Alibi Island

by SLMN

  Bimala’s overriding memory of the encounter was that she would have to look up the word jezebel when she got back to the dictionary in her room. She didn’t know what it meant, and judging by her Aunt’s use of it, it was not at all complimentary.

  “Bimala! Bimala!” Aunt Chaaya’s dream voice was coming closer, pushing its shoulders against the closed door of terrible memories, inching it open.

  A hungry, ravenous voice. Getting to the meat of the dream.

  Aunt Chaaya never mentioned the incident again, and the Gerberas were cleaned up by someone else. That particular flower was never seen in the house again.

  Bimala’s twelfth birthday was a cold wretched affair, lightened only by a Skype call with Uncle Bharat. Bimala didn’t tell him what had happened the day before, but she found herself involuntarily averting her eyes from her Uncle’s direct gaze, just in case her Aunt was watching through a crack in the door or had found a way to hack into her laptop.

  Finding out what jezebel implied hadn’t improved Bimala’s mood at all, and she spent the next few weeks keeping her head down—doing her chores, homework, and wishing she could tie her sari tight enough to flatten her breasts back to the original line of her chest.

  They were the reason she was being kept from her Uncle according to her Aunt. And so, even though on a conscious level Bimala knew it was nothing of the sort, emotionally the young girl came to despise the shape of her growing body. She hated the hair, and the smell of herself —which also seemed to be changing—was ever present, however much she bathed.

  Aunt Chaaya kept very much out of Bimala’s orbit, as long as Bimala didn’t try to spend any time with Uncle Bharat when he was home from conferences or from work. Whenever he joined Bimala to chat, she would make excuses and go before Aunt Chaaya could intervene.

  Then one night, as Bimala lay in her bed in the sultry Mumbai heat, she heard her Aunt and Uncle fighting. Their words were clear on the still, sluggish humid air. There was no attempt for them to hush their voices; perhaps they’d been arguing for some time, but now it had spilled over into something much more serious.

  “Have you not seen the way she looks at you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, woman!”

  “I’m not being ridiculous! She’s a snake! A snake in our house, and she wants to take you away from me!”

  “For a woman so disinterested in sex, you certainly spend a lot of time thinking about it. For god’s sake, woman! Listen to yourself!”

  “And I’ve seen you. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking, you dirty beggar!”

  Another vase smashed.

  A door slammed.

  Uncle Bharat’s car started on the drive and drove away into the night.

  Seconds later, Bimala’s bedroom door opened, and silhouetted in the hall light was Aunt Chaaya. She didn’t say a word, but Bimala could feel the green eyes of envy burrowing into her, right up until her Aunt shut the door and stormed back downstairs.

  “Bimala! Bimala!”

  In Bimala’s island dream, Aunt Chaaya was calling her down from her bedroom.

  Usually Aunt Chaaya’s voice would be tinged with scorn and disrespect, like someone calling a cat that they didn’t like, begrudgingly, to their food. But now there was a different tone to Aunt Chaaya’s voice. It was gentle, beguiling even. She’d come to the bottom of the staircase to call up, instead of hollering from the living room.

  Bimala got up from her desk where she was awaiting a Skype call from Uncle Bharat who was in America on a lecture tour, and went out onto the landing.

  Aunt Chaaya was indeed at the bottom of the stairs, and in the dream Bimala remembered that it had struck her as odd Aunt Chaaya was smiling—it was not a facial expression Bimala was used to.

  Now in the dream she was screaming at her other self. Yelling at her, banging on the glass of the dream world, separated from herself by two years and thousands of miles wrapped in the fabric of the dream.

  She watched herself going down the stairs. She watched as Aunt Chaaya held out her hand and beckoned the dream Bimala down.

  There is still time, Bimala called to herself. Go back up the stairs! Lock yourself in! Wait for the call from Uncle Bharat; tell him about the man!

