Red Fish, Dead Fish Page 9

  “They were afraid of how much evidence would be tainted if more than Bridger and Chisolm were indicted,” Langdon explained—as though Ellery didn’t already know this.

  “Yes, I know, and I don’t care. Because since Rivera, we’ve gone backward, and we’ve got a folder keeping track of likely victims—men and women of all races.”

  “Young?”

  “Late teens, early twenties, new to the street life, attractive. He likes blonds, both genders, doesn’t care if it’s dyed. They must be lookers—high cheekbones, delicate jawlines, wide-set eyes. Usually beaten, more recently knifed, and there’s usually some sexual component to the death.”

  “God.” To Langdon’s credit, he sounded legitimately revolted, and Ellery felt marginally better.

  “He’s a monster, sir. We’ve got nineteen—twenty if you count Jennifer Ricci.” He let out a long breath. “Twenty-one if you count Celia Rivers.”

  Langdon grunted. “Do you have any more evidence since the Rivera boy?”

  Ellery let out a frustrated breath. “Now, see, all of that evidence has been sent to the lab, and we have the last three murders with matching DNA on them. But….”

  But Jackson had pulled a miracle to get Bridger ID’d in three days. Then he’d been shot. Ellery had used the evidence, of course, to put Scott Bridger away and nail the coffin over Chisolm, the guy Bridger had worked for, but that was Jackson’s favor. The rest of their investigation wasn’t sanctioned by the police department, wasn’t even sanctioned by the law firm, although Ellery kept them apprised.

  It took a long time to get back nonpriority DNA evidence.

  “This is heating up,” Langdon said thoughtfully. “I need you to send me the case codes, and I’ll light a fire under them myself. This guy is active. He’s not slowing down. If we can hook all of these murders together, we have a case and we can get manpower.”

  “Thank God.” Ellery thought of all the work he and Jackson had done, late at night over Ellery’s kitchen table, looking through unsolved deaths, finding ones that fit the profile, putting together their case.

  This was the kind of help that came at the end of that rainbow, and he’d never been so grateful.

  “So, we’ve got Rivers’s family under surveillance. We’ve got the DNA tests hopefully coming through in the next few days. Can you think of anything else?”

  “Well, Jackson and I tried to see where Owens came from. Bridger knew him from the service, but we can’t pin him down on a unit or even a rank. Sir—nobody can.”

  Langdon’s eyes opened wide. “Define ‘nobody.’”

  “Well, we tracked down his CO when he was overseas, and the guy he has listed died when he was there, and there’s something hinky about that death.” Ellery frowned—friendly fire, the dossier had said. But he’d been killed with a service-issue pistol at close range. Who had been friendly enough to fire a gun from twenty feet away?

  “You suspect this guy?” Langdon looked concerned.

  “Well, no—but only because given what we’ve seen, we think he served under that guy much earlier. Let’s just say that the file the DOJ sent us was like two pieces of a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle.”

  “A lot of black ink?”

  “If that much of my life was redacted, my mother would install a camera in my collarbone.”

  Langdon laughed, but it came out strained. “Okay—have you thought about contacting people who were supposed to be in that unit?”

  Ellery nodded. “Yes, sir. That was next on our to-do list.”

  “Carry on, then.” But Langdon paused in the middle of his grand gesture.

  “Mr. Langdon?”

  “I don’t like to pry….” The tone was apologetic, but those pale blue eyes were hard in their resolve.

  “About…?” But he knew where this was going. Three months of Jackson actually living at his house, one month of the two of them coming in together—and leaving together too. They didn’t work with idiots.

  “You two. Your outside relationship isn’t going to affect the job you do here, is it?”

  Ellery grimaced. “That depends on what you mean,” he said honestly. “If my girlfriend or wife had just experienced a death in the family, it would be expected that I take some time off to help her grieve.”

  Langdon nodded. “True.”

  “He’s not going to take time off voluntarily. But that doesn’t mean our job is just going to cruise along without a hitch, right?” Ellery heard Jackson’s voice in his head when he said that—the part of Jackson that could reason through life and people with curt, clean lines and an easy logic and grace.

