The Jail
Officer Daniel Rios had witnessed much worse: shooting victims, crash scenes, unidentifiable bodies in the remnants of burned-out houses. Why couldn’t he get the image of a simple arrest out of his head?
Perhaps because it wasn’t a simple arrest. The inundation of a single wood craftsman at Kingsland Handcrafted Furniture by a swarm of ICE agents felt unfair to a person one generation removed from forbearers who escaped third world persecution for the American Dream.
Daniel’s father taught his two boys to respect the rules, to take advantage of education, perfect their English, and ultimately to protect and serve the same laws that were wholly absent in the part of the world where his parents were born.
Recruited to fulfill diversity quotas, Daniel was drawn to police work. His brother Bobby became a corrections officer. So, gaining access to the holding cell where drunks mingled with small-time miscreants was easy.
The county lockup stood a block from the river that bifurcated the city. It bore the exterior façade of a multi-story office building. Only the thin ribbons of thick glass on each level revealed its true purpose.
Daniel was a regular visitor. When his rotations ended at midnight, he often brought a snack from Pancho’s Mexican Delights to Bobby. The brothers habitually sat on the steps leading to the entrance, covered in humidity, watching the railroad drawbridge rise and fall with overnight freight traffic. The ancient structure defaulted to the up position, lowering into a flat pair of iron rails six feet above the river when the trains came.
But not tonight.
“Get a delivery from the Ice Cubes?” Daniel asked his brother as a fellow guard opened the first of several doors that separated the incarcerated from freedom.
Bobby nodded. “Just one. With the quotas, we usually get at least a half dozen.”
“Any real criminals this week?”
“Two with warrants from South Florida. The rest probably did everything right.” Bobby rubbed his cheek. “But weren’t white enough.”
“Is the Kingsland guy in the cage?”
“Yup. With about fifteen other drunks, a couple of bar fighters, one humongous gang banger, and a traffic stop with an attitude.”
“Let’s go see him.”
Almost twenty angry men populated a cell designed for ten. The guards had long ago stopped calling for paramedics when the inevitable fights led to blood on the floor. Perhaps, Daniel thought, that was why the Sheriff was being sued by two families with relations who entered the cage in one piece and came out in a body bag.
Bobby exhaled in dissatisfaction. “When are you going to learn that everyone is guilty of something?”
Daniel scanned the group for the Craftsman. “Not everyone. It took all my self-control not to intervene when the thugs picked this one guy up.”
Bobby had always been the more cynical of the two brothers. “Not worth the emotion,” Bobby said, swiping his ID to unlock a third heavy door.
As it opened a crescendo of cacophony erupted beyond the soundproofing. Within the Cage a circle of sweat and micturition surrounded a single body, unconscious on the cement floor behind the bars.
Daniel could tell by the blue pallor of the face that the man was cyanotic. “I think one of your customers is crashing,” he said to his brother.
The disinterest in Bobby’s dismissal stunned him. “The traffic stop. Probably just a concussion after an argument.”
From among the crowd, Daniel recognized the Craftsman’s calm countenance, blood still caked where his forehead met the ICE van’s door frame. A strong palm reached through the bars toward the two officers.
“Overdose.” Daniel couldn’t hear the voice but could read the lips. The word “Narcan” followed.
Bobby keyed his handheld. “Medical officer to the holding cell.”
Daniel reached for his utility belt. Narcan syringes were standard issue to street cops these days. His brother’s hand gripped Daniel’s wrist. “We wait,” he said with finality.
The Craftsman’s eyes locked with the Daniel’s. He nodded with a quiet firmness, beckoning with his fingers.
Daniel shook loose from his brother’s grasp and drew the Narcan pen from its case, handing it to the Craftsman.
The holding cage still roared with the restless noise of men pressed too close together, but it broke apart when the Craftsman moved. Wordless, deliberate, he carved a path through the bodies until space opened around him like a wound. The man on the floor lay crumpled, skin ashen, lips tinged blue, a stillness about him that didn’t belong to the living.
The Craftsman dropped to his knees beside the body. For a heartbeat, the world seemed to narrow with the rasp of collective breath and the metallic hum of fluorescent lights. The Craftsman tilted the victim’s head back and drove the Narcan into his nostril, thumb pressing hard on the trigger, as if force alone might drag him back. Around them, the noise fell to a tense murmur, every eye locked on the fragile line between life and whatever waited on the other side.
For a moment, nothing happened. The man remained slack, a body emptied out, as if the poison had already claimed him. Then it came. A violent, shuddering gasp tore through his chest, like a drowning man breaking the surface. His back arched. Muscles seized. Eyes snapped open, wide but unfocused. Air rushed in ragged bursts, too fast, too sharp, as his hands clawed at the concrete and then at the air itself.
Confusion hit next. The man coughed, choked, tried to sit up, panic flooding his face as the world slammed back into him all at once. Color began to creep back into his skin in uneven patches. Life reasserted itself in fits and starts, while the Craftsman stayed close, steady, calm with an assurance that rippled through a cage erupting into cheers as it became clear that the patient might survive.
Daniel realized he had been holding his breath. “He wouldn’t have made it, if we waited.”
“The traffic stop,” Bobby muttered. “We search them, but they still get drugs into this place.”
Amid the tableau, Daniel noticed that one of the men behind the bars backed into a corner. He might have been a football player in high school before the real world overcame him. Daniel concluded this was the gang banger, someone for whom empathy and compassion had long vanished from his being. The Craftsman’s eyes, emotionless, unjudging held his. Uncharacteristic fear bordering on terror reflected back.
As the rest of the witnesses became aware of the tension, they fell away from the two protagonists. Anticipating violence yet stunned by the genuine fear in the tall man’s features. An empty syringe Daniel concluded once held fentynal fell from an immense paw.
Bobby reached for his taser. This time it was Daniel’s clasp that held it in its holster.
The Craftsman approached the man mountain in the corner, placing his hand gently on what was now a trembling shoulder.
“You are forgiven.” He spoke the three words in a tone so tranquil, yet so powerful that it silenced every other voice in the Cage.
Then came the sound of magnetic locks unlocking. The area filled with uniforms, guns and badges.