Her Lost Alibi: A gripping suspense thriller. (An Amber Cross Thriller Book 1)

by David F. Berens

  Her heart raced in her chest. “When were they installed?”

  The man thought for a second. “Maybe like two years ago? Or coulda been three. Why?”

  She explained that she was working on a murder case and had thought they might be helpful. She was about to thank the man and hang up when he said, “You must be lookin’ into that Morales thing, yeah?”

  Her heart, that had been racing, seemed to stop. “Yes,” she stammered. “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “I seen it happen, ya know? Watched the whole thing. I was taking an empty keg out to the curb and blammo. That guy Morales shot the other guy twice.”

  She took a deep breath, “Are you telling me that you watched Marcario Morales shoot Eric Torres in the street that night?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did the police talk to you?”

  “Well, I went down to the station to tell ‘em what I seen. They said they had two reliable witnesses and that I wasn’t needed. I mean, they got the guy, put him in jail. I figured it was all good.”

  “Would you be willing to testify to that fact, Mr. um…?”

  “Cruz,” he said. “Tito Cruz.”

  The hits just kept on coming. “Are you related to … Governor Jerry Cruz?”

  “Yeah, Uncle Cruz to me. Super guy.”

  She was shaking her head in disbelief. “Thank you, Mr. Cruz. I’ll be in touch.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to Minter. “Morales. I have to find Morales.”

  “Go get ‘em tiger,” he said, as she ran out his conference room door.

  23

  Gone, Baby, Gone

  When she burst through the double doors at the Savannah Police Department, one of the yellowing panes fell to the floor shattering into a million pieces. She ignored it and yelled at the room.

  “Where is Marcario Morales?” She demanded.

  Later she would realize how crazy she must’ve sounded in that moment, but it didn’t really matter. She had all the evidence she needed to put the guilty man back behind bars.

  No one in the lobby moved. A few of the perps being walked through nodded and smiled. She ran past the receptionist into the den of detective’s desks. She slammed a hand on Fat Rick’s desk.

  “Rick, where is Morales?”

  She left off the “Fat” part in the hopes of winning him over. Unfortunately, true to his name, he was in the middle of a pastrami on rye sandwich. Mustard dripped down his chin and onto his tie as he shook his head.

  “Mo frukin’ crue,” he mumbled, his words muffled by his lunch.

  She picked up his stapler and threw it. It banged into a wall shattering someone’s framed commendation letter. Oops. She would pay for that to be fixed later.

  Chief Felton Decker jerked open the door to his office.

  “Ber!” He yelled. “In my office, pronto!”

  “But sir,” she protested, “I need to find Marcario Morales.”

  “You will need to find a new job if you don’t get your butt settled down and into my office right now!” He said, jabbing a meaty thumb toward the open door.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Rick was shaking his head and rolling his eyes at her as she walked away. On a whim, she turned around and feinted a lunge at him. He shrieked, spilling even more half-chewed sandwich into his lap. He leaned backward suddenly just slightly too far. His chair gave up the fight and fell, throwing him back, sprawling across the floor.

  “Ber! Now!” The chief said.

  She walked in and he slammed his glass-paned door so hard that she thought he might break it like she’d done out in the lobby.

  “Sir, I need to find out where Marcario Morales is right now. There’s been a huge misunderstanding and it’s all my fault. If you’ll just— “

  “Stop,” he said softly. He held up a hand to keep her from continuing. When he was sure she was calmer and in control of her outbursts, he said, “Now, if you can keep from becoming frantic again, you may tell me what you need to know.”

  “Sir, I made a mistake in the Morales case. He’s not innocent. He mixed up the dates so that his alibis would tell me he wasn’t in New York during the murder, but he was. I have an iron-clad witness that saw the whole thing. He played us. He played me. And now it’s up to me to get him back into prison.”

  “But your report,” Decker said, “your … your father. He was …?

  “Innocent. I just misunderstood what he was trying to tell me there at the end. He was … confused.”

  “As any father would be in that circumstance.”

  “So, you see, sir,” she said. “I need to find Morales. He needs to be arrested and retried. Do we know where he is?”

  “Last I heard, he went back to New York.”

  She stood up. “Permission to— “

  “Go on, Ber,” he said. “Just put it on Tweed’s tab, not the station’s.”

  She squeezed him suddenly and pecked his cheek. She ran back out to a smattering of applause from the other detectives and the soon-to-be-incarcerated loitering around.

  24

  Southern Comfort

  Less than twenty-four hours later, Amber along with a team from the NYPD knocked on the door of the apartment to where Morales. He’d found a buddy who had some kind of drug den apartment he could crash in and a snitch had led them here. A neighbor confirmed that he had been there once or twice, but hadn’t seen him lately. The landlord tried to let them in, but apparently all three locks had been changed.

  A battering ram took the door down in three quick blows. The air was musty and smelled of moldy food. Dust motes floated in the air of the trashed apartment. If she hadn’t known she was here to find Morales, she might’ve thought it was the scene of a burglary.

