From the Desk of Zoe Washington(52)

“Professor Thomas told me what happened when you went to her office. She said that she had your letter from Marcus.” Mom reached into her blazer pocket and held out a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. “Here.”

Marcus’s letter.

“You went to see Professor Thomas?”

Mom nodded. “After our phone call.”

“We both went so we could talk to her together,” Dad said.

I couldn’t believe it. “Does she really remember Marcus?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mom said. “She had a lot to say.”

Dad said, “I asked her if I could record our conversation. We want to talk to a lawyer about what she said.”

A lawyer? My heart squeezed. They were going to talk to a lawyer about this?

Dad took his cell phone out, and a moment later, Professor Thomas’s voice filled my bedroom. My heart started to race as I leaned closer to the phone in Dad’s hand.

“Let me start from the beginning,” Professor Thomas said. “Marcus originally reached out to me because he wanted to see a futon I was selling—I’d posted it on Craigslist. He came by my house to take a look.”

Dad’s voice came up on the recording. “You’re sure it was that same day? His crime took place on October 26. It sounds like police believe the victim was killed in the late afternoon.”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure. It was a Friday,” Professor Thomas said. “He came toward the end of the workday. I showed him the futon, and he said he wanted to buy it. Then he noticed some of the baby stuff I had out for sale, which my brother and his wife were getting rid of. Marcus said he was going to be a dad soon, and started asking me questions about the baby stuff. Like what sort of gear he should have.”

“He said he wanted to buy stuff for a baby?” Mom’s voice on the recording asked. She sounded surprised, but in a good way.

“Yes,” Professor Thomas said. “That’s the part that made me remember him. He said he could use some stuff for his ‘Little Tomato,’ which is what he said he called the baby. I thought that was so cute. He was so young, still looked like a kid himself, but he seemed excited to become a dad. I’d never heard of Little Tomato before. My brother called his son Peanut at one point. I asked him where he got the nickname, and he said it was from a song. He ended up turning on his car and playing it for me. It was a sweet song.”

The tune of “Hang On Little Tomato” played in my head as I listened to Professor Thomas tell the story. I could imagine it—them standing in her driveway listening to the song from his car’s speakers. Marcus smiling, thinking of me.

Because he wasn’t committing a crime that afternoon. He was thinking about me. My eyes started to water.

Professor Thomas kept talking. “We talked about babies for a couple of minutes, and then we decided on a price for the futon. He said he’d rent a U-Haul truck the next morning so he could bring it home, but that he’d give me the cash that night so I’d hold the futon for him. He asked me where the nearest ATM was, and I said there was one a few blocks away in downtown Brookline. I remember he ended up walking there. He left his car in front of my house.

“He didn’t come back right away, and I remember wondering if he’d gotten lost. But then he came back holding a coffee cup and a bag of doughnuts. By that point, it was getting dark out. My husband got home, and he and Marcus got into a conversation about sports, because my husband had a Boston Celtics hat on, and I guess Marcus is a big fan. They talked for a while. But then Marcus said he didn’t need the futon after all. I guess while he was gone, he got a call from a friend who said he could have his couch. Marcus left sometime after that.”

Dad stopped the recording there.

I blinked at them. “Do you believe her?” I asked, looking between Mom, Dad, and Grandma. “Do you think she really did see Marcus that afternoon?”

Grandma nodded, and Dad said, “Her story makes sense. Plus, it takes at least thirty minutes to drive back and forth between UMass Boston and Brookline, where Professor Thomas lived. I’m not an expert, but I don’t see how Marcus could’ve driven back and forth, spent all that time in Brookline, and still committed the crime near campus.”

“What do you think?” I asked Mom.

She sighed. “I don’t know what to think. I’m still in shock. I spent so long convincing myself he had to be guilty. It was easier to believe that, to justify him being in prison—away from us.” She teared up again, blinking them away, and cleared her throat. “But he could be innocent, and if he is, I need to know. We have to find out the truth.”

I could barely believe my ears. “What happens now?”

“After we left Harvard, I called a friend of mine who’s a lawyer,” Dad said. “He’s not a criminal lawyer, but he has friends from law school who are. He’s going to speak to a couple of them and see what we can do. He said the Innocence Project of New England is right here in Boston, so we can reach out to them.”

“I know about them!” I said. “Do you think Marcus will be able to get out of prison?”

“We don’t know,” Grandma said. “Finding his alibi witness was only the first step. That’s why we need to find him a good lawyer.”

We. They were really going to help! “I . . . I still can’t believe you talked to Professor Thomas,” I said.