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Trey R. Barker

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Of Subtext

Ah, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

Dripping in subtext, rife with political statement hidden in the clothing of historical drama. Superficially, it was about the witch trials. Subtextually, it was all about McCarthy, the modern American witch hunt.

Writer Robert Ferrigno’s new novel “Prayers For The Assasin,” is just as full of subtext. While I don’t care much for the novel itself — the storyline is servicable, the characters almost compelling in a straightfoward way, the situations and plotting and pacing all competent if cliched and stereotypical — I was interested in Ferrigno’s hidden story.

In 2040, America has had a civil war, triggered by backpack nukes detonated in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The north and west is now and Islamic state, with the south a Christian nation — peopled with stereotypical and easy to write rejects from “Deliverance,” which annoys the shit out of my vague southern-ness…not all of us in the south or in Texas are redneck squirrel hunters who suffer from massive homophobia and like our women barefoot and pregnant while our blacks are in the back shack or the fields.

But the hidden story of Ferrigno’s novel — that of the fundamentalist religious police the Black Robes — tells the tale here.

The religous police in this book are what Americans have come to expect from fundamentalist Islam: women told to stay indoors unless they have a male relative for escort, women beaten for not obeying, women stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage even when that sex was rape, men with multiple wives, men pulled off the street — disappeared in the vernacular of Auguste Pinochet’s regime — for idle speculation, for speaking against the religious or societal edicts of Islam.

But at the same time, those religous police are our burgeoning cadre of religous police. In the book, the Black Robes are extreme in both thought and belief and action against those who disagree with them.

Take a look around.

Look at this place where a thirty year Marine veteran is called a traitor and coward for asking questions about the war, where a former attorney general spends nearly $7,000 on a robe to cover the bare breasts of Scales of Justice statue because he’s embarrassed to have those boobs in pictures of him at press conferences. (I guess the robe was less expensive than simply moving the press conferences to another part of the building.)

Take a look at a place where, even if you supported the war in Afghanistan but question the war in Iraq, you are called unpatriotic, “dishonest,” “reprehensible,” a place where corporations are terrified of, and refuse to, sponsor the Museum of National History’s Charles Darwin exhibit because that exhibit would take a long look Darwin’s work and his legacy, where auto makers are forced to abandon advertising in gay magazines because of threatened boycotts.

When did it become okay to say, “You disagree with me so I’m going to post your personal email and home address on my website so you can get harrassed and threatened?” (as Ann Coulter to a woman who had the temerity to question her).

When did it become okay for your beliefs to take precedence over mine and for you to attack me personally because of it?

How much longer will I be able to say what I want? How much longer will I be able to write what I want?

There is a great chill in the air.

Of Crime Novels and Coffee Stains

The stack of books — my novel 2000 MILES TO OPEN ROAD — was a beautiful thing.

Call it twenty books. Stacked in nice piles of three or four each, spread out over a beautiful Arts and Crafts style table, a nice splay of matching bookmarks, a glass of water, a poster announcing my arrival and signing, giving a few critically praiseful words about the book.

A great display at the Crystal Lake Barnes and Noble.

Until the idiot chick with the coffee. Until the idiot chick with her mother, a cup of coffee each, and a bag of donuts or bagels or some crap.

Let me say this: those kinds of appearances, where there is no particular reason for you to be at the store, where there is no discussion of writing in general or a panel exploring great crime fiction or even a reading from your book, are odd. It’s always like you’re not quite supposed to be there, like you don’t quite fit it. There are lots of readers, lots and lots and lots, but they are general readers; few of them are specifically crime fans. They are there for the magazines or the romances novels or the latest non-fiction political assassinations parading as journalism.

It’s different at mystery/crime bookstores. Those people are specifically mystery fans and so you start on the same page as they do. Usually you’re there for a specific event: a reading or a discussion or whatever. Because of that, you never feel like a shirt two sizes too small on fat man.

Anyway, the staff at this particular Barnes and Noble did an amazing job of making me feel comfortable. I didn’t have a reading or discussion, but I had the book to sign and every few minutes, they’d make an announcement over the store system, letting shoppers know I was there.

When I do signings like that, I keep an eye on the mystery section. Again, in a general bookstore, most customers aren’t going to be interested in whatever you’re selling. Maybe I’m a failure as a salesman, but I simply can not sell, much less pitch with excitement, a gritty, bleak crime novel to someone thumbing through Pico Iyer’s latest travelogue. Don’t get me wrong, I love Iyer’s work, but his fan base and mine are on different mailing lists.

