The Secret in Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri

script, he thinks. So he states his request, and to justify it, he expands a bit on the subject of “his book.” He presents (becoming excited as he does so) a summary of the story, which she knows only superficially and by hearsay, that is, from remarks made by Chaparro himself and by other dinosaurs in the court. When he finishes, Irene gives him an amused look and asks, “Do you want me to make a call to the archive?”
    “If you could … I’d like that,” Chaparro declares, swallowing saliva.
    “It’s not a problem, Benjamín.” She frowns slightly. “But look, the people down there know you better than they know me.”
    Shit,
Chaparro thinks. Is his alibi so transparent? He says, “The problem is, the case is ancient history.” He’s running out of excuses.
    “Yes, I know. You told me about it once. It came in after you had me promoted to the eleventh Court, right?”
    Is there some second meaning behind that “you hadme promoted”? If there is, Irene’s more perceptive than Chaparro would like to believe. In 1967, and more precisely in October of that year, when she’d been working as an intern for two weeks, and not long after he’d definitively abandoned his demand that she answer the telephone as God intended, Chaparro had dreamed about her. He woke up trembling. He was a married man, and at the time he was still doing his best to convince himself that his marriage with Marcela was a good one. He tried to forget the dream, but it recurred on each of the five following nights. The last time, the image of Irene was so vivid and the glow of her naked body so convincingly bright that Chaparro felt like weeping when he woke up and realized that none of it had really happened. That morning, he arrived at the court determined to purge the amorous feelings that were beginning to consume him. He telephoned all the colleagues he was on more or less friendly terms with and lauded the merits of an intern who was embarking on a career in the Judiciary, a law student who deserved a paid position. At the time, Chaparro was already a young man respected and well liked in the profession, and some months later, one of the colleagues he’d contacted called him back with the offer of an entry-level job “for the girl.” Chaparro broke the radio silence he’d been maintaining with the young woman and told her the good news. Irene appeared quite happy to hear it, and her joy hurt him a little. Ifit was so easy for her to go, that meant there was nothing in their clerk’s office she minded leaving. Nothing she’d miss. It made sense, he told himself. She was engaged to a young engineering student, a friend of one of her older brothers. Chaparro’s passion made him feel uncomfortable in front of Marcela, and knowing that his love was unrequited made him feel lonely as well as unfaithful. He told himself it was best to uproot a plant that put out no shoots and had no future.
    Irene moved to her new office in March 1968, shortly before the Morales case came into his hands, and Chaparro lost sight of her. Things were like that in the courts. Someone who worked two floors down from you might as well be living in another dimension. Chaparro had no news of Irene until February 1976, when she reentered his life as the new clerk of his section: she’d obtained her law degree and been appointed to the post. Although Chaparro was a free man, having separated from Marcela several years previously, Irene’s return gave him no sort of opportunity to declare himself, even had he dared. When he saw her come through the door of the clerk’s office for the first time since 1968, she was preceded by a considerable, six-months-pregnant belly. Because he’d thought the way to spare himself the sting of knowing she had her own life—while his was being ruined—was to close his ears to any news of her, it was only then that Chaparro discovered she’d married herengineering student two years before. The young man was now an