Her Lost Alibi by David Berens (e reader .txt) 📕

key, friendly to Latin customers, and quiet. Either way, he took the free beer, gulped half of it down, and waved to the punks in the corner. Free is free.

“How about a tequila shot now?” A woman’s voice said over his right shoulder.

He didn’t have to look. He knew it was her.

25

Bar Rita

Amber Cross sat down next to the man hunched over at the bar. Even without his prison jumpsuit and clean-shaven head, she had known it was him. Her heart pounded in her chest and a trickle of sweat rolled down her back. Part of that was her nerves, but it was also the sweltering, soupy heat down here. Much hotter than her new home in Savannah. It made her appreciate it all the more.

The bartender pointed a finger in her direction and she shook her head to wave him off. She propped her elbow on the heavily lacquered wood and held her hand out to the man.

“How ‘bout it, Marc?” She asked him. “Not going to shake the hand of the woman who freed you from prison?”

He swallowed the rest of his beer and held the glass up to order another. He took a deep breath and turned toward her. Looking over the top of his sunglasses, he gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. Amber smirked.

“Of course you won’t,” she said. “I missed it. I completely overlooked it the first time we met. I thought it was just because of the shackles, but it wasn’t, was it?”

She looked at her palm.

“Most people are okay with the knowledge that there are a few germs there.” she turned her hand over and put it on the bar. “But not you, Marc. Isn’t that right?”

He didn’t answer, but stared hard at her through his mirrored lenses.

“I spoke to Olanta. She told me she saw you kneeling over Eric as he bled out, holding the gun in your hand. But when the police brought you in for questioning a few hours later, they didn’t find any trace of gunshot residue. None on your hands, none on your clothes, none at all. It was a fact they were willing to overlook, but they didn’t know about your compulsions.”

The bartender slid a frosty glass toward him. She waited for him to pick it up, but he didn’t. Maybe he hadn’t quite overcome those tendencies. Maybe she’d triggered him and he wasn’t going to touch the glass. It didn’t matter if he did.

“You probably wash your hands ten or fifteen times a day. That’s why there wasn’t any residue, isn’t it, Marc?”

Seemingly fighting an internal battle, Morales picked up a napkin, wrapped it around the glass, and took a sip.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said.

“You played us with the alibis,” she said. “You played the detectives way back when and you played me. I have to admit, it was pretty smart. I almost didn’t catch it.”

He was so still, Amber wondered if he had somehow turned to stone.

“Eric was murdered on June 20th, 2010, the date of Gemma Jimenez’s baby’s baptism. A beautiful baby. You were in Florida to see her born. But that was on June 13th. A week earlier. It was an easy thing to mix-up and we all fell for the juxtaposition of those two important days. But you weren’t there on the 20th, were you? Gemma didn’t like you, didn’t want you hanging around, influencing her husband. She threw you out before the baptism.”

“You don’t know that,” he said. “You got no proof. Maybe I was here. Just stayed in a hotel.”

Amber reached in her pocket. She pulled out her phone and pulled up a picture of a punched bus ticket. She slid it across the bar. He glared at it.

“It’s a ticket for a ride on a Greyhound from Pembroke Pines to New York.”

He shrugged, but his body was tense.

“It’s dated June 17th, 2010. And it’s punched twice. Once for when you got on the bus leaving Florida and once for when you got off in New York.”

“You were in New York when Eric Torres was shot,” she felt her voice begin to tremble. “You know, if you hadn’t come to my house … if you hadn’t … touched me…”

The memory of the attack snapped into her mind. His rough hands throwing her down on the couch. The horror of realizing what his intentions sent terror up and down her spine. A new detail that she hadn’t remembered came back. The last piece of the puzzle snapped into place.

Her father rushed into the room, his fists slamming into Morales over and over. He punched him in the face, in the ribs, in the back as he ran. She could see her father’s face, a mask of anger and guilt. She could hear his voice, crying out rebukes as he beat Morales. She saw the man clawing his way across the carpet, leaving a bloody trail across it. Her father chased him out the door, but somehow, Morales got away from the enraged preacher. Her father ran into the road, shaking his raw, scraped fists in the air as Morales ran.

“You cannot get away from your sins,” he screamed. “The Lord will punish you for what you have done.”

When he finally came back into the house, he held his daughter and smoothed her hair as they both sobbed into each other’s arms.

She realized that Joseph Cross had been carrying the guilt of that attack since that day. Over a decade ago, he had gone against his morals, he had gone against the wishes of his god and the covenant he had made as a man of peace and kindness. When the stroke took the sharpness away from his mind, he had confused that beating of Morales with … shooting him in New York. Yes, he had gone to New York, but had probably never found the man, instead, visiting the Bronx Zoo and buying his baby girl a snow globe with a pink