East of the Sun

by Trey R. Barker

  He looked at his partners, his face blank but with tension beneath his skin, changing his mask by the heartbeat. None of them said anything. “Ask.”

  She looked at the other inmates. They all stared back, unwilling to move, unwilling to leave their partner alone.

  It’s exactly like cops. Rory and Bibb and Jakob and Bukowski. This is what they talk about . . . the camaraderie.

  “What’s the story with weed? Here . . . in Zach jail?”

  Tate grinned and looked to his buddies. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Deputy. How can there be illegal drugs in a penal institution?”

  “Look, I couldn’t give two shits about who’s smoking. All I want to know is where it comes from.”

  “Trying to snap a bust on our backs,” one of the inmates said. “Fuck her.”

  Tate regarded her for a long while and her throat dried. She wanted to look around the edges of the yard, find the jailers bundled up in their department-issued winter coats, make sure their eyes were on her.

  She didn’t. She stared at Tate.

  Eventually, Tate stood from the weight bench and silently invited her to lie down. For a heartbeat she hesitated and he saw it. A smirk began at the corners of his mouth. When she lay down, it disappeared. She put her hands on the bar above her head and two inmates moved to take some weight off the bar.

  “Leave it,” she said.

  Silent but grinning, they left the weight. One of them went to the head of the bench, his crotch inches from her head. He put his hands on the bar and when she was ready, he helped her lift it straight up.

  For a moment she managed to hold it, longer than she’d thought she would. It didn’t come crashing down like she thought it might. She pushed with everything she thought she had, maybe a bit more than that, and she managed to slow it, but she couldn’t stop the weight. It was too much, too overpowering.

  It was like the bar, bending the slightest bit in the middle, was alive. It stared at her and grinned at her and laughed at her and kept coming at her, an insistent lover who played at domination, who played at putting his hands around her throat.

  Strangling.

  Like the job. Strangling her, transforming her into a different person. Forcing her into a skin that wasn’t hers, one that she wasn’t comfortable with.

  Because it isn’t you? Or because you haven’t grown into it yet?

  The bar kept coming. About a foot above her neck now.

  The job was that insistent lover. It wanted things from her that she wasn’t sure she could give, or wanted to give. Maybe she’d like those things once she gave them, but what if she didn’t? What if she didn’t like who this new lover made her become? What if she couldn’t go back to who she’d been?

  Except she wasn’t sure who that had been. A lost girl, wandering job to job and watching the future slip into the past with only a moment between. Playing dominoes with the Hot Five, washing tenants’ laundry with Gramma, drinking beer, sleeping late, never looking at a clock, never moving forward.

  The bar was inches from her neck. She strained and pushed, felt the heat of trying in her face.

  She was with this lover now. She’d stay with him and see where he led her . . . because maybe, way down deep somewhere, she liked where she thought they were going.

  The bar touched her neck and she almost cried out. She almost screamed for help. Instead, she tried to find more gas in the tank, more fluid in the hydraulics.

  There was none.

  It strangled her, this metallic beast. Cold fingers around her neck and whispering in her ear while stars burst at the edge of her vision, dancing gold against a sunny sky.

  —so many stars, Mama—

  They’d gone to the desert all the time to watch stars. Away from the city lights so the depth of the dark could overwhelm them, always with the giant west-Texas sky above them.

  —wanna go see some stars, Mama—

  —just look through the window, honey—

  —but, Mama—

  —Jace! I’m busy—

  Panic set in, stealing air from her lungs, oxygen from her blood. Sweat coated her hands, making the beast, the strangling beast, too slippery to hold; even for her to turn sideways and maybe roll out from under it.

  Then it was gone. The beast, the weight, the stars, the hazy memories of Mama. Tate and another inmate lifted it off her and put the bar back in its cradle above her head.

  Slowly, embarrassed and feeling stupid for even trying to connect with him, she stood. Her breath was fast and hot in her throat. When she could breathe normally, she pointed at Tate’s arms and said, “Bigger guns.”

  “Damn straight.” His chest puffed out and he grew at least a couple of inches. The inmates around him slapped him on the back.