I know writers who can sell any book to anyone in any section of any store. That’s not who I am.

So I keep my eye on the mystery section and when someone wanders into it, I’ll head over, novel in hand, introduce myself, and pitch them the book. Usually, because we’re both into crime fiction, we’ll end up talking for a little bit, discussing favorite authors and techniques and books and whatnot. Most times, they’ll take my book and give it a look or two, many times they’ll buy it. Sometimes, they shrug, never touch the book, and head to the bathrooms.

(A quick aside, the worst moments during these kinds of cold-call sales are when I approach single women. Picture it this way: your sister or your mother or daughter is trolling a bookshop, looking for something to juice up a long road trip. While she’s looking, a man she’s never met, hiding behind a full beard and without a store namebadge, holding a couple of books, comes up to her and starts talking. “Hi, my name is — ” kind of stuff. She looks around, unsure of what’s going on, unsure of who this guy is, to make certain A) there is an employee or a cop somewhere near and B) an escape route even closer.)

So last Sunday, I’m trolling the mystery section of the BN, managing to sell a few copies of the novel, and when I get back to the table near the front of the store, a woman and her daughter (call Mom late 30s and daughter mid-teens) are at my table.

Cool, someone interested in the book.

No, someone who stopped at my table because it was simply on the way to their next appointment. These two ladies stopped long enough to pull a friggin’ donut out of the bag from the in-store coffeeshop. They emptied their bag, left it sitting on my books (not on the table but on the books themselves), spilled quite a bit of their coffee on my bookmarks, then strolled toward the front door as I returned to the table.

“Excuse me,” I said, holding up the stained bookmarks so they could see.

Both ladies tossed me a glance, then without even a dismissive shrug, left.

All I wanted to do was grab the stained bookmarks (and no, they don’t cost me much but that’s hardly the point), chase them down in the parking lot, and jam the wet paper into their faces. Stain my bookmark with your coffee? I’ll stain your face with my bookmark, how’s that?

An ugly impulse, wanting to bang these cheap chicks around for fouling up five or ten bookmarks. But really, it wasn’t about messing up the marks, it was about the lack of concern that they’d messed up the marks. It was about the balls it took to leave the donut bag on my books, to stain the bookmarks, then ignore me when I pointed it out, as though it simply wasn’t their problem.

That was what it was about.

But I played nice. I chuckled (probably more to save face with the sales clerk standing next to me) and shrugged them off. I planned to simply toss the stained bookmarks, but the lady who’d stood in line to buy a copy of my novel said she’d take them. So I signed them for her.

Her name was Christina and, unlike the other two, she was cool. Enjoy the book, Christina.

No Requests

George from Sleepless in Midland asked the obvious question. In my previous post, I mentioned a now-convicted residential burglar who had blasted me with a bit of honesty about Snickers.

George wrote: “Let us know if this guy asks you to bend some rule for him and then gets angry when you don’t.”

Never happened, believe it or not. Never made a sound, never asked for a favor.

In fact, after finishing his time in my jail and before moving on to another county jail for yet another residential burglary charge, he let me know there were a few minor items of contraband in his cellblock.

Can’t figure out quite why, but I’ll take it.

For a guy who busted into houses, took whatever he could find, he was brutally honest about really small stuff. Thing is, I don’t know why. Can’t figure out why he’d suddenly be honest. It freaked me out then and it freaks me out now.

In the end, I guess, it doesn’t really matter. He’s gone, I’m still there and I’ve got a ton of new burlgars to deal with.

I just have to make sure I count my Snickers bars better.

All About The Snickers

He’s a residential burglar.

When I was a journalist, I would absolutely have written “an alleged residential burglar.” But he’s been in my jail now for weeks and while he says he didn’t do it, he did. (And no, I won’t say, George Bush-like of Harriet Miers, “Trust me.”) Too many times I’ve heard him talking with other inmates about what kind of loot he got, how he got in, etc.

He did it.

And yet yesterday, he didn’t do it.

Could have. Could have absolutely gotten away with it.

In my jail, commissary day — when the inmates are allowed to buy certain items — is extremely small; a few sheets of paper and an envelope for letters, a few candy bars, a soda, some lotion or playing cards. This guy bought two Snickers bars.

I gave him one too many and then moved on my way.

Fifteen minutes later, he called me back over and handed me the extra Snickers. “You gave me this by accident,” he said.

There must have been a shocked look on my face because at least one other inmate started laughing. “What?” I said, fairly well dumbfounded that he would hand it back.

