The Alibi Man (31 page)

chapter
62

         
LANDRY PARKED
on the road fifty yards from the driveway of Sean Avadon’s farm.

The main house was dark.

There was one light visible in Elena’s cottage. Her car was parked out front. The front door was ajar.

Drawing his weapon, he went around the side of the house.

The French doors stood open.

Landry slipped inside. The only light was in the living room. Nothing was on—no television, no ever-playing jazz on the sound system.

He worked his way through the cottage, his anxiety growing. The guest suite was empty. Elena’s suite was empty.

His cell phone rang.

“Landry.”

“Detective?”

The accent was Russian. The voice was heavy and male.

“I call from Magda’s.”

“Yeah?”

The bartender, Landry thought. The big bald guy with the blue skull tats.

“You want Kulak?”

He almost said no. He almost said he didn’t care anymore about Kulak, but then he didn’t.

“That guy on the news,” the bartender said. “The one they say maybe killed Irina.”

“Bennett Walker?”

“Kulak has him. At the salvage yard.”

“Why tell me?” Landry asked.

“I tell you for Svetlana,” he said. “Kulak has that man, and a woman.”

“A woman?” Landry said, a chill washing over him. Alexi Kulak had Elena.

“You come and get Kulak,” the bartender said. “You tell him Svetlana sent you.”

chapter
63

         
“HE’S NOT
my lover,” I said with as much bravado as I could scrape together. If I could manage to stand up to him, I might at least buy a little time and in that time find a way to take him or get away from him.

Big talk from a woman in a cage.

“What would I want with him?” I said, as Kulak came closer. “He’s nothing to me. He’s a piece of shit on the sidewalk.”

“I saw you on television,” he said. “You were lovers. Your father is his attorney.”

“I don’t have a father,” I said.

Something ugly flashed in his eyes. “Have you not learned, Ms. Estes, that I do not like to be lied to?”

“Well, I’m not exactly thrilled to be called a liar, Mr. Kulak. So I guess we’re even.”

He didn’t know what to make of me.

“Edward Estes,” I said, “stopped being my father the day he wanted me to lie under oath and give Bennett Walker an alibi, knowing he was a rapist.”

Kulak stood just outside the locker, very close, studying me like I was a specimen in a museum.

“You are very bold for a woman in your position.”

“I might as well be,” I said. “You’ll do whatever you want to do. I’ll at least keep my pride.”

He turned and looked at Bennett lying on the floor, crying.

“You would not tell me,” he said. “You knew it was him, but you would not tell me. You think I am a fool. I came to you for the truth and you told me you knew nothing.”

“Because I didn’t. You wanted the truth. I hadn’t found it yet. Believe me, he’s the last person on earth I want to protect. He’s a rapist at best and a murderer at worst. Why would I risk my life for him?”

Bennett could hear me. He looked up at me, pleading. “For God’s sake, Elena!”

“Shut up!” I shouted at him. “You’re exactly that and you know it.”

Kulak’s interest went from me to Bennett and back again.

“All right, Ms. Estes,” he said, unlocking the door to my cage. “You believe he is a rapist and a murderer. Show me.”

He opened the door and pulled me out of the locker by my injured arm. Black spiderwebs shot across my vision, and my legs swayed beneath me.

Kulak pulled me over to where Bennett lay bleeding. His skin was pasty white and gleaming with sweat. He was going into shock.

Once again Kulak kicked him in the ribs. “Turn over! On your back!”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” Bennett whimpered. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes as he turned to lie on his back.

Kulak put the bolt cutters in my hands, then pulled a .38 from a belt holster and put it against my head.

“You want justice, Ms. Estes?” he said. “You want revenge? I want revenge. For Irina. Give him the justice a rapist deserves. Castrate him.”

chapter
64

         
THE BOLT CUTTER
was heavy. The sharp steel pinchers hovered over Bennett Walker’s genitals. The cold steel of the gun barrel rested against my temple.

“Is there a problem, Ms. Estes?” Kulak whispered.

“No,” I said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment.”

Bennett cried, mumbling my name, saying “please” over and over.

“I’m just…a little dizzy,” I said, swaying against Kulak.

“Do it,” he said.

I pretended to try to open the bolt cutter without success.

“I feel really weak,” I said.

“Do it!” he shouted. “Do it!!”

Abruptly, I dropped to my knees and elbowed Kulak in the groin.

As he doubled over, I drove the handles of the bolt cutter upward with as much strength as the adrenaline rush gave me. One handle hit him in the face, shattering a cheekbone. The other caught him under the jaw. His head jerked back, and his gun hand swung upward.

The gun went off, the bullet hitting something metal across the room with a loud
Ping!

He swung the weapon downward toward me.

I hit him in the side of the leg with the bolt cutter, and he dropped to his knees, firing again.

I tried to scramble backward, away from him, as he tried once more to take aim at me.

Jabbing at him with the bolt cutter, I managed to hit his wrist.

The gun fired again.

I ducked to the right.

Kulak was screaming now, in a blind rage, his eyes rolling in his head.

“Kulak! Freeze!”

“Sheriff’s office!”

“Freeze!”

“Drop it!”

I heard the shouts and the shots that followed instantly.

Blood and tissue pelted me.

Alexi Kulak’s body jerked and twisted above me.

He looked surprised. Shocked.

And then the light in his eyes went out, and his rage went flat, and his body dropped, falling across Bennett Walker’s legs.

