The Alibi

“I didn’t kill anybody on Saturday, but if I had, it would have been in self-defense. You see, Detective Smilow, Solicitor Cross lured me to his cabin in the woods and there he raped me repeatedly.”

“Solicitor Cross, how lovely to see you again. How long has it been? Oh, I remember. It was last Saturday night when we screwed our brains out.”

Alex Ladd said none of that. Nor did she say any of the other horrific things that Hammond had imagined her saying. She didn’t scream invectives, or denounce him in front of his colleagues, or wink suggestively, or give any other sign of recognition.

But when she turned toward him and their eyes connected, everything else around him seemed to vanish and all his focus belonged to her. Their eyes were engaged for only a second or two, but if the exchange had lasted an eternity, it couldn’t have been more puissant or meaningful.

He wanted to ask, What have you done to me? and mean it more ways than one. He had been thunderstruck on Saturday evening. He had thought, even hoped, that seeing her again, under bright fluorescent lighting and in a far less romantic surrounding, would have less of an impact on him. Just the opposite. His desire to reach for her was a physical ache.

All this shot through his mind in less time than it took to blink. Hoping his voice wouldn’t betray him, he said, “Dr. Ladd.”

“How do you do?”

Then she turned away. That routine acknowledgment dashed Hammond’s desperate hope that he actually had been a stranger to her on Saturday, and that their meeting at the fair had been purely accidental. If so, upon being introduced now, her green eyes would have widened and she would have blurted out something to the effect of, “Why, hello! I didn’t expect to see you here.” But she had registered no surprise whatsoever. When she turned her head to speak a greeting, she had known exactly whom she would be addressing.

In fact, it appeared that she had been braced for the introduction, just as he had been. She had almost overplayed the aloofness, had turned away almost too quickly to be polite.

There was no longer any question about it—their meeting had been by design, and, for reasons that were still unapparent, the time they had spent together was as compromising to her as it was to him.

Frank Perkins spoke first. “Hammond, this is a complete waste of my client’s time.”

“Very possibly it is, Frank, but I would like to make that determination for myself. Detective Smilow seems to think that what Dr. Ladd can tell us warrants my hearing it.”

The lawyer consulted his client. “Do you mind going through it again, Alex?”

“Not if it means that I can go home sooner rather than later.”

“We’ll see.”

That comment had come from Steffi, and it made Hammond want to slap her. Turning the Q and A over to Smilow, he propped himself against the closed door, where he had an unrestricted view of Alex’s profile.

Smilow restarted the tape recorder and added Hammond’s name to those present. “Did you know Lute Pettijohn, Dr. Ladd?”

She sighed as though she had already answered that question a thousand times. “No, Detective, I did not.”

“What were you doing downtown Saturday afternoon?”

“I could argue that I live downtown, but in answer to your question, I went window-shopping.”

“Did you buy anything?”

“No.”

“Go into any stores?”

“No.”

“You didn’t duck into any stores or chat with any shopkeepers who could corroborate that you were there for the purpose of shopping?”

“Unfortunately, no. I didn’t see anything that caught my eye.”

“You just parked your car and walked around?”

“That’s right.”

“Wasn’t it a little hot outside for a stroll?”

“Not for me. I like the heat.”