The Last Alibi

109

Shauna

10:25 P.M.

The garage door comes to life, cranking upward. A car brakes hard inside the garage. Soon the alarm sings out a beep-beep as the side door opens, and Jason is calling out to me as he races up the stairs.

“Oh, no. No.”

I realize only then that somewhere along the line, I have closed my eyes. When I open them, it seems garishly bright, and Jason is hovering over Alexa, not daring to touch anything. Then his hands are on me, his soapy smell invading my space. “Shauna, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you-hurt?”

I shake my head no. I’m deliberately unfocused, holding it at bay, refusing to look directly at it, knowing that when I do, it will change me forever, and not being ready to change forever. Not just at this moment, no.

“I was afraid. . you were dead,” I tell Jason.

“I was afraid you were,” he answers. “That’s why she came here. She came here to kill you. She planned this whole thing, Shauna. She set it up so I wouldn’t be here, so she could come here and kill you.”

I break free of him and stand up, my legs unsteady. “I. . shot her,” I say. Saying it somehow brings it to life, makes it real, not a dream.

I have killed somebody. I have taken someone’s life, someone who was walking away from me as I pulled the trigger. I will always be a person who killed somebody. My daughter or son, the small clump of cells growing every day inside me, will be raised by a killer. I will teach my child that violence is wrong, that thou shalt not kill, and I will know, every time I say that, that I am a hypocrite, that I fully understand the instinct to surrender to impulse.

And yet, I don’t remember the moment of surrender. I don’t remember saying to myself, Okay, time to shoot her. I don’t even know if I meant to do it or if it was an accident. How could I not know that difference? Because doesn’t that make all the difference? If it was an accident, like one of those tragic stories you see on the evening news from time to time, usually involving a four-year-old or something, two kids playing with Daddy’s gun and it just went off-

Did the gun “just go off”? Tell me it did. Someone, please tell me it did.

And yet. And yet, Alexa was going to hurt me and my child. She wasn’t going to stop. I could see it in her eyes, those haunting, predatory, hate-filled eyes, probing me, appraising me, debating whether to charge me as I held the gun with both hands. Alexa was going to be back. She wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get between Jason and her. She was going to take that knife and. . and. .

“She was going to kill you,” Jason repeats.

“She was. . never going to leave us alone,” I whisper.

“Shauna, listen.” Jason grabs me, holds me at arm’s length. “You have to be able to say that Alexa was coming at you with a knife. Somehow she spun around, okay, fine, you shot her in the back. But she came here to kill you, to stab you with that knife.”

He rips off a paper towel from a roll on the counter and walks over to the breakfast bar. He picks up the knife with the paper towel and walks over to Alexa.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He turns and looks at me like I’m the one being unreasonable. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’re putting the knife in her hand?”

“Yes, I am.”

“No,” I say. “I’ll tell them what happened and. . that will be that.”

“What does that even mean?” Jason says. “‘That will be that’?”

Jason looks over my head, considering everything. “No, this doesn’t work. This-how far away were you when you shot her? Shauna.” He snaps his fingers. “How far away?”

I point to the staircase.

“Okay, so that’s, like, ten or twelve feet,” he says to himself, thinking this through. “You shot her from pretty far away, with her back turned, while she was unarmed. That’s the current state of this crime scene. And it’s a very long bridge from that set of facts to self-defense. Even if I put the knife in her hand, her back was turned.”

I try to analyze it myself, still in a trance but trusting Jason’s analysis as my friend and as a whip-smart defense attorney, unsure of which matters more at the moment. I raise a hand to my face and find it trembling, and then my vision blurs, everything is moving, slow-motion animation.

“It’s over,” I hear myself say. “I’m not going to lie.”

And then I’ve fallen to the floor in the kitchen. And then my head is in my hands, and tears are flowing, my shoulders are bobbing, a full-scale cry.

“You won’t have to lie,” Jason says, a firmness to his voice that gives me comfort, a lifeboat in turbulent waves. He grips my arm. “Because you were never here, Shauna.”

He lifts me up effortlessly, my legs unfolding and finding the floor, Jason’s bear-arms wrapped around me. “Think of the baby,” he whispers. “Think only of the baby. And you’ll see I’m right. Let me handle this. I can handle this.”

“No, it’s. . it’s too much, Jase.”

“This is too risky for you, Shauna. It doesn’t matter what you and I know. This doesn’t look like self-defense. I do this for a living, okay? This is what I do. This isn’t first-degree murder by a long shot, but it ain’t self-defense, either. This is prison time or, at the very best, probably a trial and the county lockup for you in the meantime. County lockup, Shauna, while our baby grows inside you. You give birth in a detention facility.” He cups a hand under my chin and makes me look at him. “That can’t happen. It won’t happen. This isn’t about me. This isn’t even about you. It’s about the baby. You know I’m right.”

I put my head against his shoulder, squeeze my eyes shut, try to mentally will away the last hour of my life. Rewind the clock, let Alexa leave, then call the police, get a restraining order, something, anything other than squeezing that trigger, anything, God, ANYTHING-

“Let me do this, Shauna. I can do this and make it turn out okay. I can.”

“How?” My voice trembling so hard, the word has three syllables.

“Never mind how. It’s better you not know. But I promise you, I can do this.”

No, I think to myself, but I don’t say it. I don’t say it because a part of me is saying yes, yes, it’s about the baby, he’s right, but no, it’s too much for anyone to do for anyone else-

“Hey.” Jason gives me one good shake. “It’s decided. I’ve got this covered. So here’s what’s going to happen. Are you listening?”

I take a deep breath, blinking away tears.

“I need you to clear everything of yours out of here. Your purse, work bag, anything of yours needs to be gone. Can you help me do that?” he asks, pulling my arm.

“I can. . do that.”

“Good. And then we’re going to get you out of here. You were never here tonight, Shauna, do you understand? As of this moment, you were never here.”