Page 93 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“Cool,” Geordie said, taking Jackson’s vacated seat.

Jackson and Cody had left then, after checking on Aileen, who was still comforting an exhausted Otto, but their information gathering had left its mark.

“God,” Cody said now, sounding as wretched as Jackson felt. “This group of people is pure fucking corruption, aren’t they?”

“Oh yes, they are,” Jackson said grimly.

“Where we going now?”

“First to visit Henry,” Jackson told him. “You can go grab us some sandwiches if you want. I’ve got about half-an-hour’s business in the hospital—gonna say hi, give him an update, and then gotta go visit my friend in the morgue.”

“Morgue?” Cody asked, sounding hesitant.

“Yeah.” Jackson let out a breath and told Cody something he’d only discussed with Ellery so far. “Yeah. I had… well, let’s just say I’ve had a bad feeling about Caleb since I talked to Cowboy about him two nights ago. And the more people I talk to, the more I think….”

“He can’t be the only one,” Cody said softly.

“No.” Jackson took a deep breath. “These fuckers have been in our town for a year and a half. Cowboy’s been on the streetsfor about a month, which means Caleb ‘made that sound’ about a month ago. Where’s the body?”

Cody blew out a breath. “You checked the morgue?”

“Yup,” Jackson told him. “And they haven’t had anything like that nearby, so….”

“So it’s got to be out of the county,” Cody followed. “Where do you think it is?”

“Sonora,” Jackson said. “Because that’s where Gannett Hoover’s estate is, with what probably amounts to vast amounts of acreage. And it’s probably not the only one.” And with that he walked Cody through their line of reasoning about Conway Schmitt, Gannett Hoover, and the unholy alliance of Moms for Clean Living and the politician who lived in Gold Country with a D by his name and everything but a Nazi flag in front of his house.

And Conway Schmitt, aka Newton Dwayne, aka The Creeper Thug Who Would Not Fucking Leave.

“So,” Cody said slowly when he was finished, “when those two assholes who abducted Shitbag Retty said ‘she’s the package now,’ that means….”

“It means I wish we knew somebody with a cadaver dog,” Jackson said grimly. “Because I don’t think you and me are going to have to do a thing to hold Retty accountable, but her body sure will make for some nice evidence of political corruption.”

Cody grunted. “Well, shit,” he said. “On the one hand, that sounds a little ghoulish.”

Jackson grimaced. “It does.”

“But on the other hand, it couldn’t have happened to a shittier person.”

“No, it could not have,” Jackson agreed. His heart was bruised and raw from the last two days. From the worry about his friend, from the opening of old wounds, and from the raw,painful reality of a bunch of kids who could as easily have been him. That core of empathy in him felt like it had been pounded and stretched and pounded and stretched until it blanketed everybody involved in this case with a thin layer of his sorely abused heart muscle.

To stretch it to accommodate the woman who’d shot Henry through a wall, who had taken children from their homes on false pretenses, who had dangled hamburgers in front of their faces until they betrayed their friends….

He could feel that muscle unraveling like a frayed cloak, great gaps in his well-being disintegrating as he tried to be kind to the woman who had cost so many so much. It didn’t seem to matter that she was a flunky, probably as emotionally abused as the kids held captive in their sick little religious scam. What mattered was, unlike Otto or Danny or Enrique or the terrified girl trying to protect her two friends the night before, Retty had forsaken everything human that had once mattered about herself and used it to hurt other people.

He just didn’t have one more fuck to give.

“What if she’s still alive?” Cody asked.

Well, maybeonefuck. “Moral dilemma solved,” he said optimistically.

“We can always hope,” Cody agreed, and they headed for the hospital for the umpteenth time in the last three days.

Muck Swimming

“ARE WEjust not running a business anymore?” Galen asked crossly when Ellery answered his phone. “Is that why Jade and I are the only ones here?”

Ellery grimaced and excused himself from the kitchen table where he and his mother were sorting frantically through the documents Jackson had sent and putting together a brief for the ADA on the fly.

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