There seemed to be five or six long, narrow buildings, each probably full of hogs. But there was a smaller building, too.
Holy shit . . . the size of the house in my dream.
Her throat dried. Had she been dreaming of this place? How could she dream about a place she’d never been?
She stopped, the hogs snorting and shitting, filling the air with noise and stink, and stared. A single door, a single window, maybe two rooms. An office? Way out here? Or maybe a castration room? Was the blood she’d seen on the walls in her dream pig blood? Were the syringes for the hogs, keeping them healthy with antibiotics or hormones or whatever?
She took a few steps, her head moving as fast as a tornado, and she realized there was a light on. Frowning, she got closer and decided it was probably an office and someone had left the light on.
Except, when she got close enough to look in the single window, she didn’t see an office. She didn’t see a desk with papers and a bookshelf with huge binders of information. She didn’t see a linoleum floor tracked with mud and blood.
She saw Gramma.
And her heart broke.
CHAPTER 46
The woman was bloody.
Blood had turned her face into a nightmarishly painted clown’s face. The blood was dry and even through the window, Jace saw the same brown hue as the chocolate in Bobby’s cell and the blood on the walls in her dreams. Gramma was in a chair, bound behind her back, a gag stuffed in her mouth. Her feet and legs were free, but there was blood on her right thigh and trailing down her left arm.
Somewhere behind Jace, the sheriff and Ezell and the two deputies she didn’t know well were scouring the place looking for Gramma. But they were nearly a half mile away and Jace was here and Gramma was here.
She quickly texted Rory, telling her where she was and what was going on. She told Rory to call the sheriff or radio Ezell or something, just let someone know. Before Rory could reply, Jace turned her phone to silent, dumped it into her pocket, took a deep breath, and quietly opened the door.
Gramma’s head turned slowly toward her and when recognition lit her eyes, fear and anger did, too. She shook her head, as though telling Jace to leave and get someone else. Or silently telling Jace, “See this? I told you so.”
But after a second, she stopped shaking her head, gave Jace a long, hard look, and then tilted her head toward the door on the opposite side of the room. Jace nodded and put a finger over her lips. Quietly, pushing Cruz out of her head by mentally shoving him off the top of the courthouse, Jace quickly untied Gramma’s hands. They fell free as though they were dead. As she stood, the old woman rubbed them. Jace took the gag from her mouth and dropped it.
“The fuck are you doing? Where’s Jimmy?”
“Shut up, Gramma. Let’s go.”
But even as she said it, Jace knew they weren’t getting out. She heard, or felt, and simply knew, that Cruz was coming through the far door, gun in hand.
“You jutht can’t thtay out of my buthineth, can you? You thtupid bitch. I tol’ you.”
His face was a riot of blood. It spattered out from his nose and mouth in angry red slashes. He held a gun in his left hand but it was limp and pointed more at the floor than anywhere. The two broken fingers of his right hand were gone, replaced by bloody, dripping stubs. The remaining fingers were tightly closed around something Jace could not see. “Yeah? You thee? You did thith. Wrubel thtarted it and you finithed it.”
“Dr. Cruz, don’t do anything crazy, okay? The sheriff and five or six of our guys are out there at the house and barn. They’ve finished their search and are coming here next. That’s why I came over.” She held her hands so he could see them clearly. “Because I knew they were coming. If you shoot us, you’ll be caught. You’ll never make it out of here alive.”
Cruz opened his mouth and Jace thought he was trying to grin, but so many of his teeth were gone, broken off at the gum line, it was impossible to tell what he was doing. Maybe it was a grin. Maybe it was pain. “I’m dead. It don’t matter. I owe. Don’t you get it? I owe on the drugth. I couldn’t thell when Wrubel thtarted fucking with me.” He banged the gun against his chest. “I’m already dead.”
Jace took a few slow steps, putting Gramma behind her, and keeping her hands raised so Cruz wouldn’t mistake her intentions. “That’s not true. We can protect you. We can talk to Shelby and the district attorney, get you some protection. The Texas Rangers. Or the feds. I’m sure you have enough in your head to get yourself a nice cushy life somewhere on the taxpayers’ dime.”
He laughed and coughed. When he did, his eyes rolled up and blood spattered from his broken mouth. “Wrubel knew. He knew what I wuth doing. I wuth thipping drugth.” He tapped the barrel of the gun against his chest. “I’m the pipeline, bitch. Thith ith my play.”
“Kerr was keeping your records. He was falsifying inventory control. That’s why you wanted him as a trusty. You stopped signing in and Conroy wasn’t videoing the halls. Maybe you called Wrubel or asked him to take a walk with you or something; that’s how you got him out there.”
