EAST OF THE SUN
A JACE SALOME NOVEL
EAST OF THE SUN
TREY R. BARKER
FIVE STAR
A part of Gale, Cengage Learning
Copyright © 2016 by Trey R. Barker
Five Star™ Publishing, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Barker, Trey R.
Title: East of the sun : a Jace Salome novel / Trey R. Barker.
Description: Waterville, Maine : Five Star, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016024382| ISBN 9781432832322 (hardcover) | ISBN 1432832328 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781432832360 (ebook) |ISBN 1432832360 (ebook) |ISBN 9781432834722 (ebook) | ISBN 143283472x (ebook)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3236-0 eISBN-10: 1-43283236-0
Subjects: LCSH: Policewomen—Fiction. | Correctional personnel—Fiction. | Police—Texas—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction
Classification: LCC PS3602.A77555 E17 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024382
First Edition. First Printing: December 2016
This title is available as an e-book.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-3236-0 ISBN-10: 1-43283236-0
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Visit our website– http://www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar/
Contact Five Star™ Publishing at [email protected]
Printed in the United States of America
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
No one is an island. It is the same with writers, though there is only a single butt in the chair. I started writing in the 7th grade and none of the millions of words I’ve written have been written solely on my own. A bevy of people contribute to keeping my behind in the chair. For help in so many different ways, I’d like to thank Craig Johnson, Elaine Ash, Alison Evans, Midland County (TX) Justice of the Peace John Barton, Bureau County (IL) Deputies Jordan Sommers and Mackenzie Kruse, Sandi Loper, John Purcell, Eric Campbell, Elicia Dunn.
As ever, if it’s right, blame them. If it’s wrong, blame me.
One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.
—K. L. Toth
CHAPTER 1
—whiskey tango foxtrot! I’m bored. Ain’t the road guys doing nothing tonight?—
The voice over the radio, a faux-British accent that more than one jailer liked to try on occasionally as an homage to Zachary County sheriff’s office records manager James Balsamo, was shot through with exhaustion borne of the tedium of emptiness.
—on Christmas Eve? No way; they’re with their families—
—or mistresses—
—or both—
From her seat at one of the booking computers, Jace Salome’s eyes widened.
Corporal Kleopping laughed. “Wait for it. In 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .”
—can the chatter—
—uh . . . yes, sir—
“Had to be Urrea, didn’t it?” Kleopping shook his head. “Never heard a British accent until you’ve heard a Tex-Mex do it.”
The collective chuckle slipped away as quickly as west-Texas melted snow. The deputies went back to the nothing that had occupied them so far on this Christmas Eve. This was the dead shift, working 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. six days on and two off, and this was their third night on. For the first time since Jace had pinned a badge on her chest eight months ago, there hadn’t been a single arrestee. More than one hundred and sixty thousand people in the county and on any given night there were about forty cops, between county, the one big city, and the smattering of small towns scattered over the county like high notes from a jazz trumpet. Yet somehow there hadn’t been a single arrestee brought to the jail.
“Oh, man.” Rory banged her head against the desk. “I hate wintertime overnights. Even worse on Christmas.”
Booking had eight officers, six of whom were part of the Emergency Response Team. Tonight, Jace and Rory were the booking officers. Jace wasn’t certified for ERT and wasn’t sure she wanted to be. The duty struck her as requiring a taste for violence she didn’t have.
“Why can’t we put up some lights or a tree or something?” Jace asked.
Rory mimed a string of lights around her neck, strangling her.
“Ah. Right.”
Deputy Sassy Laimo, a woman with a vague mustache who’d been with the department about a decade, shook her head. “Been here nearly a year, Salome; figure it out already.”
“Barely nine months and she knows what she’s doing,” Rory said. “Mostly.” Rory chuckled but it died when Laimo opened her mouth again.
“Yeah? If she’s so smart, how come she hasn’t yet figured out her lover Bobby is selling ganja to all the inmates?”
Rory laughed. “You jealous, Laimo?”
Jace looked at Laimo. “Inmate Bobby? No, he’s not. That’s inmates jealous that he’s a trusty. Jailhouse scuttlebutt.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
“Okay, so our guy’s speeding, right?” Rory’s voice suddenly boomed in the booking hallway. “And I’m writing out his ticket—”
Kleopping snorted. “That’s right . . . the newly minted part-time road deputy.” He winked. “Soon to be Cop of the Year for Rooster County.”
Everyone in the long hallway hooted, though Rory stared them down and eventually pulled a wallet out of her pocket and flipped it open. The Rooster County badge gleamed. “That’s right, bitches, Rooster County. RC 30 on the radio. Listen for me. So I’m writing our guy a ticket and I notice a crap-load of machetes. In the back seat. Like . . . twenty? Thirty, maybe? So I say, ‘What are those for?’
“ ‘I’m a juggler,’ our guy says. ‘Use ’em in my act.’ ”
“You get his phone number?” Laimo laughed, a brittle sound that reminded Jace of breaking twigs. “Book him for the New Year’s Eve party.”
