Red Fish, Dead Fish

by Amy Lane

  Ellery’s eyes widened. “He what?”

  “Well, regulations said she shouldn’t be there. Apparently he thought the middle of a shelling was a good time to enforce that. Anyway, Burton thought the whole thing sounded funny. Fishy funny. So he did some checking on Galway. Turns out the guy had not just one, but three guys off themselves under his command.”

  “So they kept him in command?” Ellery knew his voice dripped judgment, but… but….

  “The thing about corruption,” Jackson explained patiently, “is that it has inertia. You know this. People higher up can know there’s something fishy going on, but all the effort they have to expend catching that fish seems like it would just be better spent harpooning the whales outside the system. Now you and me, we know that’s not true—but when you’re a little higher up on the food chain….” Jackson let his hands finish that sentence for him.

  “So,” Ellery said slowly, “Burton figured Galway was a bad guy. He probably threatened Ace—”

  “Sonny,” Jackson said flatly. “You didn’t talk to him. I did. Galway threatened Sonny, Ace pulled his weapon—and maybe even pulled the trigger—but shrapnel hit, things got cloudy, and they blamed it on the dead girl because—”

  “Who’d want to believe a private and a sergeant, and who’d want to open that can of worms anyway.”

  “Exactly.” Jackson shrugged while Ellery’s gut roiled. After all this time working with Jackson, it still hurt Ellery in inexplicable ways when he realized how many more people needed defending than the world had champions to defend them.

  “So this has to do with our psycho how?” Ellery pulled him back on track.

  “Well, Burton wasn’t just name-dropping to Davis. He was getting Davis to do some digging for him. Because three suicides? Someone’s got to notice that. So Davis did some digging, and he realized that the guys were assigned to the auto bay—they weren’t your usual guys. A lot of these guys had some sort of blotch on their record before they got sent. Insubordination, whatever. This was after DADT, but some of them were suspected of being gay—in the closet or out—and some of them were just… meat. Vulnerable. Afraid.”

  “So why would you take guys who were already afraid….”

  “And put them on the front lines with a sadist who likes to fuck with people?”

  “Yes?” Because duh!

  Jackson leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and his weight on his forearms. “See, that’s what Davis and Burton were trying to figure out. And he discovered that this Galway guy, he wasn’t just regular Army. He actually ran a special unit in the States, one of those psych operations where they test soldiers in extreme conditions. It’s not on any of the books—”

  “So we take your buddy’s word for it that this place exists?” Ellery asked dryly.

  Jackson actually laughed, like a caught-out schoolboy. “Well, I’ll give you that—it sounds like a Jason Bourne movie. But here’s the thing. Davis said Galway was a plant. His job was to see if extreme conditioning could create better soldiers. So, battlefield conditions sort of thing—”

  “That’s horrible!” Ellery couldn’t even fathom it. “That’s the US government—”

  “Who gave LSD to soldiers in the sixties and shot radiation up their noses in the fifties and has a couple of thousand reports of sexual misconduct every year. See—they’ve got a track record that’s a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream, and you know it. But in this case, I think Galway’s job was to browbeat people into better performances as a soldier—”

  “But we know that shit doesn’t work!” Because who did not take beginning psych?

  “Well, you and me do, but remember, the psych community is hard to change and the military even harder. There are still reality shows out there that like to present people in extreme conditions and then tout the immediate results as a positive thing. This is that same idea. Let’s do something spectacular and amoral in behavior management and see if it works. But you’re missing the point here—”

  “Which would be absolute horror?”

  “Which would be Owens, dammit!”

  Ellery blinked. “Owens?”

  “Yes. The guy served under Galway for a good six months, before Daye and Atchison, actually. Galway made a request and had him stationed stateside—a little-known training camp in the wilds of Nevada, from whence Galway himself hailed.”

  “Oh God—training?”

  “Yup. And about six months after he was transferred there, he was discharged—honorably—but remember, he’d served under Galway—”

  “A sadist,” Ellery reiterated.

