The Last Alibi

9

Jason

Friday, June 7

That court reporter from the suppression hearing is standing in my office when I walk in. I remember her. Of course I do. Today she is not dressed for court; she is wearing a blue blouse with frilly sleeves and blue jeans that fit her very snugly, thank you very little.

“Personal delivery?” I ask.

“Personal delivery.”

When it happens with me, it always happens instantly. It doesn’t sneak up on me. It doesn’t bud and slowly blossom within me. It zaps me like I stuck a paper clip in a socket. When I first met my wife, Talia, back at State, and she suggested that we could study together for the econ final, that moment I first locked eyes with her, I couldn’t breathe.

This isn’t that. I’ll never have that again, what Talia and I shared. But there is something there, lingering between Alexa Himmel and me, something primitive and daring that I can’t quite place. Lust, if you had to assign it a word, but that feels incomplete. It’s more like a connection, something between us that just seems to fit together. I get you, Jason. I’m like you.

Those penetrating icy-blue eyes, catching and hanging on to mine for just a beat beyond the required eye contact for a professional conversation, tell me I’m not alone. When we first met, I was coming off a tough cross-examination, I was in courtroom mode, I had clients with me-it was more like a bus nearly plastered me, but I narrowly avoided it and moved on with my life, just an after-rush of adrenaline to show for it. But this time it’s just the two of us, and I’m pancaked on the road.

“You seemed like you were in a hurry to get this,” she says, though I’m sure I didn’t.

“I was,” I answer, though I wasn’t.

“Okay,” she says, like the meeting is about to adjourn. She’s taken the first step, after all, a fairly overt one. She came all the way over to my office in person to drop off something that she could have e-mailed. She’s not going to take the next step. This is up to me.

She hikes her bag over her shoulder. “Have a great weekend,” she says.

“Hang on a second,” I say, like I’ve just come up with a great idea. I wish I had a line to go along with it. Now I owe you one-how about dinner? At least let me buy you a drink. A big tough Hungarian lad I am, but I get tongue-tied around the ladies.

“I’m trying to think of a smooth way to ask you on a date,” I say. “Got any ideas?”

10.

Jason

Saturday, June 8

At a quarter to three in the morning, still staring up at the ceiling in my town house, I finally surrender and pull my laptop over and open it. It’s always on. I’m supposed to properly turn it off to allow for upgrades or updates or up-somethings, but I never do.

I check out a couple of fitness sites, a marathoner’s site being my favorite, even though it will be a long time before I run another marathon. Still, I have to acknowledge, even with the occasional flare-up, my knee is getting better.

This is the worst time, the still of night, shadows jumping across the window, the gentle creaks and groans of the town house’s foundation. I’m not so good when I’m left to my own thoughts. A night like this, normally, I’d lace it up and go for a run, no matter the time. I like the city best when I’m alone inside it, when I don’t have to share it, when the streets are naked and peaceful.

There is something wrong with me, but that something is nothing. There is nothing inside me. I watch one foot move in front of the other every day. I hear my voice arguing to a judge or jurors or reassuring a client. But it’s all nothing, isn’t it? The clients will go to prison, and even if I walk them, even if I find some way to win, they’ll be back, and sooner or later they’ll find a prison cell like metal drawn to a magnet. Everyone’s chasing after something, everyone wants something from somebody else, but not me.

There is a tiny earthquake in my stomach. My lips, my mouth, my throat, are dried up, sticky and itchy. I drink from a bottle of water but it doesn’t help. I pop an Altoid and chew it up, then slug some more water. Then I jump to the site for our online newspaper, the Herald, to hear about the latest stupid thing that Mayor Champion has done, when I’m greeted with this breaking-news headline:

BREAKING: THIRD WOMAN STABBED ON NORTH SIDE

I pop up in bed and click the link. The stabbing just happened. They don’t know the victim or too many details. Police responded to a call in the 4200 block of North Riverwood Avenue, a woman bleeding out from a stab wound.

I don’t have James Drinker’s contact information with me at home, on a Friday night that is technically Saturday morning. I may have brought home my notes from our two meetings. I don’t remember. These days I-Well, I don’t remember, anyway.

Twenty minutes later, I’m drifting again, the slow downhill nod toward sleep. Tomorrow, I think, tomorrow I’ll call James, a warmth spreading over me, while James Drinker sticks a knife into a woman, pulls it out, and winks at me.