East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  She shook. “Jace Salome.” She took a deep breath. “Doc doesn’t need an ambulance.”

  “No.” Ezell keyed his radio. “Control. 10-22 the bus.”

  —say again—

  “Disregard on the ambulance. 10-79 instead.”

  —10-4—

  10-79 . . . the JP.

  “Damn.” Jace made sure she didn’t step in the blood—from Wrubel, from the teenagers laughing in the Rambler just before the train struck, or from Mama—and headed for A Pod.

  CHAPTER 5

  The main hallway at the Zach County jail was scarred; a hard skin broken by the violence of men and women.

  Most of the beige paint had long ago been flayed from the walls. What was left had been dulled to a matte smear by time and the press of bodies. Just below an average man’s waist, the paint had been scuffed and broken by shoes, duty boots, hand trucks, and all manner of items. Above the waist, the paint was marred by the reach of batons once used against unruly inmates or by the metal of locked handcuffs banged against the wall by bored inmates. Occasionally, the concrete itself was scarred. Regardless of how hard that skin was, the inmates and cops who sometimes fought against each other believed themselves harder.

  Hard boot falls sounded, carried and amplified, like the house trio at a small jazz club, by the concrete. When Jace heard them, something deep inside her tightened. The road deputy, Craig Ezell, gestured at her to calm down, though he took a deep breath and smoothed out the lines in his uniform shirt.

  Sheriff James Bukowski came around the corner, his face lined with the mileage of too many years behind a badge. An unlit cigar hung from a corner of his mouth. “Salome.” It was a pitbull bark. “What’d you do this time?”

  In one of their first meetings, he’d lit up a cigar in the jail and then ordered her to write him a ticket. That he did, just because it gave him a laugh, made her uneasy. But he’d also shown her the thin investigative file from the Lubbock County sheriff’s office about her mother’s death. So while he made her nervous, he also comforted her in a way she couldn’t quite define.

  He was a tall man, better than six feet, and carried his weight easily. He looked wiry, almost thin, but she’d heard he was hell on wheels in a fight. His conversation was normally peppered with profanities but also long silences. His eyes were dark, his hair salt and pepper with more pepper every day. Worn, black jeans hung easily on his hips, as though denim and man were comfortable with each other, while his black shirt, new with Zach County SO embroidered over the left breast, seemed stiff and uncomfortable. His boots, like always, were jet black. Black was his favorite color.

  “The man in black.”

  He chewed on his cigar. “The one about the suspect falling down the stairs was funny.”

  Jace frowned, confused, until she remembered Urrea’s joke. “Yes, sir.”

  “You tell one?”

  “Couldn’t think of one.”

  “Uh-huh. Let me know when you do.”

  “It’ll probably be about an insomniac sheriff who wanders the halls of his own jail at all hours of the night.”

  “Yeah . . . that shit ain’t no joke.” He craned his head to see around her to the dead man. “You see it?”

  Like you did last time, he left unsaid.

  “No, sir.”

  With a nod, he raised the crime scene tape again and stepped through. She checked the time on the wall clock and scribbled it down on her paper. Next to that, she wrote the sheriff’s name and badge number, and noted that he was going into the scene rather than coming out.

  From a good distance back, he looked the scene over for a few minutes, his cigar clamped tightly between his lips. Jace saw his head specifically follow Laimo’s bloody footprints to Laimo, then back to Wrubel’s body. He leaned against the wall, as she saw him do so often in the early hours of the mornings, when his insomnia had the better of him and there was no relief save for the halls and the thump of his boots against the floors. His head up toward the ceiling, he took a deep breath. His lips moved, but he was silent. Finally, he heaved himself from the wall.

  “The bloody footprints?”

  Jace swallowed. “Uh . . . yes, sir?”

  “Not yours.”

  Going the other way, Jace almost said. “No, sir.”

  “She’s an idiot.” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t’a said that. Forget it. She’s not an idiot, she just . . . well . . . I don’t know.”

