The Last Alibi (A JASON KOLARICH NOVEL)

by David Ellis

  “This lake is why I moved here,” Alexa says. “For some reason, it makes me feel free.”

  I know what she means. I live three blocks from the lake, a couple miles north of here. I always run along the water. My muscles are restless, yearning for the day when I can do it again, even as I’m unsure that day will ever come.

  It’s not my only yearning. Our first date last weekend ended at Alexa’s door with a hug. Not even a kiss. She’s an old-fashioned girl.

  “Do you miss being married?” she asks me.

  That isn’t a question I expected. I spend my days being fast on my feet, ready for any challenge a witness or judge might hurl my way, but these simple personal questions always tie me in knots. But Mom always said, if you aren’t sure what to say, go with the truth.

  “I miss Talia,” I say. “I never really cared about a marriage certificate, but she did, and I was fine with it. But yeah, I miss her.”

  She looks up at me as we walk but doesn’t respond. That probably wasn’t a crowd-pleaser, but she asked.

  “That was very honest of you,” she says.

  I laugh. “Brutally so.”

  “There’s nothing brutal about it. Would I be better off not asking and not knowing?”

  “Maybe.”

  “No.” She shakes her head firmly. “A girl needs to know what she’s getting into.”

  Interesting choice of words. Am I hooking her in? Am I even trying to? Sometimes I feel like I’m just feeling through the dark, not knowing what I’ll touch and unsure of what I’m even reaching for.

  “I had my heart broken once,” she says. “Not marriage, but I would’ve married him if he’d asked.”

  “What happened?” There is a pause, longer than necessary. “Brutal honesty,” I add.

  “It turned out he was already married.”

  “Ah. That would be a complication.”

  “Yeah . . .” Her voice trails off. She looks out over the lake. “Yeah, it pretty much sucked, I have to say.”

  “How long ago did this happen?” I ask.

  “A few weeks ago.”

  I stop in my tracks. “A few weeks—”

  She bursts into a laugh. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.” She faces me and puts her hand on my chest. That simple touch flips a switch on inside me: All systems go! “It was, like, three years ago,” she says. “He was a jerk. And I don’t miss him, to answer your next question.”

  I move my face closer to hers. “That wasn’t my next question.”

  “No?” Her mouth moves closer to mine, her head angling to the right. “What,” she whispers, “was your next question?”

  I whisper back, “I wish I had something clever to say, but I just want to kiss you.”

  “That’s clever enough for me.”

  I don’t care how many times you’ve done it, you don’t forget a first kiss: the awkwardness and trepidation, each of you trying to find that fit, that rhythm. When it’s good, it’s like few things in this world. And this one is good. I taste red wine when we pull away.

  She leans back and looks at me, her eyes searching me. As a rule, I don’t like being searched. I never know what someone might find.

  “Well, gee, Jason Kolarich. This is pret-ty romantic. You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet.”

  I don’t have the foggiest idea how to do that.

  “I still don’t have anything clever to say,” I admit.

  She rests her hands on my chest. “Then how about you take me home?” she says.

  • • •

  We walk along the beach until we hit Ash Street, the closest principal artery, and walk up the stairs, wipe off our feet, put on our shoes, and hail a cab. Alexa lives outside the city in a small suburb to the south and west, Overton Ridge, so the cab takes a while with the traffic. We talk about all sorts of things: last fall’s presidential election (she has opinions, I think the candidates are all full of shit); music (she can tolerate R.E.M., which is a relief because that could be a deal breaker); her childhood bouncing around from town to town while her father opened new Kmarts (I didn’t even know that was a specialty, opening new stores). But as we pull off the highway and turn left down Wadsworth, the conversation starts to dissipate, replaced with tension. It seems to be a given what’s going to happen next, and I sense it’s meaningful to her, that she isn’t casual about sex.

  I don’t want to be, either. I want to care about it. I want somebody, or at least something, to matter to me again.

  She lives in a small brick bungalow, three from the corner. It hardly looks like we’ve left the city; in a way this block, with its low rooflines and tiny plots, resembles the neighborhood in the city where I grew up, Leland Park.

