by Amy Lane
The confusion on their faces made his stomach hurt.
“Detective Kryzynski—you guys know him?”
Fetzer blinked. “Good guy,” she said.
“In the hospital,” Jackson told her brutally. “Because a kid with a switchblade was trying to break into our law office, and between him and the guy this morning, we figure….” He let them make eye contact, the way good partners did.
“They both wanted the same thing,” Fetzer reasoned. Then she frowned. “Is Kryzynski doing okay? We have not heard about that!”
“He’s actually by himself,” Jackson said. “I told him we’d get the guy, but we’re visiting later this evening. I….” He remembered waking up after two weeks in a medically induced coma to discover his hospital room had cards and stuffed animals from Jade and Kaden, but not a damned thing from his department because he’d been wearing a wire trying to bring down his corrupt partner. “I think it would mean something to him to know he had friends in the waiting room.”
Fetzer nodded seriously. “Mercy San Juan?”
“Med Center,” Jackson told her. “I can’t believe you guys don’t know.” He grimaced, and let some of his anger slide down his spine. “To be honest, the two flatfoots at the scene were….” He pursed his lips, and tried to remember he was being a nice guy. “They weren’t you guys,” he said after a moment. “We couldn’t get them to even call the forensics team, and we had prints on the doorknob.”
“So they don’t know who did it?” Hardison asked.
Jackson kept his expression neutral, but he arched one eyebrow.
Again, that partner eyeball communiqué. “You’re a PI, right?” Hardison asked when it was over.
“I am.”
“You’re a pretty good one, right?”
Jackson gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I get by.”
Fetzer snorted. “You’re a hot dog—we can see it. Do you know who did it?”
Jackson gave them a cat and canary smile. “Wanna see a picture?”
Their eyes lit up. “Oh, do we,” Fetzer said. “You’re not going to give us crap about it?”
“I’m not trying to defend the kid who knifed my friend,” Jackson told her, voice hard. “I’m trying to defend the kid who got charged for a murder I think this kid committed.”
Fetzer swore softly. “You are just a bag full of grenades today, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
Augh! He’d pushed too hard. He knew it. He took a deep breath. “We’ve seen some connections between this guy and some other people in the community. For example, your murder vic, No Neck—”
“James Cosgrove,” Hardison said. “Aged eighteen. Not too bright, not too rich, big guy who liked to throw parties.”
Jackson nodded. “That’s the one. Did you know that the night before his death, he hosted a party where a kid got busted for drugs?”
They frowned. “It happens,” Fetzer said.
“One kid. They walked into the house, looked for the one Black kid at the party, and searched him.”
Fetzer got it first. “Was he the only kid with drugs?”
“No, he was not,” Jackson told her.
“Where did they get the drugs?” Hardison asked curiously.
Jackson felt like he was back on an even keel again. “Would you like to see a picture?”
“How do we prove it?” Fetzer snapped. “All we know for certain is you’ve got a picture on your phone. Big deal. I’ve got hundreds.”
Jackson nodded. “Me too. Mostly of my cat. But I’ve got a picture of something else. It won’t hold up in court,” he told them, “because we couldn’t get forensics to come take the print, and it’s in the sun and will probably be too degraded if they get to it tomorrow. But we took the print, and I have a scan of it, and we’re running it right now. We got it off the doorknob—the doorknob our scumbag on my phone was holding while he was trying to break into our office before he—” Jackson had to take a breath for this. “—before he stabbed my friend,” he finished. “Are we interested in this at all?”
“Very much so,” Fetzer said. “And we’d like the names of the two officers on scene because they should have called for backup and forensics. It’s not right,” she said, looking at Hardison. “That boy’s in the hospital and nobody’s there.”
Hardison nodded. “Nope. Someone’ll be there.” He pulled out his phone and started texting.
“I’ll give you all of it,” Jackson said, feeling easy in his stomach again. The world was not all evil. Not all of it.
“That’s real generous,” Fetzer sneered. “What do you want in return?”
