The Spoil of Beasts, page 3
part #3 of Iron on Iron Series
“Well, then,” North murmured, “fuck me.”
4
The county jail was attached to the rear of the sheriff’s station, which sat in the center of Wahredua alongside several other government buildings. A few of them, like city hall, were remarkable pieces for a town this size—built when civic pride meant spending the time and money to do things right, in limestone and bronze. Other buildings, though, showed the inspiration of budget restrictions and committee groupthink: long, low buildings that had been thrown up when land was cheap and available, and when the driving aesthetic imperative had been brown.
“Brown’s making a comeback,” Shaw decided to tell North.
“No, it’s not.”
Sheriff’s department cruisers crowded the parking lot, many with their lights still flashing, and North parked a hundred yards off. Men and women milled around with the purposeless activity of people who didn’t know what to do but didn’t know how to leave, either. Many of them wore deputy uniforms—or, like one guy with sleep-tousled hair and boxer shorts to complement his uniform shirt, parts of their uniform—but others were clearly paramedics, and others had the look of administrative personnel. It was a small town, and tragedy meant people you knew.
North and Shaw made it through most of the restless crowd without more than a few side-eye glances, but as they drew closer to the sheriff’s station, a square-jawed guy darted into their path and held up a hand. He wore a rumpled deputy’s uniform, and he smelled—to borrow a phrase Shaw had heard from North and would never have used himself, on account of being sex positive—like a two-bit whorehouse.
“Hold on,” the guy said, in case putting his hand up wasn’t clear. “You can’t go in there.”
“We can,” North said, detouring around him, “and we are.”
“Hey!” the man barked, prancing backward, hand going to the gun at his side. “I’m ordering you to stop right now!”
North stopped. He gave the man a slow up-and-down look. It was similar, Shaw thought, to the time North had caught Shaw and the puppy arguing over who was going to get to sleep with North that night. That sounded silly, Shaw decided. Nobody argued with a puppy. They had been negotiating.
“Buzz off,” North said.
The deputy’s eyes flicked to him and back to North. “I don’t know who you are, but—”
“Jackass, the chief of police sent us over here, so you can call Chief Somerset and clear it with him. While you do, my partner and I are going to get to work.”
For a moment, the deputy looked like he might back down. Then his face hardened, and he opened his mouth.
“Let them through, Moore.” The voice belonged to a woman who stood in the station’s doorway, backlit by the yellow wash of interior light. “McKinney? Aldrich?”
“That’s us,” North said as they started forward.
She wore the brown uniform of a deputy, and her nametag said Weiss. She was past forty, on the stocky side, her brown hair cut short. She gave Shaw a familiar negotiating-with-the-puppy look, and when she turned to face North, Shaw caught a hint of a limp in the way she carried herself. Now, up close, Shaw could make out the film of shock covering her features, and beneath it, the deeper layer of grief. After checking their IDs, she jerked her head for them to follow, and they went inside.
They didn’t go far. She stopped in the lobby and said, “Chief Somerset said to give you whatever you need. What do you need?”
“We’d like to see Dalton Weber’s cell,” North said, “as well as the route the sheriff would have taken. Then anything you can give us that might help with finding Welch: security footage from before the cameras went down, visitor logs, phone records.”
Weiss nodded. “The cell’s locked down until Highway Patrol can get here and process it—Chief Somerset’s orders. But I can walk you past it, and you can take a look.”
“That works.”
She took them down a hallway that led toward the back of the building. The station looked like a lot of government facilities Shaw had been in: the high-traffic carpet squares with a microdot pattern meant to disguise dirt and wear; painted cinderblock walls that never quite looked like they were meant for human occupation; sterile pieces of non-art mixed with informational posters about how to run a neighborhood watch or what to do if someone left their briefcase at a bus station (SAY SOMETHING!). One of the posters had to be from the Depression—it showed a woman in a nightgown and curlers peering out her door at the suspicious outlines of two tramps, bindles over their shoulders. The words were simple: NOT IN OUR TOWN.
“Jesus,” North muttered.
“I have those curlers,” Shaw said.
North tried twice to slap him upside the head, but both times Shaw was faster.
It was silly, yes. It was stupid. It was, Shaw knew—because he could hear his mother and father saying it in their own distinct ways—wildly inappropriate. But it was the lifeline he and North threw each other when the darkness was too deep to swim in. Plus, it was fun, and it made North smile, and that went a long way toward pushing the nightmares back.
Instead of taking them through the visitors’ entrance to the jail, Weiss unlocked a steel security door and led them through a suite of offices. She stopped where another security door was propped open. Inside, a bank of monitors showed empty screens. Large windows looked out into the jail’s chow hall. “As you can see, the cameras are still out of order. The tech is supposed to come out tomorrow and tell us what happened.”
“Is this where the sheriff would have been?”
Weiss shook her head. “Normally, the sheriff would have been in his office, but Ezell was gone—you know about that?”
“We heard something.”
“The sheriff came back here to hold down the fort with Glover. This part is called the control center.”
“Add that to the list,” North said. “We want to talk to Glover.”