  She uses her key and opens the door. I follow her in as if there were never a doubt. She takes me by the hand and leads me past a small room, a combination living room–dining room that is well kept, spotless. Her bedroom is also small—the whole place is—and also immaculate. Hardwood floors, wall closet, a single window with flowery drapes, a queen-size bed with about a hundred pillows and a teddy bear. The teddy bear is interesting.

  Silently, she positions me by the bed and then faces me, taking my face in her hands and kissing me differently than the first time, more assertive but still very soft. We remove each other’s clothes methodically, gently. No tearing or ripping. We are taking it slowly, which works for me, savoring the moment, treating it like it’s something unique and special. Finally, she backs up onto the bed, me hovering over her, and we touch each other everywhere, caressing surfaces, until her tongue is more urgent in my mouth, which I take as my cue, and then a switch is flipped and everything is more primitive, more aggressive, more needy, and we find a rhythm and I do better than I expected in terms of holding out, but when it happens I grunt so loudly I surprise myself.

  We lie quietly panting, her hands drawing circles on my back, my face nestled in her hair, for a good ten minutes. I hear a car pass by outside. I hear a bunch of people, talking in that cheerful and familiar way, lubricated by alcohol and heading to their next destination, bed or another bar or late-night chow.

  “Don’t hurt me,” Alexa whispers.

  For a second, I’m sure I heard her wrong. I raise my head. “Did I—hurt you?”

  She eases out from under me, my question unanswered, and heads to the bathroom. I ease off the condom, which was basically coming off anyway as my little man retreats into postcoital hibernation, and wrap it in a tissue. I put on my boxers and lie on the bed.

  Nice night. As I stare at the ceiling, my mind drifts. To Talia, scrunching up her nose at one of my cornball jokes; to Emily Jane, our daughter, quietly breathing as she sleeps in the fold of my arm; to Shauna, watching over me while pretending she’s not; to a serial killer butchering young women on the north side.

  I sit up on the bed and wait for Alexa. I think of calling out to her. It’s been, like, ten or fifteen minutes. But hey, maybe nature called, or it’s some feminine thing that I don’t understand.

  It all comes back with a rush, the needle pricks inside my head and the stormy stomach, the bile in my throat, my mouth dry as sand. I steady myself and wait out the first wave.

  Finally, Alexa walks back into the room. “Sorry about that,” she says, casual in her tone. She crawls onto the bed and nestles into my arms.

  “Are you good?” I ask.

  “Oh, I’m great.” She adjusts herself to look at me. “I’m great. That was—I really enjoyed that.”

  That would be more believable had she not left the room for so long, but I see no reason to let my imagination run wild. It was great, and if there is sex a second time, it will be even better.

  “Will you stay?” she asks.

  I tell her I will. I suddenly realize how exhausted I am. We lie in silence, atop the covers, for how long I don’t know, all energy draining from my body, thoughts beginning to mangle themselves together in dreams. As I fade off to twilight, my defenses down, it comes to me as naturall
y as the sound of my voice, as obvious as day following night: James Drinker killed those women.

  17.

  Jason

  Saturday, June 15

  I wake with a start from a dream—dirt in my mouth, insects on my skin, my hands on the railing, trying to hold on but the gravitational pull is too strong—that quickly vaporizes into a mash of nonsense. I turn to Alexa, who has part of the bedspread pulled up over her. I am shivery, shaky, uneasy. I manage to make out the time on my watch: It’s past two in the morning.

  I climb out of bed gingerly and find my pants. I dig into the pockets, but I don’t find them. That’s where they were, I’m sure of it, but they’re not there anymore. I try every pocket, patting them down, turning them inside out, but they aren’t there.

  I gently pat the nightstand by the bed, almost knocking over the alarm clock, touching a sticky note, then something circular that is probably makeup. No. Not here.

  I get down on my hands and knees on the hardwood floor and feel around. I check everywhere, picking up lint along the way, particles of sand from our beach walk, various other minuscule items you find on a floor.

  I tiptoe outside the bedroom, close the door, and flip the switch in the nearby kitchen, squinting in the urine-colored light, retracing my steps from the front door. Nothing.