Cruz shook his head. “Doan matter why whatever. Yeah, he did that but . . .” He shrugged and opened his hand. A few white pills fell to the office floor and he laughed. “Ain’t gonna let nobody take me to prithon. Been there . . . ain’t doing it again. Ain’t going for no Thinaloa.” He coughed, another spew of blood, and Jace wondered where all the damage had come from. “Already took forty or fifty. Ain’t no taxpayerth for me; I’m already dead. But I chothe my death. Nobody elthe. I chothe it.” He jammed the ten or so pills still in his hand into his mouth and swallowed. “Ain’t gonna let them hurt me no more.”
“Doctor?”
When he fell slowly to his knees, Jace grabbed his gun. He looked at her, something like regret in his eyes. He nodded as he slumped forward. She grabbed him and lowered him gently to the floor. Blood leaked from his nose and when he started aspirating, he coughed up a whitish-yellow froth. A moment later, his eyes rolled around in his head until finally they caught hers. They locked gazes until his eyes were empty.
She shoved the gun in her waistband and herded Gramma toward the door.
“Jace, he didn’t do that to himself. He’s not the only one here.”
“What?”
Jorge.
“She means me, Chiquita.”
Jace turned and looked at the man. Jet-black hair, swept back like a Mafia stereotype, a bloody knife in his left hand. This was the man she’d seen get out of the Town Car that day at the jail, and the man on the video getting into the courthouse.
“You have caused me no end of problems.”
Watching him carefully, Jace again put herself in front of Gramma. The old woman tried to speak but Jace shushed her. She could feel Gramma’s hands on her back, clinging tightly to Jace’s belt.
“We’re not going to play games. I’m not going to stand here and explain everything and answer all your questions. I’m going to tell you Cruz’s death doesn’t matter. Cruz Medical has quite a few contracts and has successors already in place. There are lots of doctors; there will be lots of contracts.” Jorge kicked at Cruz’s feet. “This is a bump in the road.”
“You’re awfully articulate for a cartel chump.”
The man laughed. “Good schooling.”
“Paid for by Sinaloa, no doubt.”
“No doubt. Just like Cruz’s medical degree. But I went to a better school. An American school.”
“Doctors, you said. You paid for all of them? All their degrees?”
“Not me personally but the cartel, yes.”
And they’re getting contracts, Jace thought. They’re setting up in jails, a captive audience for drugs of all kinds.
“Pharma . . . weed . . . H . . . meth . . . whatever you happen to have on hand.”
The man nodded and behind her, Jace felt Gramma grabbing and grabbing, her fingers as full of fear as Jace’s head. Jace was thinking a million miles an hour, trying to stall for time
and hoping someone would notice her gone from the car, hoping someone would see the hog confinements and the light on in the office.
Rory, where are you? You said if I got hurt, it was because you were already dead. You’re not dead . . . but you’re not here.
Jace swallowed. Rory would have been here had she been able, Jace believed that with all her heart. But in this chunk of desert, as the new year began to settle in and get comfortable, as the dead-shift jailers were getting bored in the wee small hours, Jace was on her own. Even with officers so close, she was on her own.
“You’re the one who called me.”
“Yes.”
“You were toying with me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a bit of a sadist and I thought it was fun.”
“And you answered Gramma’s phone when Dr. Vernezobre called.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know he knew Gramma?”
The man shook his head. “I’m done with this. I need to finish this and slip out the back while they’re stumbling around in the dark.”
Jace bit her tongue, reopening the wound she’d given herself earlier. “You’re a lefty. You killed Inmate Bobby. Because he’d been in the hallway? Because he’d seen it. Or maybe figured it out. You sent Kerr for him, down in the tunnel, but you got to him first. You won’t get away with this.”
He shook his head. “Those men—” He waved his empty right hand toward the house and barn. “Have no idea what’s going on. It is why I prefer a knife to a gun. Silence.” The knife high like a battle flag, he charged them.
Jace grabbed for Cruz’s gun, tucked safely in her waistband. Except it was already gone. It was already firing, from a position about waist high just behind her. Shots exploded in the wall behind Jorge, then in his shoulder, then again behind him, then once in his chest and once in his face. There was no great spasm of death. He got shot; his face exploded; he dropped. Blood pooled around his head, a sanguine halo.
Jace jumped away from the gun. When she looked, Gramma held it tightly, one-handed. Her eyes were closed and one of the cuts on her cheek had reopened. Blood flowed freely down the side of her face.
“Gramma.” Jace went to her side and hugged her tightly. She took the gun and threw it on the far side of the office.
The old woman started crying and leaned heavily into her granddaughter.
“Shhhhhhh. It’ll be okay.”
“I killed him, Jace.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d do it again.”
Jace hugged her fiercely, took a last look at Jorge to make sure he wasn’t moving, and guided Gramma outside.
“Sheriff,” Jace called as loudly as she could. “Two men down. We’re secure.”
“Salome.” His bark came from not that far away. “You’re secure? Is that what you said?”
“Two men down. We’re secure.”
