The Last Alibi

108

Shauna

9:55 P.M.

I narrow down my list to four rehab centers in the area and start typing notes, questions I want to ask each of them. But with each passing minute, it’s getting harder to focus. I check my watch again, think it through again: Jason left after that call at a quarter past eight, and it wouldn’t have taken him beyond nine o’clock at the latest to reach Alexa’s house in Overton Ridge. And probably earlier than that, this time of night. So that’s an hour, give or take, that he’s been there. That’s not very long. And who knows? He could be on his way back home now. I’m letting this get the better of me.

My phone buzzes and I jump. I grab it off my nightstand and look at the face, praying that it’s Jason calling, realizing, at that moment, just how nervous I really am.

It isn’t Jason. It’s Joel Lightner.

“What’s going on?” he says to me when I answer. “What’s up with Jason? Is he having a hard time today or something? He hasn’t called me back. I didn’t want to bother him, I know he must be going through hell right now, but this is imp-”

“He doesn’t have his cell phone, Joel. Or he didn’t all afternoon, at least.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” says Lightner.

“Why doesn’t that make sense?”

“I left him a voice mail this afternoon. Two o’clock, right around there.”

“Right, but he didn’t get it.”

“Sure, he did.”

I get off the bed and pace Jason’s bedroom. “No, Joel.”

“Yes, Shauna. He texted me back, maybe ten or fifteen minutes later. He said he got my message and he’d call me back later. He said, ‘Give me a few hours. Don’t do anything.’”

“No.” I shake my head, even though Joel can’t see it. “That’s impossible. He hasn’t had his phone all afternoon.”

“Then who did? Who texted me back and told me to sit tight for a while?”

Beep-beep.

Next to me in the bedroom, the house alarm pad has gone off twice, the sound of the door downstairs opening. Relief floods through me.

“He just got home, he’ll call you back,” I tell Joel, punching out the phone.

I start for the staircase, stopping and realizing something: I didn’t hear the garage door open and close. Maybe that was the white noise in my head, drowning it out. Maybe it was Joel talking to me.

Or maybe the garage door didn’t open and close.

“Hello?” I call out downstairs.

Nothing.

“Hello?” I try again. “Jason?”

My heartbeat ratcheting up now, I head back into the bedroom. There, on the bed, is Jason’s Glock handgun, the creepy black instrument of death.

Take it, I begged Jason before he left. But he wouldn’t. You keep it, he said to me.

I hear footsteps, from the foyer up to the second floor, heavy, pounding steps. Jason. Jason’s hurt again, like earlier this afternoon when he could barely stagger through the door. Struggling to make it into the house, in the throes of withdrawal.

Do I take the gun?

I rush down the stairs, holding the gun away from my body in my right hand, pointed down. I hit the landing and turn into the kitchen.

Alexa Himmel is standing in the living room, walking toward the kitchen. I take a step back and, in a moment of panic, almost fall backward onto the stairs. I’m lucky the gun didn’t go off.

“Shauna,” she says, almost sweetly, her feet planted now. She looks like a different person, a more primitive and feral version of the cute, petite woman she is, her face sheet-white except for those dark, wounded eyes that glare at me. She is wearing a gray T-shirt and black sweatpants. Her hair is flat, air-dried, as if she recently showered but didn’t touch it with a towel or a comb.

She looks like she was roused from sleep. Except for those eyes that never leave me, those eyes that project such an intense glow. If there is an intersection of despondent and enraged, I am looking at it.

What I’m not looking at are her hands. They are tucked behind her back.

“What are you. . Where’s Jason?” I ask.

“Why do you have a gun, Shauna?”

“Why. . why are you here?” I stutter, a cold wave passing through me.

“Me? I’m just-”

“What do you have behind your back?” I demand.

She takes a step toward me. “Nothing, Shauna. Put the gun down, for heaven’s sake.”

“Show me,” I say, before my throat closes. Then, in a whisper, “Your hands.”

I raise the weapon, not directly at her but in her vicinity, preparing myself. My hand is trembling, the gun along with it. It must make for a silly pose. I use my other hand for support, which helps steady the weapon. Now if I could only steady my nerves.

It’s not that hard, my father, the deer hunter, always used to say about shooting a gun. Just aim for the middle of the body and squeeze the trigger.