  After a second, she pointed to the jailers around the edges of the yard, to the cameras and two guard towers. “More guns.”

  There was silence and for a split second, she thought she’d gone too far. But there was no new tension in the air. There were no curiosity ticklers, no hot spots. Jace was relaxed and comfortable and still rubbing her neck.

  After a heartbeat, the inmates started hooting and laughing, both at Jace and Tate. His face flushed a little but he smiled and whapped a couple of his guys in the heads. “Guess that’s true, ain’t it?”

  Jace grinned with him and let that single moment, as narrow and tailored as it was, immerse her. It wouldn’t last long and two minutes from now she and Tate would again be on opposite sides, but right now the joke at his expense was okay.

  Because he challenged me and I accepted. I did the best I could when he expected nothing from me. He did better. We both saved face.

  His face beginning to serious up, Tate grabbed a 25-pound weight and headed toward an empty section of fence line. “Lemme tell you how to lift these weights, cop.”

  Jace followed. While they walked, he gave her the weight without looking. Eventually he stopped near the fence.

  “Raise it up and down, like I’m telling you how to do it.”

  “They’ll believe that?”

  “Perception, cop. Everybody talks.” He shrugged. “Cain’t think nobody’s talking, though. Like when I was in high school. I’d go on a date and my homies wanna know how far I got. Hell, I didn’t get nothing but some tit but telling the story, she did everything I told her to, didn’t matter how freak.”

  “Gotcha.” She raised and lowered the weight slowly.

  “So you smelled the herb, huh? How come you didn’t say nothing that night?”

  “Tate, I don’t care about the drug war. We waste too much time on weed. Frankly, I’d rather deal with guys toked up on weed than drunks. Hard drugs?” She shrugged and kept lifting. “I don’t know. Seems like the whole war isn’t working, but right or wrong, I could give a crap about weed.”

  Tate whistled. “Damn, woman, you got that speech all down and everything. Must be giving it for the Rotaries and Lions clubs and shit.”

  She grinned. “I’d give all you guys weed if you’d sit around eating Twinkies and watching TV all day so I didn’t have to worry about having shit thrown on me.”

  “Why you asking?”

  “Someone killed Doc Wrubel and I don’t think it was Inmate Bobby. I keep hearing Wrubel was selling and I don’t think that’s true.”

  Tate shook his head, as though listening to some naïve fantasy from a young child. “Wrubel wasn’t selling. Hell, I sold to him a few times when he was jonesing.”

  Jace took a deep breath. “Tate, I need it straight up, okay? No bullshit. Wrubel bought from you sometimes but wasn’t selling?”

  He stared hard at her. “As far as I ever heard, and I been up in this bitch a while now.” His face flushed. “Plus a few other visits in the last few years. As far as I ever heard, Wrubel did not sell.”

  “What about Inmate Bobby?”

  “Bobby traded a lid or two here or there, but never sold as far as I know.”

  “So he was a user?” />
  Tate shook his head. “Hell, no, not a real user. Toked up some weed but his addiction was those damned chocolate donuts.”

  Jace looked out over the yard. His compadres were watching and didn’t care that she knew. She continued to lift and lower the weight. “So where’d you get your stash?”

  He looked away, obviously uncomfortable. “Ain’t looking to get anyone behind no 8-ball.”

  “Doing 8-balls, now, are we?”

  He laughed. “Deputy Salome, knowing herself a little something about the game. Ain’t 8-balling. Just some weed. Look, mine comes from an inmate; I ain’t saying who, but he don’t get his from an inmate. He sure don’t have it delivered to the jail, either.”

  “Staff?”

  “Drug pushers is drug pushers, ain’t they?”

  On her way out, Jace paused at the employee entrance, staring at Kemp.

  “Yes, I’m beautiful and totally date-able,” he said. “So tell your friends.”

  “All one of them?” After signing out, she thought for a minute. “Does everyone have to sign in and out?”

  He closed a textbook he’d been reading. “They’re supposed to, but . . . you know how it is. First of all, you got dumbasses like the guy who relieves me. He doesn’t care because it isn’t his name on the duty roster. Plus, some officers who don’t believe they have to.”

