by Dave Daren
Before Brody and I could continue our commiseration about Thompson, and his attempts at becoming the supreme leader of the city, Evelyn poked her head past me and into Brody’s doorway.
“Your case-- the Michel one-- they finally sent the documents our way,” she said without any sort of acknowledgement of our prior conversation.
I wondered if she’d actually heard what we’d been discussing, and I opened my mouth to explain, but Evelyn shot me a frosty look that had me snapping my jaw closed. Apparently she had heard the conversation and didn’t want a recap. Instead, I turned in the doorway so that I could get a look at her and Brody without having to swing my head around every time someone spoke.
“Have you had any luck getting a hold of someone at the courthouse about Natalie’s injunction?” I asked with a pleasant smile I knew she’d hate.
“I wasn’t aware that was something you needed me to do,” she deadpanned and raised her carefully maintained eyebrows.
“Please,” I added for good measure.
She looked annoyed and gave a little huff as if to prove it, but she didn’t try to smack at me, so I considered it a victory.
“It would be appreciated if you could,” I added, and her scowl softened, just a little, or maybe it was just a trick of the light.
“What else do we have today?” she asked with another huff.
I pursed my lips in thought as I tried to parse through what else we needed to do in that moment and came up empty. I was certain that there were things that needed doing, obviously there were, but none of it was life or death.
We needed to speak with the judge, but we couldn’t do that until Evelyn got hold of his receptionist and set up an appointment, which could take days.
We needed to do something about Thompson, but the real question was what could we even do? How could we topple a man like that, a man with the entire local police force at his beck and call that also didn’t like me very much?
It felt like a question for a different day, and I heaved a sigh.
“Nothing,” I finally answered with a small shake of my head. “After you’ve wrapped up whatever you have that needs wrapped up, both of you can head home.”
Evelyn fixed me with a discerning look and squinted her eyes.
“And what are you going to do?” she asked as though she was suspicious that I’d try and stay after they both left.
I supposed it was a well-founded suspicion, because that was something I had done numerous times. Every time she found out, Evelyn all but tore me a new one. But tonight was different, and I gave her a little grin.
“I have to get ready for a dinner,” I answered as I pushed myself out of the doorway before she could start to pester me with questions.
I could practically see them building up in her throat from the corner of my eye as I walked past her toward the front door. Behind me, I heard Brody give a surprised laugh.
I wasn’t worried about who would lock up the office because both of them had keys, and I knew they wouldn’t be stupid enough to forget to do something like that, especially now with Thompson and his threats looming over our heads.
I nudged open the front door and quickly crossed the parking lot to my awaiting car as I tried to banish the thoughts of Sheriff Jethro Thompson and all his corrupt dealings from my mind for the time being. I had been looking forward to this dinner with Clara for months now, and I’d be damned if I let someone like Thompson ruin it for me by occupying my thoughts.
The drive from Landon Legal back to my apartment was quick, and really, if my cases didn’t often take me all over the county, I could walk to work each morning without issue.
I gave a small wave to Mrs. Hernandez as she fetched her mail from the large, metal boxes that sat outside our apartment building. I was fond of Mrs. Hernandez, and she seemed equally as fond of me. I’d never had a close relationship with my grandparents on either of my parents’ sides, but I assumed that all grandparents were supposed to be like her.
Every few months, she showed up on my doorstep with a large ziploc bag stuffed to the brim with homemade tamales and the invitation to help her and her family make them next time. Unfortunately, due to my work schedule, I’d not yet been able to take her up on the offer, but I appreciated it every time nonetheless.
“Good evening, Archer,” she called out to me in her faintly accented English with a wide smile spreading across her plump face.
“Buenas noches,” I called back in my laughably poor Spanish.
She gave a delighted laugh and waved her hand at me as if brushing me aside. She’d taught me a few phrases of her own, but I’d picked up a decent amount from my time living in the southwest.
It would be hard to get by without understanding a little. I always had a deep level of appreciation for people that could speak numerous languages, like Mrs. Hernandez herself.
She was fluent in both Spanish and English, and I’d heard her slip in and out of each language like water down a stream, sometimes in the same sentence.
I also really appreciated her tamales.
I made my way up the front sidewalk of the apartment complex and couldn’t help but notice how different my own building was from the Greenview Apartments building. It made me wonder how differently my life could have turned out if I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.
I took the stairs up to the second story where my apartment was located and kept a brisk pace as I walked down the hall to my door. I slotted my key in the lock and after a few seconds of fiddling with the damn finicky thing, I stepped inside.
The apartment was nice, comfortable even, but not quite homey. In the few months since the Knox case, I’d been able to upgrade some of my furniture from the old pieces I’d found by the road to a few things from this decade, but I really hadn’t taken much of the check from that case for myself.
I’d sunk the majority of it into the practice after giving Brody and Evelyn their dues for all the hard work they’d done. Neither had expected it, but both had repaid me by agreeing to stay on.
