East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  Eventually, when she did sleep, she dreamed of the house that morphed into the go-between; then it was the house again and she still had no idea whose house it was or even where it was. She had no idea, awake or sleeping, what it meant to her and why it had only bubbled up recently.

  Now there was something new, too: the truck that had followed her and Rory, the truck with no license plates at all. It drove around the house endlessly, kicking up dust from the gravel, never stopping while Rory ate endless Skittles.

  She hated the entire dream: the go-between, the house, and the truck.

  Because they scared her.

  Most of the next day she spent with Gramma.

  They cleaned the entire Sea Spray. Gramma had a cleaning service that came in every day, a few older women who cleaned rooms for the transient guests, those who came and stayed a few days and left. But for the regulars, those who chose the Sea Spray as their home, it was Gramma and sometimes Jace who did their cleaning. Jace spent the time with the old woman, both to be with her and in hopes that the togetherness might ease the worry etched deeply into Gramma’s face. They filled boxes with the soon-to-be-departed year’s tax and occupancy records, and opened up a new box for the coming year. They filled the hours with plumbing and vacuuming and replacing light bulbs, but, mostly, they filled those hours with near total silence.

  “Much more laundry?” Jace asked.

  Gramma spent one day a week doing laundry for her older live-in tenants, those who had trouble getting up and down stairs or lugging baskets of dirty clothes to the laundry room. She charged nothing for the service, but almost always got some sort of thank-you. One of the old men fancied himself an artist though all of his pictures were drawn from his time as a tunnel rat in Vietnam. At least once a year he gave Gramma a painting. A woman, who’d been here as long as Jace could remember, had spent her life keeping the books for a number of bars around town. Once a year, she marched—as well as one could behind a walker—to the office with a pencil behind each ear and demanded to do the hotel’s books as a thank-you for the laundry service. Gramma always acted so pleased and cracked open the books. But the woman had done most of her work for men who tried to keep most of their work off the books. Gramma tried never to show too much alarm at the shortcuts the woman suggested, and then always had the books and taxes redone.

  “Not much, little girl.” Gramma’s voice was soft and helpful. “Thank you for all your help today. It’s your day off. Shouldn’t you be out hunting boys and getting ice cream and going to the movies?”

  Jace laughed. “Sure, if I were fourteen.”

  Gramma set down the basket of laundry. “Well, I guess you’ll always be fourteen to me.”

  “Even when I’m behind a walker?”

  “I’ll be long dead by then.”

  “Cripes, Gramma, you’re going to outlive everyone.”

  “Holy shit, I hope not. Stuck in bed, crapping myself, drooling all over, eating pureed soup.” She shook her head. “Get me outta here long before that. Maybe in the arms of the all-time ultimate lover. He gets me off in such a huge way that my poor old heart just stops plunking then and there.”

  “There’s an image I needed.”

  Gramma smiled. “Good, then. Seems my work here is done.” She grabbed the laundry basket, had Jace grab a tool box, and headed out. “Next up? Mrs. Evans. Cranky old bitch but she makes me laugh.”

  Jace opened her mouth, thought to ask Gramma about the house with the broken windows, but in the end said nothing. For now, she would keep her nightmares to herself.

  CHAPTER 21

  The next evening, after the sun had fallen over the horizon and the New Year’s Eve chill had taken stronger hold, Jace sat uncomfortably in Rory’s Rooster County cruiser. It was a hulking Impala, filled with radio gear, a shotgun over her head, citation books, and maps of nearly forgotten Rooster County back roads.

  After Rory’s fifteen-minute equipment check of all the cruiser’s gear, eating red Skittles incessantly, they headed out onto Rooster’s roadways.

  “Just the reds, Etta?”

  “Strawberry is my favorite. Why the hell you call me Etta?”

  Jace snickered and hunkered down in her seat, snapping the seat belt over her.

