by Amy Lane
He was mulling all of this over, the silence in the car thoughtful, when suddenly Jackson said, “I can’t believe it didn’t hit us about the high school.”
“Yeah. Not the same guy as the scary CI, though.”
“No, but German. I’m afraid I don’t know my Russian mob/German criminal past well enough.”
Ellery thought about the first place Suzanne Mayer had gone to piss them all off and about Ty as a distraction. That thinking—that tribalism—didn’t just extend to prejudice. Sometimes it extended to community too. “Maybe it’s enough that they’re all pale people who don’t kiss the wrong pale people.”
Jackson snorted. “Pale people?”
“You know what I mean,” Ellery said. “They’re white. They think that’s a link.”
Jackson frowned. “You know, I had an exchange teacher once from a Slavic country. She walked into our classroom on the first day of school, and her eyes got really big and she ran out. She’d apparently never seen real people of color before. She was terrified.”
Ellery made a choked noise. “Did you all educate her?” he asked, horrified.
“We ate her alive,” Jackson confirmed. “And the white kids were the worst at it. Jade and Kaden kept their heads down. They knew the white kids could do it and not get in trouble. But they’d get taken apart because the system was inclined to believe the teacher, and she was already….” He trailed off thoughtfully.
“Biased?” Ellery supplied, trying to help.
“No. I mean, yes. But that kind of blank ignorance is… dangerous. Because if someone doesn’t educate you the right way, it becomes a way to make people who don’t look like you less than human. So if we’re working with a group of mobsters who are already dehumanizing POC, that could explain what they did to Ty, using him as a distraction. His future didn’t matter, and it was obvious. ‘Go to party. Find the Black kid.’ It’s first-grade-level prejudice because they don’t know enough about the people they’re screwing over—or screwing with—to do anything more sophisticated.”
“And if you’re already dehumanizing people,” Ellery said, following his line of reasoning, “it becomes easy to regard them as a product, like cattle. So shipping them off to Vegas or LA to work as underaged sex workers wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”
“Children aren’t much use to them, especially the girls,” Jackson agreed. “So assets but not….” His voice choked a little. “Not children.” He shuddered hard. “Okay. I need a toilet brush for my brain now.”
Ellery’s stomach churned. “Make that two, thank you.”
“But you were right. Pale people. But one of them is placed close to the source of studen—” Jackson stopped abruptly, and Ellery followed his line of thought and felt cold sweat prickle the back of his neck.
“Oh God,” Ellery said, horrified. “We need to check the middle school and high school. How many kids have they had go missing lately?”
“Except it’s August,” Jackson said, also in horror. “How many people around this high school have gone missing since June?”
“Oh dear God.” Ellery held on to his breakfast, but it was a near thing.
“Don’t you hurl on me,” Jackson snapped. “Come on, Ellery. We need you at full force today. You need to get Ty Townsend off that fucking charge without bringing any of this shit into it, or he and his mother are going to be on the chopping block next. They’ll have to move out of state and change their names if this becomes a mob thing. You know that, right?”
Ellery nodded. “I need you to talk to Ty’s best friend,” he said. “I know you’ve got other things to do.”
“That’s where Henry and I are going next,” Jackson told him. “And then we’re planning to hit Lindstrom and Craft again to ask them about Ty’s case. And then….” His voice dropped and grew grim.
“Coaches and principals, oh my?” Ellery supplied.
“Yeah.” Jackson closed his eyes and smacked his head back against the headrest. “I hate the thought that there’s someone attached to the school doing this. I know some pedophiles work as coaches, but Kaden’s a coach too, and I know a lot of coaches who have given up nights and weekends just because they want to see kids do well. It’s such a shitty thing to do, abuse that sort of trust.”
Ellery grunted. “Like, say, your partner and academy sponsor trying to get you to be a dirty cop?”
Jackson sat up straight, his eyes practically popping out of his head. “I wasn’t a child,” he almost snarled.
Ellery didn’t flinch. “You were still a victim,” he said. “And it colored the way you thought of authority for the last ten years.”
Jackson shook his head. “This wasn’t even the same,” he said. “I had power then, the power to say no. The power to walk away. These kids don’t have that.”
