The Alibi Man (27 page)

Barbaro squeezed his eyes closed, as if that would stop him from seeing the image I had just painted for him. His voice trembled a little when he said, “I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know what he did with her until I heard on Monday.”

“And would it have made any difference to you if you had, Juan?” I asked. I shook my head and held my hands up to prevent an answer. “Don’t answer. Don’t bother.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Barbaro stared off in one direction, thinking I don’t know what. I stared off in another direction, thinking about the vibrant, promising young woman Irina might have been if not for a couple of twisted priorities and a half dozen men who believed the rules of decent society didn’t apply to them.

She had made a couple of stupid, careless choices. It was nothing short of tragic that she had paid for them with her life.

“Did Irina think Bennett would marry her?” I asked.

Barbaro looked at me, confused. “Why would she think that? She knew he’s married.”

“I think she might have been pregnant. She had set her sights on him…. All things considered, I don’t think it would have occurred to her that his wife would be an obstacle.”

She was young, beautiful, vibrant, exciting, sexy. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize those are qualities a wealthy man looks for in a mistress, not a wife. And the two things she was lacking were the only things that counted to a man like Bennett Walker: money and connections.

“I never thought anything like this would happen,” Barbaro said softly.

“Yeah,” I answered in kind. “It’s all fun and games—until somebody loses their life.”

“What happens now?” he asked.

“You talk to Landry.”

I took my cell phone out of my bag but hesitated before hitting Landry’s number.

“You could have called him yourself,” I said. “Why did you want to talk to me first?”

“I’m doing this because of you, Elena,” he said, the big brown eyes earnestly on me. “Because of the things you said to me last night. That’s not the kind of man I want to be.”

What a pretty line, I thought. But I didn’t believe him. And I didn’t trust him.

“I’m flattered,” I said without sincerity, then opened my phone and called Landry.

chapter
48

         
“WHAT THE
hell do you mean we have to call his attorney before we execute the search warrant?” Landry was incredulous at the suggestion. “That’s un-fucking-believable!”

“It’s a courtesy,” Dugan said, the way he might say,
It’s ulcerative colitis
.

“A courtesy?! Since when is courtesy our job?”

Dugan shot a glance at the three-piece suit standing beside his desk. Who the hell wore three-piece suits anymore? Landry thought.

“Assistant State’s Attorney Paulson here can fill you in,” Dugan said.

Landry glared at Paulson, a soft, doughy guy with pretentious little round glasses. “How many search warrants of murder suspects’ homes have you executed?”

“Well, I—”

“I’ll tell you how many,” Landry said. “None. Not one. So I’ll fill you in, Paulson. We don’t send out engraved invitations. We tip our hand, the suspect has time to hide things, get rid of things—
like evidence
.”

“This isn’t just any murder suspect,” Paulson said. “The Walker family is very prominent in Florida, as are Mr. Walker’s in-laws.”

Landry stared at Paulson, stared at Dugan. “Can you believe this guy? Can you believe this bullshit? Bennett Walker looks good for murdering a girl and throwing her body to the alligators. He probably assaulted the other girl to shut her up. I don’t give a rat’s ass who he is, or who his family is—”

“The governor does,” Paulson said.

Landry was so angry he couldn’t speak. He walked out of Dugan’s office to his desk, grabbed two photographs from the stack of paperwork accumulating regarding Irina Markova’s murder, and marched back into Dugan’s office. He held up the 8×10s from the autopsy and advanced on Paulson.

“This is what you’re protecting,” he said. “The man who did this.”

Paulson took a step back, recoiling from the sight of the mutilated face.

“We’re not protecting him,” he argued. “We’re taking precautions. No one is saying to turn the other way because of who Bennett Walker is—”

Landry rolled his eyes. “Right—”

“Look at it this way, James,” Dugan said. “If Edward Estes is standing right there, he can’t accuse you of planting evidence.”

“Why not?” Landry said. “The man is a known liar who sold out his own daughter to get Walker off before.”

“Videotape everything,” Dugan said. “Including Estes himself.”

“So now we have to wait for a camera crew,” Landry complained. “Do you want Steven Spielberg to direct? I can make some calls. Or, hell, maybe the Walkers know him. Maybe we should ask our suspect.”

Dugan scowled at him. “Can it. Do we know where Walker is right now?”

Landry gave an elaborate shrug. “How would I know? You wouldn’t let me put a unit on him.”

