The Last Alibi (27 page)

69.

Shauna

Friday, July 19

Bradley is doing redirect on one of the architects, talking about exciting things like soil samples, and my mind wanders. The jurors’ minds are wandering, too. This is the ninth day of a trial about technicalities and specifications, and it’s been a long week for them. Judge Getty has made noise about getting us out early today to get a start on the weekend, and the reaction was positively celebratory.

I’ve instructed Bradley that every witness on our side, other than our clients, can be no more than thirty minutes on direct examination. I don’t want the jury to blame us for wasting their time, for being the stereotypical blowhard lawyers. Our evidence is concise, to the point, like our case.

Still, I am B-O-R-E-D and, knowing that this is the final witness of the day and I’m basically done, my mental machinery grinds to a halt. And my thoughts drift, as they have so often during this trial, to my law partner.

Under the table, I activate my cell phone, keeping the volume on silent. If Judge Getty saw me, he would string me up. I send a text message to Joel: WTF
?

“WTF” stands for
Pardon me, but I’m slightly miffed and require an explanation
.

And I’m more than slightly miffed. Joel’s late on his assignment for me. He promised me yesterday and didn’t deliver. He comes back with a response right away: J
UST FINISHED.
Y
OU HAVE SOME FREE TIME?
T
HIS REQUIRES FACE-TO-FACE.

“Hmph,” I mumble. That doesn’t sound good. I text him back that I expect to be back at my office by four, and I’ll make myself available anytime afterward. I consider asking for a hint, a little preview, but Joel, however boorish he may be, knows one thing, and that’s when to be discreet. He’s decided that this is one of those times.

Which is why I’m starting to worry.

70.

Jason

Friday, July 19

I put the finishing touches on an appeal I’m writing for a guy named Taylor Prince, who was caught up in a large seizure of heroin by a joint county-federal task force sixteen months ago. It was a big headline for law enforcement, the arrest of over twenty people on the city’s southwest side. Taylor wasn’t one of the ringleaders—this guy would have trouble leading his own shadow—but he was part of the muscle in the operation.

Last December, Taylor was convicted and got fifteen years, stiffer than some of his cohorts who took a plea and got single digits. Taylor opted for a trial, but it was against my advice, because no matter how much judges will deny it, they still fiercely impose the “trial tax” on those defendants who make them put twelve people in a box and clog up two or three days’ worth of court time. So the guys actually selling the dope got between seven and nine years; Taylor, who was little more than a security guard, a guy with a gun standing outside on watch, was guilty of the selling, too—thank you, laws of accountability—but then additionally had a gun charge tacked on. So now I’m asking the appellate court to do something they’ll never do—second-guess the trial judge on a sentence for convictions involving drugs
and
weapons.

Taylor is no genius and shouldn’t bother applying for sainthood, but he isn’t the worst guy who ever lived, either. He had an assault and battery conviction from three years ago, so he couldn’t get a decent job, and someone came along and said,
Stand here all day with a gun and make sure nobody comes in, and we’ll pay you fifty bucks a day,
and he took it. He took it because it seemed easy. He took it because fifty bucks a day was $350 a week, almost $18,000 a year, and because it put a roof over his wife and daughter’s heads and food on their table.

Though ten years my junior, Taylor grew up three blocks from where I lived in Leland Park, went to all the same schools, and started down the same route I was traveling. But Taylor didn’t have football to snatch him out of the quicksand like I did. I could have been that kid.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m still on my way to being that kid, if the last fifteen years of my life have just been an anomaly, an accident, I’ve been playing someone I’m not, and sooner than later I’ll surrender to the gravitational pull down to what I really am at heart, the son of a grifter and alcoholic, a directionless loser.

A knock at my door. Joel Lightner walks in.

“Hey.”

Then Shauna walks in.

“Hey.”

This doesn’t feel like a good thing. I smell a lecture. That’s if I’m lucky. If I’m not, it’s an intervention.
We love you, Jason. We’re here for you. We want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Shauna closes the door, and I’m thinking,
Intervention, not lecture
.

“We’re going to talk,” says Shauna, “and you’re going to sit there and listen. When we’re done, you can tell us to go fuck off if that makes you happy. But you
are
going to listen.”

