Parnell patted him down.
“Hands behind your back.”
Bob complied. He waited until he felt Parnell’s free hand on his left wrist, the feel of skin on skin a cue to stoop slightly and throw his head backwards, full force. The back of his skull caught the officer across the bridge of the nose, snapping the bone.
“Unggh!” Parnell grunted, staggering back a few steps. Bob spun on his left heel, his right foot coming around in a spin kick, adjusting it in mid-flight slightly, the base of his heel smacking into Parnell’s chin, the mental nerve crushed. The sheriff’s legs gave way and he crumpled to the dirt, dazed, his service weapon tumbling from his grasp.
Parnell tried to recover, fighting near-loss of consciousness, looking around, confused, for the gun. Bob clocked the move early, taking two steps and kicking the pistol under the car.
He took two steps back as the deputy sheriff found his feet and rose slowly. Bob crouched and picked up the Glock he’d taken off Buckwalter.
Parnell shook his head and held up both hands, an attempt at conciliation. “Now, Mr. MacMillan, you don’t want to make this any worse…”
“Do I seem to you, after the last few minutes, as someone easily shaken by authority, deputy?”
“I can’t say you do, sir, no.”
“Turn around.”
The deputy did as ordered. Bob picked Parnell’s cuffs out of the dirt. “Hands behind your back.”
The older man complied.
“Your deputy,” Bob said as he cuffed him, “cuffed me with my hands ahead of me.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. The smaller cop seemed to visibly deflate. “Dang. He is… Well… I should keep my opinions to myself, as this has all been a might unprofessional already. You sure you won’t reconsider this, Mr. MacMillan?”
Bob shook his head casually. “Believe me when I say I’ve had just about enough of small-town Nevada for a lifetime. I’m going to go now; a friend of mine needs my help, and your deputy’s car is conveniently located.”
He climbed in and started the engine. Then he rolled down the window. “I’ll leave it somewhere safe,” he said.
“It’s still theft, son!” Parnell said, frustrated. “I’m telling you, now… I wasn’t going to let nothing bad happen to you.”
Bob frowned. The man seemed earnest. His deputy was just a violent ass. “You need better hiring policies.”
Parnell shrugged. “Family.”
“Your problem,” Bob said. “Not mine.”
A moment later, he pulled the Challenger out onto the highway, heading west. It wouldn’t take long for the trackside oglers to call help, he figured, so getting out of town and the state was the immediate priority.
Nonetheless…
Bob took the phone out of his jacket pocket and hit redial.
“Where were you!?” Dawn asked without pause. “You didn’t pick up right away. You always pick up right away!”
“I was tied up. What’s going on?”
“It’s Marcus.”
Bob groaned. “For cryin’ out loud, Nurse Dawn, I thought you were in danger! We only just talked about him a couple of days ago…”
“No, this is new,” she said. “He’s in trouble.”
4BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA
Marcus watched the other men in the holding cell warily. They’d come in over the course of Friday evening. The cell was ringed with cots attached to the bars, but no one slept, other than a hulking figure who’d looked so at home that he must’ve been a regular.
They’d picked him up in the alley he took daily, a block from his job placement at Jenkins Mechanical. They’d questioned him for three hours, demanding answers, slamming hands on tables, out-and-out yelling at times. They’d asked him why he killed a man named Singh. They’d told him they had witnesses, that there were cameras nearby that had evidence of him doing it.
They’d been surprised when he’d said he knew that wasn’t true because he hadn’t done it.
They’d told him what could happen to handsome young men in Lerdo, the pre-trial jail, where only his lawyer could visit him.
They told him how the District Attorney’s office usually won whether the guy did it or not, so he’d be better off telling them what he knew. They told him a real prison would make Lerdo look like Sunday School.
Then they told him they could ask him questions for two days before he got his first phone call and, since it was now Saturday, he wouldn’t be arraigned until Monday at the earliest.
“We get some real winners in here,” the deputy with the pencil moustache who’d arrested him had sneered.
By mid-morning, they’d realized he had nothing to say—or decided he just wasn’t up to talking—and let him have his first of three calls, on a payphone in the hall beyond the cells. He’d used it to contact the only person he knew was definitely on his side.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he’d started by saying.
And Dawn had said what he knew she’d say.
“I know.” She’d get him a lawyer, she’d suggested. “And Bob is on his way.”
