Acid Bath

by Nancy Herndon

  “You could call a bail bondsman,” said Elena. “You’ll want to bond out.”

  “I don’t know any.”

  “There’s a list there on the wall.”

  “What was my bail set at? Maybe I have enough to pay it myself.”

  Elena glanced uneasily at Leo. “Two hundred thousand dollars, ma’am,” said Leo.

  “Two hundred thousand?” Sarah echoed. “Good lord, you must think I’m a danger to the public.”

  “We don’t set the bail, ma’am. And you’d have to put up cash if you’re going to do it yourself.”

  “It can’t be because you think I’m a flight risk. I came back.” Her voice sounded almost plaintive.

  “It’s no use worrying about it right now,” said Elena soothingly. “I imagine your lawyer can get it reduced.”

  “If I can ever find him — and then I’d have to stay here three days. Isn’t that what the judge said? The state has a right to three days’ notification on a bond-reduction hearing in a homicide case?”

  “Maybe he’s downstairs right now. You told them at your office to call him.”

  “Oh.” Sarah exhaled slowly. “Then ask him to come up here right — “

  “He can’t until the booking procedure is over.”

  Sarah, hands twisting at her waist, asked, “What does a bail bondsman charge to guarantee that sort of bond?”

  “Ten to fifteen percent.”

  Again Sarah’s eyes widened. “That’s twenty to thirty thousand dollars. Do I get any of that back?”

  Elena shook her head.

  “It’s unconscionable,” Sarah muttered, and dropped back onto the bench, looking pale. “Thirty thousand dollars just to get out of jail for something I didn’t do.”

  “You’ll have to go into the holding cell now, ma’am, if you’re through making calls,” said the sheriff’s officer.

  “There’s a collect phone over there,” said Elena quickly, pointing to some blue telephones on the wall down the length of the counter. “You can call friends or family.”

  “Family? My brother’s in Brazil. And my mother would have a heart attack if she knew I’m in jail.”

  The officer, in light tan trousers and a short-sleeved shirt with a red, blue, and silver sheriff’s emblem on the shoulder, unlocked and slid back an orange door, motioning Sarah into a large room with cement-block walls, the lower half of which were painted brown and the upper half white. Jail-style wainscoting, Elena had always thought. Wooden benches jutted out from the walls. There were four other women in the room. Elena, watching outside the door, could hear one of the women ask Sarah what she was in for.

  “Homicide,” said Sarah and sat down on the only empty bench, turning her face away from her cell mates.

  The woman, who had long black hair and was wearing a miniskirt and boots said, “She-it. What’d you do? Kill someone with snobbery?” and she click-clacked across the cell to sit by a sad-looking Hispanic girl in a limp flowered dress. It was an hour before Sarah was called to stand on the wooden platform in front of the red counter and give information — height, weight, date of birth, tattoos. She looked so astounded when she was asked if she had tattoos that Leo had to put his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. Elena glared at him. She had never been more anxious to escape from the county jail.

  Sarah was asked her driver’s license number, which she didn’t know because the property room had her billfold, her social security number, which she did know, and any numbers she might have from previous brushes with the law, to which she replied, “I once had a traffic ticket, but I have no idea of its number. That was my sole experience with the police.”

  Once the computer had produced the booking sheet to which her picture was attached, she was taken around the far end of the counter and directed again to position herself on huge footprints in front of a sign at chest level that gave her booking number, date of booking, and the words, “Police Department, Los Santos, TX.” They took a front view and a side-angled view, after which she was again fingerprinted, each print put on a card with red lines and type that fit in a frame on the white marble counter.

  “These go to the FBI, to Austin, and to both Los Santos’ departments,” said the officer fingerprinting her.

  “Wonderful,” said Sarah. “Now I’ll be in every criminal computer in the country.”

  “That’s right, ma’am,” said the officer. “These are called patent prints. They’re used to compare with latent prints from the crime scene.”

  “I was never at the crime scene,” Sarah protested.

  Elena and Leo, who were standing back at the end of the red counter, heard this and exchanged glances. Elena shook her head. She already knew that Sarah’s prints had been found in Gus’s apartment.

  Then Sarah was led back the way she had come, along the high red counter, around the corner. “That’s it,” said the sheriff’s officer to Elena and Leo. “Booking’s completed. You all can take off.”

  Sarah cast one desperate glance at Elena before the officer led her across the hall to another large room.

  “Wanna go get drunk again?” Elena muttered to Leo.

  “I’d hate to think this is turning you into an alcoholic.”

  “If anything could, this is it.”

  They took the elevator downstairs and went out to retrieve their weapons.

