The Alibi Man

Chapter 4

Murder victims are afforded very little dignity at the scene where their bodies are found. Someone finds them, is horrified by the sight of them, calls the cops. Uniformed officers show up, then detectives, then a crime-scene unit with a photographer, someone dusting for fingerprints, someone measuring the distances between items at the scene. The coroner’s investigator arrives, examines the body, turns it over, looks for everything from lividity to exit wounds to maggots.

By necessity, the people who work these scenes-and have worked hundreds before, and will work hundreds more-aren’t able to allow themselves to acknowledge (not openly, at least) the victim as someone’s child, mother, brother, lover. Whoever this person might have been in life, they are no one as they lie there while the scene is being processed. Only when the investigation begins in earnest do they come back to life in the minds of these people as father, sister, husband, friend.

Bodies found in water are commonly referred to as “floaters.”

There is nothing worse than a floater that’s been in the water a few days-long enough for decomposition to begin internally, filling the body with gases, bloating it to grotesque proportions; long enough for the skin to begin to slough off; long enough for fish and insects to feed on and invade the body. I had last seen Irina Saturday afternoon. It was Monday. I didn’t look as she was pulled out of the water-not straight away, anyway. I could have let Landry take me home and leave me out of this process, but I felt an obligation to stay at least for a little while. She had been part of my ersatz family. I felt a certain strange need to protect her. Too little, too late, unfortunately.

Uniformed deputies were ordered to drag the dead gator up to the bank. The coroner’s people oversaw the extrication of burn 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 couldn’t tackle. I was a woman on a mission: to dole out justice- 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 Poxahatchee. Jumped the gun, so to speak. One of the dealers, a wild-eyed, mulleted cracker named Billy Golam, had pointed a 57 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 Sean came back into my life-or I into his-filled with anger and self-loathing and suicidal fantasies. The two years past had been spent in and out of hospitals while doctors tried to put me back together like Humpty Dumpty. On the day Hector Ramirez was killed in my stead, I had gone under the wheels of a meth dealer’s 4X4 truck and been dragged down the road, the pavement breaking bones and stripping flesh and tissue from my body. Why I hadn’t died, I couldn’t understand, and I had punished myself for it every conscious day I had in the two years that followed.

Sean had given the groom’s job and the apartment that went with it to Irina. He had taken me in like a wounded bird and put me in his guesthouse. When I seemed strong enough, he had put me to work helping to ride his horses, knowing the horses would be more help to me than I ever could have been to them.

Irina’s apartment was located over the plush clubby lounge in Sean’s barn. I went into the lounge, behind the bar, took a bottle of Stoli out of the freezer, and poured some into a heavy crystal tumbler. Leaning against the bar, I looked at the room as if it were an empty stage, remembering a conversation I had had with Irina in this room a year past.

She had just thrown a horseshoe at the head of a Belgian horse dealer who had come calling to tempt Sean into parting ways with substantial amounts of money. She would have killed the man on the spot if she could have. Her rage was a palpable thing, huge and hot and bitter. She had launched herself at him, pummeling him with her fists until Sean grabbed her by her blond ponytail and one arm and pulled her off.

I had brought her into the lounge while Sean tried to smooth things over with the Belgian. She told me the story of a girlfriend from Russia who had gone to work for the dealer, who used and abused her. In the end the girl killed herself. Irina had wanted revenge. I’d admired her for that. There had never been anyone in my life I felt strongly enough about to seek revenge on their behalf.

Full of passion. The heart of a tigress. I wondered if she had fought as fiercely for herself. Was there a killer holed up somewhere with fingernail scratches down his face, missing an eye, unable to walk straight? I hoped so.

I raised my glass in salute and finished off the vodka.

Putting on a pair of thin, tight riding gloves, I climbed the spiral stairs that led to Irina’s apartment. If Landry caught me doing what I was about to do, there would be hell to pay. Of course, the idea of negative ramifications had never stopped me from doing anything in my life.

A very private person, Irina always locked her door, but I knew where the key was hidden and I helped myself to it. The violence perpetrated on her had not happened here. The place looked lived-in, not tossed. A single coffee cup sat in the drain basket in the sink. The latest fashion magazines were strewn across the coffee table.

