48
Wyman Ford had been standing in the holding cell since eleven o’clock, and it was now seven o’clock in the evening. Someone had puked on the floor, and the puddle had been there for hours, ripening in the heat. There was no place to sit, and the floor was also wet with urine. An astonishing number of people had come through—drunks, petty crooks, and drug dealers, along with a steady stream of normal people pulled over on the interstate and brought into town, just like him, with their cars towed. They were mostly Hispanic, with a few long-haired hippies and scruffy people. Clearly some kind of profiling was going on.
The normal people, Ford included, had banded together on one side of the big holding tank, away from the real crooks, for protection and commiseration. They had exchanged stories, Ford making up his. There was a waiter from Las Vegas who was on his way to visit his parents; a community college student from Phoenix studying business; a bartender from Michigan driving to see his girlfriend in San Francisco; a divorced father of two from Oregon on his way back from a visit. Their infractions: a broken taillight, failure to indicate, driving too long in the passing lane, driving with a cracked windscreen. All had been pulled over and had been taken out of their cars, which had then had to be towed into town. The towing and impoundment fee, Ford learned, was $600.
This was quite a racket they had going in Redbaugh, Arizona.
Their jailer was that same hollow-faced man with the wispy hair. He sat in his office, door open, a television blaring out the news. Every half hour he would get up and walk down the row of holding cells, whanging on the bars with a nightstick just like in the movies, yelling, “Shut the hell up!” Then he would go back to watching the television until the next perp was brought in for booking, mug shot, and jailing.
In the eight hours Ford had been in the cell, no one had offered anyone food or water. No one had been let out to go to the bathroom. It was unbelievable that they could get away with this, that no one had put a stop to it. Somebody powerful was making money. His thoughts turned once again to Melissa, whether she was making any headway in finding a lawyer and getting him out.
He heard a heavy footfall, and the sheriff who had pulled him over appeared in the doorway. He slowly removed his shades. His small eyes swiveled around until they landed on Ford. His face seemed to harden.
“You.”
Ford pointed at himself questioningly.
Two guards came around from behind the sheriff and opened the cell door. Ford felt relief. Melissa had finally managed to do something.
One of the guards grabbed him, spun him around with a painful jab in the back with a nightstick, yanking his arms behind him, and slapped on cuffs.
“Hey,” said Ford, “easy.”
In response, he felt a stunning blow across his ear with the nightstick, so hard he dropped to one knee. He could feel blood pouring down from a cut. They cuffed his ankles with leg irons and chained the two sets of cuffs together.
“What the hell—”
A second blow whacked across the same ear, cutting it again. “You gonna learn to shut up?”
The holding cell had gone quiet. This was something, it seemed, out of the usual routine.
Ford was jerked to his feet by the cuffs so roughly that it almost dislocated his shoulder. The two guards, standing on either side of him, shoved him forward. He shuffled behind the large sheriff, struggling to keep up as the big man walked down the long hallway toward a metal door. It opened, revealing a set of metal stairs going down to a lower level. They pushed him down the stairs. His ear throbbed, and he could feel the blood running down his collar and his arm.
They encountered another metal door, which was opened to reveal a short corridor with four rooms branching from it, two on either side, gray walls, concrete floors, one-way glass windows. Interrogation rooms. Each contained a metal table and chair at one end and a lone chair in the middle, underneath a strong light, just like in the movies.
Without a word, he was guided to the chair and shoved down onto it.
The sheriff sat down at the table and made a small gesture to the guards, who went outside, shut the door, and locked it. He could see them through the wire window in the door, standing on either side.
The cop was wearing his shades again. He took them off and laid them on the table very gently, along with the nightstick, can of Mace, and stun gun. Without looking at Ford, he arranged the four items in a nice neat row. Then he looked up.
“A report just came over the wire from New Mexico. That car you were driving was reported stolen. The owner of the car is a Mr. Ronald Steven Price.”
He let that sink in. Ford considered his response.
“So it looks like we got ourselves a car thief.”
Ford said nothing.
“So I’m gonna ask you, mister, an easy question, and I want an answer. Since you’re not Ronald Steven Price, who are you?”
Ford said, “I want an attorney.”
The sheriff picked up the nightstick, slow and easy, wrapped the strap around his meaty fist, and sauntered over. He raised it and quite deliberately whipped it into the side of Ford’s head, once again across the swollen and bleeding ear, causing a fresh jolt of pain. Then, still moving with deliberation, he went back to the table, sat down, and arranged the nightstick again, lining it up. Ford struggled to clear his head, which was full of stars.