  Jace had managed to grab a decent nap after helping Gramma yesterday and today they’d done a bit more. Then they’d spent a few hours leisurely playing dominoes with Hassan and Preacher. Hassan, an old timer who had been at the Sea Spray since Grapa was still alive and spry, had been full of questions but Preacher had shushed him and the afternoon had pleasantly stayed away from the Zachary County sheriff’s office.

  After Jace had some beef soup, and while she was head-deep in Jakob’s crime scene book, Rory had shown up at Jace’s apartment and demanded she go with her.

  “What’s this stop for?” Jace asked as Rory turned the car around, flipped on her emergency lights, and stopped a gray Toyota.

  “Cracked windshield.”

  Rory radioed to dispatch, ran the plate, and waited for the response, her butt wiggling in the seat. “I love traffic stops. Never know what you’re gonna get. Maybe a warrant. Maybe an open container. Maybe the driver’s smoking a doobie.”

  “A doobie?”

  “A joint.”

  “I know what it is, just never heard anyone use that term. Except the old guys at the motel.”

  “So I’m an old guy at a hotel.”

  The license plate came back clear and valid, and Jace saw Rory’s shoulders deflate just a little. Then Rory hopped out and approached the car as though it held Al Capone himself: slowly, eyes on the driver, hand on her gun, tight against the car. In a few minutes it was all over. The car belonged to an elderly woman who’d let her grandson drive it and he cracked the windshield. Rory wrote a warning but no ticket.

  “I love stopping them, but I’m not going to hammer an old lady ’cause her grandson is an idiot. I’ll make that stop every time, though.”

  And so it went for nearly two hours. Rory stopped everything that came past them if she could. Speeding, crossing the center line, rolling through a stop sign, no turn signal. She wrote no tickets but came back to the cruiser laughing almost every time.

  “Why are you always laughing?” Jace asked when Rory climbed back in the car during a motorcycle stop.

  “People make me laugh. Rooster County from R30 . . . 10-27.”

  “10-27? License check?”

  Rory grinned. “I’ll make a roadie outta you yet.”

  —R30 go ahead—

  “Last name Sayles . . . sam-adam-young-lincoln-edward-sam. First name Michael. Middle is G-george. 10-27-66.”

  —10-4 . . . clear and valid—

  “Hang tight.” Rory went back to the bike, talked to Sayles for a minute and then came back, shaking her head and grinning. “Guy says he was speeding because he had a date.”

  Jace looked at her.

  “Right? Had a date and ran out of denture glue. Rattled his dentures around so I could see. Rushing to Wal-Mart for some glue or whatever.” She snorted. “I told him his girl might like—”

  “Stop! Yuck. Don’t want to think about that.”

  Rory cranked up the squad and glanced at her watch. “We should start watching for the drug van.”

  For the next while, the two kept to the westbound lane of I-20, moving about 45 miles an hour. A number of trucks passed, but none with the right coloring or plates. Each time a van passed, Rory ground her teeth a little.

  “So I’ve been thinking.” Jace stared out the window, at the passing vehicles, at anything other than Rory.

  “Yeah? Always a step forward.”

  Jace frowned at the car behind them. It had slowed to the same 45 they were doing. “What’s that about?”

  Rory grinned. “See those other cars? All passing us right by, ain’t giving us no kinda extra thought. They’re good, they know what the speed limit is and they can go that fast. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing. But that car behind us
? They’re not so sure and they probably have something they’d rather we not know about. Open booze. Warrant. Drugs. Something.” Rory banged back a mouthful of red Skittles.

  “You notice them more because they’re staying behind.”

  “Pretty smart for a jailer.”

  Jace laughed. “You’re a jailer; don’t forget.”

  “Not in Rooster County, I’m not.”

  “But you’re going to pass on the obvious murderer fleeing from Dallas because you’re looking for this truck, right?”

  Rory nodded. “So you were thinking . . .”

  “About Jakob’s sharper and more precise weapon.” She hesitated. “And what Dr. Vernezobre told us. And the guy following us.”