  But the Bimala on the stairs was not listening, she was going down to Aunt Chaaya, suspicious of the smile but not scared, not scared like her dream counterpart was.

  In the hallway was a man Bimala didn’t recognize. He was not someone who she had seen visit the house before. Not that many people visited, Aunt Chaaya saw to that.

  Run, Bimala! Run! The dream girl yelled to her other self. But the Bimala at the bottom of the stairs could not be reached.

  The man was tall but podgy.

  His white linen suit was crumpled, and the sweat on his brown face made his skin shiny. He had a thick moustache, and his hair was wild and uncombed. He gave Bimala the impression of a street vendor, or a restaurant waiter. He carried himself on nervous prissy footsteps, fingers moving nervously around the brim of an ancient Panama hat held against his paunch. As he moved toward Bimala, both the dream girl and the past Bimala could see his fat pink tongue moving across his fleshy, cracked lips, like the tongue of a lizard.

  Govindethi sada snanam Govindethi sada japam, Govindethi sada dhyanam, sada Govinda keerthanam.

  His eyes were sparkling with lustful avarice as he pulled the handcuffs from his pocket.

  “Oh yes, Chaaya, she is everything you said… and more,” his voice stuffed with desire.

  Too late. Bimala realized she was in danger, so as she turned, she heard…

  Run! Run! Run now!

  Aunt Chaaya was too quick for Bimala. The older woman grabbed the younger by the shoulder with one hand and by the pony tail with the other, pulling up harshly and lifting the girl’s feet off the ground.

  As the man approached with the open handcuffs, Bimala began to scream, and the dream girl banged on the dream glass, until her dream palms bled and the morning light claimed Bimala’s sleep from the night and transported her from that hell to this one.

  17

  The Roman Field Private Airport and Executive Transport Facility was a modern, well-proportioned facility to the north of Houston—with one low, grey main administration block, a wide parking lot dotted with high-end sedans, limos, and SUVs. Gaggles of drivers were smoking or chatting to each other in clumps having just dropped off their charges, or in the process of waiting for people to fly in. There was a central control tower just a few hundred yards away from the main building. Beyond that, a row of three modern hangers set back from the airstrip—on which a smooth looking Lear jet was just touching down as Passion rolled the Hyundai through the gates at the entrance to the airport.

  Passion noted a small glass-fronted concrete building next to the gate, where a security guard was watching the arrivals and departures, writing on a clipboard he held propped against his belly.

  Passion parked up and putting on her best investigator’s face ambled over the guard building, proffering a wave and a smile to the guard.

  The name tape on his uniform told Passion his name was Clayton Morris. He was in his late fifties and reeked of ex-cop. He put the pen behind his ear and set down the clipboard as Passion reached the door. You could have used his grin to scoop shit out of the toilet and sell it for a profit at the county fair. He eyed Passion’s body for an age before he raised his attention to her face. “Yes, ma’am?”

  Passion wasn’t fooled by Morris’ surface level civility. It was just your average baseline creepy. She’d seen it honed to perfection in many cops and ex-cops over the years. They could say the words, but only one in a hundred would imbue those words with any genuine authenticity. She flicked open her purse and showed Morris her Texas Licensed Private Investigator shield which Bryan had waiting for her at the hotel. Morris’ back stiffened and he straightened his shoulders, obviously unhappy this wasn’t a damsel in distress call which might necessitate some serious down blouse
action. “This is private property, ma’am. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

  “You don’t know why I’m here yet.” Passion gambled that the two $50 bills that her fingers slid out from behind the shield wallet would catch Morris’ attention as deeply as had the contents of her blouse.

  “Well perhaps you don’t have to leave just yet.”

  “That’s what I was hoping,” Passion said, passing one bill across, swiftly deposited into Morris’ uniform pants with the practiced hand of a man who was used to taking the cream off the top of the milk.

  “I’m investigating some matters related to the disappearance of Lainey Ralston.”

