The Last Alibi (A JASON KOLARICH NOVEL)

by David Ellis

“Seriously, no pressure either way,” I say. “This has been fun. I’d love to keep hanging out, but either way, I’m good.”

  I catch the waiter’s eye. He returns, the question still lingering.

  “I think we’ll just take the check,” Alexa says.

  “Please,” I say to the waiter, not skipping a beat, with as upbeat a tone as I can manage, like my chest isn’t burning. Have I been rejected or is this a See you again, take it slow thing?

  “This was fun,” I manage. “Here.” I slide a business card across the table. “You probably already have one of these, but here’s another one, my cell is on it. I’d love to get together again sometime, but no pressure. The ball’s in your court. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Jason. You’re a really interesting guy.”

  Great. I’m interesting.

  She’s better off. She’s making the smart move.

  Run, Alexa, run.

  The check comes. I already have my card out for him. Alexa digs into her purse and pulls out her cell phone. Already making arrangements for the rest of her evening? She’s actually making a call, or checking her messages, right here in front of me?

  Then my phone buzzes in my pocket. I look down, then back up at her. I reach for the phone and answer it. “Hello?” I say, my voice playing back through Alexa’s phone as well.

  “Hello, Jason?” she says.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Alexa Himmel. You remember, from the drink?”

  “Oh, sure. The non-date. I’m really interesting, and you’re old-fashioned.”

  “That’s right. Hey, I was wondering what you’re doing tonight for dinner?”

  “Oh, I’d love to, Alexa. But unfortunately, you’re not a lawyer, so you’re probably not smart enough to hang out with me. I’d have to keep explaining things to you.”

  “But I thought you’d like being the dominant person in the relationship. Smarter and more successful. Isn’t that what all men want?”

  I punch out my phone and make a face, mock injury. “That’s cold, woman. That is arctic.”

  She bursts into laughter. “You should have seen the look on your face when I asked for the check. You should have seen it. I’m sorry.” She puts a hand over her mouth but is still giggling. “I’m so sorry, that was rude.”

  I’m here to entertain.

  “I mean, you’re obviously this really nice guy and super impressive. I’ll bet—I’ll bet nobody’s ever done that to you. Turned you down like that.”

  I’m blushing, of all things. She got me.

  “Jason Kolarich,” she says, clearing her throat and addressing me with mock formality, “I would be very grateful if you’d join me for dinner tonight.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I should warn you that I’m very old-fashioned.”

  “Then I’ll let you pay.”

  This woman matches me jab for jab. That’s probably going to be a problem for my ego. But she looks so casually elegant in her summer dress, and that edge to her, that sarcasm, that challenge, is much too much to resist.

  “I’m powerless to say no,” I answer.

  14.

  Jason

  Wednesday, June 12

  I handle a couple of court appearances in the morning, a bond hearing on a cannabis possession—the brother of a law school classmate whom I’m representing as a favor—and a status hearing on an armed robbery, a kid who was whacked out on meth who held up a strip club and got as far as the front door before the gun discharged into his foot.

  Afterward, I return to the office and look at the stack of files in the corner that Shauna has given me for the Arangold trial. She identified a particular aspect of the trial—a fight over the flooring that was put in the civic auditorium—for me to handle. I need to read some depositions and go over some architectural drawings with the client, but my mind starts to wander on page one. I hate working on this case, and I haven’t even started yet.

  I light a match, hold it upright, and run through the words again:

  I’ve got tar on my feet and I can’t see.

  All the birds look down and laugh at me.

  Miss again—this time my index finger getting in on the fun with my thumb, the flesh near the knuckle. The match goes into the Styrofoam cup with the others.

  I’m thinking about this meth-head client, whom I got through the public defender program—the PD outsources its overflow; the hourly rate sucks, but it keeps you busy and sharp. This kid has been in and out of rehab twice, done two stints inside, and is undoubtedly looking at a third stay in both. He’ll fail rehab almost assuredly and find himself back under the spell of that drug, and next time he might shoot somebody else instead of his own foot. There are so many clients like that, especially in the drug world, for whom you have the feeling you’re just a temporary stop on a merry-go-round that will end only when they’re dead or sentenced to serious time.

  Sometimes this job sucks. It doesn’t help that I feel like shit, out of sorts, my head ringing like the old rotary phone hanging on the wall in my house growing up, plus I have the fucking dry mouth again. I chew an Altoid and chug half a bottle of water.

  A half hour later, Joel Lightner waltzes in and I’m feeling better. At my request, Joel had drinks with one of the cops investigating the stabbings of those three women on the north side. He likes to do that anyway. It’s good for business to keep his former colleagues on the police force happy. A private investigator needs lots of favors, and it’s easier to call one in if you’ve bought the cop a steak and a night full of whiskey.

  I already have printouts from the Internet, mostly Herald articles, on each of the three murders, but I’ve read enough media accounts over the years on things I’ve been involved with—the public corruption case against Senator Almundo, the gubernatorial scandal, my prosecution of six members of the Tenth Street Crew for the torture-murder of a witness—to know that reporters only rarely get the story right, and almost never complete. They pick and choose what is relevant and sensational, no different from writers of fiction.

