East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  “That whole drama was a little embarrassing. Resignation and facing off with the sheriff and whatever.”

  “Drama Queen 101. It’s what I like best about you.”

  “And here I thought it was my razor sharp wit and lovely eyes.” Jace dumped some quarters into the soda machine. A gigantic Mountain Dew rattled down the chute to her. “I think I like this job.”

  Rory said nothing for moment. Then she grinned. “Yeah? And you might be halfway good at it someday if you learn the lessons I’m teaching.”

  Jace nodded emphatically. “Right. Whatever Rory says, do the opposite.”

  “Ah, that wit, razor sharp as a cheese-covered noodle.”

  Jace raised her eyebrows. “Cheese-covered?”

  “Whatever. Listen, sister, you are good at this job and you should like it. I’ve told you before, being a copper is the greatest job in the world.”

  “And the worst.”

  “And the worst.”

  “So if I want to keep this gig,” Jace said, “I probably shouldn’t make enemies of people like Von Holton.”

  A couple road deputies wandered into the break room, nodding at the jailers but deep into their own war stories.

  “Don’t worry about Von Holton. Think of it this way: he already hates you.”

  “Golly gee . . . thanks.”

  Rory keyed her shoulder mic. “Control . . . 456 headed back to post.”

  —10-4—

  Together, they strolled through the main hallway, Rory stepping neatly on the purple lines on the floor that led toward the female pod, while Jace had been assigned to the investigation at Von Holton’s demand.

  “What I’m saying,” Rory said, “is that he hates you and there ain’t thing one you can do about that. If you found the murderer and gave him to Von Holton with a signed and videotaped confession, Von Holton would still hate you. It’s the way of the world. He’s a throwback who probably doesn’t believe women should be in this job—”

  “Barefoot and pregnant.”

  “With a bushy 1970s hoo-ha.”

  “Yuck.”

  “Probably also believes the police are always right, no matter what.” Rory held up a finger. “One: you’re a chick.” She held up a second. “Two: you brought down a bad poh-leece.” A third finger popped up. “Three: you made him look bad in front of Major Jakob and I wish I’d been there to see it. Fourth: you gave him the murderer. Now it’s his job to prove it. Besides, you’re not in his chain of command so who gives a crap? What can he do to you?”

  Jace was worried less about what he’d do to her than what words he’d put in other deputies’ ears.

  Rory stared at her, her head slightly cocked.

  “What?”

  “You crack me up. You’re sitting in the interview with him and slamming him eight ways from Sunday, hauling out those jail balls I told you you’d discover, and now you’re standing here terrified you’re going to foul up your job. You are about as bipolar as anyone I’ve ever met. Up down up down.”

  Jace laughed it off. “A girl can have multiple faces, can’t she?”

  “No problem . . . Sybil.”

  “Thank you . . . Etta.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  They stopped at the turn where they’d part company.

  “Tell me about Major Jakob.”

  Rory looked sideways at Jace. “Pretty interesting she was in that interview. She wasn’t in there for Laimo. Wasn’t in there for Craig, either.” Rory shrugged. “I know she’s queer for chicks on the job. Not sexually, I mean. She believes there need to be more women in this line of work and from what I hear, she’ll go balls to the wall for any women she thinks deserve it.”

  “She ever do it for you?”

  Rory’s eyes focused sharply on Jace. “What’re you saying?”

  In the blast of Rory’s gaze, Jace was suddenly uncomfortable, as though she’d stepped on a tripwire she hadn’t even known was there. “Not saying a thing. I’m just curious. You’re telling me she’s helping me out somehow and I’m just wondering if that’s the kind of help I want.”

  “Straight up, sister, straight the hell up.”

  Still feeling the tripwire against her shins, but maybe less taut, Jace nodded. “Good, I’ll take all I can get.”

  “She’s great at what she does. Her lab is constantly at the top of crime labs in Texas. People send her evidence from all over the state. They do all kinds of superstar DNA stuff. She’s worked with the FBI a few times, too. Some of her computer guys, Vance is one of them, do ICAC forensics and always get their bad guy.”

