Red Fish, Dead Fish

by Amy Lane

  “Yeah?”

  “This is Campbell—your guy was right. Dakin hasn’t been seen or heard from since around three this afternoon. But we’ve had eyes on the place since five. We haven’t seen or heard anything that would indicate she’s here.”

  Either she was inside and dead already—or he’d taken off and taken her with him. Either way, Ellery and Jackson weren’t in a position to do anything about it, not now.

  “We’ll be there at six,” Ellery said grimly. “Don’t expect Jackson to behave if you don’t have a fix on her position by then.”

  He hung up, hating the situation as much as Jackson. Owens could be beating her, torturing her—sexually assaulting her. She could be as lost in her own head as Jackson had been.

  But Meadowview was an hour away, and if the cops weren’t going in now, nothing either of them could do would make them change their minds.

  Next to him, Jackson gave a helpless cough in his sleep.

  Ellery had defended scumbags before, and he’d done it to the best of his ability. He’d needed to compartmentalize—he was fine with it.

  As he slid into bed and turned out the lights, he realized he was not fine with this. But he’d still pick Jackson’s well-being over a stranger’s any day.

  In fact, he just had.

  Still Twitching

  MORNING CAME too soon—and not soon enough.

  Jackson spent a restless, awful night coughing, battling the fever that he could feel in every breath and bone. When Ellery awakened him at four in the morning, he’d responded by coughing until his chest hurt.

  Then he’d swung out of bed, showered, and allowed Ellery to wrap his shoulder in gauze and antibiotics. Then he dressed in clean clothes and brushed his teeth, all while Ellery fumbled for his own shower. By the time Ellery was out and dressed—in a suit since this was official—Jackson had giant thermoses of coffee ready. Ellery prepared another one with hot water that Jackson naively thought was for hot chocolate before they left.

  Then Ellery pulled soft knit gloves out of the pocket of his trench coat and a scarf and hat from a drawer, all of which he threw at Jackson as they were leaving the house.

  “Thanks?” It hurt to talk—his throat was on fire.

  “Yes. You’re welcome. By the way, what did you do to the cat? He’s acting like we stepped on one of his good legs.”

  “I don’t know. I got up. It was horrible. SPCA is gonna be on my ass next. Those people are vicious.”

  Ellery laughed sharply as they climbed into the Lexus, and he turned on the car and cranked the heater on. “Seriously. What did you do?”

  Jackson grunted, because he’d actually petted the cat to calm him down, but now Billy Bob was apparently another nursemaid who disapproved of Jackson’s lifestyle.

  “I got up,” he repeated. Then he coughed—and coughed and coughed.

  Ellery rummaged in the pocket of his trench coat again and this time came up with a bag of cough drops, the heavy-duty kind. He threw them sideways at Jackson.

  Jackson totally would have rejected them, if he could only speak.

  “Thanks,” he said when he could talk again.

  The cold dark of November wasn’t conducive to idle chitchat anyway, but Jackson was also deep in thought.

  “He’s got to have another den,” he said as Ellery pulled onto the freeway.

  “Any ideas?” Didn’t sound surprised—this had probably hit him after Jackson had fallen asleep.

  “We need to see your transcripts with Bridger,” Jackson said, thinking hard. Bridger had been a small-time thug with a badge, really. Owens had freaked him the hell out, even though they were partners. While Bridger had been working for money—and at the bidding of a senator’s aid—Owens had been mostly doing it for kicks.

  But Jackson had been recovering while Ellery deposed Bridger, and although he’d relayed a lot of the information to Jackson, there was probably a lot more to be gleaned if only one had the time and the motivation and the fine-toothed comb.

  “I wasn’t at one hundred percent then, but I need to see Bridger’s beat again and maybe put some pins on a map.”

  “We can look that up after this,” Ellery said, nodding. “I think the full transcript is at the office. Grab my phone and e-mail Jade. She can have hard copies and a map ready when we get there.”

