The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 13 (New. Newish? (and so it goes))

As I wrote in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 12 (New), rewrites are in progress.

The month of July saw chapter juggling to avoid timeline conflicts, lots of editing, plus several new chapters in what I’ve already shared and, of course, stuff you’ve never seen.

God, I hope it’s worth it.

The Alibi – Chapter 13

 
Irene Casey smiled back at Professor Red “Gentleman John” Willmette as she took her seat in Forensics 517, an advanced lab with the prestigious title Forensics Materials, Standards, and Guidelines.

517 was the only course Willmette taught because he created the department some fifty plus years ago, had academic, government, industry, and law enforcement connections covering the globe, and was the Erdös of the Forensics community. Investigators evaluated each other by their Willmette number: Did you co-author a paper with Willmette? You were a Willmette-One. Did you co-author a paper with someone who was a Willmette-One? You were a Willmette-Two. Go to any conference and the floor was saturated with Willmette-Tens, -Elevens, and -Twelves, and you couldn’t get a teaching position in the field unless you were a Willmette-Six or better.

A recognized authority in several forensic disciplines, he created Semiotic Forensics, what some people called Environmental Forensics, and he always laughed when he heard the term. “Yes, we investigate the environmental system, but derive meaning from recognizing every element in a given environment is a sign, consciously or non-consciously chosen by the individual – from the petty crook to the white-collar likes of Madoff – to enhance their experience of the event under investigation.” Known as “Gentlemen John,” he lived the hobo life for six months to learn the language of their signs in order to solve a cold case.

Which he did.

And brought down an organization that made The French Connection look like a toddler’s soccer game.

Despite several attempts on his life.

Nobody did that kind of thing anymore.

But now?

Now he was everyone’s favorite uncle who knew all the funny stories about the family and neighborhood, and if you took 517 be prepared to laugh hard and work harder.

Lab benches ringed the room, the center taken up with the standard classroom desk layout, and he had people sit alphabetically, but by first name, not last, so Irene sat dead center of the fifteen students joining her.

Willmette, who had to dip his head when going through most doorways, reached down and rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Let’s get started. We’re going to have a guest with us today, and this guest,” he checked his watch, “in addition to a resume too long to recount in detail, is a member of CSAFE, a Senior Policy Advisor to the National Commission on Forensic Science, and a Senior Fellow at OSAC.” He checked his watch a second time and glanced at the door. “Yes, any minute now…”

One of Casey’s classmates nudged her. She wrote in the top margin of her notebook “CSAFE NIST Center of Excellence in Forensic Science. OSAC Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science.”

Willmette loosened his bow tie. “Why don’t we all continue with our lab work until our guest arrives. Ladies and gentleman, to your benches.”

Casey and the rest moved to their research stations. She kept some of the communion wafer she picked up that night she let Captain Romantic off the hook and analyzed it the best she could. She took a different tact than outlined in the manuals – look for compositional analogs. What were the communion wafers like?

Footsteps hurried down the hall. Willmette stood by the door and spread his arms like P.T. Barnum introducing Gargantua, the world’s largest gorilla.

“Ta-Da!”

A petite woman, just over half Willmette’s height, mid-fifties woman with close cropped, strikingly blonde hair and a deep Mediterranean complexion stopped in the door way. She supported herself with one hand on the doorjam, looked up at Willmette and smiled. “How late am I, sir?”

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 12 (New)

We skip ahead a bit because chapters 8-11 are pretty much rewrites of previous material and do you really care at this point (if you do, let me know)?

This chapter, however, is brand new and is necessary to establish a thread I make use of later in the story (no worries, you haven’t seen where yet).

The Alibi – Chapter 12

 
Ginni Lister blinked a few times. Her eyes wouldn’t focus at first. Something beeped above her, the rapidity of the beeps increased as her awareness grew. A light blanket covered her, between her and the blanket a clean, fresh-smelling sheet. Her head rested comfortably on a not too-giving pillow. Her left arm rested beside her and above the covers. With in IV inserted and taped in place.

She sat up. Walls painted a soft azure. A nightstand with a beautiful floral arrangement. Some of her personal things on a semi-commercial looking bureau with a vanity and mirror on top.

Voices. Briggs? She followed the voices to a door, a window from slightly above handle-height to the height of a tallish man let her see into a brightly lit and similarly painted hallway.

Briggs stood there. He nodded and talked to someone she couldn’t see. He glanced through the glass, saw her staring, excused himself from whomever he talked with, and entered her room.

“How you doing?”

“Where am I?”

He pulled out his phone and swiped, tapped, swiped. “You’re in recovery. You got out of ICU about two hours ago. The anesthetic is wearing off. You remember what happened?”

She pushed herself so she sat up against her pillow and kept her eyes on him. “I was giving you head. That’s the last thing I remember.”

Briggs nodded. “You started gagging.”

“You must be so proud.”

He paused for a moment but only to focus on a message on his phone. “You turned blue and passed out. I called our building’s emergency services. They stabilized you and got you here. You remember any of that?”

“Where’s here?”

Swipe, swipe, tap. “Topsfield. North Shore. A clinic I know. One where I can trust everyone. You feeling alright?”

“When can I leave?”

Tab. Tab. Swipe. “They’ll probably want to keep you in for observation for at least another day. Want to get the doctor?”

“Personal friend of yours?”

Lane looked up from his phone, shook his head, and went to the door. “Your welcome. I’ll expect you back at work the day after you’re released.”

“You mean they won’t tell you as I’m walking out the door?”

He opened the door and put his phone back in his pocket. “Don’t worry. Our insurance covers everything.”

