Red Fish, Dead Fish

by Amy Lane

  All Jackson had was the living space, currently being refurbished and spackled and painted, presumably so Jackson could go back and live there with the newly laid hardwood floors and the bright white-painted walls. Wasn’t much—the thought of being alone there ran razor wire from his groin to his throat—but it was his, dammit.

  He wasn’t letting anyone crap it up, especially when it wasn’t even finished yet.

  He got to the top of the porch and squatted by the bicycle, then used the screwdriver on his key chain to pop the chain off the gear and render their one getaway vehicle useless.

  Then he put his hand on the doorknob, an ugly, angry satisfaction welling up in his gut as he turned it.

  “Heya, fellas—gonna try to sell me some smack?”

  He’d have to classify their response as a no.

  Cold Fish

  FOUR THIRTY in the morning was a positively filthy hour to get up. Ellery’s drive, shivery in the November cold, didn’t improve his opinion of mornings any. He managed to hit every light between American River Drive and Elvas, and by the time he pulled up to Jackson’s duplex, his fury was enough to keep him warm.

  Running.

  Jackson said he was going fucking running.

  Oh yeah, up at fuck-you a.m., Ellery, going running, back soon.

  Ass. Hole.

  Ellery welcomed the anger, using it to shore up his bones and his spine for the shitfest the next few weeks were going to be. He wondered if he could place bets on how many times Jackson was going to try to break up with him before they were done.

  He’d put down money on the breakup not happening, but that didn’t mean the game wasn’t going to be an absolute joy.

  He pulled past Jackson’s CR-V, whipped his Lexus around in a circle, parked nose to nose with the damned wrong-way Honda, and leaped out of the car in time to see a kid—bronze skin tinged gray, glossy hair pulled back in a blue-black ponytail down to his waist—run out Jackson’s front door and pick up the bike on the porch. He hopped on the bike at the bottom, stood on the pedal, and flipped over.

  Ellery heard the crack of his head on the concrete like an overripe watermelon, and recoiled, nauseated. At that moment, a midsized, white-haired redneck with the spryness of a lemur jumped out from behind the black pickup truck in the driveway and held a gun in ponytail-kid’s face.

  “Freeze, asshole. Don’t fucking move.”

  The kid groaned and rolled to his side, vomiting on the concrete in spite of Mike’s warning, and Ellery tried not to hold his hand to his chest like an old-time movie heroine.

  “Jesus, Mike, what in the—”

  Mike didn’t move his eyes from the kid/bicycle combo on the ground. “This little asshole’s been trying to cook drugs for the past week. Whenever they can sneak in past me and Jade, they set up shop. Gotcha now, punk. Fuckin’ cops are on the way, aren’t they. Uh-huh, you can go bleed your brain in prison, asshole!”

  The kid retched again and twitched, and Mike gave a positively evil laugh.

  “Little fucker—did you see him, Ellery? Flipping the bike like that? Fucking beautiful. I wish I had it on camera.”

  A giant crash echoed through the doorway of the house, followed by a roar of outrage that could have only come from Jackson. Sirens began to wail in the background. Oh Jesus, this poor delinquent barfing on the driveway was the one that got away.

  Another crash, another roar, and what sounded like a yelp of genuine pain.

  Mike and Ellery exchanged glances. “You’d better get in—”

  “I need to get in there.”

  He saw the spin of the cherry lights in his peripheral vision as he opened the door, but by the time those guys got out of their cars, it could be too late.

  He stood in the doorway, squinting in the sparse light. A body flew by him from his left—the kitchen—bounced off the wall, and then stumbled backward into the guest room. Ellery pressed himself against the wall as Jackson charged past, hitting his bad shoulder on the doorframe and emitting an enraged bellow as he threw himself bodily into the guest room in pursuit.

  Ellery stepped into the house and left the door open, then peered into the guest room in time to see Jackson slam his opponent into the built-in shelf along the back wall. The victim, er, housebreaker scrambled to stand, and Jackson caught him by the shirt and slammed him into the shelf again, heedless of the crack of shattered wood.

