The Last Alibi (A JASON KOLARICH NOVEL)

by David Ellis

  “Knock, knock.” It’s Joel Lightner, gently rapping on my office door.

  “Hey.” I sigh. “What’s up?”

  “In the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by.”

  “Did you put the tail on James?”

  “Yeah, we did. Yesterday, he left work and went home. This morning, he got up and went to work. So far, nothing else.”

  I sit up straight. He didn’t come all this way to tell me that. “You found James’s mother?”

  “Yep. Yep, yep.” He takes a seat across from me and grimaces. “She’s at the corner of Nicholas and Artisan Avenues, out west. Part of the Saint Augustine campus?”

  I grab a notepad, stationery Shauna got for me, the name TASKER & KOLARICH in royal blue at the top, then JASON KOLARICH, ESQ., below it in a subdued font.

  “Saint Augustine has a nursing home?” I ask.

  “Saint Augustine has a cemetery,” Joel says. “James Drinker’s mother is dead.”

  “Dead?” I drop my head into my hands, my elbows on my desk.

  “She died this March. Just a few months ago. So your client lied to you,” he says. “Is that the first time a client has lied to you?”

  I shake my head with wonder. “But—why even come to me, then? He comes and tells me all these scary murders are happening and then lies about his alibi? To me, his defense lawyer? It’s not like he’s been charged or anything. This whole thing is so . . .”

  “Unsolicited?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”

  “So he’s a sick fuck.”

  Right. That fits him. A sick fuck.

  “Saw on the news there was a fourth murder on Tuesday night,” Lightner says. “You’ve probably seen the papers. It’s all over television, too. This thing is getting hot, Jason. They’re calling him the North Side Slasher. The police superintendent is telling women to lock their doors, that kind of thing. We . . . have . . . a . . . serial killer. Nobody’s denying it anymore.”

  I’d seen some of the coverage, probably not as much as Joel. But he’s right. The police are now openly warning that there is a killer of women in our fair city.

  I look at Joel. He stares back. Down the hall, Marie is laughing at something Bradley said. Inside this office, there is silence, heavy and dark.

  “Is he our offender?” Joel asks carefully.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I think he is.” That was all it took, I guess, that one confirmed lie about his mother, to validate the notion that has swirled through me all along.

  “You’re sworn to secrecy, right?” he asks me, knowing the answer already.

  “Of course I am. Unless I know for certain he’s going to do it again.”

  I scratch at my hand, searching in vain for that indefinable itch, until I draw blood.

  Joel makes a face as he stands up. “Heavy lies the crown, my friend,” he says.

  30.

  Shauna

  Thursday, June 20

  I shake hands with Rory and Dylan Arangold at the end of a three-hour meeting. We’re doing what you do as you near trial in a civil lawsuit: working on a dual track, considering an acceptable settlement while preparing for a trial if there isn’t one. Yesterday, the lawyers for the city said they’d accept $5.5 million from us to “make the case go away.” But $5.5 million will make Arangold Construction go away. It’s above the surety bond they obtained, and they don’t have that kind of money lying around, not in this economy.

  The Arangolds are old-school males in the construction business, hotheaded at times but totally uncomfortable showing fear. Which is why it’s so unsettling to watch them sweat so profusely as we cover every aspect of this case, as Rory taps at that calculator at the various permutations of damages a jury could award, as we consider the risks and rewards of the certainty of a settlement versus the likelihood of victory at trial.

  “So you think Jason’ll be at the next meeting?” Rory asks. “Is that trial almost done?”

  I’ve created an excuse for Jason, a major trial (the details vague) that has consumed him entirely. I won’t deny that I find it a little insulting that they keep asking for my law partner, but then again, they probably wouldn’t have handed me this case without him. I’ve handled some smaller matters for the Arangolds for years, transactional work and mechanic’s liens and a few smaller contract matters, but I didn’t really expect to get this case. I didn’t expect two guys who still call waitresses sweetheart and who always compliment me on my appearance to hand over this bet-the-company case to someone with a vagina.

