“Tell me you didn’t go over there, Alexa-”
“Shh.” She reaches her hand out to my mouth. “It’s okay. Nobody will ever know.”
I step back from her, put my hands on my head, furiously scrubbing my hair. “This-this isn’t happening.”
“It’s okay,” she says to me, lifting herself off the couch toward me. “I’ve been planning for this. I did everything right. It looks like a suicide.”
I push away from her and pace in a small circle, passing the movie on the television, the open pizza box with only half a piece missing, cut sharply with a knife.
“It was easy,” she tells me. “I knocked on the door, and he opened it. I asked him if he wanted some company. He thought I was a-I dressed the part-he thought I was, y’know, a prostitute. A skimpy outfit and a fake blond wig and sunglasses was all it took to get him to open his door.”
I don’t say anything, just shut my eyes and listen, my head against a wall.
“I have a Taser. I’ve always had one. Did you know that?”
I shake my head no.
“It was the easiest thing. I only needed a few seconds. I got him in the neck and he went right down. I dragged him into his apartment and I cut his wrists with his own knife. It looks like he killed himself. It does. I swear it does.”
“Alexa.” I turn, put my hands on my knees like a third-base coach. “The police are professionals. They’re not-”
“What, are you going to tell me about hesitation wounds? I read all about them, Jason. I know that when people slit their wrists, they hesitate first and don’t cut deeply. I did all that. I stood behind him and I used his own hands around the knife and I did some shallower cuts first. And I did the left wrist more deeply than the right. I did it perfectly!”
“Even so.” I flap my arms. “And don’t you think the police can look at your Internet searches and wonder why you were reading up on hesitation wounds?”
“What reason would they have to check? I have a really good alibi.”
I let out a nervous sigh. “And what’s that?”
“Look around you.” She gestures with her hands. “I ordered Doctor Zhivago on pay-per-view and I had pizza delivered. Does that sound like someone who went out and committed murder?”
“Oh, Alexa.” I shake my head. “You could have made a hundred different mistakes. You’re better off turning yourself in and explaining that you were trying to stop a serial killer. We-we have to go to the police. I’ll represent you. I’ll do everything I-”
“This man was a monster,” she hisses. “He butchered five women and he wasn’t going to stop. I could see it, Jason. I could see it in the way his eyes passed over me when he answered the door, like he was imagining what it would be like to do the same thing to me. Are you really telling me you wouldn’t have done exactly what I did?”
I don’t confront that question. I’d spent so much time trying to figure out who he was and how to stop him, I hadn’t decided on a game plan once I found him. Would I have killed him? I don’t have the time or the need to answer that now.
“He’s out of the way now,” she says. “Don’t you see?”
He’s out of the way. I wipe at my mouth, fidgety, trying to work through this, feeling unmoored, disoriented. She did this for me, I think to myself. She did this so we could be together.
We are both quiet. She is looking at me, waiting me out, her head cocked to one side, her lips slightly parted.
“How do we even know Joel was right?” I ask. “How do we even know Marshall Rivers was our guy?”
Alexa reaches into her sweatpants and produces something, a card of some sort.
“Your business card,” she says. “Sitting next to his computer.”
She holds it out. I walk over and take it. Holding it in my hand, seeing this card on fancy, cream-colored stock, JASON KOLARICH, ESQ. in royal blue, returns me to my law office, to the man in the goofy disguise, pumping me for information, planting a hypodermic needle in my office, plotting to kill women and make sure I knew all about it.
And then it solidifies for me, something for which I’ll have to answer someday, a decision: She shouldn’t have to go to prison for this. However messed-up her reasoning may be, she shouldn’t suffer for this. Marshall Rivers deserved to die.
I drop my head. “I. . don’t even know what to say.”
“Say you’ll help me,” she whispers.
I look up at her. Tears have formed in her eyes.
“Because you were right,” she says. “I did make a mistake.”
107
Jason
9:50 P.M.
I drive slowly, minding the speed limit, gripping the steering wheel with trembling hands, still short on every detail, but the memories coming back. I remember Marshall was violent, sexually violent toward women. I remember a young woman with a baby. Not her name, not every single feature by any means, but I remember a teenage mother. Mexican. Long, kinky black hair, I remember that. An infant in her arms, maybe six months old, not something I’d be in a position to estimate back then. She probably told me the baby’s name, age, gender, but I don’t remember any of that now.
But I remember she was terrified. I remember that I couldn’t use her. If I was going to nail Marshall Rivers, I’d have to come up with something else.
Get me a confession, said Patrick Romer back then. Get me a confession and we’ll prosecute.
And I did.
I park my car on the 2400 block of West Hampton. Lightner had said 2538 Hampton, and there isn’t a 2500 block east-it would be three miles into the lake. So he must have meant 2538 West Hampton. It makes sense, too, this southwest-side neighborhood being the home of an ex-con with minimal job prospects, probably not much money. The area has been completely ravaged by the housing crisis; what was, fifteen years ago, a promising neighborhood has been ransacked by foreclosures and is now riddled with drugs and crime, gang wars and prostitution, con artists and homelessness.
This time of night, in a hood like this, the only people who are walking the streets are looking for trouble. I guess I’m one of them. Yes, in part, I’m here because of Alexa. I left the Taser there, she said to me. I forgot all about it when I was done. Her fingerprints could be on the weapon. She couldn’t very well wear gloves, not in the middle of this blazing heat. Alexa was smart, knocking on Marshall’s door, dressed provocatively, knowing that prostitutes occasionally go door-to-door in the seamier neighborhoods-but no matter how much she looked the part, Marshall’s radar would have tuned up loudly if she were wearing gloves.
I reach the apartment complex, 2538 West Hampton. It’s a brick three-flat, not long ago probably a nice place to live, owned by people with high hopes, sold unrealistic mortgages that put them under water. Now it’s a rental building, probably still owned by the bank. Apartment 1 is the garden apartment, five steps below ground. There is a small cast-iron gate without a lock. From the sidewalk, I take one look around me, trying not to look too suspicious in doing so, and cast my eyes upward at the other apartments. No sign that anyone’s looking out, no blinds pinched or curtains folded back.
Then I stroll through the gate, covering my hand with my shirt, and walk down to apartment 1 as if I don’t have a care in the world. Alexa said the door would be open, she didn’t lock it behind her. It could have a lock on the doorknob that will keep me out. But it doesn’t. I turn the knob with my shirt again and take a breath.
Don’t touch anything, Alexa pleaded with me. Please don’t touch anything.
The door opens. I walk in and close the door before I do anything else. Then I turn. It’s a studio apartment, very small, just one large room with a small kitchenette, a round table for eating, and then a bathroom to the side. There are two pieces of furniture besides the dining table: a small wooden table on which a computer rests, and a dingy yellow couch.