  “You know what? I feel like a traitor leaving her here.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Leo. “There’s probably a high-priced lawyer waiting for her downstairs right now.”

  “Yeah. But that bond — it’s ridiculous. Sarah’s not a flight risk.”

  “Well, you know Beltran and his friendly judge. He could probably get a million-dollar bond set on Mother Teresa.”

  “Yeah.” Elena opened the locker and slipped her 9-millimeter into the shoulder holster while waiting for the door to rise, then walked up the ramp with Leo to the car across the street.

  Twenty-nine

  * * *

  Thursday, May 28, 9:15 P.M.

  Elena fretted that evening until she finally gave in to her anxiety and called to find out who was on duty at the jail. Luck was with her. Sergeant Pete Dominguez said he’d be glad to check up on her prisoner. “Still here,” he announced after a couple of minutes.

  Elena groaned silently. It was after nine o’clock, so there was little likelihood that Sarah would bond out tonight. “Has she seen a bail bondsman or her lawyer?”

  “Hold on.” Another short wait. “Yeah, the lady’s had four visitors. Pretty good for a first night in jail. Let’s see. She saw someone from Expert Bonding Company at five, before she ever went upstairs.”

  Elena tried to imagine Sarah in that little booth on Two, trying to sit on the round silver plate that jutted out on a rod from the wall in front of the window through which prisoners could talk to lawyers and bail bondsmen. There was no way to do it in a ladylike or comfortable way, especially in a straight skirt, and Sarah might still have been in her suit skirt, probably was. She’d have had to hike up her skirt or sit sideways and twist around to face the window. “No bond, huh?” she asked Pete.

  “Well, she’s still inside. Maybe Expert is checking her out, but jeez, it says here the bond is two hundred thousand. With the banks closed, how’s she going to come up with twenty or thirty thou in cash, not to mention collateral for the rest? Does she own a house?”

  “No house,” said Elena, and she had no idea whether Sarah had that kind of money or would want to spend it — at least, not before she found out what it was like to stay in jail.

  “O.K., let’s see. Then she had a civilian visitor, Karl Bonnard, a professor at H.H.U.”

  Elena breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God Sarah was getting support from her colleagues. Sometimes in cases like this, the family and friends dived for cover. It was damn nice of Karl to go down to the jail and visit. And he had a house; maybe he’d offer to co-sign for the rest of the bond. Elena felt like calling and thanking him, but she di
dn’t. She had to stay out of it now.

  “Her attorney showed up at — ah — let’s see. Bonnard came at six. Her attorney showed up at seven.”

  “Well, hell, he took his time.”

  “Hey listen, it’s Oliver Formalee. If I were charged with murder and could afford him, that’s who I’d want — even if he did show up late.”

  Elena nodded. If Sarah could afford Formalee, who was the best in town, one of the best in the state, maybe she could afford the bond.

  “You can bet Formalee will get that bond reduced if she’s willing to wait the three days. Your lady will be out on the street pretty quick either way. That’s my take.”

  Elena nodded. Pete was right. Formalee wouldn’t let that ridiculous bond stand if Sarah wanted to wait the three days for a bond-reduction hearing.

  “And then she had one last visit, about nine o’clock. Guy named — ah — Colin Stuart. Listed as friend of the prisoner. So that’s two of the four she’s allowed to list.”

  Stuart? Of course. That was the man who had been in the office when they arrested her. The man who had called her the night she got home to say he was coming to Los Santos the next day. The man that Sarah had so bitterly indicated a personal interest in — if it hadn’t been derailed by Gus’s murder and the investigation. Well, it looked like the guy still had that personal interest. And Sarah, with no family in town, could use all the friends she could get. Maybe Stuart would be her co-signer. “Can you tell me who’s in the cell block with her?”

  “Hey, you’re really taking an interest in this broad.”

  “Well, she’s not the kind that would know what to do with most of the maggots who check into your establishment.”

  “Maggots?” Pete laughed. “Good word for them. Well, let’s see what maggots we’ve got in with Dr. Sarah Tolland. There’s a parole violator waiting on a parole board hearing. Ah — an agg assault. Prostitute assaulted a john who evidently decided not to pay. Ah — one robbery, second offense. Get this — she robbed a newsstand, stuck a deodorant tube in the owner’s back. One aggravated robbery, woman who was begging, using a knife. Down on the plaza. Had a two-year-old with her. One kidnapping — husband had custody of the kid. Mother snatched it. You probably read about that one in the paper.”

  “Oh, sure. Nadine arrested the woman. Poor thing.”