Ellery didn’t state the obvious: the people Jackson had run to for safety had abused his trust, making him wear a wire for months and then using the information he’d gleaned to set up their own criminal enterprise. Jackson had been used too. Jackson had been victimized too. Jackson’s humanity had been voided and sold to the highest bidder.
“No,” Ellery said, because he was right that the children they were trying to find had even fewer choices—and fewer chances—than Jackson did. “Which is why we’re going to track this thing down to the end. Don’t hit the nice football coach, Jackson. We need to be able to arrest him first.”
Jackson grunted. “Prison has a special place in hell for those people. You know that, right?”
“Hell has a special place in hell for them,” Ellery agreed.
Jackson frowned. “You can’t fool me, Counselor. I’ve been talking to your rabbi, you know. He told me some Jews don’t believe in hell.”
Ellery thought about the young people being betrayed by an authority figure, being shipped off to a strange city to be sold for sex before they even knew what it was themselves.
“I’m starting to change my mind about that,” he said mildly.
“Don’t,” Jackson said, surprising him. Jackson’s hand on his knee surprised him even more. “No cynicism. Not from you.”
Ellery smiled tiredly. “You help me keep the faith, you know that, right?” He used Jackson’s phrasing on purpose. “Do you think we should have Rabbi Watson over for dinner next week?”
Jackson grunted. “Make it two weeks from now. He shaved his beard, you know.”
Ellery’s eyes widened. “I had no idea. You didn’t mention this to me.”
“I was trying to purge it from my brain,” Jackson protested. “I thought he had to have a beard. All the rabbis on TV do! But apparently they don’t. He said he wore the beard to make him look older, but you know why I think he really grew it?”
“I have no idea,” Ellery said, completely distracted—and happy for the distraction, at least for the moment. “Enlighten me.”
“Because the man has a cleft chin! Like, a divot so deep it’s probably hard to shave. Underneath that beard he looks like a movie star with a baby-butt chin! He grew the beard because he thought it would make him look older, and he’s right. He shaved it and looked about twelve.” Jackson harrumphed. “You would know that if you went to temple. I mean I don’t go to temple because, hello, not Jewish, but I thought you had a pact with God or something.”
Ellery made a pained sound. “Yes. I did. But then Rabbi Watson rather gently reminded me that trying to bribe God was—and these are his words, mind you—‘A very non-Jewish way of looking at your relationship with the Almighty.’”
Jackson blinked. “Because it’s like buying God’s favor?”
“Yup.” Ellery had been embarrassed to realize the rabbi was right. God, his bar mitzvah had been a long time ago. “I’ll keep going once in a while—just so I don’t forget stuff like that!”
“Well, I still think having him to dinner would make him happy,” Jackson said. “That’s a very mitzvah thing to do. You’re a mensch.”
“Oh dear Lord,” Ellery muttered. “Mitzvah thing
to do indeed! Are you sure you don’t want an actual shrink to talk to?”
“An actual shrink wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining as a guy who disguises his fountain of eternal youth with that amazing beard,” Jackson told him. Then, a little more seriously, “Watson is human. He doesn’t have to be a counselor because he’s a rabbi. If he wanted to be, he could be a religious professor kind of rabbi. He took on the role of counselor because people trust someone whose whole study is about God. He feels like that’s his mission to the world. So yeah, I trust the guy. I hope that’s okay.”
“We could practically make you a bar mitzvah,” Ellery grumbled, turning off the motor. “You sure do seem to have learned a lot.”
Jackson shrugged. “I was on medical leave for eight weeks, Ellery. I was bored shitless, and that guy was on my approved list of people you’d let me talk to. Of course I picked his brains. Smart guy. Very sweet. Let’s have him and his wife to dinner. You already know how to cook kosher.”
More like order it out, but Ellery half laughed and they both slid into the sunshine. “Sure. But, you know….”
And distraction time was over. “We’ve got work to do,” Jackson said soberly. “Let’s go catch some bad guys.”
Extra Credit
“HAVE YOU eaten?” Henry asked as he got behind the wheel. “It’s one o’clock. I’m starved. Let’s stop some place—my treat.”