  And so this lawyer and her vagina would really like to get these cavemen a good outcome.

  After we say our good-byes, my associate, Bradley, goes to his office to check his messages. I walk down the hall to Jason’s office and consider asking him to an early lunch. I catch Joel Lightner walking out the door, waving to Marie.

  “Fuck!” Jason shouts out as I approach. I don’t usually have that effect on him. “Oh, hey,” he says when he sees me.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Nothing.” He sighs. “Nothing.”

  “You just like to yell ‘Fuck’ at the top of your lungs every now and then?”

  He shakes his head absently. “Remember that weird guy, James Drinker?”

  “The killer-who’s-not-a-killer.”

  He looks out the window, his hands on his hips. “He lied to me. He claimed to have an alibi for one of the murders. His alibi was his mother. He said he was talking to her on his home phone. And now I come to learn that mommy is six feet underground.”

  “Are you a cop now? It’s your job to solve crimes?”

  He gives me a sidelong glance, an evil eye. “This is different,” he says. “A guy comes into my office and says he committed this crime or that—fine, I represent him, I’d never tell his secrets. But four women have been murdered and there’s no reason to believe there won’t be a fifth, and a sixth, and meanwhile I’m holding my dick in my hands—”

  “Jason, it sucks, but you can’t turn in a client. You don’t even know if he’s guilty.”

  Halfway through my lecture, he is shushing me with his hand, patting the air. “This from the woman who doesn’t practice criminal law because she doesn’t want to help set criminals free. But it’s okay to sit idly by and watch a serial killer run amok?”

  That isn’t fair. There isn’t anyone who’d like to see this guy taken down more than me. But Jason, as always, is forgetting that he’s a lawyer with rules to follow. If he disregards them whenever his conscience bothers him, they aren’t rules at all.

  “It isn’t a question of ‘okay.’ It’s a question of what you are ethically bound to do and not do. You can’t just go with some gut feeling and throw away your law license.”

  “My law license.” He makes a noise, something between a laugh and a grunt.

  I raise my hands. “I know this is tough, Jason. I do. It must be agonizing. I don’t work in your area of the law, so this is new to me. But I have to tell you, it seems to me that the rules are pretty clear.”

  “I know.” Jason shakes his head. “I know you’re right.”

  My eyes drift to the corner of his office where I left the Arangold materials. They still haven’t been touched, not one file.

  “Listen,” I say, “I know this is tearing your hair out, but speaking of hair being torn out—are you going to help me on Arangold or not? It’s almost game time. Let’s end the suspense.”

  He squeezes his eyes shut and puts out a hand. “I can’t think about that right now. I gotta figure this shit out, Shauna.”

  I take a deep breath. Beneath my anger and frustration is something more. Jason looks terrible. Strung out. Sleep-deprived. Skinny. For the first time, I begin to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with him, if something happened to him while I’ve had my back turned these last six or eight weeks.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. Normally, this would be the wrong approach. Jason isn’t your sensitive, sit-down-and-talk-about-your
-feelings sort of guy. But I sense a dam about to burst.

  He runs a hand through his hair. “No, I’m not okay. I spend most of my time trying to get people off for things that they did, for which they are totally and completely guilty. I kick the search on Billy Braden’s case so he can walk out of court and start selling drugs again right away. I’m just delaying the inevitable with these guys. I’m just making money. That’s all I’m doing. And now I find a guy who I know is guilty—I know it. Maybe it’s just my gut, but I know it. He’s killed and he’s going to kill again, Shauna, and he’s making me a part of it. I feel like I’m a coconspirator. And I have to sit here and do nothing?”

  He sweeps a desk full of papers to the floor, something out of a movie, the disgruntled employee with the asshole boss who’s just had it! and quits.

  “Fuck this,” he says, and he comes toward me, like he’s heading out the door.

  “Hey, come on,” I say.

  He stops and takes my arm. “I’m sorry about Arangold. I really am. But you’re better off without me. Trust me.”

