The Alibi Man

Chapter 25

Weiss drove up and parked at the curb on the wrong side of the drive as Elena walked away, headed toward her car.

“There goes trouble,” he said, getting out of the car.

“Shut up,” Landry said, and turned for the building.

He wanted a drink and a cigarette and to be able to shut his emotions off, like a sociopath. Life had to be a lot simpler with emotions stripped away, no energy wasted on overreaction, anger, regret. The way things were, he was going to drive himself to an early grave.

“They’re not going to cooperate,” Weiss said. “These are the kind of guys who have three-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorneys standing around in Brooks Brothers suits just on account of they look good.”

“So they can call in the dogs,” Landry snapped. “So what?”

“I’m just saying.”

“I don’t expect them to cooperate. I want to ratchet up a little tension. Refusing to give the DNA sample only makes them look guilty.”

“Of getting a group rate on blowjobs,” Weiss said. “We’re a long ways from proving a homicide.”

“They call themselves the Alibi Club,” Landry said.

“The Alibi Club? Where’d you hear that?”

“The Perkins girl,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. “She said things get pretty out of hand at their parties.”

“Was she there Saturday night? I thought she left.”

“She tried to talk the Markova girl out of staying.”

Weiss stopped and looked at him. “When did you get her to tell you all this? We could hardly get her to tell us her name this morning.”

“Maybe she just didn’t like you, Weiss,” Landry offered.

“Up yours, Landry.”

“Let’s go do this,” Landry said, and went into the 7th Chukker bar.

It was a far cry from Magda’s. Beautiful antique bar, plasma-screen TV showing a polo match, a waitress who didn’t look like she had to shave twice a day.

He went straight to the table where Brody, Walker, and Barbaro sat. Weiss took Sebastian Foster’s table.

Landry looked hard at Barbaro. It should be illegal for a guy to be that good-looking. The mental image of the Spaniard touching Elena sent a rush of angry heat through him.

“Sorry for the misunderstanding, Mr. Barbaro,” he said without much sincerity. “I’ve got a hot button when it comes to men abusing women. This murder has me on edge.”

“Understandable,” Barbaro said. He didn’t sound very sincere either. “You are a friend of Miss Estes?”

“I wouldn’t say that, no. She found Irina Markova’s body.”

“She used to be a detective,” Jim Brody said. “The two of you must go back.”

“No,” Landry said. “We don’t. I’m sure Mr. Walker here knows more about Ms. Estes than I do.”

Bennett Walker frowned, sulky. Spoiled rich kid at forty-something. If they had been little kids, Landry would have knocked him on his ass on the playground. He wondered how Elena had ever looked at this guy and thought it might be a good idea to marry him. But then, he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of Elena marrying anyone. She was so wary, so cynical.

Bennett Walker had to be a big part of the reason why.

“What brings you here, Detective?” Brody asked. He pushed himself up out of his chair, the genial host, half a cigar stuck in one corner of his mouth.

“We don’t pass for members?” Landry said. He looked over at Weiss; Weiss shrugged.

“No offense,” Brody said, “but if either of you boys has seven figures or more in your bank account, you must have one hell of a second job.”

“We’re trying to eliminate people from our list of possible suspects,” Weiss said.

“You can check us all off the list,” Brody said. “I thought we covered that this morning.”

“Not that we don’t believe you,” Landry said, “but this is the age of forensics. We’re collecting DNA samples from men Irina Markova spent time with the night she disappeared. It’s just a little swab inside the cheek. No big deal.”

Brody’s eyebrows went up. “DNA samples? Sounds like a very big deal to me.”

“It’s for elimination purposes,” Weiss said. “If you didn’t do anything to the girl, there’s no problem.”

“My attorney will have a problem with it,” Bennett Walker said, he rose from his seat as well, ready to make a break for it.

“Why is that?” Landry asked. “Because you’re already a suspected sex offender?”

“Because of that attitude,” Walker said, jabbing a finger at him. I was never convicted of anything. And I don’t have any intention)f having my name connected in any way to this murder.“

“It’s a little late for that,” Landry said. “You were in Irina Markova’s company in a public place the night she was killed. I’ll be surprised if that isn’t news at eleven tonight. You might want to call your wife and tell her to go to bed early.”

Walker was pissed. Landry could see an artery pulsing in the man’s neck. “You leaked that information to the media?”

“I have more important things to do with my time,” Landry said. “The media does a pretty good job of digging up dirt on their own. You ought to know by now how that works.”

Walker spoke to Brody. “I’m not putting up with this harassment. Are you?”

“No, of course not. I’m going to dinner,” Brody said, unconcerned. “If you want to get a court order, Detective Landry, go ahead. Then you can speak with my attorney.”

“That goes for me too,” Walker said. “I know too much about how evidence can be tampered with to make someone look guilty.”

Landry shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you look pretty damn guilty as it is refusing the test, considering your past. Don’t come crying to me when that hits the papers.”

Walker was red in the face, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He was used to getting what he wanted. He had clearly been accepted back into the fold of the filthy rich after he walked on the rape/assault back when. He had money and his victim did not. In the eyes of the Palm Beach crowd, that made him a target and her a liar out for hush money.

Landry had looked back over everything he could find on the case. He didn’t think like a billionaire. He thought like a cop. And a cop’s conclusion was that Walker had been guilty and had bought his way out of jail with no more concern than if he had been playing a game of Monopoly.

Walker wanted to hit him. He could feel it, could see it in the man’s eyes. Landry found that perversely amusing, and he smiled.

“You want to knock me on my ass for that?” Landry said. “Go ahead. I’ll be all too happy to haul you in for assaulting an officer.”

Brody intervened. “Bennett, let’s go. The chef is waiting for us.”

