Page 114 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“Melanie called me Retty,” she said, almost dreamily. “When our folks got together. So I was Retty. Everybody called me Retty.” She let out a little sigh. “Melanie said we were sisters.”

“That’s why you did what she asked,” he said. “Isn’t it, Retty?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Melanie…? Mel? I’m sickly. My arm hurts like fire, and I’m so dizzy. Schmitty said I’d be put out of the way, but can I get out of the cave? I… I think Schmitty shot poor Ginny Hoover. I don’t know why.”

“Probably so she couldn’t tell Valerie Trainor what happened to her sister,” Cody said softly in Jackson’s ear, and Jackson nodded. It looked as though Conway Schmitt had been trying to get rid of his ex-sister-in-law for once and for all. Loose ends? A recognizable person of interest? Whatever the reasoning, it was clear that everybody’s favorite shitting hill had suddenly become very expendable.

It was also clear that there was a rift between Conway Schmitt and Valerie Trainor that only Schmitt was aware of.

Jackson took a deep breath and tried to factor in the implications of the two women, one dead and the other dying, in what was apparently being used as an alternate dump site after the other site had been found. Conway Schmitt and Gannett Hoover hadn’t factored in Retty’s death—or Ginny Hoover’s for that matter. Cowboy’s escape from Retty’s clutches, Retty’s shooting—and Henry’s—had obviously mobilized law enforcement, and the escape of the “students” the night before must have Hoover and Schmitt and even Trainor on the run.Jackson couldn’t even imagine the atmosphere in the house right now, particularly since Ellery’s mother was well known to have DOJ ties. It occurred to Jackson that the state’s AG should be the one asking the questions today, not Ellery. Perhaps Taylor Cramer would be invited along for the ride, but why? Why would Ellery and Galen and Jade be needed to—as Jackson put it—dangle his entire family in a basket off a cliff?

“The AG’s connected to the same money people,” Jackson muttered, remembering that. Well, shit. On the one hand, sending other representatives into the lion’s den kept the investigation from being tainted with Super PAC money.

On the other hand….

Holy God. What were his people walking into?

“What do we do?” Damien asked.

Jackson unzipped his pack and pulled out a foil blanket, a bottle of water, and a couple of tablets of ibuprofen, pleased when his hands didn’t shake. “Let’s try to get this into her,” he said softly, “and then cover her up. I take it you have a backboard and some first aid equipment in the copter?”

“Yeah,” Damien said. “Preston can stay here and look after them if you want to continue your search. I get that you’re searching for other people in danger, right?”

Jackson and Cody met eyes and nodded. “We are,” Jackson murmured. “Although at some point, we’re going to need to check out that third site and see if it’s connected through any other tunnels. Finding Retty is enough to get a search warrant to this place, but something tells me that if they’re ready to dispose of her now, they’re not done housecleaning.”

“Oh, I do not like the sound of that,” Cody said, casting an unhappy glance over Jackson’s shoulder at the two victims already found.

“Me neither,” Jackson muttered. “Damien, is there any way you can land the copter closer? It took us forty-five minutes toget here. I know there was a field right before we hit the mine shaft—would that help get her to treatment faster?”

“On it,” Damien said. “Although I wouldn’t want to bring the copter too much closer or it might bring the mines down on everybody’s head.”

“And God, that would be bad,” Cody muttered.

Damien nodded at him in appreciation. “Get her set up with what you got, let’s leave Preston and Preacher with the girl, and you two take off. Don’t worry about us. We’re pros.”

ELLERY ANDGalen both “helped” Ellery’s mother alight from the vehicle like the gentlemen they’d been born to be. For her part Taylor Cramer smiled charmingly, taking her son’s arm as though they were on their way to visit a friend instead of a deadly enemy.

“How’d you convince the state’s AG to let you do this again?” Galen asked as they crossed under the shade of the drive-up carport. Behind them, Jade circled the car around an honest to God fountain, planning to park on a paved section obviously saved for visitors.

The whole setup reeked of gross expenditure, ostentation, and privilege. It wasn’t that Ellery hadn’t been to houses that used more baroque architecture and building materials—it was that they’d been in an appropriate place. The white Grecian columns and white-painted doors of this particular mansion were coated in red dust—or even redder mud.

As they’d driven the long, winding cul-de-sac that wrapped around a small lake, there had been perhaps five other properties facing the lake itself, and those houses—just as large, Ellery suspected—had accommodated their surroundings. Some had been built lodge style with exposed and stained wood paneling, and some had been stuccoed—red, yellow, or orange—the stucco, Ellery was certain, helpful insulation for a climatethat could be brutally hot in the summer, but also cold enough for a moderate amount of snow in the dark seasons.

Gannett Hoover was trying very hard to be a southern gentleman.

“My mother would faint from the vapors before she entered this monstrosity,” Galen said, his Savannah accent dripping acidly into the damp air.

“At least it’s green,” Ellery said, feeling the inanity deeply. In the foothills of California, winter often hit not as buckets of snow—although this far up there wassome—but as lots and lots of rain. Mudslides were known to close down aortic freeways for weeks. In rural, undeveloped areas, grasses and flowered weeds grew in great swaths. The mansion—surrounded by three outbuildings, one of which appeared to be a mother-in-law cottage far back in the rear of the grounds—only had a partially developed lawn. About halfway to the mother-in-law cottage, the mowed, manicured grass gave way to the thigh-high, hay-length clumps that prevailed out among the trees in the rest of the red-earthed county. Because of the recent rains, the weeds were pressed flat, almost forming little huts of grasses and the husks of plants that had died in the fall. The result was a sort of rank and entropic derision, as though the people who lived in this place no longer cared about appearances or bothered with the niceties, and Ellery suppressed a shiver of fear.

Two nights ago Henry had been shot through a wall guarding a teenaged boy. Last night, Jackson had stormed an enemy citadel and produced witnesses of widespread corruption.

It was late afternoon now, the shadows stretching long from the great oak trees and the chill in the air threatening a dark, dank night. What would happen when night fell again over this place where evil—even Ellery’s mother had said it was evil—had settled in to fester?

Green—even in a land as plagued with drought as California—didn’t seem as important here in this mud-spattered monument to greed and poor taste.

“Last minute sound check,” Ellery said, speaking normally as though offering his mother an observation on the carport extension over the driveway. “If you can hear us, buzz our cell phones twice.”

It was reassuring to feel the twitches in his pocket as Galen—leaning on his cane with one hand—reached out to employ the door knocker with the other.

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