Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,84
to the rest of the Marshals Service. Her Basic Deputy classmates had almost four years on the job now, and each of her classmates’ experiences were as varied as the ninety-four districts in which they served. Those assigned to sub-offices got their feet wet hunting fugitives straight after graduation. The ones who landed in bigger districts, especially those along the southwest border, or, God forbid, DC Superior Court, got to be besties with the inside of a courtroom for days, weeks, and months on end. She had heard from fellow deputies that they stowed their sidearms in a lockbox when they got to work, spent all day escorting prisoners in three-piece suits (handcuffs, waist chains, and leg-irons) back and forth from the cellblock to court, and then didn’t arm up again until they left for the evening jail run.
Lola didn’t mind hooking and hauling prisoners, or sitting in court once in a while. It helped her learn about people. She was a student of human nature—you had to be in this business. The sad sacks caught between the millstones of their own behavior and the unyielding weight of government justice lost any pretense or façade. Learning what made people tick helped Lola hunt them. Many law enforcement officers only saw bits and pieces of an outlaw’s personality. A prisoner might curse and swagger at his arresting officer or put on a meek face in front of the jury. But alone in the cell, facing the prospect of years in prison, bravado got flushed down the stainless-steel sink-and-toilet combo. For some reason, federal sentences always came down in months—You shall be confined to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a period of three hundred sixty months instead of saying straight out, thirty years. The lawyers explained it all beforehand, but the poor bastards always stood there in front of the judge, first with a look of bewildered relief because they heard months instead of years. Months didn’t seem so bad, even if there were hundreds of them. And then they got back to the USMS cells and did the math. One guy, a man in his early fifties who’d just been sentenced for child exploitation, finally figured out how to divide by twelve and realized that three hundred months meant twenty-five years. “There’s no federal parole,” he’d whispered, like all the air was leaking out of him. “I am going to die in prison . . .” “Things change all the time,” Lola had said, tossing the guy a flimsy lifeline, not because she felt sorry for him. He was a piece of human trash. But because she wanted him to behave on the ride back to the jail.
Lola picked her way through sparse willows, edging close enough she could see the outline of the cabin.
She loved this stuff, but hoped to be promoted someday, or at the very least, try something different in the Service. Some specialty position like witness security inspector or a sex offender investigations coordinator. The problem with all that was Cutter. She’d never say it to him out loud, but he was such an outstanding boss that any move away from the district felt like a demotion. At least he was a good boss so long as he didn’t beat the shit out of someone and get her jammed up with OPR—the Office of Professional Responsibility. Not that the guys he smacked didn’t deserve smacking. They did. But Cutter had a reputation, which tended to make misuse-of-force cases extremely palatable to attorneys.
The man flat did not care. He was an enigma, like he didn’t need the job.
Ninety-eight percent of the time he was all Southern manners and yes-ma’ams. But that other two percent . . . Heaven help the poor soul on the receiving end of Arliss Cutter’s wrath. Something had apparently happened to him during a deployment with the army. He never talked about it. But whatever it was, it took away his ability to suffer a bully, even for a millisecond. Spit on him, you’d certainly get thrown to the ground and handcuffed. Spit on someone else—especially someone he saw as needing his protection—and you were going to get your ass whipped. No questions, no reprieves, no warning. He hardly ever smiled anyway, but his frowns were enough to loosen the bowels of anyone who got in his way. His anger focused like the light of a thousand suns, withering everything in its path. Lola liked that.