by Dave Daren
It was as if a switch had been flipped, because my exhaustion seemed to seep from my body and into the floor as I pondered what Thompson stood to lose. I felt a new wave of energy course through my body, and all the self-pity I’d been feeling since the deputy had driven me to the station seemed to evaporate.
I wrenched my feet from where they’d practically sunken into the ground and made my way over to one of the barstools that sat in front of the island in my kitchen. My laptop still sat open on the stone countertop in front of my favorite spot, so I lowered myself down into the seat. The cushion squeaked as I adjusted my position, but then I was ready.
I reached out to tap at the space bar on my keyboard, and my laptop whirred to life. A small smile curled the corners of my lips as I quickly tapped in my password into the empty bar that appeared on the screen.
After a few seconds, the log-in screen dissolved, and the home screen of my laptop filled my vision.
I realized that I’d left a webpage open for another case I’d been working on in all of my free moments, but admittedly, those free moments were fleeting nowadays. Instead of exiting out of the tab, I simply dragged the cursor of the trackpad down to my home bar and opened up an entirely new window in Google Chrome.
The multi-colored Google homepage blinked into focus and seemed to stare at me with a question of its own.
My hands hovered over the keyboard for a moment before I quickly tapped in the phrase Crowley Texas sheriff election. It wasn’t the most elegant sentence, but it did its job because within seconds, my screen started to fill with search result after search result in a list I was certain had to be at least a mile long.
I shifted in my seat for just a moment to shrug my blazer off my shoulders and let it fall to hang over the low back of the black, metal barstool. I pushed the sleeves of my button-up shirt toward my elbows and adjusted my posture to get a little more comfortable as I settled in for a night of research.
I hadn’t lived in Crowley long enough to know much about local politics outside the obvious. I knew things like names and political affiliations, but not much else, and so, after only a few minutes of research, I knew that Sheriff J. Thompson always ran red, and that for the last sixteen years, he had run unopposed.
I felt a small furrow in my brow form as I read the words over and over again as if they’d eventually start to make more sense.
As for the upcoming June primary, incumbent Sheriff Jethro Thompson (R) runs unopposed.
The date of the election listed at the bottom of the article, alongside the reporter’s byline, made me feel sick to my stomach. It was less than a month away.
My mind buzzed with questions. Was there a way someone could run against Thompson this close to the election? Had no one wanted to run against him in all four election cycles he’d been in office? Had no one run against him all those years ago when he was first elected?
That question, unlike the others I had whirring around my mind, had a probable answer. Of course, he had run unopposed sixteen years ago. Abraham Knox had undoubtedly made sure of that because he needed his pinch-hitter, the ace up his sleeve.
It stood to reason that Knox had his hands in all the elections that followed, too, then. It was certainly easier to keep an unlikable man in office if no one ran against him, especially with the effective one party system that existed in Texas. Maybe a blue ticket was viable in somewhere like Austin, but Crowley’s sensibilities did more than just lean red, they practically painted themselves the color.
Which meant that Thomspon had free rein to do whatever he wanted, because no one could stand on their own two feet against him, until now.
I leaned back in my seat and reached up to rub my hand over my stubbled jaw and realized that I probably needed to shave again. I felt a quick flash of embarrassment that Clara had seen me so scruffy before I pushed the thought from my mind and centered my focus on Thompson once again.
I wasn’t sure if there was a soul left in Crowley that had the guts to run against Thompson and had a chance of standing up against his metaphorical firing squad. Or, at least I prayed it was just metaphorical.
But the seed of an idea had planted itself in my mind, and for the rest of the night, I read through page after page and article after article about the upcoming election. I even dived into the past for a time to read about the sorts of things that had happened in the previous elections to try and get a feel for how things were going to go.
By the time morning rolled around, I felt like a zombie. At some point in the night, I had fallen asleep at my countertop with my face pressed firmly into the keys of my laptop.
I ghosted my fingers over my cheek and could still feel the faint, ridged indents of the keys imprinted into my skin. I blinked away the sleep from my eyes and tried to ignore how bleary I felt as I looked at the little digital clock at the bottom of my laptop’s screen.
I groaned when I realized it was nearly nine in the morning already, and that I had lost any time I might have had to make myself look less exhausted.
I took a few, slow moments to slide myself from the barstool and back onto my feet. The first few steps I took left me feeling unstable like a baby deer, but I made my way back into my bedroom despite the shakiness.
I cast a longing look at my perfectly comfortable bed and instead shuffled into the bathroom to at the very least brush my teeth before I started the walk to my office.
My mind buzzed as I ran through my morning routine in a foggy haze. I couldn’t shake away the thoughts that had plagued me before I succumbed to sleep, and it felt like they’d scorched themselves into the very gray matter of my brain.
We needed to find a way to shake Thompson loose from office, but that felt impossible. So, the next best step was to bring light to all of his corruption.
I didn’t want to lose any more time that morning, and so I didn’t bother to change my clothes or shave. Instead, I brushed my teeth, reapplied a thick layer of deodorant, and grabbed a bottle of water and a protein bar from the refrigerator before I was out the door.