She had left her makeup out on the counter in the bathroom. I remembered she had been eager to go on Saturday. She had rushed off alone, dressed to kill. She could have been on the cover of one of the magazines in her living room as easily as working in a barn. Even in a T-shirt, baggy shorts, and muck boots, she had exuded an almost royal sense of confidence and elegance. I often referred to her as “the Czarina.”

The drawers in the vanity yielded the usual stuff: nail polish, tampons, cotton balls, condoms. I wondered if she’d dropped a couple of the latter in her purse that evening, anticipating a conquest.

What kind of man would Irina go for? Rich. Very rich. Definitely good-looking. She would never settle for the money if the guy with the purse strings was some short, fat, balding toad with sweaty palms. She thought too highly of herself for that.

Wellington during the season had no shortage of gorgeous men with lots of money. Elite equestrian sports have been underwritten by the wealthy since the time of Caesar, probably longer. Privileged sons and daughters, the princes and princesses of America -and a dozen other countries-were a part of the scenery at the horse show grounds and the international polo fields here. They populated the parties and charity fund-raisers that filled the social calendar from January through March.

Had Irina planned to snag a scion that night? I could too easily imagine the raw, cold terror that must have come over her when she realized her life was about to go horribly wrong.

I went into the bedroom and there found ample evidence of the royal Russian attitude. The bed was strewn with clothes that had been considered, then cast aside, as she dressed for her night out.

She had a very pricey wardrobe for an illegal alien who groomed horses for a living. Then again, in Wellington a good groom could make six hundred dollars or more per month per horse, plus day fees for horse shows, and another thirty-five to fifty dollars per horse per day for braiding manes each day of a show.

There were eight horses in Sean’s barn. And Irina’s apartment was hers rent-free. Her living expenses were minimal-cigarettes (which she smoked outdoors only, away from the barn; there wasn’t so much as a lingering whiff of smoke in the apartment) and food (for which she seemed to have only a passing fancy, from what I’d seen in her refrigerator). Her priority seemed to be clothes.

The tags spoke volumes: Armani, Escada, Michael Kors. Either she spent every dime she earned on clothing or she had an alternate source of income.

But Irina put in long days at the barn. The first horse had to be groomed and tacked up by seven-thirty a.m. Night check happened at ten p.m. Her only day off was Monday. Not a lot of free time for a big-bucks second career.

Among the items on the dresser: an Hermes scarf, several bottles of expensive perfume, silver bangle bracelets, a lint brush, and a digital camera the size of a deck of playing cards. That I took and slipped into my pocket.

I checked her dresser drawers. If-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it lingerie. Skimpy. Sexy. An array of T-shirts and shorts she wore to work. The big drawer on the bottom right held a burled-wood jewelry box, and in the box were some very nice pieces- several pairs of diamond earrings, a couple of diamond tennis bracelets, a couple of necklaces, a couple of rings.

I picked up a heavy white-gold charm bracelet and examined the charms-a cross studded with small, blood-red garnets, a green enameled four-leaf clover, a silver riding boot, a sterling heart. A sterling heart inscribed To I. From B.

B.

A small table sat adjacent to one side of the bed, serving as nightstand and writing desk. Irina had left her laptop on in her haste to leave Saturday. The screen saver was a slide show of personal photographs.

I sat down on the chair and watched. There were snapshots of the horses she cared for, of Sean riding in the big arena at the Wellington show grounds. There was one of myself riding D’Artagnan, Sean’s handsome copper chestnut, early-morning fog hugging the ground beneath us, making it look as if we were floating.

The more interesting photos were of Irina and her friends partying, tailgating along the side of the polo field. The stadium of the International Polo Grounds rose up in the background. A polo match was in full swing.

No jeans and T-shirts at this party. Everyone was dressed to the nines. Irina wore a big pair of black Dior sunglasses and a simple black sheath dress that showed off a mile of leg. Her hair was slicked back in a tight ponytail. Her girlfriends were similarly turned out. Big hats, big smiles, champagne glasses in hand.