  When the assisting officers cleared the dumpy place, she was allowed to stay behind while the crime scene techs went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. They tagged and bagged just about everything in the apartment that wasn’t covered in mold. While they worked, Amber carefully looked through all the papers lying on the kitchen counter, in the trash, and stuffed under the mattress.

  Marcario had been here for sure. Some of the envelopes were current papers and court documents. She was sifting through them, taking some of them for prints and DNA when one of the techs called her into the bedroom.

  She stepped over the yellow, tented numbers the photographers were using to document all of the locations of the filth they were bagging for evidence.

  “It’s clear he was here,” one of them said, pointing at a small chest of drawers. “There are some clothes there that have obviously been washed recently. But there’s not much. It’s possible he’s grabbed some things and taken off.”

  “Just what I was afraid of,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. Her badge was back on her belt, but it didn’t feel right … not yet. “Any sign of a plane ticket, or a receipt, or anything to tell us where he’s gone?”

  “Nothing recent,” the man said, but there is this. He held up a posterboard with some items shrink-wrapped to the surface. Some of the stuff had been cut out. At the top, in black sharpie, the words: PROPERTY: Morales, Marcario. “It looks like it’s just a few old bus tickets, a couple of receipts, and a matchbook.”

  He was about to toss them aside when she yelped. “That’s his stuff he picked up from prison. Let me see that!”

  He held up his hands in surrender and passed the board over to her. She put on a new pair of gloves and pulled the plastic back. She flipped through the papers and smiled when she turned one over. She laid it on a nearby table and took a picture of it with her phone.

  “Find something?” The tech asked, watching her.

  “Maybe,” she said. She handed the papers and the posterboard to the man and walked out of the apartment. She visited Tito Cruz, had him sign an affidavit with his sworn statement on it and headed to the airport.

  It was a victory, but without Marcario Morales in custody, it was a hollow one. She scrolled through her
phone and found the photograph she had taken in his apartment. She knew where he was headed.

  The man with the heavy stubble stared across his drink, eyes lowered, sunglasses on, despite the being inside a dark bar. Outside, he was the picture of calm serenity. A drinker who wanted nothing to do with the other barflies or tourists. He wanted nothing but a cold beer and anonymity. The last few weeks had been a whirlwind of events changing his life forever. He had been incarcerated for murder, when out of the blue, a woman walked in and set him free. The plan that he’d hatched sitting in the holding cell all those years ago had finally … God, finally … worked. And then, just a few days ago, the cops had stopped him on the mind-numbingly long trip south.

  He’d always liked Florida, and once the handcuffs were off, he figured he’d take up residence there. Maybe someplace small. There were plenty of towns in the lower half of the peninsula that didn’t really care who you were or, more importantly, what you’d done in your previous life. Hell, they said everyone who lived in the Keys was running away from something. If he got lucky, maybe he could get some work on a boat, or a golf course, or a landscaping crew. But after the police stop in Macon, after he’d overheard that one skinny cop on his radio talking about taking him in, he decided he might need to go even further south … someplace where he could disappear forever. He hated that those two men had to die—at least he thought he’d killed them. He didn’t wait to see if they were still breathing when he shot them.

  He knew his luck couldn’t hold out long. Somehow, he knew that bitch who had got him off would discover the truth. He wasn’t worried though. It would take a while for them to find him here and by that time, he might be a ghost in Havana.

  On the TV, an announcer said that the Miami Dolphins had done well in the draft and were a dark horse contender for the Superbowl. A murmur of approval went up around the bar and some kid who looked like he might have been all of twelve ordered a round of drinks. He and his fraternity brothers had surely come to the wrong place. But then again, it’d been a long … long time.

  He used to like this place, back before his stint at Sullivan. Low key, friendly to Latin customers, and quiet. Either way, he took the free beer, gulped half of it down, and waved to the punks in the corner. Free is free.

  “How about a tequila shot now?” A woman’s voice said over his right shoulder.

  He didn’t have to look. He knew it was her.

  25

  Bar Rita

  Amber Cross sat down next to the man hunched over at the bar. Even without his prison jumpsuit and clean-shaven head, she had known it was him. Her heart pounded in her chest and a trickle of sweat rolled down her back. Part of that was her nerves, but it was also the sweltering, soupy heat down here. Much hotter than her new home in Savannah. It made her appreciate it all the more.

  The bartender pointed a finger in her direction and she shook her head to wave him off. She propped her elbow on the heavily lacquered wood and held her hand out to the man.

  “How ‘bout it, Marc?” She asked him. “Not going to shake the hand of the woman who freed you from prison?”

  He swallowed the rest of his beer and held the glass up to order another. He took a deep breath and turned toward her. Looking over the top of his sunglasses, he gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. Amber smirked.

  “Of course you won’t,” she said. “I missed it. I completely overlooked it the first time we met. I thought it was just because of the shackles, but it wasn’t, was it?”

  She looked at her palm.

  “Most people are okay with the knowledge that there are a few germs there.” she turned her hand over and put it on the bar. “But not you, Marc. Isn’t that right?”

  He didn’t answer, but stared hard at her through his mirrored lenses.

