East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  “Just means he’s a better liar than you. Look, there is a possibility he didn’t do it. But he’s the most logical suspect right now. You follow that string out until you prove he didn’t do it, then you jump on the next suspect and follow that out.”

  “You know Von Holton was in there talking to him.”

  “Von Holton’s a detective, that’s what they do. Talk talk talktalktalktalk.”

  Jace shook her head. “No, ma’am. He told Mercer I was the investigator, the one sending him to Huntsville to death row.”

  Rory frowned. “What?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Finally, Rory shrugged. “Not how I would have done the interview but I can see that. He’s tossing you under and trying to work Mercer into coughing up more information. Kind of a good-cop, bad-cop thing.”

  Jace took a deep breath. “Or.”

  “Or what?”

  “If Mercer didn’t do it, who did? And why is Von Holton trying to put a target on my back?”

  Rory stood and slammed the chair up under the table. “No. Absolutely not. This doesn’t happen to you twice, Jace. You’re seeing crazy shit, just like you did last time.”

  “Last time I was right.”

  “Which is why you won’t be this time. It’s not a cop . . . again . . . Jace. We’re not all bad people. We’re not all out to kill inmates or staff.”

  “I never said any such thing. I’m following the evidence . . . like you just told me to do.”

  “You’re not following anything. You have an inmate, who’s been charged with murder, telling you he didn’t do it, and suddenly you think the detective in charge of the case did it. Show me what evidence you’re following. Show me a shred of evidence. Not something you think, but something you can touch and feel. Evidence, actual physical evidence.”

  Rory waited, the break room filling with silence as deep as the surrounding desert. Doors popped and banged, squads took off with sirens loud, jailers laughed and argued. It was as though the building itself had a sound; low and mournful, both afraid and confident, the sound of hunter and hunted; the certain and uncertain.

  Jace was both of those. Still learning to trust her gut, but fully cognizant that she wasn’t as critical a thinker as she wanted to be, that she could be taken in, at least to a degree, by earnestness.

  “There is none,” she said finally.

  —479 from control—

  Jace’s gut tightened. “Go ahead, Sarge.”

  —come see me—

  “As soon as I can.”

  —come see me now. Bring her, too—

  “Sarge, I’m—”

  —now—

  Two minutes later, they stood in the Pig Pen. Peanut shells were everywhere as though Bibb had never been gone. The screens flickered, black and white images of the jail at ebb tide. A handful of deputies wandered the halls, in and out of administrative offices, to and from the sally port. Two deputies hauled a cuffed woman into booking. In a far corner of the secured part of the facility, Sheriff Bukowski leaned against a wall in an empty hallway and chewed his cigar, his head back and his eyes closed.

  —456 from 434—

  Rory rolled her eyes. “I’m working B with Urrea. Must be getting lonely. Go ahead.”

  —gonna work this pod tonight?—

  “Be there in just a minute.”

  —tick tock tick tock—

  “Two bits of video for you.” Bibb’s fingers, shockingly thin, pounded the keyboard and a second later footage from the medical pod popped up on one of the fifteen screens.

  The date and time stamp put the footage at 1:57 a.m. Christmas Day. About twenty hours before Wrubel was killed. Initially, it was just the pod’s outer door. No one in or out. Through the glass flanking either side of the door—thick enough to withstand an enraged inmate pounding against it—Doc Wrubel and Big Carol were plainly visible. Jace shivered. She’d seen the video of Thomas getting killed and she was pretty sure that was at least partially what fed her dreams. Seeing Wrubel now, before he was killed, impacted her like a fist dead center of her chest.

  Bibb sped the footage up. “Watch the outer door. Ain’t nothing happening inside.”

  Ten or fifteen seconds later, though they didn’t hear it, the outer door popped and through it came Mercer with Deputy Croft just behind him. The door closed, then the inner door popped open and they went inside. A moment later, Wrubel and Big Carol came over and the four began talking. A few seconds later, the conversation became animated and shortly thereafter, the ERTs entered the pod from off-camera near the back where the war doors were. On screen, Mercer was on the ground, just as Jimmson had described, and Laimo was already laughing, leaning over Mercer and pointing a finger in his face.