  “She’s cruel, Sheriff.” Jace stared straight at him. “She laughs at weaker people. She takes glee in people hurting. I’ll never understand that kind of person.”

  The old man eyed her. “Maybe she covers her fear in cruelty.”

  Jace shook her head.

  “Tell you a story . . . when I started out? Scared to death. So I laughed at people all the time. Made me a big man and put the fear a little further away.” He stopped, pulled a bit of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it to the floor. “Later when I got tough, I just beat on people instead of laughing.”

  The sheriff let that hang between them, a bloody carcass dangling by a butcher’s hook. Eventually, he shrugged and said, “We all have our own ways of coping, I guess.”

  “That’ll never be me.”

  “Yeah? You better than me, Deputy?”

  “No, sir, I’m not saying that. I’m saying I won’t be her. I will never laugh at someone who’s weaker than me just because they’re weaker than me.”

  He stared at her for a long minute, his eyes hard and narrow. His lips cracked a tiny smile. “See that you don’t.”

  “Good thing that cigar’s not lit, Sheriff,” she said as he walked away.

  He snorted. “Get another ticket. I gotta be written up.” His boots echoed through the concrete hallway. “Suppose you wanna do that, too.”

  “If I’m not busy with something important . . . painting my toenails or something.”

  “Nice lip, Salome.”

  By the time Major Jakob, the major in charge of the crime lab, arrived fifteen minutes later, Jace had threatened to write down fourteen names: four jailers, seven road officers, and three random people whose job Jace had no clue about. All of them had slunk away but not before trying to peer around her to get a glimpse.

  “You do the taping?” Jakob asked, running a finger along the yellow crime-scene tape.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jace had strung the tape wall to wall just beyond the A Pod outer door before Bukowski arrived. It was a good forty feet from the body. Laimo had done the same on the far side, creating a zone empty of everything except the dead man and the road deputy.

  “Good. Who are you?”

  “Jace Salome.”

  Something flashed across Jakob’s mild face. Frowning, suddenly feeling the paranoia of being a worm, Jace lifted the crime-scene tape for her.

  “J-A-K-O-B. Lincoln 1.”

  Jace blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “My name is spelled J-A-K-O-B; badge number Lincoln 1.”

  Jakob stopped about ten feet from Wrubel and spoke to Ezell for a few minutes before dismissing him and then directing a trio of scene techs who’d arrived from the other direction. They became a sandstorm of activity. Flashbulbs exploded like heat lightning from deep inside that sandstorm and the thin, not-quite metallic snap of tape measures filled the hallway.

  Her phone rang. “Salome.”

  “Hey, worm.”

  Jace breathed a sigh of relief. “Hey, sister. What’s up?”

  “Just wanted to tell you, we got another body in the jail. Dr. Cruz.”

  “It’s not Cruz, Rory.”

  “Got it from a reliable source.”

  “Better pay your source more. It’s Doc Wrubel.”

  “Doc? How do you know that?”

  Jace wet her lips and turned away. A head popped around the corner up the hallway, but the officer didn’t bother coming toward the scene. “Because I’m standing right here.”

  Rory’s heavy breathing stopped. “No crap?”


  “No crap.”

  “You do it?”

  “Not funny.”

  Rory gave a half-chuckle. “Hah. It’s damned funny but you won’t realize it until tomorrow. You okay?”

  “I guess.” She licked her lips again, then wiped them off. “I mean—whatever. Yeah, I’m fine.” I’ve got as much steel as those lab techs who don’t even seem to notice the dead man at their feet other than to mark and measure.

  “Jace?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s my prob—”

  Jakob’s voice boomed down the hallway, but because of the echo, Jace had no idea what she had said. She looked and saw Jakob jabbing a finger at the bloody footprint. The techs hustled to photograph and log the prints.

  “Wow. Who’s that?”

  “Major Jakob. She’s running the scene. Laimo and me are doing scene access, if you can dig that, and Laimo screwed the pooch.”

