The truth? Sellitto reflected. Right. "You just needed to write something down?"
Struggling for breath, Weir nodded.
"Where were you?" persisted an increasingly bored Lon Sellitto. "When you needed this paper?"
"I don't know. A Starbucks."
"Which one?"
Weir squinted. "Don't remember."
Criminals had started to cite Starbucks a lot lately when offering up alibis. Sellitto decided it was because there were so many of the coffee outlets and they all looked alike--criminals could credibly sound confused about which one they'd been in at a particular time.
"Why was it blank?" Sellitto continued.
"What was blank?"
"The back of the receipt. If you'd taken it to write something down why didn't you write on it?"
"Oh. I don't think I could find a pen."
"They have pens at Starbucks. People charge things a lot there. They need pens to sign their credit card vouchers."
"The clerk was busy. I didn't want to bother her."
"What was it you wanted to write down?"
"Uhm," came the breathy wheeze, "movie show time."
"Where's Larry Burke's body?"
"Who?"
"The police officer who arrested you on Eighty-eighth Street. You told Lincoln Rhyme last night that you killed him and the body was on the West Side somewhere."
"I was just trying to make him think I was going to attack the circus
, lead him off. Feeding him false information."
"And when you admitted killing the other victims? That was false information too?"
"Exactly. I didn't kill anybody. Somebody else did and tried to pin it on me."
Ah, the oldest defense in the book. The lamest. The most embarrassing.
Though one that, of course, did sometimes work, Sellitto knew--depending on the gullibility of the jury.
"Who wanted to frame you?"
"I don't know. But somebody who knows me, obviously."
"Because they'd have access to your clothes and fibers and hairs and things, to plant at the scenes."
"Exactly."
"Good. Then it'd be a short list. Give me some names."
Weir closed his eyes. "Nothing's coming to me." His head slumped. "It's really frustrating."