“Put a unit on the house,” Dugan said. “Get everything in place. We’ll call Estes at the last second.”

“I’ll go with you to serve the warrant,” Paulson said.

“Serve coffee while you’re at it,” Landry said. “I’ll have mine black with two sugars. Or maybe an espresso. It’s going to be a long night. Maybe the Walkers could call Starbucks and have it catered.”

He left the room before Dugan could order him out and went back to his desk. After all his big talk to Walker at the 7th Chukker about hauling his ass in, throwing him in jail, nobody caring who he was, etc., etc., he felt like an asshole. Of course it mattered who Bennett Walker was and who he knew.

The world played a different ball game with guys like Walker—a rigged game.

Reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, he checked his e-mail to try to get his focus back. Nothing from Latent Prints, nothing from Gitan. One caught his eye. He clicked on it.

The shot-in-the-dark inquiry he had made to Interpol the night before had been answered. He frowned as he read it and read it again.

Weiss came in, looking jazzed. “We have a ‘probable maybe’ match on the shoe print from the scene and from the car. Did you get the search warrant?”

“Yeah,” Landry said, without looking at him. “We have to put a unit on Walker’s house right now. Some asshole state’s attorney is going with us, and we’re waiting on a couple of videographers.”

“One big happy family,” Weiss said. “Who else is coming? Walker?”

“And his attorney.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“A courtesy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office,” Landry said.

“Will there be coffee and cookies afterward?”

Landry didn’t answer him.

“What are you looking at? Porn?”

“Get this,” Landry said, pointing at his computer screen. “Juan Barbaro was questioned in relation to a rape/murder outside London in 2001.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Questioned and released. Some other guy was tried for it in ’03 and walked.”

Weiss raised his eyebrows. “What was his alibi for Saturday night?”

“He was with Walker,” Landry said. “And Walker was with him.”

“Cozy.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s the only one of the bunch who gave us his DNA sample,” Weiss said. “He had to know we wouldn’t match it to the girl. ’Course, that just means he didn’t have unprotected sex with her, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have killed her.”

“But why would Walker deal with the girl’s body if he didn’t kill her?” Landry said. “The gate guard ID’d him in Irina’s car. Nobody is that good a friend, especially not a guy like Walker. He’s all about himself. Fucking sociopath. He expects other people to lie for him. He’s not going to stick his neck out for anybody.”

“We need to get the boots,” Weiss said. “If we can put him in the car and put him at the canal dumping the body, he can stick his head between his legs and kiss his ass good-bye.”

Landry grabbed his cell phone as he rose from his chair. He had a message.

“It’s me.”
Elena.

“Bennett Walker’s alibi just went away. Juan Barbaro is recanting his statement.”

“Every man for himself,” Landry muttered as he scribbled down Barbaro’s phone number. To Weiss he said, “The Alibi Club just lost a member. Barbaro is recanting his statement.”

Weiss chuckled maniacally. “I love it when they turn on each other.”

Landry grabbed his sport coat off the back of his chair and pocketed his phone. “Let’s go get the party started.”

chapter
49

         
“YOU DON’T
believe me,” Barbaro said.

“I don’t trust you,” I corrected him. “It’s a conundrum. If you’ve just told me the truth, then you’ve admitted you’re a liar.”

“I don’t want to believe Bennett killed Irina,” he said. “Why would I tell you his alibi is a lie if it was not the truth?”

“I’ve known you three days, Juan,” I said. “As I keep reminding you, I met you only because a girl was murdered and you’re one of the involved parties. I don’t know anything about you, aside from the obvious. You could have your own agenda. For all I know, you leave a trail of victims everywhere you go. Bennett could be a convenient scapegoat.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“But you believe Bennett killed Irina,” he pointed out.

“I want to believe he did it. I want him to go to prison and sit there for the rest of his life, knowing that he didn’t get away with anything in the end,” I said. “But if I want that so badly, I overlook a truth I don’t want to see, then Irina doesn’t get justice.”

He stared down at me in silence for a moment, as if he were trying to decipher a piece of modern art. Finally, he said, “I see that you are one of the most extraordinary women—people—I have ever met. You make me want to be a better man, Elena.”

“Wow,” I said. “I guess I should think more highly of myself.”

