The Original Alibi (Matt Kile) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and there’s no place you get to know a man better than in a cell. Nothing I ever told Axel came back to me in the yard, so, okay, Axel was my staff, well, sort of. He always said. “Our cell’s our home and home stuff don’t get repeated in the yard.” Our current home was much nicer than the one we had in those days, but that principle seemed one of Axel’s core beliefs.
    “Actually, I don’t know all that much,” I began. “I’ve called Sergeant Fidgery. I’m taking him and his family to lunch tomorrow. He made copies of the relevant police files. We’ll get into those at his house in the afternoon. The department is carrying the Whittaker case as an unsolved … for them it’s the Ileana Corrigan homicide case, but they haven’t done anything with it for more than ten years.”
    “He’s the one you told me all about while we were inside? One of those two guys who came to see you a lot. Fidge, right?”
    “Yeah. Ten years we were together.”
    “So, what do you know at this point?”
    “The pregnant fiancée of the general’s grandson, Eddie Whittaker, was murdered in a house she rented on the beach up the coast toward Malibu. There were two witnesses. One who claimed he saw Eddie in the house doing the killing. The other said he saw Eddie in the immediate area fifteen or so minutes later. The cops arrested Eddie. A week or so later, witnesses came forward saying they had seen Eddie in a different location. The D.A. dropped the charges and Eddie walked. I’ll know more after I talk with Fidge. I’m going to bed. Let yourself out.”
    “Where are you meeting Fidge?”
    “At noon at Red Robin, I’m taking his whole family to lunch. Then we’ll go back to his place. He has a great family so it’ll be a nice Saturday.”
    “Okay, boss, but I’ll want a full report.”
    “Maybe. The odds will improve if you’re wearing your own pants when I get back.”

Chapter 5
    Fidge and I had, if anything, grown closer since I left the force. More accurately, since the department tossed me, and the system threw me in prison with Axel. Not that I blame them. I shot a man in plain sight of the cops and the press so I got what I deserved, I suppose. But then so did the guy I shot.
    Fidge had never seen a form of exercise he didn’t enjoy watching, a meal he couldn’t eat, or a beer that didn’t meet his standards. He also lusted after his wife, Brenda, a hunger she returned in kind. She was a great mom, a super cook, and a solid friend. I always suspected that in a former life Brenda had been a braless bar wench serving the King’s musketeers while wearing a revealing top stretched out over the ends of her bare shoulders. In this life, she was Fidge’s Dulcinea. Fidge adored her. For that matter, so did I. Brenda was a man’s woman, and a friend’s wife, and she knew more naughty jokes and double entendres than anyone I knew.
    After we had Red Robin burgers, a stack of onion rings, and milk shakes all around, Fidge and I walked his wife and children to their SUV. Brenda was driving their teens to the homes of their friends. Then she planned to fill her afternoon with errands.
    Fidge and I, walking as if we had swallowed single car garages, belched before getting into my Chrysler 300. I drove us to his place where we would hunker down and sift through the fascinating story of the murder of a pregnant woman, and an arrest with a direct eye witness, quickly followed by a dropping of charges and the release of Eddie Whittaker.
    Fidge had originally thought Eddie Whittaker guilty. It certainly looked that way. But not after two witnesses independent of one another came forward to say they saw Eddie where he said he had gone. He claimed he spent the hours before, during, and after the murder of his fiancée driving to and from Buellton, California, where he dined in Pea Soup Anderson’s Restaurant. It was impossible, short of using a helicopter, to make it from the restaurant to the place of the murder in time