  He releases my arm and leaves the office without another word.

  31.

  Jason

  Thursday, June 20

  I look through the magazine rack and settle on the current issue of Sports Illustrated, the cover featuring two brothers, twins from South Korea, Hee-Jong and Seung-Hyun Lee, each of them seven-foot, three-inch centers, one a senior at Stanford, the other a senior at UConn. They are freaks of nature, the Lee twins, expected to go number one and two in the NBA draft next week. The headline beneath the two men: “Is the NBA Ready for the Lee Twins?”

  I drop the magazine in front of the clerk, along with a box of plain envelopes, multicolored construction paper, a pair of scissors, Scotch tape, and a pair of rubber gloves. I assume I look like a father buying art supplies for his kid, who also likes sports. The rubber gloves might stand out. Probably should have bought some dishwashing liquid or something.

  I pull out my wallet for my debit card. I hardly ever use cash anymore. But then I catch myself, slip the debit card back in my wallet, and pay in cash.

  When I was a kid, we used to steal the current edition of Sports Illustrated from the local library. Pete, the more handsome and charming of the Kolarich brothers, would chat up the librarian, divert her attention while I slipped the magazine into the back of my pants after ripping off the stamp sensor—or what I thought was a sensor. When I was in high school playing football, I used to dream about seeing my name in that magazine, maybe a photo of me catching a pass in the Super Bowl. I would imagine some kid in a library just like me, stealing the magazine or ripping out my picture to put on his bedroom wall. I want to be just like him. I want to be Jason Kolarich.

  Most of my fantasies, illusions of grandeur, used to involve sports, and almost always football. The acrobatic, impossible catch at a clutch moment, the crowd chanting my name, the announcer singing my praises over the roaring crowd. But as I’ve moved into my mid-thirties, it’s sometimes more about coaching, inspiring a group of ragtag kids, given no chance to succeed, and impossibly winning the state championship or a national title. Occasionally it’s a fantasy related to my profession, usually the innocent-man-on-death-row, a last-minute discovery that compels the governor to call the warden and halt the execution.

  Lately, I’d be happy just to feel normal.

  I check over my shoulder as I leave the convenience store. I’ve taken lately to suspecting that someone is following me. I can’t place why, just a sensation that something is trailing behind me, stopping when I do, starting along with me, shadowing my every move.

  I get into my SUV and drive. With the library on my mind and a local branch in sight, I pull into the parking lot and walk in. Over the main desk, there are signs welcoming me in multiple languages—Bienvenidos, Mabuhay, Suswagatham—and notices in vibrant colors for the “Summer Book Club” and “Rock and Read,” an advertisement for a children’s author appearing next week, a program on “The Secret Language of Peruvian Cuisine” that I would love to attend were it not for having to reorganize my sock drawer that night.

  I’m not sure why I chose a library, other than the fact that it’s not my home and not my office. Untraceable to me, in other words.

  A young African-American woman behind the desk smiles at me. She seems pretty for a librarian, I think, but then I catch myself and realize I haven’t been to a library since I was a punk kid, so what do I know about librarians? Plus, speaking of fantasies, the naughty librarian look—hair pulled up tight, horn-rimmed glasses—was a staple of my adolescence.

  I find a carrel in the back corner on the second floor and remove the items from my bag. I find the words I need in the magazine, cut them out with the scissors I bought, wearing the rubber gloves I bought, and tape them onto a piece of green construction paper. When it’s done, the piece of paper says:

  It has the chaotic look of such notes, sometimes featuring entire words—James from a story on the NBA’s LeBron, WOMEN from a headline about the WNBA’s fiscal problems, dead from an article about a hockey player who overdosed on amphetamines, Drink from an advertisement for Dewar’s—and sometimes partial words and individual letters and numbers of varying fonts and sizes.

