The Alibi Man

Chapter 44

A nurse practitioner, who was both competent and compassionate, examined Lisbeth and did the rape kit, finding nothing. Landry allowed me to stay while he interviewed the girl-as if he could have gotten rid of me. I listened to her story for the second time, thinking she had been through one of the most terrifying experiences I could imagine: blind, helpless, completely at the mercy of a ruthless, faceless demon.

Physically, Lisbeth would be all right. The blood in her eyes would recede over the next few days. The swelling in her throat would abate. She was on a heavy dose of mega-antibiotics to fight off any infection that might take hold in her lungs from inhaling the filthy, stagnant swamp water. Psychologically, she was in a far worse place.

She stared at the dashboard as we drove from the hospital to the farm, saying nothing, sitting so still she might have been catatonic. I let her be. The last thing she wanted to hear was someone crowing at her to buck up and count her blessings for being alive. Alive probably didn’t seem like such a great thing just then.

Having been there myself, I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. People who have never experienced anything more devastating than a head cold are always the ones with the big Hallmark-card platitudes and wisdom. If I had a dollar for every time I wanted to tell one of those people to fuck off, I could have bought and sold Donald Trump three times over.

Sean was riding D’Artagnan when we pulled into the drive. He had the rock-solid seat and perfect upper-body position years of training with German masters had developed. He and the chestnut were one, springing across the diagonal line of the arena in a huge trot that seemed barely to touch the ground.

I wished I could be out there with him, the outside world receding as I focused on every footfall of the horse beneath me. In our sport, there is no time for the intrusion of external thoughts. In perfect moments, there is no conscious thought at all, only a oneness with the animal, only being. Communication is the simple exchange of pure energy. There is no process; no idea, plan, action, reaction, result. There is only intent and realization.

How unfortunate the rest of life is seldom that free of complications.

I parked in front of the cottage, went around the car, and opened Lisbeth’s door-otherwise, I thought, she would have just sat there indefinitely, staring at nothing.

“Come on, kiddo,” I said. “Let’s get you situated.”

I had to put a hand on her shoulder to keep her moving, or she would have simply stopped and become a lawn ornament. Inside, I took her to the guest suite and showed her how to operate the shower. While she was at that, I set out a pair of my own sweatpants and a T-shirt for her, then went to the kitchen and heated some udon soup.

Elena Estes, Domestic Goddess.

No one who knew me would ever have imagined it (which was the way I wanted it), but there was a part of me that could have too easily been a nurturer.

The quality was not hereditary. My birth mother had sold me to the highest bidder before I was even out of the chute. Nor had I learned by example from Helen, my adoptive mother.

I had learned by longing, and wishing, I supposed. By imagining how I would be, and how I would not be, when I had children of my own.

We were going to have three, Bennett and I. A boy, a girl, and a bonus baby. I had been overjoyed at the idea, had chosen names, and had mentally mapped out the things we would do together as a family.

But then there was never a marriage, never a baby, never a family.

Somewhere in my thirties I had made a kind of peace with it. I had a different calling. I was dedicated to my career. Never the most social of creatures, I was long since used to my own company. That worked for me. I didn’t have to conform to someone else’s idea of perfection or endure their unending disappointment. I was able to find some satisfaction within myself. Contentment-or as close as I was ever liable to come.

I had grown used to being as irresponsible as I wanted to be, to being as spontaneous as I wanted to be. I could be as selfish and headstrong as I wanted. I resented ever having to compromise my time, my plans. I didn’t have to be considerate of someone else’s schedule or expectations.

That was my trade-off.

But there were times-when twelve-year-old Molly Seabright came to me and began to rely on me, for instance; and then with Lisbeth, who was in many ways younger than Molly ever was- that the old longing crept up on me and I wondered how differently I would have turned out if only. I never allowed it to last very long. It hurt too much and served no purpose.

I put a bowl of soup on a tray and took it to the guest room, tapping on the door before I let myself in.

Her curly hair was a wet tangle but clean at least. She had put on the clothes I left out for her and had assumed her favorite position of the day-sitting backed up against the head of the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin. Her fingers worried at the little medallion she wore.

“Eat a little bit of this if you can,” I said, setting the tray on the bedside table. “It’ll soothe your throat. I was choked myself just the other day, so I know.”

She looked at me, not sure what to make of what I’d said.

I shrugged and took a seat on the bed. “The world is going to hell on a sled. What can I say?”

Lisbeth closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know how any of this happened,” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”

“I guess people don’t get murdered and beat up and treated like shit where you come from.”

She wasn’t listening to me. She put her hands on her head, as if to hold it together.

“It’s all my fault,” she murmured.

“You must think highly of yourself,” I said.

Confused and offended, she opened her eyes and looked at me for an explanation.

“To think you have the power to control the universe and everyone in it,” I said. “You think if only you could have convinced Irina not to go to that party… You and I both know there was no stopping Irina from doing anything.”

“I begged her not to go.”

“Then you did all you could.”

She looked away and stared out the window. “I wish… I wish…”

“If you’re going to say you wish you’d died instead, save your breath. It wasn’t your call, and that’s just how it works sometimes. Take your breaks when you get them, Lisbeth. Life will turn on you soon enough.

“I made a bad choice once and a man died who shouldn’t have,” I said. “I stood right there and watched him get shot in the face. He had a family, and now they don’t have him, because of me.”

“Don’t you feel guilty?” she asked.

“Yes, terribly. But it hasn’t brought him back, so what good is it? I’ve wasted a lot of time punishing myself. No one’s given me a gold star for it. The world isn’t a better place.

