The Last Alibi

75

Jason

Tuesday, July 23

I drop Alexa off downtown and then head to work. I have a nine-thirty in federal court, a status on a weapons case, which is bad news for my client because a federal gun charge will get you triple what it would on the state side. Trial is scheduled for six weeks from now, if it goes. The government wants my guy to flip on people up the chain, and so far my client has refused. I come from a neighborhood where you don’t narc on your buddies, so I understand my client’s reluctance, but my loyalty is to him, not his pals, and he could shave five years off his sentence if he starts talking.

I get back to my office after ten and push around some paper, a few files I’ve kept, the ones I haven’t referred out to other lawyers. I realize that it’s not an optimal strategy for a lawyer, who makes his living representing people for a fee, to push away all his clients. It’s not exactly a recipe for long-term success. But long-term success is not on my agenda right now.

The case files holding no interest for me, I return to the notes I’ve scribbled about my time interrogating suspects as a prosecutor, trying to relax my mind and come up with some breakthrough. It has to be somebody I put away, and it has to be someone who just got out of prison. This guy has way too much of a hard-on for me to have kept his powder dry for years. This is a guy who stewed in prison, every sit-up in his cell at night, every repetition of the bench press in the prison yard, every moldy piece of bologna he ate, every night staring at a cement ceiling, every morning in the shower, looking over his shoulder, blaming me for all of his troubles, plotting out what he’d do to me when he got released.

He’d want to get started on that plan right away. This is not a guy who’s enjoyed years of freedom since. This is a guy who got out of prison and got right to work.

I drop my head, feeling helpless. My stomach is revolting against me and my body temperature is fluctuating wildly from sweat to chills and back. I don’t want to take a pill. I didn’t take one for several hours on the night we tried to trap “James” at Linda Sparks’s house, the adrenaline rush distracting me, and my mind was sharper than it has been for months. In fact, it was the night I realized that “James” had been mimicking back to me one of my favorite lines during interrogations, the you’re nobody to me comment.

So, no pills. No pills because they cloud my mind, and I need my brain to function right now, I have to think, I need to process information, I need to think out of the box, one of the things the corporate robots say, there has to be something, some way, but I’m so damn tired, my vision losing focus, maybe if I just sleep for a few minutes, a quick catnap. .

“Who are you, James?” I mumble, and he’s in my office, James in my office, James telling me he didn’t kill anybody, James asking me how to frame somebody, James in my office when I leave to take a pill in the bathroom, James taking my Bic pen, James dumping out my trash for Kleenex or an empty bottle of water, anything with saliva or mucus for DNA, maybe fingerprints, What evidence do I have against you? he asks me, taunting me over the phone, Just some souvenirs I collected from you, just some souvenirs like a chewed-up pen, maybe some Kleenex from the trash, a water bottle, just some souvenirs, because That’s How You Frame Somebody by Jason Kolarich, Chapter One, first you pick a time when I have no alibi, Chapter Two, next you pick victims connected to me, Chapter Three, then you take things from my office that implicate me, souvenirs, and you leave them at the crime scene, James in my office, taking souvenirs-

My head pops up off the desk, my eyes taking a moment to return to focus, my brain reorienting.

Chapter Four, you plant incriminating evidence at the patsy’s house.

Or, failing that, the patsy’s office.

I jump out of my chair. Did I say that to him? Did I give him that advice? I don’t know. The fog is too thick. But it’s what I’d do if I really wanted to lock somebody down; I’d leave some morsels at the crime scene, nothing obvious but enough for an inquiry, and then, for the cherry on top, I’d put something really incriminating at the patsy’s house or office.

As far as I know, he’s never been inside my house. But he’s been here in my office.

There’s something here, I realize. Right here, in this office. He planted something here, something subtle, something hidden, something the police will specifically search for. It would need to look hidden. It can’t be dangling from the ceiling or plastered on the wall like a trophy. It has to look like I didn’t want anyone to find it. But it’s here.

Why didn’t you think of this before? You know why. It’s those little white round bundles of joy that turn your brain to mush. How much more proof do you need?

I go to the corner of my office and dig my fingers against the cheap carpeting, feeling for a hole, a place where he could have stuck something. I cover the entire perimeter of the room, pulling back case files, the refrigerator, the couch. Nothing. Nothing I can find, anyway. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

The couch. I search under it and run my hands under cushions, feel under the bottom. Nothing.

The fridge. That would be fiendishly clever of him, brilliant in its simplicity. But nothing there. No lock of hair tucked into the small freezer section, no bloody knife taped to the bottom.

I go through my desk drawers, removing everything, searching through my coffee cup full of pencils and pens, everything I can think of. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Bigger than a bread basket? Probably not. A woman’s fingernail? Her blood?

I turn my attention to the case files strewn around my office. Sure, maybe. He could have dropped something inside them, into one of the accordion files or one of the manila folders shoved within them. It could be anything. It could be anywhere.

This is what he wants, I think to myself. He wants to make me crazy, he wants me chasing my own shadow, my imagination scattering in all directions.

I drop down on the carpet, woozy and nauseated. Over three hours now, and no pills. Hold out. Hold out. You think better when you’re not on those ridiculous things, those beautiful tablets, that horrible, soul-stealing medicine, those delicious, wonderful pills.

I force myself up, my muscles seizing, my stomach twisting, my skin burning. I stand in the center of my office, only a few feet from my desk, five feet from each wall. The radiator, I should check the radiator, complete with peeling paint, below my long horizontal window.

Nope. Nothing underneath, nothing shoved inside. I remove the cover and can’t put it back on.

I finally succumb to the itching and start on the backs of my hands, my knuckles, my forearms, scratching furiously, knowing that I’m only spreading it like wildfire across my skin.

“Where the hell is it?” I hiss.

Leave. Walk out of the room, get some fresh air, empty your mind and start fresh.

I try my desk again, pulling out the drawers, patting underneath. The chair. I check the chair for the first time, a burst of adrenaline for an original thought, some place I haven’t already checked, but no, no murder weapon or DNA evidence that I can find, assuming I can find it at all because I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS I’M LOOKING FOR.

Then back to the knuckles, bloody now, and my beet-red forearms. And then my calves and thighs.

“Dammit,” I say to nobody, standing straight again.

I let out a long breath. I know it’s here. I know it.

But I can’t find it.

“Hey, stranger.”

I spin around. It’s Alexa, standing in the doorway.