The Lies that Bind Read Online Free

your line was busy at home, so I looked up your address, got a cab and went to your apartment.”
    â€œWhy didn’t Cindy come with you?”
    â€œI didn’t ask her to.”
    â€œ How is she?” I asked.
    â€œAll right. It’s been difficult since Michael died, but—”
    â€œMichael died?”
    â€œThree years ago. He was her only son, my only grandson.”
    â€œOh, God. How did that happen?”
    â€œIn a car accident. Cynthia and Whit want to get together with you, and I suggested you all come here for dinner Saturday. Well, are you going to represent me?”
    Was I? She was my old friend’s mother, but we hadn’t liked each other back then and it looked as though we weren’t going to like each other much now. On the other hand, homicide is more interesting than real estate and divorce, and she obviously could afford to pay. “I’ll require a retainer,” I said.
    â€œI’ll pay it.”
    â€œAll right,” I said. “I’ll talk to the DA’s office, and I’ll be in touch.”
    â€œDinner will be here Saturday night at six,” she replied. “You will have spoken to the DA’s office by then, so come at five and we’ll have a chance to talk before Whit and Cindy arrive.”
    â€œI’ll check my calendar,” I said.
    I drove out of Los Cerros in slow motion, taking the speed bumps at a pace the Nissan’s aging shock absorbers could absorb. I wondered who the DA would assign to this case and why Cindy Reid hadn’t called me when she moved to town. I saw a man putting on the putting green. It was a warm enough day to swim, and kids were playing Marco Polo in the pool. “Marco,” one kid yelled. “Polo,” another one answered. A dark-haired, heavyset guy in a wheelchair was rolling across the tennis court. He stopped and stared at me as I drove by.

3
    I N BERNALILLO COUNTY there’s always some controversy surrounding law enforcement. The police catch the blue flu and call in sick because they didn’t get the pay raise they wanted. The sheriff promotes his wife to chief deputy with a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary. That could happen anyplace, but what makes Bernalillo County unique is that the sheriff holds a news conference to announce it. The latest episode had to do with a guy named Jimmie Solano, who, in the midst of an attempted suicide, lunged at police officers with a three-inch pocket knife. The officers shot and killed him and kept him from killing himself. It was only one of a number of fatal shootings recently that have given the APD one of the worst records in the West. In the past few years the Duke City police have killed more people than the police in Tucson, Austin, El Paso, Tulsa and Colorado Springs combined. Often domestic violence is involved. Usually the victims are distraught or intoxicated. The APD are trained to “shoot to stop” when they believe they or another person is being threatened, as opposed to shooting to wound. Stopping means aiming at the largest part of the body, where the vital organs are located. A police officer from Tucson was quoted in the Journal recently as saying that perhaps the Albuquerque police had more victims because they were better shots. “It could be when they ‘shoot to stop,’ they’re connecting more,” he said.
    Deputy District Attorney Anthony Saia, who had been assigned the Justine Virga case, was an old friend and my favorite deputy DA. He had a creased, rumpled, unmade-bed kind of face. He always looked comfortable—even in his suit—as if he were sitting around on Sunday morning in his bathrobe, reading the paper, eating sugar doughnuts, drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes. That was one reason I liked him—he had bad habits to equal my own. There aren’t many people left to smoke with anymore. His office made me feel right at home too; his desk was a city