“Get in line. He’s already got his union rep, and he’s not talking to anyone until Highway Patrol gets here.”
North grunted. “So, how would the sheriff have gone to check on Weber?”
Weiss led them across the control center to a door. The door had a security window that looked into a small enclosure, with another door at the other end. The design was familiar—it was called a sally port, or a mantrap, and each door had to be unlocked in turn. In theory, this meant an offender couldn’t jump a guard while he was entering or exiting the secure portion of the facility. Or rather, an offender could jump a guard, but they still wouldn’t be able to escape.
Steps made Shaw turn. A thin-faced deputy with penciled-on eyebrows stood in the doorway. Her nametag said Lang.
“Deputy Lang was on tonight as well,” Weiss said.
“Here?” North asked.
“The women’s unit.” Lang’s voice was deeper than he’d expected. “We didn’t know anything had happened until the alarm.”
“We’re going to want to talk to you,” North said. “About Ambyr Hobbs.”
“Chief Somerset sent them,” Weiss said.
Lang’s face remained skeptical. Or maybe that was just the eyebrows. All she said, though, was, “I can’t help you. They found her in the laundry, not the women’s unit.”
Weiss produced a keycard and let them through first one door, then the other. North was frowning.
“It’s called a sally port,” Shaw said.
“I know what it’s called,” North snapped.
“Oh. Because it looked like you didn’t.”
North scowled at him as he strode off after Weiss.
The secure portion of the jail smelled like what Shaw thought of as hospital cleaner, with an underlying flush of warm bodies and warmed-over cafeteria food—tinned meats and overcooked grains. It looked well maintained, with panels of fluorescents providing unflinching light. There were no Alcatraz-style corridors of cells. Instead, Weiss led them past a door with a sign above it that said DORM 1, and men looked out at them from the inset security window. No one said anything. No catcalls or hoots or shouts. But the sound of restless movement came even through the closed door, and the animal part of Shaw’s brain was aware of too many eyes focused on him. Ahead, North’s shoulders were tight, and his head moved slowly from side to side.
Weiss had to stop at another sally port, where she used her keycard again to get them through.
“How big is this place?” North asked. “I thought we were talking about a county jail.”
“You’ve seen most of it,” Weiss said. “There’s a second men’s dorm, the rec room, the yard, the canteen. The women’s facility is even smaller, and the isolation unit—that’s what this is—doesn’t get used unless we need it.”
“Why was Dalton Weber in isolation?” Shaw asked.
“We usually have people in isolation for a few reasons. One, they’re a danger to themselves. Two, they’re a danger to the other offenders. Three, they’re in danger, and we’re trying to keep them safe. Sometimes a lawyer asks the judge for special housing. That happens if we’ve got someone with a gang affiliation, for example. LGBTQ offenders are another one.”
“Is that why Dalton was in here? Because he was gay?”
“I don’t know why the sheriff put Mr. Weber in isolation, but that seems like a good guess.”
North waited for her to start walking again before he whispered, “Or the sheriff knew Dalton was an important witness because John-Henry told him.”
“Or that,” Shaw whispered back.
The isolation unit was much smaller, and instead of dorms, Shaw found the cells he had expected to see earlier. They were all empty. Two doors stood open, and a deputy stood watch—clearly responsible for making sure nobody tampered with the scene before the Highway Patrol forensic unit was able to process it. He looked like a farm boy about to pop out of his uniform—in a good way. His nametag said Andersen.
“Why don’t you ask him to take his shirt off?” North said. “It’ll make it easier to climb up on his tits.”
“I didn’t—”
“And try not to swallow your tongue if it’s not too much trouble.”
“I wasn’t—North, I would never—I mean, yes, I looked—” Shaw managed to stop himself. “Don’t say tits!”
“I’m sorry—” Andersen began automatically, holding up a hand.
“They’re not going in there,” Weiss said. “They’re with Wahredua PD, and Chief Somerset sent them over to take a look.”
Andersen seemed ok with that; he settled back into position. The uniform was exceptionally close fitting, and Shaw wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if—
“That’s his dong,” North whispered furiously.
“I know that! I mean, I thought I knew that. I mean, sometimes the way the fabric lies, the optics of the bulge, you know—”
“You know what? I changed my mind. I don’t want to marry you.”
“North!”
“I’m good with this weird thing we have. I’m a faithful and loyal partner, and you’re this pervy little skeeve I drag around so you can stare at farm boys’ dingalings.”
“Oh my God, he does look like a farm boy, doesn’t he?”
For whatever reason, that made North’s face flash red, and he stomped a few paces closer to the cell, ignoring Andersen’s warning look.
Shaw caught Deputy Weiss’s side-eye and was suddenly aware of how he and North must seem—the poor taste of it all, the crassness, what must have looked like levity instead of what it really was: fear. The humor was a cheap veneer neither he nor North could risk letting fall. But Shaw didn’t know where to start explaining it, or if this was one of those things people didn’t say out loud.
So, instead, Shaw walked past Weiss and North and Andersen to inspect the other cell that was open. The room inside held only a metal bunk bolted to the wall, a thin mattress, and a stainless-steel toilet and sink.