  This was another huge gamble.

  Myer had indicated that Houston PD had kept the news of the discovered body out of the public consciousness so far. But being an ex-cop, Morris would know that if this had become a homicide investigation, then the last thing the cops would want muddying the waters would be a private detective, and so he’d be more likely to clam up. But the news of the body, if it had been released, hadn’t reached yet reached Clayton Morris.

  “A terrible business. Ralston has my vote for senator, that’s for sure. A good man.”

  Cut to the chase. “I noticed when I drove in, you were taking note of my license plate. Do you do that for every car that comes into the parking lot?”

  “I guess they’ll have a machine to do that for them soon enough, Miss…?”

  “Durant. Jennifer Durant.”

  “…Durant. Everything becomes mechanized in the end. But yet, we keep a record.”

  “Have you been working here all week?”

  “Yup. I do seven days on, seven off. Then seven nights, alternating with Jim and Zane.”

  “We have reason to believe that a car was here sometime on Sunday morning at around 9:30. Would you have been on duty then?”

  Morris nodded and eyed the other bill between Passion’s fingers. “Would you be willing to tell me which cars came in here at that time, perhaps an hour before which left afterwards, say during the next hour?”

  Morris flicked back a few pages in his logs on the clipboard, but didn’t show the page to Passion.

  “There were three cars in and two out in that time.”

  “May I see?”

  Morris was taking his own gamble and Passion could see the greediness in his eyes wasn’t just financial. She unbuttoned two buttons on her blouse, exposing the generous depth of her cleavage. “My goodness, I do declare it is hotter than hell today,” she said in her best Southern belle accent.

  Morris’ eyes narrowed. He liked what he saw.

  “The only car I didn’t know was a 2011 Buick Lucerne, shit brown and dusty as fuck. Three men. They met at Gulfstream, arrival at Hangar Two. Three men in, three men out.”

  He showed Passion the log for Sunday morning, and she took her smartphone from her pocket and snapped a picture.

  “Here’s your other $50 for the information.”

  She handed over the bill and reached to do up her blouse.

  “Oh you could undo a couple more buttons,” Morris said his tongue moving dryly at the corners of his mouth and his eyes focused on the dark skin exposed between the fold of Passion’s blue silk blouse.

  Passion clicked the side of her smartphone. The whole conversation they’d just had—including Passion handing over the $50 bills—was recorded and filmed. “I wasn’t taking a picture of the log sheet Clayton, the video was already rolling, it just allowed me to take the film of you accepting a bribe for your information.”

  Morris’ face was red with anger, sweat was beading across his forehead.

  “It was only when you started to look at me like I was a piece of meat that I decided to fuck with you, Clayton. Men like you really need to find a different way to operate.”

  “What are you going to do with the film?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Because you’re going to let me drive over to Hangar Two, and you’re not going to write about it in your log. Is that clear?”

  Morris sank back into his chair nodding, arching his neck, with his hands shaking.

  “The Gulfstream it met…who owns it, and where did it fly in from? Can you get me that information?”

  Clayton didn’t bother to nod. He just turned to a computer terminal, put in a password, and called up the records he needed. “A private company, Enchanted Holdings. Flying in from Nicaragua.”

  “A regular flight?”

  “Yeah. Twice a week, sometimes more.”

  “Always met by the Buick?”

  Morris moved back through the sheets on the clipboard. “No. Different vehicles and drivers. No pattern.”

  Passion shot video of the terminal screen and then—with the practiced hand of a woman who’d pulled this stunt on many oily creeps who thought they could ogle her for their own kicks—reached down, slid her hand inside Morris’ pants pocket and pulled out the crumpled fifties.

  Morris didn’t say a word, and he didn’t look at Passion again as she went back to the Hyundai to take the service road out to Hangar Two.

