Page 4 of Alibi for Murder
Okay. Allie braced herself. It was one thing for these two to know her background, but to have been looking into her schedule and her comings and goings? Something was very wrong here.
Before she could say as much, Fraser spoke again. “Ms. Foster, we’re here because the victim was part of an ongoing case the Bureau is deeply involved in.”
Allie shook her head. “I don’t see how my having worked an entire decade ago at the hospital involved has anything to do with your current case.”
Again, the two exchanged one of those suspicious glances.
“Just get to the point please.” Her frustration refused to stay hidden any longer. She’d had more than enough of this game.
Potter tapped the screen of her cell again, then stood and moved to where Allie sat. “This might give you some clarification.”
The screen was open to a video. A woman with brown hair dressed in scrubs paused at room 251. Allie frowned. The woman started into the room but paused long enough to glance first one way and then the other along the corridor, giving the camera a full-on shot of her face.
Allie’s attention zoomed in on the image. She studied the face.
Hers.
The woman going into the room washer.
Shock funneled inside her. She stared up at Potter. “Why would you have this video? It has to be from at least ten years ago.” Allie stared at the frozen image. Her dark brown hair was in a ponytail, the way she’d always worn it—still did. In the video, she wore the required blue scrubs.
“This video,” Potter explained, “is from one week ago. That room is where the patient was murdered.”
“No. No. No.” Allie heart started to pound. She snatched the phone from the agent’s hand and watched the video again. “That’s me rightly enough. But that could not have been a week ago.” She paused the video and tried to zoom in much closer on her face, but it was too blurry to determine if the couple of crow’s feet she had developed recently were absent—which, to her way of thinking, would be proof of when this video was actually taken.
She shook her head, passed the phone back to its owner. “I have no idea why you or anyone else would believe that video is only one week old. I haven’t been in that hospital since—”
“Your grandmother died at the beginning of the pandemic,” Fraser offered.
Allie blinked, a new level of uncertainty settling in. “That’s correct.” She watched as Potter resumed her seat next to her colleague. “If you know this, then why are you suggesting that video is only a week old?”
“Because it is,” Potter stated with complete certainty. “Every second of security footage from that hospital has been scrutinized repeatedly. The clip you watched is the one that occurred outside the victim’s room just before he was murdered last Friday. There’s another that shows you coming into the hospital that day, but nothing showing you leave.”
This was wrong. Allie shook her head, her nerves jangling. “What you’re suggesting is impossible.”
Fraser moved his head slowly side to side. “I wish it were.”
No. Absolutely this had to be some sort of mistake. “But you know I haven’t been in that hospital for years. You said so yourself.” Worry started to climb up Allie’s spine. They were serious.Thiswas serious.
“The victim was Thomas Madison.”
Allie rolled the name around in her head. “I don’t know any Thomas Madison.”
This was completely insane. She focused on slowing her breathing. The way her heart thundered she was headed for a panic attack. She did not want to go there in front of these two.
“You may have seen him before.” Fraser turned his cell screen toward her. The image displayed there was of a man who appeared to be in his late sixties to early seventies. Gray thinning hair. Light colored eyes. Saggy jowls.
“He doesn’t look familiar.”
“He worked with your father…before his untimely death.”
Allie hesitated. “My father was a research technician at Ledwell…”
At the time—nearly thirty years ago—Ledwell had been the leading-edge AI research facility. Still was. Her father hadn’t been a doctor or a scientist, just a tech, but he had been very good at his work. Her grandparents had told Allie stories about how good he was. Most of those in charge at Ledwell had believed him to be far better than any of their academically trained scientists.
“Did you know,” Fraser said, “there was an investigation into your parents’ accident?”
The transition into her parents’ deaths unsettled her further. “I can’t say that I knew it growing up, but, looking back, I’m sure that would have been the case. Aren’t all accidents, particularly those involving deaths, investigated?”