Thankfully, the walk to Landon Legal was one that I usually enjoyed. No deputies followed me along the street, and Sheriff Thompson didn’t appear at any point to accuse me of jaywalking.
I liked the scenery and the people I always passed by, and when I had been based a few blocks over in the opposite direction, I had always stopped at Hazel’s Heavenly Treats in the morning for some sort of breakfast that Hazel always insisted was on the house.
Some mornings, I missed those days because aside from the muffins, everything had been much simpler. The cases had been smaller, and the stakes lower. Back then, I hadn’t been able to say that I worked a case that had nearly led to my hand being blown from my body, or that I’d been nearly arrested just for trying to do the right thing.
In my experience, everyone had a fondness for the past, even if our present was better. But I found that sort of nostalgia unproductive, even at the best of times, and so I banished it from my mind as I made my way to my new office.
If I dwelled on the past too much, I had a lingering fear I would walk to the wrong building, and so I forced myself to collect my thoughts on the current case we were trying to build against Thompson. So that’s what hung in my mind as I shouldered into the already unlocked front door of Landon Legal.
I hadn’t cast a glance over the parking lot as I’d sauntered toward the door, but I assumed both Brody and Evelyn were in the office. I was happy to see that no one was waiting in the lobby, and I gave a silent prayer of thanks to whichever deity was in charge of overworked lawyers as I walked down the hallway toward our three offices.
But I frowned and felt my brow crease as I saw that Evelyn’s door was still closed.
She never left her door closed if she was there working. She’d once said that it made her feel trapped and like she was there to only work behind the scenes without any sort of recognition.
Well, she hadn’t said it in so many words because I had the feeling
something like that would have been too emotionally vulnerable. But I had picked up on a bit of anger toward the way she’d been treated in the field in the past, and so her door stayed open without fail until the end of the day.
I turned to poke my head into Brody’s open office door and rapped on the frame to announce my appearance. Like I expected, he was already there and seated at his desk. His cowboy hat still sat on his head, and so I assumed he’d only arrived a few minutes before me.
“Hey,” I began with a question already brewing in my tone, but Brody cut me off before I could ask him if he’d seen Evelyn at all that morning.
He dragged his eyes over me in a way that probably would have been akin to leering if it had been done by someone that wasn’t Brody. His thick eyebrows raised up toward the brim of his hat, and his head cocked to the side.
His lips started to warp into a nearly giddy grin, and I couldn’t help my confusion until I remembered what I probably looked like with my unshaven face and rumpled attire.
My lips twisted down into an annoyed frown, but Brody seemed blind to it.
We didn’t discuss our personal lives, not like this, but for some reason, the admission that I might actually have a life out of work had tickled him, and he’d found some reason to be invested. Maybe he’d just been waiting on something like that the entire time he’d known me.
I’d never have taken Brody Lucas for being a gossip.
“Have a good night?” he asked with a very clear meaning to his words that I wished desperately were true.
“This isn’t a walk of shame,” I started with a dry, tired edge to my tone. “This is ‘I was borderline arrested on my way to a date, and my date had to come pick me up’.”
Brody’s face morphed from one of boy-like mischief to shock and then again to horror.
“You were arrested?” he boomed the question, and I nearly wrenched back at the sudden force behind his tone. Was this what his ‘dad’ voice sounded like? Because it certainly felt like it.
I sighed and reached up to scratch at my itching cheek, and for a moment, I wondered if the shape of my keyboard was still pressed into my skin.
“Not technically,” I explained. “I was pulled over on my way to meet Clara and held at the sheriff’s department for about three hours until I was allowed to call her. She came and picked me up because they refused to let my car out of their possession.”
I was amazed at how easily I was able to rattle off the horror of my prior night with such a sense of nonchalance as if I’d never been fearful for my life at the worst and miserable at best.
Brody’s face flashed through a hard to read sequence of emotions, but he didn’t seem exactly thrilled with everything I’d just told him.
But before he could ask me any more questions, and before I could inevitably deflect and downplay the answers, I heard the front door swing open with substantial force.
A frown pulled at my lips again as I straightened up and leaned out of Brody’s doorway. I peered down the hallway to see Evelyn as she walked down the hall like it was a death march.
Her usually stoic expression was… rattled. Her softly wrinkled, naturally tanned skin looked downright pale, and I could see the thin, blue veins that ran under her eyes in stark contrast.
I took a step back from Brody’s doorway and turned to face her with my brow furrowed deeply in concern.
“Evelyn,” I began.
I realized then with a start that her entire body shook like a leaf in the wind, and I took a concerned step toward her with one of my hands out in case I needed to steady her.
“What happened?” I asked, and I felt like I was trying to speak to a skittish animal.
Behind me, in his office, I heard Brody stand up from his chair with a soft creak. He soon appeared over my shoulder in the doorway with one large hand curled around the doorframe.
Evelyn opened her mouth and promptly closed it before she tried again.
I realized then that the strange look on her face I hadn’t been able to decipher was fear.
“I was just nearly arrested,” she said in a tone so unlike her normal voice.
