The Last Alibi

77

Jason

Tuesday, July 23

“A needle,” Joel says. “With fluid still inside?”

“Some, not a lot,” I say, perching my cell phone on my shoulder. I’m at my town house now with Alexa. The needle is inside a sandwich bag, resting on my bed. “Maybe a quarter of the vial?”

“Well, that would be a signature, all right. Maybe it’s some kind of incapacitating agent. Or, well, it could be anything. He could’ve injected it when they’re half dead, or all dead, or he could have used it to subdue them in the first place.”

“It could be something meaningful,” I say.

“It’s a milky, cloudy liquid?”

“Yep. Y’know, I’m wondering if I should just take it to the cops. What if there are fingerprints on it?”

“Is that what you think?” he asks. “That this guy went to all this trouble to set you up, but he was dumb enough to put his greasy fingers all over it?”

He’s right. I take this to the cops and I’m in no different position than I was before. I still can’t identify the killer any more than a fake name he gave me. There’s still some unknown evidence out there that “James” has planted at the crime scenes. I’d be in just as helpless a position as before. Correction-worse: Now I happen to be in possession of one of the killer’s weapons, complete with DNA on the needle tip, no doubt, of the skin and blood of Alicia Corey and Lauren Gibbs.

“How are we doing on that other topic? That thing we discussed yesterday?”

Alexa, he means. His suspicions about Alexa.

Alexa’s in the master bathroom right now, the water running, but still I answer in a whisper. “She helped me find this, Joel. I was chasing my tail looking for stuff. It was her idea to check the pictures on the wall.”

“That a fact? It was her idea, was it?” He sounds almost cheerful. He seems to think this proves something.

“You’re delusional,” I say.

I hang up with Joel and get on my knees by the nightstand next to my bed. There is a small drawer and I pull it out completely, removing it from its hinges. I tape the sandwich bag containing the needle to the underside of the drawer and carefully replace it.

“That’s not much of a hiding place,” Alexa says when she emerges from the bathroom.

“Well, hopefully, it won’t need to stay hidden long,” I say. “We’re going to catch this guy. I can taste it now.”