East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  The guy’s gray sweatshirt melded into the dark and the passing traffic overwhelmed the sound of his feet.

  “Son of a bitch. Rory. Where the hell are you?”

  The man was still visible ahead of her but everything was fading into darkness. She kept running, the mesquite whipping at her legs, sometimes tall enough to grab at her arms, hundreds of tiny nicks eating into her skin, stinging ever more and more.

  “Stop, damn it.” Her voice was gone, ragged and hoarse.

  As she ran, her feet bobbled, sometimes landing on flat ground but sometimes not. She pulled in, suddenly afraid of stepping into a gopher hole or tripping over a mound left by rodents. The last damned thing she needed was a twisted or broken ankle.

  Damn it, where was he? Lost in the darkness? Had he slipped away through her hesitation?

  “Rory . . . where the hell are you? I need some help on your damned arrest!”

  The squad car’s motor screamed. The noise wound up through the air a split second before Jace heard the car bounce off the interstate shoulder and roar into the field. Then light as bright as a high desert noon stabbed the dark and in that light, harsh and stark, the truck driver was perfectly visible. He was directly in front of Jace, maybe thirty feet away, facing her. He wasn’t running, but standing, his face hard and angry, lined with fear and adrenaline.

  A pistol in his hand.

  “Stay away.” His voice was high and scared. “I’ll shoot. Swear to Christ I will. I ain’t going back to prison.”

  “Wait; don’t get ahead of yourself.” Jace slowed to a walk. “No one’s going anywhere. We’re just talking here.”

  When he fired, Jace saw the flames but heard nothing. She ducked as he fired a second time. More flame but still no sound.

  The squad car, a metal monster somewhere behind her, bearing down on her and the truck driver, was silent now, too.

  The world was silent and she wondered if she was already dead; shot twice but too stupid to lay down and die?

  “You son of a bitch. You shot me?” Jace shouted, did not hear her own voice, and blasted toward the driver with every ounce of juice left in her. Her thighs screamed through the buildup of lactic acid. “You killed me? I’ll beat your balls off.”

  The driver looked startled. His mouth opened and closed as he dropped the gun, and turned to run. But he was off stride, his balance gone. His arms flailed at the air.

  Jace pumped her legs hard, a hot lance stabbing her side and a painful howl deep in her thighs. She jumped a clump of dead cotton and stumbled through a wide washout. Light from behind her blasted the driver, highlighting him like a spotlight. He was close now and his shirt flapped behind him. Her fingers brushed it. She stretched, almost had him, and then lost him. Her center of balance was gone and her feet tangled up in themselves.

  She fell but somehow managed to grab the flap of his shirt and yank him backward. She hit the ground hard and he crashed down on top of her.

  “Don’t shoot.” His voice was a scared squeak. He flailed on top of her and she kept expecting to feel the pain of a punch. “Got no gun no more.”

  “Don’t . . . resist.”

  “Ain’t resisting.”

  The squad slid to a stop and kicked a pile of dust into Jace’s face. Rory jumped out and hammered the guy’s back with her knee until she had him cuffed. She jerked him off Jace and said, her voice still and steady, “You’re under arrest.”

  Jace let go of his shirt. “Ye . . . ye . . . yeah.” She lay, the sky spinning above her, her heart pounding so hard in her chest it hurt. “Under.” Hot, fiery air burned her lungs while dirt stung her eyes. “Arrest.”

  “Jace? You dead?”

  Instead of answering, she waved a hand and tried to catch her breath.

  “So that means . . . dead? Or not dead?”

  “. . . piss . . . off . . .”

  “Not dead, then.”

  Laughing, Rory put the driver in the back of her Rooster County squad, then helped Jace into the passenger seat.

  CHAPTER 22

  The man, name unknown, didn’t move. He sat on a simple chair, his hands knotted together in his lap, his shoulders slumped, as though the sculptor had carved away too much of him. His breath was fast and shallow and sweat broke on his forehead, glistening under the blue-white light of the humming fluorescent bulbs.

