A Few Good Fish

by Amy Lane

  Or if Jackson called in a rare favor, because every kid living in that house owed Jackson big in one way or another, and mostly Jackson’s one caveat had been simply that they took the free rent and got their shit together.

  AJ pulled up next to the meter in front of the Starbucks and waved to Jackson and Anthony through the window. In his early twenties, with a slight build, skin cool tawny-brown, and reddish-brown hair he twisted into tight corkscrews around his head, AJ had the look of someone who could fade easily into a sunset or a cold dawn. He’d been coming down from a weeklong heroin high when Jackson met him, and after enduring detox, he’d been making rehab stick for the last three months.

  But it hadn’t been easy, and keeping him busy during his days off had become a group project. Mike and Kaden’s sister, who lived in the other half of the duplex, made it a point to enlist him in gardening or home repair or even just walking their German shepherd, Albert. Ellery often had him run errands for the firm.

  Jackson—recovering physically himself—mostly just asked him if he wanted to come over and play video games and get out of the house.

  AJ had three-quarters of a college education and a quiet understanding of politics and literature that his housemates, ex-drug dealers, simply lacked.

  And AJ was gay—his housemates knew about it and didn’t judge but Jackson knew that sometimes the quiet, painfully shy AJ came over just so he could talk freely about TV crushes and movies he watched on his phone, in his room, where the other guys couldn’t see and give him shit.

  Right now he hit the horn, stood partially out of the door, and waved. Jackson made sure Anthony was done with his hot chocolate and pulled him outside.

  “Hop in, kid. Now remember—you made promises. Do what you’re told. Be respectful of the adults around you. I swear to you, these guys will treat you right, you understand?”

  Anthony shrugged, looking like he probably needed a nap.

  “And don’t sleep yet. AJ has to take you shopping on the way up the hill, okay?”

  Anthony’s eyes brightened. “Can I get shoes?” he asked plaintively, showing tennis shoes that were blown out at the toes. “It’s not the foster folks’ fault—my feet grew two sizes in, like, a month.”

  Jackson tousled his hair. “Kids do that. Don’t worry—stick with AJ. He’ll treat you right.”

  Anthony got into the front and belted up, smiling shyly at AJ as Jackson called him around to the sidewalk.

  AJ waved, a small smile on his face. “Sweet kid. What’s the story?”

  “The story is, someone paid him to do something mildly illegal to Ellery’s car and then killed his friend when he got busted.”

  AJ recoiled. “Sweet kid with a price on his head,” he deduced. “I hear you. What’s the plan?”

  “The plan is, you take him to Kaden and Rhonda’s, with a stop in Rocklin for clothes at Target or Walmart, and….” Jackson bit his lip. “Toys. Legos. Maybe even something else he likes. Here.” Jackson pulled out his wallet and dished out three large. He’d gotten the money at the mall kiosk, and he hated having that much cash on him, but he didn’t want AJ easy to track either. “Don’t spend it all on him at once—keep some back for food and expenses, especially if you think you’re being followed. Contact me on the burner number when you get there, and have K do the same. We good?”

  AJ nodded, eyes big. “I’ll take good care of him, Jackson. Don’t worry.”

  “Well, take care of you too, okay? We’re watching out for both of you here.”

  And there—right there—was the reason AJ got the car and the special place at dinner and Jackson’s whole family worried about him.

  He smiled, the glow of it a cool and soothing balm on the painful friction of every damned thing in the world. “Will do. Thanks, Jackson. I’ll call you when I get there. Deal?”

  Jackson shook his hand and brought him in for the chest bump. “Deal.”

  He swallowed, hoping this plan would work, and waved them on their way. As they pulled out, his phone rang in his pocket—his actual phone, the one that flashed a picture of Ellery sleeping as it rang.

  “On my way,” he said tersely, making his way back into the coffee shop. He had a to-go order waiting. As he spoke he winked at the barista and added an extra tip to the jar. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Good—because our client is starting to freak out. She seems to think I’m scary.”