  “God, I hate that.” Jace’s jaw ground hard, grinding pain into her head.

  “Don’t sweat her, worm.”

  Jace looked at Rory, then sideways at Bibb. “I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to become what she is.”

  Bibb shook his head. “You won’t. You don’t have the same . . . uh . . .”

  “Brutality and sadism?” Jace said.

  “Well, I was going to say nastiness but yeah, we can go with your answer.” Bibb turned back to his screens. “To the task at hand, this is where they take Mercer into a holding cell in medical. You can see it, barely, in the upper left corner through the glass. Then there ain’t nothing for twenty-four hours. I’ve watched the entire thing. You can watch it if you want, or I can just forward it.”

  Thinking about her conversation with Dr. Vernezobre, Jace asked, “Does Big Carol ever fall asleep?”

  “What? Uh . . . no, I don’t think so. No; I’d’a remembered that.”

  “Maybe she took a nap in one of the exam rooms.”

  Bibb shook his head. “I checked all the cameras. Every room in medical is taped because there have been attacks in those rooms. Plus, we’ve had inmates say doctors did something or didn’t do something and the footage is a pretty good reporter. No, Big Carol didn’t fall asleep. I don’t like her, but she’s pretty responsible when it comes to her job. Why you asking?”

  “Fast forward it, please.”

  Bibb punched some more buttons, the screen froze for a beat or two and then the time stamp was about twenty hours later. Doc and Big Carol wandered inside the pod, hands full of clipboards and bottles and various tools of their trade. After a few minutes, Doc Wrubel left the pod and something inside Jace broke.

  “Don’t worry, Salome. We can’t see it. Hallways aren’t recorded . . . as much as I have asked for them to be . . . for this very damned reason. Anyway, it ain’t about the murder. We know that happened. It’s about what happened at this end.”

  More than fifteen minutes after Wrubel left the pod, Big Carol jumped up from behind the desk and went to the pod’s inner door and checked that it was locked. Then she strained to see out into the hallway.

  “The alarm just went off, didn’t it?”

  Bibb tapped the time stamp. “At that exact moment, Rory.”

  Big Carol keyed the radio she wore at her hip. Her lips moved and Jace remembered the woman had said only that medical was locked. But Jace remembered it was less her words than her tone. Her tone had put everyone in the facility on edge. And now, seeing that the woman was pale and dancing nervously from room to room inside the medical pod, squeezed a tight fist of fear around Jace’s heart.

  A few seconds later, Big Carol spoke again, and told everyone Doc Wrubel was not locked down in medical, that he was somewhere out there. Jace shuddered to think that even as everyone heard Big Carol speak, Wrubel was already dead.

  “Mercer never left.” Jace took a deep breath.

  Rory stared at the screen for a long moment. “It’s kind of hard to see, but I think maybe you’re right.”

  Bibb grinned. “Ever the skeptic. And hence to video number the second.”

  His finger blasted over the keyboard again and this time, the view was from a high corner of medical hold
ing. The time stamp was just about the time the ERTs got called into medical. After the scuffle, which was unseen, two ERTs hustled Mercer into medical holding and closed the door. Mercer paced back and forth for a short time, then sat on the bed. After about ten minutes of sitting, he lay down and fell asleep.

  “Every watch someone sleep in fast time? It’s hilarious.”

  Bibb sped the footage up and Jace shook her head at Mercer tossing and turning, legs up and down, arms all over the place. At one point his head lolled just slightly off the bed. Then he was awake and wandering in a circular pattern around the room, then sitting, then eating when a meal was brought in, then sleeping again.

  And then suddenly awake when the alarm went off. He jumped to the locked door and stared out the window.

  “What’s he seeing?” Jace asked.

  “Big Carol get crazy and not know what to do. Maybe he can hear her telling everyone Wrubel’s out of pod, maybe not.”

  “He was sleeping,” Rory said. “When Wrubel was getting killed, Mercer was locked down in holding and sleeping. He didn’t do it.”

  “Not by a damn sight,” Bibb said.

  Rory thumped Jace on the shoulder. “That’s evidence, worm.”