Rory’s eyes went wide. “Never met a juggler before, so I say, ‘Yeah? I’d love to see it.’ Our guy gets outta his car and starts juggling. Grabs three machetes and tosses ’em straight up. Crazy, right? Three and then four and five, and finally he’s got seven machetes going. Our guy ain’t even breaking a sweat. He’s got ’em going overhand and underhand and behind his back and everything else. It’s like freakin’ Barnum and Bailey right there on I-20.
“So while he’s doing his thing, this other car drives by, real slow . . . like grandma slow. Driver leans out the window and says, ‘Shit! I gotta give up drinking and driving . . . I could never pass that sobriety test.’ ”
The booking hallway was silent for a beat before it exploded in a chorus of laughs and catcalls and shouts of “liar,” and “bullcrap.” A couple of jailers threw wads of paper in Rory’s direction.
“That’s a load,” Jace said.
With a wink, Rory put a hand over her heart. “God’s
honest truth.”
“Whatever.” Jace grinned while her fingers idly tapped out a jazz riff.
“Wait.” Rory, bug-eyed, looked at the clock. “I think it moved.”
“Don’t toy with us, Bogan,” Laimo said.
“No, really, I think it did. Another thirty . . . forty . . . hours and we’ll be done for the night.”
One of the guys, Jimmson, said, “So there’s a horse cop—”
“We don’t have a horse division.” Rory winked at Jace.
“Got enough horses’ asses for it,” Jace said.
The room boomed with laughter.
Rory jumped up and clapped like a cheerleader in love with the quarterback. “Oh, break it off in their bee-hinds! She made a joke, you guys. You hear that? An actual joke.”
“Nine months . . . one joke.” Kleopping grabbed Jace’s hand and raised it, a triumphant fighter. “Late to the party but at least she’s here . . . finally.”
Jimmson waited until the room was quiet and continued, laying his story out theatrically. “One day a seven-year-old little girl drives past this horse cop on her little Schwinn.”
“Don’t make Schwinns anymore, dumbass.”
Rory stuck her tongue out at Laimo. “Let him tell his story. You can tell the one about electrolysis next.”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
“Willya let me tell it? This seven-year-old passes the horse cop and the copper notices she don’t have no taillight so he pulls her over.”
“No taillight? On a bike?” Rory cocked her head. “This is what you’re going with?”
—control . . . B-boy inner—
The voice over the radio—a guard in B Pod—sounded tired. On quiet winter nights, when bad boys and girls stayed home to try and keep the chill out of their bones, and the hours were molasses-slow, attention wandered and it became difficult to stay awake. Eventually everyone sounded tired. A few seconds later, from the far side of B Pod, everyone heard the muffled thump of the inner door opening and then closing.
—control . . . B-boy outer—
Again, the pause, then the pop of the lock, then the door closing.
The inner door led directly into the pod. The outer door led directly into the hallway. The area between those two doors was called the go-between.
“Got a prisoner moving?” Kleopping asked Rory.
“It sound like something else?” Laimo asked.
“Ooh, Deputy Laimo, don’t yell at my stripes.” Kleopping didn’t actually rub his corporal’s stripes, but close. He was in charge of booking and ERTs for the dead shift. “When’s Bibb back? I can’t stand how Conroy does the job.”
Sergeant Bibb was the dead-shift control-room sergeant and before he left for a forced vacation, Bibb had militantly begun announcing any and all movement of inmates. Guilt plagued him, every moment of every day, because of the beating Jace had taken in a go-between. Conroy, manning the control room while Bibb was gone, mostly didn’t follow Bibb’s new policy. The new way of doing things drove nearly everyone crazy at first with the amount of radio traffic, but ultimately, deputies had gotten used to it.
And were thankful for it.
Because no one wants what happened to me to happen to them.
“Couple more nights.” Rory sniffed the air. “Until the aroma of microwaved burritos will once again fill the jail like . . . like . . . I don’t know, like something.”
“Dirty sweat socks?” Kleopping said.
“Willya let me tell it?” Jimmson glared at everyone. “So the cop says, ‘Did Santa give you that bike for Christmas?’ The girl, see, she laughs and says, ‘Yes, sir.’ The cop writes her a ticket and says, ‘Next time, tell Santa to put a taillight on it.’ The girl takes the ticket and says, ‘Did Santa give you that horse?’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the copper says. ‘Well,’ the girl says, ‘next time tell Santa the dick goes under the horse—’ ”
“Not on top,” everyone finished together.
“Yeah, okay . . . you probably heard that one.”
Another round of laughter bounced up and down the long, narrow booking hallway. Sound reverberated off the metal doors of the holding cells, off the metal benches with D rings bolted to them, off the concrete walls. In the booking area, everything except the two computer desks was made of metal or concrete or bolted to concrete or metal, which meant every sound was amplified and multiplied. Usually, on a busy night, the hallway was such a cacophony that Jace went home with a headache. But tonight, the booming silence made the hallway feel more dangerous than usual.
