by Amy Lane
“How do you know that?” The desperation in Henry’s voice to believe him was almost a palpable thing.
Jackson waited until he’d gotten their food and sodas from the second window before he answered.
“Because I’ve had sex for sex and I’ve had sex because I cared about someone, and they’re two totally different things. It’s like comparing a cat to a llama. The fact that you don’t know this tells me that your asshole brother-in-law kept you on a very short leash.”
Henry let out a sad little grunt.
“How short?” Jackson wanted to know.
“Well, I just found my second lover dead in a dumpster. How short is that?”
“Just long enough to think things through,” Jackson told him. “What hurt more? Finding Sampson dead in a dumpster or finding out your brother-in-law would take you down to keep you doing something you felt was wrong?”
The silence from Henry’s side of the car wasn’t encouraging.
“That?” Jackson said. “That way you’re thinking about your actual lover versus a one-night stand? That’s the difference between how Lance feels about the guys he fucks on camera versus… I don’t know. The grumpy bastard who just refused to consider him as a person because he’s got an unusual job.”
Henry sighed, and Jackson let up.
“Eat your burger, Henry. It’s been a week of life lessons. Allow them to soak in.”
Henry opened the bag and pulled out a burger, then wrapped the bottom half in a napkin and handed it to Jackson. “I will if you will.”
“Fine.”
Jackson bit into the burger and chewed steadily. He wondered if he was going to have to add another person to his list of people he trusted.
His stomach rumbled, displeased by the intrusion when he’d so carefully avoided breakfast that morning.
Maybe not.
HENRY WAS mildly impressed by Ellery’s house—as any sane person should be—but he gave Billy Bob the side-eye, and Jackson hoped he tripped and cracked his head open on general principle.
“What in the hell is that?” Henry stared at Billy Bob, who was eating on his mat on the table, next to a giant paperweight that Ellery’s mother had bought them after she’d gone shopping at an artisan fair that spring.
“That’s two pounds of blown glass and some dye, in bronze and magenta. Don’t knock it until it keeps your mail from blowing off the table.”
“I’m talking about the growling thing next to it!”
“Man, you dis my cat and I’ll break your face. Now stay here and apologize while I go get my scrubs!”
He also had to change. He could feel the blood seeping through the bandage and onto the shirt. He put on another T-shirt—this one said “I’m a llama-corn!” on it—and a new pair of cargo shorts, making sure to bury the ones with the blood drops on them under that morning’s towels and underwear. He came out of the bedroom with the scrubs and a towel neatly rolled under his arm and got to the living room just in time to watch Billy Bob execute a three-legged leap from the table to Henry’s head.
“Oh my God! Get it off! Get it off!”
Henry flailed around the dining room, the cat digging into his shoulders and biting his scalp, while Jackson doubled up laughing.
“Rivers, help me!”
“Okay, fine! Fine! Stand still, moron!” Jackson took two quick steps to where Henry had ended up, in the living room by Ellery’s leather couches, and put a steadying hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Hold on a second.”
Gently, because Billy Bob was his friend, Jackson lifted him off Henry’s shoulders, detaching his claws one razor at a time.
“Aw, buddy! What’d he do to you?” Jackson soothed his beloved kitty with full-body pets while Billy trembled up against his chest, letting out the occasional hiss in Henry’s direction.
“I petted him!” Henry defended, wiping at the blood on his shoulders. “I swear! I put out my hand and scratched him on the ass!”
“Oh my God, man! Slow down! You don’t even know this cat! You start with a finger on the forehead and then take liberties if they let you. Has nobody taught you about cats?”
“My dad let them sleep in the barn and live on mice!” Henry retorted. “And they still looked better than that asshole you’re treating like a victim!”
“Shh…,” Jackson soothed. “He didn’t mean it. He’s just being a prick because he was raised by wolves.”
Billy Bob meowed pitifully, and Jackson went to the drawer in the living room that held the brush Ellery had bought him. “Here, brother. Let’s chill you out, okay? I know—he’s a bad guy. Next time, maybe just hide in my room when he’s here, okay?”