  Jackson snagged the phone from the console charger and logged on, texting rapidly even as Ellery swung quickly through what amounted to light traffic that early in the morning. “You don’t think Tess’ll be at the house, do you?” he asked when he was done.

  Ellery didn’t risk a glance at him, but Jackson could feel his regard anyway. “Do you?”

  “No. Owens made the cops—he could have done it high, he could have done it dead. Whenever, however he took Dakin, he spent part of his time evading the damned police and part of the time in transit.”

  “And if he’s got a problem, like you suspect, part of the time high,” Ellery pointed out.

  Jackson grunted and rubbed his eyes. They still felt sandy with grit, and the cough drops hadn’t cleared the congestion out of his chest any either.

  “And he’s going to want to play with her,” Jackson conceded. Then he shuddered and broke into a coughing fit. When he could talk again, he managed to say, “It’s awful—and I hate to think about what she’s going through, but he’ll probably keep her alive.”

  “You should still be in bed,” Ellery told him. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Awesome. Let’s tell Dakin that after we make sure she’s going to live.”

  But his head pounded, and he couldn’t sustain his snark or his sarcasm or even his self-loathing. It was all he could do to lean his head against the window and shiver in the autumn dark, waiting for Ellery’s Lexus to bear them back to hell.

  THE HOUSING development of Meadowview looked somehow more sinister in the wee hours of the morning. Following Campbell’s directions, they pulled into a dead-end courtyard that backed up against the same undeveloped field that sat behind Owens’s hideout.

  Two cherry tops and an unmarked vehicle sat there, the occupants gathered around the hood of the unmarked, looking at a map under someone’s phone light.

  Getting out of Ellery’s car and venturing into the bone-chilling blackness of the predawn was maybe one of the hardest things he’d done in recent memory. Ellery grabbed the thermos that wasn’t coffee and handed it to him as they walked to talk to the officers on duty.

  “Drink it,” he ordered. “There’s Theraflu in there.”

  Jackson looked suspicious. “It’s not hot chocolate? What other reason would you have to make a thermos of just hot water?”

  “It’s tea, Jackson. And medicine. Deal.”

  Jackson scowled. “I bet it makes me pee like a racehorse. You watch. Your little cop groupies are gonna be all ‘We have to take shit serious!’ and I’m gonna have to pee!”

  Ellery tried to act bored. “Was that funny? Because from my end, buddy, that wasn’t anywhere near funny.”

  “That was hilarious. That was so hilarious you’re thanking your lucky stars I’m here, because I’m the closest thing to comic relief you got in your life.”

  The gust of his sigh plumed in the dark. “Yeah, Jackson. That’s why I keep you. The comic relief. Are you just talking to hear your voice? Because I know it’s entertaining that you sound like a whisky-soaked chain-smoker, but you’re going to regret talking so much when you open your mouth and nothing comes out.”

  Jackson opened and closed his mouth like a fish just for entertainment value. His body shook with aches, his chest burned, and his head had exploded about six times in the past ten minutes.

  If he couldn’t be a festering asshole now, there was never going to be a good time.

  They walked up to the huddle around the map, and Jackson defied the custom of personal space and dug his chin into Kryzynski’s shoulder.

  “Do you have anyone in the back?” he rasped, mostly to watch the blond
, blue-eyed young detective flail at him and recoil.

  “No! Why would I? There’s an eight-foot fence back there!”

  Jackson chuckled when he really wanted to throat punch the guy. “Because that’s how I got in, with a wounded shoulder and everything.”

  It ached with fever and possible infection and—more probably—inner muscle tears from the original knife wound. Owens hadn’t been wounded at all—it wouldn’t have been a problem.

  “Fuck!” Kryzynski looked at two of the uniforms and nodded to them. “Go around in back and look,” he ordered.

  “I tried to tell you this last night,” Jackson snapped, suddenly not having fun anymore. “What part of ‘I’ve been here and know the layout’ didn’t we understand?”

  “The part where you were lucid even though you were high as a kite!” Kryzynski snapped back.