“I’m fine,” Jackson said, because truthfully, eating anything after that conversation with Ellery about human traffickers and the kind of mentality it took to strip a person of their humanity and make them cattle had seriously done a number on his stomach. By the time Jackson and Ellery had gotten to the office and had their meeting with Henry, lunchtime had come and gone. Ellery had asked Jade to call out for sandwiches, but Jackson had been just as happy to miss that action.
“Jackson.”
Jackson ignored the warning in his voice and kept talking.
“So, did you ask Jenny to call Arizona and tell her what she knows about Suzanne Mayer?” Henry’s morning had been pretty productive as well. It turned out that Jenny Probst had identified the picture of Ziggy Ivanov from Henry’s phone after she’d told Henry that she’d caught one of the bailiffs who worked the courtroom she was often assigned to looking through her briefcase when Jenny had left it with a friend to use the ladies room. Jenny had snatched it back, and later that day she’d seen the bailiff with “a blond high-school-looking kid with serial-killer eyes.”
And she’d ID’d the bailiff as Mayer, and Arizona had a solid case and more leverage, and that was always helpful.
It also helped to know that the leak didn’t go beyond the Mayers and that the link was damned clear. Jackson had enough leads in this case already.
“Yes, I did,” Henry said in exasperation. “You were getting phone numbers and addresses, and I was talking to Arizona Brooks, who, I have to admit, makes Herrera look like a kitten.”
Jackson snorted. “Give Herrera some seasoning. She’ll be a tiger soon enough.”
“You sound like that’s a good thing,” Henry said.
“Well, not everyone who shows up in court deserves an Ellery Cramer defense,” Jackson admitted. “For example, these assholes at the high school.”
“I can’t believe they’re out there playing football,” Henry muttered. “From one to three?”
“Yes, but that’s because they’ve been there since nine already,” Jackson responded. “God, this heat. It’s barbaric.”
Henry gave a mean chuckle. “You forget I spent eight years going on and off deployment to the Iraqi desert. This is bad—I mean, I know it’s bad—but twenty miles, full kit, in 120-degree weather….”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re tougher than me,” Jackson admitted freely. “Well done, Junior. You go to the corner store and talk to Nate Klein.” Ty Townsend’s bestie just happened to be working today. “I’ll talk to the asswipe football coach.”
Henry grunted.
“You disagree?”
“Mm… well, for one thing, Rivers, and forgive me for saying this, but your poker face sucks, and you’re an asshole to the people you don’t like.”
“No, I wouldn’t find that offensive at all. Why would you think that?”
“Ouch,” Henry said, voice arid. “I think your sarcasm slapped me in the kisser. And for another, you get kids. They trust you. I don’t know, you have that look or something. Whatever. The kid you should talk to. I look like an Aryan asshole who might sympathize with another Aryan asshole.”
“I look like an Aryan asshole,” Jackson said, offended for Henry.
“Rivers, take it from someone whose father was a real Aryan asshole. You smell like a bleeding-heart liberal. I don’t.”
“So you put on your monster odorant, and you think you’re ready to roll?” Jackson asked, stung.
Henry narrowed his eyes, and his lips moved. “Monster odorant….” The snort of laughter he made was so sharp, Jackson honestly worried about whether or not he could drive. “Oh my God. To make me smell like a monster!” Henry hooted. “Good one.”
His grin then was so sunshiny bright that some of Jackson’s sour mood evaporated. Henry had been a stereotypical redneck when Galen had dragged him into Ellery’s office a couple of months back. Or he’d worked hard to appear that way. The truth was, he’d been lost, having just cut himself off from every toxic life pattern that had tried hard to shape him.
The person he’d shaped for himself was, in fact, kind and funny, if a little bit grumpy and bluntly spoken at awkward times. Making him laugh like that—at the person he’d worked so hard to be—was something of a victory.
That sort of thing gave Jackson hope. People could change. What he and Ellery did wasn’t in vain. Working to help people, to make the world a better place, to make sure the system didn’t eat the innocent or even the not-so-innocent whole, was important.
