Red Fish, Dead Fish

by Amy Lane

  “Will do.”

  He rang off and set his phone on the bed. Then, very gently, he detached Billy Bob from his shirt and set him on the bed next to his phone. The damned cat liked to curl up around them when they were warm. Ellery had actually bought him a small teddy bear with a heatable ceramic core. Jackson had been horrified at first, because his cat was a tough asshole who needed no coddling.

  But that hadn’t stopped him from heating the core in the microwave at night so the cat, too, had a warm body to snuggle up with when they all went to bed.

  “I’ll feed you now and get you the bear when I get out of the shower,” he promised, feeling a little stupid about talking to the cat but hating the silence even more. Jackson liked music and television and using the exercise equipment and talking about random shit in the kitchen while one of them cooked.

  He liked movement.

  And bitching at Ellery about stupid things he really wouldn’t change.

  And protecting the vulnerable.

  And taking over Ellery’s body like a demon possessor who always gave it back with even more soul than he’d had at the beginning.

  “Augh!” He stomped to the kitchen to feed the cat before undressing and jumping in the shower.

  He wasn’t in much of a better mood when he got out, but he put on his warmest flannel pajamas, made himself a cup of tea while heating up the teddy bear, and settled down to bed with the tea beside him while he read over briefs for the cases he’d been working on before this horrible fucked-up day.

  At midnight Pierpont called.

  A white Honda CR-V with the plates removed, a gym bag full of broken glass, and tiny hand-rolled pieces of trash bouncing around the backseat had been found wrecked in a gully outside a suburb in Meadowview. There was no blood at the scene. It looked as though the car had been pushed off the road and allowed to tumble into a ditch.

  The destroyed phone was discovered inside.

  Pierpont’s contact had instituted a search for a white male, early thirties, wearing jeans and a gray hooded CSUS sweatshirt. He was injured and on foot, possibly disoriented, in the area of Meadowview.

  Ellery hung up, his mind a blank, his heart numb.

  He thought about calling Jade but couldn’t. It was cowardly, but she would have the same night he was about to if he did.

  He fought back a rush of helpless, angry tears and buried his hand in Billy Bob’s fur. “Oh, buddy. Where is he?”

  Billy Bob meowed in answer, letting go of the cuddle bear to nose Jackson’s vacant pillow.

  Okay, God. If you’re out there, you need to be listening. I’m Ellery, I’m a nonpracticing Jew, and I tell people at parties I’m agnostic. This makes me a big fat fraud and a liar, because I will go to temple every Saturday for a year if only he comes back to me in—mostly—one piece.

  God didn’t go “Shazam!” and throw a sleeping Jackson next to him on the bed, but Ellery felt irrationally better.

  Thanks, God. I’ll do my part too. I promise.

  A part of him wondered if Jackson would think he was crazy if he started going to temple. Then he figured if he and Jackson were going to be a permanent thing, Jackson should get used to him appealing to a higher power.

  God knew, one of them needed to communicate with the big guy if they were both going to survive.

  Fish Caught

  IT WAS too goddamned cold to drive without a window.

  By the time Jackson got to the freeway, his teeth were chattering and he could barely concentrate, even with the heater on full.

  This is stupid. I should at least get the window repaired before I check this out.

  After he’d pumped that kid, Larry, for more information on Billy’s house, he’d called the number his mo—Celia had left Mike, and the phone hadn’t picked up. He’d called Crystal, their computer wizard at work, and had her track down the owner of the phone—Billy Culkin—and look up his address.

  She didn’t have an address, but she did have a “last known location,” which was in Meadowview. Jackson took that as a win and then asked her not to tell Ellery he’d called.

  “I thought you and Ellery were tight?” she’d asked, and he could hear the concern in spite of the air whooshing through the open window.

  “Yeah, he’s just sort of worrying about me right now. I don’t want to freak him out, okay?”

  “Jackson, I can hardly hear you! If you’re on speaker, could you close your window!”