  “Also true,” Langdon conceded.

  “And it’s not unreasonable to expect that the people in his life will take time off from work to help him.”

  “But you don’t know when or for how long.” Arched gray eyebrows really could inspire terror. Now Ellery knew.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Langdon shrugged. “You’ve both got a big stack of laurels to rest on. What can I say? And there’s always simple human decency to let a man grieve on his own terms. And at this point, nobody else is investigating the Owens case. Someone needs to. Continue on.”

  Ellery nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Go get ’em. And….” For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. “Do what you can to take care of Rivers. I… he seems pretty damned tough, and we all know about his past. But… he’s not… this? It’s going to shake anybody up.”

  “Yeah.”

  Langdon nodded him out, and Ellery left the room. Jackson stood over the counter in the reception area, tapping on his laptop with more efficiency than enthusiasm. He paused for a moment and scanned what he was working on. After biting his lip with one slightly crooked tooth, he went back to fix whatever didn’t work.

  Ellery couldn’t help staring at him from the hallway. He seemed so natural, so purposeful, and Ellery wondered if their entire morning had been in his imagination.

  Then Jade bumped his shoulder with her own.

  “How is he?”

  Horrible question. “Emotionally crippled, angry, terrified, and absolutely sure that if he tells us all he’s fine, he’s going to be, by God, fine. Any suggestions?”

  “Beat him over the head with a club, tie him to his bed, and don’t let him up until he deals with it,” she said, like that was a real possibility.

  Ellery looked at her sideways, reluctant to address the thing neither of them spoke about but they both disliked knowing.

  “Did that ever work for you?”

  Jade snorted. “Are we married? Expecting children? Living the sweet little happy life we both wanted after watching my brother? No. Because I never had the heart to beat him over the head, that’s why.” Some of the defensiveness eased out of her posture, but that didn’t leave her looking any less upright and professional in a black pantsuit. Because Ellery knew her, he could see the same signs of worry—tightness around the eyes, swollen, chewed-on lower lip, sagging, exhausted shoulders—that he could feel in himself.

  “I’m not going to do it,” Ellery protested. “For one thing, he’s still got a tube in his shoulder.”

  Jade hissed. “He hates that.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been told. I just mean… I don’t know. I told our boss he could function. How deluded am I?”

  She cast him a droll look and laughed—but not as if she found anything particularly funny. “Green men would be an improvement. You really are going to have to sit on him to get him to deal with whatever you two saw this morning.”

  She kept her gaze steady, her kohl-rimmed eyes not giving an inch.

  Oh. “This morning—you really want to know?”

  “What did you guys see? Seriously—he’s still shock white.”

  Ellery told her, and she shuddered visibly.

  “Okay. So the boss man knows there’s a bad guy, and you two are in his sights. And we got cops watching me and Mike and marshals watching Kaden. And who’s watching yo
u and Jackson again?”

  Yeah. “Me and Jackson?”

  “And he looks pretty lively for a man in an emotional coma.”

  Ellery grunted. “Well, you find the restraints and the thing to clock him over the head, and I’ll be right there in front of him so he has no idea it was us.”

  “Yeah—I don’t know if he’d forgive us for that.”

  Jackson finished sending his e-mail and glanced up around the room again, his expression unguarded. In that moment he looked bleak and hurt and young.

  His gaze hit Ellery and Jade then, and his lower lip firmed and eyes narrowed, leaving older, wiser, cockier Jackson in place of the lost child they’d glimpsed.

  Jade’s sigh rippled through the room.

  “When my mom died, he was going undercover with a wire while partnered with Hanover.”

  Ellery sucked in air, because that time in Jackson’s life, when he’d trusted nobody, had left claw marks in his soul.

  “We can’t let him do this alone,” Jade continued. “Not this time.” She bumped Ellery’s shoulder. “Call me if you need anything.” She took a few steps forward, calling, “No, Jackson, you’re not putting that thing away without the case, dammit. It’ll collect dust. No, I don’t care if you’re planning to do work tonight, because one, it’s a lie, and two, it’s like an open invitation for somebody to put their coffee on that shelf when they don’t put their coffee anywhere else in the world. Why don’t you have an office?”