  “And whoever was worse than Galway, whom Galway reported to.”

  “So… this guy was trained in covert serial killing?” Ellery hated that he could even consider this.

  “Well, yes. Think about it. How long was Hanover in operation?”

  Ellery shuddered. Hanover had been the corrupt cop that Jackson had almost died trying to build a case against. “Sources say five or six years before you came along.”

  Jackson nodded. “Right? And Hanover cherry-picked me—sponsored me through the academy, asked for me to be his partner. Like you said when we first met, I could have been dirty so easy.”

  “No you couldn’t!” Ellery hated it when Jackson said things like this.

  “Well, I couldn’t have been,” he conceded bitterly, “but someone with my background. It was an easy assumption to make. Anyway, Hanover is in operation, and he gets taken out by Bridger and Chisholm. And Chisholm is in a position of power and rising. So someone—someone in charge of DOJ funding—thinks ‘Hey—can we put someone on the case of how this crooked lawyer is getting funded?’”

  “And they assign Owens.” On the one hand, it made as much sense as that DEA sting agents had tried to run a couple of years earlier, when suddenly all sorts of grown men thought they were in a remake of Miami Vice and tried to act like Colin Farrell.

  On the other….

  “So what good does this do us?” Ellery asked. “We have some sort of shadow government conspiracy and a serial killer trained by the Army. What good does it do us?”

  Jackson grinned, almost like he’d forgotten who Owens’s last victim had been. “Well, I can give you one thing. That profile-changing makeup that’s been bothering us?”

  “Yes?” Oh, Ellery hoped he knew where this was going.

  Jackson opened his laptop and turned it around so Ellery could see.

  “We know what he looks like without it.”

  It slipped out before Ellery could censor himself. “Oh Jesus, he’s cute!”

  “Oh dear God.” Jackson rolled his eyes.

  “I mean, big hazel eyes, nice jaw, little bow-stung mouth. He looks like the boy next door.”

  “If the boy next door was a trained soldier and a certified mind-fucker who has probably killed more than twenty people as a hobby!” Jackson protested.

  “No, seriously—he looks like one of those… you know, Backstreet Boys?”

  Jackson’s eyes widened like he’d said something really heinous. “When we were ten, sure, he’d look like a Backstreet Boy. Now he looks like that Zayn kid who left One Direction, but with less stubble because it’s his enlistment photo. Now add ten years to that, and a few more kills, but still—”

  “Pretty,” Ellery finished, still boggled.

  “Yeah.” Jackson shrugged. “Pretty.” His mouth thinned. “Dirty pretty.”

  “Oooh….”

  They both paused. “Once we turn this over to the police, they’ll get a profiler in here,” Ellery said after a moment. “But if I had to guess, this guy doesn’t really….”

  “Like himself.” Jackson’s turn to finish the sentence. “Yeah. Explains the victim choice, the beatings. Maybe even the sexual component. Pure sadism—gets him off, punishes him for doing it. All the same shit.”

  “We really need to get the cops in here,” Ellery breathed. “Jackson—this isn’t us thinking we know something they
don’t anymore.”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s personal. He’s trying to get our attention. It’s like he’s been killing himself off for months, going ‘Hey guys, lookit me. I’m a bad guy!’ But we didn’t catch on quick enough.”

  “Okay. So, that’s the rest of our day. You follow Larry when he leaves the courthouse, and as soon as I spring him, I light a fire under Langdon and we turn this over to the police and hopefully the FBI.”

  Jackson stood and stretched—and it was a testament to how tired and sore he was at this point that it was the first time he’d done it in an hour. Usually he moved, paced, executed a sort of tense, coiled roaming around Ellery’s office.

  He grunted, raising his arms to chest level and pressing in front of him while he lunged slowly forward, and Ellery fought back his umpteenth urge to tell him to go home.

  “What about Dakin?” he asked, moving his hands behind his back and switching out his legs. “Think we should bring her in?”

  “Only if she can not hit on you,” Ellery growled, not proud of it.