  “Please!” the guy begged, and Jackson wound his good arm back and clocked him in the face. His head slammed against the wall, his eyes fluttered shut, and he crumpled to the ground.

  “Please?” Jackson kicked him in the ribs, and he curled instinctively onto his side. “You’re gonna beg me, motherfucker?” Kick. “You wanna beg a guy, maybe next time drop the goddamned knife!”

  And as he was pulling his leg back to kick again, he twisted his torso, and Ellery saw the four-inch switchblade embedded in his recently healed shoulder.

  “Goddammit, Jackson!”

  Jackson checked the swing and hopped on one foot. “Ellery?” He blinked his thick-lashed brilliant green eyes once, slowly, and then—in an expression Ellery was beginning to associate with Jackson being in extreme pain—several times in succession, his full mouth parted slightly.

  “Yes?” Ellery crossed his arms, holding on to his rage and his fear in equal measures.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Toe-Tag called me. He wanted me to remind you to bring some form of identification when you go in to the morgue today.”

  Jackson’s jaw went slack, as if he was trying to place this information in the world as he knew it. “The morgue?” he asked carefully, his concentration fully on the groaning man on the ground. The guy’s blond hair hung in his face, lank and greasy. Like his friend in the driveway, he wore an oversized black jersey with big white numbers. This kid’s said fourteen, and Ellery would bet the other kid’s did too. Nothing like a uniform—and co-opting a gang from LA.

  “Yeah, Jackson. I know about the morgue. And when I found out about the morgue, I called and you didn’t answer. And then you want to know who called me?”

  Jackson staggered back like it had just occurred to him that the knife stuck in his shoulder hurt like hell. “Mike?”

  “You wish. Sean Kryzynski. The cop who’s about to come storming in. He said that he’d gotten a call that there were squatters trying to come live at your address and wanted to know if it was true before he brought people over.”

  “He didn’t take Mike’s word for it?” Jackson scowled—and Ellery didn’t blame him.

  “He didn’t take Jade’s. Apparently she called while Mike camped out there with his gun and waited for them to come out again.”

  Jackson shoved himself back against the adjacent wall, his knees buckling.

  “What assholes,” he muttered. “Jade’s a reliable witness.”

  “And some of the cops are still racists with long memories.” Jade had screamed bloody murder at a bunch of cops in this very house—while Jackson had been triaged in the hallway. The cops had deserved it; Jade hadn’t. “It’s a good thing Kryzynski’s one of the good guys—”

  “Who wants in your pants.”

  Oh God—he was going to sit down. “Here,” Ellery said, coming to support him. “You don’t want to do that, Jackson. Look.”

  Jackson squinted in the barely graying light and noticed the small plastic objects with the potentially lethal metal ends. They had apparently all been thrown in one corner of the guest room and scattered by the recent violence.

  “Needles,” he said dully. Then he stood up, shook Ellery off and stalked to the guy moaning on the carpet, then leveled another kick to his ribs. “You got needles all over my house, motherfucker?”

  The guy sobbed. “Stop… stop… please. We won’t make it through jail. We’ll get shanked. Just let me piss blood and die.”

  “Augh!” Jackson screamed from the pit of his stomach. “You sniveling assfuckers! Do you have any idea how long it’
s going to take to clean this shithole up again? Jesus fuck!”

  “Stand down, sir!”

  Ellery couldn’t help the icy sheet of fear that coated him at the sound of drawn weapons. Jackson simply glared over his good shoulder and raised a slow hand to the shoulder leaking blood down his elbow. “So nice of you douchebags to show up.”

  The young uniform standing in the door grunted and adjusted the aim of his service pistol to the guy lying on the ground.

  “You couldn’t leave this to the professionals, could you, Rivers?”

  “The professionals got nothin’ on a talented amateur.” Jackson smirked, but Ellery heard it—the slur of pain and the loopiness of adrenaline and blood loss in his voice.

  Young Officer Kryzynski moved into the room, holstering his weapon before sinking gingerly onto one knee on a needle-free patch of carpet so he could cuff the kid on the ground, the muscles in his shoulders and back flexing as he did so.