  “Well, I wasn’t high when I climbed the fence, although that might have made it easier,” he conceded. “I mean, I wish I’d been high when I did that. ’Cause, dude. Also—” And in a breath he stopped screwing around. “—the side gates aren’t locked. The far side, the one near the dead end, has the dead guy in it. I don’t know if Owens gave enough of a shit to move him, so be aware.” Jackson shuddered. “It’s not pretty,” he said quietly. “The guy didn’t deserve to die that way.”

  Kryzynski nodded and looked around to the rest of the people there. “What about the others—you said there were more?”

  “The dead guy was a drug dealer. He was, in fact, a major supplier. Owens took him out to get to me—he had connections to my family. He wasn’t trying to take over a business, so he just opened the fucking doors and let people come in and fix.” Jackson shuddered. “There were a lot of ODs. Again—not pretty. And he’s been there for a week, so not fresh either.” Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he thought Owens must have another base of operations. “We think he’s got another den—someplace just his. You know Tess Dakin disappeared last night.”

  Campbell was there, and he gave Kryzynski a meaningful look. “I told him that,” he said righteously.

  “And I told you that SWAT doesn’t get here for another half an hour, and we don’t have permission to go in without them. It was stake the place out with a few of us or give up the op.”

  Jackson closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “Was it me?” he asked rhetorically. “Was it the fact that we told them months ago this guy was dangerous? Or was it that he was just killing street people? Was that it? He hit junkies and prostitutes so it was all okay?”

  Kryzynski had the grace to look away. “I don’t know,” he said after a miserable moment of not even looking Ellery in the eye. “If what you’ve told us is accurate, this is going to be a big furry deal, Rivers. I don’t know why the brass didn’t take it more seriously.”

  “I do,” Ellery said heavily. He grimaced at Jackson in what looked like shame. “The DA’s office—not consciously, mind you, but Owens arrested a lot of people. They’ve spent the last month going over all of Bridger’s old cases, making sure none of them were crooked arrests. Do you think they want to do the same thing all over again? If everybody conveniently pretends Owens just went AWOL, we don’t have to fix any of the broken.”

  Jackson let out a grunt, not sure what to do about that line of thought. “Someone is going to have to fix what’s in that house.” He swallowed against the razor blades in his throat and shivered. “When’s your fucking SWAT team getting here, Kryzynski? We need to know whether or not to start looking for Dakin.”

  Kryzynski looked at Campbell, who shrugged grimly. “You’re sure Owens got her?” He sounded sad and desperate.

  “Yeah,” Jackson told him, relenting on the fuck-you a little. He wanted a chance to look through the house and tell the forensics team what to look for. He had to make nice like a grown-up. “I think she was following me. My car got reported in this area, she checked it out the day after it was wrecked, and he caught her. Her last check-in was three o’clock yesterday. She would have had time to hear about the car by then, probably fit it into her day. He probably got her when she was checking out the house.”

  “How’d that go?” Kryzynski asked, and Ellery turned away.

  “He doped me,” Jackson said briefly. “I pretended to be too stoned to move, and when he went to ditch my car, I ran for it.”

  “He didn’t tie you up?”

  Jackson shuddered, remembering Owens’s scum, his touch, his tongue on Jackson’s skin, and how Jackson hadn’t moved. “I think it gave him a sense of power to think he didn’t have to,” he said now, his voice so faint it triggered another coughing fit.

  Good. He let that take him out of the conversation for a while so Ellery could move in and ask smart shit.

  Jackson’s higher reasoning wasn’t working so well at this point.

  SWAT arrived at a quarter till, and Kryzynski took his little recon operation across the street from Owens’s house.

  Jackson made Ellery hunker down behind the car while he stood and watched the action over the back.

  “What are they doing?” Ellery asked irritably.

  “Watching gay porn and getting out condoms.”

  “This is the police! Open up!”

  “Jackson!”

  “What? They’re going in!”

  “The people in the house behind us are watching us!”