I swivel away from the computer and face them both. I don’t say anything, don’t accept her guidelines or reject them. Joel is fading back a bit, but is clearly with her on this.

“You know I’ve been concerned about you, and you know I think you have a painkiller addiction. We’ve sort of put that conversation on hold because I’ve been on trial. I don’t feel very good about that—in fact, if you want to know the truth, it tears me up inside—but it is what it is. But I think part of the problem is your girlfriend, Alexa. I think she’s enabling you. I think she’s scary, since I’m being honest. And that’s why I asked Joel to do me a personal favor and perform a background check on her.”

“You . . .” I look at her, then at Joel, with whom I recently spent a rather eventful evening, and yet I don’t recall this subject coming up.

“Jason,” he says, unapologetic, “last August, just eleven months ago, Alexa Himmel was the subject of an order of protection in Medina County in Ohio. A husband and wife,” he says, peeking at a piece of paper he’s holding, “Brian and Betsy Stermer sought an OP against her and got it. They said she was stalking Brian and demanding a sexual relationship from Brian and was physically threatening them and their children.”

“Sorry,” I say, “I’m still at the part where the two of you are doing criminal backgrounds on my girlfriend behind my back.”

“Last October, she violated the OP,” he goes on, undaunted. “She showed up on his front doorstep one day and she had a knife. She was arrested and convicted of contempt of court and, as far as I can tell, was damn lucky she didn’t get charged with something a lot worse.”

“If it was as bad as you’re saying,” I reply, “she
would
have been convicted of something a lot worse.”

“In December, the Stermers went back to court to modify the restraining order, because it kept her one hundred feet from them, and they said she was standing just outside the hundred-foot boundary, on a public sidewalk down the street from their house, for hours at a time. She would wave to them. She had binoculars. Sometimes she would hold up signs. They said it was causing the entire family extreme emotional distress.”

“Sounds like legalese,” I say. “Let me guess. They had a lot of money and fancy lawyers.”

“She was arrested again last February,” Joel says. “She showed up at Dr. Stermer’s radiology office. She burst into his office and exposed herself to him. She was charged with criminal trespass, criminal contempt, stalking, and public indecency.”

I turn my head away, toward the window.

“She entered into a plea bargain. The Stermers agreed to drop the charges if she would leave the state. And she agreed. She left the state. And she moved here.”

“And met you,” says Shauna.

I stand up. “Guys, it was really great of you to stop by. Thanks for the information, and I’ll take it from here.”

“Jason,” says Shauna, “if you’d lower your defenses for one minute, you’d see that this is serious. I take it you didn’t know any of this? I mean, what do you even know about her?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“C’mon, Jase.” Lightner drops his head a notch. “You know it’s a real question.”

“She was looking for you,” Shauna says. “Not you, specifically, but someone like you. When did you meet? May? June? By then, you’d started dropping weight and not sleeping and looking like . . . like you look now. Like a drug addict in a nice suit. You were just what she was looking for, Jason, don’t you see that? Someone who was struggling. The next person she could latch on to. But this time, someone who
needed
her. Someone who wouldn’t reject her.”

“You know what?” I throw up my arms. “I
wasn’t
struggling, I’m
not
struggling, I don’t ‘need’
anybody
, and by the way, fuck you, Shauna.”

“And you’re protecting her because she makes you feel nice and warm and fuzzy all over about your drug addiction,” Shauna says, gaining steam now. “She’s manipulating the shit out of you, and you don’t even know it. Or worse yet, you do, but you don’t care.”

“Dr. Freud over here.” I gesture toward her. “A lawyer
and
a shrink.”

Shauna keeps her stare on me. I know that stare. I’ve seen that stare a thousand times. She knows she’s right, regardless of whether she is or not.

“Listen, you don’t know her like I do,” I say. “If she’s a little intense when it comes to me, it’s probably because she doesn’t have any family anymore. Her parents are deceased, and she doesn’t have siblings. So yeah, she finds someone she cares about, she gets intense about it.”

Joel and Shauna look at each other.

“What are you talking about?” Joel says.

“She’s an only child, and her parents passed away.”

“Oh, Jason,” Shauna says.

Joel pinches the bridge of his nose. “She’s not an only child, Jason. She has a brother. And he lives here in town.”

