by David Ellis
“Ms. Tasker,” says the judge, flushed, after she finally brings the courtroom back to silence. “Do you have any further questions?”
Shauna glances at her notes, then at me. I write something on a piece of paper and show it to her. She looks at it and walks over to me. There is such a looseness to her stride, such a relaxed look on her face, that I almost don’t recognize her.
“You never said what happened to Marshall,” I whisper.
“I didn’t? I guess I didn’t,” she acknowledges. “But everyone knows what happened. Everyone knows all about him.”
We look at each other for a long time. Then she leans in and whispers into my ear.
“He killed himself,” she says. “Right, Jason?”
Shauna draws back, looks me over with a poker face. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. She returns to the podium to address the judge.
Marshall Rivers was found dead in his apartment on the evening of Friday, August 2, nearly three full days after Alexa was found dead in my town house. And two days after his rent was due. His landlord let himself in and found Marshall lying in a pool of blood. The police responded, and it wasn’t long before the search of that apartment led them to conclude that Marshall Rivers was the infamous North Side Slasher. The bloody knife, the hypodermic needles, the packets of fentanyl, all told the story. The suicide note on his computer didn’t hurt, either.
The timing of Marshall’s death was a difficult one for the medical examiner to pin down. The circumstantial evidence helped somewhat. Marshall hadn’t been scheduled to work at the dry cleaner’s on Wednesday, July 31, but he did miss work the next day, Thursday, August 1, so it looked like he died before the morning of August 1. The medical evidence? Rigor mortis had long come and gone by the time he was found that Friday night, so sometime before August 1 made sense to the coroner. The best estimate, from the larvae present, was that Marshall Rivers had been dead approximately seventy-two hours when he was found.
Marshall Rivers, in other words, died within relatively the same window of time that Alexa Himmel died.
“I have no further questions,” says Shauna. “And the defense rests.”
THE DAY OF ALEXA HIMMEL’S DEATH
Tuesday, July 30
105.
Shauna
9:05 P.M.
I sit upstairs on Jason’s bed with my iPad, doing research on addiction recovery centers around here. They certainly aren’t hard to find. But finding the right one could be a chore. So I’m looking for reviews, as well. Some of these clinics specialize in painkiller addiction, which is probably a better fit, but how the heck do I know?
I check my watch and do the math. Jason got the call from Alexa at a quarter past eight. Even with bad traffic—and I doubt traffic is bad this time of night—Jason would have reached Alexa’s house by now.
What’s going on there? It didn’t feel right, the way Jason popped up and left. Alexa calls in a breathless panic and he goes running.
She could have told him anything. Jason wouldn’t tell me, but it’s not hard to imagine. I’m going to kill myself, I swear I will! Or: “James Drinker” just tried to kill me. Anything.
I should have gone with him. He said no. That will make it worse, he said to me, undoubtedly true, but still—I should have gone.
And his ultimate rationale: I have to get my cell phone, anyway. He’d left it at Alexa’s house earlier today, after reading that threatening e-mail from Alexa about telling the Board of Attorney Discipline about his drug problem. I need to get it sooner or later.
True. And maybe that’s all it was. Sure, she’ll beg him to take her back. But he won’t. He knows better.
Maybe he’s hoping that this one last time with her will do the trick, will finally calm her down and make her go away. Fat chance, but I could see Jason thinking that, giving her the benefit of the doubt.
And I can’t discount the level of guilt he’s feeling, however misplaced it may be. No matter how much she manipulated him, he assumes responsibility for her broken heart.
Is she capable of something more? She wouldn’t hurt him, I tell myself. Would she? No. No?
But if I really didn’t see Alexa as a threat, then why did I run upstairs to Jason’s closet to retrieve his gun, hidden in the old pair of wingtips in the back of his closet? Even though I despise guns, can’t stand the sight of them, detest the very idea of them, I carried down the gun, the Glock handgun, the creepy black instrument of death, and put it in Jason’s hands.