  “Wait . . . Laimo screwed it up? That’s almost hard to believe.”

  “Be nice.”

  “Uh . . . no?”

  “Well, Laimo walked through the blood and carried it all the way down the hallway.”

  Rory laughed.

  “First name I had to write down was Sheriff Bukowski’s.”

  Rory’s laugh boomed through the phone. “Holy hell, Jace, how the hell do you stumble into this crap?”

  “If you can figure it out, I wish you’d tell me because I’d rather not stumble into this crap.”

  “Sounds like we’re going to need a stress breakfast again.”

  “Long as you’re buying.”

  “I ain’t the worm.”

  “Jeez, already, how long am I the worm?”

  “Until they hire someone new and you get some seniority.”

  “They’ve hired like . . . I don’t know . . . five new jailers since I got here.”

  “Oh. Right. Forgot about that. Then forever, I guess. See ya at seven, worm.”

  Shoving her phone back into her pocket, Jace watched the techs work. They’d work until the justice of the peace got here, at which point he would do his thing and release the body. Then the techs would move back in and get back to evidence collection.

  Urrea popped his head out of B-Pod’s outer door. Just a tiny bit, just enough for her to see him. He pretended to take pictures, then rubbed his thumb and forefinger together: Take pictures I can sell, he was saying.

  Jace ground her teeth until she heard her jaw pop. She pointed at Urrea and then at the murder scene. This should be you, the gesture said, not me.

  “I’m just the worm,” she mouthed.

  “Exactly,” he mouthed back.

  CHAPTER 6

  “You okay?”

  “Not even close.” She whirled on Rory. They were in the locker room, grabbing their personal gear before heading out. “And don’t you ever, ever say no one will die in this jail. Ever again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Rory looked toward the floor. “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “You should be. Damn it.” She sat heavily on the bench, willing the tears not to come. Maybe Gramma was right; maybe this job was too much for her. Maybe Jace simply wasn’t cut out for a job where people routinely died, where she routinely saw the anguish and despair of it.

  “I know that look.”

  “Stop it.” Jace closed her gym bag. “It’s not any look and it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It is a look and it does mean something.” Rory sat next to her. “Listen to me: This is a tough job, no shit about that. But you couldn’t quit even if you wanted to. The sheriff already refused your resignation. What makes you think he’ll take it now?”

  “First of all, I wasn’t thinking of resigning. Second of all, if I did want to resign, Sheriff Bukowski has no say over that; I’ll just quit showing up and send all his gear back FedEx. Third of all . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “It just . . . it scares me, okay?”

  Rory gave her a quick hug. Her voice was as soft as a pleasant night. “I know. We’re all scared sometimes.”

  “You?”

  “Of course not.” She tried an ill-fitting grin, then threw it away. “Don’t quit, Jace. This is the greatest job in the world. The hardest, too, maybe. Don’t quit yet. Next week, if you want, I’ll write your resignation for you.”

  “You can’t write.”

  “Fine. You write it and I’ll bring the Skittles. Just promise me you won’t quit this week; that’s all I ask.”

  Jace nodded as a knock sounded on the locker-room door. “You guys decent?”

  “Not a single day in our entire lives.”

  Dillon came in. “Always with the comedy jokes . . . and yet, hardly ever funny.” He shook his head. “Jokes after a murder. We are twisted individuals, indeed.” He looked at Jace. “Detective Von Holton wants to talk to you when you sign on tonight. First thing. But also, you need to come in an hour early. Mandatory debrief.”

  “With Von Holton?” Jace asked.

  “With me. It’ll be fine. Generally we did pretty good. Only one big problem.”

  Rory mimicked Laimo’s walk through the bloody scene.

  “Easy, Bogan,” Dillon said.

  She saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  “Who’s Von Holton? I don’t think I know him.”

  “A detective,” Dillon said.

  Rory looked at Dillon, then at Jace. “One of the flyer boys.”

  Jace ground her teeth.

  “Flyer boys?” Dillon frowned. “That mean what I think it means?”

