School of Fish

by Amy Lane

  Jackson nodded. “No, that’s what Ty told us. That you guys shoved the drugs in your pockets so you could throw them away later. But that you didn’t want to piss Ziggy off.”

  Nate shifted from foot to foot. “I… I saw Ziggy one day, walking by the store. He had his arm around this girl. She looked like his sister, and she was crying. She was young—like maybe fourteen—and they were talking in what sounded like Russian. And at first I thought, ‘Hey, maybe he’s not as creepy as I thought.’ He seemed to be comforting her, you know? And then, as they were disappearing around the corner, I saw his arm tighten, like, you know what muscles look like, when they’re all taut? And it wasn’t until I was walking home that I thought, ‘Wait—was he restraining her?’ And I started watching the news and stuff for amber alerts, but I didn’t see one, and thought maybe I was imagining it. But… but I just keep thinking about that. And it hasn’t left me. I’ve never trusted him, and I didn’t want to, I don’t know…. Call down the heat of God on him because of a muscle spasm. But….” Nate shuddered. “I just can’t get it out of my head.”

  Jackson nodded and felt bad because he was going to color this kid’s world a little darker. “Your instincts were right on, kid. You see Ziggy around—especially with any kids—and you need to call me.” Jackson gave Nate his card and then wrote the department’s general phone number along with Fetzer’s and Hardison’s names on the back. “If you can’t get hold of me, get hold of these two cops and tell them what it’s about. Ziggy, he’s bad news. And those two cops aren’t the same as the two who busted that party. Can you tell me about those guys?”

  Nate resumed his sandwich making, obviously trying to gather his words, and Jackson gave him his space. For one thing, he was actually getting hungry, and for another, if he didn’t feed Henry, Henry’s newfound sense of humor might go up in hunger fumes.

  For another, this kid had a sharp mind, and he might be able to give Jackson something important.

  “Ty and I were toward the back. To be honest, I was heading for the bathroom so we could ditch the stupid butterfly drugs. God, making X look like candy? It’s fucking creepy, you know? I’ve got a little sister. Someone could tell her that’s a fucking vitamin, right?”

  Nate’s swear words got a little more pronounced as he got upset, and Jackson approved. But then something Nate said pinged something he’d seen in Ellery’s notes on the police report.

  “Ty said something about that too—little pink pills with butterflies on them. Have you seen those around?”

  “Ziggy passes them around a lot.” Nate shuddered. “God, I just keep thinking I should have beaten him up on general principle, but my folks didn’t raise me that way.”

  Jackson’s breath quickened, remembering that knife. “He’s really fucking dangerous, Nate. Don’t… the next time you see him, you call the cops or you call me, do you understand?”

  Nate nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I get it. What’s he done?”

  And Jackson sobered. “You heard about No Neck and Tage Dobrevk?”

  Nate’s eyes widened. “Tage couldn’t have done that. Are you representing him too?”

  “Yeah. And guess who was there before Tage got knocked unconscious at the scene?”

  Nate shuddered. “Oh God!”

  “So take this seriously, and don’t let on to Ziggy you know he’s dangerous. If he asks you to do anything, just tell him you can’t. And then call me!”

  “Okay. I hear you. Do… do we know why No Neck was killed?” Nate’s voice trembled. “He wasn’t a bad guy, you know? A little dumb and, God, insensitive as hell, but he was learning. Most of the time he was always smiling, always glad to see his team. We weren’t tight, like me and Ty, but we were friends. Tage too. It just seemed so unreal! That two people I knew would… would be dead, or have done something that awful.” Nate clenched his jaw and shook his head. “But Ziggy? Ziggy I could believe.”

  “Trust your instincts, kid. They’re right on. And be careful around him. Don’t let him know you know he’s a bad guy.”

  Nate rolled his eyes. “Have you even seen me, mister? I can’t hide shit with this baby face!”

  And go self-awareness! “Well, do your best. Ziggy’s pretty hot right now. Odds are good he’s not going to be lingering around the high school set. Keep an eye out. And tell me more about this party.”