  “ICAC?”

  “Internet Crimes Against Children. Child sexual exploitation. All computer-based crimes. Kiddie porn. Like that.”

  “Wow.”

  “Pretty good for a hometown girl. She’s on the talk shows sometimes.” Rory nodded. “She’s impressive as hell, Jace, and you want her thinking you’re a good guy.”

  “A good guy with breasts.”

  “Boobs or not boobs, if you’re a good cop, she’s a supporter. But yeah, if you have that extra chromosome, she’s your supporter.”

  “My own personal, living, breathing sports bra.”

  Rory laughed. “You been to see Bibb yet?”

  Jace waved the Mountain Dew and a five-pound bag of peanuts. “Going right now.” She glanced at her watch. “He texted me and said he’s coming in tonight. Idiot. His last day of vacation and here he’s coming back.”

  “Oh, hey, almost forgot. Changed my schedule in Rooster so I’m on when the truck comes through.” She waved the tiny piece of paper Shelby had given them. “Gonna stop that truck and have some fun. Sheriff said you could ride. It’s gonna be a blast.”

  “I’ll pass on hanging with Cop of the Year, thanks.”

  Rory eyed Jace, her frown deepening. “This is going to be a great bust and even if we can’t find him, it’ll be fun driving around with you. You can see what it’s like to work the road.”

  Jace stopped walking. “I don’t know, Rory. I just . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m not a road cop, Rory; I’m barely even a jailer.”

  The truth was, Jace had thought about maybe someday being a road cop, in an unreachable fantasy way, like having a perfect date with Young Man with a Horn–era Kirk Douglas. But when it came down to it, Jace wasn’t sure she had the stones for that job. She certainly didn’t have the training and maybe that scared her more than anything. She’d been on the bad end of a big bust and it had nearly killed her. She had no desire to jump in that particular swimming pool again anytime soon.

  “Oh, bullshit. You’re twice the cop most anyone else in this jail is . . . the obvious exception being me.” Rory grinned and winked. “Look, I’m not trying to turn you into something you’re not; I’m just trying to have some fun with my best friend. And maybe trying to help her see that she’s better than she thinks . . . expand her horizons some.”

  Jace nodded and headed for the control room, thinking that expanding her horizons was exactly what Von Holton was trying to do to her.

  CHAPTER 12

  On the way to the jail control room, Jace got stopped by an inmate named Doug Kerr. He worked as a medical trusty and had fairly good run of the place.

  “Hey, Salome. What’s shaking?”

  “Living the dream, Kerr, living the dream.”

  He laughed, his gigantic arms wrapped around his body and his hands holding the opposite shoulder. He ran better than six feet and had hardly an ounce of fat on him. He’d be a monster in a fight, Jace thought. Have to call ERTs for that one.

  “Hey, grapevine word is you’re working Doc’s death.”

  “Grapevine, huh?”

  “Usually solid.”

  “You know anything about it?”

  The man shrugged. “Eh . . . what do trusties ever know for sure? Ever’body who talks to us got some agenda or other.”

  “Hearing any agendas last couple of days?
”

  The smile left his face and his eyes, leaving them empty and cold. It startled Jace, made her back up a step and raise her hands slightly. But he never squared up or clenched his fists.

  “Hearing a thing or two.”

  “Yeah?”

  He said nothing. Silence bounced off the concrete walls.

  “Kerr?”

  “Look, keep me outta it, okay? I just wanna do my time and boogie down the road. I got my medical technician schooling almost done. I’m’a get me a good job, get my ass on the straight and narrow.” He grinned. “Got me one boy already and another coming. They gonna need me around. Gonna get straight behind all this child support, get me a job with Cruz. Hey, who better to work a jail than someone been in one? Right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, word is Wrubel wasn’t as clean as ever’body likes to think. Maybe he was selling a little on the side. You know he and Cruz argued about missing meds a few weeks ago.”

