an excerpt from joan’s LATEST book
up from hell: echos of the past
crimes in central texas book 1
I’d wanted to be a policeman since I was eight. The first time I saw a cop was in 1970, when a couple of officers rolled up to my mom’s low-rent building on Oakey Boulevard off Las Vegas Boulevard South.
My mother’s place was called The Broken Arms. We lived on the second floor of the two-story building. As a kid, the name made me laugh. Of course, I was skinny, with all elbows. Sometimes, I pretended to be a cowboy with six-shooters on my hips, and I’d stage showdowns with my shadow. He always drew faster, and I always died first.
One hot summer night, everything changed. A gunshot cracked from the ground floor directly below us. A few minutes later, police sirens screamed outside. I opened the apartment door and saw a squad car screech into the parking lot below. Two policemen got out, drew their guns, and spread out, looking for the person who had shot the gun.
“Get the hell away from the door, you idiot,” my mom shouted. “We don’t want those bastard cops rushing in here.”
“Someone shot a gun,” I said, inching the door wider.
“There’s always people shooting guns around this place.”