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

painless.”
    Fidge and I shared a few bad and ugly stories about Two Dicks. I know the saying is, “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” but there were no good stories about the man.
    Fidge had made me a copy of all the documents in the case file so we were looking at the same information while we talked. He recalled the case as if it had happened yesterday instead of eleven years ago. The gist of it went like this: A young fellow hanging out on the beach had looked into Ileana Corrigan’s beach house and saw her murdered.
    “We got the witness’s name?”
    “It’s all in there,” he said, pointing toward the copied file in front of me, “along with a copy of the report on the stolen Welrod assassin’s pistol, which came nine years after the murder. Like I said, the Welrod wasn’t the murder weapon.”
    “Where was the eye witness?”
    “About a hundred yards or so out from the house, he had binoculars he used to look out to sea before it got dark. He had fallen asleep on the sand and saw the murder after he woke up. He picked Eddie Whittaker out of a group of pictures. The time of the murder, the witness said was 8:45 at night, and that jibed with the M.E.’s report. An attendant working in a gas station also pointed to Eddie’s picture as having bought gas a little after nine that same night. The station was an old one with a security camera the owner failed to use. The man working the station alone said Eddie paid cash. He remembered because so few folks used cash. The police picked up Eddie. Both the witness to the murder and the gas jockey picked Eddie out of a lineup.
    “Two days later, Eddie was released after the D.A. dropped the charges. Eddie’s claim that he had driven up from Long Beach to have an dinner in Buellton was substantiated by a man and his wife who had dined at the same restaurant. A retired middle school principal who lived in Buellton also stepped forward to say he saw Eddie in the restaurant between 8:30 and 9:30.”
    “Did Eddie have a credit card transaction or maybe a debit card he used for the dinner? And what about buying the gas? Oh, you said he paid cash for the gas.”
    “No dice,” Fidge said. “I verified Eddie Whittaker had gotten pissed at his credit card company, cut up his card and closed the account. He had an application pending at a different local bank, his grandfather’s bank, to get a new credit card. He didn’t have a debit card. They weren’t as popular back then as they are now. So, he was using cash for everything during those few days.”
    “That was convenient. That way there would be no paper trail as to where he was during the critical hours.”
    “Convenient if he murdered his fiancée. Serendipitous, if he didn’t,” Fidge said. “Nothing else pointed anywhere then and nothing’s come up since. No con or suspect in any other case has offered anything about it to bargain for a better deal. It would seem the murderer has kept his exploits to himself. And you know how rare that is.”
    It was rare. Thugs often brag to other thugs about their crimes, as if such behavior constituted something to brag about in the first place. And, later, the listening thug trades that knowledge to bargain with the police for a pass on some lesser charge.
    “I understand Ileana Corrigan was pregnant when she was killed. Was a determination made that Eddie Whittaker was the father?”
    “When I met with General Whittaker, the general insisted we make that determination. DNA testing was still gaining stature, but it was established. We would have anyway, particularly when Eddie quickly became a suspect, as it could have gone to motive. He was the papa.”
    “Bail?”
    “Eddie Whittaker had a clean record so his attorney argued he posed no threat to the community. The issue of special circumstances was questionable and the D.A. decided not to pursue that. The bail was set at one million. The general posted the bond. Eddie Whittaker walked.”
    Fidge offered another