Short Straw Read Online Free PDF Page A

shade trees, to speak of. I take my tools and go to peoples’ houses and fix their cars.”
    “You any good at it?”
    “There are a lot of crates around Santa Fe that would have already been compacted, if it hadn’t been for my work. People get their money’s worth.”
    Eagle tapped the file. “Says here you killed three people with a shotgun. You want to tell me about that?”
    “You want the long version or the short version?”
    “The short one.”
    “A guy was fucking my girl and a girlfriend of hers. That was my job. I came home to my trailer and found them splattered all over the bedroom, and I called the cops.”
    “Tribal or local?”
    “Local. I don’t live on the reservation. My trailer’s parked out near the airport by that junkyard, which I like to think of as my parts department.”
    “Who was the guy?”
    “I didn’t recognize him; he didn’t have a face.”
    Eagle glanced at the file. “The name James Earl Hardesty mean anything to you?”
    “Jimmy? Was that who it was?”
    “Says here.”
    “Yeah, I know…knew him. We both drank regular at a bar called the Gun Club out on Airport Road. I didn’t have nothing against him.”
    “Until he screwed your girl?”
    “Well, if I’d known about it, and I ran into him at the Gun Club, I might have taken a pool cue to his head, but I wouldn’t have killed him. It’s not like she was a virgin.”
    “Your call to the cops came in at six-ten P.M. last Wednesday?”
    “That sounds right. They were there in two minutes and asked me a lot of questions. Then two detectives showed up, looked around and arrested me.”
    “Where were you before six-ten? Tell me about your day.”
    “I left my trailer about seven-thirty, had breakfast at the IHOP on Cerrillos Road, fixed a guy’s car out on Agua Fría—that took all morning; I ate lunch at El Pollo Loco; I got a call on my cell phone about a job off of San Mateo—a fan belt was all it was. I went to Pep Boys for the belt, then put it on the car. I always check out a car for other things wrong, so I pointed out a couple things to the owner, and I fixed those, so he’d pass his inspection test. I didn’t have any other work for the day, so I stopped by the Gun Club for a beer around four-thirty and shot a couple games of pool, then I went home.”
    “Who saw you at the Gun Club?”
    “The guy I played pool with, but I didn’t know him; never seen him before. I took ten bucks off him, so he’d remember me. The bartender knows me; his name is Tupelo.”
    “From the Gun Club, it’s a short drive home. Did you stop anywhere?”
    “I picked up a bottle of bourbon at the drive-thru, that was all.”
    Eagle tapped the file again. “Says here they found your fingerprints on the shotgun and gunshot residue on your hands.”
    “It was my shotgun, so it would have my fingerprints on it, and I picked it up off the floor and set it on the kitchen counter, so I might have gotten some residue on my hands. When they tested me, they found it on my right palm.”
    “Nowhere else?”
    “Nope.”
    “How fresh was the scene?”
    “Not all that fresh; I couldn’t tell you how long, but some of the blood had dried.”
    “Did you get any blood from the scene on yourself or your clothes?”
    “No, sir; I backed right out of that bedroom when I saw the mess inside.”
    “Step in anything?”
    “That’s possible, but if I did, I didn’t notice it.”
    “I’m going to need the names of the people whose cars you fixed.”
    “Look on the front passenger seat of my pickup. It’s parked outside my trailer. I’ve got a plastic briefcase there, and there are two pads of receipts inside. There’s one name on the last receipt in each of them; address, too.”
    “Anything else you want to tell me, Joe?”
    “Can’t think of anything. Any chance of getting out of here?”
    “Let me check out your alibi, and we’ll see. How much bail can you raise?”
    “Not much.”
    “Well, if your alibi checks, you