I tossed my keys up onto the island in the kitchen and walked over to the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water that I’d opened earlier in the morning and hadn’t had a chance to finish. I took a long swig of water and gave myself a few minutes to relax while I stood there with the cool bottle resting against my palm. I could still feel all of the stresses of the last few days resting on my shoulders with a sort of vengeance, but I worked to shoo them away. I figured I had earned a single night to relax and enjoy myself with a woman I’d been dying to actually sit and have a meal with.
Once I finished my water bottle, I tossed the plastic into the recycling bin I kept next to the trash can and headed toward my bedroom to find nicer clothes to put on. Martinos’ wasn’t The Ritz, but it was one of the nicer, if not the nicest, restaurants in town, and I kept that in mind as I flipped through the clothing hanging in my closet.
I had all of the dress pants and shirts I kept ready for work and the nicer suits that I owned for court, and after a few minutes of debating with myself that nearly led to me calling both my mother and Evelyn for advice, I settled for a pair of tailored dark-slate trousers and a matching blazer with a crisp white button-down I made sure to tuck in.
I opted out of a tie and kept the top two buttons undone to keep from looking like a mortician. After I spent a few minutes appraising my outfit in the mirror of my bathroom, I combed through my hair and made sure I didn’t look like an idiot.
I wasn’t usually nervous for things like this, and to be honest, I couldn’t tell if what I was feeling could even be called anxiety, but it did certainly leave me off kilter.
I checked the watch on my wrist for the time and saw that it was already 6:15. The restaurant was only about twenty minutes away, and if I left now, I’d get there in time to reserve a table without getting stuck in rush hour traffic.
I gave myself one last look in the mirror before I patted at my pockets to make sure that I’d transferred my wallet an
d phone. Once I was certain I hadn’t forgotten anything, I walked back out through the living room and into the kitchen to grab my keys from the island.
I took a deep breath and headed into the hallway, locked up the door once it swung shut, and started off toward my car with a briskness to my steps.
I’d been looking forward to this dinner for too long to let the weight of my day or my own anxieties weigh it down.
As I stepped outside and into the cooling evening air, I pulled my phone from my pocket to send a message off to Clara.
I’m heading to Martinos now, I’ll grab a table.
I didn’t see the three little dots pop up after the message whooshed to indicate it had been sent, and so I figured she was either getting ready after leaving the hospital, or that she hadn’t been able to leave the hospital yet at all. But that was alright, because I’d happily wait as long as she needed. I understood the way her job operated, and to a much looser extent, how her life operated.
I slid into my car after I pocketed my phone again and backed my car out of the parking spot. I waited for a moment to make sure traffic had completely cleared before I turned left to merge onto the road.
Martinos’ wasn’t too far away, but I never knew what to expect from the local traffic. It seemed like whenever I felt I had a good handle on things, it threw me for a loop. So even though I expected the worst of the gridlock to have passed by the time I set off, there were, of course, plenty of cars still on the road. With a sigh, I leaned forward in my seat just a hair to turn the dial on the radio on as I came to a slow halt behind a maroon minivan.
The radio crackled another classic rock hit I didn’t recognize, but I felt myself begin to hum along despite that fact. My good mood seemed to be affecting every part of me, down to my taste in music.
When the red light turned green, the line of cars started to trickle forward at a snail’s pace, and I’d just barely managed to make it through the light before it flashed from yellow and then back to red in a near instant. I heaved a sigh of relief and scanned the intersection for any official vehicles. The stoplight was known locally as one of the local police traps where the deputies liked to stake out and catch people that ran the light when there was nothing better to do.
I’d heard a few conspiracy theories that they’d even tampered with the light to try and catch people, but I didn’t think that was too believable.
The classic rock song on the radio faded into that song I always thought was about a one-winged dove when I saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror.
The ugly brown squad car’s red-and-blue lights flashed, and then it’s siren wailed as I pulled over to the side of the road without thinking much of it, because that’s what you did when you saw a cruiser speed by. I just hoped there wasn’t any serious emergency.
But then the cruiser pulled up behind me on the shoulder of the road, and a pit opened up in my stomach.
“Fuck,” I sighed.
Chapter 12
I watched in the rearview mirror as the deputy stepped out of his car dressed in regulation browns, and I preemptively rolled down my window and grabbed my license and registration from where I kept them in my center console.
The deputy cleared the distance between us and instead of giving the standard spiel I’d heard played out so many times on television, the whole ‘license and registration’ bit, he leaned down to look at me, as if he needed to confirm who I was.
The pit in my stomach grew wider.
I didn’t recognize the deputy, but he had a face like a mean dog, maybe a doberman that had never been given a hug a day in its life.
“Howdy,” he said in a tone that didn’t match the word. “License and registration, Landon.”
Ah, so he clearly knew who I was already.
I didn’t need to give the deputy any further ammunition against me, and so I simply passed him the papers and license in my hand.
