East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  Jace nodded. “He’s never lied to me. He’ll tell me straight.”

  “Never lied to you? You’ve never asked him to let you stab him with a death needle. Think that might change things? You’re not getting in and questioning Bobby about a murder. What if you screw it?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Jace, listen to me. I know you’re good, and someday I think you’re going to be great, but that day ain’t today. Or tomorrow or next week or even next month.”

  Silently, Jace ground her teeth. She wasn’t ready for this, she knew, but something dug at her. She had pointed everyone toward Mercer and she had been completely wrong about that. She didn’t want to point everyone toward Inmate Bobby and be just as wrong.

  “Sorry, Rory. I’m going to talk to him. I’ll be delicate, I promise, but I can’t throw him to the wolves if he’s not the right guy. I did that to one man already; I won’t do it again.”

  Rory took a deep breath, nodded, and left.

  CHAPTER 25

  After Rory left, Jace went immediately to the jail. When she arrived at the employee entrance, the afternoon sun was limping higher in a cold, cloudy sky.

  The door’s electric lock popped open and she stopped at the security desk. “Do I need to sign in?” she asked the desk clerk, a uniformed deputy she didn’t recognize.

  He never looked up from his shooting magazine. “You wanna?”

  “Your door, your procedure.”

  “Ain’t my damned door or my procedure. I’m just here.”

  “Ah. Well, okay, then.”

  Records was staffed by civilians, including a man who led the department and believed himself to have been an English king in a past life. Jace had called before she’d left the Sea Spray and told the clerk, Pat, what she needed. Now Pat handed her a thick manila folder.

  “The entire file.”

  “I appreciate it, Pat.”

  “No problem, babe. Way I hear it, this’ll help you take Von Holton down a peg or two.”

  “You heard that, huh?”

  Pat winked, her hazel eyes flashing in the light. “Sad thing is, I been here a long time and I can remember when he was a decent man. Now he’s caught up in . . . I don’t even know what . . . wanting to be on top, I guess. Word is he’ll run for sheriff next election.” She sighed. “When you get up there, floating around in that rarefied atmosphere, you better damn well remember the little people down here.”

  With a smile, Jace grabbed the file and headed out. “What little people? Everything I’ve done, I’ve done on my own.”

  “Kiss my ass, ya’ wench. When we going to lunch?”

  “Anytime you want. Text me.”

  “10-4”

  There was a different deputy on duty at the back door as Jace left. “The other one get fired?”

  The man whistled. “My winner of a lunchtime replacement.”

  “They give you guys lunch?”

  “Once a week, whether we need it or not.” He winked. “Get it more often when I work courthouse security.”

  “Wow. Maybe, if I work hard, I can get a lunch break someday.” She held out her hand. “Jace Salome.”

  The man watched her while he shook her hand. “Salome, huh? Heard of you.” Eventually, he relaxed. “Tell you what, way I heard it? I’m not sure I’d’a had the eggs to do what you did with Badgett.” He shrugged as though embarrassed at his own honesty.

  “To tell you the truth, I mostly didn’t have the eggs, either. If I’d had a chance to stop and think about it? Hell, I’d have gone to Aruba instead.”

  He laughed again. “I’m Billy Kemp.” He pointed at the logbook. “Don’t forget to sign out.”

  After signing and being let through the door, she sat in her car and let the local college radio station give her a solo piano version of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.” She scanned each page of Inmate Bobby’s file and by the end hadn’t found a single reference to medical services. What his file did have was pages and pages of exemplary work reports and decent housing reports and fairly boring commissary reports dating back more than seven years. There were two minor disciplinary write-ups, one for smoking and one for offering a deputy a sip of cell-brewed hooch Inmate Bobby had purchased from another inmate. The file also included a commendation for performing the Heimlich on a deputy who’d been choking on a pastrami and rye while they were together in the sally port.

  “Deputy.”