  Jackson laughed maliciously. “Your patented charm not working?” He emerged from the coffee shop and, balancing the tray in one hand, began his stride through the streets like he could knock obstacles away with his shoulders alone.

  “Fuck off. Get your ass in here, I need you.”

  “It’s not usually my ass you need, Counselor. But the other way is good too.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re cute,” Ellery growled, and Jackson grinned. “Do you still have An—”

  “Not on this phone,” Jackson insisted. “And not at the office either.”

  “Can we talk in bed?” Ellery asked sweetly. “Is the house bugged too?”

  Jackson’s blood ran a little cold.

  And then it ran a lot hot.

  “If the house is bugged, you and me are going to have so much sex you won’t be able to walk for a month. We’re having sex until the floor collapses. We’re having sex until the neighbors call the cops, and then we’re having sex in front of the cops. I swear to Christ, if these assholes bugged our fucking home, I am going to make them regret it to the depths of their fucking balls.”

  “Our home?” Ellery said, of course picking up on the one thing Jackson hadn’t meant to say. “It’s our home now, right? Not just my house?”

  “I swear to God, Ellery—”

  “Just get here,” Ellery said crisply, like he hadn’t completely mooned over Jackson’s slip of the tongue.

  “Gimme five. I’m gonna talk to Crystal before I get to your office.”

  “Understood.”

  Ellery hung up, and Jackson had a moment to adjust to that thing Ellery was mooning over. Our home. Okay. So, fine. Jackson’s duplex had gotten shot up in August and Ellery had just moved him in—and then kept him. Jackson had harbored delusions that he’d move back to his duplex in November, but then.

  November.

  November hadn’t just been a physical and emotional train wreck. It had been the physical and emotional train wreck Jackson had been putting off his entire life.

  And Ellery had been there to witness it.

  And had been there to pick up the pieces.

  Jackson had never, in his entire life, known a person like that existed for him. Kaden and Jade had been there—no doubt. But he’d never let them see him raw. They still didn’t know all the things November had been to him.

  But Ellery did.

  It had to be their home. Because Jackson literally had no place else to go, either in his person or in his heart.

  Scary Monsters, Running Fish

  JACKSON ARRIVED none too soon. Ellery really thought Janie Isaacson was going to bolt if she had to wait one more minute.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Jackson apologized. He held a tray of travel cups in one hand. “Here, Janie?”

  The young woman—twenty-five—who had been nervously shredding her tissue as she waited in their shared office nodded. “Yessir. Are you the PI?”

  Jackson smiled, tiny dimples in the corners of his mouth appearing, and Ellery tried to tell his traitorous libido to tone it down a little. They were at work, and this poor kid didn’t need Ellery’s adolescent fawning.

  “I am. So sorry I’m late. But I did bring drinks.” He set a Venti chai tea in front of Ellery without looking and carried a cup the same size to the client. “Hot chocolate,” he said, inclining his head. “I had a meet with someone at the coffee place, and I got a flat of them.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, taking a tentative sip. As soon as it hit her tongue, though, Ellery watched her shoulders relax.


  Yeah, Jackson earned his keep as PI by just talking to people sometimes.

  “Not a problem. Now Mr. Cramer here says you’ve got a very interesting story to tell. I’m the one who’s going to be digging up the evidence to back up the story, so you need to tell me everything, okay?”

  Janie nodded and cradled the chocolate in hands covered with bright red fingerless gloves. The girl wore her hair in a shiny blonde bob with mulberry streaks along the top of it, and her clothes were quirky—a plain black skirt with a retro crocheted tabard over it. This girl dressed and carried herself as though most days she was fearless.

  But not today.

  “Okay,” she rasped, taking another sip. “It’s… it’s so strange. I mean… one minute my day was pretty normal, right? I’m… I was a nanny for this nice couple who live in the forties—you know, the Fabulous Forties?”

  They both nodded. The Fabulous Forties was a ten-block stretch of downtown that housed the most affluent of the city dwellers, and the houses were pretty impressive.

