School of Fish

by Amy Lane

  Jackson laughed and squared up another poster, this one featuring the title The Cost of War, with a list of everything from economic impact to the cost of the truth to social impact.

  “No worries. I’m here to do two things. One of them is nice—Nate Klein says hello, and I imagine Ty Townsend would too, but I haven’t talked to him yet.”

  “Oh, that’s wonder—” Jackson heard the exact moment what he was really saying seeped in. “—ful,” she finished weakly. “So, are you Ty’s lawyer? I heard it through the grapevine that he was getting a good one.”

  “I’m the PI who works for the good lawyer,” Jackson clarified, making sure the top of the poster was straight before sliding his hands down the front and pinning it from the bottom. “And we think Ty got a raw deal. In fact,” he said, pinning first one tack and then the other, “we think he got set up.”

  “Oh thank God.” He straightened to find Mrs. Eccleston taking a heavy swig from his root beer. “That kid has so much promise. I couldn’t believe that he’d do something stupid—like getting caught with drugs—right before he was about to leave for school. His dad died when he was practically a baby, you know. His mom is just the nicest person. She started volunteering when his sister was going here. I….” She took another chug of the soda, then paused ruminatively. “You just worry about kids sometimes. But that kid I never worried about.” She grimaced. “I worried about No Neck—I mean James—though.”

  He watched as she deflated where she sat, and his heart gave a little wrench. Ty Townsend and Tage Dobrevk were getting all the attention now because there was still time to save them. But James Cosgrove had been a victim too, and he seemed to have been forgotten.

  “Why would you worry about James?” he asked. “He was going to college as well, right?”

  She grimaced. “Yeah, but his heart wasn’t in it. I don’t know his family situation, but I know his original name wasn’t Cosgrove.”

  Jackson frowned. “What was it?”

  She frowned. “Something long and Slavic. I’m sorry. I’m pretty good at pronouncing names when I see them, but once they’re out of sight? Not so much. But this school is about fifteen percent second-generation Russian immigrants and about thirty percent third- and fourth-generation Mexican immigrants.”

  “African American?”

  “Around twenty percent. There’s this terrible, terrible tension between the kids of color and the Russian immigrants. All sorts of hidden resentments. On both sides.”

  “I bet the Russian kids don’t get told to go home, do they?” Jackson said grimly.

  “No, they do not.” Poor Mrs. Eccleston—she looked so defeated. “And when we can teach one of those kids to really open up? To love all his classmates, all his teammates, the same? That’s a big deal.”

  “Was James like that?” Nate had said something like this, that he wasn’t always the most sensitive of guys, but he’d tried hard to fix that and to do the right thing.

  “He was.” Mrs. Eccleston’s voice grew thick. “It’s so unfair. James started out sort of this big bruiser who had no plans to go to college. He told me when he was a freshman that his family didn’t see any need for it. His oldest sister was already going, and he just didn’t have the brains. Me, his math teacher, his history teacher—we kept urging him to try. We were like, ‘Hey, you have to pass your classes to play football anyway, so why not just a little more?’ And a little more, and a little more. And suddenly, he was taking his SATs and not doing half bad, and he applied to Sac State, and he was admitted. No big scholarship—he was a good football player, but not great—but he was a college student. We were really proud of him. I mean, kids like Ty? He was so bright, we had to wear shades the minute he walked in. But kids like James? He had to work so hard to get something like that. You’re proud of them both, but with James, we really earned our stripes, you know?”

  “It’s hard when you lose someone like that,” Jackson said softly.

  She nodded and unashamedly wiped under her eyes with a clean napkin. He noticed that she had a stockpile of Kleenex under one of her shelves, and he ran her a box before she had to do that again.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just… I had all those kids. James, Ty… Tage, and I don’t think he did it by the way. To have all those things happen so quickly—it’s hard. We lost a carload of kids in a crash about ten years ago, and this feels the same. It’s like every day I’m mourning all my hope.”