“Tell me about the Dobrevk case,” Jackson said, meeting her world-weary cop eyes with a hardness of his own. “I read that file twice, and I don’t see how you guys came to the conclusion that he did it.”
“We didn’t,” Hardison snapped. “That’s no fucking fair. That kid was barely coherent. We got there and the EMTs were busy pronouncing the dead kid, and suddenly this kid sits up and starts babbling—”
“In Russian,” Fetzer clarified. “He must have made some sort of sense, because his father burst in, and they, you know, had one of those conversations without words.”
Jackson smiled faintly. “You guys have been eyeball talking since I walked in.”
And that got him his first smile from Fetzer. “Is that so? What have we been saying?”
“You’ve been saying this case is driving you nuts, and you don’t like the idea of that kid in gen pop any more than I do.”
“He’s in gen pop?” Fetzer asked, her voice pitching the same way Jackson’s had when he’d heard.
“Hopefully not for long,” Jackson said grimly. “We just got this file today. Mr. Cramer is headed to the jail as we speak, trying to get that kid tried as a kid and taken out of general population. We’re doing our best, but we really need some more details.”
“All right, then,” Fetzer said, nodding grimly. “Here’s the details. We get called to the scene, like I said. The EMTs are already there, and the dead kid is on the ground with his throat slit. Dobrevk is on the ground knocked out—he had a concussion or I didn’t raise three boys. He’s sitting up, babbling in Russian, and his father comes in and tells him something, and he goes limp. Still. I tried to talk to him, I had Jimmy here talk to him in case he didn’t like the Black or the woman. He just shut the fuck down and cried.”
“You don’t think he did it,” Jackson said.
“I know he didn’t,” Fetzer told him. “He couldn’t even look at the body.”
“But your lieutenant was on site?”
“Chambers. Got called because it was a murder, and because the kid who got killed was some sort of local football hero. Anyway, Chambers had us arrest him and then signed off on it. But Jimmy and me, we would have brought him in for questioning, maybe, turned him over to the detectives on site, but we didn’t see that kid as the killer.” She grimaced. “We’ve seen a few, you know?”
Jackson nodded. “You said his father was there. Were his mother and the other two kids?”
Fetzer’s eyes went so wide, the whites showed all around the irises. “Two others?”
“Yeah. I know this kid. He has a brother and sister, look a lot like he does—sort of sandy hair, small pretty faces, big gray eyes. Girl dyed a pink stripe in her hair, but it might have washed out.”
“But…. Jimmy, you remember, right?”
“Yeah,” Hardison said. “His father—we went in to arrest the kid, and his father starts to wail, loud, in English. He’s all, ‘My son! My son! My only child, my son!’”
Jackson’s breath stopped. “Oh, I think we have a motive,” he said, not sure he even should have spoken.
“For killing the bigger kid?” Fetzer asked, horrified.
“No, for lying about it.” He watched as they both met horrified gazes and saw the dawning comprehension steal across their faces.
“Someone’s got his brother?” Hardison asked.
“And sist
er,” Jackson added. “That’s what his father was trying to tell him. Not to say anything.”
“Because whoever killed the big guy with no neck…,” Hardison began.
“Has the younger kids,” Fetzer picked up. She frowned. “But who? And how do we even start?”
Jackson held up his phone. “Maybe give me your number first,” he said, “and I’ll send you this kid’s picture and prints. His name is Sergio Ivanov, but people call him Ziggy, and you need to run his prints through your computer and tell your lieu that you have a lead on the guy who knifed a cop. One of you go do that right now while I pick the other guy’s brains, because I’ve got a timetable and punching the time clock is not on the agenda. Let’s talk.”
Hardison rattled off his cell, and Jackson texted him the info before the big guy lumbered out of the room.
Fetzer broke out her notebook and her own phone, and they got down to business.
Twenty minutes later, Hardison walked back into the room, and Jackson’s phone was absolutely bursting with addresses and contacts. He and Henry were going to be running their asses off tomorrow.