Chapter 14
Her words dropped into the office as loud as a bomb, despite the softness of her tone.
My eyes widened in horror, and I felt my mouth drop of its own volition as I reached out to cup my hand around Evelyn’s shoulder. I could hardly contain my own anger, confusion, and fear as I led her to her office. I reached out to open the door for her as her shaking hands both still clutched her purse as if she was afraid to let it go.
Once we were in her office, I helped Evelyn around her desk and kept my hand on her shoulder as she sank into her office chair.
I looked back and saw that Brody had followed us and stood in the doorway of Evelyn’s office. Whatever traces of the sort of boyish camaraderie he’d tried to have with me earlier had disappeared from his face, and his jaw was set so tightly I could see the muscle in his neck pulse.
I looked back down at Evelyn and retracted my hand before I took a step back to give her some space. I had never seen her look so rattled, and it left me feeling unmoored, like I didn’t know where anything stood now.
Evelyn wasn’t the sort of woman to look this afraid.
“What happened?” I finally asked once a few minutes had passed in fraught silence.
Evelyn took a deep breath as if to compose herself before she shifted to set her purse on the edge of her desk. She then neatly clasped her hands together in her lap before she swallowed hard enough that I could see a visible lump work its way down her throat.
“I was on my way to the office,” she started, and I could hear the faintest tremor in her words. “And when I was about five minutes away, I was flagged down by a squad car. It was one of the older models, so I knew it wasn’t Thompson.”
She closed her mouth as if she couldn’t think of what else to say. But then she cleared her throat and straightened her spine as if she could physically steel herself against her own recollection.
The sight of her this distraught made my chest ache. Despite all her bluster and bravado, Evelyn wasn’t any more untouchable than the rest of us.
“I pulled over and didn’t think anything of it,” she continued. “I’ve been driving for longer than you’ve been alive, so this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this. But, when the deputy came up to the window, he--”
Evelyn cleared her throat once again, and I pretended not to see the barest hint of a tear welling in the corner of her eye. She reached up to wipe it away, and I didn’t say anything about it.
Brody had apparently noticed as well, because he crossed the room to offer her the handkerchief he often kept tucked into the front pocket of his shirt.
Evelyn gave the red handkerchief a discerning look, and for a moment, it seemed like we were all waiting for her next move, Evelyn included. But she reached out to snag it from his hand without so much as a thanks and used the cloth to dab at her eyes. When she was dry-eyed again, she straightened up in her seat and took a deep, watery breath.
“The deputy had approached the car with his gun drawn,” she said in a voice so eerily calm I felt a chill roll down my spine.
Her words sent a wave of heat through my body to counteract the chill, however, and I swore I saw red. I gave a quick look over in Brody’s direction to see him struggling with the same sort of emotions that coursed through me.
I’d been terrified that Deputy Quentin was going to draw on me the night before, and the fact that this deputy hadn’t even gotten to the car before he’d trained his gun on Evelyn made a dark, angry thing twist inside my gut. I swallowed down the ball of anger in my throat and nodded for her to continue.
The atmosphere in her office had shifted from one of fear to one of righteous anger.
“He said that he’d pulled me over on suspicion of kidnapping, and that my car had allegedly been used in a bank robbery as well,” she said with a clipped tone to her words, like she chewed th
em up before she said them aloud.
I shoved my hands in my pockets so that I could clench them into fists without drawing Evelyn’s attention.
“It wasn’t until someone radioed him that he let me go,” she said, and I could tell just how casual she was trying to be, but she dabbed at her eyes with Brody’s handkerchief once again. “I’m not sure what would have happened if he didn’t, but none of his claims were true.”
She said it like Brody and I legitimately might have thought she’d taken part in a kidnapping and a robbery. I knew Evelyn carried a little pea-shooter in a purple, velvet Crown Royal bag, but she seemed more the type to shoot a bank robber than to be one herself.
“Someone at the department probably falsely flagged your plates,” Brody said with a gruffness to his voice that usually wasn’t there.
It didn’t matter if the three of us didn’t always see eye to eye because over the past few months, we’d become more than just co-workers. We were friends, and friends didn’t take lightly to one of them being held by the police at gunpoint.
Evelyn nodded her agreement, and I was glad to see that she’d stopped shaking at the very least, but her skin still hadn’t quite returned to its usual shade.
“I was detained last night,” I told Evelyn, as if my own horror story would help lessen the terror of hers, or at the very least, distract her.
It seemed to work because her eyebrows furrowed, and she gave my appearance a once-over that she seemed to interpret in a new light.
Ah, so Brody had told her about my date after all.
“Detained?” she said the single word like a question.
I nodded and flashed her a thin, toothless smile.
“They kept my car, amongst other things, my phone included,” I continued before I remembered that I was supposed to check my voicemail and email for a message from Clara.
I filed that memory away for later and promised myself I’d check it the first free moment I got.
“Clara had to come pick me up,” I said with a deep sigh to punctuate my words.
I wasn’t sure if Brody had informed Evelyn of who my date had actually been with, but if he hadn’t, she didn’t seem too surprised to hear Clara’s name.
