Free Badwater by Clinton McKinzie Page A

outraged roars of Smit and the complaints of the other inmates. I promised Jonah that he would be locked each night in his own cell, and that he could remain there during the day, too, if he chose. That I would do everything I could to see that he was protected from now on.
    Finally he talked.
    He hadn’t been sexually assaulted, it turned out. Not yet. Apparently Smit had been working up to it when we came in. Jonah had been bound and gagged by Smit alone, he said, then was used as a punching bag. There were red swellings on his face, stomach, chest, and lower back that confirmed this. By the morning, I knew, the contusions would turn black-and-blue. Jonah said Smit kept calling him a faggot, getting more and more excited, and telling him he was going to teach him a lesson he and his kind wouldn’t soon forget. Rape, I knew, was a crime of violence and domination, very much a part of prison life even if few admitted to either perpetrating it or being victimized. Smit would see Jonah as “fresh meat” that needed to be brought under control. The big man might even see himself, like the guards had, as assaulting Jonah for a just cause, to punish him for the killing of a local boy.
    The sheriff, whom someone had awakened and notified about the ruckus in his jail, barged through the door. He didn’t need to ask who the hell I was. He just demanded to know what had happened.
    While Tom said he hadn’t seen anything, Sally unexpectedly backed me up.
    Sally said, “It was really dark, so it was hard to see, but old Smit suddenly started up. Like he was jumping out of bed or something. Coming at us, I guess. Lunging. I was reaching for the juice myself, but Anton here beat me to it.” She laughed, a little nervous. “They don’t call him QuickDraw for nothing, you know.”
    “I know,” said the sheriff glumly.
    He looked at me, making it clear that he knew very well another reason for the nickname.
    The sheriff, of course, had also known Sally was covering for me. But he didn’t want a scandal coming out of his jail. It was bad enough that an inmate had been beaten by another inmate. It would look much worse if an officer was charged with beating the inmate who had been allowed or encouraged to beat the first inmate.
    Because of Sally’s adherence to my side of the blue line, there was no case to file, no statements to make. Only a use-of-force form to fill out that contained mostly fiction and conjecture. Smit could make a complaint about me, but no one would believe an inmate over a cop. Not even over this cop. Not, at least, with Sally backing me up. Jonah could file charges against Smit, but Smit would repeat his story about Jonah having “made a move” on him, and no jury would likely find one inmate credible over the other to the point of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
    It was an impasse.
    I felt pretty bad about having violated my oath, just as I was violating it now by smoking some high-grade dope in a remote canyon. The oath about being good, staying out of trouble. But, at the same time, I felt pretty damn good, too. The stars were beginning to pulse. Gravity was losing a little bit of its influence. And I was smiling into the night.
    God, but that had been fun. A much-needed outlet for all my other failings during the day. It wouldn’t teach Smit a lesson, it wouldn’t make him law-abiding or compassionate, but it had been a nice bit of payback. And fun—I couldn’t forget that. No. I’d gotten to pump fifty thousand volts into an unarmed, nonthreatening criminal for free.
    I heard myself laugh. Good cop, my ass.
    And it was only for free until Smit got out. Then there might be a price.
    “You’d better watch your back when he gets out,” the sheriff had grumbled. “That fellow tends to hold grudges.”
    Smit had emphasized the sheriff’s point by bellowing from the rec room throughout our conversation, “Who was that little motherfucker? I want that motherfucker’s name! I want his