  On the monitor of the here and now, the sheriff continued to lean against the wall in the hallway.

  CHAPTER 16

  Through the rest of her shift, Jace documented everything: where Mercer had been housed, her conversation with Mercer. She completed her written report and made multiple copies of Sgt. Bibb’s video. When she was done, she sat at one of the computers in the squad room, three or four roadies scattered around the room like buckshot, each finishing their reports, and thought.

  She was disappointed in herself for not realizing earlier Mercer couldn’t have done it. In hindsight, knowing where he was at the moment of the attack seemed so basic. How would she ever be able to have faith in her decisions when she missed easy clues and cues like that? Where he was should have been her first question. That would have led her directly to the video and none of the rest would have been necessary.

  “How’s it going?” Ezell asked.

  “Hey, how are you?”

  He shrugged. “Banging reports. The bane of my existence.”

  She laughed. “Me, too.”

  “Wha’cha got?”

  “Finishing the investigation on Wrubel.”

  Ezell frowned. “You’re doing it? Thought that was lazy-ass Von Holton’s.”

  “Technically it is, but he asked me to do a few things for him.” She tried to eat back her grin.

  “Spill; wha’cha got?”

  “Well, between us?”

  He made a cross over his ballistic-vested heart.

  “He’s focused on Mercer.”

  “The guy who Wrubel was fighting with.”

  Jace nodded. “It wasn’t Mercer.”

  Ezell said nothing for a few seconds. Then he looked around to make sure they were semi-alone, and leaned in close. “No, it wasn’t.”

  Jace stared at him. “What?”

  “Mercer never left medical holding and Von Holton knew that. Or should have known. It’s basic. Investigation 101: where was the suspect at the time of the crime?”

  An image of the flyers, splayed all over her second bedroom wall, burst into her head. Bloody Jaces, bloody rats, bloody inmates, all topped by SuperHeroCops with huge chests and thighs the size of a well-grown burr oak tree hammering down the bad guys and keeping society free and clean and functioning.

  Von Holton was one of the flyer boys. He’d made no secret of it, almost dared her to accuse him of it. He hated her, hated anyone who went after cops. Of course he knew Mercer wasn’t the guy, and of course he’d used her inexperience to make her look like an idiot.

  “Listen, don’t take it so hard, okay? You figured it out, right? At least from what I heard . . . Bibb talks a lot. He loves you, by the way. Thinks you’re brilliant.”

  “Bibb loves watching my ass.”

  Ezell shrugged. “Sure, that, too. But you got where you needed to be. Learn from it and move on.” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t play Von Holton’s game. All he does is try to make people look bad. Let him make himself look bad.”

  While they’d spoken, everyone else had left. Ezell sat with her a moment longer, then clapped her on the shoulder. “I got to get back to it, see if I can find some traffic stops. Don’t sweat it and don’t worry about him . . . he’s a sweaty ball sack.”

  Then the room was just Jace, her packets of information, and her anger.

  CHAPTER 17

  Twenty minutes after her shift, Jace saw Major Jakob in the parking lot.

  “Good morning, Deputy Salome.” Major Jakob blew across the top of a coffee. It was from a local coffee house, fancy cup and thermal lid. A wisp of steam rose through the tiny opening. She held a book under her arm. “How goes the investigation?”

  Jace took a deep breath, stared out into the neighborhood around the jail, a neighborhood just beginning to come to life. A few cars here and there; an old white, work pick-up truck, the driver eating a burrito and aimlessly watching Jace and Major Jakob and the roadies going in and out. Near the courthouse a van from Texas Department of Criminal Justice waited, two prison guards in front and a single inmate, maybe brought back on a writ or wanting to ask a judge for a new look at his case, sat behind the guards, separated by a metal cage. Later, when the street fully awakened, it would teem with bail bondsmen, lawyers, courthouse workers, court clerks, advocacy counselors, counselors for addictions to alcohol or drugs, to sex, addictions to whatever might break a person’s spirit and leave them staring through the thin windows of the Zach County Jail toward the counseling centers.

  “Well, I used Detective Von Holton’s case number and filed my report as a supplemental.”