She listened as the clacking steps of his bespoke shoes died in the hallway and lay back in bed. “Thanks, Briggs. Really appreciate your concern.” She glanced at the IV injection point. Another red mark, a slight swelling, was about an inch above it. “Must’ve not been able to find the vein the first time.”

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 8 (Yep, New)

(i can tell you right now this chapter will either get moved to a new location.
Extra points if you can guess why (leave your idea in the comments))

The Alibi – Chapter 8

 
Ed reached up and caressed a ripening apple. It hung like a glittered like a red and green Christmas ornament in the sun. Except for the August heat and the gnarling branches of the apple tree, Ed remembered a childhood with Christmas treats and presents and goodies and smells of baking and roasting permeating his house. He wondered what became of this brothers and sisters. Christmas was one of the few days everyone came together in the orphanage. There were times he missed it so.

He snapped the apple from its stem and bit into it. Sweet nectar of the sun dribbled down his stubbled chin, over his fingers, pooled in his palm.

Morelli’s Impala came up his dirt road. A short bed lowboy, two men in overalls in the cab, came up behind it hiding something big and roundish under a tent sized tarp. A knuckle boom crane sat at the very end of the lowboy, its crane reaching over the tarp and locked in position behind the cab.

Morelli got out of his Impala and pointed to a large shed at the far end of the road, on the far side of the orchard.

Voss shouted, “If what’s under the tarp is sensitive, better let them know that track’s rutted from tractor tires.”

Morelli called up to the lowboy’s cab. “You got that?”

The driver held a thumb’s up towards Voss. The lumper got out of the cab and stood five feet in front of the hood.

“And you damage any growing thing, I’ll put a shotgun shell into whatever’s under that tarp myself.”

Both driver and lumper gave Voss a thumb’s up.

The lumper got ten feet in fromt of the truck, turned to face it, and waved his hands to guide it forward. The driver kept his eyes on the lumper’s hands and never took the lowboy out of low gear. He let the diesel’s idle drive the lowboy forward.

Morelli came up beside Voss. “Did I tell you the Director sends her thanks?”

Voss focused on Morelli’s abdomen before looking up.

“Will you stop doing that?”

“Going to tell me what’s under the tarp?”

“You want G20 or higher security clearance?”

“And you know for a fact this isn’t going to harm my orchards?”

“I asked. Nobody thinks it could. It’s completely passive. No moving parts. Just…” Morelli stopped, looked down, cleared his throat.

“Just a lot of direcitional and distance sensing gear?”

Morelli frowned at him. “What makes you say that?”

“You didn’t do a deep background check on me once your found out who I am?”


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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 7 (Yes, Another New One)

The Alibi – Chapter 7

 
Voss felt a tingling along his arms, looked up, and saw Morelli’s Impala coming up the dirt road to his farm.

Morelli got out and waved.

“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Still haven’t seen Gio. Don’t know where he is.”

“Couldn’t keep away. I need a favor.”

“Do I have to kill somebody?”

Morelli chuckled. “Sorry, that’s not in our charter. Did you have somebody in mind?”

“What’s the favor?”

“You have any outbuildings you’re not using? Empty? Maybe a small barn or big shed? And not near your house?”

“What are you going to use it for?”

“Storage. And I’ll pay any rent or fees you want.”

Voss cocked his head at him and snorted.

Morelli reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills secured with a thick elastic band. “Off the books. Nobody needs to know. What’s your price?” He undid the elastic. Ben Franklin frowned up at Ed from the top bill.

“Don’t you work for the government?”

“Right hand left hand thing. I won’t tell anybody if you won’t. So?”

Voss kept his eyes on Morelli. “Last time I saw a roll of bills like that was in an FBI Al Capone movie. What d’you want the buildling for?”

“The Costner-Connery-Di Nero one? Yeah, that was a good one.” Morelli paused. “You’re not buying the storage story, huh?”

“Uh-uh. Your attitude makes me think this is something illegal. Is this illegal?”

“Hey, I work for the government, remember?”

“Is this illegal?”

Morelli wrapped the elastic back around the bills and shoved the roll back in his pocket. “I told them this wasn’t the right approach.” He sighed. “Can I ask you a question?”

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The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 5 (Brand new! Again!)

Yeah. Well. So.

As I wrote in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 6 (Brand new!), The Alibi continues to grow and get restructured. I mentioned in that previous post – Surprise! – Quite a bit got added and edited in June. The throughlines are pretty well established, individual character plotlines are merging.

Surprise!2, more changes occurred since last week.

What, you blinked?

Originally a continuous storyline, then it grew to three, then four, five, and now we’re at seven. I’m hoping it quits at seven.

This chapter is one of the ones added while you were busy reading The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 6 (Brand new!).

The Alibi – Chapter 5

 
BPD Patrolwoman Irene Casey walked north on the North End’s Commercial Street and cut over into Langonne Park. She had nothing against night shift – the Boston skyline from the waterfront always took her breath away – and she liked the fact that the North End, despite mia familia stereotyping, was one of Boston’s quieter nighttime neighborhoods.

Besides, her powerlifter frame didn’t make her a pushover and she kept up with the latest hand-to-hand trainings.

An ex-boyfriend called her “short and mighty” and she liked that. He didn’t like the fact she could do one-hundred sets of Fenway stadium stairs and he coudln’t do five, or the fact that when he went down on her and she came her thighs damn near crushed his skull like an overripe melon.

“Oh, well. His loss.”

A beat, puce green Ford Aerostar van drove along the waterfront walkway towards Puopulo Playground, the only note of its passing the rattle of its muffler and squeak of its springs. “Yep, some other drunk didn’t know the difference between a street and a public walkway.”

Just out of sight, the Aerostar’s horn blared, its tires screeched, a door slammed, and a man starting screaming.

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