  My head is echoing a gong now, my limbs twitching. I ease back into the bedroom and drop to my hands and knees again, repeating the same steps and expecting different results. I reach far under the bed, and my hand finds something small, granular—a mint from the Jurassic era—but otherwise nothing. “Shit,” I say, my hands moving wildly along the floor. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I hear a soft moan from the bed. Alexa rolls back over toward me and says, in a sleepy mumble, “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” I say quietly as I pull one leg through my pants. “But I need to get going. Somewhere I need to be tomorrow morning. I totally forgot.”

  Alexa pushes herself up slowly. In the darkness, as far as my eyes have adjusted to it, she looks like she’s still climbing the ladder to wakefulness, peering at me with sleepy eyes. “You’re . . . leaving?”

  “I have to. I’m sorry.”

  She rubs her face. “Is it your knee?”

  “No, nothing like that.” I sit on the bed next to her. “Let’s do something tomorrow. Okay?”

  She pauses. I don’t know if she’s considering it or if she’s still half asleep.

  “Call me tomorrow,” she says.

  I press my lips to her forehead. “See you tomorrow,” I say. I throw on my clothes and head for the door. I go to the corner and try to hail a cab on Wadsworth, but there’s nothing here this time of night—I’m in a suburb, not the city—so I walk down a few more blocks to what passes for a downtown, a couple of banks and restaurants and a children’s store, and give it another few minutes. Finally, I call information on my phone, and after a couple of tries locate a company that will send a cab my way. I stand on the sidewalk, hopping on the balls of my feet, my thoughts careening wildly to dark subjects. A homeless man has taken up residence within the cocoon of a travel agency doorstep, a dingy SpongeBob SquarePants blanket over him, a skanky black beard obscuring his face. I can’t tell if he’s asleep or watching me, motionless.

  A police squad car rolls down the street. I consider skulking into shadows, but they’ve already seen me. I’m committing no crime, but I can’t shake a feeling of something like guilt—but not guilt, not exactly, just a sense that I am wrong, that I am . . . not right. “Waiting for a cab,” I tell them when they slow the patrol car and roll down the window before moving on, after a curt appraisal.

  Guilty, but not guilty. Wrong, not right.

  I am wrong. I am not right. I am falling.

  The cab arrives. I show the driver a hundred-dollar bill and tell him it’s his if we get home in twenty minutes. If there’s no traffic, the highway makes that a possibility. My knees bob up and down inside the sticky taxi, the cheap torn seating and the inane interviews from some entertainment show on the small video screen.

  James Drinker is gutting women like fish and hiding behind me, the guy who isn’t supposed to say anything, isn’t allowed to say anything, would be punished for saying anything at all to anybody at all. I put my head between my knees and grit my teeth. My tongue is like a piece of damp fur, my breath putrid, my forehead slimy with sweat.

  I throw the driver the money and push myself out of the cab. I run up to my door, get in, give the door a push before I bound up the stairs two at a time, all the way to the third story, and rush to the bathroom. I open the cabinet under the sink and find the box for the allergy medicine, a white box with an orange stripe.

  I pull out the silver-foiled sheet and pop one of the pills out, chew it up, and fall to my haunches. I wipe sweat from my eyes and fall back against the wall, finally finding a gentle, warm place on my bathroom floor.

  Relax, I tell myself. Everything’s fine. Just because Drinker is a weirdo doesn’t mean he’s a killer. You don’t have to do anything, and you can’t, anyway. And this other thing you’re dealing with—it’s going to be fine. You need to do something, but you will, you always have; you overcame Talia’s and Emily’s deaths, you overcame poverty and a fucked-up childhood, you can do anything you want, anything at all.

  It’ll be fine, I promise myself as warmth spreads through me. It’s all going to be fine.

  PEOPLE VS. JASON KOLARICH

  TRIAL, DAY 1

  Monday, December 9

  18.

