A Stranger Lies There (13 page)

We were taking the direct route to the Palm Springs police station, the radio occasionally squawking a too-loud dispatch framed by scratches of static. Off the highway, the Spotlight 29 and Fantasy Springs casinos were still garish novas of light, even at this late hour.

My unexpected arrest in Coachella meant I couldn't reconnect with Deirdre at the motel. At the exit for Palm Springs I tried again. “Look, I know there was a lot going on at the Blue Bird, but I need to know if my wife showed up.”

The officer in the passenger seat turned around and answered through the metal screen that separated us. “The only woman I saw was about sixty years old, and she was with another man. I'm assuming that wasn't your wife.”

“There wasn't a younger woman hanging around by herself?” He shook his head. “Maybe she'd just driven up?”

“Look, I just told you, there was only the one older woman. Not that we need to be answering your questions. Now keep quiet and enjoy the ride.”

But I couldn't let it go. It wasn't like Deirdre to be that late; all told, she'd had over an hour to get there before these two would have arrived. Something must have happened, I was sure of it. “Can't you swing by my place and check it out, just to make sure she's all right?” I pleaded, knowing how ridiculous the request sounded. “Or send somebody else?”

“I'm not going to make a welfare check in the middle of the night just because you miss your wife,” the driver told me. “You can call her in the morning from jail.”

“You don't understand. She could be in danger.” I felt the sweat on my forehead, but couldn't wipe it away because of the cuffs. Some of it dropped into my eye, and I shook my head to clear it.

“So why did you leave her alone?”

I didn't have an answer for that.

“You heard what the detective said. We get a call from your wife, I'll take it myself. But right now, you're going to jail.”

I gave up, knowing there was nothing I could say or do. My only hope was that she'd arrived at the motel after my departure and, seeing that I wasn't there, assumed from our phone conversation that I'd already been taken into custody. Maybe she was waiting for me right now at the Palm Springs police station. Please God, I thought, let her car be in the parking lot when we drive up.

A few minutes later we were there, the street quiet under the hard yellow light from the streetlamps. There wasn't a solitary vehicle parked at the curb in front, and the only ones sitting in the small parking lot were patrol cars and a few civilian vehicles that weren't Deirdre's. My heart sank as I glued my face to the window, checking again in the feeble hope that I'd somehow missed it the first time. But Deirdre wasn't here. I cursed myself under my breath for not saying something to Regan earlier, certain I could have convinced him to check on her.

Now I was about to be jailed, over two hours since Deirdre told me she'd see me in thirty minutes. Worried sick, and not a damn thing I could do.

In back, they pulled me out of the car and escorted me through a heavily secured metal door. It slammed shut behind us, a resounding bang echoing through the holding area, which was brightly illuminated. The walls were painted an institutional gray-green and the floor was unadorned concrete, pockmarked and dented in numerous places.

One officer went over to a counter to confer with the officer on duty. The other one led me further inside to one of three holding cells, where he patted me down in front of the metal bars. A prisoner slouched against the far wall and watched us without interest, obviously out of it. After taking my watch and everything in my pockets, the officer uncuffed me and told me to remove my shoes, which he deposited in a plastic bag. Then he put me in the cell.

“What about my phone call?” I asked, turning around.

“Later,” was the curt reply. “After you're processed.”

The officer walked off with my stuff without another word. I nodded to my cellmate, who was occupying the sole bench. A big white guy with greasy brown hair and stubble on his face. Dressed in a threadbare T-shirt and blue sweatpants. He didn't say anything, just watched me a few moments, then sighed loudly and stretched out on the bench with his arm over his eyes.

I was about to sit on the floor against the wall, then I changed my mind and jabbed him hard on the shoulder. “Move, buddy. I'm taking the bench.”

Startled, he lifted his arm from his face and studied mine. Seeing something he didn't want to mess with, he quietly complied, shuffling to the spot on the cold concrete floor where I'd been about to sit.