  “No!” he’d shouted back. “My window got shattered!” When he’d slammed the door, he had heard the rest of the glass pebbles swooshing inside the hollow between metal and pressboard, sounding oddly enough like rain.

  “Then come back and fix it!” she’d hollered. “This is bullshit!”

  “I can’t hear you, Crystal!” he lied. “I’m signing off! Thanks for the info! Bye!”

  It was a relief to click End Call. Sweet girl, but she was worrying too much.

  His mind kept a pleasant blank as he merged from Highway 80 east to the interchange, and then to 99 South. If it wasn’t for the fact that he couldn’t feel his fingers by the time he got off Florin Road, he would have enjoyed the ride.

  As it was, by the time he made his way to the southeasternmost part of the development, he was seriously thinking of pulling off for some coffee or soup or something before he got to his destination.

  Except it was frickin’ Meadowview, and there was very little in the way of fast food or Starbucks when you were exploring what had been designed to be a sweet little prosperous suburb.

  There were a lot of foreclosures in Meadowview, particularly since the crash in the early 2000s.

  Some of the houses had been standing vacant for nearly five years, sometimes back to back. Holding companies tried to keep squatters out, some with varying degrees of success, but Barrington Road backed up against vacant land. A house that stood empty for more than a few weeks was subject to squatters, with nobody to drive them out.

  Jackson had asked Crystal to check Zillow—the houses along Barrington had been empty for between three and five years.

  The address Jackson cruised by didn’t look vacant.

  The For Sale sign leaned drunkenly against the tree in the front yard, and grass grew up between the cracks in the sidewalk—but not that high, considering how rainy this November had been. The yard was patchy and fungus-like—but there were tattered curtains in the dingy window, and someone had kept the weeds cleared on the side yards. The garage door had been graffitied up, but it had also been spray-painted white again.

  Whoever lived there must have enjoyed spray-painting, because the old and battered blue Corolla out front sported two gray fenders airbrushed the same way.

  Jackson tooled by once, looking lost, and then wandered down the side street before stopping at a dead end with a cattle guard.

  Hunh.

  Jackson pulled a U-turn and went down a block, then took that street to the next cross street.

  This one ended at another dead end with another cattle gate.

  The property behind the housing tract could have been prime development land—but it hadn’t been developed, and any of the clearing and leveling that various contracted companies had done was now growing a lush green crop of grass. If the lot had remained level, someone could probably make some money mowing it for hay in the fall, but as it was, the entire lot was damned lumpy under the greenery.

  Jackson grimaced. It probably needed to be cleared out again anyway. Trash abounded, and he hated to think of the quality of trash. You’d need a damned hazmat suit and super-spiffy lead-lined gloves to come out of that place without disease or some sort of blood poisoning.

  There was a thicket of oleander lining the back fence that separated the housing tract from the field, its roots scattered with soda cups, dime bags, and used condoms. Jackson gave it a wide berth on his way in.

  The sun was at the horizon as he slunk along behind the six-foot plank fence, counting houses, and he pulled his phone o
ut of his pocket, frowning through the twilight. Jade and Ellery had been texting him all day, and he took a moment to lean back against the fence and read.

  Jackson, please text me if you can, I’m worried about you.

  Jackson, please don’t bother with Billy’s place today—I’ll go with you tomorrow.

  Jackson, please, just come back. We’re eating dinner at Jade’s after this next interview.

  Dammit—would it hurt you to answer your phone?

  By the way, if you don’t come home, your cat will grieve until he dies of a broken heart, so you need to be careful, whatever you’re doing. You understand that, right?

  Those were from Ellery.

  Kaden is two seconds away from running out here and grabbing your stupid scrawny worthless ass, throwing it into his trunk, and driving you to some godless shithole in the foothills where they don’t even have Dish, so you’d better stop being captain cowboy wonderpants and get your stupid self back here and deal with it.

  Oh, and by the way, that stupid yuppie you’re sleeping with who’s got the stick up his ass is completely losing his shit over you. I hope you’re happy, because I’ve had to be nice to him all day, and I’m starting to like him better than I ever liked you.