The rest of them had been pulled in by the tension. No one said anything while they waited for Walker to respond. When he didn’t, Paul Kenner, the erstwhile baseball player, got up and slapped Walker on the shoulder.

“Let’s go, my man, the steaks are calling my name.” He moved past Walker, turned around, and headed slowly backward in the direction of a door on the far end of the room.

Walker kept his stare on Landry. “The sheriff will be hearing about your behavior from my attorney.”

Landry laughed. “You’re not on the Island now. This is the real world. You can’t threaten me or buy me off for doing my job. If you’re on the list, you’re on the list, Mr. Walker. You’re a potential suspect, like any other potential suspect. And your attitude isn’t doing anything but moving your name closer to the top of that list.”

Rich Boy didn’t have anything to say to that. Landry just stood here. He would have stood there all night, waiting for Walker to back down and retreat. He didn’t have to, but he would have. Walker went with Kenner and Brody toward the door to what was probably some members-only secret dining room. The rest of the club followed.

“I guess that was a group no,” Weiss said.

Landry was watching Barbaro, who went for the exit. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

They followed the Spaniard out. Barbaro turned a corner and went down the sidewalk toward the men’s room, but he stopped and turned to face them.

“I will take your test, Detective,” he said to Landry. “I have nothing to hide.”

“And your friends?”

“Are spoiled, wealthy men. As I told you earlier today: The wealthy are not like you or me. They have certain expectations in how they should be treated.”

“They’re a pain in the ass,” Landry said bluntly.

Weiss had the plastic bag and sterile swab in his hand.

“You want to do this right here?” he asked. “You don’t want an attorney present? You don’t think we’re going to tamper with the sample? You’re not going to sue us for violating your civil rights?”

“I have nothing to hide, Detective. None of your points apply, because you won’t find my DNA to match whatever other samples you may have.”

It took only a matter of seconds. Swab in the mouth, rub the inside of the cheek, swab in the evidence bag, done.

When it was over, Barbaro turned and went back into the building.

Weiss turned to Landry. “How do you like that?”

“I’d be happier if we had Walker’s sample.”

“You got some kind of hard-on for that guy?” Weiss asked. “What’s that all about?”

“Twenty years ago he went to trial on a rape/assault. The case fell apart and he walked,” Landry said. “It was a William Kennedy Smith kind of a thing. Rich kid from a prominent family, victim without a pot to pee in.”

“He said, she said.”

“In the end, she didn’t say. She suddenly refused to testify against him.”

“He bought her off,” Weiss said.

“That’s my guess.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

“Tigers don’t change their stripes,” Landry said. “Especially not if they got away with something once.”

“And in all these years he just hasn’t gotten caught.”

“Who knows? Maybe he started paying outright for rough sex. Maybe he knocks his wife around, keeps it all in the family. I don’t know,” Landry said. “I know he sure as hell acts like he’s got something to hide. I know that I saw a snapshot of him sitting with Irina Markova the night she went missing.”

“I don’t like any of these guys,” Weiss said. “I think they’d sooner lie than breathe. And they walk around with this big air of entitlement, like their shit don’t stink. They should all have to go to jail just for being jerks. Let them see what they’re entitled to in there.”

Weiss left with the sample to take it to the lab. Landry followed him but went back to Robbery/Homicide. At his desk-one of a collection of ugly 1960-vintage tan metal schoolteacher reject desks in the room-he put his reading glasses on, clicked a couple of keys, and brought his computer screen to life.

He brought up the archived newspaper articles about Bennett Walker’s arrest and trial and scanned them again. When he had first dug up the dirt earlier in the day, his reaction to the fact that Elena hadn’t been the one to tell him had been strong. He wasn’t sure he could put a name to the emotions-anger, hurt maybe. He didn’t like being shut out of her life.

Funny, neither one of them had done much talking about what their lives were like before they became involved. It had never bothered him. He hadn’t really even thought about it. What was the point in talking about twenty or thirty years back?

Now he felt like she had been purposely holding back on him.

React first, think later. She had every right to be pissed off at him. He’d been a jerk.

He read back through the Bennett Walker articles, read between the lines.

He hadn’t been living in Florida then. He had been aware of the case mostly from catching the odd newscast, and he hadn’t retained what little he had known. Digging up the details had been full of surprises, not the least of which being that Elena was engaged to Bennett Walker at the time.

Walker’s defense attorney had been Edward Estes, Elena’s father. a man well-known for confusing juries by twisting facts and misdirecting focus, and getting his clients off, no matter how dead-to-rights guilty they may have been.

In Walker’s case, Estes had gone with the tried-and-true blame-the-victim defense. The girl was promiscuous, liked rough sex, had an abortion when she was seventeen. She seduced Bennett Walker. She asked for it. She only brought charges against him in the attempt to get him to buy her off.

Landry looked at the photograph of the victim taken in the hospital two days after the attack. She looked like she’d been run over by a truck. Nobody asked for a beating like that. The girl was a bona fide victim.

He could only imagine how Elena would have reacted to her father’s battle plan. She was a person who believed in justice. Her father believed in winning.

Elena had testified for the prosecution against her then-fiance, which must have gone over well with dear old Dad. His own daughter sabotaging his high-profile case, shattering his client’s alibi-that he had been with Elena at the time of the attack.

Stories had then been leaked to the press that Elena was nothing more than a woman scorned, out for revenge; that she had a checkered party-girl past; perhaps she wasn’t mentally stable.

Landry didn’t wonder where those stories had come from. They had come from Bennett Walker’s camp, and the general in charge of Bennett Walker’s camp had been Edward Estes.

Her own father had turned against her to win a case.

“Why would I trust you, James?”

Her fiance turned out to be a rapist, and her father sold her down the river to suit his own purposes.

Why would she trust anyone?

She wouldn’t.

She didn’t.

Including him.