The Last Alibi (A JASON KOLARICH NOVEL)

by David Ellis

  But with one-to-one personal stuff, I’ve never enjoyed getting into people’s faces. Probably something I got from Mom, who made it her duty to prevent “Dad volcanoes,” as Pete and I used to call them when we were kids, who made conflict avoidance an art form. A turned cheek will do you wonders, boy, she used to always say.

  “You sure?” She comes out of the bathroom, her hair combed back wet.

  My cell phone buzzes. It’s over on the dresser. Alexa takes a peek. “It’s Shauna,” she says. “Wow, that’s been a while.”

  She looks at me for a reaction, but I don’t give her one.

  “Do you want to answer it?”

  “No, I’ll call her later.”

  “Is she calling for any particular reason? I thought she was still on trial.”

  “I have no idea why she’s calling,” I say, which isn’t really true.

  “Shauna doesn’t approve of me,” she says.

  I don’t answer. I’m probably supposed to say something.

  “Has she told you that? Or said anything about me?”

  “I think she’s concerned about me,” I say.

  “And she doesn’t think I’m good for you,” Alexa finishes. “I know. She told me that.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. When I went to pick up a few things at your office, when you were going to leave the firm. She yelled at me. She said you and I shouldn’t see each other. It was . . . unpleasant. If I may say so, I don’t think Shauna’s a very pleasant person.”

  “Shauna’s wonderful,” I say. “Shauna saved me after my wife and daughter died.”

  “Oh.” One word, but more than one syllable the way she says it, a bell curve of octaves, like she just discovered something meaningful. “I think she likes being the only woman in your life.”

  “That’s not true.”

  I’m adjusting my position in bed as I say this, not looking directly at her, but the ensuing silence brings my eyes to hers, and hers do not look amused. She looks, more than anything, like she wants to slap me.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she says with mock sweetness.

  She turns and walks back toward the bathroom.

  “Alexa,” I say. “You told me you’re an only child.”

  She stops in her tracks, her back to me. She turns around slowly, as if she’s afraid of what she’ll find behind her. “What?”

  “Is it true that you’re an only child? Or do you have a brother, Aaron, in Glenwood Heights?”

  She turns to face me again, her eyes narrowed, a look of discomfort. “Why . . . would you ask me something like that?”

  “You first,” I say.

  “Me first . . . me first . . .” Her eyebrows rise. She lets out air. She crosses her arms. “Aaron is my brother, yes. We aren’t close. We never have been. He’s not . . . he’s not nice to me. He’s not a good person. But technically, yes, I have a brother.”

  “Technically.” I laugh. “Why tell me this whole thing about how your mother had you when she was forty and didn’t want any more kids?”

  “Your turn,” she says, color coming to her face. “How do you know about Aaron? Are you . . . Did you check up on me?” She’s good at this. Regaining the moral outrage, or trying hard to.

  “My friends did, yes,” I say.

  “Shauna, you mean.”

  “Shauna and others. They’re concerned, that’s all.”

  “So they did, what, a background investigation on me?” Try as she might to resist, Alexa is losing composure, placing a hand on the dresser for stability as the earth moves beneath her, as the footing of this relationship shifts sideways without warning.

  “Yes, they did. I didn’t know about it. I was mad when they told me, actually.”

  “Really? How mad? Did you stand up for me?”

  “I did, in fact.”

  “Well, go on.” She whips her arm about. “Go on. Get it over with. They told you about Brian.”

  “Brian Stermer,” I say. “Yes.”

  Alexa gives a bitter shake of the head, her eyes brimming with tears, red and swollen. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this.”

  “They told me—”

  “I told you!” she cries, slapping her chest. “I told you I’d been in a relationship that ended badly when I found out he was married. Did I leave out some details? Yes. Did I leave out the part where his wife found out about me at around the same time I found out about her? Did I leave out the part where Brian turned out to be a complete coward, who wouldn’t admit to his wife that he was fucking somebody on the side, and so he had to turn me into a stalker? Did I leave out the part where his wife basically bullied him into telling lies about me to a judge, as if that would somehow make Brian’s lies true? Or the part where Doctor Brian Stermer has more money than God and hired, like, ten lawyers to go after me, and I couldn’t afford a single one?”