Tage Dobrevk was only seventeen years old. Ty Townsend had his entire shining future ahead of him. There might be dragons in the world, but that was why there were people who would slay the dragons too.
Jackson smiled a little, chuckled along with Henry, and let some of his funk fade away. “So okay, you go speak redneck to this guy. Nate Klein’s in the little shop around the corner. He’s got a scholarship to Sac State, so he’s got to stay local, but he’s apparently a nice kid. Drop me off at the mom-and-pop, and you go do your thing.”
Henry grinned. “I’ll make sure I smell like monster when I do.”
Kensington’s Groceries was one of those rare, true small grocery stores that big cities sometimes held on to. In a corner of the first floor of a much larger building, it had a produce aisle and a milk aisle, and while it did have a case for beer and some alcohol, that was only about 10 percent of its overall stock.
The kid wearing the traditional grocer’s apron was busy with the rest of the stock, taking cans of beans from a handheld basket and stacking them neatly on a shelf that had been apparently stripped bare.
He was a good-looking kid—tall, more bulked up than most kids his age, but he had that ranginess in his shoulders and the thinness in the neck that said he was still growing. Dark hair, dark eyes, and Jackson bet he had his pick of cheerleaders if that was his thing.
“Nate Klein?” Jackson asked, putting his hands in his pockets and slouching a little to look as nonthreatening as possible.
It must have worked—or the kid must have had a good life—because he smiled earnestly and nodded. “Yessir, can I help you with something?”
Jackson noticed the small deli counter and thought of Henry’s claim that he was starving.
“Yeah, can I get two sandwiches on sourdough and some conversation?”
Nate brightened, and he finished clearing out his basket. “Yessir. Here, let me go wash my hands. The sink’s in the back.”
He returned in two minutes, drying his hands on a paper towel. Jackson watched as the kid crumpled the towel and pitched it into a trash can, raising h
is hands by his head and mouthing, “For three! The crowd goes wild!” before pretending to run down “the court” and behind the deli counter.
Jackson had to laugh. “Bored much, kid?”
Nate grinned, his apple cheeks coming up to obscure his vision. “Well, it gets sleepy here after lunch. But you should see the place around eleven thirty. Line around the block. Mr. Kensington and I are usually working the deli nonstop for about two hours.” He waved to the rest of the store. “It takes me a good half hour to get the place to look like it wasn’t scavenged by locusts, you know? I don’t mind a lull in the operation.”
Jackson nodded. “I hear you. I’m glad I didn’t catch you when it was busy. I sort of need to talk to you about something.”
“So you said. Sourdough? We use the good stuff.”
“Yessir,” Jackson said, liking this kid very much. “I’ll take one hot pastrami with pickles, and one chicken pesto with lettuce and tomato, no mayo.”
“Good choices both.” Nate got busy. “So, how do you know who I am, and what are we talking about?”
“Well, I got your name from Ty Townsend, and we’re talking about how bullshit the charges against him are.”
Nate paused for a second to look Jackson in the eyes. “So you’re his lawyer? I told him to go find a good one because it was really bullshit. It was a total setup. I went home and told my parents, and after they chewed me out for even staying there when someone gave out party favors like that, they told me to make sure Ty got a good lawyer. They love him, you know. We’ve been buddies since we were in pre-K, and they were so proud of both of us when we graduated. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. What do you want to know?”
Jackson had to take a breath, his belief in humanity suddenly reaffirmed. “Okay, so we know it was bullshit. I want to know a couple of things. For starters, the kid who gave you the pills—Ziggy—what do you know about him?”
Nate gnawed his lip thoughtfully. “He’s not really a high school student,” he said bluntly after a moment. His hands paused mid bread slice. “Coach Schroeder is the only teacher who seems to know who he is. Calls him Ivanov, like he’s a football player or a kid, but he’s not in any of our classes. Ty and I….” Nate frowned. “We don’t trust him. He was always trying to get us to go to parties and stuff, and, I mean, we were studying for our AP exams and our SATs and stuff. We didn’t have time for that shit. I mean, Ty and me, we’re not even in the same league as players, but we were both pretty good students, and, I mean, my folks would kill me, right?”