Longhorn Law 2: A Legal Thriller

by Dave Daren

  “Turn around,” the deputy barked, and I heaved a sigh of relief as I dropped my hands down from the side of the car.

  I shifted on my heels to turn and face him, and he once again took a handful of steps back and away from me.

  “Is everything up to snuff, Deputy?” I asked in as pleasant of a tone as I could muster.

  I didn’t want to come off as sarcastic because he could react poorly, and I didn’t want to come off as defensive because he could react poorly. I had to tamp down every single emotion I wanted to let loose just to dance around the frayed edges of this man’s temper.

  My phone was still in the deputy’s hand, and he kept cutting his eyes up to me and back down to my screen. He looked like he was hoping to find something, but I couldn’t understand what that might be.

  Instead of starting with an answer to my question, the deputy simply matched my false smile with one of his own.

  “I’m gonna need to take you back to the station for a chat,” he said with a slow drawl.

  I could practically hear the power trip in his tone as he uttered that statement, and so I sputtered and my composure slipped just a hair once again. I hated how easily this wormed its way under my skin. I could keep myself together in court when I was being attacked, so why couldn’t I do it now?

  Rationally, I knew it was because this wasn’t a situation that demanded any sort of logic and any sort of precedent, but that rationality didn’t make my own reactions less annoying.

  “And why is that?” I finally asked slowly. I enunciated each word as if I was speaking to a child.

  This did not seem to do me any sort of favors with the deputy, and his face cut into a deep scowl.

  “For being obstinate,” he snapped back at me. “And because I don’t like your goddamn face.”

  He had, apparently, not been a fan of my tone.

  I couldn’t help but keep my focus on my phone in his meaty, power-hungry hand. I knew that there was a snowball’s chance in hell that they might actually manage to crack my password, but they could always break the damn thing.

  “And my car?” I asked with a weary sigh following closely at the heels of my words.

  The deputy’s face split into a mean-spirited smile.

  “We’ll take care of it,” he said in a way that did not make it feel like it would be taken care of.

  But what could I do? Argue with him?

  So I just exhaled another deep, slow sigh, and felt my body deflate like some sort of balloon before I plastered a thin smile on my face.

  “Of course,” I simpered through my damn teeth. “But can I turn my vehicle off so it isn’t a hazard to other drivers on the road?”

  I raised my eyebrows toward him to punctuate my sentence. From the look on his face, I could tell that the deputy hadn’t even thought of something like that. Hell, he probably didn’t even have a real plan for my car.

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot and then looked around like he was hoping someone might come by and tell him what to do.

  “Fine,” he said with a huff and waved his hand toward my vehicle as if he was doing me some sort of favor and not the absolute bare minimum.

  I kept the thin smile on my face and gave a small nod that would have been appreciative if I didn’t want to punch him in the face. I turned on my heels and leaned over into the doorway of my car.

  I didn’t like the feeling of having my back exposed to him like this, and that thought alone wasn’t pleasant. I should not have been afraid of this man, but he had been working very hard to make that the case.

  The car dinged in annoyance at the open door, and I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed the noise sooner. When I pulled the key from the ignition, I was almost stunned by the silence that followed.

  I straightened back up and fought the urge to drop the keys straight back into my pocket, and instead, I spun on my heels and extended my arm toward the deputy with my key ring slipped over my finger.

  He took a half-step forward to snag them from my waiting grasp as quickly as he could, as if I would try and bite him or something absurd.

  But instead, I just reached behind me to blindly hit the lock button on the door and then slammed it shut with a loud thunk. I let my arms fall loosely down at my sides and nodded once again at the deputy.

  For a moment, I thought he was going to let me walk to the squad car with a small shred of my dignity still intact, but that, of course, wasn’t going to be the case. Instead, the deputy reached toward his belt for his cuffs, and I knew where things were going from there.

  I exhaled a deep, tired sigh and extended my arms in front of me with both of my fists clenched and rolled toward each other so that he could slap the handcuffs on.

  The deputy pulled the metal cuffs from his belt and cleared the small distance between us. He didn’t say another word before he clamped a cuff around my left wrist and then another around my right.

  The metal was cooler than the air around us and bit into my skin as he clearly pressed them too tightly closed. I had a feeling he had done that on purpose.

  This close, though, I could finally see that the deputy’s name tag below his gold badge read Quentin.

  Quentin reached up for my shoulder and clapped a meat hock of a hand around it and used his grip to pull me forward.

  I nearly stumbled but managed to quickly find my footing just as he planted his hand onto my back to give me another little shove. I didn’t need to be told twice, however, and started to walk toward his awaiting squad car.

  It felt like a damn death march.

  Quentin only stepped in front of me to open the door to the back seat, and I could tell he had derived far too much glee from everything that evening as he shoved my head down.

  I awkwardly climbed into the back seat, and then the door slammed shut with so much force the car’s suspension rattled. Despite the cuffs around my wrists, I still reached up to grab the seatbelt to secure myself.

