The Alibi Man

Chapter 53

I watched through the foliage that divided Bennett’s property from the yard of the house next door. The house behind me was dark and vacant. People moved in and out of Bennett’s house, carrying things in, carrying things out.

My father was kept at bay outside the front door. I could tell by his body language he was angry. I could easily imagine how he had managed to insert himself into the situation. The Walkers, the Whitakers, the governor, my father. That all added up to privilege.

As I watched the people come and go from the house, I imagined Bennett’s cronies and Irina going up the sidewalk and disappearing inside on Saturday night. And all the dark scenarios of what had played out in that house swirled through my head like a toxic gas.

Not for the first time in my life, I wished I had been adopted by couple of CPAs in Middle America and had grown up to do my four years at a state college, get a job, get a husband, have a couple kids. People who had that life didn’t know the things I knew out the darker side of life. I envied them.

Because I needed to focus on something tangible, I moved toward the back of the property and peered through the branches to catch a glimpse of Bennett’s backyard. The interior lights of the house spilled out through French doors onto the patio and across the dark water of the pool. Deck chairs were scattered around.

I thought of the photograph of Irina and Lisbeth sitting on the chaise together, looking happy and silly. Sitting here, at this pool, in these chairs. I recognized the background and the stripes on the cushions.

Lisbeth had tried to prevent Irina from coming here that night. They had argued. “I begged her not to go,” Lisbeth had said.

“… he told me Irina was dead… that she was dead when he found her in his pool… ”Barbaro had said.

I wondered why he had turned his story around. Why, really. I was just too cynical to believe it was because I had somehow awakened a conscience in him.

But if it was simply to take himself out of the picture of what had really happened that night, if what he had decided to do was hang the murder on Bennett and exonerate himself, why tell a story with a component he couldn’t control?

“I saw Beth-Lisbeth-when I got to the parking lot…”

Why say that? Unless it was part of the power trip. Unless he knew he could control Lisbeth, because he had seen to it that she would be too terrified to do anything other than what he told her.

That would mean it was a game for him, that he was a monster.

I couldn’t see that, but I hadn’t seen it in Bennett Walker either.

I would have said I was well past being surprised by anything in this life, but in that moment I thought I wasn’t so sure of anything anymore. Maybe that was what came with time and bad experience-the ability to know that no matter what I’d seen, things could always get worse.

And so they would.