by Amy Lane
“Well, I was….” He grimaced. “I wanted a candy bar, and… and Smitty usually lets me have one if I pick up around the back. He’s a good guy. This time he said he’d give me food instead and a candy bar later, and I got sort of shitty with him and he told me I looked like hell and I said….” The kid swallowed. “I said some shit I shouldnta, and I need to tell him sorry. Anyway, a guy was in the back by the beer cooler, scoping the Jewish place out through the window. I went to go do the boxes, and the guy says, ‘Hey—you wanna earn your own money? That fat bastard can’t tell you what to buy.’ I was like, ‘You talk nice about Smitty,’ ’cause, you know. Food is good and Smitty gives me some. And he offered me money. So I told Smitty I’d be back to break down the boxes and….” The kid shrugged. “You got me dead to rights, but I don’t know what I was doing wrong.”
Ellery wanted to smile, but the expression on Jackson’s face was… sorrowful.
“Tampering with someone else’s stuff, on the whole,” he said, voice mild, “just not a good idea. Kid, can you give a description of this guy? Like to draw?”
“Well, sure.” The kid shrugged. “Big white guy. Built like Jason Momoa. Mean little piggy eyes. Walked like he had a stick up his ass. But ask Smitty—he knows everybody in the store.”
Jackson swallowed, and Ellery saw the flicker of lights from a half mile away, and that’s when he knew things were really, really wrong.
“Kid, uh….” Jackson took a deep breath and looked away, and then swallowed and looked back. “I’m afraid your friend… your friend Smitty isn’t going to be around anymore. I’m… I’m thinking me catching you wasn’t the worst thing in the world.”
The kid bit his lip. “What… what… I don’t understand?” And all his swagger fell away, his streetwise I-got-this. Suddenly he was just a kid who’d been mean to his friend, mostly because he was a kid, and kids didn’t know how quick life could change. He was a kid who felt bad, and who didn’t want grief to strip away what innocence he had quite so brutally.
Jackson saw the lights too. He looked over his shoulder and shook his head, like he was shaking off the temptation to just bail on this moment right here.
Ellery wouldn’t have blamed him if he did.
“Whoever paid you to bug our car shot your friend in the liquor store. Kid, I’m sorry—Smitty’s dead, and it looks like the person who killed him tried to get him to spill about you.” Jackson made an indeterminate, hostile noise. “We… we need to keep you under wraps. Safe.”
Three police cars pulled up in front of the liquor store, and one unmarked vehicle.
Ellery watched them come to a halt and watched Sean Kryzynski come out of the tan unmarked, another detective at his side.
“Think they believe us about stuff now?” he asked idly, and Jackson nodded in bemusement.
“Seriously—where was all this fu… er, frickin’ backup three months ago?”
Ellery looked at the frightened boy and thought about how much work it usually took to get someone into protective custody.
“Don’t count on that much help this time around,” he said quietly. “We may want a plan B for young Anthony here.”
This kid’s eyes—limpid and blue—went even wider. “Plan B?”
“Don’t worry,” Jackson said quietly. “Here. You and me, we’re gonna talk some more—you okay with that?”
Anthony nodded weakly and used his newly freed arm to wipe his eyes. “Smitty… is… I mean, I was gonna go back and do the boxes, right?”
“Yeah, kid. Don’t worry. I think he forgave you for being snotty to him. He was a good guy?”
Another nod. “The best,” he whispered.
“Good guys, they know what’s inside you isn’t always what you say. I think you were probably square.”
Another nod and a big, long, suspicious breath. Jackson tilted his head back and rolled his eyes to heaven—and then looked at the kid and held out his arms tentatively.
Anthony, the urchin who’d tried to plant a bug on their car, ran into a complete stranger’s arms and cried like his heart was breaking.
TWENTY MINUTES later Ellery had to hold Jackson back to keep him from assaulting an officer.
“What do you mean you can’t protect him?” Jackson snarled, lunging for Kryzynski, their on-again, off-again contact in SPD.