  “So Ty and I were back by the bathroom, getting ready to flush those creepy pink pills, and there’s a knock at the door. Ziggy opens it and invites the two officers in.”

  Jackson frowned. “Did they identify themselves when they knocked? Say they were Sac PD or anything like that?”

  “No, sir,” Nate told him, looking puzzled. “But as soon as they stepped in, they told everybody to freeze.”

  “So of course everybody started streaming out the back door.”

  “Well, they would have, but the cops had their guns out already.”

  “Wait what?” Jackson blinked. “No. No no no no. You don’t take your piece out if nobody’s resisted. You don’t take it out if it’s a bunch of kids standing around a keg!”

  “I know!” Nate said. “I almost wet my fucking pants. Anyway, Ty and I, we’re good kids, right? So we just stand there like morons with our hands up, thinking if we do what we’re supposed to, they go away. But they didn’t. They walked straight to Ty and searched his pockets, and they found the little packet with three pills and arrested him and walked out.”

  The packet with three pink butterfly pills was starting to stick in Jackson’s craw. “What happened to the party after he left?” Jackson said curiously.

  “Well, for starters, everybody said it was bullshit,” Nate said. He paused. “And then No Neck looked at Ziggy and….” He swallowed. “He had this hurt look on his face. He said, ‘But Ty’s my friend.’”

  “What did Ziggy say?” Jackson asked, stirred with reluctant sympathy for the departed No Neck.

  “He said, ‘Yes, but not your family. You need to remember who your family is.’”

  Jackson closed his eyes, hating where this was probably leading. “Did No Neck say anything afterward?”

  “I cornered him in the kitchen,” Nate said. “I was pissed. Told him I’d go to the cops myself. He said not to, said he’d do it.” Nate’s shoulders slumped. “And the next night, he was dead.”

  Jackson took in a sharp breath. “Okay. Okay, then. So you know Ziggy’s dangerous, and there are a few things I need to find out. You got my card, kid?”

  Nate nodded to where it sat as he finished wrapping the two sandwiches.

  “After I pay for those, I’m going to watch you put that into your phone. Then I’m going to walk to the school where some guy named Baldwin is going to be lying to my buddy about why he let this Ziggy asshole around high school students.”

  “Baldwin?” Nate said, wiping down his work space before taking off his gloves. “You mean Coach Schroeder?” One full lip curled up in disgust. “Coach asshole?”

  “Asshole? Why?”

  Nate moved behind the register and threw his gloves away underneath the counter. “That’ll be $15.98. But since you’re helping Ty out, I can throw in some chips and two sodas for free.”

  Jackson grinned at him. “I’m down for that,” he said. “Can I grab them on the way out?”

  “Sure.”

  Jackson paid him and then threw a fiver in the tip cup, because the kid had been competent as hell. “So, why’s the assistant coach an asshole?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s not really a teacher. Coach Foster and Assistant Coach Herredia both get stipends for doing football, but they also teach in the school. Schroeder got the job part-time as… I don’t know. Some sort of glorified water boy. But he’s not a teacher, and he’s always trying to ‘get in with the kids.’ It’s creepy. He’s been working with the varsity kids for the last two years but usually only the bench. I guess Foster and Herredia thought he could do less damage that way.”

  Jackson frowned. “What are hi
s qualifications?”

  Nate stared at him blankly. “Do I look like the principal or superintendent? I start college next week, remember? The only reason I’m here now is because we get the stadium to practice, when it’s not two zillion degrees outside!”

  “Well, you know, kid, you’ve been a fountain of information until now. I was sort of hoping it could continue.”

  “I dunno, mister. Come back when I’m all grown up or something.” The kid rolled his eyes, and Jackson let out a snort.

  “My ass. You’re pretty grown up now. College is window dressing.”

