Secret Alibi

by Lori L. Harris

  The eleventh call was from her employer. She’d been fired. Several days ago, losing her job would have devastated her. Now it seemed inconsequential.

  There were several hang-ups in a row. Only half listening now, Lexie reached for a water glass.

  “Mrs. Dawson, this is Amanda Wilkes. We met at the meeting last Saturday.”

  The glass Lexie held slipped from her fingers and, hitting the wood floor, exploded. Stepping over the mess, she crossed to the machine.

  “I…I need to talk to you.” There was a long pause where Lexie thought something might have happened to the rest of the message, and then, “It’s about my baby. I…I…don’t know how to say this, but I think it’s possible your baby’s not dead. That it was my baby…” Another long pause. Lexie stood over the machine, wanting to turn the volume up, but afraid if she did, if she hit the wrong button by mistake, she might erase it.

  Not dead. The words echoed in her head. How was that possible?

  “I live at 1316 Banyan Court, unit 5.” There was a final long pause before Amanda hung up. As if she’d wanted to say even more.

  Lexie stabbed the rewind button. She rewound too far, though, and as the other messages replayed, she tried to make sense of what the young girl had said. Lindy alive? Her baby? Lexie rubbed her forehead. What was she doing even letting herself believe that was possible? Obviously, the young woman was delusional.

  “Mrs. Dawson, this is Amanda Wilkes. We met…”

  Lexie looked up and saw Jack standing there. When the message finished, he reached past her to turn off the machine. “Is there any way that any of that is possible?”

  Frowning, she rubbed her forehead. She needed to think clearly, logically, which was difficult because of the excitement welling up inside her. “I don’t see how. I saw her body. There was an autopsy.”

  He remained unmoving, as if not wanting to distract her. “Tell me everything you can recall about that night.”

  Lexie forced herself to think back. Dan had been plopped in front of the television, glued to one football game after another. She didn’t know when he’d started drinking, because she’d recently noticed that he tried to hide it from her by opening a Coke, pouring half of it down the drain and then refilling the can with rum.

  It had been one of those gray days, raining off and on, so she’d spent most of the afternoon working on the nursery, putting away some of the things from the baby shower her coworkers had given her the day before.

  She’d been sitting on the room’s window seat. One of the gifts had been a book where you wrote in all the important dates and included several pages for the mom-to-be to talk about her excitement over the coming birth and about being a mother. Looking up from what she’d been writing, she’d seen Dan wobbling in the doorway. She had frowned, and as soon as she had, he’d stormed off, accusing her of all sorts of crazy things. She’d caught up to him as he was unlocking the front door, the car keys in his hand.

  She’d gotten in front of him, tried to stop him. He’d pushed her. She’d ended in a pile at the bottom of the steps. Dan hadn’t even looked at her, had kept going. Had gotten in his car and left her there on the ground.

  “Lexie?” Jack prompted.

  She hugged herself. “I was in hard labor when I arrived. I banged on the front door instead of using my key.” Only when the broken glass crunched under her foot did she remember it, but she still made no attempt to clean it up. “Fleming should have been waiting by the door when I arrived. I had called him.” Her gaze connected with Jack’s. “Why wasn’t he?”

  “Maybe because he was already busy. Maybe because you weren’t the only woman in labor that night.”

  “But why wouldn’t Amanda have gone to the hospital? The office isn’t really set up for deliveries, and she wasn’t trying to hide anything.”

  “Maybe she was. You said she put her baby up for adoption. Did she say anything about how the adoption took place?”

  “All I know is that she doesn’t know who the family is.”

  “Did she say how the adoption was arranged?”

  “From what I recall, the doctor who delivered her baby assured her that she was making the right decision by giving her up for adoption.” Eyes narrowing, Lexie glanced back at him. “You think Fleming switched the babies?” It was just sinking in. She’d been so overwhelmed by the idea that Lindy might be alive that she had failed to focus in on how any of that might be possible. “And that it was intentional?”

