The Alibi Man

by Tami Hoag

  She had told him to talk to the valets. He guessed this was the kid who had split before he’d gotten there. Elena had known him, then. And Walker had been here.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said.

  Weiss flashed his light at the crowbar planted in Jeffrey C. Cherry’s skull. “Imagine how he feels.”

  Chapter 61

  Kulak left Bennett lying on the ground, bleeding, and dragged me inside the building by my injured arm, digging his thumb into the wound every time I slowed down.

  He took me into a large, open garage space with hydraulic lifts and drains in the concrete floor. Lights hung from a ceiling of open steel trusses. On one side of the space was a row of old beat-up red metal lockers with iron-mesh fronts. He dragged me to them, pulled one open, shoved me inside with my back to the wall, shut the door, and locked it.

  I was in a cage. Literally a captive audience for whatever horror Kulak might want to play out in front of me.

  The cage was not much taller than I was and not much wider or deeper. I could get my hands in front of me, but I couldn’t get any leverage or power to try to push against the door.

  It seemed a very long time before Kulak returned. I began to think perhaps he had taken Bennett elsewhere to torture and kill him and that I would be left standing in that cage for hours and hours, wondering what would happen to me when he finally came back. Then I heard them—Kulak shouting at Bennett to move, a scuffle of footsteps, someone falling, Kulak shouting.

  Bennett came sprawling through the doorway, landing on the floor near one of the drains. Kulak walked over, gun in hand. He seemed very calm, relaxed even, as if he had flipped the switch on his emotions.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  Bennett looked up at him. “What?”

  “Take off your clothes, Mr. Walker.”

  “Why?”

  Kulak gave him a savage kick in the ribs, an action weirdly at odds with his demeanor.

  “Take off your clothes, Mr. Walker. You are going to know how it feels to be vulnerable.”

  When Bennett still didn’t move, Kulak kicked him twice more, once in the back, once in his injured leg. Bennett struggled then to sit up, grimacing. His face glowed with sweat as he stripped off his T-shirt and jeans. He had trouble moving the injured leg, trouble bending that knee.

  It seemed to take forever for him to complete his task. All the while Alexi Kulak just stood there, waiting, gun in hand. He smoked a cigarette, watching dispassionately as his victim struggled.

  When he was naked, Bennett curled on his side on the concrete, and just lay there, breathing hard. His back was to me, and I could see the entrance wound in the back of his thigh—a small innocuous-looking hole that belied the damage the bullet had most surely done inside the leg.

  Kulak dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and put it out with the toe of his wingtip shoe. He produced a pair of handcuffs, closed one around Bennett’s left wrist and the other around one of the iron bars of the drain.

  He walked over to a workbench, set his gun aside, and chose a tool from a rack hanging on the wall. He chose it carefully, like a musician choosing an instrument or a sculptor choosing a chisel.

  It was a bolt cutter.

  Bennett watched him. I could see the abject terror in his face. Like an animal trying to flee a predator, he threw himself as far away from Kulak as he could—a pathetically short distance—before the cuffs rattled and he strained against the unyielding iron bar of the drain.

  “Why did you kill my Irina?” Kulak asked him with eerie calm.

  “I didn’t,” Bennett said. “I didn’t kill her.”

  Kulak took a step closer and stomped on Bennett’s wrist, making him cry out.

  “Why did you kill my Irina?” he asked again.

  “I-I didn’t,” Bennett said. “I barely knew her.”

  Just like he was snipping a weed from his lawn, Kulak leaned over with the long-handled bolt cutter and cut Bennett Walker’s left index finger off at the knuckle.

  A wet hot sweat washed over me from head to toe. The screams were horrible. I closed my eyes for a moment but opened them again to abate the dizziness.

  Bennett was sobbing. Blood ran from the stump of his finger.

  With the toe of his shoe, Kulak knocked the detached digit into the drain. He stepped away, lit another cigarette, smoked it down halfway. After a moment, he went to Bennett, squatted down, and applied the red-hot tip of his smoke to Bennett’s mutilated finger, cauterizing the wound.

  Bennett screamed. The sound went through me like a razor lade.

  “Why did you kill my Irina?” Kulak asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” Bennett whimpered.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You murdered this exquisite girl,” Kulak said, “and she meant little to you that you don’t even remember why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kulak looked at the butt of his cigarette, then casually leaned over and pressed the red-hot ember to the thin skin on the inside of Bennett’s wrist and held it there.

  Bennett’s body jerked wildly, convulsively. His screams came from a place inside him so primal there was nothing human in them.