  “He’s selling out of the pharmacy?”

  “Maybe, but what do I know from nothing? Maybe outta the pharmacy, maybe offa the street.”

  “Was he using?”

  Again, the unreadable shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe not.” He headed off down the hall. “Anyway, just thought you should hear what I’m hearing.”

  Jace watched him go, distrust as heavy in her gut as the barbeque.

  CHAPTER 13

  Five minutes later, Jace sat in the jail control room, what the dead shift jailers called the Pig Pen. The last two weeks, though, with Sergeant Bibb on vacation, the Pig Pen had actually gotten cleaned. The cleaning staff had done the job every night, which they didn’t do when Bibb was around. As long as he was casual about the remains of his tacos and his peanut shells and his half-finished cans of soda and energy drinks, the cleaning crew was firm in their avoidance of the room.

  However, on his two annual vacations, the cleaning crew—civilians rather than trusties in this sensitive part of the jail—would go in vengefully. The carpet was deep-cleaned and all fifteen computer screens, strung five across and three tall along the wall beyond the controller’s desk, were as clean as if they’d come out of the box ten minutes ago. The green lights of locked doors and red lights of unlocked doors, embedded in the touch screen which was itself embedded in the main desk, were bright and easy to see. With everything so clear and clean, the room seemed a foreign land; bright-eyed and pulsing with energy where with Sgt. Bibb it was always dark and dirty and smelled vaguely of back alleys and cattle pens. To Jace, the sterility of the clean Pig Pen was boring.

  This windowless room was the nexus point for all jail security. No doors or gates, with the exception of individual cell doors within the pods, opened or closed that the control room sergeant didn’t orchestrate. She chuckled. This was also the place from which Bibb frequently watched Jace’s behind as she walked the hallways. Not just her, of course, but all the women. It was like being under the constant, intense gaze of a teen-aged boy. Yet because of that very constancy and security, she became comfortable. Bibb was a 41-year-old pubescent who had a fixation on rear ends and ate like a college boy, but there was no one Jace wanted watching those monitors more. His very fixation meant he always had an eye on the deputies whom he considered his jailers.

  Right now, the second shift controller sat behind the desk, eyes hard on all the screens and doors. The radio crackled over a loudspeaker hung in the corner and a stream of communication poured from it.

  —control adam outer—

  —10-22 on the transport—

  —booking two males 10-76 . . . about two minutes out—

  —10-4—

  —436 from 472—

  —472 go—

  Jace marveled. It hadn’t been that long ago that she heard every word over the radio but understood none of it. Now she understood almost all of it but with that understanding came a deafness to it. Most of the words slipped away even before the speaker finished uttering them. She heard only what she needed to hear.

  “There he is,” the second shift control sergeant said to her. On the black and white screen, Jace saw Bibb wandering slowly along the main parking lot, a grocery bag in his hand.

  She laughed. Meeting or not, Bibb always had his snacks.

  In the days and weeks after Jace was attacked, Bibb had blamed himself. If he had paid closer attention, he believed, Will Badgett would never have been in the jail. “That son of a bitch never gets in? He don’t beat on you.”

  “Sarge,” Jace had said over and over. “He beat on me at my apartment first, then at the jail.”

  “Well . . . whatever. One less beating.”

  That was his drunken apology on her doorstep at the Sea Spray two days after she got out of the hospital. The blame that burned in Bibb’s head made him much more conscientious of his job. He watched foot traffic and listened to radio traffic much more closely. It was both maddening and comforting.

  In fact, it was that very militancy that helped Bibb take a vacation. His supervisor had a bevy of complaints about Bibb’s demands to know every step at every moment. Traylor was the jail administrator and he had insisted Bibb move his vacation from his mother’s January birthday to Christmas with a vague supervisory pressure.

  The day after Christmas and a dead guy on the floor. Welcome back, Sarge.

  On cue, Bibb’s voice crackled over the two-way intercom from the jail’s back door. “Let me the hell in.”