The lawman clasped his hands in front of him. “Try again,” he said.
Ford stared at him. “I want an attorney.”
The cop rose again and this time picked up the Mace. He came strolling over. He paused with it pointed at Ford’s face. “Here in Arizona, we don’t let scumbag criminals lawyer up till they’ve talked. Last chance: your real name.”
Ford closed his eyes.
The Mace blast hit him square in the face. It was like someone had doused his skin with gasoline and lit it. He expelled air, took a deep breath, coughed, tried to open his eyes, but it was like grinding sand in there and hurt so much he had to close them again. He could feel the phlegm pouring out of his nose and running down his face and the burning sensation spreading all over his face and neck.
“You ready to tell us who you are?” said the sheriff mildly.
Ford tried to open his eyes, gasped for breath. He’d been hit with pepper spray before, along with being stun-gunned and waterboarded, as part of mandated CIA training sessions in interrogation resistance. He knew he could stand it, at least for a while. But he wondered if it was necessary. The game was clearly up, and even if the FBI hadn’t quite connected the dots, they would soon.
“The biggest mistake you ever made in your life, friend, was thinking you could drive through our law-abiding county in a stolen vehicle.”
Interrogations were normally taped. Ford glanced up at the camera in the corner.
“It’s broken,” said the sheriff. “Too bad.”
There came a soft knock at the door. The sheriff called, “Come in,” and one of the guards entered. He leaned over, whispered something in the sheriff’s ear. The sheriff nodded and he left, relocking the door.
“Here’s some late-breaking news for you. I just got word my men picked up your ‘wife’ or whatever. If you won’t talk, she will, once she gets a taste of Redbaugh justice.”
“We have the right to an attorney.”
“In Redbaugh you don’t have a right to a steaming pile of shit.” He paused, taking a moment to adjust the items in front of him. His hand grasped the stun gun. He held it up and pressed the trigger, causing a blue crackle of electricity to arc between the two electrodes, once, twice. “Let’s try again. You’re gonna tell me who you are. Or you are going to be the sorriest white man in Mohave County, Arizona.”
Ford stared at the stun gun. He knew exactly what to expect from it. But again he wondered if there was any point. If he went clean, he would spare Melissa this brutality. It was only a matter of time, anyway, before the FBI learned that he and Melissa had been arrested in Arizona. They were never going to reach Half Moon Bay, California.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you who I am. I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.”
“Oh, I’ll like it right enough, taking one more piece of scum like you off the street.” The sheriff looked him up and down with a curl in his thin lip.
As Ford was poised to tell him the truth, he heard the clang of a metal door and voices. Melissa’s voice. Raised in protest.
The sheriff turned. “Whaddya know, here comes your chippie.”
He saw her through the window, cuffed and shackled, being shoved along. There was blood on her face.
Ford rose abruptly. “She’s been abused.”
The sheriff laughed loudly. “I got all the witnesses I need who’ll swear she resisted arrest. Like they’re gonna do with you. Now sit your ass down.”
Through the window, Ford saw two guards shove her into the opposite interrogation room, causing her to fall, sprawling, to the floor. One of them kicked her.
“Looks like she’s still resisting arrest,” said the sheriff.
Ford lunged at the sheriff, but the man was expecting it. Moving nimbly for such a large man, he stepped aside and jammed the stun gun into Ford’s shoulder. Ford felt the jolt of electricity, but he was so enraged it didn’t stop him, and he swung his body around and rammed his lowered head into the sheriff’s gut. With a big oof! the man fell back, landing with a crash and grunt. The two guards burst into the room, guns drawn. Ford rushed them, but one guard pounded him in the face with the butt of his gun while the other slugged him in the gut. Ford, encumbered with his hands handcuffed to his leg irons, was knocked to the ground, incapacitated.
His head swam, and he gasped, trying to get his breath back. From a long way off he heard a scream—Melissa.
When his eyes came back into focus, the sheriff was standing over him, his face red, his eyes bloodshot, pointing a .45 at his chest. “Say your prayers, boy, ’cause now I’m gonna have to shoot you for resisting arrest. I got two witnesses gonna say you went crazy, tried to take my sidearm.”
He racked a round into the chamber and leveled the gun, his finger tightening on the trigger.