“Chambers briefed?” Jackson asked.
Hardison shook his head. “No. I mean, yes, I gave her the information and told her it came from a credible source, but… well, she’s a transfer. She doesn’t know you from fucking Bambi, and she said she’d take the info under advisement.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “Famous fucking last words,” he muttered. “Well, when we’re done here, I suggest you go back and tell her why she might want to listen.” He turned back to Fetzer, wondering if he was going to have to tell these two well-meaning, reasonably intelligent police officers about Ty Townsend in order to secure their cooperation.
He hated the idea—he really did. Galen’s advice was sound—and bringing Ty into it went against his first instincts. But God, there were too many balls in the air here for him to keep that one spinning when he might just maybe be able to trust someone else to handle it. If he could get these two cops to intervene, maybe they could get Lindstrom and Craft to drop the case.
“So about the Townsend kid,” Jackson said delicately. “Do you guys really think he did it?” And now that Hardison was back in the room, he was treated to the vibrating eyeball schtick again. He gave a sigh and swung his leg back over the chair, standing up and stretching while he waited for an answer.
“You know who the arresting officers were,” Fetzer said mildly.
Jackson nodded and moved his hands over his head, taking care to stretch out his chest and upper back. Physical therapy was important for heart patients too. “I do know,” he said. “I was wondering if you had… opinions.”
Hardison rolled his eyes, and then he and Fetzer shared one of those speaking glances again. “Of course we got fuckin’ opinions,” Hardison said finally. “But you don’t speak ill of the department outside of the department.”
Jackson thought about leaving it alone for a nanosecond, and then his hands found his hips and his mouth opened all by itself. “That was so much comfort when I was lying in my hospital bed for a year, and I had one fucking visitor from the department,” he said and then wished for a ball gag, just to make things kinky and uncomfortable.
This time, they couldn’t meet each other’s eyes. Or Jackson’s. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen to the Kryzynski kid,” Hardison said gruffly. “We already promised.”
“Good,” Jackson said, straddling the chair again. “Because our firm is full up on PIs, and you people need him on your side.”
Fetzer let a low, sweet laugh erupt. “You do not mind your words,” she said after a moment.
“Well, there seem to be a lot of people who mind them for me,” Jackson told her, feeling a sunny sort of benevolence again. “So about those two arresting officers—what do you think they were doing at that party?”
“They had a tip,” Fetzer said grimly. “A CI they use.” She swallowed like she tasted something bad. “I don’t know why, but I do not like the sound of the guy’s voice, even over the phone.”
Jackson frowned. “You’ve met him?”
“No. But he’s got a thick, gravelly voice. Not the voice of that kid you showed us. He just sounds smug. You can hear him through an earbud. Hell, Lindstrom was talking to him in the ladies one day, and I could hear him through the walls. I just….” She shuddered. “I know it’s superstitious as hell, but I wouldn’t trust that guy.”
“Any sort of accent?” Jackson asked.
“German,” Hardison said, surprising him.
“Not Russian?” Because that kid who’d knifed Sean had sounded Russian.
“Nyet,” Hardison said and then laughed at his own joke. He sobered for a moment. “I took German in high school. It’s less liquid, more phlegm.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “Gross. Moving on. Look, that bust, the Townsend bust, if I told you we think it was a distraction, could you tell me where you thought those guys were supposed to be that night?”
“Where was the bust made?” Fetzer asked, eyes narrowed shrewdly.
“I thought I’d told you,” Jackson said. “Dead kid—No Neck Cosgrove’s place.”
The open mouths were not a good sign.
“How…?” Fetzer bent her head and rubbed the back of her neck. “Wouldn’t Chambers have caught that?” she asked. “Shouldn’t somebody have turned this over to a detective?”
Jackson shrugged. “I would think so. I don’t know how it was missed.”
