Robert Crais - Free Fall

They took me out into the detectives’ squad room and began the booking process. Dees wasn’t around, and after Micelli spoke to a couple of uniforms, he and Stilwell left.

The processing cops had already begun with Pike and, as I watched, they used paraffin on his hands and took his picture and fingerprinted him and asked him questions so that they could fill out their forms. He nodded once and I nodded back. It was strange to see him without the glasses. He seemed more vulnerable without them. Less inviolate. Maybe that’s why he wears them.

They led Pike away through a hall toward the jail and then they started with me. A uniform cop named Mertz led me from station to station, first using the paraffin, then getting my prints, and then taking my picture. I crossed my eyes when they took the picture and the cop who worked the camera said, “No good, Mertz. He crossed his goddamned eyes.”

Mertz picked up a baton and tapped it against his thigh. “Okay, smart ass. Cross’m again and I’ll smack you so hard they’ll stay crossed.”

They took the picture again but this time I didn’t cross them.

When Mertz was filling out my personal history form, I said, “When do I get a bail hearing?”

“Arraignment’s tomorrow. One of the detectives ran over to the court to get a bail deviation so we could bind you over.”

“Jesus Christ. Why?”

“You see the crowding down there? You’re lucky they’ll arraign you by next Monday.”

When the processing was finished, Mertz turned me over to an older uniform with a head like a chayote squash and told him to take me to felony. The older uniform led me back along a hall to a row of four-by-eight-foot cages. Each cage had a seatless toilet and a sink and a couple of narrow bunks, and it smelled of disinfectant and urine and sweat, sort of like a poorly kept public men’s room. “No place like home.”

The older uniform nodded. Maybe to him it was home.

There were two black guys in the first cage, both of them sitting in the shadows of the lower bunk. They had been talking softly when we approached, but they stopped when we passed and watched us with yellow eyes. Once you were in the cells, there was no way to see who was in the next cell, and no way to reach through the bars and twist your arm around to touch someone in the next cell, even if someone in the next cell was reaching out to touch you. I said, “Which one’s mine?”

The uniform stopped at the second cell, opened the gate, and took off my handcuffs. “The presidential suite, of course.”

I stepped in. A Hispanic guy in his early thirties was lying on the lower bunk with his face to the wall. He rolled over and squinted at me, and then he rolled back. The uniform closed the gate and locked it and said, “You wanna make a call?”

“Yeah.”

He walked back down the hall and out the heavy door and was gone. One of the black guys in the cell next to me said something and the other laughed. Someone in one of the cells on the other side of me coughed. I could hear voices, but they sounded muted and far away. I said, “Joe.”

Pike’s voice came back. “Fourth cell.”

Someone yelled, “I’m trying to sleep, goddamn it. Shut the fuck up.” It was a big voice, loud and deep, and sounded as if it had come from a big man. It also sounded about as far away as Joe Pike.

I said, “D’Muere said he’s going for Jennifer Sheridan.”

Joe said, “Dees wouldn’t go for that.”

“Dees may not know. D’Muere wasn’t talking like a guy who was worried about what Eric Dees thought.”

The big voice yelled, “Goddamn it, I said shut up. I don’t want to hear about your goddamn-” There was a sharp meat-on-meat sound and the voice stopped. Joe continued, “Maybe he isn’t. Maybe things aren’t the way we were told.”

“You mean, maybe they aren’t partners.”

Pike said, “Maybe Dees is an employee. Maybe D’Muere is the power, and Eric Dees is just trying to control him. Maybe putting us in here is part of that.”

“Only maybe while we’re in, Jennifer Sheridan gets offed.”

Pike said nothing.

The heavy door opened and the cop with a squash for a head came back pushing a phone that was bolted to a kind of a tripod thing on heavy rollers. The cop pushed it down to my cell and parked it close enough for me to reach the buttons. “You can make as many calls as you want, but it won’t take long distance, okay?”

“Sure.”

He went out and left the door ajar because of the phone cable.

I called Marty Beale’s direct line and a male voice answered. It wasn’t Marty, and it wasn’t Jennifer Sheridan. “Watkins, Okum, amp; Beale. Mr. Beale’s office.”

“Jennifer Sheridan, please.”

“She didn’t come in today. May I take a message?”

“I’m a friend, and it’s important that I speak with her. Do you know where I can reach her?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m an office temp, and I didn’t get here until this afternoon.”

“Do you know why she didn’t come in?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

I hung up and called Jennifer Sheridan’s apartment. On the third ring, the phone machine answered. After it beeped, I said, “It’s Elvis. If you’re there, pick up.”

No one picked up.

I called Lou Poitras. A woman’s voice answered, “Detectives.”

“Lou Poitras, please.”

“He’s out. You want to leave a message?”

“How about Charlie Griggs?”

“Hold on.” I heard her ask somebody in the background about Griggs. She came back on the line. “He’s with Poitras. You want to leave a message or not?”

I hung up and leaned against the bars. “She didn’t go to work and she’s not at home.”

Pike said, “Could mean anything.”

“Sure.” Mr. Optimism.

“We could help her.”

“In here?”

Pike said, “No. Not in here.”

“Joe.” I knew what he was saying.

“Wait.”

The cop with the squash head came back for the phone, and forty minutes after that the heavy door opened again and in came the squash with a Hispanic cop sporting a flattop crew cut The squash said, “You guys are going to be bused over to County. On your feet.”

You could hear the men in the cells coming off their bunks.

The squash went down the row, unlocking the doors and telling the prisoners to step out into the hall. When the squash got down to Pike’s cell, he said, “What in hell happened to you?”

The big voice said, “Fell.”

Pike was three people behind me.

They lined us up and led us down another corridor past the booking area. The young Hispanic cop brought up the rear.

We went down another short hall and then out into a kind of outdoor alcove. Two uniformed cops were walking into the maintenance building to our right and a third uniformed cop was coming in from the parking lot to our left. A large blue bus that said SHERIFF on the side was parked maybe sixty feet away. The deputy sheriff who drove the thing was talking to a guy in the maintenance building. The cop coming in from the parking lot walked past us and went inside through the same door that we had just come out of. The deputy sheriff yelled, “Hey, Volpe,” and went into the maintenance building. Pike said, “Now,” then stepped out of the line and launched a roundhouse kick into the side of the Hispanic cop’s head. The Hispanic cop went down. The squash heard it and turned and I hit him two fast straight rights low on the jaw, and he went down, too. The Hispanic guy who had shared my cell said, “The fuck you guys doing?” He looked surprised.

The black guys with the yellow eyes held on to each other and smiled. The big guy who’d been with Pike said, “Fuckin’ A,” and ran to the right past the maintenance building and toward the front gate. Two other guys ran after him. Pike and I went to the left through the parking lot, keeping low and moving toward the street. We made the fence just as men began shouting. The fence ran back along the side of the building past a trash dumpster and maybe half a dozen fifty-five-gallon oil drums and a motorcycle that looked like somebody’s personal property. We followed the fence back toward the oil drums, and pretty soon we were on the side of the building. The shouts got louder and there were the sounds of men running, but all of the noise seemed behind us.