  “If it happened at all, it was intentional.”

  “But why? How could he do that? How could he steal my baby? Give my child to another woman? Let me believe Lindy was dead?”

  Pacing now, she shook her head. “No. It doesn’t make any sense.” She stared out the window. As much as she wanted it to be true, it wasn’t. Lindy was dead. She’d spread her ashes just over two months ago, believing that doing so would help her let go. And here someone, a young woman who had gone through a mental breakdown, and who had seemed to be having a hard time coping with guilt over giving her child up for adoption, was telling her that Lindy was alive. That it had been her baby who had been born dead. Was this Amanda’s way of coping with her guilt?

  “Why now?” Lexie asked. “What would make her suddenly think that the baby she’d put up for adoption wasn’t hers? And how would she have known that I was in the office that night?”

  “Because Fleming told her. He couldn’t afford for you to know what he was doing there that night. And don’t forget, he wasn’t the only one breaking the law with that adoption. Amanda was and is just as guilty.”

  Jack walked up behind Lexie and cupped her shoulders. “What do you remember about the actual birth?”

  “I remember Fleming helping me to one of the exam rooms. He kept saying he was just going to stabilize me and then call an ambulance. But I was already in full labor and that he couldn’t. I remember that as soon as Lindy was born, he cut the cord and took her away. I was scared, really frightened, when he didn’t say anything.”

  “How long was he gone?”

  “Five minutes?”

  “What happened then?”

  “He brought her back, cleaned up and wrapped in a scrub top. He told me that he’d tried to revive her, but that he hadn’t been able to.”

  “Did he let you hold her?”

  “Yes.” She shivered. “I couldn’t believe how cold she was.”

  “After just five minutes?” Jack asked quietly.

  Lexie stepped out from beneath his touch. Was that why she hadn’t been able to let go? Because subconsciously she had known the baby she held wasn’t hers? Had Amanda experienced the same sensation? Had she known the baby she held wasn’t hers? Had she known all along what Fleming had done? Was her appearance that morning at the support group a coincidence? Or had Amanda followed her there?

  “So it was Amanda’s baby that he brought me to hold? As I was crying uncontrollably, my heart feeling as if it had been ripped from my chest, he pretended to comfort me. How could he do that? What would make him do that?”

  “Maybe because he had a buyer for Amanda’s baby? Selling babies isn’t just illegal, it’s also very profitable, especially if you know where to find the right buyers.”

  Lexie looked up at Jack. For the first time in days, she wasn’t thinking about the murder charge.

  “If Lindy’s alive, I’m going to find her.”

  THE APARTMENT WAS ONE of those that rented by the week, a long block building that had probably been a mom-and-pop motel in the 1960s. If it had been maintained, it wouldn’t have looked half-bad maybe, Jack decided, but the paint job was a dingy white and there were quite a few shingles missing from the roof. He guessed that most of the units probably coped with leaks every time it rained, and flourishing colonies of mold and mildew even when it didn’t. It was the kind of property you expected to see in a third world county, but not in your backyard.

  “I can’t imagine living like this,” Lexie said as they approache
d Amanda’s apartment. Unit five was on the end, right next to a weed-filled lot and a retention pond of green scum water where trash floated. “This makes the house out in Pierson look palatial.”

  “Makes you wonder why she would move out and into this.” Jack knocked on the gray door, and then stepped back several feet and waited.

  When Amanda didn’t answer after a reasonable period of time, he tried the door, but found it locked.

  Lexie was already walking around the side when he caught up. “This isn’t the kind of place you want to go wandering around back.”

  Lexie looked determined. “Because of snakes and rats?”

  “No. Because of what you just might walk into.”

  “Like a drug deal going down? A meth lab?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, there’s no way I’m just knocking on the door and leaving when someone doesn’t open it up. Not when there’s the slimmest chance that my daughter’s alive.”