Because in my jail, Snickers and Hershey bars are gold. Not as food…as money. Inmates buy and sell anything and everything they have — their meals, their blankets, their books, sometimes their pictures — and Snickers and Hersheys are the coin of the realm.

Call them poker chips, too. Basic ante is one bar and the betting goes up from there.

“You gave me too many,” he said. “It’s not mine. I didn’t want you to have to pay for it if you came up short on your inventory count.”

I stood for a long moment, my addled brain running through all the different scams I thought this might be, might turn into.

In the end, after seeing something approaching honesty on this guy’s face, I handed him the candy bar back. “I appreciate you letting me know about it.”

He shrugged. Eventually, looking probably as befuddled as I had moments earlier, he took the Snickers.

“You keep it,” I said. “For letting me know.”

I still don’t quite understand it. He’s in a cellblock with a bunch of guys who do regularly cause problems. He is a bit of a problem. Suddenly he gives back a 50 cent candy bar I would never have known about?

I refuse to believe any sort of jailhouse switch in morality, it just doesn’t happen that way usually. Maybe, like the character Red says in Stephen King’s ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,’ he did it just to feel normal, if only for a little while.

Maybe this guy, who probably will go to prison for breaking into Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public’s house, just wanted to be a regular guy for a little while. Maybe he wanted to see something other than suspicion on a guard’s face.

Screw it. Maybe there was a scam and I’m just not smart enough to have it figured out.

All For The Money

Sometimes I hate the money.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not some Birkenstock wearing, granola-eating naive, idealistic artist who believes in the sanctity of art above all else. I understand there is commerce in everything, art included, and that the largest engine driving the world is money.

But sometimes I hate it.

Recently, my first novel, 2000 MILES TO OPEN ROAD, was published. Right now, I’m working as hard as I can to promote it. I’ve been to signings and readings, to conventions, I’ve produced and mailed thousands of chapbooks featuring the first two chapters of the novel, I’ve sent press releases. I’ve done everything I can think of and everything my writer friends have found successful, to promote the book.

One suggestion I got was to attend the Great Lakes Booksellers’ Association conference in Chicago; to attend their Regional Author Event. That, I was told, would put me and my book in front of hundreds of booksellers. It would allow me to pitch directly to the people who put books in the hands of readers.

Not only would this be a great opportunity for me as a writer, but as a bookseller as well. My wife’s bookstore, Green River Books, is a member of GLBA. Promotion of both writer and store.

I sent numerous emails to various executives. Over and over and over again.

None were answered. None.

Except, finally, an email sent to the general mailbox at GLBA.

Here is part of their response:

“Good Morning,

Thank you for your interest in our 2005 Trade Show. Though there are
numerous opportunities for authors…we reserve those opportunities for authors who are represented by an exhibiting publisher, i.e., a publisher that has a booth….

Once you’ve established that your publisher will be represented…contact me…or send in a “Call for Authors” nomination form. We welcome and review all nominations until the trade show schedule is set and all author slots are
full.”

What? Did I read that correctly? You’ll let me tell booksellers about my book only when my publisher has given you money for a booth?

The Great Lakes Booksellers’ Association says their mission is to bring books to readers, books to booksellers, the written word to those who love to read. In fact, their website says, “The Great Lakes Booksellers Association is formed to support bookstores and to promote excellence in the publishing, distribution, promotion and selling of books.”

Evidently, that’s true only if you buy a space at their regional show first.

The booths are decently cheap, a bit less than $600. The cancellation policy isn’t particuarly good (a $200 fee if you cancel at least two months out, no refund at all if you cancel less than two months out…standard practice in the convention industry).

I’m not an idiot, I understand GLBA has to cover costs, but by having a policy of “pay us first, then we’ll allow you to promote yourself,” they cut out any publisher who doesn’t have a decent sized budget for that kind of thing.

But the publisher should be willing to put money into their books, shouldn’t they? True enough. Except that there are ten regional ABA-style organizations. If they all charge $525 for a booth, that’s $5,250 just for booth space. Doesn’t include shipping, transportation, accomodations, and meals (not to mention all kinds of things I’ve probably forgotten). That’s all on top of all the other marketing publishers have to do.

Small publishers, medium publishers, self-publishers, assorted others don’t always have that kind of budget.

And let’s not forget, promotion at GLBA has two elements. First is the booth cost. Second is the review process. Remember the email response? “We welcome and review all nominations….” So they take your money, then decide if your subject matter is appropriate, I guess.

