The Alibi Man Read Free Page B

little, too late, unfortunately.
    Uniformed deputies were ordered to drag the dead gator up onto the bank. The coroner’s people oversaw the extrication of human tissue from between the reptile’s jaws.
    I smoked another cigarette. My hands were still shaking.
    I leaned back against the side of my car, too wired to sit.
    In the old days, when I was “on the job,” as the cops say, nothing got to me. I was numb. Ice water in my veins. There was no case I wouldn’t tackle. I was a woman on a mission: to dole out justice—or at least to serve up the bad guys to the DA’s office hog-tied on a platter. I went from case to case to case, like an addict constantly looking for the next fix.
    The last murder victim I’d had on the job was someone I knew, someone I had worked with and liked. His murder had been my fault. I’d made a poor decision going into a meth lab in rural Loxahatchee. Jumped the gun, so to speak. One of the dealers, a wild-eyed, mulleted cracker named Billy Golam, had pointed a .357 directly in my face—then turned abruptly and fired.
    I watched in horror as the bullet hit Deputy Hector Ramirez in the face and blew out the back of his head, blood and brain matter spraying the walls, the ceiling, splattering my lieutenant, who was standing behind him.
    Three years had passed, and I still watched that scene play out in my nightmares. The face of Hector Ramirez floated through my memory every night.
    I suspected that tonight Irina’s face would supersede that of the man who had died because of me. It would be Irina’s pale blue face that stared up at me through the fog of sleep, her ravaged eyes and lips. The idea made me feel ill and weak all over again.
    How well had I known her, Landry had asked.
    I had known her for more than a year, and I hadn’t known her at all. Our lives may have revolved around the same center but otherwise never touched. I felt regret for that. The remorse of the guilty conscience—something all of us feel when we’ve lost someone from our lives we had never taken the time to really know. We always believe there will be time later, after this, after that…. But there is no time after death.
    On the other side of the canal, Landry and the rest of them were engrossed in their task of evaluating the scene and collecting evidence. They would be at it for a long time. They expected—wanted—nothing from me aside from my statement, which Landry would take later.
    Irina was dead. There was nothing I could do to change that. I was of no use to her standing there watching as people stepped around her remains like a sack of trash torn open by scavenging animals.
    I hadn’t made the effort to get to know her in life. Before this was over, I would know her well. That was what I could do for Irina. I knew even then that the journey was going to take me places I didn’t want to go. If I had known exactly where, I might have made a different decision that day…but probably not.
    As if he had sensed the direction my mind was turning, Landry looked over at me, frowning. I got in my car, turned it around, and drove home.

    Irina and I had come to Sean’s farm at the same time, for the same job. Happenstance, if you believe in that. Fate, if you believe something more. I didn’t believe in anything at the time.
    I had answered an ad in
Sidelines,
a locally based magazine for people in the horse industry.
Groom Wanted.
The person looking had turned out to be Sean Avadon.
    Sean and I had known each other back in the days when I was a daughter, had parents, lived on the Island (Palm Beach proper). I was filled with rebellion and teen angst, and horses were my escape from the rest of my spoiled, privileged, empty life. Sean, older and wilder, had grown up a couple of mansions down the street. We had been friends, an odd couple, unrelated siblings. Sean was my sense of humor—and fashion, he claimed. What he got out of the deal, I never had figured out.
    I had been in a very dark place when