I dragged myself to the side on one arm, trembling violently, my heart pounding wildly. My ears were ringing. I lay flat on the cold concrete. Not six feet away Bennett Walker stared at me. His eyes were wide open, unblinking.

One of the shots from Kulak’s gun had struck him in the forehead.

He was dead.

chapter
65

         
LANDRY RAN
across the garage, shouting Elena’s name at the top of his lungs, knowing she probably couldn’t hear him. The gunshots were still ringing in his own ears. He could hardly hear himself think.

“Elena! Elena!”

She didn’t move, staring at Bennett Walker’s blank, lifeless stare.

“Elena!”

He was there then, on his knees, bent over her, wiping blood splatter and tissue from her face, hoping to God none of it was hers. His hands were shaking.

“Are you hit?” he shouted, staring into her face. “Are you hit?”

She blinked, seeing him for the first time.

“H-he’s d-dead,” she said.

Landry nodded. Gently he pulled her into his arms and held her, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. It seemed they stayed there for a long time, even as deputies and crime-scene people moved around them.

His heart galloped for miles as the adrenaline slowly ebbed. He couldn’t remember ever having been so scared as he had been seeing Alexi Kulak pointing a gun at this woman he now held.

What an idiot he had to be, falling in love with a woman who put herself into situations like this one over and over again. But there it was, and all he could do about it was hold her and stroke her hair, and whisper words to her that he was sure she couldn’t hear.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter what the words were. It only mattered that he said them.

chapter
66

         
FOR ONCE
an ER doc and I agreed: she did not want to admit me, and I did not want to be admitted.

“She’s been shot, for Christ’s sake,” Landry growled.

The doctor, who might have been a zygote when I was her age, rolled an eye at him. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“Yeah?” Landry said. “How many times have you been shot, sweetheart? This isn’t a fucking paper cut.”

I got off the gurney, my arm in a sling, and started for the door.

“Elena—”

“I want to go home,” I said simply, and walked out into the hall.

“I’m going with you,” he said.

I didn’t argue. Nor did I point out to him that I couldn’t get home without him. I hadn’t gone to Alexi Kulak. Alexi Kulak had come to me. I didn’t want Landry asking me why.

“Lisbeth is there and—”

“No, she isn’t,” he said.

I stopped and faced him. “What?”

“She’s not there. There was no one in the house when I stopped by.”

Half a dozen bad scenarios streaked through my head like so many comets, the worst of them being that Kulak had gotten rid of her while he was lying in wait for me.

“We have to find her,” I said.

“We’ll find her.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. We have to find her. She knows what happened.”

Landry squinted at me. “What do you mean, she knows what happened? We know what happened. Walker killed Irina because she was pregnant. She was going to ruin his life. He killed her and dumped her body.”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? You’ve been selling Bennett Walker as a killer from day one.”

“I don’t think he did it, James,” I admitted. “I watched Alexi Kulak torture him. The only thing Kulak wanted to know was why. Why did he kill her? And all Bennett could say was that he didn’t know, that he couldn’t remember doing it.”

“So? Who would cop to anything that would piss off Alexi Kulak?”

“But
that
pissed off Alexi Kulak,” I said. “If Bennett had had an answer, he would have given it up. I think he believed he did it. I think he woke up Sunday morning, found a dead girl in his pool, and convinced himself he must have done it.

“He couldn’t give Kulak the answer, because he didn’t have one.”

“And what makes you think Lisbeth does?”

A hunch, I thought, a feeling. A feeling that had been slowly taking root in the back of my mind as small scraps of information bonded together.

“When Barbaro recanted his statement,” I said, “I asked him if he had seen anyone who could corroborate his statement. He said he’d seen Lisbeth. As he got back to his car at Players, she was walking across the parking lot. But Lisbeth told me she went home long before that.”

“So Barbaro’s lying,” Landry said.

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would he lie about something so stupid? Why not just say no one saw him? It’s impossible to disprove a negative.”

“And why would Lisbeth lie about being there,” Landry said, as the picture started becoming clearer to him, “unless she had something to hide.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Yesterday I showed a photograph of Irina and Lisbeth to a mentally disturbed woman who hangs around Players and the Polo Club. I asked if she had ever seen Irina. She looked at both girls and said that
they
were very naughty. I think she meant ‘they’ as in ‘together.’”

“You think Irina and Lisbeth were involved?” Landry asked.

“I think so. I think Lisbeth thought so, anyway.”

“But why would Lisbeth kill Irina?” Landry asked.

I thought about it for a moment, replaying all the broken little pieces of memories. The photographs of Lisbeth and Irina together, Lisbeth so happy and smiling—and the photos of Lisbeth standing a little apart and uncomfortable in the snapshots of herself with men. Too many pictures of Irina on her fridge, I had thought.

I thought about how hard Lisbeth had argued with Irina about the after-party. I thought about the abject grief and the abject guilt.

“Irina was pregnant,” I said. “She wanted a rich American husband, not a naive lesbian farm girl from East Backwater, Michigan.”

“Rejection,” Landry said.

A deep sense of sadness came over me as I thought about it. As motives for murder went, it was one of the oldest stories in the book. Unrequited love. It never ceased to amaze me that an emotion that was supposed to be so good and bring such joy so often turns so destructive.

And no matter how often life tries to teach us that lesson, we keep going back for more.