The Alibi Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

phones,” Weiss said. “They’ve got a racket going. My brother-in-law got a bill from Verizon that was twenty-seven pages long. Calls to Zimbabwe, the Ukraine, all over the world. The farthest he ever called was his mother in Astoria, Queens.
    â€œSo maybe some Haitians followed her out of a club, grabbed her…”
    Landry tuned him out. Another couple of sentences and Weiss would be into his theory that Castro was behind the influx of criminal types from the islands to South Florida. Maybe he was, but Landry didn’t want to hear about it. He had to deal in the present, the here and now, the corpse du jour. The anti-crime unit could worry about Castro.
    He opened a little zippered compartment in the purse. Inside was a foreign-looking coin. The girl was Russian. It was probably something from the old country to bring her luck.
    The ME’s people came past with the body bag.
    So much for that theory.
    â€œAll right,” he said on a sigh. “I’m going to go deal with these people and get it over with.”
    As he made his way to the other side of the canal, he dug in his pants pocket, came up with a couple of extra-strength Excedrin and choked them down without water, shuddering at the bitter taste left in his mouth.
    Like hogs at a trough, the reporters tried to muscle one another out of the way for the honor of being the first to stick a microphone at him.
    â€œDetective!”
    â€œDetective!”
    â€œDetective!”
    The pushiest was the blonde from the NBC affiliate in West Palm. “Detective, what can you tell us about the victim? What can you tell us about the murder?”
    â€œI can’t tell you anything about the victim, and we don’t know yet that this is homicide,” he said. “The ME will determine cause of death.”
    â€œBut clearly the body was dismembered,” the woman said.
    â€œWe don’t know when that happened. We don’t know how long the body has been in the water.”
    â€œAre you saying this is another alligator attack?”
    Excitement swept through the group, raising voices, as if some poor soul being eaten alive by a giant reptile was a better story than a regular person-on-person murder. The media seemed to want to promote the idea that the alligators were conspiring to take back their habitat, like something from a bad horror movie.
    Three area residents had recently died in separate incidents with gators. One swimming in a pond, one walking a dog on a jogging path along a canal, and a drunk who had the misfortune of passing out on the bank of another canal within easy striking distance for the predator. Even if he’d been conscious, the drunk probably wouldn’t have gotten away. An alligator can charge short distances as fast as thirty-five mph, nearly as fast as a thoroughbred racehorse running full out.
    â€œNo, I didn’t say that,” Landry said.
    â€œBut it could have been?”
    It could have been aliens,
he wanted to say, but sarcasm was not looked on with a sense of humor in the sheriff’s office.
    â€œI can’t speculate as to the cause of death” was what he said. “At this point we have no idea how the young woman died or how she came to be here. The sheriff’s office will be releasing a sketch of the victim later today, and we’ll ask for help from the public in trying to ascertain her whereabouts the last few hours of her life.”
    â€œA young woman?”
    â€œHow old?”
    â€œWho was she?”
    â€œHave you found the murder weapon?”
    â€œWas she sexually assaulted?”
    â€œWe won’t know that until the autopsy is complete,” Landry said.
    The blonde leaned ahead of the pack. “Who found the body?”
    â€œA local resident.”
    â€œWill you release his name?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhen will you be able to give us more information?”
    â€œWhen we have some,” Landry snapped. “Now