“I don’t have anything behind my back, Shauna. Now put that gun down before one of us gets hurt. I just want to talk to you.”

I am cornered against the staircase where it wraps around to the kitchen, Alexa standing in the living room of the open-floor space, but not more than ten feet away. I can smell the heat coming off her, the restrained rage with each heave of her chest.

“Where’s. . Jason?” I manage.

“I said, put that gun down, Shauna!” Her left hand pops out from behind her, poking a finger in the air at me.

Unable to speak, I shake my head, the gun more or less steady in my hands.

She stares at me with those rabid eyes, watching the gun, watching me. “You wouldn’t use it,” she says. “You wouldn’t pull that trigger.”

“I will.” My voice comes alive, something unexpected.

She is quiet, but her mind is racing. It’s her resolve, more than anything, that unnerves me. I’m the one with the gun, and yet it feels like the situation is reversed, that somehow she has the upper hand, that she is willing to take the ultimate step and I am not, and each of us knows it.

Then the first hint of pure emotion crosses her face, her face balled up in frustration and rage. “I heard you earlier tonight, when I called here,” Alexa says. “Interfering as always. Why do you have to do that? Why can’t you just let Jason be happy?”

I don’t answer.

“I said put down that goddamn gun!” Her throat full, choking, tears forming in her eyes. “I need you. . I need you to put down that gun. Please, Shauna, please. I’m not here to hurt you.”

I take a deep breath, then another, and speak again.

“Alexa, if you come any closer, I will pull this trigger. I don’t want to, but I will.”

“Shauna, I don’t have time for this.” Her face scrunched up, her hand rotating in the air like a wheel. “Just-put it down and I swear we’ll just talk.”

I don’t speak, but I shake my head no.

Her composure continues to melt, her shoulders heaving, her face now streaked with tears, her mouth turned downward in a snarl.

“You don’t know what it means to love somebody,” she hisses. “You like to live in your prim-and-proper little world, but you don’t know about real sacrifice. You won’t do for him what I did for him.” She pounds her chest with the palm of her left hand.

And then her right hand comes into view, a long knife at her side.

Don’t, Alexa. Please, God, don’t.

“Don’t,” I warn her.

“You think I’m afraid of your gun?” She shakes her head wistfully, almost mumbling the words. Her right hand, holding the knife, rotates in small circles, as if she’s warming up, getting the kinks out before she springs into action.

“You don’t understand him like I do,” she says. “You don’t understand us.”

Her right hand suddenly locks with her wrist, the knife now poised firmly at a sixty-degree angle, as if ready to be thrust upward.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Alexa, but I swear to God, I will.” I spit out the words, the fear choking my throat, the thumping of my pulse like a gong inside my head. I’m doing my best to keep my outward composure, keep my trembling hands from dropping this weapon. I do the math in silence: No more than four or five strides and she would be on me. Less than five seconds. In that window of time and space, I will have to decide whether I’m capable of pulling this trigger.

I see it in her eyes, in that dreamy way she looks at the weapon in my hand: She is willing to accept either outcome. She is not afraid of death. She is not afraid of anything anymore.

And then, in a movement so sudden that I lurch backward, almost discharging my weapon, she raises the knife and tosses it onto the breakfast bar, a clanging noise that rattles my stretched nerves.

“Do it,” she says to me, raising her hands in surrender, then spinning around, a one-eighty, her back now turned to me. “You want to shoot me? Do it now, Shauna. Shoot me in the back. This is your chance.”

Relief flooding me, I adjust my posture, spread my feet for better balance.

“Now or never,” she says, and the words are like a siren in my head. She isn’t going to stop. She isn’t going to let this go. She’s made the decision not to act right now, not this moment when I’m prepared for her, when I’m training a gun on her, but I won’t always be prepared, will I? Not me, and not Jason.

And not our baby.

She’s never going to stop, and every second that I do nothing while she stands there with her back to me, defenseless, every moment that I fail to act empowers her, clarifies for her my lack of resolve, and it’s now simply a matter of when, not if, and then the gun explodes, vibrating through my hands, a single burst, magnificent and exhilarating in its power, its deafening roar, and then everything is different forever.