71.

Jason

Sunday, July 21

It’s near eleven in the morning. My eyes are heavy, my vision hazy; I fought the typical demon battles during the night, blood and fangs and cries of terror. Given the weekend, I kept up the broken-sleep pattern into the late morning, with a few doses of those yummy Altoids thrown in to lubricate the machinery.

I hate that I’m sleeping when there’s so much to do, but the truth is that there’s so
little
I can do. If running around the city would help me catch our killer, I’d do it. If standing on my head would do it, I’d be flipping upside down right now. I’ve racked my brain repeatedly to come up with names of suspects with whom I sat in a room and secured a confession, but if those names are out there somewhere in the netherworld of my brain, I haven’t found them, and pushing myself toward them seems to have the effect of pushing them away, like reaching into the back of a cabinet and contacting the thing you want just enough to move it completely out of your reach. It’s the worst kind of frustrating, this directionless angst.

I know I’m not well, and that a lot of what Shauna said is true. I know it the most when I’m in bed, either drifting to sleep or first awakening, when my guard is down, my justifications and rationalizations not fully engaged. Of
course
I’m not doing well. Of
course
I have to change things. But now’s not the time. I can’t spend time on pulling myself away from these pills while I’m trying to catch “James Drinker.”

Now’s not the time
has become very good friends lately with
I don’t have a problem
. They trade off hours, one of them always on call inside my brain.

Alexa’s just getting out of the shower, wrapped in a bathrobe that is way too big for her, wiping a circle in the mirror out of the steam and brushing her hair. “Are you okay?” she calls back.

“I’m fine,” I say.
I’m fine. I’m all good. I don’t have a problem. And even if I did, now’s not the time to deal with it.

I’ve avoided a complicated conversation with Alexa. Haven’t found the right time yet to ask her about the things Joel and Shauna disclosed to me. I’ve never been one for confrontation, which I fully realize is ironic given that the two things I’ve done best in my life—playing wide receiver on the gridiron and playing a lawyer in a courtroom—both involve conflict. But that’s when you flip on a switch, when you’re doing a job, when the people with whom you’re butting heads aren’t your friends and would just as surely knock you on your ass as you’re trying to knock them on theirs.

But with one-to-one personal stuff, I’ve never enjoyed getting into people’s faces. Probably something I got from Mom, who made it her duty to prevent “Dad volcanoes,” as Pete and I used to call them when we were kids, who made conflict avoidance an art form.
A turned cheek will do you wonders, boy,
she used to always say.

“You sure?” She comes out of the bathroom, her hair combed back wet.

My cell phone buzzes. It’s over on the dresser. Alexa takes a peek. “It’s Shauna,” she says. “Wow, that’s been a while.”

She looks at me for a reaction, but I don’t give her one.

“Do you want to answer it?”

“No, I’ll call her later.”

“Is she calling for any particular reason? I thought she was still on trial.”

“I have no idea why she’s calling,” I say, which isn’t really true.

“Shauna doesn’t approve of me,” she says.

I don’t answer. I’m probably supposed to say something.

“Has she told you that? Or said anything about me?”

“I think she’s concerned about me,” I say.

“And she doesn’t think I’m good for you,” Alexa finishes. “I know. She told me that.”

“She did?”

“Yes. When I went to pick up a few things at your office, when you were going to leave the firm. She yelled at me. She said you and I shouldn’t see each other. It was . . . unpleasant. If I may say so, I don’t think Shauna’s a very pleasant person.”

“Shauna’s wonderful,” I say. “Shauna saved me after my wife and daughter died.”

“Oh.” One word, but more than one syllable the way she says it, a bell curve of octaves, like she just discovered something meaningful. “I think she likes being the only woman in your life.”

“That’s not true.”

I’m adjusting my position in bed as I say this, not looking directly at her, but the ensuing silence brings my eyes to hers, and hers do not look amused. She looks, more than anything, like she wants to slap me.

“I’m sure you’re right,” she says with mock sweetness.

She turns and walks back toward the bathroom.

“Alexa,” I say. “You told me you’re an only child.”

She stops in her tracks, her back to me. She turns around slowly, as if she’s afraid of what she’ll find behind her. “What?”

