The Alibi Man (30 page)

chapter
58

         
EDWARD ESTES
declined to speculate as to the whereabouts of his client.

“You might want to give him a call,” Landry said in a voice filled with magnanimous sarcasm. “Give him the heads-up. As a courtesy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.”

He left Paulson to deal with the attorney.

“Every cop in the county is looking for Walker’s car,” Weiss said as they walked away from the house. “We’ve got the airports covered.”

“What about the marinas? Walker races boats. If he can get to a marina, he can be down the coast in a hurry.”

“I’ll notify the Coast Guard,” Weiss said. “You know Estes is gonna try to say the phone was planted.”

“He can say whatever he wants. We’ve got the discovery on videotape. No jury in this neck of the woods is going to believe the poor-little-rich-boy routine a second time around.”

His phone rang. He grabbed it. Dugan.

“I’m just saying,” Weiss went on.

“Save it,” Landry said, snapping the phone shut. “Let’s go break his alibi. Barbaro is waiting for us.”

The Spaniard sat in the interview room, waiting. Landry watched him through the one-way glass. He appeared calm and relaxed, not like a man about to rat out his best friend on a murder. He ran a hand back through his hair, checked his watch, casually drummed his fingers on the table.

He looked confident.

Landry turned to Dugan. “You got that thing working?”

The voice-stress-analysis machine—it had a yard-long name Landry had never bothered to learn—would pick up on the voices in the conversation and determine whether or not any of the parties were feeling stress or anxiety. A poor man’s lie detector of sorts, and a good tool if the interviewee was easy to rattle.

Landry had to think it would be of little use here.

“Press him on the London case,” Dugan said, adjusting a knob on the machine. “He won’t be expecting that.”

Landry nodded, picked up a file folder with case notes, and went in.

“Mr. Barbaro. Thank you for coming down.”

Barbaro made a small dismissive motion with his hand. “I felt an obligation.”

“To whom?”

Barbaro studied him for a second, making up his mind. “To Irina, of course.”

“You didn’t seem to feel any obligation when you gave your first statement, saying that you and Mr. Walker were passed out at his home that night and never saw Irina Markova after you left Players. Why is that?”

He sighed like a man burdened by a great disappointment. “I never imagined what had happened. That my good friend could have killed the girl.”

“Really?” Landry said. “That seems strange to me, seeing how you went through virtually the same experience in London a couple of years ago.”

The Spaniard’s dark eyes met his. “That was something very different.”

“A young woman, raped and murdered. How is that different?”

“The man who perpetrated the crime was not a friend of mine.”

“He got off. Did you know he was guilty too?”

Barbaro shrugged. “I was not surprised.”

“Another wealthy guy,” Landry said. “Into the polo scene.”

“A sponsor, yes.”

“Scotland Yard tried to pin it on you.”

“Prosecuting a foreign polo player would have been much easier than prosecuting a wealthy member of British society.”

“The wealth-has-privilege thing.”

“Money is the universal language, is it not?”

“So here you are, years later, in the States,” Landry said. “Playing polo, minding your own business, and son of a bitch if a girl you know isn’t murdered. You must have thought that was a hell of a coincidence. I know I do.”

“I came here of my own volition, Detective,” Barbaro said. “I came to tell you the truth.”

“As opposed to the lie you’ve been telling me.”

“I don’t excuse my behavior.”

“That’s good. What changed your mind?”

“I’ve been accused of growing a conscience.”

“Is that right? Have you?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Do you have anyone who can corroborate your story—that you left the party at Walker’s house?”

“I thought I saw Lisbeth Perkins. I don’t know whether she saw me.”

“Lisbeth Perkins told us she was home in bed shortly after one. Why wouldn’t she tell us she saw you later?”

“You would have to ask her that question.”

“Are you aware Lisbeth was attacked last night and threatened?”

“I heard, yes.”

“Do you think she might be more apt to tell us she saw you now than she would have before the beating?”

“I resent that implication, Detective,” Barbaro said, rising from his chair. “I came here to set the record straight about that night. If you’re not interested in that, I’ll take my leave.”

“You didn’t see anyone else going back to your car?” Landry asked. “No one saw you?”

“I saw the Freak,” Barbaro said.

“What freak?”

“The Freak,” Barbaro said impatiently. “That’s what she is called. She is a crazy woman. She is always around the parking lot there.”

“And this freak is your alibi?”

Barbaro sighed. “Detective, if I was going to simply make up a story, do you not think I would come up with something less ridiculous?”

Landry sidestepped the issue. “Do you think Bennett Walker murdered Irina Markova?”

Barbaro looked suddenly very weary. “I think, Detective Landry, that for some men who have too much, there is never enough.”