Take your gun and be careful, I said to him.
I let out a long, nervous sigh, my stomach stirring. Then I continue my search of rehab clinics.
106.
Jason
9:10 P.M.
Blaring out from the speakerphone on my phone, held in Alexa’s hand, is Joel Lightner’s voice:
“Get ready to be happy, sport. I found him. I found our fucking guy! We were looking for cons recently released from a state penitentiary. This guy came out of a federal facility in January. You got him to confess to a gun charge, like, eight years ago, but you handed him over to the feds and they prosecuted him. We were looking in the wrong damn place! His name is Marshall Rivers. He’s got a history of violence against women and, since he got out, he’s been working at a dry cleaner’s two doors down from Higgins Auto Body! He probably saw James Drinker every day! Anyway, Marshall Rivers, does that ring—”
The recording stops abruptly, mid-sentence. I steady myself with a hand to the wall, squeeze my eyes shut, lower my head, then slowly raise it. Marshall Rivers. Marshall—
And then I remember him. I remember what happened. I remember what I did to him.
Marshall Rivers is “James Drinker.” Marshall Rivers is the North Side Slasher.
“Finally,” I mumble. Then I look at Alexa, remembering the truncated nature of the voice mail. “Did you pause the message or did it just stop there?” I ask. “Is there more?”
From her dark corner, Alexa stands slowly and inches toward me, crossing the line of the television light, blocking it out, leaving us in darkness, her features changing with each step—
—the face of a ghost, a haunted figure, piercing eyes, a wry grin, a scowl, terror and rage and panic and fear—
“There’s more,” she says to me. “There’s a lot more.”
She pushes a button, and the recording continues.
“—a bell with you? Anyway, it’s him, Jason, I know it! He lives here in the city. He’s on Hampton, 2538 Hampton, Apartment 1. Call me back, man. We fucking got him!”
I stare at Alexa’s hand, at my phone. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, I make out her face better, almost cartoonish, dark and eerie.
“You’ve been crying,” I say.
I walk over to the wall and flip on a switch. Alexa winces, her eyes squinting in the light.
“I have to call Joel,” I say. “Then you and I have to—”
“No, don’t do that.” She shakes her head slowly, something in her eyes, in the certainty of her tone, revealing herself to me. She approaches me slowly. She is freshly showered, her hair still wet, dressed in baggy, kick-around sweats.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “Alexa,” I say, “what did you do?”
She touches my cheek, her hand trembling furiously. Only then, up close, do I see that her whole body is quivering. Her legs buckle, and I catch her, helping her to the couch. I stand over her.
“Tell me,” I say.
Her eyes search me, her nostrils flaring, her mouth moving without sound. “I fixed it,” she says. “I fixed everything for you.”
“Did you—”
“He can’t hurt you anymore,” she whispers. “He can’t hurt us.”
I take the phone from her hand and check the voice mail we just heard. The call came from Lightner today at 2:04 P.M. She listened to this message a long time ago, back when Joel called. She has known for seven hours where Marshall Rivers lives.
Alexa takes the phone from my hand and pushes a
button, erasing the voice mail.
“Tell me you didn’t go over there, Alexa—”
“Shh.” She reaches her hand out to my mouth. “It’s okay. Nobody will ever know.”
I step back from her, put my hands on my head, furiously scrubbing my hair. “This—this isn’t happening.”
“It’s okay,” she says to me, lifting herself off the couch toward me. “I’ve been planning for this. I did everything right. It looks like a suicide.”
I push away from her and pace in a small circle, passing the movie on the television, the open pizza box with only half a piece missing, cut sharply with a knife.
“It was easy,” she tells me. “I knocked on the door, and he opened it. I asked him if he wanted some company. He thought I was a—I dressed the part—he thought I was, y’know, a prostitute. A skimpy outfit and a fake blond wig and sunglasses was all it took to get him to open his door.”