But what if it’s not? What if I wrote a porn novel they didn’t like and I was the only book being promoted by my publisher at the time? Would they take the booth money and then deny me the opportunity to promote the book (and then refuse to give a refund based on their own rules)?

I understand covering costs, but linking book promotion to whether or not the publisher has bought a booth is not what GLBA says they want to do.

Why does GLBA connect the worthiness of a book with money?

So I will continue to promote my book the best I can. I will try and get in contact with all of the GLBA members and pitch my book to them without the help of the Great Lakes Booksellers’ Association. I will try to succeed inspite of their heavy-handed attempts to get some money out of my publisher.

Like I said, sometimes I hate the money part of the business.

Art and Artist, Hypocrisy 101

I noticed my own hypocrisy with Toby Keith.

Hypocrisy? Perhaps double-standard is a better characterization. Either way, I’m not sure I’m happy with it.

Music means a great deal to me. Long before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be Alex Van Halen. Then Neil Peart. Then Larry Mullen, Jr. There are times, even at 38 years old, when listening to “The Unforgettable Fire” or “Moving Pictures” or “2112” and banging on my drumset that I still want to be those guys.

But as much as music means, I find I’m not much of a fan of country. Much of the music I like, and the vocal harmony of the old time country, the musicianship of bluegrass. But I have a hard time with much of the hard-right nationalism and religion of country artists. I don’t like songs that tell other countries it’s the American way to put a boot up their ass if we don’t like what they say.

I tend to think of those artists as hard-right politically (and yeah, I tend to think of them as a monolithic group, with no differences in degree or thought). They vote red state, worship red state, celebrate and educate red state, eat and sleep red state.

Worse, I see them celebrate going to war. Doubly so Toby Keith, who has made a vast American fortune reminding people we’ll put a boot up their ass (witness his horribly titled album “Shockin’ Y’all”).

I stay away from his music because I don’t like his politics. I gravitate toward U2 and Sting, Peter Gabriel and Rush, because I dig their tunes but also because they are where I am politically. Oddly enough, being both a Texan and in law enforcement, I am a lefty. I am a liberal.

Here’s the problem. Toby Keith has a fabulous new song out. “As Good As I Once Was.” It’s about getting older and not being quite as quick on the draw or quite as tough as in the old days. Great lyrics, hysterical video, bad politics.

Now the hypocrisy: I tell myself not to worry about the politics when I’m listening to that song. Separate art from artist, I tell myself.

Except, I don’t tell myself that when I’m listening to U2. I revel in their politics, their world view. It is my seeming selective application of ‘separate art from artist’ that concerns me. Why do I usually ignore that advice, then suddenly follow it when it’s some whose politics I don’t agree with?

Tricky question, that. Hypocrisy? Cheap rationalization? Or massive over-analysis of a fairly petty issue?

It could be as simple as wanting to hear a good tune and ignoring the politics unless I happen to agree with them. After all, I lean more toward the Barbra Streisand side of politics but can’t stand any single song she’s ever done. With her, I don’t separate art from artist, I separate self from Streisand. (Okay, it’s a cheap joke, but you get what I’m saying.)

I have no answer for this, if there even needs to be one, I just find the question an interesting one to explore. For now, I’ll continue digging Red-State Toby’s new song and I won’t worry about the politics because chances are pretty good our votes would cancel each other out anyway.

The Relativity of Success

Perception is everything.

There is a place I want to be as a writer. It’s not a dollar amount (give me millions and I’ll probably still work at the Sheriff’s Office because I dig the job), it’s not number of books sold (sell hundreds of thousands and maybe those numbers become cement shoes, weighing you down with an audience’s expectation), it’s not the number of times I’m asked to be a guest of honor at a mystery convention (though the free beer bought by younger writers wanting to crack open the secret code of success might be fun).

It is the ability to write what I want to write, almost regardless of content.

There is no purity there, just as there is no purity in the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….” But of course you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater (or movie in a crowded fire house quoth Steve Martin).

But I want to get to a place where it matters less, where I can, for the most part, do what I want to do, write the kinds of stories I like. Those tend to be violent and fast, ruled by characterization more than plot; James Crumley, Jim Thompson, Victor Gischler, some of Dan Marlowe.

I met a writer recently, a man I’ve admired for some time, whose books have kept me great company over the last couple of years. He and I got into a conversation about success. We didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was.