  You’re a stupid asshole. Get your shit home and man up. She was a horrible person and you’re fucking not, and if she’s gonna hurt you this much, I’m glad that rank bitch is dead.

  Please, Jackson—just come home.

  And there was Jade. But wait—the fun wasn’t over.

  Kid, you’re scaring the people who love you. I see what you’re doing here—could you maybe do it where your people can see you?

  And Mike. And wait….

  We could move into the duplex if you want. It doesn’t have to be my place.

  He stared at the text, absurdly moved. Oh, Ellery.

  No, your place is fine. Backspace, backspace, backspace. I like your house. Backspace, backspace, backspace. You shouldn’t miss me when I go. He stared at it for a moment, finger hovering on Send. A sound from the house on the other side of the fence startled him, and he deleted that message too.

  He had better things to do.

  He turned and peered through the slats of the fence, grateful the house in front of him had its lights on. If his count was right, he was where he was supposed to be. Time to suck it up, stop wishing he was home and could take a Vicodin, and climb over the damn fence.

  It was worse than he’d anticipated. He dropped to the ground on the other side with a muffled whimper and tried not to throw up. Oh shit. Shit. He had to stand and force himself to breathe past the spots in front of his eyes. Oh goddammit. His shoulder throbbed, and the new gush of blood through the gauze stuck his sweatshirt clammily to his skin.

  He clung to the shadows of the fence, hoping nobody inside heard him but not betting on it. Oh hell. He squinted through the lowering dark at the side yards, wondering if there were fences or locks between him and the front yard, because… oh God.

  He couldn’t scale the fence again.

  Maybe he should call Ellery now and ask him to send a patrol car?

  Off in the distance, maybe four blocks away, he heard shots and screams, and he caught his breath.

  Waited.

  Waited.

  Waited.

  Let out his breath in a big rush and realized nobody was coming from four blocks away. Nobody was coming here.

  He was as he had always been—all by himself.

  He stayed to the side of the fence, in the dark, creeping soundlessly through the long November green grass until he was even with the corner of the house. Ahead of him was a walkway, maybe four feet across, between the house and the fence. A gate, slightly shorter than the fence itself, sat at the end, barely illuminated by the streetlamp on the sidewalk. He saw no lock in the latch. Okay—good to know. Given nothing noxious lurked in the shadows he couldn’t see, freedom lay thataway.

  To his left was the stucco corner of what had once been a small and serviceable tract home. The tan stucco was chipping and faded, and the paint at the gutters peeled and cracked. Nobody had loved this house in a long time, but it was still sound and whole, maybe.

  Depended what was on the inside.

  Jackson had just turned his body so he could creep forward and peer inside through the sliding glass door when a shadow cast from the inside fell against the concrete.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  The back door slid open, then the screen slid closed, and the house farted. Or that’s what it seemed like when a noxious burst of overheated air wafted into the chilly November night.

  Oh my God, kill me now!

  The smell of cooking chemicals, human feces and vomit, burnt hair, and—worst of all—fried chicken rolled from the bowels of hell into the surrounds.

  Jackson fought everything in him not to fall to his knees and retch. He’d seen enough bodies at the morgue, and even more at the coroner’s office. He knew the smell of human decay, and sure enough, that’s what moved like a great sluggish undercurrent in the putrescent bouquet that overwhelmed his senses now.

  Hold it together. Hold it together.

  Okay—there was a dead body in there. Jackson would stake his reputation on it. He had some proof to offer the police. They could call Tess Dakin, and she could put on her hip-waders, and Jackson could go whining back to Ellery and tell him maybe he shouldn’t have gone haring off into the wild blue without backup.

  Jackson remembered this smell—minus the dead body. He’d lived through this smell before. One more second breathing the smell of his childhood and he’d be a mewling baby in the corner of the yard, and his ability to help a damned soul would be blown out of his mind by the trip to memory lane he’d been putting off all day.