  Jackson let out a short rasp of laughter. “That woman wants less to do with fucking me and more to do with arresting me. God, Ellery—that was not the kind of heat I’d go after even if—”

  He stopped and glared.

  “Someday you’re going to finish that sentence,” Ellery told him savagely, hitting Print on his computer and getting out his briefcase.

  “Even if we weren’t together,” Jackson said, like he had pincers to his toes. “Even if I wasn’t living with someone and monogamously involved. See? I can say it out loud, and I could even say it to someone else. Just not—”

  “Yeah.” Ellery deflated. “I know. Not then. Not now. I’m sorry. You’re just… you’re scaring me.” He put the papers in a folder, marked the top of the folder carefully, and put it in the case.

  Jackson had the nerve to look at Ellery like he didn’t understand. “I’m fine, and you have better things to do. I’m going to see if Jade brought the car here like you asked her to, or if she drove it home like you wanted her to because she read your mind. If it’s here, I can follow the kid in my CR-V because it doesn’t stand out quite like yours does, and you can drive home.”

  Ellery scowled. “Wait—you think this is going to take that long?”

  Jackson laughed, and he sounded almost joyful. “I forgot. I haven’t really gone on stakeout much since we’ve been together. God, you never know when you’ll hit your rack, you know? Anyway, see? That way you’re not stuck without a car.”

  And with that he turned away like Ellery had never expressed concern and like he was going to always be okay.

  Ellery jumped out of his chair to stop him from leaving just like that—because he felt it, in his gut, a helpless terror he wondered if Jackson lived with every day of his life. He would forever remember that moment with deep loathing and terrible venom—but even at his bitterest, he could never think of a single way to make the next twenty-four hours go differently.

  And that would hurt even more.

  Fish Gone Walkabout

  JACKSON LOOKED at the text from Ellery and decided on one more loop around the block behind the courthouse. What could checking out the odd concrete sculptures that dominated the lunch area one more time hurt?

  Jade had come through with the car and agreed to let Ellery bring her home, so that was nice. If Jackson had to hunker down in a vehicle and dredge through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city, he wanted to do it in a car he wasn’t afraid of.

  Not that the Lexus would do anything, turn on him or anything, but Ellery had been right. With Jackson’s luck these days, he didn’t want to be responsible for Ellery’s baby getting hurt.

  Jackson felt guilty enough for all the bad shit he brought to Ellery’s life as it was.

  He should be walking down the steps right now. Jackson checked his buzzing phone. Stringy blond hair, a polo shirt, and my emergency client tie.

  Jackson chuckled. Ellery, he didn’t miss a trick—including trying to make the client look more presentable for the court appearance.

  And in this case, old Larry had needed all the help he could get.

  At the moment he was trotting down the steps, glaring at Ellery over his shoulder. Ellery shouted something—probably when his next court date was—and Larry made a rude yet vague gesture over his shoulder.

  So he didn’t want the free time or legal advice of Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson & Cooper, which was a real shame. Jackson doubted another lawyer could have gotten the kid off a charge like breaking and entering plus assault with nearly the efficacy of Ellery Cramer.

  Well, Jackson really didn’t care about his next arrest. What he really wanted to see was what had spawned this baby drug dealer into the overwhelming current of distribution and production.

  He had the feeling it wasn’t burning ambition or even basic street savvy.

  Larry Sherwood got closer, and Jackson recognized the punk kid with the switchblade immediately. The same couldn’t be said for Larry, who didn’t seem to know Jackson from a hole in the ground.

  Yeah, well, the little asshole probably thought everybody over thirty was a square.

  Jackson had expected the kid to go trekking for the nearest bus stop, which was less than half a block away. Instead, Larry prowled the sidewalk like a panther, stopping twenty feet away and coming back to pace the next ten feet without even looking inside Jackson’s double-parked CR-V.

  Just when Jackson was about to drive around the block one more time to make sure he didn’t get made, a beat-up Chevy Impala in sort of an optimistic light brown puttered up to the sidewalk, ignoring the No Parking signs just like Jackson was.