  He’d known she wouldn’t be willing to let it go. “Just stay behind me, then.”

  The back of the building actually looked better. The grass, or weeds, had recently been cut, and most of the units had tidy patios. Amanda’s held a couple of plants in plastic pots, a cheap white-plastic chair and a plastic crate turned upside down being used as a table.

  Jack knocked first. He didn’t expect anyone to answer. As he had out front, he tried the door. When it, too, appeared to be locked, he lifted the one panel up off the track as far as it would go and shook it enough to release the catch on the door lock.

  He slid the door open.

  “Is this legal?”

  “No. But I didn’t get the impression that you were willing to hang out and hope Amanda comes back.”

  “You’re right.”

  He wasn’t doing it just because Lexie was anxious for answers. He was getting a really bad feeling about the girl. It was always possible that she had a job or was shopping, but it didn’t seem likely that she would make that kind of call, then go off. At least not willingly.

  Jack pulled out the 9 mm and flipped off the safety. “Stay here.”

  He pushed aside the drape, but didn’t enter right away. Instead, he listened. Even with a weapon, walking into a dark building without soft body armor or backup was dicey.

  He glanced at Lexie again, felt fairly certain that she was going to listen to him and stay put. Of course, with Lexie, you never knew.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold, he dropped into a crouched position next to a large chair just inside the unit. He waited again, listening, absorbing his surroundings. The drape hadn’t fallen completely closed behind him, and allowed a small amount of light to filter in. Even in the dimness, he could make out a couch and another chair, a television set and a small coffee table. There were magazines on the floor, as if they had been thrown there after they’d been read. It wasn’t the room of a tidy person.

  Which worried him, because someone had recently used chlorine in the apartment. Bleach was one of those chemicals that criminals favored, mostly because they believed it would destroy blood evidence. It didn’t, but he didn’t like to think about what that might mean for Amanda.

  Careful not to touch anything, he worked his way through the apartment, moving from the living area to the kitchen, where the scent of bleach seemed equal to what was present in the living room. The bedroom was next to the front door, and the chlorine smell seemed slightly less strong. Of course, after a matter of minutes the olfactory sense tended to adjust, no longer registering what had previously been a strong, offensive odor.

  When he was convinced that the unit was unoccupied, he turned on the bedroom light. The room was tidy, the bed’s swaybacked mattress covered in a pink spread. There had been other attempts to make the room comfortable. A poster with some roses hung over the bed, and a piece of cloth covered the top of the old dresser. He opened the closet door and looked inside. The clothes were arranged by type and by color. He glanced at the floor. Only four pairs of shoes, but they were lined up like piano keys. He checked the bathroom. Towel hung up. All the surfaces, if not shiny, certainly cleaned. And wherever the bleach had been used, it wasn’t in this room.

  Jack swore as he headed for the living room.

  Lexie stood just inside the back door. “Is that bleach?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t know where it’s coming from yet.” When she started to step toward him, he held up a hand. “You better stay where you are, and whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

  The living room didn’t look exactly as if it had been tossed, but it did appear as if someone had maybe been in a hurry looking for something, or as if someone had been taken by surprise and quickly subdued.

  He checked the kitchen again. Counters cleared, no dishes in the sink.

  “Do you think something has happened to Amanda?” Lexie had followed him into the room.

  “I don’t know.” Jack glanced at her. “You don’t follow instructions very well, do you?”

  “I don’t like to be left in the dark. Or behind.”

  He could understand that. For the past week he felt as if he’d been spending most of his time uncertain of what was going on around him, and he hadn’t liked it much, either.

  “Just don’t come any farther.” Jack squatted to study the front of the sink cabinet. The raised profile of the hinge was probably responsible for the small amount of blood next to it being missed during the cleanup. Jack bent down farther. There appeared to be more blood in the joint where floor met the kick plate. Still didn’t mean it was the girl’s. Maybe after cutting up a chicken for frying, she’d decided to erad icate the possibility of any lingering salmonella risk by using bleach.