  Jackson looked away from the action—where the SWAT team was swarming into the house like clowns into a car, without resistance or apparent effect—and down to see Ellery pointing at what looked to be a bathroom window.

  Jackson risked a glance behind him and saw a middle-aged woman peeking out from the blinds. She saw him looking and dropped the blinds and shut off the light.

  “I’d watch too,” he said, turning his attention back to the action. “If we’re invading the guys across the street, that means we’re not coming at them. Besides, do you think they don’t know what’s been going on across the street?”

  “Then why didn’t they call the police?” Ellery asked. He sounded a little freaked-out by the sounds of banging going on inside the house.

  “Who says they didn’t? The cops can only come out and do so many drive-bys. If they don’t have enough manpower for the bust, it’s not going down. The guys inside have squatters’ rights. If nobody’s going to serve the eviction notice—and a lot of homeowners and realties can’t afford to in a neighborhood like this—there’s no way to get rid of the drug dealers. This could be the best thing to happen to these people in a month!”

  Or in this neighborhood, it could be another day at the office. Jackson had no idea, but Ellery was taking deeper breaths, and his jitters had worn off, so Jackson considered it a lie well told.

  “Wait,” he hushed. “They’re coming out.” The lead officer stepped aside and let one of his men out. The man fell to his knees in the mud in front of the entryway, took off his helmet, and puked. “Oh.”

  Ellery apparently couldn’t stand it anymore and stood up. “Oh what?”

  “They found the bodies.”

  Ellery stood up just in time to watch another member fall to his knees next to his brother-in-arms so they could blow chunks together.

  “Oh, Jackson,” he whispered. “You were in there.”

  “I remember.” Jackson was simply too sick to get sick. The pounding in his head, the zillion other aches and pains of the cold building in his bones, were plenty enough to distract him from the visceral memory. “I’m going to go in there again.” And suddenly this was really important. “But you can’t.” He darted his eyes to Ellery’s. “Please,” he said softly. “Please, baby. Don’t think of me in there. I couldn’t stand it.”

  Ellery shook his head. “I have to,” he said, breaking Jackson’s heart a little. “I need to see where you were—and where Tess might have been. It’s important. Especially if it goes to trial—I’ll be a witness for the prosecution.”

  Jackson found a chuckle from somewhere. “There shoul
d be a law against that.”

  “Shut up.”

  His voice was down to rasp and hope by now, so he did. Kryzynski had gone in after the two weak stomachs had given the all clear, and now he showed up at the door, talking on his radio.

  “Ambulances?” Ellery queried.

  “And coroner buses. He probably had them on speed dial.”

  “So what you’re saying is Owens is gone, and we’ve got another hour before we can get in there.”

  Jackson looked at the graying sky around them. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “No. No we don’t.”

  Ellery shouldered his way around the car and across the street, Jackson in his wake. Jackson recognized the mantle of authority he was wearing, the one that came with the full name of the firm and his own courthouse ID. It was bullshit, of course, because at this point he didn’t have a client involved, but Ellery managed to make bullshit look good.

  “We won’t contaminate your precious crime scene,” Ellery said, pulling booties and gloves from his trench coat pocket and giving them to Jackson.

  Jackson raised his eyebrows at that level of preparedness. He needed to get him some of these. “I’ve already been here anyway,” he said, voice flat. “We just need to look for proof that he has Tess Dakin so we can get more manpower on the hunt.”

  “Do you think she’s alive?”

  Jackson didn’t recount their reasoning—just their hope. “Yeah. I really do.”

  “Don’t touch anything,” Kryzynski cautioned. Then he shuddered. “You won’t want to. Try to stick to the main room. The hallways and back bedrooms are….” He shook his head. “Just really fuckin’ awful. Nightmare fodder. Just….”

  “Hear you.” Jackson nodded, not wanting to see the pity in Kryzynski’s eyes when he figured out that, yes, Jackson really had been there.

  SWAT had set up floodlights in every room and had gone from body to body, marking the live ones green for the ambulances and the other ones red for the coroner’s buses.