  Jackson frowned. “Why would I have an office?”

  “So you can keep your computer there. And a change of clothes.”

  “I keep my clothes in my car. And I’ve been in Ellery’s office since I got back from leave. I’m not even in your hair.”

  “It’s about having your own space, dumbass. Make them give you an office.”

  “I don’t get this thing you’re saying about an office. It’s not making any sense.”

  Jade’s growl echoed through the reception area, and the two other paralegals working at their desks both grimaced and hunched their shoulders in fear.

  Ellery didn’t blame them.

  “You ask these nice people for an office, asshole. You act like you ain’t grown.” With a bustle and a hip check, she shoved Jackson out of her space in front of the standing counter and moved her chair back into position in front of the desk that sat behind it. In short order, Jackson’s laptop—in the case—was set respectfully on top of the counter.

  “Now take that with you.”

  “Fine,” he mumbled, taking the computer and heading toward Ellery’s office without even a look to see if Ellery was coming with him. “If I live to next week, I’ll ask for an office.”

  Ellery’s blood ran cold.

  “Why would you even say that?”

  Jackson shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that’s why I never asked for an office in the first place. I just assumed I wouldn’t be here long enough to need one.”

  “Today,” Ellery said darkly. “Ask for one today.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “You didn’t sound kidding. Snap out of it.”

  Jackson rolled his eyes.

  “Like a fucking teenager,” Ellery growled. “Can you be an adult for long enough to admit you are not okay?”

  “When are you getting our housebreaker out?” Jackson asked, taking a right down the hall and heading for Ellery’s office. Ellery had commandeered a good chair to go with the small side table. He privately had to admit he didn’t mind that Jackson didn’t have a space of his own—but he didn’t like that Jackson saw his entire life as a short-term operation.

  “Two hours.” Ellery looked at his phone. “Two and a half. I’ve got some paperwork to do before then, and I need to look up Owens’s unit—”

  “I can do that. You do your real work. And I’ve got to run down Billy too. I’ll make phone calls from here, then follow our guy out of court after you get him let off.”

  Ellery grimaced. “You do have faith in me, don’t you? The cops have this guy dead to rights.”

  Jackson’s wolfish grin made him look almost like the man Ellery loved. “Claim brutality. God knows, I was pretty fuckin’ brutal.”

  “Well, he got some licks in,” Ellery said, trying to disapprove. It was hard to be an asshole about this. Yes, it wasn’t sound medical practice, and no, Ellery would rather not see Jackson hurt.

  But the part of him that would rush into a fight and ask questions later? Ellery had to admire that. He absolutely didn’t have any of that in himself.

  “You jealous ’cause you didn’t get in yours?”

  Ah, prurient humor.

  “Me? Jealous of that guy you beat into the carpet? Hell no. I’m only jealous of people who’ve been in your pants.”

  Jackson’s low—definitely dirty—laugh echoed through the modest-sized room.

  “That’s half of Sacramento,” he admitted freely.

  “It makes me cranky. Do me a favor and behave.”

  “Yeah, I’ll behave shopping for a ball gag for you while I’m doing my job. You like that idea?”

  Ellery considered it briefly. “If I don’t get to talk during sex, I think it has to go.”

  “Handcuffs it is.” Jackson raised his eyebrows a couple of times and then settled down to work. His voice lowered to the murmur of professionally cadenced phone calls, and Ellery got to the work at his own desk, so solidly entrenched in what he was doing that when he got a pop of recognition from his data, he actually had to catch his breath.

  “Jackson—”

  “Hey, I got something!”

  They both looked up from their computers, Jackson across the room at his little table, Ellery at his desk.

  “You first,” Jackson said soberly. “We’re going to court in an hour. This we’re going to need.”