  Shauna

  Roger Ogren completes his opening statement at two-thirty. His presentation is what Jason predicted it would be: efficient, to the point, not flashy or hyperbolic. He is, according to Jason, a lifer at the office, a guy who interned during law school, started in traffic court when he got his law degree, and has spent nearly a quarter-century handling major felonies. I’ve struggled to guess what the upshot will be on drawing a veteran prosecutor. Has he fallen into bad habits that I can manipulate? Will he be wise to any tactical maneuvers we dream up? The best I can get from Jason, other than thoroughly unhelpful comments like “Roger is Roger,” is that Ogren puts on a straightforward case free of theatrics and imagination but may have the occasional blind spot for a creative defense attorney. (Now if I only knew a creative defense attorney—at least one who isn’t my client.)

  Age has robbed Ogren of most of his hair and left it heavily grayed; cancer took away a good thirty pounds. Tall and thin and weathered, experienced and street-smart, careful and humorless—this is my adversary. I try to make it a habit to get along with opposing counsel, but then again, nearly every case I’ve ever tried was in the civil courts, where the dispute is over money, and where few of the attorneys have any illusions about their clients and sometimes are willing to share as much in off-the-record, colorful commentary. Prosecutors, however, are different. Their client is the state, the people, and many of them bring a holier-than-thou approach to their jobs. Defendants are the bad guys, criminals who must be incarcerated, and thus their attorneys, who search for dust to kick up or technicalities on which to seize, are likewise unsavory.

  Judge Judith Bialek—“Judge Judy” behind her back—is a former prosecutor and a trial court judge going on eighteen years now. The bad news is she’s inclined toward the prosecution, the good news that Jason always did well in her courtroom when he was prosecuting felonies. I’ve noted a crimp in her expression from time to time when she’s looked over at Jason sitting in a chair that she probably never expected him to occupy.

  “Ms. Tasker,” she booms to me, looking over her glasses, “does the defense still wish to reserve its opening statement?”

  It’s been a debate between Jason and me all along. I want to deliver the opening statement now, to tell the jury, right now, right this second, before any impressions can cement in their minds, that Jason didn’t kill anybody. I’m a believer that many jurors make up their minds after opening statements,
and if I hold back now, Roger Ogren gets out his first impression without me giving mine. Strike that—the defense is giving a first impression, but not a favorable one: We have something up our sleeve, something perhaps too clever by half, not a straightforward, just-the-facts presentation like our adversary. Roger Ogren has the facts, the defense has snake oil.

  “We will reserve, yes, Judge,” I say, standing at my seat.

  Jason, who wanted us to hold back our defense, won our internal debate. He might be right. On these matters, he usually is. But the truth, which I prefer not to confront, is that I went along with his idea because I was afraid of overruling him and then being wrong. That is something they don’t talk about in law school and something that attorneys in civil litigation rarely experience—the all-consuming fear that your mistake will land a client in prison.

  The truth is that I’m absolutely terrified of making one of those mistakes.

  19.

  Jason

  “It was the right decision,” I say to Shauna after Judge Bialek calls a recess following Roger Ogren’s opening statement. Over the last two weeks, she has argued fiercely for delivering the defense’s opening statement at the start of the case, as is tradition—so much so that she actually wrote and presented her opening statement to me two nights ago in an effort to change my mind. It was a great opening, well couched and expertly delivered, but she was never going to change my mind about this. There’s no way we’re telling the jury what happened yet. I know this more than Shauna does.

  Because I know things my lawyer doesn’t.

  Shauna looks at me, poker-faced. The jury hasn’t filtered out yet, and she doesn’t want to betray any reactions, any emotions, in front of them. Plus there is the gallery behind us, a plentiful group of reporters and onlookers, all of whom would be more than happy to send tweets or post online stories about a perceived “disharmony among the defense team” or “surprised reactions” from a lawyer or from me. I’ve been surprised at the media’s interest in this case, which owes primarily to the fact that many people believe that I was the private attorney who played a central role in the scandal that embroiled our last governor, Carlton Snow. I was, and I did. But I’ve never acknowledged it publicly. Shauna wanted me to do so now in a blatant attempt to influence the jury pool, to trumpet the work that I did for the federal government, to display me to the public as a whistle-blower on corruption, a do-gooder who helped stop bad people from doing bad things. From whistle-blower to accused murderer was how one of the local papers blazed it in a feature story, even without my saying anything.