  “Brass and command.”

  “Not necessarily. Sheriff Bukowski always signs in, but not everyone else.”

  “Why sign in?” She pointed at Bibb’s video cameras, which hovered inside and outside the door.

  “Cameras don’t always work, and we both know that not all control-room guys are particular about doing their job. Bibb, for instance, is a tyrant about doing his job but—”

  “I heard that.” Bibb’s voice came through the tinny intercom system.

  “Get the hell outta here,” Kemp said. “Quit stalking me.”

  “Yeah, you’re the one I’m staring at,” Bibb said.

  With a tight grin, Jace gave the camera a middle finger.

  “Oh, that’ll look good in front of a grand jury, Deputy,” Bibb said.

  She added her free hand for a double banger.

  “Anyway,” Kemp said. “Bibb’s the exception. Not all the control-room guys record who’s coming and going. I promise you that’ll change when the jail commission comes in. They’ll take over running this place and it’ll be on total lockdown all the time.”

  “Because of the deaths?”

  He nodded.

  Jace thought for a moment. “Mind if I take a look?”

  Kemp shoved the book around. “Looking for something in particular?”

  Silently, Jace started on December 20 and moved slowly forward. Not once, before or after Wrubel’s death, did she see Cruz’s signature.

  “Remember, Salome, this is only one door. We’ve got ten or twelve throughout the entire facility. Four in the secure part of the jail. If you’re looking for someone during the day, they could have used any door.”

  “This would have been well into dead shift.”

  Kemp drank from his steaming cup of tea. “This is the only door, then. Everything else closes at six. Since administrative is closed, makes no sense to keep those doors open. We funnel everyone through this door.”

  “Does Dr. Cruz sign in?”

  Kemp’s eyes flashed. “This about Wrubel and Bobby? Don’t look at me like that; I hear stuff. Cruz used to sign in religiously and once a month he’d make copies of every visit.”

  “Documenting his hours.”

  “Probably. He doesn’t do that anymore. Never signs in or out. Told me a few months ago he didn’t have to because he was administration. It’s crap. He started getting these other contracts and now his head’s as big as mine. It’s just ego.”

  Or blurring the lines of when he was here and gone, just in case.

  Jace turned the book back toward Kemp. “Thanks for the help; I appreciate it.”

  “No sweat. Anytime. Gets kinda lonely at this door all the time.”

  “Why are you here? You seem maybe smart enough for the road.”

  He tapped his knee. “ACL injury on a tussle at a bar fight a few months ago. Isn’t healing the way my doc thought it would. I’ll be back out there eventually.”

  But Jace heard uncertainty in his voice, anxiety about his future. “Yeah, you will. I mean, I hope. I don’t know, maybe not.”

  “Ouch!”

  Laughing, she headed out. “Have a quiet shift.”

  “Damn it! Did you just jinx me?”

  “Probably.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Jace didn’t sleep much that afternoon.

  Her head moved too fast to do more than doze in fits and starts. If her skull were a record, it would be the hard bop jazz that exploded out of Minton’s Playhouse in New York in the early Fifties, all head and steam, intricate harmonies, no speed limits. Her head would be Charlie Parker’s sax or Thelonious Monk’s piano.

  And like those guys, circling around the melody and expanding it and pushing it and refining it, but always coming back to it, she came back to Dr. Cruz.

  “It’s always Cruz and drugs,” she told Rory when Dillon assigned them both to E Pod that night. E Pod was the orange stripe on the floor and old men and infirm men in most of the cells.

  “So Tate told you Wrubel wasn’t pushing? Just using?”

  Jace nodded as they checked each door together. By shift start at eleven p.m., usually everyone in this pod had been asleep for a while. Most of them would wake, plagued by age and unreliable bladders and bowels, and pace through the wee hours, but at shift change most of them were asleep. “Said staff was pushing.”

  “Who do you think?”

  “The way Cruz’s name keeps circling around this thing? I’d lay money on him. Plus, remember how he kept pushing Wrubel as the pusher. So I guess I’d like to know why Dr. Vernezobre told us Wrubel was selling.”