I don’t say anything, just shut my eyes and listen, my head against a wall.
“I have a Taser. I’ve always had one. Did you know that?”
I shake my head no.
“It was the easiest thing. I only needed a few seconds. I got him in the neck and he went right down. I dragged him into his apartment and I cut his wrists with his own knife. It looks like he killed himself. It does. I swear it does.”
“Alexa.” I turn, put my hands on my knees like a third-base coach. “The police are professionals. They’re not—”
“What, are you going to tell me about hesitation wounds? I read all about them, Jason. I know that when people slit their wrists, they hesitate first and don’t cut deeply. I did all that. I stood behind him and I used his own hands around the knife and I did some shallower cuts first. And I did the left wrist more deeply than the right. I did it perfectly!”
“Even so.” I flap my arms. “And don’t you think the police can look at your Internet searches and wonder why you were reading up on hesitation wounds?”
“What reason would they have to check? I have a really good alibi.”
I let out a nervous sigh. “And what’s that?”
“Look around you.” She gestures with her hands. “I ordered Doctor Zhivago on pay-per-view and I had pizza delivered. Does that sound like someone who went out and committed murder?”
“Oh, Alexa.” I shake my head. “You could have made a hundred different mistakes. You’re better off turning yourself in and explaining that you were trying to stop a serial killer. We—we have to go to the police. I’ll represent you. I’ll do everything I—”
“This man was a monster,” she hisses. “He butchered five women and he wasn’t going to stop. I could see it, Jason. I could see it in the way his eyes passed over me when he answered the door, like he was imagining what it would be like to do the same thing to me. Are you really telling me you wouldn’t have done exactly what I did?”
I don’t confront that question. I’d spent so much time trying to figure out who he was and how to stop him, I hadn’t decided on a game plan once I found him. Would I have killed him? I don’t have the time or the need to answer that now.
“He’s out of the way now,” she says. “Don’t you see?”
He’s out of the way. I wipe at my mouth, fidgety, trying to work through this, feeling unmoored, disoriented. She did this for me, I think to myself. She did this so we could be together.
We are both quiet. She is looking at me, waiting me out, her head cocked to one side, her lips slightly parted.
“How do we even know Joel was right?” I ask. “How do we even know Marshall Rivers was our guy?”
Alexa reaches into her sweatpants and produces something, a card of some sort.
“Your business card,” she says. “Sitting next to his computer.”
She holds it out. I walk over and take it. Holding it in my hand, seeing this card on fancy, cream-colored stock, JASON KOLARICH, ESQ. in royal blue, returns me to my law office, to the man in the goofy disguise, pumping me for information, planting a hypodermic needle in my office, plotting to kill women and make sure I knew all about it.
And then it solidifies for me, something for which I’ll have to answer someday, a decision: She shouldn’t have to go to prison for this. However messed-up her reasoning may be, she shouldn’t suffer for this. Marshall Rivers deserved to die.
I drop my head. “I . . . don’t even know what to say.”
“Say you’ll help me,” she whispers.
I look up at her. Tears have formed in her eyes.
“Because you were right,” she says. “I did make a mistake.”
107.
Jason
9:50 P.M.
I drive slowly, minding the speed limit, gripping the steering wheel with trembling hands, still short on every detail, but the memories coming back. I remember Marshall was violent, sexually violent toward women. I remember a young woman with a baby. Not her name, not every single feature by any means, but I remember a teenage mother. Mexican. Long, kinky black hair, I remember that. An infant in her arms, maybe six months old, not something I’d be in a position to estimate back then. She probably told me the baby’s name, age, gender, but I don’t remember any of that now.
But I remember she was terrified. I remember that I couldn’t use her. If I was going to nail Marshall Rivers, I’d have to come up with something else.
Get me a confession, said Patrick Romer back then. Get me a confession and we’ll prosecute.
And I did.
