The Alibi Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 cell-phone 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.

chapter 5
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  “WHAT A fucking mess,” Landry muttered as he watched the ME’s people load the various pieces of the girl into a body bag. Everyone was sweating and swatting at flies. It had to be eighty-five degrees, with wet-blanket humidity. His hands were sweating inside the latex gloves he wore.
    A floater, a dump job, no crime scene, and Estes was involved.
    â€œWhy was
she
here?” Weiss asked with an edge to his voice.
    â€œâ€™Cause somebody dumped her here,” Landry said, purposely misconstruing the detective’s question. Weiss was a pain in the ass, always with the chip on his overly developed shoulder. The guy spent so much time in the gym his arms stuck out from his sides like he was a blow-up doll.
    â€œI meant Estes. What was
she
doing here?”
    â€œShe found the body. Turns out the DB was someone she worked with.”
    â€œYeah? How do we know she didn’t do it?”
    â€œDon’t be an ass.”
    â€œI don’t like her being around,” Weiss announced.
    â€œShe didn’t ask to find someone she knows dead in a canal.”
    â€œShe’ll be a problem.”
    Landry said nothing. Weiss was right. Elena would be a problem. She wouldn’t stand back and let the detectives do their job. She knew their job. She’d done it herself, and she’d been good at it. Irina was someone she’d worked with every day. She was going to take the girl’s murder personally. She was probably doing something she shouldn’t be doing on Irina’s behalf at that very minute.
    Frustrating, maddening, difficult, attitude up to here. It pissed him off no end that he wanted to be with her.
Had
wanted—past tense. That was over. Thank God they had been discreet. No one in the SO knew (at least not for a fact) they’d been seeing each other, therefore no one knew they’d split.
    â€œDid she call you?” Weiss asked. “You weren’t up. I was up. Why didn’t I get the call?”
    Landry rolled his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake. You have a bug up your ass because you didn’t catch this case? We got