  He straightened.

  “Stay here. I have some evidence swabs in the car.”

  When he returned, he collected the spot on the cabinet and ran a second swab in the corner where cabinet met floor. Maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe it wasn’t human blood. He slid each swab into a separate container and marked them.

  “Should we call the cops?”

  “And say what? That we broke into the apartment, found some blood that we don’t know is even human yet? I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “But what if something has happened to her? Shouldn’t we report her missing?”

  “We don’t know anything about Amanda. Her habits. If she’s employed. Who her friends are. Even if we knew all those things, unless we also had evidence of foul play, the police wouldn’t do any more than take a report.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Jack straightened. “I get Andy to check this out. He’ll be able to determine if it’s human and not just from the last time she did some cooking. He can get us a blood type, too. We have Amanda’s, so we’ll be able to tell if it’s the same as what we have here.”

  He sensed Lexie’s frustration and fear, and felt powerless. Because he couldn’t alter either emotion. And he wanted to, he realized. More than he’d wanted anything in a long time.

  “What about Fleming?” she asked. “Maybe if I went to him and told him—”

  “That Amanda phoned you? What if she’s okay right now, but just off working or shopping? You could be putting her at greater risk.”

  Lexie’s chin came up, and her eyes met his. “You think Fleming might harm her?”

  “Yes. And I think there’s a possibility that he murdered his partner because your ex-husband discovered something in those files.”

  “But we’ve been through them a dozen times,” she said. “And Alec has talked to some of the women.”

  “But not all of them.”

  Lexie threw up the hand with the cast. “So what are we going to do? Wait to see if Amanda shows up?” She paced toward the back door. “I don’t think I can do that. If Lindy’s alive, I have to find her.” Returning to where Jack stood, she stopped. “Don’t you see? She’s my daughter.”

  He pulled her into his arms. He understood what she felt, but he also un
derstood what they were up against. They needed proof.

  And then one of the pieces suddenly dropped into place for him.

  “You said Dan accused you of being unfaithful?”

  She lifted her chin. “Yes.”

  “I think maybe when Dan read the autopsy he realized that the baby’s blood type was wrong. He assumed the discrepancy was because he wasn’t the father, that you had slept with someone else. He certainly wouldn’t have suspected that the baby wasn’t yours. No one would.”

  “So all we need is the autopsy report?”

  “To go after a respected doctor? It’ll take more than that.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shortly after they left Amanda’s apartment, and just after Garland Ramsey postponed the appointment until Monday morning, Alec phoned Jack on his cell phone, suggesting they meet at a small restaurant a short distance away.

  Instead of inside, they sat outdoors at the picnic tables, where they would have more privacy. Jack told his brother about Amanda’s phone call and their visit to her apartment.

  Jack took a bite out of his hamburger. “So what did you come up with on your end?”

  “Something that’s both interesting and disturbing.” Alec wiped his mouth. The breeze had messed up his usually neat hair, and he was dressed in jeans and a blue oxford shirt. “One of the women on my list was reported missing nearly ten months ago by her family,” Alec said. “Her body turned up three weeks ago in a shallow grave.”

  Jack lowered his sandwich. “Jesus.”

  Horrified, Lexie closed her eyes. When she thought it couldn’t get any worse, it just had.

  “And here is where it gets interesting,” Alec continued. “The record shows that she miscarried, but the medical examiner’s report indicates that there were signs that she gave birth just prior to her death. Which makes her the second woman whose chart showed a miscarriage, but who carried full-term.”

  “Cause of death?” Jack asked.

  “After ten months, the heavy rains of last summer and the heat, there wasn’t much for him to work with, but no obvious signs of trauma. The M.E. thinks it may possibly have been a medical complication from the delivery. The local authorities have been investigating, but it’s a small department and they’re poorly equipped.”