Jackson took the cat to his and Ellery’s bed and brushed him for about five minutes, until his fur stopped standing on end and he wasn’t growling anymore. He cleaned up the fur, grabbed another clean T-shirt, and went to find Henry in the guest bathroom, wiping the blood off his head and shoulders.
“Here,” he muttered, throwing the shirt.
“Thanks.” Henry changed shirts, and Jackson turned to leave. Henry’s voice stopped him. “You weren’t wrong, you know.”
“About what?”
“I might have been raised by wolves.”
Augh! Every goddamned time Jackson thought Henry was beyond redemption, he said something honest.
“Well, I was raised by a junkie. Wolves at least feed their young. Clean up. We’ve got places to go.”
A HALF hour later, Jackson was parking Ellery’s car behind a small cluster of doctors’ offices next to the Kaiser outpatient clinic on Fair Oaks. Across the street sat a Shell station, but Jackson had parked in a corner by a neatly kept stand of oleander bushes that hid him from view. Without talking to a mostly silent Henry, he opened the car door and executed a quick change right there in the parking lot, and looked up to see Henry doing the same.
“What’s the plan, hoss?” Henry asked when they were done.
“There’s a transport bay to the side,” Jackson said. “It’s for patients who need to be driven in for consult, and right now, it looks to be empty. I say we enter through there and snoop around. We’re checking for the drug cabinets and holes in their security. Something made Martin Sampson turn from dealing coke to dealing oxy, and somewhere in there, he pissed off the meth dealers. I’m pretty sure if we follow the drugs, we’ll find the guy who killed him. We need to split up and follow our noses, understand?”
“What if we’re caught?”
“Say, ‘Oh my God! I was here for the last transport. I got so lost!’” Jackson handed him a small packet of forensic gloves. “And put these on before you touch anything.”
“I’m not dumb!” Henry denied hotly, and Jackson wished he had something to throw at him.
“Do you really care what these strangers think? Jesus, dumbass, better to play stupid than get caught! Now Carver is supposed to be out of state, but I’ve got an idea about that. I’ll take Sampson’s office. You take Carver’s. Look for anything out of the ordinary. You have your phone—take a picture if you need to. Remember, don’t lift any drugs even if the labels are incriminating. That’s a handy way to get arrested. We take twenty minutes, maximum, after we split up, and we meet back here. Are you ready?”
“Yessir.” Henry stood straight and proud, the Army grunt any CO would ask for.
“Henry?”
“Rivers?”
“Learn to slouch.”
“Goddammit.”
Henry adjusted his posture, and Jackson led the way.
The op went smooth as silk.
The practice was a big one. Jackson had gotten a look at the total number of employees, and while the four surgeons made up the medical group, there were a number of general practitioners and physicians’ assistants using the building and generally beefing up the co-op. Jackson and Henry slid in through the loading bay and scanned the site map, both of them acting like they had a reason to be there. They went down the central hallway, Henry peeling off to the left
toward Carver’s office, Jackson heading toward Sampson’s.
The offices themselves were standard—beige carpet, beige walls—but there was a navy-and-burgundy stripe around waist level, apparently meant to instill confidence or something. Jackson just thought it made the hallway look longer. Sampson’s office was easy to identify—it had a name plate on the wall with all the accompanying letters of the alphabet that spelled out “Very Educated Man.” But the door was locked.
Well, sort of.
Jackson slid a slim, flexible blade of metal out of his wallet and wiggled it around a bit, and suddenly, the office wasn’t locked anymore. He hadn’t always walked on the side of angels.
Also, he’d taken a PI class the last time he’d been laid up. Amazing what you could learn online.
He slid into the office and looked around, thinking he should add Very Rich Man to Very Educated Man. The rug wasn’t beige in here, and the desk wasn’t Formica and metal. The room was decorated with solid oak furniture with nice tapestry cushions, and photos with matching frames. Some were of Robert Scott Sampson getting awards and shaking hands with the mayor and various celebrities, and some were of his family.
