Guardian of Lies by Steve Martini

you anywhere?”
    “No. But I think he was going to. If he knew I was trying to leave.”
    “But he never did it?”
    “No. He would not let me have cash. He took money away from me whenever he found it. And then he would send money to my family in Costa Rica. It made no sense unless he was trying to keep them quiet and keep me here against my will.”
    “Did you tell him you wanted to leave, to go back to Costa Rica?”
    “Almost every day. Sometimes several times a day.”
    “And what did he say?”
    “He made excuses. Next week. Next month. Two weeks from now, and then he would change the subject.”
    “Did you think of going to the police?” Harry knows this is the first question the prosecutor will ask if they get Katia on the stand.
    “No. But if I had to, I would have. He knew it.”
    “These pictures,” I ask, “the ones your mother took, why would they be of concern to Emerson?”
    “That’s what I wanted to know. He wouldn’t tell me,” she says.
    “Where are the pictures now?”
    According to Katia, the police have them. They were in her bag the day they arrested her. She and Emerson had argued over the photographs the night she left. He had finally given them back to her and she had stashed them in her overnight bag before she left the house.
    “That brings us to the bag,” says Harry. “What else was in there?” Harry already knows, but he wants to hear what Katia has to say.
    “You mean the gold coins and the stubs from the pawnshop dealer? I already told them all about it.” Katia is talking about the police and her earlier statements to them.
    Her plan was simple. When she flew into the country with Pike coming north, they landed and changed planes in Houston. She knew she could get back home from there. She also knew she had enough money from the cash in Pike’s wallet the night he was killed for a one-way bus ticket from San Diego to Houston. She had gathered the bus fare information off the Internet when Pike wasn’t looking.
    According to Katia, the gold coins she took from Pike’s study were to cover the cost of an airline ticket from Houston home to Costa Rica. The exact cost of the airfare was less certain. She couldn’t be sure. But she knew one thing. She needed time to cash out the coins. According to Katia, the bus ride would give her that time, all the while putting distance between herself and Emerson Pike. While he was searching the airport for her, she would be gone. She fenced some of the coins at a pawnshop in a small town in western Arizona just hours before the police caught up with her. The pawn tickets were still in her purse, along with the cash. When they stopped her, Katia thought she was being arrested for theft.
    One thing was clear, if anyone should be in jail it was the pawnshop owner. Katia had no idea of the value of what she was selling. According to expert appraisals, she had pawned more than thirty thousand dollars in rare coins and had received just over fourteen hundred dollars in cash, far less than the gold content of the coins she’d sold.
    “What happened to the rest of the coins?” says Harry.
    “They were in my bag,” she says.
    “No. No, I mean the other two hundred and eighty-six coins. That’s what the police are estimating is gone, the ones from the drawers. The ones you broke into.”
    Katia gives me a puzzled look, then back to Harry. “I didn’t go near any of the drawers. I didn’t need to. I took only what was on the desk. There were nineteen coins and twelve others in two plastic sheets. I counted them carefully on the bus when no one else was looking, down inside my bag. I am sure. This is not a question. I took no other coins,” she says.
    According to the police there was almost half a million dollars in coins missing from Emerson Pike’s study the night he was murdered. “You’re sure you don’t want to think about this?” says Harry. “Where you might have put them?”
    “I am sure.” Katia looks at him,