It felt good to let off steam at someone else's expense, small-minded and petty as it was. I thought about my situation, got more and more pissed as I waited. I cursed myself for every wrong move I'd made. Starting with not calling the cops as soon as I'd found that matchbook.

There was still the possibility that Deirdre had eventually made it out to the motel and then returned home, knowing there wasn't much she could do until morning—a tiny flame of hope that I tried to keep alive. It wasn't easy. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, punch a hole in the wall. But that would do no good. There was no choice but to stick it out.

The booking officer came to get my cellmate about half an hour later. My request for a phone call got only a noncommittal “
Later
,” a response that didn't surprise me. The holding area became as quiet as a tomb after they left, my own ruminations the only sound in my head. Eventually, those thoughts turned into an incoherent haze and I actually dozed off.

I awoke what seemed a short time later. Dazed and mushy-headed, like I'd been sleeping off a bender. The booking officer was unlocking the cell door.

“Come with me, Mr. Ryder,” she said, swinging the door open. Her nameplate said “Brock.” I followed her in my stockinged feet, while her patent leather shoes clicked smartly on the concrete floor. We turned down a short corridor and entered a small room where she took my picture and my fingerprints.

When we were done I asked about my phone call again.

“First thing in the morning,” Brock told me, looking at her watch. “That's only a few hours away.”

Easy for her to say. “What time is it?” Time had a weird way of distorting itself in here, and the absence of any windows magnified that feeling. It was like being stuck in the hold of a ship lost at sea, the queasiness of incarceration replacing seasickness.

“Four thirty.”

“So how long do I have to wait?” I asked as evenly as I could.

Brock gave me a stern look that said
don't push it
. “After seven,” she answered, then nudged me out of the room. “Follow me, Mr. Ryder. We'll get you a blanket.”

I went with her to an unmarked door, which she unlocked and opened. A small room filled with shelves of bleached white towels and musty blankets. “Take one,” she said, indicating the blankets. “You'll get a shower in the morning.”

“Has anybody called here tonight asking about me?”

She'd closed the door to the linen closet, and now I was following her deeper into the jail complex, toward another heavy metal door with reinforced glass in it. I was hoping Deirdre had phoned to verify my whereabouts and situation.

But Brock shook her head. “No one's called for you tonight. At least not while I've been on duty.”

“What time did you come in?” I asked a little too quickly.

“What's with all the questions?”

“I apologize,” I told her. She stopped when we reached the end of the corridor. Regarded me coolly. “Really. It's just that I was supposed to meet my wife earlier tonight and she never showed up. That's not like her. I think something's wrong.”

“Like what?” She'd heard it all before.

“There might be someone after her.”

That got a raised eyebrow. She folded her arms on her chest, but didn't say anything.

“You know about the murder in North Palm Springs yesterday, right? They found him on somebody's front lawn?”

“I know who you are.”

“Then you know how important this could be. I need that phone call. Now.”

But Brock only shook her head, as if to clear it of any compassion she might be feeling. “None of that makes any difference,” she told me, picking a large key from the assortment in her hand. She stuck it into the slot and pulled the heavy door open, her voice hardening. “You'll get your phone call in the morning.” She held the door open for me, gesturing with her head. “Go on.”

The jail area was dimly lit at this early hour, a maze of squared-off hallways and dead ends. The cells weren't enclosed by metal bars. Instead, they were sealed with thick sheets of a transparent Plexiglas or Lucite material that looked bulletproof, like the clear windows that sometimes protect bank tellers. Unlike the ones in banks, however, which were probably cleaned nightly, these were scratched and smudged with dirt and grease and saliva. Most of the cells we walked by were unoccupied. A few housed indistinct human forms laid out in the shadows of the bunk beds, some of them wide awake and watchful, others loudly snoring. In one of them a man stood urinating into an aluminum toilet, his stream a thick arc that bubbled noisily in the bowl; I could smell its strong, acidic odor. He stared at us frankly as we passed, but Brock ignored him, kept her eyes straight in front of her. The next corridor came right after an empty shower area, also enclosed but completely visible behind the clear walls. Four shower heads protruded starkly from plain tiles. A few cells past that, Brock stopped and selected yet another key from the crowded ring and unlocked the door. The constant rattle of those keys was a grim reminder of the freedom I'd lost.

