David Ellis - The Last Alibi

I couldn’t sleep, the remnants of the conversation with James Drinker in my head, texting Lightner at all hours to confirm with his surveillance team that Drinker was still in his apartment. This guy has officially invaded my brain. I don’t have a lot of options or recourse, but I have to figure out something. The problem is that my brain isn’t working at one hundred percent speed lately. The world is moving in slow motion these days, my legs heavy, white noise drowning out the cries around me.

I stop for Starbucks and make it into the office just past nine. Not bad for me, on a non-court day like this one.

“So how was your big night alone?” Alexa asks me when she calls me at the office, ten minutes after I hit my chair. “Did you go to strip clubs and eat steak burritos?”

That sounds a lot more fun than what I did. I stayed home by myself, reading some case law for a motion to suppress I’m filing next week, then giving up and watching half of season two of Arrested Development on DVD, popping Altoids every two hours along the way.

“Is that what you think guys do when women aren’t around?” I ask.

“Yes, it is. What do they really do?”

“Masturbate, eat pizza, and watch sports.”

“All at the same time?”

“Sometimes,” I say. “God didn’t give us two hands for nothing.”

“Did you masturbate last night?”

“That’s a very personal question, Ms. Himmel.”

“Did you?”

“Are you kidding me? After a week with you, I’m sore as hell, woman. I had an ice pack down my pants all night.”

She laughs hard at that comment, but I’m not kidding about the soreness. I’ve never met someone with this much energy in bed. This old-fashioned girl is going to break me in half.

“By the way, since we’re being personal,” I say, “I’m out of protection.”

“Condoms?” There is tapping in the background. Putting a transcript into final form, I assume. I don’t really understand what court reporters do. I should probably ask her.

“Yeah. I’m out. Remind me to buy some more.”

“I told you, I’m covered,” she says. “I have birth control.”

“You sure?”

“Either that or I’m planning on trapping you into marriage by getting pregnant.”

I give a good and awkward laugh, heh-heh-heh .

“Take a breath, for God’s sake,” she says. “I’m covered. You’re not going to get me pregnant. But if it will make you feel better, by all means go buy some-oh-oh, no-oh, Jason-”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, no.”

“What?”

And then, somehow, I realize it before she says it. She isn’t working on a transcript. She’s tapping her computer. She’s on the Internet.

“Don’t tell me,” I say, waking up my laptop and heading to the Herald website.

“Oh, Jason.”

And there it is, the garish headline:

NORTH SIDE SLASHER CLAIMS FIFTH VICTIM

A fifth woman, Samantha Drury, age twenty-five, was stabbed in her car as she was arriving home on the city’s northwest side last night. Ambushed inside her garage, stabbed multiple times.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” Alexa says.

The bitter venom rushes to my throat. I grab my garbage can just in time as I retch liquids, my stomach in revolt. I take a couple of panting breaths and wait for my pulse to settle. This guy is just having fun now. Toying with me. Killing women as part of a game with me.

“What. . what are you going to do?” Alexa asks.

Dim the lights, mute the sound: A calm sweeps over me, sudden and vivid, like I’d lost my breath but recovered it. Calm, not because I’m feeling peaceful or serene, but because finally I’m making a decision that, in the back of my mind, I always knew I might have to make.

I’m done with you, I told James on the phone two nights ago. I wasn’t really sure what that comment meant; it was just my turn for a lob in the verbal tennis match, an attempt to regain some momentum in the conversation.

But now I’m ready to give those words some meaning. I’m done with you, James Drinker.

“I’m going to call the police,” I tell Alexa. “I’m going to tell them everything. Even if it gets me disbarred.”

“Oh, Jason, really?”

No, as a matter of fact, not really, but that’s what I need to tell her, that’s what she needs to think. She can’t be involved in what I’m going to do.

It’s not that I would mind losing my law license over this. It would be well worth it. The reason I’m not going back to the cops is that it wouldn’t work. There’s nothing I can tell them that I haven’t already told them. James Drinker probably has no more of a connection to Samantha Drury than he has to President Obama. And somehow I know that he has covered his tracks. I just know it.

No, the police aren’t an option.

“I’ll call you later,” I say. I punch out the call and dial up another one.

Joel Lightner answers his cell on the second ring.

“Jason-I was just about to call you. We just saw the news. I don’t know what happened. Our people were on him. They swear he never left the apartment building after he got home from work. They swear it.”

“He snuck out somehow, Joel. He probably spotted the tail. He probably slipped out a fire escape or something.”

“My people are better than that.”

“Well, his better is better than their better , I guess.”

“Are we sure Drinker was the one who did it last night? I mean, maybe he isn’t our offender.”

I realize I’ve been holding my breath, my head getting dizzy. “It was him,” I say. “There’s no doubt.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Jason. We fucked up. It won’t happen again, I can prom-”

“Joel, I think we’re done with the surveillance. I want your guys to stand down.”

“Stand down?”

“No more surveillance on James Drinker. Effective immediately.”

“We won’t lose him again, Jason.”

“No. I want it over. As of right now. Stop the surveillance.”

“Why?”

“Tactical reasons,” I say. “He’s smart enough to know when we’re tailing him. He’ll be smart enough to know when we’re not. Maybe he’ll drop his guard and make a mistake.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s what I want,” I insist. “I’m the client, you’re my investigator. Do what I ask.”

Joel doesn’t speak. He has a brain cell or two himself, and he knows me too well. He knows I’m not telling him to remove the surveillance detail for any tactical reason.

“My client sometimes has stupid ideas,” Joel says. “Very stupid ones. What are you planning to do, Counselor? And why don’t you want my people watching when you do it?”

“Just do it,” I say. I hang up before he can say anything else.

Because there’s nothing left to say. I can’t involve Joel any more than I can involve Alexa. I have to do this myself and let the chips fall where they may.

And I can tell myself that I tried. I tried to follow my lawyer’s oath, giving my client the benefit of the doubt, hoping that if Drinker was the offender, the police would figure it out without his own attorney selling him out. When they didn’t, I violated my oath and gave them a very large nudge, pointing them directly to Drinker, and still they’ve turned away from him. I don’t have any other choice, as I see it.

For a reason all his own, James Drinker is intent on killing women in this city, and the only person who can stop him is me.

Jason

Saturday, June 29

The problem with summer in the Midwest is that it stays light outside for so long. Just my luck, we’re only slightly over a week removed from the solstice, so today is the ninth-longest day of sunlight in the entire damn year.