I didn’t recognize any of them. Even if they had been other grooms from the neighborhood, I wouldn’t have recognized them out of their barn attire. That’s how it is in the horse world. At social events the first hour of the party is spent trying to recognize the people we see every day in breeches and baseball caps.

The photos were not limited to girlfriends. There were half a dozen shots of gorgeous Argentinian polo players, some on horses, some standing, laughing, an arm around one or more of the girls. I wondered if any of them was B.

I touched the mouse. The screen saver disappeared, revealing the last Web site Irina had been looking at: www.Horsesdaily.com.

Without hesitation, I put my gloved hands on the computer’s keyboard and went to work, clicking and double-clicking until I located the files that contained the photographs. I wanted to e-mail them all to myself, but that would leave a trail that would bring Landry down on my head like a ton of bricks. Instead, I pulled Irina’s digital camera from my pocket and simply took pictures of the snapshots as each appeared on the screen.

The desktop screen returned when I closed the file on the pictures. The AOL icon beckoned. If I was very lucky, Irina would have her account set up with the password saved so she didn’t have to enter it every time she signed on. She lived alone. There was no nosy roommate she needed to protect herself from.

I clicked to sign on and was immediately rewarded with the AOL greeting and the announcement that Irina had mail. Mail I couldn’t open because no one should have been on this computer after Irina’s death. The mail had to remain new. But I pulled a white note card out of the table drawer and wrote down the e-mail addresses of the senders.

Access to saved mail was another story. I brought that up and browsed through the list, opened everything from the three days before I last saw Irina, and printed them out. Later I would go through them carefully, looking for signs and portents of the evil that was to come. Now I couldn’t take the time.

Also on the writing desk was a basket holding mail. A coupon for Bed Bath amp; Beyond, a doctor’s bill, an offer to join a health club. On the back of one of the e-mails, I jotted down the name and address of the doctor.

The message light on the phone was blinking, but as much as I wanted to listen to her messages, I couldn’t do it without being found out, for the same reason I couldn’t open her new e-mail. I could, however, check the numbers of the missed calls without disturbing the voice mail itself.

The readout in the small window of the phone told me Irina had missed four calls. Using the tip of the pen, I touched the button to scroll through the calls, and jotted the numbers down. Two were local, one looked like a Miami number, one was Unknown, a blocked call. All had come on Sunday, the latest being logged at 11:32 p.m. A call from Lisbeth Perkins.

I wondered what the callers would feel when they found out Irina was dead, may have already been dead at the time they made their calls to her.

Who were her friends? Did she have any family? Had one of those calls been from someone she loved?

To I. From B.

I checked the drawer for an address book but couldn’t find one. Irina had been addicted to her cell phone. I imagined she kept pertinent addresses and phone numbers in it and/or in her computer. The cell phone-which had become like a growth on the side of her head, she used it so constantly-would have been with Irina on the night of her death. I wondered if Landry and company had found a purse in the weeds or in the canal.

If I couldn’t have the cell phone, the next best thing was the cellphone bill, which I found in a plastic file box under the table. I took the last two statements, hurried downstairs with them, and made copies on the fax machine in Sean’s office.

I looked out the end of the barn, nervous that Landry would come rolling in, even though I knew better. He would be a long time at the scene. There would be no sense of urgency to go through the victim’s apartment. The first priority was to find evidence where the body had been dumped. A shoe print, a cigarette butt, a weapon, a used condom, something dropped by the perpetrator.

Landry was lead on the case. He would stay there and oversee every detail. And he would have to deal with the press, because the news crews, like bloodhounds, would have picked up on the scent of death by now and beat it out there.

Still, I hurried back upstairs and replaced the bills. The copies I folded and tucked inside the waistband of my pants.

The crunch of tires on the crushed-shell drive drew me to the window-the farrier come to replace a thrown shoe. The delivery truck from Gold Coast Feed rolled in behind him.

The world kept turning. That fact always seemed cruel to me. There was no moment of silent respect for the dead, other than within the minds of those she left behind.