The Lies that Bind Read Online Free PDF

had happened? How much she’d planned, how much she remembered, how much she’d blacked out? It wasn’t really my job to find out. My job was to present reasonable doubt and better now than later, because this was a case I did not want to take to trial. Given the evidence so far, it wouldn’t be hard for Saia to get an indictment; grand juries in Bernalillo County will indict a burrito. “Martha didn’t move the body or try to conceal her car, did she?”
    â€œ Nope. The body didn’t appear to have been moved; the car was parked in its usual spot.”
    â€œIt seems like a guilty woman would make some attempt to cover her tracks.”
    â€œA guilty woman who was sober and in her right mind would, but women who take too much Halcion aren’t always in their right minds, and women who take Halcion and booze together are never in their right minds,” he said. “We’re seeing more of these kinds of cases now. In combination, Halcion and liquor can cause poor judgment, decreased attention span and bizarre behavior.”
    Amnesia too.
    â€œThe older people get, the more sensitive they are to psychoactive drugs. An automobile in the hands of an elderly person on Halcion and booze can be the equivalent of a cocked and loaded gun.”
    â€œWhen did the police get to the scene?”
    â€œEleven-fifteen.”
    An hour after Martha got home, an hour in which Justine’s body might have been lying in the rain or might not. “What did the medical examiner give as the time of death?”
    â€œTen-fifteen, more or less.” He knew as well as I that the Office of the Medical Investigator can’t pinpoint death to the minute.
    I put out my cigarette, got ready to go. “Maybe it’s just bad karma that brought these two together,” I said.
    Saia laughed. “You and I start believing in karma, good or bad, we’ll be out of a job.” He looked at the clock on the wall. The minute hand had come to twelve noon exactly. “What are you doing for lunch?”
    â€œTaking you to Arriba Tacos for a stuffed sopapilla.”
    â€œIf that’s a bribe, I accept.” He put out his Camel and chucked the contents of the overflowing ashtray into the wastebasket. He stood up, leaned back, bent his knees to see into the too-low mirror and smoothed his hair in place.
    The way I judge a man is not by how much money he makes, how many cases he wins or loses, whether he’s good to his mother or his dog or even how much hair he has. My criterion is whether a guy is willing to eat with me at Arriba Tacos. They have the best stuffed sopapillas in town, but a lot of men don’t appreciate that—I’d been married to one once. That kind of guy sees a drive-in shack with flames licking the red letters on the sign and thinks the food isn’t good enough for him.
    Saia and I sat outside, eating our sopapillas and watching the traffic go by. At high noon there was about enough shade to shelter a bug. We ate our hot food in the hot sun, the way it’s meant to be eaten. An immaculate turquoise and white fifties Chevy with sparkling chrome stopped for a light.
    â€œWhat do you call a Chevy on a stick?” Saia asked me.
    That was easy. “Art,” I said. Elevated Chevys had become an item on the New Mexico art scene. The City of Albuquerque paid an Arizona sculptor $75,000 for a sculpture of a purple tile Chevy on a green tile arch. Santa Fe got one that was balanced on a pole. Someone took a chain saw and cut that one down. You couldn’t do that to our Chevy, but a lot of people would have sent it back to Arizona if they’d been able. We finished eating and lit a cigarette for the road.
    â€œBest damned sopapillas in Albuquerque,” Saia said.
    â€œIn America,” said I.

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    W HEN I GOT to Hamel and Harrison, my secretary, Anna, was sitting at her desk drinking coffee, eating yogurt—the diet that kept her a size