  She recognized the voice and tried not to suddenly shove all the papers back in the folder or cover the folder with her hand. “Sheriff.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  She stared at him a long minute, trying to decide how much to tell him. They’d had conversations before, more than the sheriff and the average deputy probably had but still she was uncertain around him. “Well, he got caught smoking in the jail once . . . just like you.”

  His laugh might once have been a bellow and full of the expanse of west Texas, but anymore it was as worn as his face. “Did you cite him . . . just like me?”

  “Aw, hell no, Sheriff. I only write tickets to people who can derail my career.”

  Another breath of laughter. “Career, huh? Seems like not that long ago you was gonna quit.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Guess that’s changed.”

  “As far as you know.”

  His grin faded as he bundled his coat up a bit more tightly. A slight wind had come up. The coat wasn’t one she’d seen before. It might have been an old navy pea coat, but it was hard to tell given the mileage it had on it. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t the coat she’d seen him wear at political rallies. She said so.

  “Well, sometimes you gotta tailor a little bit to the audience. I’m more comfortable in this thing, fits me better, but ain’t nobody gonna vote for me if they see me wearing it.”

  “The plain folk might vote for you, one of them and all that.”

  “Ain’t no such thing as plain folk. They might wear the same ratty coat, but that’ll just make them think I’m as poor as they are, or as uneducated. That’s fine to have a beer, but people want to look up to whoever they put in charge. They want to believe that person can solve all their problems. Plus, those people wearing a coat like this? They ain’t got no money to help me along. I gotta wear a nice coat to get the nice money, otherwise I’m out on the street and ain’t helping nobody.” He nodded to Inmate Bobby’s file. “Bobby’s your boy, now?”

  After a hesitation, she said, “I don’t know. I don’t want to say until I’m sure.”

  He shook his head, looking past her and the truck into the Zachary City skyline. “I’m almost never sure of anything anymore.”

  “I was sure of Mercer and sent everyone running after him.”

  “Bullshit. No one ran anywhere. Von Holton knew it wasn’t Mercer when he sent you on that stupid goose chase.”

  “And Jakob? Did she know?”

  “Jakob’s a good woman. A damned fine officer and a good woman. She believes there aren’t enough women in law enforcement.”

  “There aren’t.”

  “Maybe, but she loves her little tests for the good ones. Seems you made her list and passed the test. But that’s not why you haven’t said anything about Bobby yet.”

  “No.”

  He waited.

  “He hasn’t had a single medical contact,” Jace said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe he’s telling the truth, maybe he’s not.”

  “State of the world, Deputy.” Turning his head away from her, he closed a nostril and blew hard until his sinuses were clear. “You know, Bobby had at least one medical contact. I’m sure it ain’t in there.”

  “Huh?”

  “Dr. Cruz interviewed him for medical trusty. Ol’ Bobby can’t stand the sight of blood. Bobby said he could do whatever else, but sure as shit didn’t wanna be around when there was blood.”

  “It’s good Kerr came along, then, i
sn’t it?”

  “Guess God shining down on Cruz. Doesn’t get the inmate he wanted but lookie here, here’s someone else even better qualified.”

  Jace looked at him, something tight in her head. “What are you saying, Sheriff?”

  “Not a thing. Just thought you oughta know Bobby and Cruz had a conversation.”

  Closing the file, Jace set it beside her. “I looked like an idiot. That’s why I haven’t said anything about Inmate Bobby yet.”

  Nodding, he pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit up. He blew the smoke away from Jace as his gaze wandered the parking lot, stopping for a minute on the bail-bond shops near the jail. They lined the street like soldiers in an ongoing war and most were open twenty-four hours a day. “Lotta bail money moving through those doors.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the businesses. “Trying to keep up with all the arrests, I guess.”

  “You ever notice how rarely we arrest the rich?” He dismissed the thought. “So . . . that bandage on your ear . . . that your first foot chase?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll remember it forever. First time you arrest a domestic, first time you make a traffic stop with a warrant or drugs.” His dark eyes were as intense as summer thunderstorms. “First time you arrest a drunk driver . . . save someone from getting killed.”