I stepped inside with my blanket, and she closed the door behind me. The lock engaged firmly, with a metallic click that echoed sharply in the small space. When I turned around, Brock was gone, the sound of her footsteps quickly diminishing down the narrow passageways.

There was a man lying on the bottom bunk. His breath whispered rhythmically, betraying sleep. He stirred when I threw my blanket on the top bunk and hoisted myself up. A thin, plastic-covered mattress. No pillow. I bunched the blanket up at one end and laid my head on it. Stared up at the ceiling at least seven feet above me. Not surprisingly, the height did nothing to make the room seem less confining.

A few minutes later, the guy below me stirred again. Sniffled and cleared his throat noisily. He got up and went over to the toilet and spat in it, took a long piss, returned to his bunk and lay down.

“Hey man,” he said, kicking the underside of my bed. “You awake up there?” I didn't respond, hoping he'd get the message and leave me alone. But he didn't.

“What are you in for, bro?” my cellmate asked, undaunted.

“Do you mind? I'm trying to get some sleep.”

He continued obliviously, as if I hadn't said anything. “They got me for indecent exposure,” he explained proudly. “A weenie-wagger.” Pause. “Did you see that shower area over there? All open like that? When I get my shower in the morning, I'll show that bitch what a real man looks like.”

That was it. I leaned over the bunk. “I don't want to hear any more about your perverted pastime, all right? So why don't you shut the hell up?”

He didn't respond, just gave me a shit-eating grin, and I could barely restrain myself from jumping down there and slapping it off. Instead I promised, “and if I ever see you on the street doing that shit, I'll kick your ass.”

His smile only got wider. “Maybe you'd enjoy it.”

“Yeah. Just like all the women that laugh at what you got.”

“Oooh. Good one.”

He wasn't worth it, I decided, and lay back down, muttering one final insult. “Freak.”

He was quiet after that. A few minutes later I heard his breathing slow and become more regular. Dozing again, apparently at peace with his unnatural compulsion and the trouble it brought him. There was no way I'd be able to sleep. Not with the hours until morning lined up like miles of desert sand dunes between me and what I hoped wouldn't be a mirage. That phone call I waited for had to give me Deirdre's voice on the other end, awake and alive and wondering what all the fuss was about.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

My first few months in prison weren't as bad as I'd feared. Of course I was petrified from day one, not knowing what to expect, and the reality was as brutal and demeaning as anything I'd imagined. You could never afford to let your guard down. Violence exploded instantly and seemingly without provocation at any time of day or night; constant vigilance was required to stay out of it and avoid becoming a victim.

I got into several serious scrapes those first few months, as the bullies and intimidators tested the new guy. Was I going to stand up or punk out? I'd answered that question to myself before even getting there and was determined to make it stick, no matter what the cost. Hitting rock bottom was almost liberating. My staunch refusal to succumb to the threats and intimidation that were second nature to so many of the inmates became a form of therapy that helped rebuild my dignity and self-respect. The old military adage
if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger
may once have seemed macho and trite, but in prison it became a new outlook on life. I scratched the phrase on the wall beside my bed over the course of a few days. Some nights, when I wasn't sure I would make it into the next day, I'd run my fingers over the letters I'd carved in the concrete. Trace the words out one by one while the lights were out until I fell asleep.

Gradually my life inside became less frightening and dangerous. I've heard that if you make it through the first few months behind bars you'll probably be okay, as long as you keep your nose clean. For me, that was true. I learned how to act and what to say to defuse a situation without giving in. When to crank it up a notch and get in someone's face even if it meant getting the shit kicked out of me. Who to stay away from and who to get close to. How to deal with the gangs that virtually ran the cell block. Day-to-day existence became less random and more predictable. As time went on, I acquired the right kind of associates to watch my back.