Kryzynski was young—it was his tentative friendship with Ellery that had helped promote him up the food chain—and he fidgeted, pulling his fingers through his slick blond hair as he tried to explain why he was so excited about kissing up to the department now.
“Look, Rivers—I called the DA, and they say it’s not enough. Do we even know what that thing is?”
“Can we maybe, I don’t know, find out?” Jackson asked acidly, the tension in his shoulders unmistakable. “Could we, I don’t know, at least move the kid’s foster placement just in case—”
“What? The guy who knocked over the liquor store comes back to grab a twelve-year-old vandalizing a car?”
“It’s bigger than that!” Jackson roared. “He was putting a bug on the car—did you check it out? It’s got a little magnet on it—all the kid was supposed to do was put it underneath. Bug, tracking device—whatever. They wanted to know our movements.”
“And who is ‘they’?” Kryzynski gazed levelly at him, and Jackson broke free from Ellery with a grunt.
“Who do you think?” he asked in disgust. “We told you the Owens thing wasn’t over. Didn’t we? I’m pretty sure we did.”
“Because why?” And for the first time, Ellery heard compassion in Kryzynski’s voice. “Because Ellery met a guy from the military who pissed him off? Because Owens was a psychopath who apparently picked up his mass-murdering skills from basic training? I got news for you, Rivers—everybody pisses Ellery off, and psychos train in all sorts of places. It’s just not enough to put the kid into custody, you understand?”
“Can we take him?” Jackson asked suddenly.
“What the what?” Oh Jesus—Ellery was so surprised his brain hurt. “Jackson, I hate to tell you this, but he’s not a lot safer with us than he is on his own!”
Jackson shot him a disgusted look. “I’ve got an idea,” he said quietly. “And a favor to call in. I just need permission to have custody of the kid.”
Kryzynski looked at Ellery for permission, his blue eyes skeptical, and Ellery shrugged. Seriously, like he’d been able to stop Jackson from doing anything he set his mind to up to this point?
“I’ll get the paperwork in order,” Kryzynski said, pulling out his phone. “Let me make a few calls.”
“Uh, Sean?” Ellery asked, pained. “Is there any way we can keep the units away from the front of the synagogue? I’m uh….” Oh Lord. He was trying to make a good impression, as embarrassing as that was.
Kryzynski tilted his head at Ellery. “You were attending the services?” he asked, bemused.
“Well, I was, but then the rabbi didn’t show because he was talking to Jackson and Jackson was chasing the kid and—”
Kryzynski’s dry chuckle was all Ellery needed at that point. “You ever think maybe, you want to go to church or temple or whatever, you shouldn’t take you-know-who?”
Jackson looked at Ellery and nodded, although Ellery had the feeling he and Rabbi Watson had been having a pretty decent conversation.
“No,” Ellery told him, hating him almost as much as Jackson did. “No, I don’t think I should leave him home. I think if I left him home, it would get hit by a meteor or infested by snakes or something. The only way to keep him safe is to drag him by the ear and put him somewhere near a house of God.”
“Unbelievable,” Jackson muttered, and Kryzynski burst into guffaws.
But he also asked the units to move to the other side of the liquor store.
Before he did, Jackson walked up to where Anthony was working with a policeman to describe the man who’d offered him twenty dollars to put a tracker on Ellery’s car. Ellery dogged after him, curious again
to see him interact with the boy.
“I don’t know,” the kid whined. “He was… he was that guy’s height.”
Anthony pointed to Jackson, who said promptly, “Six one.” The officer nodded and wrote it down. “Hair color?” Jackson prompted.
“I dunno. Tan? Not like yours, like, blond but brown underneath. Just not a lot of… brown. Or blond. Or….”
“Sandy brown,” Jackson filled in for the cop. “Eyes?”
“Uh… wore sunglasses. The kind that get dark in the sun, right? And there’s big windows at Smitty’s….” His voice dropped. “Even if they’re the kind with the bars.”
“Was there anything interesting about his face?” Jackson asked. “Big nose? Crooked jaw? Bad skin?”