  She is trembling now, her entire body, her face contorted, her voice getting deeper with emotion as she goes on.

  I get out of bed. “Listen—”

  “Did I leave out the part where I didn’t put up a fight when he wanted his stupid restraining order, because I was planning on staying away from him, anyway? So I just let the judge order whatever he ordered? I did, Jason. I left out those parts. This man screwed me over like nobody ever could, then when he got caught in his bullshit string of lies, he screwed me over even worse to cover up his new lies.”

  I approach her, but she gives me a warning look: Do not enter.

  She wipes at her cheeks with the fluffy arms of the robe and takes a gasping breath. “Well, let’s keep going, Jason. Let’s get it over with. Why stop the laughs now?”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  More tears fall, little rivers angling along her cheeks. “He said I showed up at his house with a knife, but I didn’t. I can’t prove I didn’t. Apparently the judge felt like I was supposed to prove my innocence. I don’t know how to prove a negative.”

  I nod, but I’m not sure why.

  “Let’s see, what else? Oh, when they wanted to make the restraining order for a wider distance, because I was supposedly hanging out down the street, just beyond a hundred feet? Yeah, like anyone’s just going to loiter around on a sidewalk for hours in the dead of December in northern Ohio. Do you have any idea how cold it was last December in Ohio? Yeah, but I’m standing out there for hours on end, holding up signs saying ‘Please take me back, Brian!’ or whatever he said they said. I mean, really? Really, Jason?”

  “Hey—”

  “But you know what? I didn’t fight that, either. I didn’t fight him because I couldn’t afford anyone to represent me and because I didn’t care, anyway. I didn’t care if the restraining order was a hundred feet or a hundred yards or a mile. I had no intention of going anywhere near him after what he did to me.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  “And now I finally meet a nice guy and he hears all this and he thinks . . . whatever you think . . .”

  “I believe you,” I say. “I do.”

  She looks at me for a long time, her expression easing, her breathing slowing, the tears drying up. She takes a deep breath, runs her fingers through her wet hair.

  “I believe you,” I say again.

  72.

  Jason

  Monday, July 22

  “Hey.” Joel Lightner sticks his head in my office, cautious.

  I wave him in. “It’s okay, Lightner. You’re still doing a job for me, whatever else.”

  “You’re pissed at me,” he says when he walks in and helps himself to a seat.

  “You’re not at the top of my list right now,” I agree.

  “I’d like to see that list. I’m pretty sure there’s only one name on it: Alexa Himmel.”

  I put down the court opinion I was reading. “I take it you didn’t come to apologize.”

  “Apologize? Why would I apologize? For the background check? Shauna asked me for a favor, and she was doing it out of genuine concern for y
ou. And she’s right to be concerned.”

  I raise my hands in surrender. “Let’s stick with business,” I say.

  He holds his stare a moment, just to show his displeasure, before moving on. “We’re having a hard time digging up records, like you thought,” he says. “We’ve found some in a warehouse. So far, no recently released ex-cons—by recently, I mean in the last eighteen months—were interrogated by you. We aren’t done, but we’re starting to run out of places to check. There are big gaps. You got moved around all the time when you were on Felony Review. It’s not like you even stuck at one station house.”

  None of this is a surprise, but it’s a big blow nonetheless. We’re running out of places to check. We’re running out of ways to catch “James.”

  “Joel, this signature, the thing he does to all the victims. I need to know what it is.”

  “We’ve already talked about this,” he says. “They won’t tell me. I won’t ask.”