  “Well, the guy following us was nothing. No plates just means west-Texas redneck. Probably hasn’t had them renewed since dear old W. was president. Don’t sweat him. As for the other?” Rory frowned for a second and Jace could see her digging the information out of her head. “The scalpel.”

  “Maybe. And Wrubel maybe being an addict and maybe selling.”

  “Except Dr. Vernezobre told us the scalpel was found and returned.”

  The car behind them finally came around and passed them. It was an elderly couple. She drove and kept her eyes on the road while the gentleman waved at Rory and Jace. Rory returned the wave and glanced in the rearview mirror.

  “But he heard the story second-hand from Wrubel,” Jace said. “If Wrubel was an addict or dealer, he sure as hell wouldn’t have told Dr. Vernezobre everything. Or maybe Wrubel didn’t know it all. Maybe there were two scalpels and only one was found.”

  Rory looked again in the rearview mirror. “Maybe, but that doesn’t put you any closer to who done the deed.”

  Above them, the moon stubbornly refused to show from behind banks of clouds. It left the night dark, lit only by the stark, rare orange glow of arc sodium lamps every few miles. Cars passed slowly, quickly, and constantly. Jace was amazed at the life on the highway. She’d been on the highway before, even at night, but had never paid attention with the intensity that Rory was bringing to bear. Vehicles everywhere; even when there weren’t many, it was a never-ending flow of metal. Beyond the highway, cattle wandered through fields empty of everything but animals and hay bales. In the distance, like the hinted-at background in a painting, were the occasional head-or taillights of a cotton farmer’s truck on a back road.

  Rory took a deep breath, her eyes glued to the rearview mirror as she turned on the digital recorder hanging at the top of her windshield. “Here we go.”

  What Jace saw when she turned was an exact description, delivery via Shelby and Force Chrome from a dealer’s brother, of the white van. It came on quickly and suddenly slowed when it was just a few car lengths behind the squad. It made no move to pass so Rory eased off the speed until the cruiser was down to less than 40. The van stayed behind them, the driver with his hands locked on the wheel at ten and two. Rory slowed further. Eventually, the van signaled into the next lane and crept to their side. As he passed, the driver kept his hands on the wheel while rigidly never looking at them.

  “Son of a bitch is scared to death,” Rory said.

  So am I.

  Jace had watched Rory make traffic stops for a couple hours but realized she had no idea what to do if things got out of control. Nothing in training for a jail—or working a jail—gave her a single tool for an interstate traffic stop, but she also knew, now that she was here, she wanted to see what was in that van.

  Because it’s the next question.

  Sheriff Bukowski had told her months ago that the next question was the only thing that drove Jace; a need to make sure someone asked all the questions. At the time, she thought his theory simplistic, but Jakob had said much the same thing while blowing on her fancy coffee. There was truth in that simplistic theory and, right now, she wanted nothing more than to see what was in that van.

  It’s the drug war, Jace, a useless waste of money that attempts to cut supply rather than demand, which then raises the price of supply because the demand is still there.

  In her mind, there were no more questions to ask about the drug war.

  She gritted her teeth. There were questions to ask about this little sliver of the drug war in the van next to them. Plus, there was that little chili-pepper burn of excitement deep in her throat.

  The hallmark of an adrenaline junkie.

  “Calm down, sister.”

  “Why do you always say that to me?”

  “ ’Cause you’re so high strung. Cut a loud fart and you’ll have a heart attack.”

  “Fart? That’s ladylike.”

  “Okay. Cut a loud fluff and you’ll have a heart attack.”

  “That is total psychological projection. You’re amped up, Miss Candy, not me. On a Skittles sugar high.”

  Grinning, teeth bared like a feral dog, Rory nodded. “Damn straight.” She grabbed the mic. “All right, gangsta, let’s see what you’re all about. Rooster from R30 . . . 10-28.”

  The plate came back valid and registered in California. They followed the van for another two miles before the driver gave Rory a reason to pull him over. Rory called in the location, reran the plate, and let dispatch know they were out with a single driver and white van.