The kid frowned. “Like you—like you had zits when you were a kid, but they got better.”
Jackson gave Ellery a quick glance then, almost embarrassed. “Old acne scars,” he said to the officer, his voice not betraying that small burst of insecurity in the least. “Nose? Chin? Lips?”
“Like a Superman jaw,” Anthony said promptly. “But his nose was crooked. Like yours. Like it had been broken in fights before. And….” The kid wrinkled his lip. “His forehead was really big. Like, so big you could put another face on it. Just saying.”
Jackson half laughed and looked at the officer. “This enough?”
The officer shook his head and took Anthony through his paces, Jackson translating, giving him a human connection to the scary world of police procedure. By the time they finished, people were trickling out of the synagogue, and Jackson and Ellery got the signal from Kryzynski that they were free to go.
They loaded up into the Lexus, Anthony in back with the seat belt done, and Ellery said, “I give. Where to?”
“First off, through the drive-thru,” Jackson muttered. “Someplace we can get something sweet.” He raised his voice. “Food and dessert, Anthony?”
“Yeah? Please?”
“Then what?” Ellery was seriously at a loss. They couldn’t care for a twelve-year-old kid—not at this juncture in their lives, and especially not if they were under surveillance and someone was trying to bug their car. Speaking of which— “And how did they know we’d be there?”
“You went there before,” Jackson said, almost accusingly. “You seemed to know the rabbi.”
Oh, he’d caught that. “I called them up,” he confessed. “To make sure they were American Reform or Reconstructionist—you know. So they’d be cool with the….” Ellery’s eyes darted to the back seat, where Anthony was listening, his brown eyes enormous. “The thing,” Ellery finished, holding on to his dignity.
“The gay?” the kid asked—and again, Jackson’s exact phrasing. “What’s the big deal? Seriously?”
“There is none,” Jackson said dryly. “But sometimes churches and temples and shit get hung up on it.”
“Oh. You could still adopt me. I don’t mind.”
Jackson’s eyes went comically wide. “Wow, kid—moving in a little fast. For all you know, that was the American Reform Cannibal Association and you’re what’s for dinner!”
The kid cackled, and then his voice dropped. “Was just a joke,” he mumbled.
“Look, Anthony?” Jackson turned in the seat, and once again, Ellery was rendered a fly on the wall. “You’re a great kid. Your foster parents are right—you could use a bath, but you and Smitty, you were friends. And he must have thought something good about you, because… just because. Anyway, me and him, we get shot at a lot. I mean, this summer my cat almost died because of what we do for a living. You’re such a great kid, I don’t want you to get shot.”
“Was your cat okay?” the kid asked.
“Lost his back leg. And some asshole asked the vet to cut off his balls—”
“Not. Apologizing.” Ellery scowled. God, how long could Jackson hold a grudge about that, anyway?
“But he’s okay?” the kid asked again, suddenly concerned for a cat he’d never met.
“He’s fine. He’s sitting on the table as we speak, his face in the trough. Anyway, the cat barely got out with his life. We want something better for you.”
“Where exactly is better for me?” Anthony asked, the vulnerability giving him an edge. “This is my third foster home—and the first one that didn’t suck. You got a line on movie people who want me or something?”
“Like, people in the movies?”
“Yeah. Real people don’t want grown-ups.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “You’re going to be so disappointed when you realize how not grown up you are. But no. No movie people. I just have an idea. One that will keep you safe and out of the way until we get to the bottom of this, okay?”
“And the idea is….” Ellery looked at him sideways. It wasn’t like Jackson to be evasive.
“Waiting for me to get a burner phone to initiate,” Jackson told him. “Where were you when you called the rabbi?”
Ellery frowned. “Work, why?”
“Because. Somebody found out where we were going to be today and tried to use that opportunity to plant a bug on the car. Did you use your own phone?”
Oh. Oh Lord. “No. I used the one at work.”
“So hopefully they don’t have a tap on our cells, but who knows. So yes. Let me get a burner phone, give me a couple of hours to get this kid safe, and you and me have a plane ticket to SoCal to buy.”