  Deputy Quentin might have not given a shit, but I personally did not want to die in a tragic car accident while cuffed in the back of some unclean squad car because he hadn’t had the foresight to buckle me in. I tracked the deputy’s movements as he moved around the side of the car toward the driver’s side door.

  He yanked it open with practically as much force as he had used to close my own before he slid into the seat and pulled the door shut.

  I watched as he tossed my keys and phone into the passenger side seat which I really didn’t imagine was proper evidence gathering procedure, but given the fact that I was cuffed and sitting in the back of a squad car, I kept quiet.

  The radio on Quentin’s shoulder crackled to life as one of his colleagues said something over the line that I couldn’t discern.

  I exhaled a deep sigh and leaned back in the uncomfortable seat to look around the inside cab of the squad car. It was no less hideous on the inside than it was on the outside.

  The back seat was a creaky, cracked brown pleather which I assumed was a choice made for easy cleaning. The back seat was littered with a couple of old, crumpled chip bags and a handful of sports drink bottles.

  I wrinkled my nose at the sight. Apparently, not only was Thompson a bad man and a bad sheriff to boot, he was bad at making his deputies keep their damn cars clean.

  Because I valued my life free of jail time, I didn’t try to have a conversation with Deputy Quentin as he turned off his lights and edged back into the road.

  I tried to draw a map in my mind from where we were to the sheriff’s department, and I felt relief flood my system when I realized that it was only a meager five or so minutes, unless of course Quentin decided to find the world’s longest route there.

  Luckily, however, he seemed to want to be in a vehicle with me about as much as I wanted to be trapped in one with him because the drive passed quickly. Quentin pulled into the sheriff’s department’s parking lot, and I wasn’t surprised to see how barren it was.

  The lot was barely filled on the
busiest of days, but at nearly seven o’clock at night, I assumed that most of the deputies had gone home for the day.

  Deputy Quentin threw his car into park in a handicap spot closest to the entrance to the department, and I nearly barked out a laugh as I realized what he had done.

  It was something so comically low-tier evil it felt too contrived to be true, but he shifted gears, twisted his key from the ignition, and stepped into the cracked parking lot nonetheless.

  It only took a few seconds for him to yank open the back seat door with a violence in the gesture.

  I took my time leaning over to unbuckle myself and spent another minute or so untangling myself from the seatbelt.

  If he was going to inconvenience me, I was going to do the same in the small ways that I could manage.

  As soon as the seatbelt retracted, Quentin reached out and grabbed my arm and proceeded to yank me out of the vehicle with such force I was nearly afraid he’d pull my arm from my socket.

  I stumbled to my feet and straightened up as soon as I was on level ground.

  The deputy slapped his hand on my shoulder and steered me toward the narrow front door to the sheriff’s department, and I felt alarmingly like a battering ram as he pushed me through the sepia-tinted glass door. He aimed me toward the row of chairs along the wall, and I noticed that the one I had dragged in front of Jenkins’ usual desk remained out of place.

  Quentin shoved my shoulder down so that I would collapse into a chair, and I could tell he was deriving some level of pleasure from manhandling me like that.

  I gave a small exhale as the wind was just barely knocked out of me with the force of the shove, and I sank down into the uncomfortable plastic. Maybe I was still a little naive, because I assumed that when Quentin had stated he was going to bring me back to the station for a chat, that we’d actually chat.

  But after he pushed me into a chair in the pseudo-lobby, he simply walked away.

  I tracked his movements with my eyes, and felt my brow furrow as I tried to figure out what game he was playing.

  Quentin poked his head into the back hallway and called out something I couldn’t quite hear, but after he’d said it and straightened back up, two more men appeared in the doorway with matching jackal-like grins painted across their faces.

  I gave a thin smile and a raise of my eyebrows in their direction.

  “Deputies,” I called out in greeting as if this was completely routine and not at all a violation of the law as well as just downright obnoxious.

  Apparently, they hadn’t been expecting me to speak because the three of them exchanged a look I couldn’t interpret.

  Quentin looked back at me and cocked his head to the side, and I could sense another metaphorical blow coming.

  “We’ve got some important police business that’s come up, Landon,” he said with that same jackal grin his co-workers had worn at the sight of me. “Hope you understand. We’ll have that chat soon.”

  And then he disappeared into the hallway like the others.

  I had a sinking feeling that there was not, in fact, going to be some sort of chat. I gave another long, tired sigh, and slumped in the stiff plastic chair with my legs sprawled in front of me.

  It wasn’t the best position for my posture, but these chairs were so unpleasant that it was the only way I could get remotely comfortable. And combined with the slowly increasing pain in my wrists from how tightly they’d been cuffed, I would take comfort where I could find it.

  When I was still again, I could still hear the faint sounds of the deputies chattering amongst themselves in what I assumed was some sort of break room down the hallway.

  The words were too far off for me to make out what they actually were, but I could pick up on the intention behind them well enough.

  They were pleased to have managed to pick me up and drag me in here. This was a farce meant only to piss me off and inconvenience me. They were ordered to do it by Thompson. Sheriff Thompson was going to be so pleased that they’d actually done it.