  Rory sat near him and Jace watched through one-way glass, the Rooster County sheriff at her side. He was a surprisingly young man with fiery red hair. He had told Rory it was her bust and therefore her interview. Right now, he stood with his hands on his gunbelt, watching intently, the smell of aftershave heavy on him. They stood in a small room next door to the interview room. It had been a closet at one point, but the previous sheriff had put in a small window so it could be used for observation. The interview room had once been the observation room for Rooster County’s single indoor shooting lane, where deputies watched other deputies shoot. The shooting lane was long since closed and had become an overflow evidence room. From where they stood, Jace and the sheriff could see through the interview room and into the old shooting lane, now piled high on each side with boxes and bags sealed with red evidence tape, tags hanging off like gift tags on forgotten presents.

  Rory had asked his name. He hadn’t answered, instead looking down at his hands, and she had let that silence linger for nearly three minutes.

  Eventually, she nodded. “That’s fine. I can charge you just as well without your name. We’ll John Doe you and it’ll be fine. But why would you let someone else let you take the weight of this? Meth, weed, heroin, a ton of ’script pills. Cash. Maps. That doesn’t make you just the delivery driver, but a player. And we both know you’re not.”

  “Playah. Gangstah.”

  Rory shook her head. “You’re smarter than that. Gangsters are idiots. They got nothing for you except fear. You’re smarter than that.”

  He shook his head in a tiny arc, his voice as soft as a summer rain. “You playing me now . . . playah.”

  “I don’t play. If I thought you had nothing to offer or were too stupid to offer it, I wouldn’t be here. You’d be locked up, prints on the way to Austin, and I’d be hanging with my girl eating barbeque.” She sighed theatrically. “Ain’t my skin in this game. I got a great arrest for my stats. Possession with intent to deliver, fleeing and eluding, attempted capital murder of a peace officer.”

  When he looked up, his face was pained, his hands clenched to fists and suddenly on the table in front of him. “Wasn’t attempted murder of no cop.”

  The sheriff stiffened beside Jace.

  “It wasn’t attempted murder? You shot at my partner.”

  He shook his head violently. “No, I didn’t. I mean, yeah, I did.” He banged a hand on the table. “I shot but wasn’t no cop. Damn it, I wasn’t trying to off no cop.” Again his fist hammered the table, the dull thud echoing through the speaker system into the other room.

  The sheriff’s hands came off his belt. “He better calm his ass down.”

  “You. Shot. At. A. Cop.” Rory leaned back in her chair. “How do you not understand that?”

  “I didn’t know you was cops, is what I’m saying.”

  Rory laughed. “Didn’t know we were cops?”

  “No.” The man’s voice thundered up through the room, banged at the glass through which the sheriff and Jace watched. “How was I gonna know that?”

  Rory’s voice rose as well. “The flashing red and blue lights? That maybe give you a hint?”

  “Damn it, don’t talk to me like that, bitch. I didn’t know.” He shoved away from the table, stood, and kicked the chair out behind him. He stumbled over it and ended up near the far wall.

  “Sit the fuck down.” Rory’s voice was hard but controlled.

  “Ain’t sitting shit. I didn’t know you was no cops. How many times I got to tell your dumb ass?” He came at the table fast, both hands in tight fists, his eyes hard on Rory. The sheriff moved toward the door but Jace bloc
ked him. “Hang on, Sheriff.”

  “That’s my deputy in there.”

  “And my friend. She’s fine.”

  Rory never moved. She sat in her chair, her eyes hard on the man who hung over her. His face was blood red, his hands near Rory’s face.

  Rory spoke slowly, softly. “Sit down. Please. Explain it to me.”

  The sheriff watched, his hands ready to shove Jace out of the way.

  Jace tried to put reassurance on her face, though her insides were on fire. “This is what she does, Sheriff. I’ve seen it a thousand times in Zach. Let her do her thing.”

  The sheriff looked again at Rory and the arrestee. They still hadn’t moved. The man breathed hard, Rory didn’t. She kept her hands on the table, unclenched and relaxed.

  “Tell me how you didn’t know we were cops, okay? Make me understand.”

