Tami Hoag - The Alibi Man

Landry shushed Weiss and hit redial on his phone.

The sound was faint. Muffled. But it was there. Landry didn’t know one piece of music from the next, but Elena would later tell him the song was by Beethoven-Fur Elise.

Walker had sandwiched the phone between his mattress and box spring near the head of the bed, handy for a bedtime lullaby.

Edward Estes was still ragging on Paulson when Landry walked out the front door again.

“What kind of evidence do you think would be convincing, Mr. Estes?” Weiss asked. “To prove Irina Markova was here the night she was murdered?”

Estes didn’t even glance at the detectives. His eyes went straight to the cell phone covered in pink crystals Landry held in his gloved hand.

“How about a voice from beyond the grave?” Landry suggested, hitting the button to play the phone’s greeting.

“This is Irina. Please leave message…”

I had already started walking back to my car by the time Landry called to ask for Irina’s phone number. What a Perry Mason moment that would be, I thought, showing the victim’s found cell phone to her killer’s attorney. Aside from the obvious incriminatory value of the phone being at the house, there would very likely be photographs from the evening’s festivities stored in the phone’s memory.

I hoped Landry had that moment of victory right in front of my father.

Bang, bang, Daddy. There goes another nail in Bennett’s coffin.

He would probably mourn the loss of Bennett going to prison more than he had ever mourned the loss of me walking out on the family. And why not? Bennett was the son he should have been able to sire for himself: handsome, intelligent, ruthless, without conscience. A chip off the old block.

That was what my marriage to Bennett would have meant to my father: that he gained Bennett as a son-in-law. My happiness was irrelevant to him. I had been a means to an end. He should have thanked me for leaving. With me out of the picture, he had Bennett all to himself.

Now he would see Bennett on visiting days in the state penitentiary. Provided my father didn’t get him off. There was no doubt that he would call into question every scrap of state’s evidence. He would cast a shadow of doubt over every aspect of the investigation. I fully expected him to try to throw me under the bus, imply I had somehow interfered with the investigation.

Even as the thought occurred to me, a chill went down my back. Landry had called me for Irina’s number. If he had done that in front of my father, I could already hear the spin on the woman-scorned excuse. He would have me planting Irina’s phone in Bennett’s house, then telling Landry where to find it.

Before it was all over, he would have the jury believing I had killed Irina for the sole purpose of setting Bennett up, or out of a jealous rage that Bennett was with my groom or that my groom was with Bennett. He had already impugned my mental stability, why not take a crack at my sexuality as well?

I could see the tall, gangly kid still working the valet stand on his own as I retrieved my car from the lower parking lot. His friend Jeff the Weasel was probably off selling his story to the National Enquirer: I parked for a killer.

There was no sign of Barbaro’s car. Was he even at that moment sitting in an interview room in Robbery/Homicide, laying out his latest truth of what had happened the night Irina died?

“I saw Beth-Lisbeth… ”he’d said.

Beth.

I wondered.

To I. From B…?

A little sterling silver heart on a charm bracelet. Something sweet, innocent, touching.

It was none of my business. I just felt bad for Lisbeth, that was all. She’d lost her best friend. She felt alone and afraid. I had never been as innocent as I suspected Lisbeth was before she came to South Florida, but I knew what it was to feel abandoned.

My God, Elena, are you in danger of growing a heart?

I certainly hoped not. No good could come of it.

Sean’s house was dark. He’d gone off to one of the Disease du Jour charity balls that dominated the season. I went into the cottage wondering what to do with myself for the rest of the night.

The question was answered for me as I turned on the lights and found Alexi Kulak standing there waiting for me, gun in hand.

“Shouldn’t we be past this by now?” I asked.

Kulak was unamused. He came toward me, pointing the gun in my face, backing me up, as I had backed him up the night before.

The cold kiss of steel touched my forehead as I backed into the wall. He stepped so close in I could feel the heat of his body, smell his sweat. His eyes were wide and glassy. The pupils pinpoints of black.

“Now you find out,” he said in a low voice, “what happens to women who betray me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, genuinely afraid because I really didn’t know what he was talking about. That was always a much stronger line when I was lying.

Kulak looked as crazy as he had the first night he came to me. The significant difference was that his insanity that night had been driven by grief, and this rage was being given extra fuel by drugs. Raw emotion and chemical reaction-a volatile mix, the kind of combination that got people killed every day of the week. Especially when the vessel containing that mix was holding a gun.

“You lying whore,” he said, pushing the barrel of the gun into the skin just below my left cheekbone. “I saw you. I saw you on television.”

“What are you talking about? On television?”

“You and your lover. He killed my Irina. You would protect him. You would never tell me.”

I swallowed hard and tried not to shake as I looked him in the eyes. “Alexi. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have to believe me.”

“I don’t have to do nothing,” he said. “I do what I want. I’m thinking I want to kill you.”

“How can I help you if you kill me?”

“You are of no use to me, you lying cunt.” He grabbed me by the neck and marched me across the room, toward the French doors onto the back patio. As we passed the hall to the guest suite, I wondered what he had done to Lisbeth. She was of no use to him either. Had he killed her? Or was she in bed, still blissfully unconscious, unaware of the danger just beyond her door? Kulak had begun to mutter in Russian. He shoved me out the door. I could see his car parked at the far end of the barn, out of sight from the driveway.

If he got me in the car, I was as good as dead. I pretended to stumble, throwing Kulak off balance, then came up with an elbow, hitting him in the Adam’s apple. He tumbled backward, choking, grabbing at his throat with one hand. I bolted sideways, started to run.

I felt the sting almost before I heard the shot. The bullet cut through the flesh of my left upper arm like a hot, sharp knife. I grabbed my arm just as Kulak barreled into me from behind, knocking me flat on the flagstones, my right arm caught beneath me and no way to break my fall. My breath burst out of my lungs, and stars swam before my eyes. Alexi Kulak stood, grabbed me by the scarf I had tied around my throat to hide the marks he’d left from choking me, and hauled me to my feet.

He had to half-drag me to his car. Not because I was fighting him, but because I couldn’t. Stunned, semiconscious, and bleeding, was no match for him. When we reached the Mercedes, he popped the trunk and shoved me inside. I had only a second to register the fact that there was already a body in it. Bennett Walker.

Edward Estes declined to speculate as to the whereabouts of his client.

“You might want to give him a call,” Landry said in a voice filled with magnanimous sarcasm. “Give him the heads-up. As a courtesy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.”