I park my car on the 2400 block of West Hampton. Lightner had said 2538 Hampton, and there isn’t a 2500 block east—it would be three miles into the lake. So he must have meant 2538 West Hampton. It makes sense, too, this southwest-side neighborhood being the home of an ex-con with minimal job prospects, probably not much money. The area has been completely ravaged by the housing crisis; what was, fifteen years ago, a promising neighborhood has been ransacked by foreclosures and is now riddled with drugs and crime, gang wars and prostitution, con artists and homelessness.
This time of night, in a hood like this, the only people who are walking the streets are looking for trouble. I guess I’m one of them. Yes, in part, I’m here because of Alexa. I left the Taser there, she said to me. I forgot all about it when I was done. Her fingerprints could be on the weapon. She couldn’t very well wear gloves, not in the middle of this blazing heat. Alexa was smart, knocking on Marshall’s door, dressed provocatively, knowing that prostitutes occasionally go door-to-door in the seamier neighborhoods—but no matter how much she looked the part, Marshall’s radar would have tuned up loudly if she were wearing gloves.
I reach the apartment complex, 2538 West Hampton. It’s a brick three-flat, not long ago probably a nice place to live, owned by people with high hopes, sold unrealistic mortgages that put them under water. Now it’s a rental building, probably still owned by the bank. Apartment 1 is the garden apartment, five steps below ground. There is a small cast-iron gate without a lock. From the sidewalk, I take one look around me, trying not to look too suspicious in doing so, and cast my eyes upward at the other apartments. No sign that anyone’s looking out, no blinds pinched or curtains folded back.
Then I stroll through the gate, covering my hand with my shirt, and walk down to apartment 1 as if I don’t have a care in the world. Alexa said the door would be open, she didn’t lock it behind her. It could have a lock on the doorknob that will keep me out. But it doesn’t. I turn the knob with my shirt again and take a breath.
Don’t touch anything, Alexa pleaded with me. Please don’t touch anything.
The door opens. I walk in and close the door before I do anything else. Then I turn. It’s a studio apartment, very small, just one large room with a small kitchenette, a round table for eating, and then a bathroom to the side. There are two pieces of furniture besides the dining table: a small wooden table on which a computer rests, and a dingy yellow couch.
Marshall Rivers is against the couch, tipped over on his right side, his legs splayed o
ut perpendicular to his body. Alexa said she Tasered him and dragged him over by the couch, where she slit his wrists. It looks like she propped him against the couch, sitting upright, but he eventually fell over.
The smell raises bile to my throat. Feces, which is understandable, mixed with the metallic smell of spilled blood.
I ease the backpack off my shoulder. First, I put on the rubber gloves Alexa gave me, small on my hands, but sufficient. Then I walk toward the couch, checking for any marks my shoes might be leaving on the thin, dingy carpeting and finding none.
Then I walk over to Marshall Rivers. I don’t get close; I don’t need to and I don’t want to. But I do want to see that face, turning colorless, mouth gaping, eyes wide open, lying awkwardly on the floor, blood nestling under his cheek and mixed into his hair.
This, of course, is the principal reason I came. I needed to see him, face-to-face, to confirm that he was the man who came to see me in disguise.
And he is. He doesn’t have red hair, but rather light brown, cut short and messy. He is wide and muscular, but not fat. So that must have been part of his disguise, the fat suit, the belly flab. There is blood everywhere, a few splatters on his yellow-checkered shirt, probably from when Alexa first slashed the wrists, and then a pool that has migrated to the north of Marshall, up against the wall. The floor is probably uneven, and gravity pulled the blood in that direction.
Those eyes of his, those are all I need to see. This is the man who came to visit me as “James Drinker.” This is the man who killed five women on the north side this summer.
I give a presumptive nod. He’s done. What this will mean for me, I don’t know. He said he had a contingency plan if anything happened to him—a safe-deposit box with evidence implicating me in the north side murders. Probably bullshit. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. Nothing to worry about at this moment.