  “Anyway, so I drop the kids off at a little private school on H Street—”

  “I know the one,” Jackson said, not surprising Ellery in the least. “Has the little rainbow board on the front? It’s by a church—”

  “But not affiliated with it,” the girl hastened to explain. “It’s… you know. Independent.” She flushed and sipped her chocolate. “Just… Jasmine and Forrest—those are the kids I nanny for. Their parents are really… not religious. So when I got hired, they, you know. Wanted to make sure I wasn’t, like, a nutjob or anything.” She smiled briefly. “They’re just super nice.” Her face fell. “It’s just… it’s important to know that they’re super nice. So you know why I did what I did.”

  Ellery swallowed, because here was the hard part.

  “What did you do?” Jackson asked kindly.

  “Well, see, I didn’t do anything. Really. I dropped Jasmine and Forrest off at preschool, and they kissed me and hugged me and ran inside and I waved—like I do. Then I pulled out of the school and turned right—I guess west, down J, and I was slowing to a stop at the sign. There was a woman and her two kids crossing the street, so I’m, like, way careful, right? Anyway, this….”

  She shook her head, gesturing madly, her red hands a blur.

  “This big blue fuckin’, I mean frickin’, government car comes out of frickin’ nowhere. It whips around me and….” Her voice started to break. “And hits the mom. He was going so fast, you know? He probably didn’t realize that’s why I slowed down. She threw the kids in front of her, but she’s down, and I screech to a halt and put the car in park, and I’m on the phone with the cops and running to check on her and keep the kids out of the road—” She paused and nodded, like this was really important. “I had to keep the kids out of the road. You get it, right, Mr. Rivers? I’m a nanny. It’s like… like having kids in the middle of the road just fuckin’ terrifies me.”

  “We get it,” Jackson said gently, touching her hand. “You’re a good person. You can’t just let bad things happen to people when you’re a good person.”

  She shook her head, and her eyes spilled over, but she kept telling her story.

  “So I’m in the middle of the road, and this woman looks… broken. Like… like not doing too good, and the kids are freaking out and I’m on the phone, and this guy gets out of this car. He’s wearing a uniform, right? I got no idea what the stuff means on it—I’m sorry. But he gets out of the car and tells me… well, he tells me she’s dead and to stop bawling. And then… then he squats down and looks me in the eyes. And says, ‘You know, you’re a reckless driver. It would be a shame if your little ones got hurt because somebody drove into them like you drove into this woman.’”

  Jackson gasped, just like Ellery had, and poor Janie nodded.

  “I didn’t hit her,” she moaned. “I swear I didn’t. But while I was squatting there, he walked up to the minivan—you know, I got the minivan ’cause I’m driving the kids? And he kicked in the bumper. And I’m still on the phone, mind you, but me and the kids—we just scream. And we’re still screaming when he walks back by us and gets in his big blue car and drives away.”

  She closed her eyes and wrung her hands, her pretty half gloves stretching out. “I… the cops got there and the woman was taken away in an ambulance and somebody got her kids and they asked me what happened….” She took a big gulp of air. “And I said I did it. And they arrested me. And I lost my job and the kids’ parents are suing me for damage to their car and my mom had to hire this guy to get me out on bail… and it’s worth it. I’d totally do my time if the kids would just be okay, but he… he just drove away. And he’s out there. And he must have seen me with Forrest and Jasmine, and I can’t let him… I can’t let him….”

  The girl broke into sobs, and Jackson rubbed her back, letting her cry.

  “Forensics,” he said after she’d calmed down. “Ellery, we need a crash specialist to look at the car.”

  Ellery nodded. “I emailed yesterday, but I didn’t get a response.” Well, they were frequently backed up.

  “Witnesses. Janie, who was there to take the kids to their classes? Somebody must have seen you drive away.”

  Janie paused for breath and mumbled a name. Ellery shoved a yellow pad of paper at her, and Jackson took it from him and pushed it more gently. “Here, sweetheart. We need the spelling here. Evidence. We’re looking for evidence.”