  He got a grin in return, and then Nate Klein grew sober. “You’re gonna get Ty off, right? I….” His voice stuttered. “He’s worked so hard. I mean, you look at No Neck, and I guess there’s worse things than not going to college but, you know. All that work.” A flutter of a smile then, like a scared moth. “He was supposed to go to a big school and be a football hero and come back and brag to me. We had a deal, you know?”

  Jackson nodded. “I hear you. We’ll do our best.”

  He got an earnest nod in response. “That’s all you can do, you know.”

  Augh! This kid’s sweetness was killing him slowly. Nate Klein, Tage Dobrevk—even Ty Townsend, although Jackson hadn’t even met the kid yet—they had no place in the same area populated by the Ziggy Ivanovs or the Baldwin Schroeders of this world.

  “We’ll try to make it count,” Jackson told him. He took a step toward the door, plastic bag hanging from his hand, and then turned back. “So you may not know why Ziggy doesn’t belong, but I understand that the teachers hated him. Can you give the name of a teacher you saw who wanted him gone?”

  “Mrs. Eccleston,” Nate said promptly. “I had her for American Government and Econ. Her classroom is right by the gate, so when Ziggy was just outside the gate, talking people up and shit, she could see him from her desk. Boy, did that woman kick up a fuss.”

  “Hardass?” Jackson asked approvingly.

  “Marshmallow,” Nate countered. “But she took care of us. And she thought Ziggy was dangerous.”

  “Interesting.” Jackson pondered, thinking about the date. “Are the teachers there now, you think?”

  “Oh yeah. School starts on Thursday of this week, if you can believe that shit!”

  Jackson grimaced. “Yeah, no. My summer was a complete loss—I’m not even kidding. So if it starts Thursday, they should be back fixing up their rooms and stuff, right?”

  “I hope so.” Nate grinned, and then it died. “I was going to go with Ty on Wednesday. We made a plan the night of the party, you know? To go say hi to our old teachers.”

  It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, but it was a sharp reminder that somebody was trying hard to dick with Ellery’s client. “Well, Ty needs to stay away until we get Ziggy into custody. Maybe give him a call and have him give you messages to take.”

  “Yeah. God. Okay. This sucks. We were going to do a sleepover before he left for school. I just….” He flailed a little.

  “Miss your friend.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we’ll see what we can do,” Jackson reassured him. “I’d like to wrap this up in time to call his school and tell them all charges have been dropped, but there’s what I want to do and what I can prove.” He took another step toward the door. “And to that end….”

  “Yeah. Bye, Mr. Rivers.”

  “Bye, Nate. Don’t forget to call me if you need anything or remember anything. Any help to fix this, okay?”

  “Will do. Thanks!”

  And with that, Jackson sauntered into the heat of the day, grateful for the sodas and the sandwiches as he took off for the school.

  JACKSON HAD to pass the football practice field as he made his way to the administration building, and he looked across the grass to see Henry showing something on his phone to a stocky man in his late twenties, brown-haired, blue eyed, and as pretty as a field of daisies.

  Henry’s eyes flickered to Jackson as he sauntered by, giving him a brief nod but keeping his concentration on the man Jackson assumed was Baldwin Schroeder. Something about the way Henry carried himself—the stiffness of his posture, the way he crossed his arms, the neutrality of his expression—told Jackson that he was trying hard to hide his dislike of the person he was talking to.

  Ah. That was what they called in the business a clue.

  Jackson kept going, walking wide around the fence to head for the admin building, hoping he could check in as a visitor.

  By the time he got there, he was drenched in sweat and so grateful for the air-conditioning he almost collapsed. There was something about the sun on the football field—probably the humidity—that made the heat so intense and so close it seemed to stop his breath.

  He tried not to sweat all over the Formica counter and smiled at the grim-faced secretary behind the desk. “Hi, I’d like to talk to Mrs. Eccleston?”

  “Sign in, please,” the woman said sourly. The nameplate on her desk read Shirley Anderson, and Jackson wondered if she saved any of that disdain for her students or if she spent it all on him.