  He waited, not breathing, until the footsteps moved away from the back before venturing through the darkened pathway to the gate.

  He tripped on the body halfway mashed into the crawl space and almost wet his pants when it moaned.

  “Jesus!” he hissed, pulled out his phone, and turned on the lighting app. “Oh… dear God….”

  The man—probably—moaned again through broken teeth and vomit crusted on the side of his mouth. Under the matted hair, layers of grime, and the emaciation of the starving junkie, Jackson detected—barely—a glimmer of familiarity.

  “Billy?” he whispered. “God—is that you?”

  “Where’d Celia go?” he mumbled. “Bitch… sent her for help.”

  “Yeah, well, you helped her so good she’s dead,” Jackson said bitterly. To his horror, Billy started to cry.

  “Celia… baby… come back for me….”

  Oh hell. The last thing he wanted was to feel bad for Celia’s dealer. But maybe you couldn’t interact with someone for years and years without a little bit of a bond.

  “Kk, Billy,” he muttered. “I’ll go get help.” He pulled away from the filth and the smell then, hating himself for being too revolted to care much for the human being under it.

  “Help,” Billy muttered pathetically. “Good kid. Feed ya anytime.”

  He had. Mostly to get Jackson out of his and Celia’s hair when they were conducting business, but he could have used his fists instead. Could have screamed epithets, threatened with the big bowie knife he always carried—could have done lots of shitty things.

  But he hadn’t. He’d given Jackson food instead, when Celia more than likely forgot.

  Didn’t make him father of the year. Didn’t even make him a decent human being. But he still deserved better than dying in a pile of rags.

  Just like even Celia didn’t deserve to get carved up like a slaughtered deer when she was still alive.

  Yeah, Toe-Tag had been careful not to elaborate—Jackson had understood. If she’d presented as alive enough to end up at the hospital, her blood had still been flowing when she’d been found.

  She’d been alive when she’d been gutted—and Jackson wouldn’t wish that on an enemy, much less�
� much less….

  He took a deep breath of stench and heaved to his feet, thinking escape, safety, calling the police and an ambulance and calling this fucking day at five thirty, the end, Ellery you fucking win.

  The body at his back stopped him—as did the arm across his throat.

  “Jackson? You came!” The voice sounded younger and higher than Jackson had imagined it—not the voice of a serial killer, but the voice of a fourteen-year-old chess geek.

  “Well,” Jackson graveled, barely able to catch that breath, “you issued such a nice invitation.”

  A low, filthy laugh tickled his ear, and then a tongue, sloppy and foul, licked him.

  He jerked hard enough to see stars when his windpipe made contact with the killer’s forearm.

  “I did, didn’t I?” Owens—it had to be Owens—whispered into the hollow of his ear. “I wanted you to come to me so bad….”

  At their feet, Billy whispered “Help….” to the indifferent elements.

  “Oh yes, I’ll help.” The iron grip at Jackson’s sore shoulder disappeared, and Owens fumbled for something at his belt. Jackson fell to the ground and attempted to roll away, but Owens stood on his shoulder and, while Jackson watched, threw his knife directly into Billy’s throat.

  Billy’s body twitched a couple of times as he breathed his last, but Jackson waited until his eyes closed tightly and then relaxed before he looked away.

  “He wasn’t bad for a junkie,” Owens said conversationally, squatting to haul Jackson up by the arm. Jackson gave a squawk to wake the dead, because his shoulder had one too many insults to be powered through, and Owens stopped what he was doing.

  Jackson doubled over, spots dancing before his eyes, and he barely noticed when Owens pulled the knife out of Billy’s throat and held it, still dripping, in front of Jackson’s face.

  “Now I know you’re going to want to run away again,” Owens said, almost playfully. “Can we just agree that I don’t want to hurt you, but I will?”

  “I don’t know how much incentive that is,” Jackson panted, straightening out his body when all his ass thought he could do was crouch and gibber. “I have to admit, I was going already. Not my kind of jam.”