  Alicia Corey, age twenty-six, was a stripper who was last seen leaving her club at about two-thirty in the early morning of Wednesday, May 22. She was found dead the next morning in her apartment, the victim of “six or seven” stab wounds. There was no sign of forced entry; police believe she was accosted outside her apartment and the assailant forced his way in, presumably at knifepoint.

  Lauren Gibbs, twenty-eight, was a bank teller who also ran a website design business out of her home on the north side. She was found dead of “multiple” stab wounds at her house on Friday, May 24. None of the articles on Lauren mentioned the number of wounds.

  And then Holly Frazier, twenty-seven, a graduate student at St. Margaret’s downtown and a barista at Starbucks, found dead of “at least half a dozen” stab wounds near midnight on Friday, June 7.

  I put down the papers I’ve printed out. Hard to discern a pattern when all you have is media reports. The police have not even confirmed that they believe these murders are related. But they haven’t denied it, either.

  Joel helps himself to a chair and uses my desk for a footrest. “Turns out one of the main cops working this case is Chris Austin’s nephew.”

  I don’t know who Chris Austin is. Probably a cop Joel worked with before he turned to the lucrative career of private investigation.

  “Nice kid, the nephew. Vance is his name. Guys must give him shit for that. Anyway, I didn’t get Vance, but I got one of the uniforms assisting on the task force who loved talking about the stuff. He spilled all he could for me and probably a little more. The kid can drink Scotch.”

  I roll my hand for him to get to the punch line.

  “What’s with your hand?” he asks me. “You smashing it with a hammer?”

  “I don’t have a hammer.”

  He sniffs the air. “You’re lighting matches in here?”

  “Keeps me awake,” I say. “When I get bored.”

  Joel shakes his head, like I�
��m not making any sense, but that it’s not the first time he’s felt that and it’s not worth pursuing. He’d be right about all of that, especially the last part.

  “Anyway,” he says, “these three murders are definitely the same offender. All three women—Alicia Corey, Lauren Gibbs, Holly Frazier. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “He butchered them. Not just clean stabs. It was like he gutted them. Enjoyed it. Real violent. Angry guy, this offender.”

  “Anything else connecting them? Any suspects?”

  “None he mentioned. But there was one other thing,” he says. “This guy has a signature.”

  “A signature beyond gutting them like fish?”

  “Yeah. Something else. Don’t know what, though. That’s where the lid came down. I mean, that’s going to be real hush-hush, right?”

  I nod. If the offender has some signature to his murders, the cops will usually keep that information out of the press. It makes it easier to distinguish real confessions from bogus ones, the crazies who want to take credit for crimes they didn’t commit.

  “He didn’t give any hint? Anything at all about this signature?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t ask. Guy could lose his badge over that.”

  True enough. “And what about the three women? Any pattern to them?”

  He blinks his eyes no, a quiet shake of the head. “All pretty young. ‘Nice-looking,’ he said, but not bombshells or anything. Well, the one was a stripper at Knockers. He said she was pretty hot. Nice figure, fake boobs.”

  That was the one James Drinker said he dated. He got very defensive when I doubted that a stripper would be interested in him.

  “Actually, what this uniform said was, she used to have fake boobs. Sounds like our offender was pretty vicious with that knife.”

  I shudder. Did the freaky redheaded guy who sat in the same chair Lightner is sitting in do those things to those women? Lightner’s eyes catch mine. We’re thinking the same thing.

  “You want me to look at your client now,” he says. “James Drinker.”

  I nod my head. “At least check out that he’s being straight with me. Name, address, work, that kind of thing. And obviously, you’ll be happy to do this free of charge.”

  “Obviously. All of a sudden, I’m a candy striper.” Lightner makes a face, but he knows I need this. I’m his best client, too.

  I reach for the file that Marie opened for James Drinker. The informational sheet is always appended to the left side of the open file. I take a look at the sheet, and it looks weird immediately.

  “This doesn’t look like his handwriting,” I say. “This looks like a woman’s handwriting.”

  I buzz my intercom. “Yes, Your Highness?” Marie squawks. She knows I don’t have a client in here, thus the attitude.

  “James Drinker,” I say. “The weird redheaded guy? His info sheet looks like a woman’s hand—”

  “That’s ’cause I wrote it for him. He said he sprained his hand or something and he couldn’t write it himself. So he dictated the information to me.”

  I stifle the easy smart-ass reply—You take dictation?—and hang up.

  “Okay,” Joel says. “James Drinker. Give me the sheet.”

  “James Drinker, 3611 West Townsend. No phone number listed. No phone number?”

  “That’s Townsend and Kensington,” Joel says. “Not a nice neighborhood. That’s—I know that building. There’s an apartment building at that intersection.”

  Lightner knows every building in this city. It gets annoying.

  “He says he’s a mechanic at Higgins Auto Body,” I say. I give him the address, but he probably already knows it.

  “Okay. Okay. Basic background?”

  “Yeah, is he who he claims to be, criminal background, vitals.”

  “Photos? A day in the life?”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” I say. “I just want to make sure this guy’s for real. I owe you one.”

