The Last Alibi

107

Jason

9:50 P.M.

I drive slowly, minding the speed limit, gripping the steering wheel with trembling hands, still short on every detail, but the memories coming back. I remember Marshall was violent, sexually violent toward women. I remember a young woman with a baby. Not her name, not every single feature by any means, but I remember a teenage mother. Mexican. Long, kinky black hair, I remember that. An infant in her arms, maybe six months old, not something I’d be in a position to estimate back then. She probably told me the baby’s name, age, gender, but I don’t remember any of that now.

But I remember she was terrified. I remember that I couldn’t use her. If I was going to nail Marshall Rivers, I’d have to come up with something else.

Get me a confession, said Patrick Romer back then. Get me a confession and we’ll prosecute.

And I did.

I park my car on the 2400 block of West Hampton. Lightner had said 2538 Hampton, and there isn’t a 2500 block east-it would be three miles into the lake. So he must have meant 2538 West Hampton. It makes sense, too, this southwest-side neighborhood being the home of an ex-con with minimal job prospects, probably not much money. The area has been completely ravaged by the housing crisis; what was, fifteen years ago, a promising neighborhood has been ransacked by foreclosures and is now riddled with drugs and crime, gang wars and prostitution, con artists and homelessness.

This time of night, in a hood like this, the only people who are walking the streets are looking for trouble. I guess I’m one of them. Yes, in part, I’m here because of Alexa. I left the Taser there, she said to me. I forgot all about it when I was done. Her fingerprints could be on the weapon. She couldn’t very well wear gloves, not in the middle of this blazing heat. Alexa was smart, knocking on Marshall’s door, dressed provocatively, knowing that prostitutes occasionally go door-to-door in the seamier neighborhoods-but no matter how much she looked the part, Marshall’s radar would have tuned up loudly if she were wearing gloves.

I reach the apartment complex, 2538 West Hampton. It’s a brick three-flat, not long ago probably a nice place to live, owned by people with high hopes, sold unrealistic mortgages that put them under water. Now it’s a rental building, probably still owned by the bank. Apartment 1 is the garden apartment, five steps below ground. There is a small cast-iron gate without a lock. From the sidewalk, I take one look around me, trying not to look too suspicious in doing so, and cast my eyes upward at the other apartments. No sign that anyone’s looking out, no blinds pinched or curtains folded back.

Then I stroll through the gate, covering my hand with my shirt, and walk down to apartment 1 as if I don’t have a care in the world. Alexa said the door would be open, she didn’t lock it behind her. It could have a lock on the doorknob that will keep me out. But it doesn’t. I turn the knob with my shirt again and take a breath.

Don’t touch anything, Alexa pleaded with me. Please don’t touch anything.

The door opens. I walk in and close the door before I do anything else. Then I turn. It’s a studio apartment, very small, just one large room with a small kitchenette, a round table for eating, and then a bathroom to the side. There are two pieces of furniture besides the dining table: a small wooden table on which a computer rests, and a dingy yellow couch.

Marshall Rivers is against the couch, tipped over on his right side, his legs splayed out perpendicular to his body. Alexa said she Tasered him and dragged him over by the couch, where she slit his wrists. It looks like she propped him against the couch, sitting upright, but he eventually fell over.

The smell raises bile to my throat. Feces, which is understandable, mixed with the metallic smell of spilled blood.

I ease the backpack off my shoulder. First, I put on the rubber gloves Alexa gave me, small on my hands, but sufficient. Then I walk toward the couch, checking for any marks my shoes might be leaving on the thin, dingy carpeting and finding none.

Then I walk over to Marshall Rivers. I don’t get close; I don’t need to and I don’t want to. But I do want to see that face, turning colorless, mouth gaping, eyes wide open, lying awkwardly on the floor, blood nestling under his cheek and mixed into his hair.

This, of course, is the principal reason I came. I needed to see him, face-to-face, to confirm that he was the man who came to see me in disguise.

And he is. He doesn’t have red hair, but rather light brown, cut short and messy. He is wide and muscular, but not fat. So that must have been part of his disguise, the fat suit, the belly flab. There is blood everywhere, a few splatters on his yellow-checkered shirt, probably from when Alexa first slashed the wrists, and then a pool that has migrated to the north of Marshall, up against the wall. The floor is probably uneven, and gravity pulled the blood in that direction.

Those eyes of his, those are all I need to see. This is the man who came to visit me as “James Drinker.” This is the man who killed five women on the north side this summer.