  “You guys can go make your statement while I read him his rights.” Kryzynski dismissed them, keeping his attention rightly on the suspect.

  “You be sure to do that.” Jackson pushed off the wall he’d let bear his weight as Kryzynski moved. “And when you’re processing him, make sure the courts know Ellery’s representing him. He’s a pro bono case at Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper.”

  Ellery grunted. “Because why?”

  Jackson turned away from the mess on the floor, and Kryzynski’s partner moved in past them, holstering his weapon as he went.

  “Because these wahoos are working for somebody else, and while Captain America is trying to find this dick in a hole in the ground, I’d like to find out who the big fish is so his minnows can stop breaking into my house.”

  Ellery saw Kryzynski’s outraged look at the both of them and ignored it, following Jackson into the hallway, where he paused to survey the damage.

  “There’s needles in the sink,” he muttered under his breath. “And a big old pan of not-meth that will kill you on the floor. Baggies of heroin all over the counter, some of them burst open. I can’t… I don’t even want to see the rest of it.” He looked up and met Ellery’s eyes. “It’s going to take another month to even be livable again. I can move into a hotel if you don’t want me to stay.”

  Ellery mentally counted “one.” The first time Jackson would try to break up with him.

  “I want you to stay,” he said, not even taking a deep breath. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  Jackson nodded and looked despairingly around the recently remodeled house. “The good news is, none of the appliances had been replaced, and the air-conditioning unit is still on order. Mostly we just need a hazmat crew.” He went to scrub his face with his hands and let out a whine like a kicked puppy.

  “There’s probably an ambulance outside, Jackson. Would you like them to take the knife out of your shoulder?” Ellery showed all his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile.

  Jackson eyed him warily. “That would be peachy,” he admitted and then grimaced and—oh God!—yanked it out himself, staring at the blade intently, looking for something. The blood ran fresh and red, and Ellery needed a deep breath this time. “The wound is burning,” he said frankly. “I think there was some sort of drug on it.”

  Ellery took another fortifying breath and wondered if it wasn’t psychosomatic. Jackson had a justifiable fear of street drugs. “Well, we’ll just have to get that all taken care of,” he said brightly. He wrapped his arm around Jackson’s waist and willed the stubborn jackass to actually give him a little bit of weight.

  “You have a stick up your ass,” Jackson pronounced as they cleared the doorway. The first ambulance—there were three by now—was scraping the kid up off the concrete and divorcing him from the bike wreckage. Jackson took it all in and chuckled. “You see that?”

  “Yes, I see that.” The memory of the kid’s head hitting the concrete wasn’t going to leave him soon.

  “I did that.”

  “You weren’t anywhere near him!”

  “I popped the chain off the gears,” Jackson bragged. “Did he go over good? Did he endo?”

  “It was spectacular. You would have loved it.” At this point, any news for Jackson was good news, he figured.

  “Jackson!” They both looked up and saw Jade, comfortable and rumpled in a tattered chenille bathrobe, hustling over the cold driveway in bare feet. “Jackson, are you okay?”

  “Fine, not a problem, don’t touch. It’s icky.” Jackson angled his shoulder away from Jade and toward Ellery, and Ellery grimaced at the amount of blood. Jackson never seemed to notice bleeding—but Ellery did.

  “Hey, over here!” Ellery signaled one of the ambulance drivers conferring with some of the policemen waiting for Kryzynski and his partner to come out, and unfortunately got the attention of both the paramedic and the police officer.

  “Oh God,” Jackson muttered—but he stumbled. “Why?”

  “Give the nice officer the knife,” Ellery ordered. “He’s got a stab wound in his shoulder,” he said to the paramedic. “There were drugs all over the house. You may need to test the blade or the wound for some of them before you do more than give him antibiotics.”

  Jackson groaned. “Oh God—not even a Vicodin!”

  “We’ll get one of the CSIs over here with a kit,” the paramedic told him, leading him toward the ambulance. The officer, Campbell by his name tag, stood in their way.