“Nobody likes a martyr, Lisbeth,” I told her. “Now I try to get up in the morning and be a decent human being, do something good with myself, help somebody. I figure that’s the best I can do to make up for my mistake.

“Save yourself the years of self-loathing and substance abuse, and just get on with it.”

Lisbeth stared at me, not knowing what to say.

“What a hell of a mother I would have made,” I said sarcastically. “Donna Reed would be rolling in her grave.”

“Who’s Donna Reed?”

I gave her a look. “You will go to hell for that.”

She didn’t ask me why. Trying to avoid another sermon from the crazy middle-aged lady.

“What I’m saying, Lisbeth, is work off your guilt. Don’t wallow in it.

“How?”

“Help me find out what happened to Irina.”

“But I didn’t go to the after-party,” she said, looking away, staring at the wall as if the memory of that night was playing there on a movie screen visible only to her.

“Where was the party?” I asked firmly. “And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

A big fat tear rolled down her cheek.

“At Bennett’s,” she whispered.

I wasn’t surprised, but still, that hard, electric jolt hit me in the stomach. A conditioned response to the sound of his name. Or the weight of boxed-up bad emotional memories banging into me. And even though it was essentially what I wanted to hear, I felt sick inside.

“Just how involved with Bennett was she?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Was she in love with him?” I asked bluntly.

Another big fat tear.

“No,” she said, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice. “She didn’t love him.”

“They were lovers,” I stated without any care for Lisbeth’s feelings. Cold hard fact.

She nodded. Two more tears.

“Did she have an agenda?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.

“I’ve heard from more than one person that Irina was angling for a wealthy husband.”

She inhaled a trembling breath. Through all of this she wouldn’t look at me.

“Lisbeth, I know Irina was seen recently by a doctor at a women’s clinic. Could she have been pregnant?”

More tears.

“Was she?”

The nod was almost imperceptible.

“She didn’t love him,” she said again.

“Are you trying to convince me, Lisbeth?” I asked gently. The change-up pitch meant to throw her off balance: “Or are you trying to convince yourself?”

She didn’t answer. I sighed and waited, letting the emotional pressure build inside her. I played back the memories of the photographs I had looked at over the past couple of days. Lisbeth in the pained smile and the purple bikini, standing next to Jim Brody in his swim trunks. Lisbeth and Irina sitting shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek on a poolside chaise, each with an umbrella drink in hand, toasting the photographer, all smiles.

“You miss her a lot,” I said softly.

Her shoulders were shaking as she tried to contain the emotions.

I thought about the vodka in her freezer. Out of place. The snapshots on her refrigerator. Too many of Irina.

“She was your best friend.”

She squeezed her eyes shut tight.

“Lisbeth?” I asked, then paused. “Was Irina more than just your friend?”

“I don’t know w-what you m-mean.”

“Were you in love with her?”

Now she looked at me, shocked, offended… guilty. “I’m not a lesbian! Irina wasn’t a lesbian!”

I had put together enough of a profile to know that Irina was whatever she wanted to be at any given time. There was no doubt she was into guys, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear she swung the other way when it suited her. It certainly wasn’t hard to imagine that at those Bacchanalian orgies of the Alibi Club, girl-on-girl action would have been a popular spectator sport-and Irina had loved the limelight.

“You’ve had a rough go of it, haven’t you?” I said softly. “You came down here thinking you were going to get a job, make some good money, meet people, have fun. Maybe you thought you’d meet the love of your life, I don’t know. But you got something very different from what you bargained for.

“You got sucked in with Brody’s crowd, you got overwhelmed. You’re a good kid, Lisbeth. You didn’t know anything about that world. Fast, shallow, amoral. In a way, you had the clearest vision of what it was, and how wrong it was. You come from a normal place populated with normal people. There’s nothing normal about how these people live. Everything is a game, and they’re entitled to have whatever they want until they don’t want it anymore. And then they just throw it away, like it never meant anything to them.”

From the outside looking in, to people who have to worry about paying their mortgage and their electric bill, the world of the wealthy seems easy and wonderful. But every kind of life has its price and its pitfalls. In a lifestyle where there are no boundaries, it becomes a challenge to find one’s true self. If everything comes easily, there is no way to establish worth. And if nothing has real value, then there is no way to gauge satisfaction or accomplishment or contentment.

That was Bennett Walker’s world. He had everything anyone could possibly want, yet he was never satisfied. He had taken everything there was to take-except perhaps a human life. And in a world where nothing meant anything, why not take that too, just to see what it might be like to play God?

Bennett had always believed the world should run according to his plan. What if Irina had decided to disrupt that plan? What if she had decided she could get what she wanted by getting the upper hand on Bennett? What if she had told him she was pregnant, and that she expected him to marry her?

I could imagine the wrath that would set loose in Bennett Walker.

“Did you think something might happen that night, Lisbeth?” I asked. “Is that why you tried so hard to keep Irina from going to the after-party?”

“I’m really tired,” she whispered. “I want to go to sleep now.”

I considered pressing her harder but decided against it. Emotional battery was a good start. I would save sleep deprivation for later.

I didn’t allow myself to feel guilty about it. Lisbeth was alive, Irina was not. Lisbeth would recover. The best I could do for Irina was vengeance. If I had to further manipulate, deceive, and abuse this girl to get it, so be it.

“One last question,” I said. “Did you ever see Bennett Walker- or any of the rest of them, for that matter-hurt Irina physically?”

She didn’t answer me. Either she was faking it or she had in fact fallen asleep. It didn’t matter which. I didn’t need Lisbeth Perkins to tell me Bennett Walker was capable of hurting a woman.

I knew that firsthand.