The realization of where Martin Sampson got his porn name left a taste in Jackson’s mouth like sour come. If that wasn’t a fuck-you to dear old Dad, Jackson didn’t know what was. So much of this case was cock cheese, he didn’t know where to start.
The pictures didn’t make it any better. Martin Sampson had been a cute kid once, with an infectious smile. Jackson looked at a grade school montage and tried to decide when that smile had become a cynical smirk. Was it grade school? Seventh grade, when he grew tall but his jaw still sported that softness of young adolescence? Was it his freshman year, when his father’s hand on his shoulder looked like a manacle of doom?
Jackson squinted at that picture, frowning. There was something off about Sampson Senior’s expression. It wasn’t… paternal. It wasn’t avuncular. Jackson shuddered, having recognized that look from some of his mother’s boyfriends—including the one who’d woken him up with a hand on Jackson’s dick and his tongue down his throat.
He looked at Martin Sampson in later photos—cynical, lips pulled back in a sneer that passed as a smile, his eyes narrowed in pure venom.
Not a nice guy, no.
But he’d hung with nice guys—John, Henry’s brother—and then he’d screwed them over. Maybe it was the only way he knew how to be. Jackson had seen firsthand that monsters were more often made than born.
Jackson’s suspicions for what made this one, found dead and discarded like trash, made his stomach churn.
He had no qualms grabbing a couple of sterile gloves from his pocket and looking through Robert Scott Sampson’s mail after that.
Drug advert, drug advert, several of them, actually, for oxy or an oxy-like substitute. Interesting. Jackson laid them all flat and took a picture, then stacked them as he’d found them. QuadCeption rental properties, a receipt. Very interesting. Jackson took that out of the opened envelope, took a picture, then replaced it. He searched some more but saw nothing of interest—no receipts to Bad-Guys-Are-Us or You-Sell-It-We-Snort-It—but that was standard. Most people kept their legitimate stuff online these days, and there was a solid desk unit front and center.
The desk done, Jackson rifled through the trash, unsurprised when it yielded very little—but stunned when he heard the doorknob jiggle.
Shit.
He set down the trash can, shucked his gloves into his pockets, and sprawled on the visitor’s chair like he owned the place.
He barely moved his head when the door flew open and the tall, distinguished man in his fifties, with Martin Sampson’s brown eyes and dimples, barged in.
“What in the hell—”
“Wait…,” Jackson muttered, holding up a finger but continuing to tap on his phone. “I’m almost at the next level….” He finished his text to Henry—the one that read, Come knock on Sampson’s door and tell me to get my ass in gear! And then he concentrated diligently on Simon’s Cat, the newest phone game he and Ellery were trying to best each other at this month.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my office?” Robert Sampson sounded pissed and baffled, which was about perfect.
“Waiting for my transport patient,” Jackson said, sounding bored. “Dude, if you didn’t want me to chill in here, you should have locked your door!”
“I did lock my door!” Sampson raged.
Jackson rolled his eyes. “Sure you did. That’s why I’m sitting here, because the door was locked.” He tapped a few more times, then stood up and shoved his phone into his pocket. “But whatever. I’ll leave your precious office—”
“What is your name? You have violated protocol, and you need to be disciplined.”
Jackson pulled a name out of his hat—the name of his least favorite doctor and one of Dave and Alex’s most hated bosses. “Scheideman,” he said, smiling. “Junior Scheideman.”
Sampson’s eyes got really, really big. “Any relation to—”
And Henry, bless him, pounded on the door. “Dammit, move it! We need to get going, now!”
And Jackson sauntered past Robert Sampson, phone in pocket, and out the door with Henry.
He didn’t even break a sweat.
They broke into a run once they cleared the door, though, the early evening heat hitting them like a hammer after the air-conditioning inside. Jackson had the car gassed up and was peeling out of the parking lot before they said another word.
“What did you find?” he asked tersely.