  The second shift control-room sergeant popped the lock and on the desk, a red locked-door light became the deep green of an unlocked door, then changed back to locked-red when Bibb closed it. Jace stepped out of the Pig Pen and waited.

  “The hell is this happy horseshit?” Bibb asked when he rounded the corner a few minutes later.

  “Welcome back, Sarge. Merry Christmas.”

  Growling, he slammed a meaty fist against the Pig Pen’s door. It banged closed with an explosive thunk. “Damn door oughta be closed.” Bibb’s voice boomed through the hallway, capable of shattering concrete walls.

  “My bad. I just came out. Sorry.” She popped an uncomfortable smile on her face. “Did you have a good time? You look good.”

  “Lost thirty damn pounds with worry. I leave for a couple weeks and the wheels come off. What are you doing in my hallway?” He fell silent but squirmed under her gaze. Taking a deep breath, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, Salome. This door.” He tapped the control-room door. “Should be locked all the time. Every door should be locked all the time.”

  “Yeah, they should, but you have to calm down, Sarge. Everything’s fine.”

  “Yeah? That why we got another dead guy? Got a call yesterday about Wrubel. Spent an hour today reaming out the administration and telling them that their security sucks.”

  She laughed, then stopped when his face remained serious.

  “After telling them ‘I told you so,’ which you know I loved doing, I grabbed some food.” He held up a bag stuffed with two sodas and a premade sandwich from the grocery store down the street. “Forgot my peanuts, though, damn it.”

  Jace swallowed a chuckle.

  “I said this place was lax and no one believed me and now Wrubel’s dead and we’re strapping Mercer in the chair so he can ride the lightning in Huntsville.”

  “You heard that? That Mercer did it?”

  “Couldn’t have been anyone else, the way I hear it.” He stared at her, his gray eyes a wall between them. “Hear you’re hip deep in the investigation, too.”

  Jace shook her head. “Not hip deep, but deeper than I want to be. Von Holton asked me to document a few things.”

  “Asked?”

  “Well . . . demanded. He ordered me to do his legwork and Major Jakob just let him.”

  “That’s ’cause she’s testing you.”

  “I’m tired of being tested.”

  “Gonna happen every day until you retire.”

  “Yeah . . . well . . . I passed the t
est. I’m the one who brought him Mercer.”

  “Good for you.” Bibb pointed to the control room. “I’ll take a look and see what I can see on the hard drive. Maybe we can get you some actual evidence to take to him.”

  Jace smirked. “Sarge, Conroy didn’t catch anything on the hard drive. He’s barely able to open the doors.”

  “Yeah, the boy is a moron.”

  “Anyway, the investigation’s basically over but I’m not sure I’ll be off Von Holton’s radar any time soon.”

  “Yeah?”

  She pulled tonight’s flyer from her pocket. She’d known there would be one waiting because she had pissed Von Holton off so badly. This one had five officers trying to handcuff bad guys while a crude depiction of Jace—no breasts and a huge butt—pointed the five officers out to a stick figure with a Texas Rangers badge pinned to its chest.

  Bibb nodded. “I’ve seen ’em around.”

  “Von Holton’s one of them.”

  “I heard that, too. ’S probably good information.”

  “He didn’t deny it.”

  For the first time, a tiny smile cracked Bibb’s face. “You ’fronted him? Knuckle up, worm.” He held his fist out for her while his smile grew.

  Grinning like an idiot, knowing she was basking in the glow of his approval, she tapped his fist with her own. “I probably shouldn’t have done it.”

  “He deserves to get his shins kicked.”

  “By the way, that whole worm thing? I’m pretty much done with that.”

  “Hah. I’m not.” He paused. “So what happened with Wrubel.” His fist banged absently against the control room door. “Christ, I can’t believe there was another one. Just proves what I’ve been saying, doesn’t it? We’ll be lucky if the Southwestern Jail Commission doesn’t step in and take us over. Or shut us down completely. Damn it. We gotta get better about security, we want to keep people from dying. Or maybe fire your ass.”