I give a presumptive nod. He’s done. What this will mean for me, I don’t know. He said he had a contingency plan if anything happened to him-a safe-deposit box with evidence implicating me in the north side murders. Probably bullshit. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. Nothing to worry about at this moment.

I look at the knife, still gripped in his left hand. Alexa said she slashed his left wrist deeper, then the right one shallower. That would make sense for a right-handed person. Is he right-handed? I don’t know. Alexa wouldn’t know, either. Just one of many things that could raise a red flag when his body is discovered, if it turns out Marshall Rivers is a southpaw.

And is that one of Alexa’s knives or one of Marshall’s? Did we discuss that? I don’t remember. If she was smart, she subdued Marshall and found one of his own kitchen knives to carry out her plan. That’s the kind of thing the police can figure out.

I’ve been planning for this, Alexa assured me. I did everything right.

She’s been planning for this. She did everything right. Except she left her Taser here.

But-where is it?

It doesn’t take me long to pace the room and check the tiny bathroom. I cautiously get down on my hands and knees and look low, under the couch, under the table that holds the computer.

I open some cabinets in the kitchenette, a generous term for it because it’s really just a long countertop with a microwave sitting on it. There is a four-burner stove, a small sink full of dirty cups, a plate crusted with ketchup smears, and a pan with remnants of macaroni and cheese. There is a small oven as well. It doesn’t make sense to look in these cabinets-there’s no good reason why her Taser would have ended up in there-but I look anyway.

In the third cabinet I open, in addition to a few plates and some dishwasher soap and a box of raisins, I find a package of unopened hypodermic needles and two needles sitting inside a plastic sandwich bag, looking as if they’ve been used.

Just like the one I found a week ago in my law office, taped behind the framed prosecutor’s certificate.

No time for that. I close the cabinets, panicking now. It isn’t here. The Taser isn’t here. Where could it be? I take a breath to calm myself and hold still. The room itself is still, quiet, motionless, save for the screen saver on Marshall’s desktop computer, silver asteroids bouncing around the black screen haphazardly, a computer mouse resting next to it on a mouse pad that is royal blue.

I check the bathroom one more time. Nothing. Back into the main room. I gently feel behind the computer, moving the small table slightly when I do so. Nothing back there. No Taser, at least. I take another breath, thinking of how long I’ve been here, that anyone could walk in at any second.

Could the Taser be under Marshall? Could he be lying on it? It could have happened that way. She sat behind him, worked his hands so he cut his wrists, put the Taser next to him or on the couch next to her, maybe, and it fell to the floor-whatever, one way or the other, it could have ended up on the floor, and when Marshall’s body fell sideways to the floor, he covered it.

Am I going to have to move him to get it? That, of course, is the very last thing I want to do.

I move cautiously toward him. No. Too risky. If I move the body, any talk of suicide goes out the window. But if that’s where it is, the police will never think this was a suicide, anyway. Especially if Alexa’s fingerprints are on it.

Time is not on my side here. I can’t stay here forever. I have to make a decision.

I look to my right, back at the table with the computer.

The screen saver is gone. The black screen, the silver asteroids darting about, have vanished. When I searched behind the computer, and rocked the table while doing so, the mouse must have moved. The screen saver went away.

In its place is a word-processing document, a white background with four lines of text:

Now u finaly know who I am

Now u will never forgit

Number six was difrent

But she was my favorit

A suicide note. Alexa didn’t mention doing this. There’s no way Marshall could have done it. Alexa wanted Marshall’s faux suicide to look more plausible.

Don’t touch anything, Alexa made me promise.

She didn’t want me to see this note.

I’ve been planning for this, she said to me.

I’ve been planning for this.

An unintentional slip? It meant little to me at the time, when her revelations were hitting me like a tidal wave, but now those words-they don’t make sense. She was planning for what, exactly? How could she have known that I’d leave my phone at her house and she would just so happen to intercept a voice mail to me from Joel Lightner, giving me the name and address of the north side killer? What, precisely, was she planning?

Number six was difrent

But she was my favorit

My blood goes cold. Marshall Rivers only killed five women.

“No,” I say. “No.”

I reach into my pocket, pat both sides of my pants. No cell phone. Shit. I never got back my cell phone from Alexa. I race through the drawers or cabinets in his apartment. Marshall doesn’t have a landline I can see and probably no cell phone, either. He only used throwaways and they’re nowhere-

I’ve been planning for this.

Alexa didn’t leave a Taser behind.

I race for the door, a silent prayer echoing in my head.