All the Alibis Are True
A detective proves every suspect was elsewhere when a judge died.
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How it begins
By lunchtime, Dina had cleared every suspect.
By two, she had stopped enjoying the achievement.
The judge was still dead.
Seven people had reasons to kill him. All seven had been elsewhere at the relevant time, and their alibis were not the usual fragile arrangements held together by friendship and poor lighting.
A live broadcast.
A hospital procedure.
A train delayed inside a tunnel.
A wedding video containing three independent clocks.
Dina spread the photographs across the interview table.
Peter Shaw leaned over them with the pleased expression of a man finally invited to discuss his particular obsession.
"Which one bothers you?"
"All of them."
"That isn't useful."
"Neither is a murder with no available murderer."
Peter tapped the courthouse photograph.
The clock above the judge's door showed twelve seventeen.
"What time did he die?"
"Twelve seventeen."
"Convenient."
"The emergency log confirms it."
"Does the emergency log own a watch?"
Dina looked at him.
He had spent forty years maintaining public clocks. The department had called him because the courthouse clock was old, and because nobody else had answered before lunch.
"The mechanism is sound," he said. "I serviced it last month."
"Then why point at it?"
"Because that isn't its face."
Dina brought the photograph closer.
Roman numerals. Brass hands. A crack near the six.
She had seen it every day during the inquest.
Peter took a folded receipt from his wallet.
On the reverse, he had drawn the old clock.
The crack was near the nine.
"Could the face have been turned?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"That," he said, "sounds more like your profession."
Dina looked again at the seven alibis.
Every witness had told the truth.
Someone had simply decided when that truth was supposed to matter.
She called the records office.
This time, she asked for the first emergency log.
Not the corrected one.
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Outline and characters
- Dina verifies seven apparently incompatible alibis.
- Peter identifies a court clock altered during maintenance.
- Independent recordings confirm the witnesses told the truth.
- Dina discovers the reported death time was copied from a forged emergency log.
- The judge had been investigating timestamp fraud in past cases.
- A clerk admits helping move the body under threat.
- Dina reconstructs the true sequence from delivery records.
- The killer tries to erase the original clock mechanism.
- Peter preserves the mechanical evidence and Dina identifies the administrator responsible.
- The murder is solved and affected convictions receive independent review.
Characters
- Dina Cross, 42. A detective investigating a judge's death
- Peter Shaw, 61. A retired courtroom clock technician
Series possibilities
- Dina reopens another conviction whose evidence depends on an apparently reliable timestamp.