  “Well, at least Tage’s been released,” Jackson told her, pretty sure she wouldn’t have heard this yet. “All charges dropped.”

  “Oh thank God!” She grabbed a couple of the aloe Kleenex. “Who are you, the happiness fairy?”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to check. When he saw Henry’s text—a series of question marks—he responded with the room number and quick directions from where Henry was out in the field.

  “Just doin’ my job, ma’am,” he said when he was done, tipping an imaginary hat.

  “Except what is your job?” she asked, and he turned back to the posters.

  “You mean besides helping nice folks such as yourself?” He kept the accent to let her laugh.

  “Well, you said you were saying hi from Nate and Ty. What was the other thing?”

  He hated to even bring it up, so he made sure he’d set the next poster up to tack before he began.

  “There’s two things,” he said. “First of all, the party favors getting passed around when Ty got busted were little pink pills with butterflies on them. Is that something you’ve been told to look out for?”

  She thought about it. “No, but—” She wrinkled her nose. “—I am not a big fan of our Student Resource guy anyway.” She snorted softly, and Jackson wondered where this woman had been hiding when he’d been in high school. Well, this was the good school district. She’d probably been thanking her lucky stars she’d gotten hired here instead of where he, Jade, and Kaden had gone to school.

  “What’s he like?” Jackson asked, pulling his attention back to the job at hand.

  “Young,” she said dispiritedly. “And unlike most of the other SROs we’ve had, he got his job because he was connected and it was easy. The last guy was great—we had seminars at the teacher in-services, we’d get newsletters telling us the latest shit to watch out for. This guy just hangs out after school and talks to the kids and says he’s patrolling—he doesn’t even keep out the guys who don’t belong here!”

  “Like Ziggy Ivanov?” Jackson said, nose twitching.

  “Who even is that kid?” she snapped, and he had to laugh, because she suddenly sounded no older than her own students.

  “A pain in your ass?” he prompted, checking the number of pins he had in his hand.

  “He does not belong here, and he’s always leering at the freshman girls. It’s gross.”

  Jackson hoped she never learned how truly, truly gross it was. “Have you seen that kid lately?” he asked.

  “No.” He saw when the question hit her. “Why? Does he have something to do with what happened with Ty and Tage Dobrevk?”

  “What if I told you he was at both crime scenes?” he said.

  Her frown deepened. “But he and James were cousins. At least that’s what James always said when I told him Ziggy wasn’t a good influence.”

  Jackson remembered what Nate had told him. “Did he say they were cousins? Or did he say they were family?” he asked sharply.

  And she knew what that meant. “Oh,” she muttered. “Shit. He said family. Oh dear God—do I need to watch out for that kid?”

  Jackson pushed the final pin in and stood back to admire his work proudly. “Don’t confront him,” Jackson said after a moment. “Don’t say, ‘I know what you did.’ Don’t ask him about it. Be normal. Tell him to get off school property or whatever, but then get out of his face and call me.” He pulled out his card and then wrote Sac PD’s number on the back, as well as Fetzer’s and Ha
rdison’s extensions, which he knew by heart now. “Or call them. The point is—”

  “Oh my God, you’re slow.” Jackson looked up as Henry burst in, and rolled his eyes.

  “Hi, Henry. This is Mrs. Eccleston. She’s given me a gold mine of information. Are you done flirting with the football coach yet?”

  Henry made a gagging motion with his finger and open mouth. “Gross. It would be like flirting with a slime mold. Ugh. Poor kids. I’d rather sleep with an octopus. At least they’re sensitive and have morals.”

  Jackson closed his eyes and then opened them again. “Did I mention Mrs. Eccleston the history teacher who is in the room?”

  Henry rolled his eyes. “Please. She’s not going to melt if I talk. Besides, the smell of food is making me faint. I can’t be held accountable. Ma’am, if I may ask, where did you get that—”

  Jackson held out his bag of food, complete with soda.

  “—sandwich?” Henry finished. He threw himself into one of the desks with so much force Jackson watched the cheap metal legs bow. “Gimme.”

