Page 129 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“Disappeared,” Curly said. “We couldn’t catch him.”

“So what happened to your trucks?” Sean asked. All three of the men had bloody foreheads and were cradling their wrists—the three-truck accident hadn’t been his imagination.

“Well, it was weird,” Shep said. “We all came back here and stamped out the fire, and then this brown minivan pulled up alongside us and the guy driving stuck his head out and screamed, ‘Come and get me, you cousin-fucking morons!’ and we had to go.” He nodded, and Curly and Moe all nodded too.

“So he hung out there at the corner, and we all jumped into our trucks, and then he took off and we followed,” Shep said. His excitement dimmed, and he appeared crestfallen. “And then my baby… she fell apart at the seams. The tires came off, and the exhaust ports toppled, and we went over like a tipped cow, and….” He gave Moe and Curly unhappy looks.

“We was drivin’ in formation,” Moe said staunchly. “We done it plenty of times.” Then he glared at the pileup of trucks in the middle of the road. “And I practically drove over poor Shep.”

“And I plowed into the back of Moe,” Curly said unhappily. “You know, I thought them trucks was better made than that. But it was every damned one of our welds shattered like plastic. It was no damned good at all.”

Sean and Andre had both frozen, stock-still, at the mention of the brown minivan. “So,” Sean said. “This minivan. Did you guys catch the license plate?”

“Naw,” Shep said, spitting. “Ain’t that what cameras are for?”

“You shot out the cameras,” Andre said. “When you claimed this corner to electioneer on. Remember? We have you on tape.”

“That wasn’t me,” Shep said automatically.

“On camera,” Sean said through gritted teeth. “Do you remember anything else about the minivan?”

“Yeah,” Moe said glumly. “I think the other three guys who’d given us such a bad time were in the back, laughing.”

Sean rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, we’ll see what we can do,” he said.

As he and Andre were striding toward their department-issue vehicle, Andre said, “Really? Are we really going to see what we can do?”

Sean muttered, “Let me give them time to get their stories straight first, okay?”

“Fair,” Andre said. He sighed. “You know, if I’d been twenty years old tonight, I bet I could have taken the bumpers off too.”

“Oh yeah,” Sean told him. “And I definitely would have stripped off the chrome rims.”

ELLERY GOTthe text from Billy and was obliged to pass it on.

Everybody was home tonight. Everybody. Was fucking home. Nobody went nowhere. Like me. I went fucking nowhere, when I wish I’d been out with everybody else. Don’t leave me out of shit because I’m with the cop now. He can bail me out of jail same as everybody else. But it doesn’t matter because EVERYBODY WAS HOME.

Ellery stared at the text and then forwarded it to his new text group.

Jade:I’ll kill him.

Galen:I’ll maim him first, then kill him.

Lance:I won’t kill him. But he’ll wish I did.

Ellery:However you commit murder, remember two things. Number one: We’re angry too.

Jade:And number two is EVERYBODY WAS FUCKING HOME.

Ellery:Because they were.

And then he got up and poured himself an extra glass of wine and waited for the rumble of the minivan in the driveway.

An hour later—because apparently he had to drop everybody off—Jackson opened the door, and Ellery’s reason escaped through the door like a startled cat.

The House on American River Drive

Ellery: Are you crazy? Do you realize what could have happened?

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