  Jakob smiled a harsh little sneer. “Except his isn’t done yet, is it?” Jakob waved away Jace’s hesitation. “And you discovered Mercer is our boy, right?”

  It was a split second of hesitation but Jace knew the major saw it. So Jace faced the major fully and squared her shoulders. “No, ma’am. Mercer is not our suspect.”

  “No, in fact, he’s not.”

  “You knew that.”

  Jakob nodded. “I was fairly certain, but there’s always a chance, Deputy, that something turns up. That’s why you never stop asking questions.” She sipped her coffee. “Some kind of thing with vanilla and cinnamon and I don’t know what all. Should’a just got coffee. Plain old coffee. So tell me what you found, Deputy.”

  She told the major about everything she’d found and about Mercer giving her an earful.

  “You talked to Mercer?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good for you. He scared you and you got right back up on the horse. So to speak.”

  She left the videotape for last. “There is no way, from two different viewpoints, that Mercer killed Doc Wrubel.”

  “Well done, Salome. Very well done. So . . . who’s my murderer?”

  “I’m not a detective, ma’am.”

  Jakob laughed into her coffee cup. “My mother and I always had problems. She was a strait-laced Catholic who hated everything about everything. Used to tell me I was a bad girl because I wasn’t as worshipful as she was. ‘No, no,’ I’d say, ‘I’m not a bad girl. I’m a good girl.’ ” Jakob laughed again. “I was absolutely a bad girl, and it’s what drove my mother into an early grave.” She looked thoughtfully at the rising sun. “I wonder why you and I feel the need to deny our nature.”

  “Deny our nature? That’s a little heavy for this early in the morning. I’m just trying to finish an assignment.”

  Jakob smiled disarmingly. “Absolutely, Deputy.”

  Jace squirmed under the woman’s gaze. “I was asked to track where Mercer was housed while he was at the jail and I did that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Yes, I did. And I think you already knew where he’d been housed.”

  “Yes
, I did. Von Holton told me. He didn’t tell you because he’s an asshole. Don’t look shocked, Salome. I’m brass but I’m not oblivious. He’s an ass who runs with those guys who put nasty flyers in your locker. He wanted to watch you chase nothing.”

  Jace forced herself not to clench her fists.

  “Except you didn’t do nothing, did you?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “You tracked down some video that showed something quite interesting. Von Holton didn’t think about video so you have that above him.”

  “Well, that wasn’t me.”

  “It was your team.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t have a team.”

  As they spoke, two black Lincoln Towncars pulled into the lot. They pulled into a no-parking zone near the employee entrance. Two drivers jumped out and seconds later, Dr. Cruz, along with six men, headed for the entrance. All except one were in uniforms or plainclothes with pistols and badges on their belts.

  “Another of his tours,” Jakob said.

  “Who’s the guy with no gun or badge?”

  “An administrator, I’d guess.”

  The man’s hair was perfectly combed, raked back to a jet-black slash over his skull. He took the lead toward the entrance, ahead even of Dr. Cruz. His suit was a deep gray and from here, Jace thought it might be a double-breasted, pinstriped thing. Walking with confidence, even aggression, he made a handsome picture as they disappeared into the jail.

  Jakob looked at Jace. “Your team is the two deputies you’ve surrounded yourself with. Sgt. Bibb is as creepy as the day is long, but he’s damned good at his job. Bogan is a scrapper. She wants to do the job well. She’s too excited right now but when she calms down she’s going to be just as good.”

  Jace said nothing for a minute, surprised that anything she or Rory had done was noticed by the commander of the lab. “So who’s the suspect?”

  Jakob shrugged. “Don’t have one yet. Figure it out for me.” With eyes swimming in sadistic delight, Jakob watched her. “Worried about Von Holton? Screw him. I’m giving you this assignment. And a bit of information . . . that better not go any further than you and me for right now. There were two sets of stab wounds, Deputy. The ones you saw? On his chest? Those big, raggedy wounds were made by the shank, but that’s not what killed him. They would have, but the other set killed him first.” She poured the remaining coffee out. “Two sets. One from the shank, one from something else.”