Then he was on her, close in the dark, the last bit of light from the office splaying across his face. His eyes were burning holes in his skull, his breath bubbling with anger. He looked past her into the office, then went inside. A few moments later, as Ezell arrived, Bukowski came back out. He got on his cell phone and called the sheriff’s office.
“You guys okay? What happened?” Ezell looked through the window. “Holy shit. Who’s the other guy?”
“Sinaloa soldier,” Jace said. “Carries a Mexican badge to get in and out of places. He was setting up a pipeline through Cruz Medical.”
“Huh?”
“Smuggling drugs into the jail through their doctors. Pay for doctors to go to med school, and then getting them in as jail docs.”
Ezell whistled. “Wow.”
“Salome.” The sheriff hung up the phone. “You’re suspended. Seven days. Disobeying a direct order.”
“Jimmy, she came and got me.”
“And you’ll have seven days to talk all about it. Ezell, Jakob is on her way. Tape the area; start a list. Arlene and Salome’s names at the top, mine next.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ten minutes later, the first lab techs began to arrive and soon after that, an ambulance pulled up.
“Arlene, Salome, go to the hospital.”
“But Sheriff, nothing happened to me. I’m fine—”
“Wanna make it fourteen days?”
Jace stared at him, his face bathed now in white light from the ambulance and blue and red flashing light from the squad cars. Anger strode across his lines and creases exactly the way he strode through the jail’s halls late at night, unable to sleep. His eyes challenged her to defy him again.
She didn’t. She took a spot on the bench. EMTs had Gramma strapped to a backboard and on the gurney in the middle of the bay. One of them banged on the glass between the bay and the cab, and the ambulance started moving. Through the back glass, Jace watched the sheriff watch them until he was out of sight.
CHAPTER 47
“You really want another tattoo?” Rory looked askance at Jace, sitting in the chair, her shirt open to the valley between her breasts. “You know I can see your boobies, right? And if I can . . .” She tilted her head to indicate the tattoo artist.
“Bah.” The guy was an old man with an amazingly steady hand, a head of long, gray hair, and a body almost lost beneath his own tattoos. He stopped, looked at Rory, winked in a slightly repulsive and creepy way, and went back to Jace’s chest. “Ask her where her first one is.”
Rory’s eyes bulged but Jace shook her head. “He’s full of crap.” She sucked in a long blast of air when the needle touched her skin.
“Eyes and half-hearts. Goofy shit.” He stared hard at the spot on her chest between her breasts as the black outline of an eye slowly came to life.
The eye was Thomas’s eye. And Wrubel’s and Inmate Bobby’s. Maybe a little bit Cruz and Jorge’s, too. Jace wasn’t sure what it said to her, what the over-arcing metaphor was, if there even was one. But she did know she never wanted to forget the emptiness, the sadness and finality of those eyes in the moments before death. She never wanted to forget what it meant when someone died. It wasn’t just a puzzle to be figured out; it was a life. Maybe not a good life, maybe not a bad life, but a life nonetheless.
“Maybe its Laimo’s eye,” Rory said softly, watching the quarter-sized tattoo take shape. “She was laughing at Mercer’s being so scared. Maybe you want to remember that everybody deserves human dignity.”
“It’s just a fucking eye, ladies. Don’t mean shit.” The tattoo man came off her chest for a minute, staring at his work. “What color you want when we get there?”
Mama’s eyes had been green, so translucent that they almost didn’t exist, as though Jace could see straight through to her soul. Except Jace had never known, truly, what was hidden in Mama’s soul.
“Green. Translucent.”
“Trans-what?”
“Semi-transparent . . . like.”
Jace grinned at Rory. “Getting smart on me, sister?”
“Been smart like you. Just don’t like showing it.” She tapped the tattoo artist on the shoulder and when he looked back at her, she said, “Can you put a tiny star in the pupil?”
Jace frowned.
“She used to go watch the stars with her Mama.”
The man looked back at Jace, shook his head, muttered “Goofy shit,” again, and got back to work.
CHAPTER 48
Four people—three men dressed in conservative blue suits with white shirts and dark ties, and one woman in a pale-green suit—walked through the front doors of the Zachary County sheriff’s office. Sheriff Bukowski, Chief Deputy Gaddis, Major Yancey of Operations, and Major Jakob waited for them. The four came through the metal detectors as would anyone else coming to visit the office. They stopped directly in front of the sheriff and his staff.
“You taking over?”
The woman held her hand out. “I’m Felicia Upchurch, Southwestern Jail Commission, and I guess we’d better talk about tha
t.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trey R. Barker has published a bit of everything: crime to mystery, science fiction to nonfiction, plays to novels, and a short-story collection. He spent seventeen years, off and on, as a journalist before moving into law enforcement. Currently, he is a sergeant with the Bureau County sheriff’s office, the crisis negotiator for the regional special-response team, a member of the Illinois State Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and an adjunct instructor at the University of Illinois (Champaign) Police Training Institute. He currently lives in northern Illinois, though he was born and bred in west Texas.
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