Read Online Badwater by Clinton McKinzie - Free Book Online Page B

room was large, but not all that dark. The lights from the corridor, although dim, penetrated the room completely. I passed tables and benches and even a couple of second- or third-hand La-Z-Boys that faced a black TV screen mounted high up on a wall. Life in a county jail was not all that bad. Most of the men would be drunks or wife-beaters serving misdemeanor sentences. The others would be awaiting trial. Anyone convicted of a felony would be sent to far less comfortable housing at the state prison in Rawlins.
    The cell door was open, as were the other five I had walked past. It was darker in there, but not dark enough. Sally stepped up next to me, peering in. Tom stayed back to guard the open gate.
    There were two cots inside. On one of them lay the form of a man far larger than Jonah. Smit, I assumed. In the second or two it took my eyes to adjust to the diminished light, I made out a heavy blond beard and a pair of close-set eyes glinting at me. Some white teeth, too. He was flat on his back, his fingers laced together innocently across his heavily tattooed chest.
    On the other cot there was a shape that was far smaller than Jonah’s should have been.
    He was on his side, naked except for a pair of white jockey briefs. His arms were tied behind his back, his feet tied to the same restraint. Hog-tied, the way you do a calf in a rodeo. With strips of shirt, apparently. Beneath his bulging eyes was another shirt that was serving as a gag.
    At least he was still alive. I could tell because his body was trembling and jerking.
    The big man reclining on the other cot lifted his head.
    “Sal, I don’t want this faggot in my crib anymore. He made a move on me—”
    But Smit didn’t get to finish his bullshit complaint.
    Without thinking or really being aware of what I was doing, I’d lifted the gun-shaped Taser out of the holster on Sally’s utility belt. I pointed it at the broad, bare chest and depressed the trigger. A tiny red dot appeared just below the man’s wide neck. Then I pulled the trigger all the way.
    With a pop of compressed air, two barbed darts trailing insulated wires shot out of the muzzle at 120 miles per hour. They embedded themselves among the dark etchings on Smit’s chest. Tiny pieces of confetti scattered in the air as proof that the weapon had fired.
    No such proof was needed, though, because for the next five seconds the big man’s body bucked on the bed, flopping like a fish, one arm beating without rhythm on the concrete wall. His mouth opened and snapped shut with audible force.
    “Hey!” Sally was yelling. “Hey!”
    I stuck the gun back in her holster and scooped up Jonah in my arms. I wanted him out of the way before Smit regained his senses. I used him to push the deputies out of the cell. Back in the main room, I dropped Jonah on a Ping-Pong table then turned to slam shut the cell door.
    “Are you crazy?” Tom demanded angrily. “What the hell did you do that for?”
    Sally shoved me. “Shit, man! Why’d you do that?”
    Amazed and excited prisoners were sitting up in their beds and beginning to chatter.
    I had done what anyone would do. Anyone, that is, but a cop. I’d Tased a man who was showing no resistance. Good cops don’t do that. They stick to the use-of-force rules and leave to the courts any question of punishment. I hadn’t even had the presence of mind to shout the way bad cops are supposed to—
Stop resisting! Stop resisting!
—long after you’ve wrung the last bit of resistance out of them.
    I used my pocketknife to cut the T-shirt gag out of Jonah’s mouth. Still tied, he began to take huge, shaky breaths.
    Just behind us, a bellow of rage exploded from the locked cell. Something with the mass of a piece of chewed gum struck my back, accompanied by a spitting sound. Turning, I saw the shirtless, bearded giant gripping the bars as he snarled at me. What looked like blood was running down the beard.
    The chewing gum, I realized, was a hunk of tongue that