“Is it true that you’re an only child? Or do you have a brother, Aaron, in Glenwood Heights?”

She turns to face me again, her eyes narrowed, a look of discomfort. “Why . . . would you ask me something like that?”

“You first,” I say.

“Me first . . . me first . . .” Her eyebrows rise. She lets out air. She crosses her arms. “Aaron is my brother, yes. We aren’t close. We never have been. He’s not . . . he’s not nice to me. He’s not a good person. But technically, yes, I have a brother.”

“Technically.” I laugh. “Why tell me this whole thing about how your mother had you when she was forty and didn’t want any more kids?”

“Your turn,” she says, color coming to her face. “How do you know about Aaron? Are you . . . Did you check
up
on me?” She’s good at this. Regaining the moral outrage, or trying hard to.

“My friends did, yes,” I say.

“Shauna, you mean.”

“Shauna and others. They’re concerned, that’s all.”

“So they did, what, a background investigation on me?” Try as she might to resist, Alexa is losing composure, placing a hand on the dresser for stability as the earth moves beneath her, as the footing of this relationship shifts sideways without warning.

“Yes, they did. I didn’t know about it. I was mad when they told me, actually.”

“Really? How mad? Did you stand up for me?”

“I did, in fact.”

“Well, go on.” She whips her arm about. “Go on. Get it over with. They told you about Brian.”

“Brian Stermer,” I say. “Yes.”

Alexa gives a bitter shake of the head, her eyes brimming with tears, red and swollen. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this.”

“They told me—”

“
I
told you!” she cries, slapping her chest. “
I
told you I’d been in a relationship that ended badly when I found out he was married. Did I leave out some details? Yes. Did I leave out the part where his wife found out about
me
at around the same time
I
found out about
her
? Did I leave out the part where Brian turned out to be a complete coward, who wouldn’t admit to his wife that he was fucking somebody on the side, and so he had to turn me into a
stalker
? Did I leave out the part where his wife basically bullied him into telling lies about me to a judge, as if that would somehow make Brian’s lies true? Or the part where
Doctor
Brian Stermer has more money than God and hired, like, ten lawyers to go after me, and I couldn’t afford a single one?”

She is trembling now, her entire body, her face contorted, her voice getting deeper with emotion as she goes on.

I get out of bed. “Listen—”

“Did I leave out the part where I didn’t put up a fight when he wanted his stupid restraining order, because I was planning on staying away from him, anyway? So I just let the judge order whatever he ordered? I did, Jason. I left out those parts. This man screwed me over like nobody ever could, then when he got caught in his bullshit string of lies, he screwed me over even worse to cover up his new lies.”

I approach her, but she gives me a warning look:
Do not enter.

She wipes at her cheeks with the fluffy arms of the robe and takes a gasping breath. “Well, let’s keep going, Jason. Let’s get it over with. Why stop the laughs now?”

“I’m not laughing.”

More tears fall, little rivers angling along her cheeks. “He said I showed up at his house with a knife, but I didn’t. I can’t
prove
I didn’t. Apparently the judge felt like I was supposed to prove my innocence. I don’t know how to prove a negative.”

I nod, but I’m not sure why.

“Let’s see, what else? Oh, when they wanted to make the restraining order for a wider distance, because I was supposedly hanging out down the street, just beyond a hundred feet? Yeah, like anyone’s just going to loiter around on a sidewalk for hours in the dead of December in northern Ohio. Do you have any idea how cold it was last December in Ohio? Yeah, but I’m standing out there for hours on end, holding up signs saying ‘Please take me back, Brian!’ or whatever he said they said. I mean, really? Really, Jason?”

“Hey—”

“But you know what? I didn’t fight that, either. I didn’t fight him because I couldn’t afford anyone to represent me and because I didn’t care, anyway. I didn’t care if the restraining order was a hundred feet or a hundred yards or a mile. I had no intention of going anywhere near him after what he did to me.”

“Okay,” I say.
“Okay.”

“And now I finally meet a nice guy and he hears all this and he thinks . . . whatever you think . . .”

“I believe you,” I say. “I do.”

She looks at me for a long time, her expression easing, her breathing slowing, the tears drying up. She takes a deep breath, runs her fingers through her wet hair.

“I believe you,” I say again.