  I dropped my head back against the wall and stared up at the yellow-stained, watermarked ceiling tiles, and because I had nothing better to do with my time, I started to count them.

  One, two, three, four...

  I started the process in the lower left corner and made my way across the entire ceiling seven entire times before Quentin reappeared. I wasn’t actually sure how much time had passed because I couldn’t find a damn clock in the entire department lobby.

  He almost looked sheepish, if he was capable of that sort of thing.

  “Phone call,” he said in what was not actually a sentence and nor was it helpful.

  My brow furrowed, and I scrambled to sit up.

  It took a moment for all my blood to rush to my brain, and once it did, I cocked my head in his direction in mild confusion.

  Obviously, I should have been granted a phone call, and I should have been read my Miranda rights if this was an actual arrest, but it clearly wasn’t an arrest. It was just a pissing match with a sheriff that wanted me severely inconvenienced at best, and dead at my worst assumption.

  “Am I being given a phone call?” I asked slowly and this time fought the urge to over enunciate my words, despite the fact Quentin probably needed that sort of treatment.

  He gave a nod and wouldn’t quite meet my eyes, but that seemed more to be because he was an asshole than any sort of real remorse.

  “How long have I been here?” I asked without really expecting much of an answer.

  I couldn’t tell what time it was without being able to at least see out the window, and I hadn’t dared get up to look over my shoulder. But from the small sliver of darkness I could see when I craned my neck up, it didn’t bode well for my dinner-maybe-date.

  Quentin bristled at the question but ultimately decided it was harmless after he heaved out a beleaguered sigh. He glanced toward my wrist as if he’d suddenly remembered that he had taken my damn watch.

  “Nine-forty-five,” he said as he checked the clunky watch on his own wrist.

  He shifted from foot to foot again before he nodded toward the desk that, unbeknownst to him, I’d been sitting in front of earlier that day.

  I realized after a moment that his gesture had been toward the phone on the desk itself rather than the desk. I hesitated as I wondered if this was some sort of trick. The last thing I needed was to misread his nonverbal cues and end up shot or tazed or some other awful thing.

  “May I?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

  Quentin moved over toward the desk and turned the phone toward me so that it faced the opposite direction. He yanked it to the very edge of the crowded desk and knocked a few things over in the process.

  After a second of thought about whether or not this was some sort of trap, I stood up from one uncomfortable chair and moved to another. It felt nice to stretch out my legs, even if it was just for a moment, at least.

  I reached forward with my cuffed wrists toward the receiver and brought it up to cradle between my ear and my shoulder.

  But I hesitated once again.

  I wasn’t sure who I should call. If I called Brody or Evelyn, they might discuss something about our investigation we were building against Thompson. The last thing I wanted to have happen during my already horrible evening was to reveal to a pig-headed deputy what we knew about his department, because he would clearly report back to Thompson.

  And then I remembered Clara and was plagued with the image of her, seated alone at Martino’s, and undoubtedly thinking that I’d stood her up.

  I took a small breath as I tried to recall her number from memory before I reached out to tap at the buttons on the ancient phone.

  The line began to ring, and I held my breath and prayed I had remembered correctly because I really doubted that Deputy Quentin would let me play a game of trial and error until I managed to contact the right person.

  The dial tone cut off after the fourth ring, and I heard a soft, familiar voice cut thro
ugh the silence.

  “Hello?” Clara asked in obvious confusion.

  I couldn’t even imagine what the number had shown up as on her phone, but the sound of her voice alone was enough to make some of the tension seep from my shoulders.

  “Clara,” I breathed out. “Let me explain.”

  “Archer?” she sputtered out another question.

  If I concentrated, I swore I could still hear the sounds of the restaurant in the background, but I couldn’t imagine that she’d stayed there that long to wait for me to eventually show up.

  “What’s going on?” she continued. “Where are you? What’s happening, and why are you calling me from a police line? Are you hurt?”

  I tried to remember each of her questions so that I was capable of addressing them in turn. I kept my eyes on the phone receiver and didn’t dare look up at Quentin for fear he would cut the call short.

  “I’m fine,” I started off with an easy answer, despite it being only partially-true. “I had to come down to the sheriff’s department to answer some questions, and I’m being detained.”

  They weren’t lies, exactly, but they were only half-truths.

  The last thing I wanted to do was tell the complete truth with Quentin hovering over my shoulder like the world’s worst guardian angel, because I knew he could make the situation more miserable than it already was.

  The line went so silent I was afraid she’d hung up, and I nearly called out to her just to make sure she was still there. But before I could, she came over the line again.

  “Do you need me to come get you?” she asked, and I couldn’t help the warmth that flooded through my chest at the question.

  I realized then that the background noise of the call had all but disappeared. So she had been waiting at the restaurant still, for me. I wanted to kiss her right then.

  “That would be good,” I said with a thin laugh. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to leave, but I don’t think I can drive home.”

  She didn’t have to ask me what I meant, because I think she already knew.

  Clara exhaled a sigh over the line and a small laugh of her own.