  “It’s the key to this, the more I think about it. Whatever it is he’s doing to them, he’d probably want to tie it to me, right? If he’s framing me, he’d want to make that signature tailored to me.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Joel agrees. “If he’s doing some strange, crazy thing to all the victims, he’s probably doing it because it implicates you. But what?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “That’s why you have to get it for me.”

  Joel raises his hands. “I can’t help you. Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t tell me.”

  There’s got to be some way. I have to figure out that calling card he’s leaving at every crime scene.

  “Okay.” Joel starts to look uncomfortable, rubbing his hands, stalling. “So . . . so listen.”

  I look up at him.

  “I’m just going to say this as your friend. I’m not sure about that lady, Jason. I got a bad feeling about her.”

  “You don’t know her.” I wave a hand. “Leave it alone.”

  “Jason—”

  “She has a very sweet side, Joel. She does. Does she come on strong? Okay, maybe. But she’d do anything for me.”

  “Yeah? That so?”

  “Yeah.” I nod at him. “The alibi, for example. She’s willing to say I was with her at the time of each of the five murders. She’s willing to be my alibi. Now, how many people would do that?”

  Lightner doesn’t seem as impressed as I am. “I remember in my office, you guys said you were going to square up dates to confirm.”

  “Yeah, we confirmed dates, and you know what? She wasn’t with me on any of those nights. Not one, Joel. And yet she’s willing to say she was. If the police walked in right now, she’d swear on a Bible that we spent those evenings together at my house.”

  Joel thinks about that for a long time, seemingly unmoved, but thinking. “That’s a dangerous game, first of all. It could get you both in trouble.”

  “I know. I told her that. I told her there were all kinds of ways you can attack an alibi. But she said she was home alone, just like me, on each of those nights, but she didn’t do anything that would establish that. Didn’t make any phone calls. Didn’t order food to the house or order a movie off of TV or have any visitors over or anything that would tie her to her house.”

  I don’t even know how to order a movie off the television, she said.

  And I never, ever have food delivered.

  “It’s still a bad idea,” Lightner says again.

  “I know, Joel. I’m not going to let her do it. But the point is that she’s willing to do it. Does that sound like someone who cares about me, or someone who doesn’t?”

  Joel makes a face. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he says.

  “Is there another way?”

  Joel lets out a bitter laugh and shakes his head again. “Of course there’s another way,” he says. “And if you didn’t have your head so far up your ass, you’d see it, too, Counselor.”

  I wave a hand. “Then enlighten me,” I say.

  He leans forward and cups his hand over his mouth, like he’s shouting across a canyon. “She’s not just giving you an alibi,” he says. “She’s giving herself one, too.”

  PEOPLE VS. JASON KOLARICH

  TRIAL, DAY 4

  Thursday, December 12

  73.

  Shauna

  Judy Bialek hurries into her reception area, two work bags slung over her shoulder, looking just a bit disheveled as she nods to her receptionist and waves to the lawyers waiting for her. “Sorry I’m late, everybody, crazy morning,” she sings as she brushes past us into her chambers. She is a divorced mother of three kids, all in high school. It is somehow comforting, in the midst of the angst and stress of this trial, to see the judge coping with some stress of her own.

  Not that a judge is ever late. The meeting starts when the judge says it starts. Judges make you wait all the time—I remember once Judge DeCremer, in the civil division, scheduled no less than four pretrial conferences for the same time and made us all wait for him. I showed up with my client at one o’clock and left at a quarter to five.

  The receptionist’s phone buzzes. “You can go on in,” he says to us.

  Inside her chambers, the judge looks a bit more composed, sitting behind her long black desk, everything neatly in its place, her hair pulled up in back now, her black robe hanging to the side on a coatrack.

  “I want to talk schedule,” she says. “The government only has one more witness, is that correct, Mr. Ogren?”

  “That’s correct, Judge. Her direct testimony won’t take half an hour.”

  “Okay. And then the government will rest?”

  “Yes, we will.”

  The judge nods. “Ms. Tasker, I suppose the defense will move for a directed verdict.”