  “Doesn’t mean anything, Sergeant.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Salome.”

  “I would never lie to you.” She held three fingers up as though she were a Girl Scout. “Probably.”

  “Tonight,” Dillon said again. “Hour early for debrief, then Von Holton, and if I find one of those flyers that you guys think is ‘nothing,’ I’ll take care of the problem myself. You understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After he left, Rory said, “I think you oughta kick his ass.”

  “Dillon’s?”

  “Von Holton’s, dummy.”

  Jace tried to laugh it off. “Luckily, Miss Violence, I didn’t ask you.”

  “Miss Violence? I like that. ‘Today’s contestants for Miss Universe include Miss Violence, well-schooled in the art of offensive defensiveness and more than willing to bring about world peace by kicking a two-by-four up your ass.’ ”

  Jace chuckled. “I guess my question would be how does she look in heels and a ball gown?”

  Rory struck a quick pose. “Marvelous, I’m sure.”

  “Ladies,” someone said through the closed door. “Can I have a word?”

  “The popularity of Miss Violence is overwhelming.”

  “Enter, if you dare.” Rory’s voice rang out, girlish and coy. “Oh, crap, Doctor. Sorry, we were just having a laugh. Just . . . Well, damn. I’m really sorry about Doc Wrubel.”

  Dr. Ernesto R. Cruz was just under six feet. Lean but decently muscled and always tan, as though the Texas sun, summer or winter, sought him out. “Me, too. He was a good man.”

  Until Dr. Cruz came along, the Zachary County sheriff’s office had kept most medical in-house. They had a doctor with privileges at Zach City Memorial, but he wasn’t on site and his usual treatment was to take the inmates straight to the hospital. Dr. Cruz had convinced the county commissioners he could provide better and less expensive medical treatment. The Zachary County jail hadn’t been Cruz Medical’s first contract, but it had been their largest to that point. Cruz was a good doctor but an even better hand-shaker and his company now had contracts at jails throughout west Texas and eastern New Mexico. He still counted himself the head doctor in the Zach County jail, though his time in the facility had gone from forty hours per week to something closer to ten. That was the reason he’d hired Doc Wrubel.

  Cruz’s right hand curled around a manila folder with Wrubel’s name at the top while his left thumb moved
urgently from fingertip to fingertip and back again. After a moment, he offered Jace his left hand. “Deputy.”

  Jace shook the man’s damp hand.

  “You were there, right? You saw what happened?”

  “No, sir. I heard the alarm and was directed to the scene. I saw Doc down and—”

  “He was dead?”

  Jace hesitated, uncomfortable beneath the man’s penetrating eyes. “I’m not a doctor—”

  “Sure, right, I know. But—” He stopped himself with a deep breath. “My apologies; I’m not doing this well. Doc Wrubel . . . Francis . . . Frankie . . . was my friend. I’m not asking for any medical distinction; I just want to know . . . if he was dead.”

  “Sir, yes, I believe he was. I’m sorry. I didn’t know him very well, but he seemed like a decent man.”

  “Thank you for that; it is appreciated. And he was; for all his problems at the end, he was my friend and I’m heartsick over this. I know that sounds stupid.”

  “It doesn’t sound stupid at all,” Rory said.

  “I controlled scene access on the A-Pod side. Major Jakob got there pretty quick with her guys and she dismissed me after the scene was processed.”

  Cruz nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. Thank you. I am so sorry you had to see something like that, Deputy. I know it’s part of our job, but violent death is not the kind of thing you get comfortable with.”

  “Not even close,” Rory said.

  Cruz said, “What can you tell me about the incident with Mercer? The inmate? Were either of you on that detail?” His gaze, intense and troubled, scuttled back and forth between the women.

  “We were working booking,” Rory said. “We weren’t in medical. We heard him yelling but didn’t see—”

  “He did it, didn’t he?” Cruz interrupted her quietly, as though he didn’t want to give voice to the thought. “Mercer killed Frankie because of that incident.”