The Last Alibi

89

Jason

8:50 P.M.

I find a parking space on Wadsworth, a few houses down from Alexa’s bungalow, and race up the steps to her door. I knock on the door and it falls open.

I step in. “Alexa? Alexa.”

She is sitting in her living room, the lights off, the curtains pulled, the room dark, save for the illumination from the television, an old movie, Doctor Zhivago, I think, with the sound on mute.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Am I. . okay. Huh,” she hiccups without humor. She is motionless, the dancing light from the TV playing shadows across her body, her face.

Something makes me stay where I am, halfway between the front door and the living room where Alexa is sitting, her back to the wall, facing me. The flickering light is messing with my vision, playing with her facial features, masking them, exaggerating them.

“Did you hurt yourself, Alexa?”

She doesn’t answer at first. The smell of food-pizza? pizza-wafts past me. She doesn’t even like piz-

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” she says. “You never did.”

“Tell me.” I raise my hands. “Tell me what’s going on. I couldn’t even understand you on the phone. I thought you said that you were going to kill yourself.”

She makes a noise in her mouth, like a giggle, something fleeting.

“No, Jason, that’s not what I said.”

She raises her hand, holding something, showing it to me in the dark.

“You left your iPhone here,” she says slowly, as if she’s saying something of paramount significance. “There’s a voice mail you should hear from this afternoon.”

She lowers her hand and plays with my phone. A moment later, blaring out from the speakerphone is Joel Lightner’s voice:

“Get ready to be happy, sport. I found him. I found our fucking guy! We were looking for cons recently released from a state penitentiary. This guy came out of a federal facility in January. You got him to confess to a gun charge, like, eight years ago, but you handed him over to the feds and they prosecuted him. We were looking in the wrong damn place! His name is Marshall Rivers. He’s got a history of violence against women and, since he got out, he’s been working at a dry cleaner’s two doors down from Higgins Auto Body! He probably saw James Drinker every day! Anyway, Marshall Rivers, does that ring-”

The recording stops abruptly, mid-sentence. I steady myself with a hand to the wall, squeeze my eyes shut, lower my head, then slowly raise it. Marshall Rivers. Marshall-

Okay.

I remember him. I remember Marshall Rivers.

I remember a bad guy. Pure evil.

I remember a scared witness, a young woman.

I remember what I did to him.

And when he got out, he came back to pay me his respects. He came to my office in disguise, assumed a different name, and watched me sit helplessly while he carved up five women on the north side of the city.

Marshall Rivers is “James Drinker.” Marshall Rivers is the North Side Slasher.

“Finally,” I mumble. Then I look at Alexa, remembering the truncated nature of the voice mail. “Did you pause the message or did it just stop there?” I ask. “Is there more?”

From her dark corner, Alexa stands slowly and inches toward me, crossing the line of the television light, blocking it out, leaving us in darkness, her features changing with each step-

— the face of a ghost, a haunted figure, piercing eyes, a wry grin, a scowl, terror and rage and panic and fear-

“There’s more,” she says to me. “There’s a lot more.”