  “So let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “Uh . . . should I come or stay or what?” Jace hadn’t gotten out on any of the other traffic stops.

  “You stay in this squad car . . . and I’ll be sorely disappointed. This is the show. This is why we’re here. Let’s dance!”

  Rory hopped out of the squad and Jace trailed a few steps behind. Traffic rocketed past them, some vehicles moving to the far lane and some not. Rory paid them no mind at all. She crept to the driver’s door, hand on her gun, hugging the side of the van tightly.

  “Good evening. Deputy Bogan, Rooster County sheriff’s office. Can I see your license, registration, and insurance, please.”

  Jace came up on the passenger side and tried to stay out of sight while getting a look at the driver. A skinny, middle-twenties kid, not unlike what she dealt with in the jail. Hispanic, with a wisp of dainty mustache and definitely scared.

  “Did nothing wrong.” The driver handed over a license and a confused pile of papers.

  “Arizona? Where’d you get the truck?”

  “Huh? Uh . . . Arizona. No, California. I don’t remember; been a long drive.”

  Jace swallowed and felt the constriction of her sharps vest. It was for knives, for the jail, and wouldn’t stop bullets on a traffic stop but it made her feel safer.

  “You don’t remember? Huh. Okay, well, there’s a lotta trash in the foot well there. Drinks and food wrappers and stuff. You driving straight through?”

  “Why you axing me all these questions? I ain’t did nothing wrong.”

  “Calm down; I’m just making polite conversation.”

  “No, you ain’t; you profiling. That’s illegal. You stopped me ’cause I’m a Mex.”

  “No, you’re a man who was riding the shoulder.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Rory smiled and pointed to her squad car. “Wanna see the video? Didn’t think so. Any reason you were riding the shoulder? Maybe a medical problem? I can call an ambulance if you need it.”

  He held a cell phone up. “Calling my boss.”

  “Yeah? What’s your name?”

  He pointed to his license in Rory’s hand.

  “Right. But what is it?”

  The man’s face twisted, his eyes darting from Rory to the windshield. Jace saw fear come fully into his face. Rory was pinning him down to a name he didn’t remember and that wasn’t going to match any of the paperwork.

  “Lemme get the ’surance.”

  He reached across the truck and Jace saw his ass scoot away from the driver’s door. He leaned across and opened the glove box with Rory watching him intently. His butt again scooted further from the driver’s door.

  Or closer to the pa
ssenger door.

  He looked out the passenger window toward the darkened field beyond the highway.

  He didn’t see Jace. She was dead still in the shadows. Even as he reached for the glove box, his eyes were fixed on the distance. The box popped open and a ream’s worth of papers fell out.

  “Hang on . . . it’s here.”

  And still closer to the passenger door.

  He’s grabbing a gun.

  “Gun! Rory . . . gun.”

  The door blasted open and something heavy smashed into Jace’s chest. She stumbled backward.

  “Got a rabbit.” Rory’s voice boomed.

  He was running and Jace tried to close the door on him, but he was already a blur, blasting out of the truck and disappearing into the very darkness he’d been eying since the traffic stop began.

  “Rabbitrabbitrabbit.” Rory’s head was tilted toward her shoulder-mounted portable radio mic. “South off’a I-20.”

  —Rooster County to R30 10-4 foot chase—

  Jace hesitated only a second before leaving Rory in the tangle of paperwork. The driver was already fifty feet ahead, moving quickly, and Jace bolted into the empty cotton field after him.

  “Stop. Police. Policia.”

  The bang of his feet on the hard ground was in her ears like handclap jive, but it was fading as though moving away from her, like he was on a float in a Mardi Gras parade, clapping in time to the music but getting further away as the entire parade slipped down the street.

  Except this wasn’t a street, lit by neon or giant blue-white street lamps, where she could keep him in sight. This was a dark, empty cotton field and if he got too much further away, she’d never find him.

  “Stop.”

  Where the hell was Rory? This was her stop . . . her arrest. Why was she making Jace do all the work?