When the electric lock on the metal door between booking and the main hallway popped, the sound thundered through booking like a cannon on a lonely hill. Jace jumped, then crushed her annoyance at herself for being startled.
“Still scared?” Laimo’s voice was overly sweet, a confection designed just for Jace.
“Shut up, Laimo.” Rory’s voice was as hard as Laimo’s had been soft.
“Piss off.”
Kleopping glared at them. “Both of you shut up.”
Rory leaned close to Jace. “Hate to say it, but the wench is right. You been here a while.” She held up a single finger. “You should tell more jokes,” and then a second, “and you shouldn’t be scared by the door locks.”
“Ain’t ’a-skeered’a nothing.” Jace did it in her best imitation of Rory.
“Oooh, ain’t you a tough sister?” Rory nodded at the visitor who’d wandered in from the main hallway. “Well, well. What’s the haps, Caps?”
The man, Caucasian and well into his forties, strolled to the desk and plopped two well-manicured hands on it. “Nada, nada, Bogan. How you?”
“Passable.”
The man turned to Jace. “You Salome?”
“Yes, sir.”
He held out a hand. “Simon Shelby. I’m with the task force.”
“Task force?” Jace’s stomach tightened.
“Force Chrome.”
“Uh . . . okay.”
“Drug interdiction?”
“Uh . . . okay.”
“The regional multi-jurisdictional drug interdiction task force?” Shelby smiled. “Any idea at all what I’m talking about?”
Jace felt the color rise in her cheeks.
“She’s a newbie worm.”
“Gotcha. Listen, I made a bust a few days ago you two might be interested in. Cat named Tomas Salazar. Brother of Enrique. Or should I say: brother of dead Enrique.”
Jace kept her face blank, trying to crush down the memory of Salazar. During the Badgett investigation, Salazar had made his presence known to Jace and Rory by trying to run them over with an SUV. After they’d tracked him down, she and Rory bled him dry for information. In return, and hoping for an ongoing source of info, Rory had let him skate on the vehicular assault charge. Salazar had later been killed by a man named Badgett, who had presented Jace with a hacked-off ear as proof.
“I popped Tomas with decent weight. Not a career bust, but good enough for some free beer at Doll’s. We got to talking and pretty quick you guys’ names came outta his yap. Name dropping. Trying to get some rhythm for the delivery I interrupted. Deputy? You okay?”
“I get nervous when a dealer I’ve never met is tossing my name around.”
Shelby shrugged acknowledgement. “True, that. But you’ve got no worries with me.”
“A Texas Ranger said that to me once.”
He cocked his head. “I did hear tell of that. Look, I’m just a drug guy down by the end of his road. Ain’t working up no sweat over anything. In fact, I brought you a gift. Salazar said you two did his brother a good turn. He wants to pay back the family’s honor. Mexican machismo.” Shelby handed Jace a slip of paper. “That’ll be a good bust for the two of you to have.”
“What’s this?” A date, a time, a highway, and a vehicle description.
“Shipment.”
Rory’s eyes were wide and excited. “Drugs.”
Shelby nodded. “Weed, crank, knock-off pharma. All from Me
x.”
“Coming to Zach City?” Rory asked.
“Far as I know.”
Jace’s gut fluttered and a surprising bit of excitement sat lightly in the back of her throat. “We can’t arrest people on the street; we’re just jailers.”
“Jailers with information. Parley with someone who can make the bust and roll that into some credit.” He winked at Rory. “Or pop it in Rooster. Word will get back.”
“You could ride with me. Pull it down on a traffic stop.” Rory grinned. “Either we get it ourselves or bank the credit.”
“True, that. Never know when you might need it. Or when some itty, bitty tiny piece of info you have puts someone else’s entire case together.” Shelby stared at Jace. “Deputy? What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing. I’m good. I . . . just—”
“What’s the problem?”
“No problem.” She handed the paper to Rory. “Why didn’t you keep the info? Drug busts are your thing, not mine.”
His sigh felt like a breath from the desert. Dry and dusty, ancient. “I’m getting old, Salome. Too old to worry about who gets what credit. I keep that info? Hell, then I’ve got to find the damned truck, stop it, make the bust, do the paperwork. Bah. The only credit I’m interested in now is my twenty years’ pension. Six weeks, three days—” a quick look at his watch—“four and a half hours. You two got a career up ahead of you. Besides that, doesn’t matter how hard I try, I absolutely will trip over Salazar’s dumb ass again and he’ll ask me if I gave you guys the message.” He stared at her. “Plus, you straight up did the right thing with Badgett. I know there are cops getting their mail in the Huntsville state pen behind all that bullshit, but I got no sympathy for them. You did right by all of us.”
Jace choked back her surprise. “Doesn’t feel like it sometimes. From some cops.”
Shelby leaned in close. “Fuck. Them.”
Rory nodded. “Straight up.”
“You sleeping at night?”
Not all the time, she wanted to say, but she knew what he meant. “Mostly.”
East of the Sun Page 1