“And a client!” Ellery muttered. Shit. He’d almost forgotten!
“Well, I figured you’d be doing that while I was getting the kid safe.”
Ugh. “Look,” Ellery muttered. “Let’s bring the kid to the office, see the client together, and then go do all the other stuff—”
“You don’t trust me on my own?” Jackson demanded, stung.
“No, but that’s not the point. The point is, the client actually needs you. In fact….” Ellery frowned. “In fact, I was going to book tickets to Southern California because of her case alone. This guy in the liquor store just makes me think I’m right. Did the hit look professional?”
“Yeah,” Jackson said quietly. “It did.”
Ellery grunted and they were silent as they came to a stop at the eternal light at Howe and Fair Oaks. For a moment Ellery was sorely tempted to go straight, because American River Drive and their home was that way, and even if it meant setting the urchin up in the spare room and buying him clothes, home was safe.
Home was not bugs on their car or dead liquor store owners or scared kids on the run or trips to Southern California to investigate a psychotic military officer who preyed on the vulnerable and unstable to create serial killers.
Which is where this kid—and Ellery’s case back at the firm—were leading them.
Ellery could remember, clear as day, being in the back of an ambulance with Jackson, his body burning with fever, his newly restarted heart pumping threadily. He’d said, “Peace. We deserve some peace.”
Two months of peace was not enough. Maybe for Jackson’s heart, but not for Ellery’s. A kid in their house—what could be more domestic than that? How easy would it be to just back off? Take the kid home, peace out of the investigation, stop being the people expected at a hinky crime scene or who got called when a defendant was not just innocent, but framed by forces beyond his or her control?
“You didn’t tell me about her,” Jackson said at last, as Ellery consciously went right and hoped the cat would forgive them.
“I told you I wanted you to hear her story.”
“Well, yeah. I thought you were humoring me.”
Ellery stopped a little short at the traffic on the bridge. “I’m sorry?”
Jackson threw a look over his shoulder at the kid, and Ellery couldn’t see what his expression was, but Jackson didn’t seem reassured. “You’ve been making a big deal about recovery,” Jackson mumbled, not able to look at him. “Just… I don’t know. Wasn’t sure you were going to let me in on anything real.”
Ellery’s heart grew chilly.
“Peace,” he rasped. “You promised me peace.”
“You think I don’t want peace?” His voice sank—Ellery could hardly hear it, much less the urchin behind them. “But I get no peace if you think I’m weak.”
For a whole half second, Ellery tried to hold on to his temper, because there was another human being in the car and he didn’t want to parade his dirty laundry in front of a stranger, child or not.
Then his mother shut up in his head and the person he’d become since Jackson entered his life sat up and roared.
“You are not weak!”
Jackson stared at him, obviously stunned. “Ellery!” he hissed. “This is not—”
“You’re not weak. You almost died. There’s a difference. I need you to… to know that’s not what’s going on here.” Ellery’s stomach kicked up a notch, and he remembered Jackson’s seduction that morning.
His shoulder had given out.
He’d hidden the shoulder, had pushed himself until he could run five miles, and hid how tired he was at the end of the day. Didn’t talk about the nightmares—oh God, the fucking nightmares that had gone from one, maybe two a week when they’d met to a nightly, sweat-drenching terrifying occurrence.
He conceded to the little things—the time off work, the visit to temple, eating what Ellery put in front of him no matter how much he didn’t want food—but the hard things, those were the elephant that could destroy the room.
“Whatever,” Jackson said sourly. “Look, there’s a McD’s. Let’s get Anthony anything the hell he wants plus cookies and a shake and then drop us off at the mall. I’ll get a couple of burner phones.”
Ellery negotiated with traffic, and Anthony spoke up behind them. “You almost died?” he asked, awe in his voice. “I thought it was the cat.”
Jackson shrugged. “See, kid? We need to get you someplace… good. You’re easy to take care of—I’m a frickin’ nightmare.”
Anthony laughed like he was supposed to, and Ellery wished fervently they were back at the synagogue. Which reminded him….