“I guess what I’m wondering, Mr. Barbaro,” Landry said, “is, are you one of those men too? This happened before in your life. You were suspected, denied it, came around and talked, and an acquaintance of yours almost went to prison. Maybe that’s your idea of tipping the scales.”

“And maybe,” Barbaro said, “you can go to hell.”

As he reached to open the door, someone knocked, and Weiss stuck his head in, looking to Landry.

“We’ve got Walker’s car—and a dead body.”

chapter
59

         
“HE’S GOING
to kill us,” Bennett said, terror in his voice. “He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?”

“Shut up!” I snapped.

It was pitch-dark in the trunk. The smell of diesel fuel, sour sweat, and fear gagged me. I lay half on top of him. When I tried to move away, I cracked my head on the trunk lid.

“He’s a Russian,” he said. “He’s that gangster Irina talked about. He’s killed people.”

“Shut up!” I snapped again. My arm was burning like hell and still bleeding.

“Oh, my God. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Shut up!” I screamed, and kneed him as hard as I could. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Yes, he’s going to kill us! He’s going to kill you, and he’s going to torture you first, and I’m going to watch, you son of a bitch!”

“Jesus Christ, Elena! Do you hate me that much?”

“It’s nothing less than you deserve for the lives you’ve ruined.”

“Oh, my God,” he said again. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

To
him
.

“Can you move?” I asked. “Are your hands free?”

“No. They’re tied behind my back.”

“Roll over,” I ordered. “I’ll try to undo the rope.”

“It’s duct tape.”

“Roll over!”

Bennett struggled to move, to turn away from me. I struggled to get my hands in position. My injured arm was throbbing like the beat of a bass drum. I could move my fingers, but they felt swollen and clumsy. I couldn’t find the end of the tape. I broke a fingernail trying to scratch through it.

“Fuck!”

The hell with Bennett, I thought. He would be of no use getting away, because he would think only of himself and end up getting us both killed in the process.

I started trying to feel around the trunk for anything that I might be able to use as a weapon. There was nothing.

The car made a sharp left, then a sharp right, then sat for a moment as something rattled and screeched outside.

A gate.

The car moved forward. The gate screeched and rattled shut.

When the trunk opened, the first thing I saw was the barrel of Kulak’s gun. I held my breath and waited for Kulak to pull the trigger.

“Get out,” he said. “Get out!”

I got out, a little dizzy, legs wobbly.

Hands bound behind his back, Bennett struggled out and stood doubled over for a moment.

“Stand up!” Kulak ordered.

Bennett rocked once on the balls of his feet, then bolted forward, hitting Kulak like a battering ram. He knocked the Russian sideways and kept running for the gate.

Alexi Kulak very calmly got his balance back, aimed, and fired.

I watched, horrified, as Bennett’s right leg buckled beneath him, and he went down, crying out.

In the distance I could hear police sirens, but I knew with a terrible sinking feeling in my gut they wouldn’t be coming here. We were locked inside the gates of Alexi Kulak’s auto salvage yard, and we were at the mercy of a madman.

chapter
60

         
“SO WHO IS
this guy?” Landry asked, shining his Maglite into the trunk of the car.

“Jeffrey C. Cherry,” the deputy said, reading from the victim’s driver’s license. “West Palm Beach; 06-20-88. He’s got an employee parking sticker from Players.”

“Jeez,” Weiss said, poking at the trash around the body. “If he didn’t have that crowbar in his head, I’d say he died from eating this shit.”

“There’s a couple of dime bags of coke,” the deputy said. “Could have been a drug deal gone bad.”

Landry looked over at Bennett Walker’s Porsche. “Could have been. But what was Bennett Walker doing here, and where is he?”

“And what drug dealer wouldn’t steal that car?” Weiss asked. “The keys are in it.”

Landry took a pen out of his pocket and pushed open the small black duffel bag that sat on the victim’s chest. A couple stacks of bills—singles topped with a twenty—and what looked like some coke residue.

“This sucks,” he said. “This is some kind of setup. This kid works at Players—”

“Valet,” Weiss said, peering in the open driver’s door. “He’s got a name tag in here.”

Landry walked away from the car and called Elena. Straight to voice mail. He didn’t like that. She would have been waiting to hear news on what the search warrant had gained them.

She had told him to talk to the valets. He guessed this was the kid who had split before he’d gotten there. Elena had known him, then. And Walker had been here.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said.

Weiss flashed his light at the crowbar planted in Jeffrey C. Cherry’s skull. “Imagine how he feels.”

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 show 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 blade.

“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 so 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 in 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 do it.

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 was 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.”