Troy pushed on the buzzer once and then tried the door, and since it was unlocked, he went on in. That put him in a little tiny vestibule with doors on both sides and a window straight ahead, behind which he could see a dispatcher sitting at a desk surrounded by muttering radios and glowing computer screens. The dispatcher had one hand cupped over the ear part of his headset and his elbow propped on the desk, and since whatever he was listening to didn’t appear to have him too excited, Troy went ahead and tapped on the glass to get his attention.
The dispatcher, who appeared to be the only officer on the premises, glanced up, nodded once and went on with his business. When he had it taken care of, he swiveled his chair around and got out of it, ambled over to the glass and said, “Yes, sir, can I help you?” The voice came through the glass muffled, sounding a mile away.
“Well, now, I hope so,” Troy said, raising his voice but smiling in a comradely way. He hadn’t quite figured out yet how he was going to play this, but the way he saw it, it was always a smart move to get on the good side of whoever was in charge. “What I’m lookin’ for is your jail.”
The officer, who, according to the pin on his pocket, was named Baylor, did not smile back. He had meaty- looking jowls and a buzz haircut and was built like the back end of a truck- sort of reminded Troy of Sergeant Carter on the old
Troy scratched his head. “Lord, I don’t know. You got more’n one?”
“We got the county jail, down on Court Street, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for visitin’ hours tomorrow, sir. Unless you’re lookin’ for somebody in holding.”
“Holding?” Even though he’d been raised by people who would have skinned him alive if he’d ever been stupid enough to get himself arrested, and consequently his personal experience with such things was limited, Troy did know what “holding” was. He was just feeling his way.
And the dumb-and-innocent approach did seem to be working; at least Officer Baylor finally cracked a smile. “Drunk tank. Mostly.”
“Ah.” Troy thought about it. Hard as it was to imagine a friend of Mirabella’s occupying a drunk tank, it seemed even less likely that one could have done anything to warrant actual jail time. “Damned if I know. Person I’m lookin’ for is named Phelps. Charly. That’s a woman.” He took a wild guess and added, “About mid-thirties.”
“Oh, yeah, sure-she’s back there.” Officer Baylor relaxed some more and jerked his head toward the door on Troy’s right. “Already been processed. I’m just waitin’ on confirmation of her ID. Should be gettin’ that from the California DMV any minute now. Then she’s free to go. She’s gonna need a ride, though. Her car’s not goin’ anywhere.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Troy uneasily, more than ever sure he was about to have an inebriated woman on his hands and looking forward to it less and less. “Why’s that?”
“Tried her best to climb a tree with it, is what I understand.”
“Oh, boy.” It wasn’t difficult to look shocked at
“Oh, yeah, just a little shaken up. She’s seen a doctor, everything checks out okay. But, uh…” He paused. “Turns out there’s a stolen-vehicle report out on the car.”
“Oh, man.” Oh, Lord, thought Troy, this was getting better and better by the minute. What in the hell had he gotten himself into?
Officer Baylor, who seemed to have become downright chatty now that he’d unbent, put up a hand to reassure him. “That’s lookin’ like just some sort of a misunderstanding. Turns out there were papers in the glove box. It’s a rental.”
“Well, that’s good.” A drunk, he thought, but at least not a felon.
“So,” the officer went on, “if she turns out to be who she says she is, she’s clear on that. Don’t think we’d be lettin’ her go if she wasn’t.”
“I…see,” said Troy, who wasn’t at all sure he did. “If…she’s who she says she is? You got some reason to think she
Baylor shrugged. “She didn’t have any ID on her.”
“No ID. You mean-”
“No license, no wallet, no pocketbook.”
“But how-?”
“Sir,” the officer said, looking stern, “unless you’re her lawyer, I really can’t tell you any more’n I already have.”
Which struck Troy as being kind of like locking the barn door after giving the horse away.
“Well, hell,” he said, deciding that the whole thing was just too damn weird not to see it through to the end. And besides, no matter what kind of fruitcake this Charly Phelps turned out to be, there was still Mirabella to contend with. “I can vouch for her, if that’s all you need.”
After he said that, he decided it was the truth, which was always his first choice, if at all possible. Even if he’d never personally set eyes on the lady, when she needed help, she’d called on Mirabella, hadn’t she? The way he saw it, a person would have to be a close relative or a very good friend to do that. Plus, he’d been listening to Mirabella talk about her best friend Charly for weeks now. So he almost felt as if he knew her.
“And you are…?” Officer Baylor was still minding his p’s and q’s.
“Family friend. My name’s Troy Starr.” He got out his wallet and held it up to the glass so the man could get a good look at the military ID next to his Georgia driver’s license.
Officer Baylor did so, then glanced up at Troy, trying not to look too impressed. “Navy, huh?”
“Yes, sir-retired.” He folded up his wallet and shoved it back in his hip pocket, then gave the officer a wry grin. “As of a couple months ago. Still gettin’ used to bein’ a civilian again.”
“I hear ya,” Officer Baylor said, slipping enough to grin back. Then he put on his policeman’s deadpan expression again. “Okay, sir, if you wanna step through that door there on your right? You can wait there at the counter, and I’ll bring Miz Phelps right out. Oh-” he started off, hand going for his belt, then turned back “-she’s gonna need somebody to pay her bail. You prepared to do that?”
“Let me guess-no money, either?”
“Not a dime.”
Troy heaved a sigh, and he and Baylor exchanged a “Women-what are you gonna do with ’em?” kind of look.
“Yeah, sure,” Troy said; “I’ll pay it.” He watched the officer disappear through another door, shuffling keys.
The door on his right opened into a long hallway with a counter partitioning off the dispatch room on the left. While he waited there, leaning his elbows on the countertop and listening to the radios burp static and unintelligible mumbles, he told himself it wasn’t any of his business what kind of crazy, screwed-up lady this Charly Phelps was. His job-his mission-was to get her out of this jail and this town and deliver her safely to Mirabella in time for her wedding. Period.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d rescued somebody whose character wasn’t exactly stellar, or whose politics he didn’t agree with.
He didn’t have to wait long; it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before he heard a door swish open down at the other end of the hallway. He turned his head that way, then slowly straightened up and watched them come toward him-Baylor and the woman he was holding by the arm.
He couldn’t be sure what it was he was feeling right then, just that it wasn’t anything he could recall ever feeling before. Later, when he tried to take it apart and put it back together in a way that made sense to him-he still thought of it as “debriefing” himself-he was astounded to recall that his first reaction had been a gut-level antagonism, an almost possessive resentment, and that it seemed to be centered around the officer’s meaty masculine hand encircling the woman’s bare arm. The kind of thing where, if he’d been in a bar and already a few too many beers to the good and possessed of a lot less self-control than he was, he might be inclined to grab the guy by the collar and snarl, “Hey, get your filthy hands off of her, bub!”
Then he thought about it some more, and that’s when it really got interesting.
It sure couldn’t be anything sexual; in Troy’s judgment, Charly Phelps wasn’t a sight to arouse a man’s lust, at least not right then. In fact, if you asked him, she looked like hell warmed over.