To me, he is quite successful. He’s finishing up a three book deal with a major publishing house, his first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, he signs lots of books for lots of people at lots of bookstores and mystery conventions.

And yet, his sales have not been particularly great. First of all, that shocked me because I thought they were good. Not brilliant, but not bad. I figured quite a few people liked his books.

Not quite the case. He said there had been good critical review, just not much in the way of sales.

And yet I thought of him as knocking on the door of wildly successful. Big publisher, bringing out book after book, hard and soft; hey, that and a shot of tequila, a Corona back, and a plate of nachos and that’s a damned good day.

But the evidence said otherwise. I don’t find his books in that many chain bookstores and more than a few independents are without him on their shelves, too.

So why did I think he was burning the world down?

Because he’s higher on the publishing food chain than I am and from where I stand, that looks — at least superficially — more successful. But might it be, that since his books tend to be more violent and gritty, more edgy, than mainstream mysteries, that his success has to be defined differently? Does his content mean that he has to measure everything with a smaller yardstick…call it a half-yard stick?

It could be that his style of writing, which I so admire, will never have mainstream acceptance. Look at Jim Thompson. Even with the revival of recent years, lots of mystery fans have no clue who he is.

This writer defined his version of success for me in our conversations. I think it’s a new definition for him, too. He said if his publisher dropped him, it would be sad but not earth shattering. He’d gotten much further than he ever thought he would when he was writing the first book and he was pretty sure there would be smaller presses out there who’d keep his material on the market.

And he was cool with that.

Perception isn’t quite everything, but it’s close. My perception of him was as a fairly successful writer moving his way up. Now, it’s of a writer more attuned to the song in his head than the chant of mainstream readers.

He is in the place I want to be: writing what he wants to write, almost regardless of content.

Three cheers for him.

Victor Gischler Has Great Hair

Victor Gischler has great hair.

Not like the Marlboro Man has great hair, not that kind of hyper-sprayed, thoroughly combed, possibly plastic and/or artificially extended kind of hair. No, what this guy has is funky hair.

I’d never met the man until Mayhem in the Midlands mystery convention in Omaha a few weeks ago, and I didn’t realize about the hair until we were at some Irish pub, having lunch outside and the wind came up a bit.

A few strands blew across his head, fluttered like naval semaphore flags in a Gulf Coast breeze. I could see this guy sitting in a James Lee Burke novel, waiting for Dave Robicheaux to arrive so the fists could start flying.

Anthony Neil Smith, another write I met at the convention, also has great hair. More like the Marlboro Man, though. Combed and neat and full.

Being bald, I am envious of anyone with hair (and yeah, I really dig that thing Jon Bon Jovi did in the mid-80’s…there was so much of it!)

I’ve spent most of my writing career thus far in the horror genre. Most of my publications are there and any recognition I get has been in that field. But the last few years, I’ve turned an eye toward crime and of late have gone to a few crime conventions.

They are vastly different from the horror conventions I trolled for the second half of the 90’s.

First of all, at the mystery cons there generally aren’t men walking around in black rubber tutus like I saw in Atlanta when poor Wayne Allan Sallee was assaulted by such a citizen. Secondly, the panels start way too early at crime cons, some as early as 8 a.m.

What the hell is that? In the horror world, people are just getting to bed by 8 a.m. Panels never start until well after lunch and then go until at least midnight. At Mayhem, most panels were finished by 5 p.m. and there were damned few people even awake at midnight.

But it was nice, even if I have to get used to people wearing clothes other than black goth garb. I had a chance to meet some writers I’ve always admired (Gischler and Smith among them), some new people (Jon and Ruth Jordan, editors and publishers of Crime Spree mag) and hook back up with some old friends like Sean Doolittle.

But this having to be up early for mystery conventions is going to be a problem. And if I have to sit and watch Victor’s cool hair too often, he and I might have a problem or three.

Dead Again

There is another dead one.

This one I do remember. Heavy-set, close-cropped hair, vaguely befuddled. He was sentenced to my jail for ten weekends, convicted of possession of controlled substance. I believe his drug of choice was heroin, I don’t remember for sure.

He played me like a cheap xylophone. Seemed like a decent guy. A guy who’d made a mistake, but who realized it, who wanted to get it behind him, get on to the next thing. Worked for a medical service and it was a good job. Decent pay, good benefits. The man was a veteran of the Iraqi war, a medic in the desert, patching together military and civilian alike, anyone who bled and hurt.

I guess he couldn’t find that same help for himself. Or maybe he got lost while looking for it. Or maybe he thought the skag was the help.