“Augh!” Fetzer wore her hair in a tight graying braid, much like the desk sergeant’s, and Jackson watched her wrestle with the urge to run her fingers through her hair. “This is no damned good at all!” she said finally, and Hardison shook his head.
“It’s Chambers,” he said after a moment. “She means well, but….” He shrugged. “Green. She legit could have missed that because she wasn’t looking.”
“I hope,” Fetzer said sharply. “Because…. Because there are too damned many questions here. And I’ve got three years to go before my pension!”
“I’ve got two,” Jimmy said dispiritedly, and at Fetzer’s wounded sound, he gave her a tired grin. “I was going to hang in there for you. Don’t go getting all girlie. My wife would never forgive me. She wants to start a Jimmy Hardison survivor’s club.”
Fetzer gave her partner a tired smile in return. “Good. I’ll hold you to that.” Then she looked at Jackson. “Look, we know who you are and what you did. And you probably expect the whole department’s crawling with snakes. But there’s crooked and there’s green and there’s lazy—and none of these things are the same. But you’re right about one thing. This shit can’t stand. These cases are linked, that Townsend kid should never have been busted, and whether he was part of this or not, James Cosgrove was barely eighteen and his parents are devastated. And the Dobrevk kid’s a victim too. So you’re right. We’ve got some shit to sort, and I’m grateful you brought it to our attention.”
Jackson held up a hand. “Oh no. Stop right there. I’m not leaving this shit. We’re getting the Dobrevk kid out of gen pop, and we need to get the Townsend kid off for reasons that have nothing to do with the rest of this shit, or he’s a target. You see that, right? He becomes a material witness for this other shit, and his life is over. And that’s if they don’t shoot him dead.”
Fetzer and Hardison stared at him, trying to digest. “Well, what, kid? You’re going to save the world all on your own?” Hardison sneered.
“I’ve got help,” Jackson told him, feeling grumpy. “And I wouldn’t mind if you guys did your share. But you can’t write us off because we’re about to clean up your mess, and you’d better not get in our way.”
The two seasoned officers stared at him. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you?” Fetzer asked.
And Jackson hated to bring this up again, but he and Henry were keeping to a schedule here. “Dirty/pretty killer,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Sampson drug ring. And there is some shit down sout
h that you don’t even want to know about. So don’t fuck with me here. I gave you solid details on a 245 with a cop, and I’m going to get that kid out of gen pop if it kills me.” He grimaced. “And it might. Believe me, my boyfriend is fucking tired of me ending up in the hospital here, so if we could avoid that last one, that would be great. So yeah. We’re going to clean up a mess. It would be fantastic if we had some help from the good guys instead of having to worry about them fucking with us instead.”
They went eyeball to eyeball again, and Jackson had had enough.
“Don’t look at each other,” he snapped. “Look at me! You guys can excuse anything you want to each other in the name of department solidarity, but I’ve seen past that curtain, and you know what’s behind it? Blood and fucking despair. I’m the guy who didn’t jump on the fucking bandwagon, and it almost backed over my head here. You got a guilty conscience, you own it up to me!”
“Oh my God,” Hardison muttered, and his hair was short enough that he could run his fingers through it. “You are not going to let up, are you?”
“My friend’s in the hospital and there’s a kid in jail!” Jackson shouted, and both of them flinched.
Fetzer held her hands up. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “You’re right. You’re totally right. Tell us what you need, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Jackson held up his hand and ticked the points off on his fingers. “Kryzynski needs people,” he said. “I need to know what Lindstrom and Craft were supposed to be doing when they were busting Ty Townsend. I need you guys to run Sergio Ivanov, and if your lieutenant isn’t going to do anything about him, I need his fucking information because I will.”
“We don’t need a fucking vigilante!” Fetzer snapped, showing the spine he’d known she’d possessed when he’d walked in the room.
“Do you think he’s working alone?” Jackson said, remembering Ellery’s text as he’d entered the building. “Do you think these incidents are just isolated mayhem? There is something going on that we don’t know about, and that kid is the key. If you’re not going to investigate, we will.”