The Alibi Man

Chapter 43

“I got the warrant. I’m at Palm Beach Polo,” Weiss said. “We’ve got the girl’s car driving in the west entrance at two-thirteen a.m. Sunday.”

“Can you see her in the car?”

“The tape isn’t that good.”

“And Walker?” Landry asked, getting that old familiar tension in his belly. He could practically smell Bennett Walker’s blood.

“And Walker and Barbaro in Walker’s Porsche. And Brody’s Escalade with a passenger. Ovada, maybe. And a couple of other cars I’ve got a deputy running plates on, but even money one is Paul Kenner and one is Sebastian Foster.”

“Jesus,” Landry breathed.

He stood on the far end of the sidewalk from the entrance to the ER. If he walked back inside and had a nurse take his pulse, they’d probably admit him.

He had the addresses of all the men in Brody’s clique. Of them, two lived in the Polo Club development: Paul Kenner and Bennett Walker.

“And going out?” he asked.

“Brody leaves via the west gate around three-thirty; the car I think belongs to Foster goes out behind him. Not Kenner, not Walker.”

“And the girl’s car?”

“Drives out the west gate Sunday night, late.”

“Can you see the driver?”

“No.”

“Shit,” Landry said. “Go to Walker’s place and canvass the neighborhood. See if anyone was aware of a party going on there Sunday morning. Kenner lives in the Polo Club too. If you don’t lit pay dirt in one place, try the other.”

“If we can place the cars at either house, I’ll get a search warrant,” Weiss said. “In the meantime, should I get Walker and Kenner picked up for questioning?”

“No,” Landry said. “We wait until we’ve got enough for an arrest warrant. Picking them up now will only piss off their lawyers-and give Dugan another excuse to chew our asses some more.

“I’ll talk to Dugan about having someone sit on them from a distance.”

“Right.”

“Did they get any prints off the car?”

“A couple of partials is all.”

“Better than nothing.”

“My money’s on the footprint,” Weiss said. “What’s up with the Perkins girl?”

“I haven’t interviewed her yet. She looks like an extra from a horror movie. And she’s scared shitless, but she claims she doesn’t know who attacked her.”

“I thought you hadn’t interviewed her yet.”

“I gotta go,” Landry said, and ended the call.

Immediately he called Dugan and updated him on the guard hack videos.

“Is there any way we can freeze these guys’ passports?” he asked. “They have access to private planes.”

“I’ll call the state’s attorney,” Dugan said. “I’m guessing no. If you don’t have enough for an arrest warrant, they’re free to do as they please.”

“Can we sit on them?”

“And have Estes and Shapiro screaming harassment?”

“From a distance.”

Dugan hesitated.

“Jesus Christ,” Landry snapped. “Do we have to ask please and say thank you when we slap the cuffs on them? Do we have to ask permission from their lawyers before we arrest any of them for murdering a girl and feeding her to the fucking alligators? Whoever did this is a goddamn criminal. I don’t give a rat’s ass how much money he has in his bank account.”

“Yeah, that’s all very socially conscious of you, James. But the reality-which you know as well as I do-is rank has its privileges. Life isn’t fair. If anyone past the age of six hasn’t figured that out by now, they need to get their heads out of their asses and look around.”

“So the answer is yes,” Landry said. “I’ll have to go home and get my white gloves and party manners before I arrest one of these assholes.”

“And when the time comes, Landry, every t crossed, every i dotted on the affidavit, or Edward Estes will chew up your warrant and shit motions to dismiss. Got it?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Where’s the other Estes in all this?” Dugan asked.

“Why would I know?”

“You have a way of coming across her. Do I have to worry about that?”

Landry didn’t answer right away, considering the ramifications one way or the other. If he told Dugan that Elena was at the hospital with the Perkins girl, Dugan would try to do something to get her out of the way, to contain her. Taking her out of harm’s way, Landry thought. But preventing Elena from doing any damn thing she wanted was no easy task.

If she thought Landry was behind Dugan’s actions-and she could-whatever small scrap of trust she might still have in him would be gone, probably for good.

And while she didn’t carry a badge anymore, this case was hers in all the ways that mattered. This was her vendetta, if in fact Walker had murdered Irina. Could he take that away from her?

Should he?

“Landry?”

“Yeah. I’m here. My phone cut out. What did you say?”

“The media is digging up everything from twenty years ago,” Dugan said. “She was involved with Bennett Walker. Testified against him on a rape/assault. Now here she is again, in the middle of it. Edward Estes’s daughter. This could be the fucking Rubik’s cube of conflict of interest. Do you know where she is?”

“No,” Landry said. “I don’t.

“Look, I have to go interview the Perkins girl,” he said. “She’s in the hospital. Someone beat the crap out of her last night.”

“Does she know who?” Dugan asked.

“You’ll be the first to know.”

He closed the phone and went back inside to take Lisbeth Perkins’s statement.