  Jackson signed the register, and Ms. Anderson plopped a school map and a visitor’s badge in front of him. “Put your name there and follow the map to here.” She circled a destination. “It’s in the K block, the portable on the end by the gate.”

  The gate actually backed up against the parking lot behind the football practice field—which had been open, dammit. He was heading, in fact, back to where Henry was, and given that the campus had a tendency to sprawl in the middle of the city, he wanted to whimper. Okay, okay, fine. Maybe he wasn’t 100 percent yet, because the heat and the humidity really were sapping his will to live, but he was damned if he admitted that to anybody.

  “Are there any water fountains on the—”

  “You’ll see them on the sides of these two buildings,” she interrupted in a bored tone.

  “Any vending machines with cold water?” he asked, and he had to admit, he was sort of pushing her buttons now because she was being a pill. He didn’t usually get this response from people. He tried a pretty smile. “I’ve got sodas in here for my buddy, but I gotta admit, some clear water would be—”

  “At the end of the building,” she said, no smile in her icy gray eyes at all. “You’ll see it. You should leave now before she goes for the day. They really weren’t required to come back after lunch, but most of the teachers stayed to fix up their rooms.”

  “Gotcha,” he said, still smiling.

  Her hair was iron gray, and she compressed her lips so tight, they almost matched. “You can find it,” she said heavily, and he turned to go.

  “Hey,” he said as his hand hit the release bar across the glass door. “You stay happy. You’re the heart of the school, you know that?” And then he left before she could respond. Yeesh!

  She was right about the vending machines, though, and he felt a lot better after finishing off an icy cold water in one gulp. He bought another one for Henry, because the sodas were nice, but seriously, nothing beat water, and then bought another one for Mrs. Eccleston on a hunch. Poor woman, having to work with that dragon? Jackson felt like the water was the least he could do.

  His steps echoed on the cheap wooden ramp up to the portable classroom, and he had to admit, the sound had a familiar ring to it. There was something universal about cheap prefab buildings and schools bursting at the seams.

  He opened the door partway and stuck his head inside, liking the bright posters on the walls that he got with that first glance. “Mrs. Eccleston?”

  “Yeah? Can I help you?”

  Given Nate Klein’s glowing report, Jackson half expected the American Government teacher to be one of those sweet young things whom schoolboys fantasized about—and in that way, Mrs. Eccleston was a surprise.

  Squat, fiftyish, with a good inch of gray between her dyed black hair and her part, the woman sitting at the desk was wearing loose shorts and an oversized gray T-shirt, neither
of which was flattering on her. She wasn’t attractive, not even in that lean, superfit way that a lot of women had when they hit this age. She was squishy and tired, and she’d obviously forgotten her coif and her public face when she’d come in to finish decorating her room. There was a step stool in the corner of the room and a series of posters and tacks, obviously waiting to fill up the last empty space.

  “Hi,” he said, coming in. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Jackson Rivers. I’m working for Ty Townsend’s attorney, and I was hoping you could answer some—”

  “Oh my God,” she said, her eyes practically rolling back in her head. “Is that food?”

  Jackson grinned. “Uhm, sure. How about… here.” He pulled out the chicken pesto he’d meant for himself and the chips and soda, setting them up on her desk with plenty of napkins. “You sit down and eat, and I’ll pin up the rest of these posters, and you can answer my questions. How’s that sound for a bargain?”

  Her eyes, which had sort of been lost in the folds of her eyelids, grew wide and limpid. They were a sweet brown. “That sounds like you, sir, are an angel from heaven. I forgot to eat and I didn’t remember until right now.”

  He figured. And after that morning, facing the realities of getting Tage’s family back, he was still a little queasy. The heat didn’t help.

  She sat down and dug into the windfall, and Jackson got started pushing pins. After a few minutes during which Mrs. Eccleston ate like she’d forgotten what food even was, she finally wiped her mouth, took a drink of soda, and sat back.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I just jumped a stranger for food. That’s so embarrassing.”