Olanta told her she’d eventually given up on becoming a star and moved to Cleveland. Amber thanked her for her time and hung up.
“And?” Minter drawled, squinting his eyes quizzically.
“I am beginning to think our innocent man was not so innocent. I have a hunch that he was in New York. If he was, I think he actually might have shot Eric Torres.”
“Certainly would be a tidy little bow to wrap around the case if that were so,” Minter said, scratching his chin and chewing on his pipe. “But hunches in this business need proof. What proof have you got that Marcario Morales could have been in New York on June 13th, 2010? Are all the alibi witnesses lying? And why wasn’t there any gunshot residue on his hands? And, most important of all, why did your father tell you he had something to do with it?”
She barely heard Minter ask the questions. She was staring over his shoulder at the whiteboard on the wall. In one shocking moment, it all became clear.
22
The Art of Penmanship
She stood up and walked to the board with Minter Tweed’s notes. She picked up the red marker and began to draw lines between each of the critical details. As she did, the whole thing played like a movie in her mind. When she finished, she turned around to see Minter packing his pipe with tobacco.
“Well?” She asked, waving her hand behind her at the whiteboard.
He squinted at it, tilted his head, and scratched at his silver curly hair. He said nothing for a moment.
“So, what do you think?” She finally said.
“I think the art of penmanship is lost on the youth of this world.”
She tapped a finger hard on the board, smudging part of a line she had drawn. “It’s him. Marcario is not innocent. He shot Eric Torres.”
“A jury said so back in the day, but you have spent the better part of a week proving otherwise,” Minter said. “Perhaps if you enlighten me on your … discovery, I’ll see it more clearly.”
She took a deep breath. “June 20th, 2010, Eric Torres is gunned down on a New York Street.”
Each time she made a statement, she tapped the board leaving red dots all over it.
“Two eye witnesses say they saw Marcario Morales at the scene though neither saw him pull the trigger. He was brought in for questioning and railroaded into prison.”
“Open and shut,” Minter chimed in.
“It would seem that way,” she said. “But then I came along to review the file. I found the alibi list that would’ve freed him. Over a dozen people saying he was in Florida for the baptism of a friend’s baby.”
Minter began to rub at his beard and chew on the end of the pipe.
“One of them being my father,” she said, a sudden catch in her throat. “And ultimately … me.”
I was in Florida at the same time Morales was … I could’ve provided an alibi for him as well.”
“Then Mr. Morales is innocent.” Minter held his hands wide mimicking the scales of justice, “right?”
“Wrong.”
Amber shuffled through some papers until she found the alibi list that Morales had provided for the police officers. She put the sheet in front of Minter and pointed to a single name. Beside the poorly penned line that read: Gemma Jimenez there was one word. It was nearly illegible, but it clearly started with a “B.”
“He wasn’t in Florida for the Baptism, like we all thought—well, like I thought.” She tapped the word. “He was in Florida for the birth of the child.”
Minter shrugged. “I’m not sure I follow.”
Amber went back to the board and changed to a blue marker. “Marcario Morales was in Florida for the birth of the Jimenez child on June 13th, 2020. He was not in Florida for the baptism on June 20th, 2020, the day that Eric Torres was shot.”
A glimmer of something began to light up in Minter’s eyes. “And you know this how?”
“My father did not perform a baptism that day, he simply gave a sermon on the life of the child … and the death … of my mother.” She briefly cleared the emotion from her throat. “You know, circle of life and all.”
Minter was nodding now, his arms crossed, the pipe still firmly in his jaw.
“The same day Morales came to my house and attempted to assault me.”
A long moment of silence hung in the air. She walked back over and tapped the alibi list. “Gemma Jimenez told me she threw Morales out shortly after the birth … I think she said on Thursday. He was basically a thug at that time and she didn’t want him around influencing her husband.” She stared at the whiteboard now covered with what could have passed for an original Jackson Pollock painting. “And my father, pretty much followed him back to New York and tried to get revenge for the assault. I guess he never did. It was really hard to tell what he was saying he’d done after the stroke.”
Amber sat down in a conference chair in a heavy slump. “He played us. He played me. He worked the whole system of people, knowing that it had been a long time ago and that the dates would get mixed up. I mean, no one actually saw him do it. The witnesses just saw him afterward. His hands were clean of gunshot residue because at that time, he was just developing his O.C.D. issues. He probably washed his hands a hundred times before the police got him into the station to run the test.”
“And you helped him go free,” Minter said, a slight tone of awe in his voice.
“Not a big help to point that out right now,” she said, rubbing her temples with her fingers.
“Then, I believe it is incumbent on you to get him back in prison,” Minter said, matter-of-factly.
“But he’s free. He was declared innocent.”
“No, no, my dear,” Minter said, with a wag of his finger. “His conviction was
