The Last Alibi

44

Jason

Tuesday, July 2

The next morning, Alexa goes with me to Joel Lightner’s office. The sign outside his door on the seventh floor says JDLPARTNERS, a suitably vague name for a company that serves customers who value discretion. He works from referrals, no print ads or fancy websites. He has a row of offices on the west side of the building, his own the largest, but decorated tastefully and simply. He doesn’t want clients to think he’s getting rich off their troubles, though he is.

Joel gives a warm greeting to Alexa, whom he’s only seen once at a glance when she visited my office the first time. Normally he’d turn on the Lightner charm, crack wise, try to get the pretty girl to laugh, but current circumstances dictate otherwise.

When Alexa is taking a seat, Joel catches my eye and gestures at her with a question on his face. He’s asking me if I’m sure I want her to be here for this sensitive conversation. But I do. Alexa knows my darkest secret; if she can be trusted with that, she can be trusted with anything.

Joel paces along his window, which gives us a view into a concrete skyscraper across the street. It is drizzling outside, teardrops on the glass.

“It’s not much,” he says. “Yes, if the cops are good, if they’re looking that hard at security tapes, they might put you at each location.”

“They can easily put me at the dentist office,” I say. “And I put down a credit card at Runner’s High. Those two alone, right? I mean, that’s what the police are doing right now. They’re gathering data and cross-referencing. What do these women have in common?”

Joel makes a noise, his finger on his lips, pacing around. “That’s what I’d do.”

“And once they see where I work, it won’t be hard to imagine I went to that Starbucks. Send a cop over there to show the employees my photograph, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, he comes in all the time.’ The security cameras will just confirm it. And it will take them a grand total of five minutes to learn that I have bank accounts at Citywide, and that I was there recently at the district branch.”

“Okay, okay.” He holds out a calming hand. “But-you have no motive. You’re a successful lawyer. You’ve taken on some big cases, well-known cases. The Governor Snow thing. That thing with the terrorist attack, Jason. And now, suddenly, you’re a psychotic serial killer who guts women with a knife?” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t fly. I might find some significance in your connection to these victims, but I wouldn’t think you killed them.”

Now I’m pacing the office, too. One wall of Joel’s office is devoted to old photographs from the Terry Burgos case. Sometime in the late 1980s, Burgos killed seven-I think it was seven-college students and prostitutes on a small college campus in a town just south of the city called Marion Park. Joel was the lead detective on the case, the one who arrested Burgos, who interrogated him and obtained a confession that helped defeat his insanity defense at trial. The case launched his career. It’s the first thing any potential client knows about him, that he was the guy who once caught a serial killer.

“Do you. . do you have alibis for the murders?” Joel asks with an embarrassed laugh, as if he can’t believe he has to ask me that question.

“Yes, he does,” Alexa says. “He was with me. Every one of those nights.”

I turn away from the wall and look at her. Joel has a look of relief on his face until he catches my eye.

A knock at Joel’s door. Standing in the threshold is one of Joel’s investigators, a young, attractive blond woman. As much of a pig as Joel is, he didn’t hire her for her looks, or at least not in the way that would normally mean. He hired her because she can get people to do things she wants, a nice trait for a private eye who might need a peek at a sign-in sheet, the name of a hotel guest, or a particularly well-placed spot in a restaurant. Her name is Janet or Jennifer or Jessie or something.

“What’s up, Linda?” Joel asks.

Right. Linda. That was my next guess. It occurs to me, as I look at her, that she’s fantastic, a true head-turner, and that under ordinary circumstances I might experience at least, I don’t know, a mild adrenaline rush or something. Like I remember what it was like to feel normal, something that’s just across the room from me but might as well be on another planet.

“Need you for one second, Joel, when you can.”

“Go ahead,” I say to him. “We can wait.”

Joel and Linda huddle briefly in the hallway outside. Alexa is still facing forward, toward Joel’s chair, and I’m behind her across the room. I let the silence fill the air.

Finally, she turns her head back to see me and says, matter-of-factly, “We were together each of those nights.”

“Sorry,” Lightner says, popping back in. “Anyway. What were we-oh, the alibis,” he says, dropping into his chair.

“Alexa and I need to figure that out,” I say. “Confirm those dates.”

Alexa shoots a glance my way but doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, definitely do that.” Lightner nods, casting alternate looks at Alexa and me. “Here’s the thing, though,” he says. “Just putting you at a location where you had the chance to come into contact with these people isn’t enough. By itself? Not nearly enough, especially for a professional like you. If you had a criminal record or a history of mental illness or you had some dead-end job or something, maybe. But you’re too buttoned-up a guy, a successful professional. The fact that you happened to come into contact with each of them? It’s just. . not enough.”

“Well, that’s good, then.” Alexa opens her hands. “Right?”

“That’s not what he’s saying,” I interject. “What he’s saying is, if the asshole formerly known as James Drinker is any good at what he’s doing, there’s more than what we know so far.”

And Joel’s absolutely right. There has to be more that he has on me. And I helped him with ideas, for God’s sake. That scumbag sat in my office while I gave him a fucking tutorial on how to frame somebody for murder.

Joel points at me. “We have to figure out what he has on you. Because whatever he has on you, he could use it any day.”