He reached out and touched the right side of my face, and it seemed each of his fingertips contained a slight electrical charge. I wondered if he had any idea how powerful his touch was, how strong that animal magnetism. Even not quite trusting him, I felt the warm rush of attraction.

“He hurt you very badly,” he whispered.

I didn’t tell him that Bennett Walker wasn’t the first man to hurt me, or the last, or that there was scarcely a man in my life who hadn’t—or that the ones who hadn’t yet had the opportunity would be headed off at the pass by me pushing them away. Or that he would be the next to join that club if he came too close.

“What goes around, comes around,” I said. “I’m a firm believer in revenge.”

His fingertips brushed the fine hair at the nape of my neck, and a chill went through me.

“I could make you forget him, Elena,” he said, his voice warm and soft, lowering his head until he was close enough to kiss me.

“I’m sure you could make me forget my own name,” I said, moving just out of his reach. “But not tonight.”

I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked away from him. I could feel his touch on my skin long after that.

chapter
50

         
“SO MUCH
for that last-minute phone call to notify Estes,” Weiss said, walking up to the front door of Bennett Walker’s little weekend house: six thousand square feet of stone and marble that looked like it had been uprooted from Europe and replanted in South Florida, gardens and all.

Edward Estes’s black Town Car pulled around the circular drive, and the attorney got out of the back, his face taut and drawn. Pissed off, Landry thought. Good.

“Hell,” Landry said, “I thought he would have been here an hour ago having the rugs shampooed.”

“This is an outrage,” Estes snapped, his anger directed at the assistant state’s attorney. “The governor will hear about this.”

“He already has, Mr. Estes,” Paulson said. “These are Detectives Landry and Weiss. They’ll be conducting the search.”

Estes ignored the cops and looked down his nose at the papers in Paulson’s hand. “That warrant is invalid on its face. I have a call in to Judge Beekman to—”

“Do you have a key to this place, or do we have to let ourselves in?” Landry asked, unimpressed with Edward Estes and his attitude.

“You’re going to proceed with this?” Estes said to Paulson. “When this warrant is thrown out, anything taken during this search is fruit of the poisonous tree.”

Landry raised his eyebrows and looked at Weiss. “Did you hear that? Mr. Estes seems to think we’re going to find something here to incriminate his client.”

“That isn’t what I said, Detective.”

“Maybe he knows something we don’t,” Weiss suggested.

“Yeah,” Landry said. “Like how many bodies Bennett Walker has gotten rid of over the years that we don’t know about.”

“Make a remark like that in front of the press, Detective,” Estes said, “and you’ll be looking for a new profession.”

Landry shrugged as if it made no difference to him.

“Professional poker,” Weiss suggested. “Money for nothing.”

“I thought maybe I’d become a defense attorney,” Landry said to him. “How hard can that be?”

“You’re a very amusing comedy act, Detectives,” Estes said. “Unfortunately, being a buffoon isn’t a trait that will impress a jury.”

“I don’t know,” Weiss said. “Seems to work for most of you guys.”

Paulson cleared his throat. “Mr. Estes, our office notified you as a courtesy. As you can read in the warrant, we have sufficient grounds for the search. Why don’t we get on with it, so it can be completed with the minimum amount of fuss?”

“I would prefer we wait for my client,” Estes said.

“Where is he?” Weiss asked. “Out burying the murder weapon?”

Estes turned to him. “Mr. Walker is an innocent man. He is to be presumed innocent. If you have an obvious bias, Detective—”

“Not at all, Mr. Estes,” Landry said. “We only go where the evidence leads us.”

“What evidence?” Estes said. “You’re here on a fishing expedition.”

“We can put the victim here the night she died,” Landry said. “We have a witness who puts your client in the victim’s car, leaving the premises, less than twenty-four hours later. We can connect the car to the site where the young woman’s body was found, and I’m betting we’ll be able to put your client’s foot in the boot that left a print both in the car and at the dump site.”

“My client has a very solid alibi for the night Miss Markova went missing.”

“Mr. Barbaro has recanted his earlier statement,” Landry said.

He had to imagine it wasn’t very often anyone got to surprise Edward Estes, but he had just managed to do it. With information Elena had given him. She would have been pleased.

“That’s news to you, isn’t it, Mr. Estes?”

Estes didn’t respond. He pulled his cell phone from the inside breast pocket of his tailored suit and stepped aside without a word.

Landry smiled like a shark. “Tell your client Elena sends her regards.”