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

fine Savannah Police Department took it upon themselves to believe the simpler of the two explanations. Even in the absence of such pesky things as alibis and lack of any evidence that Morales ever fired that gun.”

“So, they just buried his claim of fifteen alibi witnesses?”

“In the best possible place to be sure they would never see the light of day.”

“I have to speak to them. I need to talk to these people and see what they have to say,” she shook the paper as she said it. “I can’t believe they didn’t talk to a single one of them. I have to call them.”

She shoved her hand into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

Before she could dial the first number, Tweed glanced at the Grandfather clock. “And the clocks were striking thirteen,” he said, as a single gong echoed from the antique time keeper. “Perhaps, you should call them a little later in the morning, when normal people have eschewed the bonds of slumber.”

“Oh, right.” She put her phone away and a yawn burst out of her mouth. “Guess I should be going.”

“I usually arrive by ten or ten thirty,” he said, walking her to the door. “And Mattie always has coffee and danishes on by then. You’re more than welcome to use this office for your purposes. I honestly don’t know that Chief Decker will notice, or even care, if you clock in and come on over. I’m sure he gave you this onerous job to get you out of the way of more important police business.”

She hurried across the street to the lot behind the police station. She put the key into the ignition of her Datsun—the single thing her mother had left her when she died—praying the engine would turn over. The car was an unfortunate shade of brown with intermittent wipers that worked intermittently at best … if at all. The radio could be tuned with a pair of pliers grabbing stem of the long-gone plastic knob to exactly three stations—88.1 The Light, 93.1 La Frontera, and 107.7 The Bull. She wasn’t sure if that was because the antenna was faulty in some way or if there were only three stations left broadcasting in Savannah. The AC had given out a long time ago, but the faux leather seats were faded and cracked, so she’d covered them with chic velour covers that looked like black and white cowhide protecting her legs from scalding in the hot, South Georgia sun.

Three cranks did the trick and she was blowing smoke down the street as she made her way across the tracks to her tiny, one-bedroom apartment. The bright, full moon draped long blue shadows over everything and more than once, she had the sensation that someone was watching her. She passed three golf courses, two cemeteries, a dozen parks with creepy statues and fountains, a Walmart, Georgia Southern University—not yet a hub of activity at this time of night—before pulling into the poorly lit parking lot at the Orchard View Apartments. Though maybe there had been once, there was no orchard anywhere near the complex, and the view was of a concrete jungle of low-end storage units.

The population of Orchard View was an incongruous mix of students and retirees making her feel, at times, like the only one who wasn’t getting stoned on Vodka Cranberries or Vicodin. She didn’t look at anything but the door handle as she jammed her key in, turned it, ducked inside, and turned the deadbolt. She slid the brass chain across and wedged a wooden chair back under the knob.

The front room was billed as open concept in the splashy brochures in the rental office. In actuality, it was a single space that was supposed to double as living room, kitchen, and dining room. Amber could easily sit at the “vintage,” chrome diner table she’d bought at the thrift store, adjust the vertical blinds hanging down over the screechy sliding door looking out into the courtyard, adjust the rabbit ears on top of her tube TV, and scramble an egg all at the same time. To say it was cozy was to misuse the word in the worst way. The out-of-fashion taupe paint bubbled in places and the apartment always felt slightly damp. She wanted to adjust the air conditioning to just above walk-in cooler temperature, but that would mean a higher utility bill, so she just cranked up the dusty box fan in the kitchen window sending a pile of unopened envelopes cascading off the counter.

Knowing she wasn’t likely to sleep at this point, she poured a glass of milk and sat down at the kitchen table. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the single sheet of yellow paper—the one with all of Marcario Morales’s alibi witnesses on it—and began to make notes.

6

The List

After a couple of simple internet searches on her phone, she found that the first five names on the list were friends of Morales. His alibi claim produced a web-like story of his visit to Florida at the time of Eric Torres’s murder. The original notes taken by the police were in a nearly illegible scrawl that reminded Amber of a doctor’s handwriting. The detective who had taken Morales’s statement was listed as Roger Dalton. Amber was not aware of anyone by that name in the department and he wasn’t listed as the lead officer on the case. That wasn’t altogether unusual, but it made tracking down the team who had questioned the alleged shooter just a few days after the event tough, if not impossible.

She made her way through the other names and the cryptic notes about each one, some with no more than a single word or two to describe the nature of the alibi in question. But it became clear that they were all alibi witnesses that would say Marcario Morales could not have been in New York at the time of the murder. According to Morales, he was more than