Alibi Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  EPILOGUE

  Praise for ALIBI

  “A finely plotted thriller. This is like Love Story with grisly bits and featuring a team drawn straight from another popular TV show: CSI. In a word: labyrinthine.”

  —Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun

  “Outstanding legal thriller . . . equal, if not better, to those written by more celebrated authors worldwide. Sydney Bauer’s first novel, Undertow, won the 2007 Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel—I think Alibi is even better.”

  —Australian Crime Fiction Database

  “There are all sorts of tension-filled dramas going on at the same time, all of which are held together under a tight rein . . . And what an ending. You don’t want me to even hint about it, so there’s little else to say except . . . what an ending!”

  —Crime Down Under

  “Entertaining reading. Intriguing.” —Gold Coast Bulletin

  “This is a well-written and well-paced thriller with enough twists and turns to keep the most jaded reader in attendance.”

  —Sunshine Coast Daily

  UNDERTOW

  “Bauer (the nom de plume of Australian TV executive Kim berly Scott) credibly navigates multiple segments of Boston society as she fashions a complex plot from simple elements.” —Publishers Weekly

  “An impressive debut. Written with urgency . . . The climaxes and about-turns and surprises just keep coming until the final showdown . . . Watch out, Grisham.”

  —The Sydney Morning Herald

  “A creditable, enthralling legal suspense drama following firmly in the footsteps of Grisham and Patterson.”

  —Good Reading

  “Undertow is all handled with dexterity and no little style . . . [Bauer’s] locations have the right sense of place, her plotting is economical and concise . . . Bauer is credibly packaged.”

  —The Australian

  “Bauer has done a Grisham, producing a fast-paced and sus penseful legal thriller.” —The Melbourne Age

  “Sydney Bauer has hit the crime scene in fine style with a legal thriller that is confronting, touching on relevant and controversial issues with absolute confidence. This is the kind of story that legal thriller fans everywhere would eat up with a spoon and then go looking for more.”

  —Australian Crime Writers’ Association

  “One of the most accomplished Australian crime novels to date. Look out, John Grisham.” —Sisters in Crime Australia

  “A deeply compelling political/legal thriller . . . with a series of ingenious twists.” —Crime Down Under

  “Bauer’s eye for detail never lets her down. Her obviously thorough research is carefully integrated and never just for effect.” —Bookseller and Publisher Magazine

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ALIBI

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Pan Macmillan Australia trade paperback edition / 2008

  Jove mass-market edition / August 2009

  Copyright © 2008 by Sydney Bauer.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form

  without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-10511-5

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.


  JOVE® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  PROLOGUE

  Saturday, July 11

  The Plaza Hotel, New York

  “Once there was a young Japanese princess,” said Jessica Nagoshi, the thick cotton sheets now stretching across her middle as she twisted to meet his eye, “who was picked up by a powerful wave and carried to a deserted island far away from her father’s home.” They were in New York, at the Plaza no less—two of the Ivy League elite, hiding out from the rest of the world in the middle of the busiest city on earth.

  “The princess was lonely and sad,” she went on, as James turned his head, his arm now reaching across her shoulders so that he might pull her close. “And wished with all her heart that she would be rescued, but many years passed until someone came to her aid.”

  Jessica was prone to stories such as these—simple yet telling tales of Japanese folklore that gave him a rare insight into not so much what but how this clever, complex girl was thinking.

  “Let me guess,” said James then, his green eyes lost in her own deep brown ones, the lamps in their executive suite dimmed but the curtains stretched wide apart so that the room was now flooded with the lights of the city beyond. “It was her knight in shining armor.”

  “No, James.” She shook her head, and he realized how much he had grown to love the way she would feign frustration at his simplistic “Western” generalizations. “In fact, there were four warriors who came to her aid—one carrying a sword, one riding a crane, a third astride a tortoise and a fourth holding a cherry blossom and wearing the smile of the gods.”

  “ ‘Rescue me and I shall be your bride,’ said the princess, after which all four warriors stepped forward to state their case.

  “And so the warrior carrying the sword said: ‘Allow me to rescue you, for I have the strength of minions,’ while the warrior riding the crane argued, ‘But I sit upon a crane which will assure us a life of good fortune,’ and the third man, astride the tortoise, promised the princess good health and longevity, while the fourth remained silent, offering her only a branch of cherry blossom as a symbol of life’s transience.”

  “So who did she choose?” asked a now intrigued James, shifting on the mattress so that he might rise onto his elbow.

  “The fourth warrior of course,” she said. “The only one who would bring her happiness, no matter how short-lived.”

  James frowned then, looking down upon her—at her smooth skin and perfect lips, at her dark almond eyes and long black hair, which fell across the pillow in waves. It had only been two months since they first met, and strangely enough, he felt like he knew everything and nothing about her all at the very same time. She was not like the other girls at Deane—the beautiful, well-connected intellectuals, the daughters of old money and the progressive nouveau riche.

  “What are you saying, Jess?” he asked after a time. “That you want me to rescue you? That you want me to offer you that cherry blossom and promise you happiness for as long as it will last? Because if you do, I . . .”

  “I do not need to be rescued, James,” she said then, as if he had failed to grasp her point. “But the garden I live in is small.”

  “I don’t understand,” he replied. “You of all people have the world at your feet.”