He practically ripped them from my hand and didn’t so much as glance at them, but he didn’t walk away, either.
I kept a smile on my face and reminded myself not to poke the bear with a stick. I couldn’t help but wonder if Jenkins’ had opened his mouth about my visit, or if Thompson had just decided that I needed to see him flex his metaphorical guns.
“Why have I been pulled over?” I asked in the same tone I might use in the courtroom, clear, concise, authoritative without being bludgeoning.
It didn’t seem to do much good against the deputy however.
“I think you know,” he said with that same sharp-toothed grin.
I did know, but that didn’t make it a legal act. I sighed and shifted slightly in my seat, but as soon as I did, I saw the deputy’s posture tighten, and I realized I’d made a mistake.
His hand drifted to the gun on his belt, and he took one, then two steps back from my window.
“I’m gonna need you to exit your vehicle,” he ordered, and I could tell he was on some sort of power trip.
I slowly raised my hands up, as if I could possibly be concealing a weapon.
“Once again, why?” I asked as I made a show of slowly reaching over to unbuckle my seatbelt.
I knew this was unlawful, but I also knew that I wouldn’t have a lick of luck trying to find any real reason in this entire endeavor. Thompson wanted to make my life difficult, and so he’d had one of his dogs pull me over.
“Furtive movement,” the deputy snapped out and seemed pleased with himself for making up a reason that might actually hold up in court if he ever learned how to pronounce furtive. “You moved like you had a weapon.”
We both knew it was a lie, but I gradually reached over for the handle on the door anyway. I kept all of my movements slow and deliberate, like I was performing a magic trick for an easily impressed toddler, and nudged the door open.
I wanted to turn my car off, but knew it was too late to try and do something like that given how twitchy that deputy’s trigger finger looked.
Once the door was open wide enough, I swung one leg out and pressed my loafer onto the asphalt, and then the other. Each movement was slow and deliberate.
I could practically imagine the headlines now if something went backwards. Local lawyer shot in violent attack on police. It didn’t need to be true, just splashy enough to make me look bad.
I felt like I might throw up.
As soon as I had both feet on the ground, I started to straighten my body up while I kept both hands up in the air where the deputy could see them. I couldn’t see what the name tag below his badge read, but it wasn’t like it mattered if his boss was the one who sent him here to harass me.
The deputy seemed to relax, just a little, once it became apparent that I wasn’t going to try and attack him, as if I was anywhere near that much of an idiot, and his hand finally drifted away from the gun on his bulky belt.
I felt some of the tension leave my own shoulders. I wasn't calm, but I did feel better to see that he wasn’t contemplating shooting me at the moment.
“Turn around and put your hands on the car,” the deputy snapped at me.
I bit back a sigh and my usual questions I’d have if this were under normal circumstances. It wouldn’t matter what I said, because this clearly wasn’t based on logic or the law, and nothing I said would sway this man to be on my side.
Really, the only option I had was to comply to avoid some sort of real arrest, because I could handle this level of inconvenience. Sure, it might take some explaining to Clara, but I could handle it, especially if it meant I could still make my dinner plans.
I could not handle getting arrested, however. That would be more problematic.
And so, with my hands still up in the air, I turned toward my car and swallowed down all my dignity and the knowledge that this was a farce before I planted my hands on the warm metal of my vehicle.
I’d seen people searched by the police before and knew to keep my feet planted about a shoulder’s width apart, and I tried to keep my muscles relaxed.
The deputy started at my waist and patted up my body toward my shoulders and arms in what I could tell was not a real attempt at a pat down. He wasn’t trying to find any hidden weapons, and we both knew it. He was just succeeding at being an asshole.
His hands moved from my shoulders to pat my arms, and I wanted to tell him to be a bit more considerate toward my clothing, especially because I was in the process of being made late for a maybe-date.
But for some reason, I assumed that if I told him either of those things, he’d find some way to keep me from going about my business until after three to five business days.
When he made it down to my wrist, he didn’t even hesitate to unhook my watch and snag it.
It’s sudden disappearance left me feeling naked and sick to my stomach all at once, and I had the startling thought I might throw up. Without my watch, I felt strangely unmoored, and I understood on a deeper level how Natalie probably felt about her mother’s ring.
Having a gift from my deceased parent in the hands of one of the Crowley Sheriff’s Department’s hands was enough to make me come apart at the seams.
After he had finished jostling my arms, the deputy moved down to my legs. For the first time, he actually hit paydirt, and his hand stilled at my phone in my pocket.
Shit, I’d forgotten about that.
I hissed a breath through my teeth and prayed he’d leave it be, but I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t happen. While I couldn’t see the deputy’s face, I imagined he had broken out into some sort of unflattering grin as he reached into my pocket to pull my phone free.
There were a few dragging seconds in which I didn’t know what was happening, and I just hoped that Clara hadn’t texted me, that Evelyn or Brody hadn’t sent me anything about our crusade against Thompson.