  “You owe me, like, fifty. Give me a day or two and you’ll know whether he’s for real. And get some sleep, wouldja?” he adds on his way out. “You look like shit.”

  15.

  Jason

  Thursday, June 13

  I rise with my client, Billy Braden, as the Honorable Donald T. Goodson enters the courtroom, stumbles on a stair, and tries not to look embarrassed as he takes his seat at the bench.

  Billy releases a heavy breath. This is the ruling that will decide his fate. He looks older than his nineteen years, genuinely terrified. I consider mumbling words of encouragement, but there’s no point. We’re going to know soon enough. And it may not be the worst thing for him to have sweated out this whole thing. When I first met him, he was a cocky kid with his hair hanging in his face and one of these rich-kid senses of entitlement, the trust-fund baby who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. But he buzzed his hair before the hearing a couple of weeks ago, at my insistence, and coupled with his nice blue suit and tie, he actually looks like somebody who could make something of himself if he put forth even minimal effort.

  “State versus William Braden,” the clerk calls out, as if there were any other cases up on the call.

  Judge Goodson looks out at the attorneys but doesn’t greet us. That’s probably one of the reasons lawyers always give him low marks on the confidential evaluations that the bar associations pass around. If he would just show basic courtesy to the bar, they’d probably give him halfway decent marks, and he could have his own felony courtroom. But some people just can’t get past themselves.

  The nausea announces its arrival inside me, weaving through my stomach and drifting upward. I take a shallow breath.

  His Honor raises his glass and reads from a prepared text. “This matter comes before the Court on a motion to quash arrest and suppress evidence. The Court has heard testimony from the arresting officer, Detective Nicholas Forrest, and has considered written and oral arguments of counsel. The Court is now prepared to rule.”

  Next to me, Billy Braden sucks in his breath and holds it.

  “The Court finds that Detective Forrest lacked probable cause to arrest the defendant or to search him for the presence of illegal contraband. Thus, the arrest of William Braden is hereby quashed, and any evidence of the illegal narcotics obtained incident to that arrest is suppressed in any future prosecution of this matter. The Court is filing a written opinion today consistent with this ruling.”

  Billy exhales, his posture easing with the flood of relief.

  “Mr. Braden,” says the judge. Billy perks back up, back to military posture. “There is not a single person in this courtroom who doesn’t know that you had an eight-ball of crack cocaine on your person when you were arrested. You are free to go, Mr. Braden, because our Constitution is concerned not with individual cases but with the rule of law. It’s a crucial aspect of our system, but it is a technicality no less. You are a very, very lucky young man. I trust that I will not be seeing you back in this courtroom?”

  Billy raises his hand as if he’s about to give sworn testimony. “I promise,” he says.

  I wouldn’t put money down on that promise. I wouldn’t bet a used napkin. But for now, Billy has a new lease on life. His mother, Karen, gives me a big hug, and his father shakes my hand and covers it with the other. “We can’t thank you enough,” he says. “Really, Jason.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Billy and I clasp hands, and he does that bump-hug thing against my shoulder. “Hey, man,” he whispers, “I owe you big. Seriously. Fuckin’ seriously.”

  “Glad to help, Billy,” I say.

  He looks at me for a long moment, winks at me, smacks my arm, and leaves the courtroom with his parents.

  16.

  Jason

  Friday, June 14

  Alexa and I step down from the promenade along the highway and into the small park near the beach. We sit at one of the stone benches and remove our shoes and socks. I angle away from her, slip out an Altoid, and p
op it in my mouth as I get to my feet.

  “You’re sure this is okay?” she asks me.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” I turn to her. She is in partial shadow, the overhead lighting catching one side of her face, the breeze off the lake playing with those straight bangs on her forehead. A beautiful sight. She even looks great in the dark. Better, actually—there is something about her that seems more at ease in the dark.

  “Your knee,” she says. “It’s hard to walk in sand.”

  “My knee’s fine.” That’s actually true. I can’t run or anything like that, but there are actually pockets of time now when I don’t even think about it in my daily routine, don’t even recite the words of caution before I stand up or hustle through a crosswalk.

  I’m tired of even thinking about it. I want to take in the moment. Dinner at Schaefer’s, a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino—half a glass for me—and now a stroll along the lake.

  As we walk down the sand to the shoreline, she takes my hand, ostensibly for support, but then she leaves it in that position as we walk. I’m not the most romantic guy in the world, I admit, but there’s something sweet and intimate about holding hands. Talia and I used to always say that we wanted to grow old together and hold hands walking down the beach. That memory, casually breezing through my brain, freezes me for a beat, but it doesn’t paralyze me like it did once upon a time. You just finally move on. You take steps: initial, gut-wrenching grief, then denial, then a dull ache that colors your world that will never, ever subside—and then one day it does; one day you look up and you realize it’s actually possible to move on.

  Our toes sink into the wet sand. The lake is endless, alternately blue, black, even purple. The air is thick and damp. Around us is the gentle harmony of waves crashing ashore and vehicles whisking by at high speeds on the highway twenty yards to the west; there is something special about feeling like there is nowhere else in the world right now that you can hear what I’m hearing.