  “Okay, our scumbags are Robert Corona and Larry Sherwood. Ol’ Bob here is the one in the hospital in what they hope is a healing coma, and Larry is the one who stuck the knife in your shoulder. Both of them were low-level delinquents through school, but in their senior year they sort of cleaned up their act. I’m not sure how. Anyway, that was a year ago, and they’ve managed to stay out of prison since.”

  “Good for them!”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I don’t have a parent contact for either of them. I’m assuming that ship has sailed. But when Larry did two months in juvenile detention for theft, a Claudine Levine—”

  Jackson snickered.

  “Yes, it rhymes. Anyway, she has a son their age, Jael—”

  “Jail?”

  Ellery grimaced—yeah, that was an unfortunately chosen name. “Jay-ell, I think is how you pronounce it. Anyway, he too was in juvenile detention around the same time.”

  Jackson raised his eyebrows. “Hunh.”

  Sometimes that word didn’t suck. “Indeed.”

  “This woman—this Claudine Levine—might have some knowledge about where these boys have been hanging out.”

  Ellery nodded. “She might.”

  “Good. Text me her stats. I’ll keep that in mind while I’m trailing darling Larry. Now for you. You remember Davis?”

  “The nice policeman who brought you home after you wrecked your car—”

  “Helping you!” Jackson pointed out, showing animation for the first time since he’d sat down.

  “You got hurt,” Ellery pointed out. Again.

  “You can’t stop that from happening.” And oh God, he sounded gentle. “And don’t forget—he helped us find Jason Rivera, and he’s still helping you, so behave. Davis was a Marine, and he had a buddy, Corporal Lee Burton, who got recruited, he thinks, to some sort of shadow op. You know, nth level shit, super training, that kind of thing.”

  “And…?” Although that name—Lee Burton—was tickling his lizard brain. Not like the man had been important, but he’d been a footnote somewhere.

  “Well, Burton told Davis a story before he got recruited, and Davis looked it up to see if it was true. Appare
ntly Burton was outside of Afghanistan when the base camp got attacked. He was stuck in a bunker with a bunch of green recruits and a sergeant when the sergeant got up and left him in charge. Said he was worried about a guy—the guy’s unit didn’t have his back.”

  Ellery’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah. Scary, right? Anyway—shelling stopped, and the sergeant was wounded by shrapnel. He’d been found in the auto bay with his friend—Private Sonny Daye, if that name rings a bell. He was promoted to corporal at the end of his tour.”

  Ellery gasped, remembering where he’d seen Burton’s name before. It had been in the list of contacts for one Corporal Sonny Daye, in San Diego.

  Ellery and Jackson had gone to San Diego less than two months earlier, after Jackson had crashed the car. The purpose of the trip was for Jackson to recover, but Ellery had tacked on an interview, just so Jackson wouldn’t feel like Ellery had pulled up stakes and put everything on hold for him. Ellery had—but that hadn’t mattered.

  What mattered was that in the course of investigating a defendant’s alibi, they had discovered a couple of unsolved murders and the catalyst for two low-level mob branches wiping each other the hell out of existence.

  At the core of the tornado had been one Ace Atchison and his terrifying shadow, Sonny Daye. Mechanics, garage owners, ex-street racers, lovers.

  And neither of them had enough evidence on them for Ellery to even call the police—but Jackson’s instincts and a few well-chosen details had told the whole story, and Ellery didn’t doubt his take even a little.

  “Really?” he heard himself asking from far away.

  “Really,” Jackson confirmed. “And inside the auto bay were two casualties—a little girl from one of the refugee encampments near the base and one Master Sergeant Galway, who by all accounts was a real motherfucker.”

  “How were they killed?” This sounded so bad—they had let Atchison and Daye go.

  “Not the way you’re thinking. The girl had been killed by falling debris—there was no doubt about that. And apparently she’d grabbed Atchison’s weapon and had been aiming it at Galway’s face when the shell hit. Gun went off, Galway died, Atchison took shrapnel, Daye was conscious to give testimony. The girl had been defending herself and Daye from Galway, it seems, because he kept threatening to throw her outside the auto bay.”