  Jackson set it down in front of him. “You’re welcome. So did you get any info—”

  “He’s dirty,” Henry said through a mouthful of pastrami on sourdough. “But not in the way we thought.” He swallowed. “You are the best work partner ever. If I wasn’t in love with someone else, I’d marry you.”

  “Be sure to tell your someone else that so your someone else doesn’t shiv me if you get hurt,” Jackson muttered. “How’s he dirty?”

  “How’s who dirty?” Mrs. Eccleston asked curiously. “Did you want my chips?”

  “No thanks, ma’am,” Jackson told her. “Too hot to eat.”

  “And your assistant coach,” Henry said, after swallowing.

  “Sal?” she asked, looking legitimately surprised. “Herredia? He’s an angel!”

  Henry took another bite and nodded, chewing thoughtfully. They waited for him to swallow before he said, “He seemed totally nice and totally legit. It’s the other guy. The guy who works the bench. Schroeder.”

  Her face closed down. “Yeah. He’s related to our SRO. That guy’s name is Schroeder too. They’re both….” She grimaced. “You can hear it in people’s voices. When they talk to a group of kids. There’s the tentative people who don’t know what they’re doing and the confident people who do and the people who assume the kids are stupid and inferior, and they think they know what they’re doing and they really don’t.”

  “They throw their power around because they don’t have the kids’ respect,” Jackson said, getting it.

  “Yeah. Both the Schroeders. They bark out orders, and they don’t get that the kids are doing what they say out of fear. Not out of respect.”

  Jackson and Henry met eyes. “I know the type,” Jackson said mildly. “Henry, how did you know he’s dirty?”

  Henry chewed thoughtfully. “Besides being an asshole to the kids, he kept talking about sports statistics. On kids. You know who I know who used to recite statistics like that? At the drop of a hat?”

  Jackson’s heartbeat picked up in the good way that was the thrill of adrenaline when you found something you weren’t expecting to find. “Bookies?”

  Henry nodded decisively. “Man, we got really fucking—uh, fricking—bored in the desert. Someone was always betting on something. I learned everything I ever need to know about gambling watching my ex burn through both our paychecks on a Sweet Sixteen pick one year. God, he was an asshole. I hope it was worth it.”

  “Your ex, no,” Jackson muttered. “And hey, way to spill your personal life in front of the nice lady who didn’t ask to share lunch with you.”

  Henry stopped for a moment and looked horrified. “But you—”

  “Didn’t use pronouns. But that’s fine. I’m glad you’re all evolved and swearing in front of your history teacher now. Tell me more about the bad guy, Henry! That’s why I sent you out there.”

  Henry took another bite of sandwich and slowed down enough to think, thank God. “He was looking at the kids like statistics,” he said slowly. “And when I mentioned Ty Townsend, he got this… this smirk on his face. He said, ‘That’s a shame. USC will need to find another player. Maybe this one without his numbers.’”

  Jackson rubbed his temple. “Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  Oh, the puzzle pieces were about to click. “Wait a minute.”

  “Waiting, dammit!”

  “Wait—no—fuck!”

  They heard the report of the gun just as the glass next to Jackson shattered.

  “Get down,” Jackson yelled to Henry and Mrs. Eccleston. “Ma’am, under your desk. Henry, you okay?”

  “I’m under my desk,” he called back. “Me and my delicious sandwich. We’re chilling.”

  There were another couple of shots and more shattered glass as Jackson crawled past the window to take shelter back behind the desk with Mrs. Eccleston.

  “Ma’am, you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, her squishy body tucked neatly in the recess under the desk. He noted that the desk was in a corner with two filing cabinets and a closet, providing her with cover on all three sides. Henry, on the other hand, was nearly naked.

  Jackson handed her his cell phone, unlocked. “Call 911,” he told her. “Tell them who you are and where you are and repeat the words ‘active shooter’ until someone says them back at you.”