  Passion parked the Hyundai around the back of the hangars so to not arouse suspicion. She walked in the killing heat, shielding her head against the sun, before entering the dusty shadows between hangers one and two, and made it around to the entrance. Hangar Two was dusty and hot as an oven in the afternoon sun. There were no ground crew in the back office, and no sign of cameras or security.

  Planes continued to take off and land behind her, as she walked into the hot space. The concrete was covered in the dusty trails of tire marks. Some from cars, others fatter and more defined from the wheels of an aircraft.

  The office at the back of the hangar was big enough for two people to sit and wait, with two office swivel chairs, a filing cabinet, a desk, a cold coffee maker on a ledge by the window.

  Passion pulled the drawers of the filing cabinet out, but they were all empty, squeaking out on rusty runners. The drawers below the desk were empty too. Either the office had already been cleared of all paperwork, or the people who operated it didn’t like anything put down on paper.

  There was a calendar on the wall that was two months out of date, showing a picture of Miami lit up at night, but other than that the office was as anonymous as could be.

  Passion came out of the office and went past the padlocked tool shed and through the rest room door. The stalls were empty, even the containers where someone finishing up at the sink would throw paper towels, had only three or four pieces of scrunched paper in the bottom of it. This was not a place that was used on a regular basis, which made finding the two thick clumps of silver duct tape laying on the floor of the middle stall all the more interesting.

  Passion bent to pick up the chunk of tape.

  It was still sticky, not covered in dust four layers thick, and when she turned it over in her hand she saw her first real clue of Lainey Ralston’s fate.

  Stuck to the inner adhesive surface was a raggedly torn piece of fishnet stocking. It looked as if it had been ripped straight off the leg it had been wrapped around.

  Lainey had been here, Passion was sure of it.

  She reached into her purse to pull out her smartphone to get to Bryan, when she heard the nearby whine of a jet engine in taxiing mode.

  It echoed the length of the hangar. The acoustics changed at the sound of an aircraft rolling into the space outside the restroom, making the thin walls surrounding her vibrate.

  Passion dropped the phone and the duct tape back into her purse and slammed her back against the wall, next to the door. The engine was still winding down; there was a hiss and clank as something within the engine stopped moving.

  Passion edged the door open with a nervous finger.

  Through the slit between the door and the jamb she saw the nose of a white Gulfstream.

  The plane and its engines were still in wind down mode, and Passion figured it was probably better to make a run for it now, rather than try to brazen it out.
Whoever was in the Gulfstream, if they were connected to Lainey’s disappearance—and the subsequent conspiracy to fake the school girl’s death—then they might know all about Passion. And that was an argument she didn’t want to have right now.

  Discretion being the better part of valor, Passion tensed her muscles and made ready to burst out of the door. She would run for the hills hopefully before the plane crew finished their post flight checks.

  Best laid plans…

  There was a muffled gunshot, and a bullet hole followed by a spray of blood exploding out of the cockpit window. Passion ducked, thinking that perhaps they already knew she was here, but the shot and the blood had come from within the plane, not from without.

  There were three more muffled crumps as more shots were fired inside the fuselage.

  Someone was doing some serious shooting in there. Another shot and another hole appeared in a window. Passion couldn’t make a run for it now, not with the hangar turning into a weapon hot zone. She figured that whoever was shooting up the plane was mightily pissed at something. The first shot might have been an accident, but the four that had followed were most definitely not.

  The door on the side of the Gulfstream hissed and opened; someone behind it operated the emergency inflatable exit ramp which blew out like a dashboard airbag and whumped to the floor of the hangar.

  A man’s voice said, “Please! Don’t shoot!” Just before there was another shot and a spray of blood, bone and brains messily hit the ramp. Then a body in a pilot’s uniform crashed out through the door, pitched over the side of the ramp and fell face first to the concrete. The pilot was already dead, but the fall killed him a second time, breaking his neck with a crack that shook the hangar.

  Passion expected a seven foot, camouflage bedecked action hero titan to emerge from the doorway.