  Eventually, he backed up. Moving slowly, he raised his shirt. An ugly, gray scar ran from the base of his neck across his chest and down his abdomen until it ended just above his waist.

  “The cops. In Mexico.”

  “The cops did this to you?”

  “Dressed as cops, but not cops. Enforcers. Sinaloa. You think I want to run drugs? You think I want to smuggle dope across the border to do to Americans what they done to mi hermana? She was a junkie and sold everything we had to feed it. Her body, too, and then she stole when no one would buy her body.”

  He sat, his voice soft again, his breath ragged. “I am an American citizen.” He thumped his chest. “A Texan. But I go back to see my family. The cartel forced me to drive to repay Maria’s drug debt even after she died, and when I refused, they cut me open, left me to bleed to death on the sidewalk. I survived and refused. I don’t care if they kill me, so they took my mother and grandmother. If I don’t drive, they will kill them. So I drive. Simple.”

  Shaking his head, the sheriff looked from Rory and the arrestee to Jace. “Hire the right people, then trust them. That’s what the former sheriff told me when I got elected. Sometimes I forget that.”

  “Well, you’re a big, strong, west-Texas man. It’s in your DNA to help a woman.”

  He looked at her, a flash of confusion in his eyes. When he smiled, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Gotta remember she’s good on her own.”

  “Plus? She’ll kick your ass if you foul up her play.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, there’s that.” He clapped Jace on the shoulder. “I’m glad you were out there tonight, Deputy Salome.” He pointed at the tip of her ear. After cleaning and bandaging it, there was only a sliver of pain. “Let that be a lesson to you.”

  “Thanks for letting me ride, Sheriff.”

  “Almost anytime, Deputy.”

  He left the room and when Jace turned back to the window, Rory was staring at her. The arrestee had his head in his hands. On the outside of his right hand, Jace saw a tattoo, the letters T and S twisting into each other.

  “Say that again,” Rory said.

  “Not everything is bad. I don’t bring just death. I bring some life, too.”

  Rory kept her gaze on Jace. “What does that mean?”

  “I told you already.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Some’a them drugs go to poor-people doctors.”

  “And you were going to Zachary City?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Delivering to who?”

  Looking up, he said, “No. Ain’t going to get a doctor in trouble to save my skinny ass. He do good work; you don’t need to know who he is. You got his drugs, that’s enough.”

  “But I want to know who’s making a profit off your back. Who’s making the benjamins?”

  The man laughed. “Ain’t no benjamins. Doc trades most’a his services. He ain’t getting rich no how.”

  “How’d he afford smuggled drugs, then?”

  Now the man laughed, though the sound was shot through with sadness. “I buy ’em for him. Take whatever they gonna pay me, which ain’t too much, and buy some extra. I give them to him.”

  Eventually it dawned on Jace. Dr. Vernezobre. That was the name no one was saying. Deep in her gut, Jace felt emotions split two different ways. Disappointment that he bought smuggled drugs. But an odd kind of pride that she knew someone who stood so tall for what he believed.

  “What’s your name?”

  The man took a deep breath. “Absalon Bustillo. I been down in Lynaugh. On a dime. It’s in Fort Stockton.”

  “For?”

  For a moment, he said nothing. Eventually he nodded. “Possession. Intent to deliver.”

  “And the other scar?”

  It ran from the base of his neck up toward his right ear. He sort of smiled, a pained and lopsided thing. “Got this in a yard fight. Dude cut me. Tried to kill me.”

  “Not a fan of Sinaloa soldiers?”

  “Nigger won me in a poker game and I refused. I got turned out soon as I got there . . . Sinaloa soldier said I was pretty. He lost me in a poker game and I was tired of it so I . . . just . . . refused.”

  Rory shook her head in admiration. “How are you not dead?”

  He shrugged. “Just lucky. It is what it is, I guess.”

  “I guess.” Rory patted his hand and stood. “All right, Mr. Absalon Bustillo. Hang tight and let me see what I can do.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “You try and I’m grateful, but there’s nothing. I’m down for this one.”

  CHAPTER 23

  An hour later, as they left, Jace was deep in her head about Dr. Vernezobre and Dr. Wrubel. Paying no attention, she came around a corner and bumped into a trusty.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” The trusty shoved the mop bucket out of her way.

