David Ellis - The Last Alibi

Jason

Saturday, June 15

I wake with a start from a dream-dirt in my mouth, insects on my skin, my hands on the railing, trying to hold on but the gravitational pull is too strong-that quickly vaporizes into a mash of nonsense. I turn to Alexa, who has part of the bedspread pulled up over her. I am shivery, shaky, uneasy. I manage to make out the time on my watch: It’s past two in the morning.

I climb out of bed gingerly and find my pants. I dig into the pockets, but I don’t find them. That’s where they were, I’m sure of it, but they’re not there anymore. I try every pocket, patting them down, turning them inside out, but they aren’t there .

I gently pat the nightstand by the bed, almost knocking over the alarm clock, touching a sticky note, then something circular that is probably makeup. No. Not here.

I get down on my hands and knees on the hardwood floor and feel around. I check everywhere, picking up lint along the way, particles of sand from our beach walk, various other minuscule items you find on a floor.

I tiptoe outside the bedroom, close the door, and flip the switch in the nearby kitchen, squinting in the urine-colored light, retracing my steps from the front door. Nothing.

My head is echoing a gong now, my limbs twitching. I ease back into the bedroom and drop to my hands and knees again, repeating the same steps and expecting different results. I reach far under the bed, and my hand finds something small, granular-a mint from the Jurassic era-but otherwise nothing. “Shit,” I say, my hands moving wildly along the floor. “Shit, shit, shit .”

I hear a soft moan from the bed. Alexa rolls back over toward me and says, in a sleepy mumble, “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I say quietly as I pull one leg through my pants. “But I need to get going. Somewhere I need to be tomorrow morning. I totally forgot.”

Alexa pushes herself up slowly. In the darkness, as far as my eyes have adjusted to it, she looks like she’s still climbing the ladder to wakefulness, peering at me with sleepy eyes. “You’re. . leaving?”

“I have to. I’m sorry.”

She rubs her face. “Is it your knee?”

“No, nothing like that.” I sit on the bed next to her. “Let’s do something tomorrow. Okay?”

She pauses. I don’t know if she’s considering it or if she’s still half asleep.

“Call me tomorrow,” she says.

I press my lips to her forehead. “See you tomorrow,” I say. I throw on my clothes and head for the door. I go to the corner and try to hail a cab on Wadsworth, but there’s nothing here this time of night-I’m in a suburb, not the city-so I walk down a few more blocks to what passes for a downtown, a couple of banks and restaurants and a children’s store, and give it another few minutes. Finally, I call information on my phone, and after a couple of tries locate a company that will send a cab my way. I stand on the sidewalk, hopping on the balls of my feet, my thoughts careening wildly to dark subjects. A homeless man has taken up residence within the cocoon of a travel agency doorstep, a dingy SpongeBob SquarePants blanket over him, a skanky black beard obscuring his face. I can’t tell if he’s asleep or watching me, motionless.

A police squad car rolls down the street. I consider skulking into shadows, but they’ve already seen me. I’m committing no crime, but I can’t shake a feeling of something like guilt-but not guilt, not exactly, just a sense that I am wrong, that I am. . not right. “Waiting for a cab,” I tell them when they slow the patrol car and roll down the window before moving on, after a curt appraisal.

Guilty, but not guilty. Wrong, not right.

I am wrong. I am not right. I am falling.

The cab arrives. I show the driver a hundred-dollar bill and tell him it’s his if we get home in twenty minutes. If there’s no traffic, the highway makes that a possibility. My knees bob up and down inside the sticky taxi, the cheap torn seating and the inane interviews from some entertainment show on the small video screen.

James Drinker is gutting women like fish and hiding behind me, the guy who isn’t supposed to say anything, isn’t allowed to say anything, would be punished for saying anything at all to anybody at all. I put my head between my knees and grit my teeth. My tongue is like a piece of damp fur, my breath putrid, my forehead slimy with sweat.

I throw the driver the money and push myself out of the cab. I run up to my door, get in, give the door a push before I bound up the stairs two at a time, all the way to the third story, and rush to the bathroom. I open the cabinet under the sink and find the box for the allergy medicine, a white box with an orange stripe.

I pull out the silver-foiled sheet and pop one of the pills out, chew it up, and fall to my haunches. I wipe sweat from my eyes and fall back against the wall, finally finding a gentle, warm place on my bathroom floor.

Relax, I tell myself. Everything’s fine. Just because Drinker is a weirdo doesn’t mean he’s a killer. You don’t have to do anything, and you can’t, anyway. And this other thing you’re dealing with-it’s going to be fine. You need to do something, but you will, you always have; you overcame Talia’s and Emily’s deaths, you overcame poverty and a fucked-up childhood, you can do anything you want, anything at all.

It’ll be fine, I promise myself as warmth spreads through me. It’s all going to be fine.

TRIAL, DAY 1

Monday, December 9

Shauna

Roger Ogren completes his opening statement at two-thirty. His presentation is what Jason predicted it would be: efficient, to the point, not flashy or hyperbolic. He is, according to Jason, a lifer at the office, a guy who interned during law school, started in traffic court when he got his law degree, and has spent nearly a quarter-century handling major felonies. I’ve struggled to guess what the upshot will be on drawing a veteran prosecutor. Has he fallen into bad habits that I can manipulate? Will he be wise to any tactical maneuvers we dream up? The best I can get from Jason, other than thoroughly unhelpful comments like “Roger is Roger,” is that Ogren puts on a straightforward case free of theatrics and imagination but may have the occasional blind spot for a creative defense attorney. (Now if I only knew a creative defense attorney-at least one who isn’t my client.)

Age has robbed Ogren of most of his hair and left it heavily grayed; cancer took away a good thirty pounds. Tall and thin and weathered, experienced and street-smart, careful and humorless-this is my adversary. I try to make it a habit to get along with opposing counsel, but then again, nearly every case I’ve ever tried was in the civil courts, where the dispute is over money, and where few of the attorneys have any illusions about their clients and sometimes are willing to share as much in off-the-record, colorful commentary. Prosecutors, however, are different. Their client is the state, the people, and many of them bring a holier-than-thou approach to their jobs. Defendants are the bad guys, criminals who must be incarcerated, and thus their attorneys, who search for dust to kick up or technicalities on which to seize, are likewise unsavory.

Judge Judith Bialek-“Judge Judy” behind her back-is a former prosecutor and a trial court judge going on eighteen years now. The bad news is she’s inclined toward the prosecution, the good news that Jason always did well in her courtroom when he was prosecuting felonies. I’ve noted a crimp in her expression from time to time when she’s looked over at Jason sitting in a chair that she probably never expected him to occupy.