“You know those drug prescription pads?” Henry replied. “You know, the ones that are numbered so they can’t be duplicated?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, Carver’s office was empty, but there were, like, cases upon cases of those stacked up on his desk.”
Jackson whistled. “That’s subtle.”
“Not so much, no.”
“Did you get pictures?”
“Oh yeah—you?”
“I got some other shit that will be very useful. Send your stuff to me and Ellery, and I’ll take a look at it after I drop you off. Where to, by the way?”
Henry thought about it for a minute. “The flophouse,” he said softly. “I… I don’t know. I feel like the guys might… need a little reassurance, you think?”
Well, shit. Again with the totally human Henry. “Yeah. I think that’s decent of you.”
“What about you? What are you going to tell Ellery about your shoulder?”
Which was currently on fire and stiff as a porn-star’s prick. “I’ve got a plan,” Jackson said. “Right after you hand me the ibuprofen in the glove compartment.”
Shattered
ELLERY LEANED over the kitchen table and reexamined the pictures Jackson had just sent him. Interesting—both sets—and they tied into what Ellery had discovered about Sampson’s financials that afternoon. They’d have to discuss his findings when Jackson got home, right after he found out what it was Jackson was trying to hide from him.
He hadn’t liked the sound of Jackson’s voice—not one bit—and he was tired and cranky. And he and Jackson still hadn’t had a good chance to talk about Jackson goddammit talking about what was eating at him.
Ellery had the feeling this was some sort of a test.
He was not great at emotion, really. Had always approached things from a place of reason. But once he and Jackson had gotten together, reason had been taking more and more of a back seat. On the one hand, being in love with Jackson was sort of an amazing experience—totally worth changing for. On the other hand, it left him emotionally raw in a way he’d never imagined. It was like those crimes of passion he’d defended. Now he understood why they were committed.
When you felt so strongly about another human being that their happiness was yours, it left you profoundly vulnerable.
He tried very hard to be patient with Jackson, given what Jackson had grown up with, but he didn’t like
being vulnerable to a man who had a problem with communication and possessed an uncomfortable relationship with the truth as it applied to people who cared about him.
Jackson lied cheerfully about his state of being. The word fine graced his lips so often, Ellery had been tempted to buy him a T-shirt that said nothing but “I’m fine.”
And he was so obviously not fine. The night before had not been fine. The sound of his voice that afternoon had not been fine.
And Ellery needed to know Jackson was fine before they went any further.
Still… those pictures…. Ellery had gotten the photos right before Jade left the office. Jackson had asked Ellery to compare the numbers on the narcotic prescription sheets to the one on Summer Frasier’s tablet, but the codes had been completely different in the electronic prescription. Jackson had included pictures of the family—Robert, Martin, and Martin’s mother, Hadley. In a way, they reminded Ellery of his own family—well-heeled, everybody wearing the right thing for the right occasion, almost professional smiles on everybody’s faces. But Robert’s face was missing the warmth of Ellery’s own father, and Hadley’s eyes didn’t have Taylor Cramer’s wicked intelligence or dry humor.
And Martin Sampson looked fucking miserable from the minute he hit junior high onward.
Resolutely, Ellery tried to make a list of things to do. He’d run Martin Sampson’s financials and had found some interesting things, but he wanted a deep dive of Martin and Robert Sampson’s money paths, as well as Summer Frasier’s. And the name Candy Cormier was starting to niggle at the edges of his brain, like there was something important there he needed to see. He added Ask Kryzynski about Cormier to his list of things to do.
He was still pondering the pictures, the evidence, the things he’d discovered and the things Jackson had told him, when he heard the garage door open. Jackson was home, but Ellery was still leaning over the table, studying the files and his phone, when Jackson’s hands, ripe with the heat of the furnace-like day, circled his waist.
“Mmm…,” he murmured, thrusting back a little, finding Jackson’s thighs as strong as they’d always been, in spite of the lack of meat on his frame. Jackson bent over him, rucking up his shirt and kissing up his spine. Ellery melted into the table, fully aware he was being used for sex and was okay with that.