  Jace smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I didn’t see you.”

  He waved it away. “No problem, Deputy.” He grabbed the sleeve of his jail-issue black-and-white striped uniform. “Damn near makes me invisible.”

  “Better place to be usually,” Rory said.

  He winked. “No doubt there.”

  “Hey, have a good night.”

  “You, too, Deputies.”

  As they went out the door, Rory munched an assortment of Skittles and Jace turned back to the trusty. He was bent over his mop, the yellow bucket just a few feet away, a flop of brown hair over both eyes.

  Invisible.

  He glanced at her, a quizzical and somewhat uncomfortable smile on his lips, but kept mopping.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jace’s balcony was on the east wall of the second floor of her apartment at the Sea Spray Inn. It overlooked a broken bit of asphalt that ran like a hard, gray river behind the Sea Spray building. Once upon a time, according to Gramma, that alley had been back-door access to some of the rooms. Now it was just forgotten.

  Invisible, Jace thought.

  “Christ, that was great.” Rory whooped softly, though midmorning had already passed.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Because you got nothing but old people here. They sleep . . . like . . . twenty-four hours a day.”

  “First of all, we don’t have just old people. Second of all, they don’t sleep all day. Third of all, most of them can’t hear anymore anyway.”

  Rory laughed loud. “Good enough. You see the sheriff?”

  Jace chuckled. “Yes, Rory, I saw the sheriff.”

  After watching the interview and helping to catalog the haul, the sheriff had loudly praised Rory and had harassed his two night deputies for not making the same kinds of arrests.

  “Ahhhhhhhh.” Rory leaned back in the chair and raised her face to the noon sun. A chill bit the air but it wasn’t too bad for the end of December in west Texas. “Basking in the glow.”

  “Dork.”

  Rory grinned. “And your point is?”

  “So do they always do that?”

  “Do what?” Rory finished off her beer and went for another in Jace’s fridge.

  “The deputies and town cops. Do they always come in to hear the story whil
e you’re doing evidence and reports? If they hadn’t interrupted, we’d have gotten out of there an hour earlier.”

  “It’s not about getting out earlier, worm. It’s fun telling your stories. Everybody laughs and hangs out. It’s about . . . well, the camaraderie, I guess. Sounds kind’a cheesy but it is. Having stories to tell is gold in law enforcement.”

  “The currency of the realm.”

  “Uh . . . okay. You and your big words. All those stories prove that you’re part of the family, Jace. You know that. Hell, you’ve got some of your own already.” Rory snorted. “What annoys the crap outta me is that everybody’s favorite part was you chasing ass after him.”

  Jace shook her head, ran a hand over the bandage on her ear, and drank. “It was stupid.”

  Rory plopped down next to Jace. “Wasn’t any stupider than snatching my gun yesterday and just about chest bumping that truck. Like some badass Old West gunslinger.”

  Holy crap, am I an idiot. Double idiocy . . . twice in two days. Next thing she knew, she’d start knocking on the doors to all the shooting galleries and identifying herself as a cop, just for the adrenaline rush.

  Getting to be a junkie, she thought. Getting to like that rush.

  It was the last thing in the world she wanted. She did not want to turn into a road deputy always looking for the high-speed chase or the shootout or the bar fight, unable to get off with anything other than excitement.

  “You know, if you’d gotten shot, I mean real shot, not just a flesh wound on an ear you don’t use much anyway, I would have cashed in your life insurance and gone to the Caribbean.” Rory sighed theatrically. “It would have been a worthy cause so I’m a little disappointed here.”

  Jace chugged back a long swig of Corona as a white work truck, old and beat up, meandered slowly down the alley. “I’m basking in your warmth and love.”

  “Hehe . . . was just a joke. I don’t want you dead. I mean . . . I don’t think I do.”

  “Nice. Thanks.” Jace took a deep breath and the air smelled of winter and exhaust from cars and trucks on the highway, of greasy breakfasts served up and down this stretch of the I-20 frontage road, what Zach City residents still called Highway 80.