Ten weekends and on the ninth, he got nailed. Fourteen and a half pills secreted in his shoes. He swore the pills weren’t for him, that they were for the other inmates, that the other inmates had pressured him into the smuggle. That could be the truth. That could be part of the truth.

Could be bullshit. Like I said, he played me but good.

Said all the right things, did all the right things. Never caused any problems while he was incarcerated. Never gave me grief over the millions of details most inmates give me grief over (food…plumbing…mattresses…jail uniforms…heating…cooling…phones…commissary…innocence…guilt)

The day he got popped for smuggling contraband, he got charged. Went from nearly done with a relatively minor charge to the beginning of a charge that would — no question — land him in prison for at least years. He finished his ninth weekend but couldn’t leave because of the new charge. A day later, he managed to bond out, $100,000 or ten percent cash. His girlfriend brought a bundle of cash to the jail and he went home. A few days later, he was back for his final weekend, no longer saying the right things to me. In fact, no longer talking to me much at all.

Then he was gone, waiting for trial.

A few days ago, he OD’d. I don’t know on what, toxicology hasn’t yet come back from his autopsy. Maybe heroin. Maybe sleeping pills or pain pills.

Two dead now. The man who killed himself after beating an officer into the hospital, and the smuggler. For thirteen months, my first thirteen working at the Sheriff’s Office, nothing like this happened. Now, suddenly, two former inmates are dead in less than a month.

I won’t even try to answer their deaths mean, I have no idea. I’m not even sure what the question actually is. All I know is that these two guys, these two mopes or shitbags or perps or lost souls, whatever you want to call them, are dead and I keep on truckin,’ jailing people, releasing people, warehousing people.

It’s my job.

The Man’s Picture

I can’t remember the man.

I’ve looked at the picture maybe a thousand times. Thick-necked, short-cropped hair. Brown. Eyes too far away to tell the color, and cast sideways anyway. Head slightly down, as though somehow embarrassed to be in this particular picture.

It’s a mug shot.

I didn’t book the man into the jail, but I did deal with him for two days before he made bail, and I can’t remember anything about him. Not his voice, not his smell, nothing. I didn’t even remember what he’d been arrested for.

When I looked up those charges, Saturday’s affair made a bit more sense. Arrested in early March for domestic battery and violating an order of protection.

Two Saturday’s ago, he got arrested again. Driving under the influence. He managed to make bail on the charge before he ever even got to the county jail. A few hours after that, he got arrested again. Violation of an order of protection.

Less than an hour after that, he lay dead, a bullet to the head, his own finger on the trigger.

But before he killed himself, before the Illinois State Police called out their SWAT team and their helicopter, before all the K-9 units in the county came out, before damn near every police officer in Bureau County raced to Spring Valley, before all of that, I heard the scream.

Short, less than a second. Garbled. I couldn’t understand any of it. But somehow as clear as the mythical summer days when I was a kid.

The dispatcher at the Spring Valley police station screamed into the radio, desperately calling for help. At the Sheriff’s Office, we heard that call. More to the point, our dispatcher understood it and immediately ratched up a response.

“10-33,” she radioed to every cop in the county. “Officer down.”

The man, whose face and picture and stay in my jail I can’t remember, had attacked the arresting officer, had savagely beaten him, and then battered his way out of the holding cell. He also managed to snatch the officer’s gun.

He fired once.

We didn’t know until later it was a suicide. At the time, with the single officer at the station covered in blood, with the dispatcher screaming for help, all we knew was there had been a shot.

Bureau County is a small county, only 35,000 people. Spring Valley is our second largest town at about 5,500 people. We are not Chicago or L.A. We are not New York or Miami or even my hometown of Midland, Texas. Our last killing was more than a year ago. Before that, the last had been in the last century. Things like this don’t happen here.

Except they happen everywhere, all the time.

The man I can’t remember had been waiting for transport to my jail. That freaks me out pretty good. Would he have fought with me? Would he have done as much damage? More, maybe?

And yeah, the entire thing scared me…continues to scare me around the edges. Every day I’m in that jail, I do the same thing the Spring Valley officer did. I do all the things he did and he ended up in the hospital. But this is my job and in spite of that ever-present threat, I dig it.

I just wish, as I still sometimes look at his picture, I could remember him. I wish he didn’t so easily disappear into the sea of inmates’ faces.

About Trey

“Trey ain’t such a bad guy.”A jail inmate, charged with murder. Murderers, thieves, junkies, those … Read More

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