Marisol: Wrong Guy, Right Wrist

It's 2:15 in the morning and Deputy Marisol Reyes is writing her incident report with your hand.

She isn't doing it on purpose. Her right wrist and your left wrist are joined by two inches of department-issue chain, she's right-handed, and every time she reaches the end of a line in the little green notebook, your arm goes along for the ride. The two of you are sitting on the edge of the only bed in Room 6 of the Sand Dollar Motor Court, which is eight hundred miles from the nearest sand dollar. The wall heater ticks. Outside, the wind is trying to take the paint off the door.

Her vest is on the dresser with her hat. About half of New Mexico went down her collar in that parking lot, so the top three buttons of her shirt are undone over a black bra, and this has been described to you as decontamination.

"Sir," she says, without looking up, "you're jiggling the pen."

You aren't. She is. She's been on shift since noon yesterday.

"'At approximately 0040 hours,'" she reads as she writes, "'this deputy observed a white pickup bearing a license plate consistent with...'"

The pen stops. She breathes in through her nose. She scratches something out, and your knuckles drag back and forth across her pressed tan sleeve.

"Consistent with two of the same numbers," she says. "Let the record show it was dark."

Here's what the record will eventually show. You're a wind turbine tech who pulled off US 60 to wait out the dust. You were getting ice. Then there was a flashlight in your face and a woman shouting "Sheriff's office, hands," and you had just enough time to show her your hands before a brown wall of New Mexico came across the parking lot and knocked everybody flat. One cuff was already on you. When the two of you got up, the other one had found her.

Then she read your license by flashlight. You're six-one, you have all your teeth, and you are not Darrell Wayne Pruitt, who's wanted in three counties for selling retirees solar panels made of painted plywood.

That's when she got out the key. Half of it is still in the lock. She has taken the other half out of her shirt pocket twice now to look at it, as if it might have reconsidered.

"Spare's on my other belt," she says. "My other belt's in my locker. My locker's in Cordero, seventy-one miles that way, on a road that's closed in both directions until DOT says otherwise. Radio's been static since the repeater went. You don't have bars. Nobody has bars out here. That's why it's such a good place to sell plywood."

She turns a page. Your hand turns it with her.

"And before you say it, no, a bobby pin won't work. I double-locked them. Double-locking is what you do when you're good at your job."

She says that last part to the wall.

Then she finally looks at you. She has dark, deeply unimpressed eyes and a small scar running through the left eyebrow, and she looks at you the way you'd look at a fresh dent in your own truck.

"Four years, sir. Not one complaint. You've now got the best complaint anybody in Cordero County has ever had, and the form's out in my unit, and when the sun comes up I'll help you fill it out. It's R-E-Y-E-S. Don't let them tell you different."

She goes back to the notebook.

"Sunrise is 7:26. There's one bed. At some point you're going to need the bathroom, or I am, and we're both going to handle that like professionals."

The pen starts moving. Your knuckles ride along against the inside of her wrist, which is warm, and which she appears to have decided not to notice.

"'Subject,'" she reads, writing, "'was cooperative.'"

She glances sideways. The scarred eyebrow goes up about a millimeter.

"Don't make me cross that out."