  “Poor thing, my butt,” said Pete. “She was convicted of child abuse. Got a suspended sentence.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Woman in for agg assault on a police officer. Member of Mujer Obrera. They were picketing one of those little sweatshops where the boss hadn’t paid ’em in a couple of weeks. Boss called the cops to get the trucks in and out of the lot. Woman hit the cop with her picket sign. Aggravated assault against an officer.”

  “Yeah,” said Elena. “I wish we didn’t have to get into that kind of stuff.”

  “I agree with you there,” said Pete. “You gotta feel sorry for those women. They make little enough even when they do get paid. Then those sleaze fly-by-night companies come in, hire some people, operate for a couple of months while the contract lasts, quit paying the operators, and try to get outa town before the shit hits the fan. Cop was lucky she didn’t hit him with a sewing machine.”

  “Too bad she didn’t hit the owner instead of the cop,” said Elena. “Any more?”

  “Just your maggot, hon. Dr. Sarah Tolland, homicide.”

  “An empty cell in the block,” marveled Elena.

  “If we go empty, which isn’t too often, it’s usually on Eleven.”

  “Thanks, Pete.”

  “No problema.”

  Elena hung up and went out onto her patio to trim the vines she was growing on a trellis for shade on the west side of the house. As she snipped industriously, she tried to imagine her friend Sarah up there on Eleven, eating dinner at a table bolted to the floor with the women Pete had described, sitting in a six by twelve cell with a window in the metal door, having to use the stainless steel john where anyone could look in on her.

  She probably wouldn’t be using one of the two community showers in the cell block that night. They’d have made her shower before they put her into jail clothes and sent her upstairs. Elena hoped they’d had sense enough not to insist on de-licing her. She could just imagine how Sarah would feel about a suggestion that she had lice.

  And the clothes. Elena shook her head and twined an errant section of the vine into the trellis. Sarah in one of those red smocks with the elasticized waist and the slip-on blue tennis shoes, probably all of it too big for her. She’d look like a concentration camp inmate. Elena whacked off a section of the vine she hadn’t meant to cut and then swore under her breath. She’d be sorry about this gardening project come next spring.

  Oh boy, she hoped Oliver Formalee got his client out before Sarah had to spend another night on one of those hard bunks that jutted out from the wall in a tiny cell on the eleventh floor. With her gourmet tastes she probably wouldn’t eat from the time she went in to the time she got out. They’d have a real hunger strike on their hands, not the usual kind where the prisoner announced that he or she was on a hunger strike and then consumed Twinkies and Cokes from the commissary. Most of the hunger strikes involved giving up jail food, not all food. At least Sarah had been lucky, if you could call it that. She’d been arrested on Thursday, which was one of the three visitor’s days on the women’s floor. Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Pray God Sarah wasn’t in long enough to see a second one.

  Elena had just finished bagging the trimmings and dragging them to the alley when Karl Bonnard called and mentioned his visit to Sarah, saying that he’d understand if Elena refused to see him until the case was resolved. The man had a finely tuned sense of propriety, she thought, better than hers. “I offered to put up my house as collateral for part of her bond,” he added, “but I’m afraid she was too proud to accept.” Elena was so touched that she accepted his invitation to dinner. Which wasn’t maybe the best idea. On the other hand, she didn’t have to tell him anything if he seemed to be pumping her for information on Sarah’s behalf, and she did like his company — once he’d apologized for talking endlessly about his soon-to-be-ex-wife — and his loyalty to Sarah. Maybe she could learn something from him that would help Sarah.

  Thirty

  * * *

  Friday, May 29, 8:30 A.M.

  “Got news for you,” said Leo, sitting down across the aisle from Elena. “She’s bonding out. She’ll be on the streets in time for lunch.”

  “On the streets?” said Elena grumpily. “That’s not really a term that applies to Sarah Tolland.”

  “Your prejudice is showing,” said Leo. “Oliver Formalee’s her lawyer, and he’s already filed a bunch of motions. Must have stayed up all night.”

  Elena nodded. Sounded like he was doing his job. God knows what he was charging Sarah for it. Of course, the screening officer at the D.A.’s office had to agree to take the case and assign it. The whole thing could disappear there or be sent back for more evidence. There were lots of possibilities that would keep Sarah from standing trial.

  Elena noticed for the first time how glum Leo looked. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “You’re not still hung over, are you?”

  “I gotta wife who says she ain’t sleeping with any borrachos or whatever the Spanish word for drunk is. That’s night before last. I told her I was drinking with two very nice policewomen, and she didn’t like that either.”

  “Can’t blame her there. Easy to see you were taken with Maggie Daguerre.”