  “Absolutely, Judge,” I say, but nobody in this room thinks the judge is going to toss the case for lack of evidence. This case is going to the jury.

  “Assuming that your motion is denied, Ms. Tasker, can you give me an idea of whom you plan to call, and why, and how much time you need? Oh, and I forgot—you reserved your opening statement. How much time do you expect to use on your opening, too?”

  I haven’t told them anything yet. The defense is entitled to considerable leeway in withholding its game plan in a criminal case. Jason, of course, has the right to testify and the right not to testify, and that gives me the right to leave everyone guessing. Beyond whether Jason testifies, I haven’t given a hint as to whom I may call in our defense, if anyone.

  Don’t tell them, no matter how hard the judge pushes, Jason advised me. She’ll push you, but she can’t make you tell her. These aren’t the civil courts you’re used to. Don’t let them know until it’s time.

  I’ve followed that advice, to the chagrin of the judge, until now. Now it’s time.

  “Judge, we’ve decided to waive our opening statement.”

  The judge is surprised. So is Ogren. His eyes have narrowed and he’s blinking rapidly, thinking it through. First, we asked for the right to reserve our opening statement until the defense’s case. Now we are forgoing it altogether. Why? He’s probably narrowing the reasons down to two. One possibility is that our case is so incoherent that I don’t have a story to tell. We’ll drop a few bombs and try to muddy the picture, but we don’t have a logical theory of what really happened, start to finish, so we won’t bother trying to craft a narrative.

  The other possibility is surprise. We’ve been holding back our argument and we’re continuing to do so, because we want to spring it on the prosecution as late as possible.

  I’m sure Ogren prefers the former theory to the latter.

  “Very well,” says the judge. “Do you plan on calling any witnesses?”

  “We reserve the right to call everyone on our list for the moment,” I say. “But we’re going to start, today, with my client.”

  Roger Ogren and Katie O’Connor each stir just a bit, casting glances at each other, Ogren taking a deep breath. They never k
new for sure. They didn’t know if, they didn’t know when Jason would testify.

  “I see.” The judge falls back in her chair. “Would it be fair to assume that Mr. Kolarich’s testimony will take up the rest of this week, today and tomorrow?”

  “I would assume so. At that point, Friday evening, I should have a good idea whether we’re going to call anyone else.”

  “Judge,” says Ogren, “Ms. Tasker has named, as you said, the entire roster of Area Three detectives on her witness list. Including several detectives who didn’t work on this case at all, by the way. First of all, we’d request that Ms. Tasker give us a good reason why they have to be called, and second, Judge, these men and women don’t all work nine-to-five shifts. It’s going to take some work to bring them in. We need as much notice as possible. And again, I’d hope that we could get a good explanation as to the relevance of—”

  “I understand, Mr. Ogren. It’s not my first trial.” The judge holds him up. Ogren has the tendency to talk down to people, and judges are not fans of condescension.

  “Okay, everyone. Let’s put on your final witness, Mr. Ogren. Then, Ms. Tasker, I’ll give you fifteen minutes to argue for a directed verdict. I will tell you right now that you will face a tall climb, but of course I’ll hear you. Assuming we go forward from there, Ms. Tasker, do you think Mr. Kolarich’s direct testimony can be completed today?”

  “I would think so, Judge.”

  “So that would give Mr. Ogren tomorrow for cross-examination and then redirect and recross, and maybe we could get that done by then. Okay. Okay.” She nods. “Ms. Tasker, tomorrow, you will give me a smaller list of witnesses you’re going to call. It’s not going to be the entire Area Three squad room. You understand that?”

  “Yes, Judge. It won’t be that long.”

  “Very well. Let’s get out there,” says the judge.

  74.

  Jason

  “We call Detective Molly Hilton,” says Katie O’Connor.

  Molly Hilton is a short woman with frizzy blond hair and a hard look about her. I’ve never met her, but Lightner apparently knows her ex-husband from when he was a cop in Marion Park. These cops are a whole community unto themselves.