  He left the phone with her and stayed low, snake crawling back behind a table that sat in front of the white board. There were boxes of books and art supplies under the table—unless someone was shooting through the wall to his left, he was pretty safe. Books were damned dense, and so were reams of copy paper.

  “Henry, tip those desks over and surround yourself. You need better cover!”

  “Where are you going?” Henry asked, doing what Jackson told him to.

  “Heading for the door.”

  At that moment, a flurry of shots came at the door, but they didn’t penetrate.

  “What in the hell…?”

  “Steel reinforced,” Mrs. Eccleston said, her voice thready and bright with fear. “They wanted to put in a skylight. I asked for a better door.”

  “Henry, stay surrounded by the desks. I’m going to do a thing.”

  “Oh God,” Henry muttered.

  “Keep talking. Say something stupid.”

  Jackson turned and started to belly crawl toward one of the two shot-out windows, double-checking to make sure it wasn’t the kind with the embedded wire inside. In the breathless silence, he could hear Mrs. Eccleston’s shaky voice as she engaged the 911 officer, and Henry said, loudly and without context, “Don’t worry, Jackson. I’m only bleeding a little.”

  “You’d better not be bleeding at all, asshole,” Jackson muttered. He grabbed a box of Kleenex and held it above his head, waving it as if to get someone’s attention.

  “You told me to say something stupid!” Henry retorted, and Jackson couldn’t be sure whether to smack him or kiss him.

  “Mission accomplished.” The Kleenex box remained un-shot-at, so he pitched it through the window and waited a heartbeat.

  The response was more shots at the door, which told him everything he needed to know about how smart the shooter was. With a deep breath and a prayer, he vaulted over the bookshelf and through the shattered window, feeling some of the glass shred through his new cargo shorts and catch some skin.

  Wasn’t fatal, but God, Ellery was going to be pissed. He landed neatly in the gravel strip that separated the portable buildings from the fence that encircled the school and started running for the opening by the gate as soon as his feet touched the ground. The cuts on his thigh burned, and the blood sliding down his leg into his tennis shoe wasn’t comfortable either, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. If the guy shooting from the other side of the portable building figured out he was there and caught him in this tiny crawl space, he’d be a big fat walking target and probably a dead man. He needed fre
e air for any sort of self-defense.

  He got to the corner of the building and peered around just in time to see cleated tennis shoes disappear behind a large, permanent structure about thirty yards away, the clopping sound of the cleats absurdly loud in the silence after the shooting. He called out, “Henry, collect the shells!” before taking off after those disappearing footfalls.

  He turned left between two buildings and kept running until the space opened up to a quad area in the center of the school. The quad itself was empty except for a couple of teachers wandering around looking at each other uneasily.

  “Hey!” one of them called out. “Did you hear shots?”

  “Cops are on the way,” he replied. “Did you see someone running by?”

  “Heard someone—breathing hard. But didn’t see them. Who are you?”

  “Visitor. I’m signed in. Get back in your rooms and get down!”

  The two men—both dressed like him in cargo shorts and T-shirts—managed to look alarmed. One of them followed the other back to what Jackson presumed was the closest room, and he was left alone in the quad, breathing hard, realizing that whoever it was, he’d lost him.

  Fuck.

  Irritated, he turned back toward the line of portables, tracking in the distance a line of cruisers, lights blazing, as they turned the corner around the football field and headed toward the back parking lot.

  Goddammit, there went the rest of their day. It wasn’t until he neared the portable building that he saw the damage to Galen’s car.

  A Little Chum

  ELLERY HAD ten other cases on his desk besides the Dobrevk and Townsend cases, and he was working on those as Jackson and Henry went out and did their boots-on-the-ground thing.

  But that didn’t stop him from pondering the two cases in the quiet points. He was looking at his notes for a defense against a drug charge for a single mother—who, he was pretty sure had been asked to mule for her shitty boyfriend—and muttering to himself when he heard a knock on the door.

  He looked up, saw Galen leaning casually against the doorframe, and gave a distracted smile. “I have the most comfortable office chairs on the planet. Come sit.”