  I tried to look away, but I could still see him in my peripheral vision. If I closed my eyes, the dizziness and nausea would wash over me and I would be sick. It was important I not appear weak. I knew that.

  The stench of hot feces filled the air, and I tried not to gag.

  Kulak waited for the screams to die, for his victim to lie still in his own waste.

  But panic was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Alexi Kulak could smell panic. He fed on it. He savored it like a fine wine.

  “I loved her,” he said. “I would have done anything for her. I will do anything for her. Why would she want you, Mr. Walker? You are weak. You are no man for a woman like Irina. She would have run you around like a trick pony. Is that why you killed her?”

  Bennett shook his head. “No.”

  “Because she was too strong for you?”

  “No.”

  “Why, then?” he asked, as if he was asking a sweet small child. “Why did you kill her?”

  “I-I must have been angry.”

  “Yes.”

  “She made me angry.”

  “Yes. And so you killed her?”

  “I swear to God,” Bennett whimpered, “I don’t remember killing her. I don’t remember anything. I must have blacked out.”

  Kulak pointed at the stump of Bennett’s index finger. “This hurts quite badly, doesn’t it?”

  Bennett nodded. He was flat on his belly on the floor, his face pressed to the concrete.

  “Let me take your mind off that pain,” Kulak said.

  He stood up, took the bolt cutter, and snapped off half of the middle finger beside it.

  I wanted to put my fingers in my ears to block out the screams, But I couldn’t fold my injured arm that tightly. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to cry. Panic swelled in my throat like a balloon.

  Kulak stood there watching Bennett Walker sob, watching the blood run from his mutilated hand and drip down into the drain n the floor.

  “I’m sorry!” Bennett cried. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened!”

  I listened to him. I watched him lying there. Many times in my life I had told myself there was no punishment on this earth too severe for him. But all I could think in that moment was that he didn’t fit.

  Bennett Walker was a bully, but he was also what Alexi Kulak had called him: weak. There was no way he could take what Kulak as doing to him and not spill his guts. He didn’t have it in him.

  “You don’t know what happened,” Kulak said. He turned then and looked at me.

  “If you don’t know,” he said, “then perhaps your lover can tell us.”

  Chapter 62

  Landry parked on the road fifty yards from the driveway of Sean Avadon’s farm.


  The main house was dark.

  There was one light visible in Elena’s cottage. Her car was parked out front. The front door was ajar.

  Drawing his weapon, he went around the side of the house.

  The French doors stood open.

  Landry slipped inside. The only light was in the living room. Nothing was on—no television, no ever-playing jazz on the sound system.

  He worked his way through the cottage, his anxiety growing. The guest suite was empty. Elena’s suite was empty.

  His cell phone rang.

  “Landry.”

  “Detective?”

  The accent was Russian. The voice was heavy and male.

  “I call from Magda’s.”

  “Yeah?”

  The bartender, Landry thought. The big bald guy with the blue skull tats.

  “You want Kulak?”

  He almost said no. He almost said he didn’t care anymore about Kulak, but then he didn’t.

  “That guy on the news,” the bartender said. “The one they say maybe killed Irina.”

  “Bennett Walker?”

  “Kulak has him. At the salvage yard.”

  “Why tell me?” Landry asked.

  “I tell you for Svetlana,” he said. “Kulak has that man, and a woman.”

  “A woman?” Landry said, a chill washing over him. Alexi Kulak had Elena.

  “You come and get Kulak,” the bartender said. “You tell him Svetlana sent you.”

  Chapter 63

  “He’s not my lover,” I said with as much bravado as I could scrape together. If I could manage to stand up to him, I might at least buy a little time and in that time find a way to take him or get away from him.

  Big talk from a woman in a cage.

  “What would I want with him?” I said, as Kulak came closer. “He’s nothing to me. He’s a piece of shit on the sidewalk.”

  “I saw you on television,” he said. “You were lovers. Your father is his attorney.”

  “I don’t have a father,” I said.

  Something ugly flashed in his eyes. “Have you not learned, Ms. Estes, that I do not like to be lied to?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly thrilled to be called a liar, Mr. Kulak. So I guess we’re even.”

  He didn’t know what to make of me.

  “Edward Estes,” I said, “stopped being my father the day he wanted me to lie under oath and give Bennett Walker an alibi, knowing he was a rapist.”

  Kulak stood just outside the locker, very close, studying me like I was a specimen in a museum.

  “You are very bold for a woman in your position.”

  “I might as well be,” I said. “You’ll do whatever you want to do. I’ll at least keep my pride.”

