Nonetheless, we arrived early at my office and began going through the files we had taken off of Oxenstein's computer. Within a few minutes we had recovered the records we were looking for. There were two McNulties with different addresses. One named Brian Ryan and the other named Ryan Brian. No wonder everybody got them confused.
I immediately called Joe Wilson at DCPD and told him what we found.
"You guys are really slipping," said Joe. "We already tracked down the two McNulty boys. One was living in Boston and the other was living here in Washington. One was named Brian Ryan and the other was named Ryan Brian. Their mother thought it was clever and they kept the names because the similarity of the names would cause endless confusion. They have been running cons for years in which somebody would identify one of them but the other would provide an alibi."
"Well, they certainly fooled us," I commented, "although that staged alibi really raised out suspicions."
"Apparently, they've fooled a lot of people," said Joe, "they've been running operations like this for quite some time."
"We'll at least we have them now," I observed, with naïve conviction.
"Well, unfortunately, we don't really have them. We picked them up and we are holding them, but it is likely that we will just have to let them go." Joe said sadly.
"Let them go? For what ever reason?" I asked incredulously. "We have an eye witness. We ruined their alibi when we discovered the twin. What more do you want?" Gita was sitting next to me mouthing the word 'what' while I kept waving her back as I tried to get more information out of Joe.
"Calm down and I'll try to explain it to you," Joe offered patiently. "We know one of the McNulties killed Oxenstein. They aren't openly admitting it. But they aren't trying to deny it either. The problem is that we don't know which one. One of them pulled the trigger and the other was buying drinks at Syncopation. The only problem is that we don't know which one was in which place. We can't charge two guys with murder just because we know one of them did it. We have to charge one of them. As far as we can tell they are identical twin and unless we can find a difference between them that will place one of them at the murder scene, they are going to walk. Even if we put Mrs. Esterberry on the stand and ask her to point to the guy who ran from the house, she will say 'It was one of those two guys but I don't know which one,' and our case will fall apart."
"Do you mean to tell me," I began in utter disbelief, "that even though we have an eye witnesses, we don't have a case because we aren't sure which one actually did it?"
"Exactly," said Joe. "Even if we had a video tape of the murder being committed we couldn't make it stick. Whichever one we were trying to charge would simply say it was the other. And that would be more than enough reasonable doubt."
"Maybe you can get one of them to deal," I suggested.
"If one of them admits to murder that might work," Joe explained. "But if one of them accuses the other, then the accused will just make a counter accusation and we are no farther ahead."
I was beginning to see just how clever the McNulty plan really was. They conned Oxenstein out of a couple million dollars that they could keep clear because there was no hard evidence that Oxenstein had given them the money. When they killed Oxenstein there was no legal link between them and the money. If they got caught for the murder, they would pull the alibi scheme and might have gotten away with it. They didn't but there was no way they would be charged for murder. Unless we could prove the one of the two actually committed the murder, the worst they would get charged with would be as an accessory to murder. That would get them a couple years at most. Not a bad trade for a couple million dollars. Even that would be a hard sell to a jury and it was most likely that they would get away with the whole thing.
I thanked Joe for the update and asked Gita if she wanted to go out for coffee. I was feeling boxed in and needed to get out of the office so I could think clearly.
We walked over to the Buzz-in-a-Cup coffee shop. Gita got a decaf cappuccino and I got a regular coffee with an almond croissant.
Let's get it down to cases Gita said patiently. She was really good at keeping her cool when everything around her was falling apart. "Case one, there are no differences between the two twins and they get off. Case two there are differences but they cannot be used to distinguish them as far as the locations under question."
"You mean one of them has a thousand freckles and the other only has nine hundred," I offered just to keep up with the conversation.
"Exactly," she said, "it is unlikely that anyone would notice such a difference so it is the same as no difference. In those cases they also get off and there is nothing we can do about it. Case three, there is a difference that would distinguish them in this case but we don't know about it so they get off. Case four, there is a difference, we find it and we use it to convict one of murder and the other of accessory to murder."
"Case four is the outcome we are looking for," I observed, "but my gut feel is that we are dealing with case three."
"Then all we need to do is turn case three into case four," Gita observed, "We somehow have to find the difference that will place one in either place and we get the other for free."
I was impressed with her reasoning. She always made things so simple. If only life were really that easy. "So how do we find this difference that will turn case three into case four?" I asked.
"You just keep going over the evidence and talking to the witnesses until something that everybody missed turns up."
"And if it doesn't?" I asked.
"Then we are no worse off than we are now."
I had to admit her reasoning was impeccable. No wonder I spent last night on the couch.
"Look Tad," she began, "you can start combing over this stuff tomorrow, but right now I need some help with my homework on Internet scams. I've got to be back in Chicago tomorrow morning which means I'll have to catch the last flight out of National, unless you want to drive me to BWI where I can catch a later flight."
"Alright," I agreed, "let's walk over to your office on K St. where there won't be as many distractions. While we are walking you can fill me in on some of the scams that you are familiar with and I will see if I can figure out how they could be worked on the Internet." I tossed our trash into a trashcan while Gita put on her jacket and we headed up 21st street.