  “Just a minute, Rivers—you’re not getting away without questioning—”

  “You want to question someone, question me,” Jade snapped. Campbell turned toward her, and Jackson got led toward the ambulance. Ellery stayed to make sure nobody gave Jade crap. Three months ago, not his problem. Now she was the closest thing to family Jackson would ever have, and he wasn’t leaving her at the mercy of this asshole.

  “What relation are you to—”

  “I live on the other side of the duplex. Those guys have been breaking in and using the place for a week. If Mike and I catch ’em, we drive ’em off, but Jackson owns the duplex, and he was not going to deal with that bullshit today.”

  Campbell—a perfectly average fortyish man with an unfortunate chin, unremarkable cheekbones, and graying brown hair—narrowed his eyes at her and scowled.

  “So what was he going to do about it?”

  “He ejected intruders from his property.” Ellery crossed his arms and eyed the guy with distaste. “Which sounds absolutely fine in court. Trust me.”

  Campbell eyed him back. “And you are….”

  “Ellery Cramer, an attorney for Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson, and Cooper,” he said, not offering a card. For one thing, he was still wearing his pajama bottoms under his sweatshirt. His wallet was in the car. He’d driven over in leather moccasins, for Christ’s sake. For another, the guy pissed him off, and he felt like any professional courtesy was a betrayal of Jackson.

  “And you’re here because….”

  “I feel like it. Mr. Rivers was alerted by his friend and tenant, Mike Chambers, and he arrived here with the intention of evicting intruders on his property—”

  “Why was the house standing empty?”

  “It’s being renovated after a drive-by shooting. Where have you been?”

  Ellery was glad Jade said it. Personally, he’d be happy not to mention that day ever again for as long as he lived. He’d be even happier if Jackson only ever returned here to visit Mike and Jade and the other tenant he rented the duplex out to as soon as he agreed to make his move in with Ellery permanent.

  An event that remained a pipe dream, but Ellery refused to give it up.

  “So, does this house get a lot of action?” the officer sneered, and Jade was surprisingly ready for him.

  “A vacant house is an open invite to drug dealers and meth labs, and you know it,” Jade told him squarely. “It’s a national epidemic. Most of the time, it starts with mattresses and people moving in claiming squatters’ rights. That didn’t happen here. The
y tried, but the minute the mattresses hit the ground, Mike towed them off.”

  “Did you report it?” Campbell asked, typing something into his tablet.

  “Do I look stupid? Wait, scratch that. You’re too stupid to know smart when you see it. Yes, we reported it, because we didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Campbell scowled and kept typing—probably looking up Jade and Mike’s reports.

  “I didn’t know about that,” Ellery said softly to Jade while the policeman was busy.

  “Jackson didn’t want to bother you with his bullshit,” Jade told him quietly. “We….” She looked over to where he was being tended to by a hapless paramedic. “We didn’t agree with it,” she said after a moment, meeting his eyes. “But, you know….”

  “You knew him first.” Ellery got it. He’d gotten it three months ago when Jade’s brother had been falsely accused and Jackson had asked him in on the case. Jackson Rivers had a short and finite list of people he trusted in a pinch—Jade, her brother Kaden, Kaden’s wife, Rhonda, and Mike, his neighbor—that was pretty much it. Ellery was getting there, but Jackson wouldn’t burden him with this. Not when he felt like he could take care of it himself.

  Fucker.

  “Yeah,” Jade said, shoulders slumping as she wiped sleep out of her eyes. “I’m sorry, Ellery. You’ve been there for him. He owed you better.”

  Ellery looked over to Jackson again—and caught Jackson looking at him, face crumpled with unhappiness and guilt.

  “He did,” Ellery said softly. “But this is small potatoes.”

  “To what?” She sounded upset, and he didn’t blame her, but at that moment Campbell finished whatever business he had on the tablet and addressed them both.

  “Okay—your story checks out. You, ma’am, and your boyfriend have made multiple calls to the police. Can you tell me why this is the first time we’ve shown up here?”