“Who was in this room? Uh, cell. Who was in this cell?”
“Philip Welch,” Weiss said.
“The inmate who escaped?”
Weiss nodded.
“Why was he in here?”
“Gang affiliations. It would have been too risky to house him with the general population.”
“Because it’s full of neo-Nazi white trash,” North said.
Andersen stiffened.
“Because it would have been too risky,” Weiss said again.
Shaw glanced around, but the other cells looked unoccupied. “Was anyone else in the isolation unit?”
“No,” Weiss said.
“So, Welch was the only one who could have gotten to Dalton?”
Weiss grimaced. “Nobody should have been able to attack Mr. Weber in his cell. Everyone should have been locked down for the night. In the isolation unit, they’re locked down twenty-three hours a day.”
“But that’s clearly not what happened,” North said, and he directed a meaningful look at Shaw before turning his attention back to the cell. Shaw moved over to join him as North continued, “So, what did happen?”
“Ideally,” Weiss said in a tone that Shaw couldn’t pin down, “the explanation is that some sort of failure in the locking mechanism of the cell doors left both Welch and Weber unsecured.”
“Yeah,” North said, “that’d be great. What really happened?”
“We can’t be sure until the doors are inspected—”
“You didn’t have some sort of tragic coincidence when both doors magically unlocked themselves. Somebody made sure these two cell doors were open. The question is, who?”
Weiss’s mouth twisted, but she didn’t answer. Andersen’s face was ruddled with what must have been anger.
“Do you need to see anything else?” Weiss asked. “Or are we finished here?”
For the first time, Shaw let himself look into Dalton Weber’s cell. Both Weber’s body and the sheriff’s had been removed, but blood puddled on the floor, slowly drying on the concrete. More blood spattered the bunk, the walls, the sink. John-Henry had told them that the sheriff had been stabbed multiple times, but that didn’t come close to describing what must have happened. Shaw could picture it: the rapid thrusts, the resistance of muscle as the shiv penetrated, the frantic, manic energy driving Welch to stab over and over again, the blood spraying out, black under the fluorescents, the sound of the dying men’s breaths under the flurry of blows—
North squeezed Shaw’s nape. Shaw drew in a ragged breath. He blinked his eyes clear and nodded.
“We’re done here,” North said.
Weiss led them back the way they’d come, and North kept his hand on Shaw’s neck. Eyes followed them from the darkness. Shaw thought he could feel air moving against his skin, the collective breath of men caged like animals. Sweat slicked his neck where North’s hand lay heavy on it. When they stepped back into the control center, safely behind the sally port and under the watchful gaze of Deputy Lang and her eyebrows, North let his hand slide down Shaw’s back, Shaw felt cold, and he shivered in spite of himself.
“Question number one,” North said. “How the fuck did Philip Welch walk out of here?”
Lang’s mouth tightened at the swear, but Weiss just shrugged. “If you’re talking about the sally ports, well, they all have a mechanical bypass.”
“Let me guess: the sheriff is the only one with the keys.”
“It’s a security protocol.” Weiss shrugged again. “He’s not the only one, but he does have a set. In theory. If you want my guess, Welch did what he did and then waited. He stayed out of sight until Glover went to investigate why the sheriff had been gone so long. Then, while Glover was headed down to the isolation unit, he walked right out of here.”
“Really good fucking system,” North said. “They could do a whole ‘Your Dollars at Work’ show about this fuck-up.”
“Why didn’t the sheriff use his gun?” Shaw asked.
“Because he wasn’t carrying it,” Lang said, the words a little shrill, a little sharp. “Obviously.”
North spared her a glare for obviously, but he turned his attention back to Weiss when she spoke.
“All firearms are stored in a locker outside the secure facility,” Weiss said. “If there was an emergency, I guess maybe he’d take his with him. But walking back there with a gun is against protocol. I think Deputy Lang’s right about the surprise. When the sheriff stepped out of the sally port—that would be a good place to get the jump on him.”
“But there weren’t any signs of a struggle,” Shaw said.
“Inside the cell, then. He might have seen that Dalton was hurt, gone to check on him. It would have been a mistake, not following protocol, but everybody makes mistakes.”
“Is his gun here?”
Weiss grimaced. “We don’t have the key, but one of the lockers is still in use.”
Hands on hips, North was silent for what felt like a long time. When he looked at Shaw, Shaw read the question in his face and shook his head.
“What kind of timeline are we talking here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody unlocked those cells. When could that have happened?”
“If it was a mechanical failure—” Lang began.
But Weiss spoke over her. “We do rounds and checks once an hour, and five full head counts every day. You didn’t see, because we didn’t go in there, but the dorms have an observation room so a CO can keep an eye on things. Everyone’s in their dorm by eight. When we’ve got someone in isolation, we do checks every fifteen minutes.”
“That’s why the sheriff went back there?” Shaw asked. “Routine?”
“And we have floor deputies in the rec room, the yard, the canteen,” Lang said. “But that’s only during the day, before lockdown.”