  I feel like I’m demanding ransom for some wealthy family’s child or blackmailing a cheating spouse. It’s not that bad, but it’s bad. I’m betraying my oath. I’ve taken some liberties with the rules in the past, but this isn’t a step over the line; this is taking a sledgehammer to a wall. But I’m done with sitting around like some do-nothing chump just because of some stupid rule. Four women are dead, and I’m not waiting for a fifth.

  Getting the address is tougher, but just as important. They will print and analyze the envelope as meticulously as the note itself. Detective and Vance and Austin require a lot of cutting of various words, police is easy—the overdosing hockey player story—the street name, Dunning, a challenge, and the zip code a complete nightmare.

  When I’m done, I find a mailbox downtown, north of the river, and drop the letter in. The last pickup is at two P.M., and I’m here ten minutes early. So with any luck, this should arrive on the desk of Detective Vance Austin tomorrow.

  32.

  Jason

  Friday, June 21

  I overslept this morning, having not fully settled into sleep until about four in the morning, then awakening at six-thirty, then back down until nine. I desperately need some REM sleep, which makes me think of my favorite band and then my favorite person, Shauna. I ditched out on her yesterday, finally turning away the Arangold case, doing her a favor even if she doesn’t realize it, and then ditched out on her literally by leaving the office to author my anonymous note. I noted, when I walked in this morning, a deep impression in the carpet, in the shape of a square, next to my refrigerator, a slightly lighter color on the fabric as well—Shauna had reclaimed the Arangold files that had been sitting there untouched for over a week. I can’t imagine what Shauna is thinking about me right now.

  “Nothing,” Lightner tells me over the phone. “James spent the night at his apartment and went to work this morning. Will keep you posted.”

  “Thanks, Joel.” At least we’re keeping tabs on the man now.

  My intercom squawks. I don’t have any appointments this morning.

  “Yes, my love?” I call out to Marie.

  “Alexa Himmel to see you.”

  Well, then. I figured her for gone after the Altoids incident. If she had an ounce of common sense, she would be.

  She carts in her transcription machine behind her like a piece of luggage and leaves it in the corner of my office. She gives me a fleeting kiss, her lips full and wet, just the way I like them, and says, “Sorry to barge in while you’re working.”

  “No problem,” I say, especially considering that I wasn’t working at all. I don’t have any trials coming up, and every other deadline I have isn’t imminent, which is a good thing because I’ve been terribly inefficie
nt, unable to focus, often rereading the same passage three or four times. My vision is starting to suffer, too, a shady border framing my eyes, as if everything were in a dream or flashback.

  Alexa closes the door behind her. A big talk? I hope not. We’ve talked enough.

  “Well, I have something for you,” she says. She is wearing a blouse with frills at the edge of her sleeves and a blue skirt. She cleans up good.

  She hands me a manila folder.

  “Is this a subpoena?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Open it.”

  I rip it open from the side and remove three, no, four sheets of foil, each containing thirty small pills.

  She puts her hand on my cheek. “Your knee will get better, but until it does, you shouldn’t have to live in pain. Not my man.”

  “Alexa . . . This is . . . How did . . .” I lower my voice. “This is . . . illegal.”

  She puts her hands on my chest. I like it when she puts her hands on my chest. She gives me a longer, softer kiss, a taste of strawberry on her tongue. I could learn to love this girl.

  She puts her mouth next to my ear. “Then maybe tonight,” she whispers, her breath tickling my ear, “you can spank me for being a bad girl.”

  33.

  Shauna

  Friday, June 21

  Bradley John, newly deputized as the second chair of the Arangold defense team, finishes arranging our lone conference room, which has now officially become the war room. He has set up the television and DVD player in one corner for the videos of the auditorium construction during its various phases; he has one end of the room devoted to the flooring issue, another to colonnades and shoring, a third to the various internal issues during Arangold’s renovation of the civic auditorium.

  “This case is bigger than two lawyers,” I say, as if I’m suddenly realizing it.

  “Yeah, but you know enough about this stuff for six.” Bradley smiles at me. I like this kid. A solid mind and a good sense for how and when to say the right thing. This is one of those times.