  Rory shook her head. “Dr. Vernezobre said he had demons but I don’t think he ever said Wrubel was selling.”

  “So Wrubel’s name was on Shelby’s list because he was buying for himself?”

  Rory nodded. “Makes sense. Good job with Tate, by the way. Give a little, get a little.”

  “I’m learning.”

  Rory’s eyes, so light as to be almost translucent, were sad at the mention of Dr. Vernezobre. “I think he knows more than he’s telling us.”

  They checked doors in silence for a bit, pulling each one to make sure it was secure. The computer already told them the doors were secure but it was a quiet night and they liked walking. More than one inmate waved at them. They nodded or waved in return.

  “He’s a good man, Jace; he wouldn’t be playing around in illegal shit without a damned good reason.” She chuckled. “His vaunted Cuban honor wouldn’t allow anything skeezy.”

  “It’s admirable in a certain light.”

  “In every light, I think. Can you dig Cruz’s ego at not signing in, though? Doctor balls, I guess.”

  But Jace wasn’t convinced. She believed it had to do with hiding tracks rather than leaving the tracks of an ego. “I think it has to do with Jorge.”

  “Who is this guy? Kleopping mentioned a Mexican poh-leece coming on a tour. Maybe that’s him. But Carol said he’s been around for a few months?”

  “Yeah.”

  While they talked, they walked laps around the entirety of the pod. Faces, some old, some attached to bodies with issues, stared out through some of the cell-door windows.

  Jace shook her head. “All of this is tied together and the ribbon around it all is Cruz.”

  “Maybe something Doc knew?”

  “Or had. Was he giving drugs to inmates? There were the missing meds a few weeks ago.”

  “Giving to Bobby? Bobby was jonesing and Wrubel held out on him so Bobby stabbed him?”

  Jace shrugged. “Tate told me Bobby didn’t have a habit and we know he’d never visited medical or had
any condition that needed meds.”

  “Which wouldn’t explain why Bobby was killed anyway. So we’re back to something Wrubel knew, and the way Cruz’s name keeps floating around this whole mess, it’s pretty damned safe to say it’s about Cruz Medical and their new contracts or something going on in this jail.”

  “So Cruz killed Wrubel because he knew something? And then . . . what? Killed Bobby because Bobby saw it? What about the other guy? The one going into the courthouse?”

  Rory shrugged. “I’m just spit-balling.”

  “Well, don’t spit on me.”

  As they rounded a turn and came to the doors leading to the go-between and the main hallway, Rory saw Dr. Cruz pass E Pod, his body wrapped in a white coat emblazoned with the Cruz Medical logo. He glanced up and saw them. His eyes bulged and his mouth started flying, though they heard nothing.

  —control . . . E Pod outer—

  The outer door popped and as soon as it closed, the inner door popped. Cruz blasted into the pod, his hands clenched to fists, his eyes fixated on Jace.

  “Again? Stay the hell outta my business. You do not need to know why I do or don’t sign in, do you understand me? That is an arrangement between me and the administration, way above your pay grade so keep your nose out of it. If you need to know something I’ll be sure to tell you.” He stepped up to her, chest to chest, his lips bleeding white and his eyes as fiery as a west-Texas Southern Baptist sermon. “And if you’re going to investigate me, do it yourself.”

  “Doctor, I don’t—”

  “Sending Kemp to do it is weak, Salome. Shouldn’t expect anything else.” He snorted and thumped his chest, then stuck his finger in Jace’s face. “I am Doctor Ernesto Reo Cruz and I’m strong enough to let my own hands get dirty. Don’t have to hide behind someone else.”

  “Like your cousin?” Jace put her chest against his, forced him back a few steps. “Why’d you have Campbell following us?”

  Cruz’s face paled. “What?”

  “Trying to intimidate us?” Jace shoved as much contempt into her laugh as she could. “You wanna dig your way under my skin, you’d better get a bigger shovel.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Campbell tell you how I ’fronted him in a parking lot and he took off, too scared and weak to stand up? He tell you we caught his ass in the cemetery?”