Requiem for a Flower Child by Warren Trest

Author:Warren Trest [Trest, Warren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, South, Alabama, Fiction, Murder, hard-boiled detective, Governor John Patterson
ISBN: 9781603064033
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Published: 2015-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

Sheriff Sparrow waited until Falcon had paid the fine and then told him there were more charges. Jasmine’s car had been impounded and his deputies couldn’t get it started. She could leave it and it would be abandoned and put on the auction block, or the sheriff could have it repaired and towed back to Montgomery. The charges would be fifty dollars to get it released and three times that for repairs and towing. “Just make the check out to Sparrow’s Garage. My nephew will do you right.”

“Are brakes his specialty?” Falcon asked. Sparrow shot him a nasty look but before the sheriff could say anything a deputy came in and whispered in his ear. The sheriff dropped both checks in his desk drawer, strapped on his guns and took a rifle off the wall. “Put out an APD and call out the hounds! We got a runner on the loose!” He brushed past Falcon and Jasmine and rushed out the door.

A deputy escorted the Mustang to the county line in a camouflaged pickup. The front tag bore the iconic Confederate soldier vowing to “Forget, Hell.” The truck turned back when they crossed into the next county and Falcon pulled into a McDonald’s down the highway. Jasmine hadn’t eaten since the night before and was starved.

She had spoken no more than a couple of sentences since Falcon arrived to bail her out, and she was still reticent inside McDonald’s. Other customers ignored them for the most part but there were a few whispered asides and smug faces. When she was back in the car Jasmine opened up with a few choice words of her own. She had not been physically abused behind bars but she was subjected to verbal harassment and humiliation.

The sheriff had refused to let her make a telephone call and Jasmine believed they would have kept her locked up or worse had Earl Birdsong not put out the APB on her. Before that she had made up a story that she was working with the Montgomery police when she posted the flyers. Sparrow said that cut no ice with him, this was his jurisdiction and they could go suck on a lemon. He thought better of it when he heard the APB on the police channel and called to let Birdsong know she was there.

Jasmine was concerned about the fate of a teenage Mexican girl who shared the cell with her and wondered if there was anything they could do to help. “I’m afraid something bad may have happened to her.” The girl spoke enough broken English for Jasmine to understand her and she claimed to have been raped by her jailers.

The girl’s name was Cristina. She worked in the mess hall and was in jail for stealing food for her family. She told a story of having been smuggled across the border with her family and other Mexican laborers. She was a young girl at the time and remembered being herded into the back of a van and driven across country to Alabama where their captors forced them to work on this big farm.

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