  “But what if he threatens them too?” she asked, gulping for air.

  Jackson met Ellery’s eyes and frowned. “Okay—here’s the thing. People think the bad guys know it all, right?”

  She nodded miserably, and he patted her hand.

  “Sometimes they do—I had a bad guy get my phone, and bad shit happened.”

  She recoiled, and Ellery fought the temptation to smack him on the back of the head.

  “But sometimes they don’t. In this case I don’t think he did. He probably saw you coming out of the preschool, so he knows you dropped kids off. But if he really knew you, he’d know they weren’t yours. If he really knew you and wanted to scare you, he would have used their names. Now, maybe he got the minivan license plate number—that’s a concern. So we’re going to have a talk with your employers—maybe, if they know you didn’t do it, they won’t be so quick to throw you under the bus, but that’s not the point. The point is, they can up security, maybe get out of town for a little while, because what happened, that’s so not right. Now we can subpoena medical records and see what her injuries would be—and I’ve got a connection at the highway patrol. See, the thing is, he must have been going pretty fast if he just zoomed past the preschool and whipped around you—and you couldn’t have been going that fast, and we know this because there’s no room to accelerate. So all your witness has to do is say you weren’t driving like a bat out of hell, and we’ve already got reasonable doubt, and keeping you out of jail is key.”

  Ellery had thought of this already—in fact, he’d written some of it down. But Jackson had two or three things on his checklist that Ellery didn’t, and that was impressive. But even more important, Jackson had managed to calm down the client, to instill some faith so she trusted them. If she trusted them, she’d tell them things she might have forgotten she knew.

  “So I know you’re afraid of this guy,” Jackson continued. “And you should be. But the quicker we find out who he is and prove you didn’t do it, the quicker he’ll have more to worry about than harassing you or following through on that threat, you understand?”

  Janie nodded, tears flowing, but she wasn’t sobbing yet. Ellery had noted rather clinically that sometimes women cried when they were scared but that it seldom incapacitated them. One of his guiltiest clients once wiped out an entire box of Kleenex while telling the story of how she’d killed her crime-boss husband because he’d threatened to molest her daughter. The murder had been perfectly executed, and Ellery had actually gotten the woman off, and she’d been allowed to keep her husb
and’s inheritance as well. Smart, tough, fearless—tears were a sign of nothing but an emotional trigger system that didn’t mesh well with mascara.

  “Do you remember anything about him—anything at all? You said he had a military uniform on—was it formal or informal?”

  “It was… I think it was formal,” she said. “It wasn’t camouflage or anything. It was all dark blue.”

  “Navy,” Jackson said with a faint smile. “That’s great—that helps immediately. So, he was wearing a jacket with bright stuff on his sleeves, right? Stripes? How many? One? Two?”

  “Three, at least three,” Janie said, running her own fingertip around her wrist as though she was imagining things. “And silver—he had silver spangly things on his shoulders.”

  Ellery made a sound. He recognized the uniform—he even recognized the rank.

  And he knew somebody with that rank. Somebody who had a very specific interest in Jackson and Ellery. It was the reason he’d needed Jackson here in the first place.

  “Was he really tall?” Ellery asked thoughtfully, and she must have grown used to him because she didn’t startle.

  Janie bit her lip. “Yeah. He had like… like that silver hair—the kind that looks like spray paint.”

  Jackson glanced at him sharply. “You know this guy?”

  Ellery nodded but didn’t say anything. Jackson gave him a level look and then turned his attention back to Janie. “Okay. This gives him a few more resources—but none that he can tap without setting off alarms. When’s your arraignment?”

  “Wednesday,” she said hesitantly. “I got out on bail this morning.” She pulled another Kleenex. “This is gonna fucking kill my mom, you guys. She was so proud of me. I mean, I was going to get my degree this year, and the Evanders would have made good references. Now I’m just so damned scared for everybody.”