  “I spoke to Olanta. She told me she saw you kneeling over Eric as he bled out, holding the gun in your hand. But when the police brought you in for questioning a few hours later, they didn’t find any trace of gunshot residue. None on your hands, none on your clothes, none at all. It was a fact they were willing to overlook, but they didn’t know about your compulsions.”

  The bartender slid a frosty glass toward him. She waited for him to pick it up, but he didn’t. Maybe he hadn’t quite overcome those tendencies. Maybe she’d triggered him and he wasn’t going to touch the glass. It didn’t matter if he did.

  “You probably wash your hands ten or fifteen times a day. That’s why there wasn’t any residue, isn’t it, Marc?”

  Seemingly fighting an internal battle, Morales picked up a napkin, wrapped it around the glass, and took a sip.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said.

  “You played us with the alibis,” she said. “You played the detectives way back when and you played me. I have to admit, it was pretty smart. I almost didn’t catch it.”

  He was so still, Amber wondered if he had somehow turned to stone.

  “Eric was murdered on June 20th, 2010, the date of Gemma Jimenez’s baby’s baptism. A beautiful baby. You were in Florida to see her born. But that was on June 13th. A week earlier. It was an easy thing to mix-up and we all fell for the juxtaposition of those two important days. But you weren’t there on the 20th, were you? Gemma didn’t like you, didn’t want you hanging around, influencing her husband. She threw you out before the baptism.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said. “You got no proof. Maybe I was here. Just stayed in a hotel.”

  Amber reached in her pocket. She pulled out her phone and pulled up a picture of a punched bus ticket. She slid it across the bar. He glared at it.

  “It’s a ticket for a ride on a Greyhound from Pembroke Pines to New York.”

  He shrugged, but his body was tense.

  “It’s dated June 17th, 2010. And it’s punched twice. Once for when you got on the bus leaving Florida and once for when you got off in New York.”

  “You were in New York when Eric Torres was shot,” she felt her voice begin to tremble. “You know, if you hadn’t come to my house … if you hadn’t … touched me…”

  The memory of the attack snapped into her mind. His rough hands throwing her down on the couch. The horror of realizing what his intentions sent terror up and down her spine. A new detail that she hadn’t remembered came back. The last piece of the puzzle snapped into place.

  Her father rushed into the room, his fists slamming into Morales over and over. He punched him in the face, in the ribs, in the back as he ran. She could see her father’s face, a mask of anger and guilt. She could hear his voice, crying out rebukes as he beat Morales. She saw the man clawing his way across the carpet, leaving a bloody trail across it. Her father chased him out the door, but somehow, Morales got away from the enraged preacher. Her father ran into the road, shaking his raw, scraped fists in the air as Morales ran.

  “You cannot get away from your sins,” he screamed. “The Lord will punish you for what you have done.”

  When he finally came back into the house, he held his daughter and smoothed her hair as they both sobbed into each other’s arms.

  She realized that Joseph Cross had been carrying the guilt of that attack since that day. Over a decade ago, he had gone against his morals, he had gone against the wishes of his god and the covenant he had made as a man of peace and kindness. When the stroke took the sharpness away from his mind, he had confused that beating of Morales with … shooting him in New York. Yes, he had gone to New York, but had probably never found the man, instead, visiting the Bronx Zoo and buying his baby girl a snow globe with a pink flamingo inside.

  “How did you find me?” He asked, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him. There was something there she hadn’t heard before … something threatening, something dangerous.

  She was crying as she swiped away the photo of the bus ticket to one of a matchbook. The logo was outdated, the previous bar owner had long since sold out, but the name of the place was the same today as it was a dec
ade ago: BAR RITA.

  26

  The Last Stand

  Amber wiped at her eyes, never seeing Marcario Morales squeeze his fingers around the handle of the glass mug. In a move so fast it was nothing but a blur, he whirled on her, slamming the mug into her forehead. It hit her so hard, the handle cracked away from the rest of the mug. Her head jerked backward so hard, she and the barstool she sat on smashed into the floor. She hit the cement floor and her vision began to close in an ever-shrinking circle of blackness.

  Morales wasted no time. He was standing over her, his voice sounding like it was in a long tunnel. His glasses were off now and the calm, quiet, innocent eyes she remembered from her first visit with him in prison were gone. Now only an angry demon was there, spit flying from his lips as he growled at her in rage.

  “I’m never going back there,” he said, his breath shallow and ragged. “Not now, not ever. So, you can take that pipe dream with you to your grave.”

  She fought unconsciousness knowing if she passed out, he would most certainly kill her. In the distance, she could feel people watching, but it didn’t seem like anyone was moving to help. Why weren’t they helping her? She wanted to scream, but when she opened her mouth, bile rose up in her throat, burning as it trickled from her lips.

  Amber sensed that he was reaching under his shirt. He was getting something from his waistband. She wanted to get up. She wanted to run. She wanted to get away. She wanted to live. Marc leaned closer to her face, his breath smelling of beer.

  “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” He hissed. “Eric Torres disrespected me. You don’t mess with another man’s girl. Everybody knows that.”

  She was shaking her head, tears leaking from her eyes, running down her cheeks. “I won’t … no one knows I’m here. Let me walk away and I won’t say anything to anyone about— “