  She looked away.

  “My first foot chase was a disaster. There used to be this little gas station, Illinois and Midkiff. Great old shop. Go in there off duty, buy homemade hooch. Best I ever drank, God rest his soul. Had a collection plate on his counter, church soup kitchen. Getting gas one night—off duty—and this mope walked right up while Walt was in the back. Took that plate off the counter.

  “Chased that son of a bitch five blocks through a damned sandstorm. Couldn’t see crap. He was pro’ly ten years younger than me. Felt like his head start was about a mile. I was wearing boots. No gun or badge or stick. Nothing. Might as well have been naked for all the good I could’a done.”

  “So it turned out well, is what you’re saying, because you could have been killed?”

  “A disaster. Tripped over a tricycle. Broke my leg. He got away clean.”

  “Wow, that’s a really uplifting story, Sheriff. Thanks for sharing.”

  “You ain’t hearing me. I pissed off my sheriff with that stunt. He believed I had no business doing it and I believed otherwise. Sometimes you gotta do what you think is right, don’t matter who you piss off.” He chuckled and the tension drained away. “If you’re pissing them off, though, helps to be right. But sometimes there’s somebody up there you can trust, who gives you cover. Use them to give you the power that you won’t have until you’ve got some years under your belt.”

  “And you’re my guy?”

  “Me? Hell, no.” He spat and sucked deeply on his cigar. “I can’t stand you. Ain’t no chick oughta be in law enforcement.”

  “You don’t believe that so let’s talk like adults, shall we?”

  The slightest twinge of a smile broke at the corners of his mouth. “The man who ran that gas station was a war man, fought them Nazis and could tell you every single one he killed up close. Believed that was the only way to kill a man. ‘You gonna kill him,’ he used to say, ‘you do it close.’ Believed a man—or woman—should understand exactly what they were taking from whoever they killed.”

  “Have you killed people, Sheriff?”

  “Just worms who write me smoking tickets.” He pulled his coat more tightly around him. “Yeah. A few. More than I wanted to, less than probably needed it.” He looked sideways at her. “You wanna kill somebody?”

  “Thought about it when I fell chasing the drug dealer.”

  “At embarrassment or pain?”

  She thought. “Well, it didn’t hurt too much.” Then, after a moment, she said, “I wanted to kill Badgett.”

  For a long while, the sheriff said nothing. He smoked his cigar down before dropping the butt to the parking lot and stubbing it out. “Wouldn’t have been a crime.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You talk to the attorneys yet?”

  Though the Badgett affair was only a few months behind them and the official investigation, being done by the Texas Rangers, wasn’t yet completed, the lawsuits over the deaths had already started flying. The sheriff’s office, the sheriff personally, the jail staff, the administration, the academies that had hired Badgett, the deputies he’d trained. The families of the dead men were looking far and wide for anyone with money to try and cool the raging anger at what they thought the system had done to their loved ones. But Jace believed it hadn’t been the system that killed their loved ones. Jace believed the system had stopped the killers.

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Get to it. Soon.” He glanced at his watch. “Bobby ought to be coming outside in a few minutes. Probably at the fence like every day. Him wanting to breathe air that don’t belong to the jail. Good timing . . . if your intention was to talk to him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “ ‘Sir.’ You blowing me, ain’t you?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  Then he was gone, disappeared in the chill breeze that had wrapped west Texas like an obsessive lover. The back door popped open and he slipped inside.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Bobby, tell me the truth.”

  “Sheriff Jace, I didn’t do it.”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “Deputy Salome, I did not kill Dr. Wrubel. I didn’t even know him. Never met him. I saw him around, sure, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “You selling to the johnnies?”

  His gaze darted away, maybe to the same bail-bondsmen’s shops Bukowski had looked at. “Huh? I . . . uh . . . what kind’a bullshit is that? I ain’t selling. Why would I sell inside?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? Got a captive audience, many of whom need their ganja fix.”

