No Screen, No Record

The booking room smelled like bleach and old coffee. A window unit rattled in the wall, blowing hot air around a metal desk and a sink with brown stains under the rim.

Thurl Gaddy stood behind the counter with his thumbs hooked in his belt. He had taken off his hat. Sweat had gathered at his hairline already. Deputy Tunstall hovered by the door, holding Sloane’s tote with both hands like it might bite him.

“Name,” Gaddy said.

“Sloane Merrick.”

He wrote it on a yellow pad, not the county system. No screen lit up. No keyboard clicked.

Sloane watched his pen move. The ceiling light flickered once. “You have not advised me of the reason for detention, nor have you entered me into the booking log.”

Gaddy gave her a look that was almost amused. “Lady, this ain’t federal court.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

He slid the pad aside and reached for the tote. Not to search it. Just to keep it near enough to show he could. He opened it half an inch, saw a wallet, a folded blouse, a phone charger, and stopped there on purpose.

No full inventory. No receipt. Deniable ignorance.

“Empty your pockets,” he said.

“I don’t have any.”

“Then strip the watch.”

Sloane unclasped it with her still hands and set it on the desk.

Gaddy nodded toward the back hall. “Cell four.”

Tunstall blinked. “Sheriff, the old wing’s—”

“I know what it is.”

Tunstall swallowed and shifted the bag. His eyes dropped to his boots. “Yes, sir.”

They took her through a concrete corridor that went cooler with every step. The old wing door hung open at the end, its paint blistered from years of heat. The hallway beyond had a damp, sour smell, like wet towels left in a trunk.

Cell four sat at the far end, bars painted over in gray. The floor inside was slick with dirty water that had leaked from somewhere behind the wall. A bunk frame bolted to the concrete leaned at one end. No mattress. No blanket.

A woman sat on the top bunk with her bare feet tucked up under her dress. She had a sharp face, dark hair pulled back in a knot, and eyes that took in Sloane in one glance.

“New one?” she said.

Gaddy stepped away from the door. “You keep quiet.”

The woman looked past him, at Sloane, then back at the sheriff. “That’s her?”

Sloane met her eyes once, then looked at the wet floor, the rust on the bars, the drain with hair caught in it.

Tunstall swung the cell door open.

Gaddy pointed. “In.”

And as Sloane stepped over the threshold, the woman on the bunk said, soft enough that only she could hear, “You’re the first one he’s put in here without a number.”

The key turned with a dry click, and the door swung in on a smell of mildew and old water.