  Looking relieved—and very young—Mr. Sherwood opened the door. Another kid got out—same age, but this one with a brown buzz cut and a lot of black-line cartoons inked on his skin. Larry jumped in the backseat, the newcomer hopped into the passenger side and slammed the door shut, and Jackson was on the tail.

  If Jackson ever had a grandmother, he would have accused the person behind the wheel of the Impala of driving just like her.

  Slow at the stop, whup, whup, whup, are we turning right? Oh yes. We’re turning left. And whoa, a big, loud, ugly, drifting left-hand turn, and down we go down J Street.

  Excellent.

  This could take us anywhere, right?

  Well, no, not anywhere. A right down Alhambra and a left down Broadway and Jackson recognized the Pocket Area. And then another right down Twenty-Fourth and past the hospital and right on Second.

  Jackson made that final right and looked around, puzzled. The Impala was quickly disappearing, going up one of the few deep driveways that led around to the personal residences.

  Jackson wanted to sputter—and he definitely wanted to snark at Ellery.

  This was a nice street—snug little houses, slightly larger buildings that held multiple single-family places. The sidewalks were well-kept but aged concrete, and the houses were thick stucco with charming porches and loads of plants, not to mention nicely planted gardens in both the front and the backyards.

  It wasn’t just a nice suburban neighborhood, it was a pricey urban one, and Jackson had no idea what he was doing there.

  Nevertheless, he parked back from the quaint little stucco house that the Impala had pulled into and settled in to see what he could see.

  One of the first things he saw was a pretty woman, late thirties, blonde, probably blue-eyed, wearing tight little capri pants and a cardigan sweater set as she swapped out the festive flag on the front porch.

  Jackson frowned.

  The original flag had been sort of a generic Thanksgiving flag, with pretty orange and yellow leaves and a school of some sort.

  This one was brighter, bolder, in green and black and purple, of hard plastic Halloween candy.

  Was Halloween coming? No, actually. Two weeks ago he and Ellery had handed out full-sized candy bars and sticker books to kids wearing expensive—and often expensively engi
neered—homemade costumes. No Party City knockoffs for kids on American River Drive. Jackson had been boggled.

  Now he looked at the flag and frowned, his suspicions hitting him hard.

  Candy—an age-old metaphor, right?

  He settled back into the seat, pushing against it strategically so he could stretch and get counterpressure, working the aches out of his bruised body and trying to get rid of that last moment with Ellery before they left the office.

  Ellery’s hand on his wrist, warm and strong, and Jackson spinning to find him intimately close.

  “Be careful with yourself, Jackson. Please.”

  Jackson tried to pull his mouth up at the corners, make his response carefree and irresponsible, and to not give Ellery any more worry than he’d already had today.

  “Yeah, ’course. I’m like Billy Bob—I land on my feet.”

  Ellery’s eyes burned. “I saw that cat fall off the back of the couch and land on his back just last week. He’s fine—you won’t be. Promise me.”

  Face, chest, eyes—hell, sphincter!—all tightened, along with Jackson’s stomach. He couldn’t. He couldn’t promise. There was nothing in him, no substance, no resolve, no sense of self to make that promise.

  “I’m not good at…. You should just….”

  Ellery’s mouth crashing down on his shocked him out of his emptiness and into fire. Demanding fingers in his hair tugged to pain, and Ellery’s tongue took angry possession of his mouth. Jackson mmphed, pressed back against the closed door, his shoulder screaming in agony, but not nearly as loudly as his body howled for Ellery’s touch.

  If Jade hadn’t pounded on the door, telling them they were going to be late, Jackson would have sunk to his knees just to have Ellery’s cock in his mouth, Ellery’s come coursing down his throat, Ellery inside him again that day, filling the emptiness and void.

  Ellery pulled back from the kiss and rested his forehead against Jackson’s. “You know your way home,” he rasped. “Come home to me when you’re done.”