  “I ain’t selling to nobody.”

  “So anyone who says you are is lying?”

  He fidgeted, bouncing from one foot to another.

  “You cold?”

  “Huh? Well, yeah, it’s cold out here.”

  “Must have just now gotten cold, I guess. I believe you were selling and someone was cutting into your profit.”

  “Deputy Salome, you know I like you. You’ve always treated me good, better than most. But I ain’t talking to you no more. You ain’t going to bother to get to the truth. You going to go along to get along. I didn’t think you were like that.”

  “I’m not. I’ll follow the truth where ever it leads me. Right now, it’s leading me to you.”

  “Leading the wrong direction.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  He grinned but it was full of teeth and anger. “Yeah, oh yeah, it is.” He jingled the keyring at his belt. “Got some chores need doing.” He turned and walked away. “I ain’t talking to you no more. Have a good day.”

  “Chill, chick; she’ll call.” Hassan, a 67-year-old dealer of gourmet ganja, winked. “Ain’t got to get all worked up and lathery and slippery.”

  “Slippery? Don’t ever use that word around me again.”

  He grinned. “Because you get all worked up and lathery when I do. I know it; ain’t got to lie to ol’ Hassan about Ol’ Willie.”

  “Stop it. The less I know about your named parts, the better.”

  “Give her some time. She gotta get over the shock of me calling her. Thought she was gonna get a little Hassan.” He held his hand across his heart. “Very sad it wasn’t about me.”

  Hassan was one of Grapa’s Hot Five. The group was down to just three now: Gramma, Preacher, and Hassan. Grapa had passed and Galena Brown, a stripper who’d seen her best days in the Fifties, had walked out without a word years before. Every few nights, they got boozy and crazy on dominoes, and then insulted each other until they yelled at each other.

  Hassan got serious. “She wasn’t too happy—”

  Jace’s phone rang. “Caro
l? Thank you for calling me.”

  There was a long pause. “I owe Hassan a favor.”

  Jace waved goodbye, Hassan. He grumped but left. “Well, I appreciate it. It’s no big deal, really.”

  Carol choked out a bitter laugh. “Wrubel’s dead, Bobby’s a murderer, you’re making Von Holton look bad, he and Jakob are still pissing on each other, and more than a few deputies hate that you sided with a Texas Ranger over fellow cops. So no big deal. Really.”

  Jace swallowed.

  There was a pause punctuated by Carol’s heavy breathing. Eventually, she apologized. “It’s been a bad few days. Doc Wrubel was my friend.”

  “I didn’t know him so well, but I liked him.”

  “So what’s your question?”

  “Where’d you hear that Inmate Bobby had done it?”

  There was a long hesitation. “Didn’t you tell me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, I don’t remember. Somewhere.”

  Jace let the silence hang between them. When it became obvious Carol wasn’t going to fill it, Jace changed tack. “Why is the doc dead?”

  The nurse, who’d been with the jail for years before becoming a Cruz Medical employee, hesitated. “I guess . . . uh . . . Bobby wanted him dead. Why does anyone kill anyone?”

  “So Inmate Bobby did it?”

  “Didn’t he?”

  Jace paused. “I keep hearing Doc was selling to inmates. Or was an addict. Or stealing from the pharm. Doesn’t seem like the man I knew.”

  “Sometimes people are hard to see.”

  “So he was selling?”

  “No, no, no, of course he wasn’t.”

  “Dr. Cruz thinks he was.”

  “Damn it. I don’t—I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Please, I’m trying to help.”

  “The man is dead. Leave him be.”

  She’s scared.

  Jace had heard scared inmates, usually first timers who had no idea what being in jail meant. Carol’s stuttering, rushing and then denying, reminded Jace of that fear. She’d heard it, too, from Inmate Bobby when she asked him straight out if he’d killed Wrubel. Fear about the murder, not about selling drugs to inmates.