The Alibi Man

Chapter 61

Kulak left Bennett lying on the ground, bleeding, and dragged me inside the building by my injured arm, digging his thumb into the wound every time I slowed down.

He took me into a large, open garage space with hydraulic lifts and drains in the concrete floor. Lights hung from a ceiling of open steel trusses. On one side of the space was a row of old beat-up red metal lockers with iron-mesh fronts. He dragged me to them, pulled one open, shoved me inside with my back to the wall, shut the door, and locked it.

I was in a cage. Literally a captive audience for whatever horror Kulak might want to play out in front of me.

The cage was not much taller than I was and not much wider or deeper. I could get my hands in front of me, but I couldn’t get any leverage or power to try to push against the door.

It seemed a very long time before Kulak returned. I began to think perhaps he had taken Bennett elsewhere to torture and kill him and that I would be left standing in that cage for hours and hours, wondering what would happen to me when he finally came back. Then I heard them-Kulak shouting at Bennett to move, a scuffle of footsteps, someone falling, Kulak shouting.

Bennett came sprawling through the doorway, landing on the floor near one of the drains. Kulak walked over, gun in hand. He seemed very calm, relaxed even, as if he had flipped the switch on his emotions.

“Take off your clothes,” he said.

Bennett looked up at him. “What?”

“Take off your clothes, Mr. Walker.”

“Why?”

Kulak gave him a savage kick in the ribs, an action weirdly at odds with his demeanor.

“Take off your clothes, Mr. Walker. You are going to know how it feels to be vulnerable.”

When Bennett still didn’t move, Kulak kicked him twice more, once in the back, once in his injured leg. Bennett struggled then to sit up, grimacing. His face glowed with sweat as he stripped off his T-shirt and jeans. He had trouble moving the injured leg, trouble bending that knee.

It seemed to take forever for him to complete his task. All the while Alexi Kulak just stood there, waiting, gun in hand. He smoked a cigarette, watching dispassionately as his victim struggled.

When he was naked, Bennett curled on his side on the concrete, and just lay there, breathing hard. His back was to me, and I could see the entrance wound in the back of his thigh-a small innocuous-looking hole that belied the damage the bullet had most surely done inside the leg.

Kulak dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and put it out with the toe of his wingtip shoe. He produced a pair of handcuffs, closed one around Bennett’s left wrist and the other around one of the iron bars of the drain.

He walked over to a workbench, set his gun aside, and chose a tool from a rack hanging on the wall. He chose it carefully, like a musician choosing an instrument or a sculptor choosing a chisel.

It was a bolt cutter.

Bennett watched him. I could see the abject terror in his face. Like an animal trying to flee a predator, he threw himself as far away from Kulak as he could-a pathetically short distance-before the cuffs rattled and he strained against the unyielding iron bar of the drain.

“Why did you kill my Irina?” Kulak asked him with eerie calm.

“I didn’t,” Bennett said. “I didn’t kill her.”

Kulak took a step closer and stomped on Bennett’s wrist, making him cry out.

“Why did you kill my Irina?” he asked again.

“I-I didn’t,” Bennett said. “I barely knew her.”

Just like he was snipping a weed from his lawn, Kulak leaned over with the long-handled bolt cutter and cut Bennett Walker’s left index finger off at the knuckle.

A wet hot sweat washed over me from head to toe. The screams were horrible. I closed my eyes for a moment but opened them again to abate the dizziness.

Bennett was sobbing. Blood ran from the stump of his finger.

With the toe of his shoe, Kulak knocked the detached digit into the drain. He stepped away, lit another cigarette, smoked it down halfway. After a moment, he went to Bennett, squatted down, and applied the red-hot tip of his smoke to Bennett’s mutilated finger, cauterizing the wound.

Bennett screamed. The sound went through me like a razor lade.

“Why did you kill my Irina?” Kulak asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Bennett whimpered.

“You don’t know?”

“I can’t remember.”

“You murdered this exquisite girl,” Kulak said, “and she meant little to you that you don’t even remember why?”

“I don’t know.”

Kulak looked at the butt of his cigarette, then casually leaned over and pressed the red-hot ember to the thin skin on the inside of Bennett’s wrist and held it there.

Bennett’s body jerked wildly, convulsively. His screams came from a place inside him so primal there was nothing human in them.

I tried to look away, but I could still see him in my peripheral vision. If I closed my eyes, the dizziness and nausea would wash over me and I would be sick. It was important I not appear weak. I knew that.

The stench of hot feces filled the air, and I tried not to gag.

Kulak waited for the screams to die, for his victim to lie still in his own waste.

But panic was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Alexi Kulak could smell panic. He fed on it. He savored it like a fine wine.

“I loved her,” he said. “I would have done anything for her. I will do anything for her. Why would she want you, Mr. Walker? You are weak. You are no man for a woman like Irina. She would have run you around like a trick pony. Is that why you killed her?”

Bennett shook his head. “No.”

“Because she was too strong for you?”

“No.”

“Why, then?” he asked, as if he was asking a sweet small child. “Why did you kill her?”

“I-I must have been angry.”

“Yes.”

“She made me angry.”

“Yes. And so you killed her?”

“I swear to God,” Bennett whimpered, “I don’t remember killing her. I don’t remember anything. I must have blacked out.”

Kulak pointed at the stump of Bennett’s index finger. “This hurts quite badly, doesn’t it?”

Bennett nodded. He was flat on his belly on the floor, his face pressed to the concrete.

“Let me take your mind off that pain,” Kulak said.

He stood up, took the bolt cutter, and snapped off half of the middle finger beside it.

I wanted to put my fingers in my ears to block out the screams, But I couldn’t fold my injured arm that tightly. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to cry. Panic swelled in my throat like a balloon.

Kulak stood there watching Bennett Walker sob, watching the blood run from his mutilated hand and drip down into the drain n the floor.

“I’m sorry!” Bennett cried. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what happened!”

I listened to him. I watched him lying there. Many times in my life I had told myself there was no punishment on this earth too severe for him. But all I could think in that moment was that he didn’t fit.

Bennett Walker was a bully, but he was also what Alexi Kulak had called him: weak. There was no way he could take what Kulak as doing to him and not spill his guts. He didn’t have it in him.

“You don’t know what happened,” Kulak said. He turned then and looked at me.

“If you don’t know,” he said, “then perhaps your lover can tell us.”