  “Then maybe I am asking too much.”

  They lay in silence for a while, the street noise beyond cosseting them in anonymity.

  “I want to meet your father,” said James at last. “Tomorrow.”

  “Shhh,” she whispered, lifting her long narrow finger before stretching her neck to meet his lips with hers. “Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Nobody knows what tomorrow might bring.” And he kissed her in return.

  “Jessica,” he said. “I want you to know . . . that whatever happens, you are . . . I am . . .”

  “It is all right,” she interrupted. “In case you have not noticed, I made my decision weeks ago, by the riverbank on that morning filled with color. For as my mother once told me, it is the choices that we don’t make in life that we live to regret—not the ones that we do.”

  1

  Friday, September 11

  “Okay,” said Boston attorney-at-law David Cavanaugh as he took his girlfriend by the arm and led her inside the warm cocoon that was O’Sullivan’s Bar in riverside Cambridge. “It’s official. I am old, Sara Davis—over the hill, past it, seriously on the wrong side of thirty.”

  David took Sara’s coat and looked around the student bar. It was cozy and dark and filled with good-looking twenty somethings, all knocking back beers and wines and other alcoholic concoctions of various colors in long slender glass bottles.

  “David,” said his fellow attorney girlfriend. “I wouldn’t call thirty-seven over the hill. And besides, you’re fit, healthy and still pretty hot—for an old geezer that is.”

  David grabbed both ends of the wool knit scarf that hung around Sara’s neck and pulled her close, kissing her squarely on her lips, which were tinged with a hint of blue despite the now tepid surroundings.

  “You’re cold,” he said. “I’ll get us a drink.”

  “Let me find Jake first,” she said. “He is the reason we are here after all.”

  David had met thirty-one-year-old Sara Davis almost two years ago when she asked him to represent her boss, Rayna Martin, in what turned out to be one of the biggest hate trials of the decade. David had made many good friends—and enemies—during the course of that high-profile trial, and even better, had fallen in love with his long-haired, brown-skinned, turquoise-eyed co-counsel.

  Last year Sara agreed to join David’s law firm—Wright, Wallace and Gertz—run by David’s boss, friend and mentor Arthur Wright, and since then they had taken on a range of cases together, including the high-profile defense of Professor Stuart Montgomery, the man accused of killing the vice president of the United States.

  “There he is,” shouted Sara, in an attempt to be heard over the din as she pointed to the far back corner of the hotel. “You grab the drinks and meet me over there.”

  While David headed to the bar Sara jockeyed her way down to the back, ignoring the various stares and proclamations of love by at least two drunken college boys who, she knew, would definitely be feeling it in the morning.

  She wrestled her way into the tightly knit group as politely as possible before coming face-to-face with one of the three men she loved most in the world—her little brother, Jake Davis.

  “Hey bro,” she said wrapping her arms around her blond-haired, blue-eyed sibling. Sara had been adopted by her parents six years before they surprised everyone by giving birth to a second child the natural way. “Congratulations, kiddo. This new job is huge, right? Who would have thought, my scruffy little brother the big corporate executive.”

  “Thanks, Sara,” said Jake, pulling her into his circle of friends. “But it’s only an internship, and I still have to finish my . . .”

  “I know, I know. But it is seriously great, Jake. I’m allowed to be proud of you. That’s what big sisters do.”

  Earlier in the year, twenty-five-year-old Jake had completed the much respected Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan’s Undergraduate Program in Management Science at the top of his class. This meant he could pretty much choose his career path from a long list of alternatives including consulting, commercial and investment banking, financial analysis, commercial marketing, software engineering or new product management.

  He had decided on continuing his post-graduate studies by taking on a further degree in international business law, a course he would now have to complete part-time considering he had just been offered a high five-figure internship by Credit Suisse First Boston.

  “So here he is,” said David, putting down the three beers on a now-sticky walnut bar table before joining the huddle to shake Jake’s hand. “The buddi
ng Donald Trump. So how long before I can hit you up for a loan?”

  “Actually,” said Jake, “I was gonna ask you guys to lend me a coupla bucks tonight. With only a few days of freedom left, the boys are in the mood for partying and I figure we better make the most if it.”

  “The most of what?” Sara smiled. “Us having more money than you, or you being able to cry destitute little brother just one last time?”

  “Both.” Jake laughed.

  “Fair enough,” said David, pulling out his wallet.

  Jake was right, the crowd was obviously in for a long night. The new college year started the following week and, judging by the festive mood around them, this lot were going to milk this unusually cold final week of summer vacation dry—literally.

  “Let me introduce you to my friends,” said Jake with one arm around his sister and the other draped over David’s shoulder.

  “Look out, guys,” he said, turning to his circle of drinking buddies. “There are two lawyers in the house so no talk about tax evasion strategy until after my sister and her boyfriend here leave.” Jake smiled before downing most of his freshly poured beer and proceeding to give the introductions. “Seriously, Sis,” he said, turning back to Sara again, “I am so glad you guys made it.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Sara said, smiling at her brother.

  A little over an hour later the crowd started to disperse, with talk of clubbing here and hooking up there. David and Sara were just about to leave when an expensively dressed, good-looking young man with short dark hair and pale green eyes made his way through the group to their cozy little corner at the far end of the room.