  He turned and looked at Bennett lying on the floor, crying. “You would not tell me,” he said. “You knew it was him, but you would not tell me. You think I am a fool. I came to you for the truth and you told me you knew nothing.”

  “Because I didn’t. You wanted the truth. I hadn’t found it yet. Believe me, he’s the last person on earth I want to protect. He’s a rapist at best and a murderer at worst. Why would I risk my life for him?

  Bennett could hear me. He looked up at me, pleading. “For God’s sake, Elena!”

  “Shut up!” I shouted at him. “You’re exactly that and you know it.” Kulak’s interest went from me to Bennett and back again. “All right, Ms. Estes,” he said, unlocking the door to my cage. You believe he is a rapist and a murderer. Show me.“

  He opened the door and pulled me out of the locker by my injured arm. Black spiderwebs shot across my vision, and my legs swayed beneath me.

  Kulak pulled me over to where Bennett lay bleeding. His skin was pasty white and gleaming with sweat. He was going into shock. Once again Kulak kicked him in the ribs. “Turn over! On your back!”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Bennett whimpered. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes as he turned to lie on his back. Kulak put the bolt cutters in my hands, then pulled a .38 from belt holster and put it against my head. “You want justice, Ms. Estes?” he said. “You want revenge? I want revenge. For Irina. Give him the justice a rapist deserves, castrate him.”

  Chapter 64

  The bolt cutter was heavy. The sharp steel pinchers hovered over Bennett Walker’s genitals. The cold steel of the gun barrel rested against my temple.

  “Is there a problem, Ms. Estes?” Kulak whispered.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.”

  Bennett cried, mumbling my name, saying “please” over and over.

  “I’m just… a little dizzy,” I said, swaying against Kulak.

  “Do it,” he said.

  I pretended to try to open the bolt cutter without success.

  “I feel really weak,” I said.

  “Do it!” he shouted. “Do it!!”

  Abruptly, I dropped to my knees and elbowed Kulak in the groin.

  As he doubled over, I drove the handles of the bolt cutter upward with as much strength as the adrenaline rush gave me. One handle hit him in the face, shattering a cheekbone. The other caught him under the jaw. His head jerked back, and his gun hand swung upward.

  The gun went off, the bullet hitting something metal across the room with a loud Ping!

  He swung the weapon downward toward me.

  I hit him in the side of the leg with the bolt cutter, and he dropped to his knees, firing again.

  I tried to scramble backward, away from him, as he tried once more to take aim at me.

  Jabbing at him with the bolt cutter, I managed to hit his wrist.

  The gun fired again.

  I ducked to the right.

  Kulak was screaming now, in a blind rage, his eyes rolling in his head.

  “Kulak! Freeze!”

  “Sheriff’s office!”

  “Freeze!”

  “Drop it!”

  I heard the shouts and the shots that followed instantly.

  Blood and tissue pelted me.

  Alexi Kulak’s body jerked and twisted above me.

  He looked surprised. Shocked.

  And then the light in his eyes went out, and his rage went flat, and his body dropped, falling across Bennett Walker’s legs.

  I dragged myself to the side on one arm, trembling violently, my heart pounding wildly. My ears were ringing. I lay flat on the cold concrete. Not six feet away Bennett Walker stared at me. His eyes were wide open, unblinking.

  One of the shots from Kulak’s gun had struck him in the forehead.

  He was dead.

  Chapter 65

  Landry ran across the garage, shouting Elena’s name at the top of his lungs, knowing she probably couldn’t hear him. The gunshots were still ringing in his own ears. He could hardly hear himself think.

  “Elena! Elena!”

  She didn’t move, staring at Bennett Walker’s blank, lifeless stare.

  “Elena!”

  He was there then, on his knees, bent over her, wiping blood splatter and tissue from her face, hoping to God none of it was hers. His hands were shaking.

  “Are you hit?” he shouted, staring into her face. “Are you hit?”

  She blinked, seeing him for the first time.

  “H-he’s d-dead,” she said.

  Landry nodded. Gently he pulled her into his arms and held her, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. It seemed they stayed there for a long time, even as deputies and crime-scene people moved around them.

  His heart galloped for miles as the adrenaline slowly ebbed. He couldn’t remember ever having been so scared as he had been seeing Alexi Kulak pointing a gun at this woman he now held.

  What an idiot he had to be, falling in love with a woman who put herself into situations like this one over and over again. But there it was, and all he could do about it was hold her and stroke her hair, and whisper words to her that he was sure she couldn’t hear.

  It didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter what
the words were. It only mattered that he said them.