Page 142 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

Apple Picking Weather

JACKSON HADto hand it to the woman; she claimed she was shy and nonconfrontational, but she didn’t seem to be afraid to express an opinion.

The courthouse in Sacramento was a newish marble-and-glass structure, the rooms inside were carpeted, and the seats were cushioned. It wasn’t exactly designed for comfort, but there wasn’t a thunderous echo either, which was helpful when the witness who saw the crime in question hadn’t wanted to testify in the first place.

But she had finally agreed because, she said, it wasn’t right.

“So, Mrs. Kleinman,” Ellery said, looking decisive and articulate in his best gray wool pinstripe. “You say you are absolutely positive that the person you saw holding a knife to the victim’s chest was not, indeed, the defendant, Mr. Ezekiel Halliday, seated.” Ellery gestured to Halliday in the defendant’s chair, still thin from the hospital, dressed reluctantly in a suit that was tight at the shoulder joints and knee joints but loose everywhere else. He had dark curly hair and a close-cropped beard, mostly because it was easier to trim the beard than to shave by himself, and his brown eyes didn’t always track the proceedings, although Jackson knew without a doubt he was listening. His narrow face was capable of great joy—Jackson had seen that—but not today.

“Absolutely,” Mrs. Kleinman said. Her face softened as she took Ezekiel in. “Zeke wouldn’t have known what to do with a knife if he had one.”

Ellery nodded. “We’ll get back to that. It’s important. But how can you be so sure? The police identified Ezekiel after onecanvass of the neighborhood. What makes you say it couldn’t have been him?”

She gave aharrumph. “Well, for one thing, I’d passed Ezekiel about a block before I came to the mouth of Harmony Park, where the incident happened. He was sitting on the sidewalk, holding his foot up to his mouth to suck on a wound.”

Ellery had been prepared for this answer—he and Jackson had spent some private time in their office giving voice to the “oogies” as their paralegal, Jackson’s sister, called the intense visceral reaction to something gross. But Jackson still saw his wince of dismay when Mrs. Kleinman said it.

“That doesn’t sound… hygienic,” Ellery said delicately. “Why would he be doing that?”

The woman was plump and doughy, in her fifties, with graying hair and everything from bad ankles to bad knees to a bad back. None of that stopped her from walking three obnoxious Pomeranians two to three miles a day in her little suburb, and apparently Effie Kleinman didn’t miss a trick.

“He’d run away from his care home the day before,” she said, shaking her head. “His shoe had come off, and he’d stubbed his toe. Zeke’s joints aren’t properly formed—it makes him very flexible, but not very stable on his feet.”

“Did you offer Mr. Halliday help?” Ellery asked.

Effie sucked air in through her teeth. “Well, that’s tricky. I’ve got the number for his care home by my desk in my house, but I didn’t have it on my cell. I talked to him for a bit, and he was feeling fractious, so I told him I’d call Arturo—that’s the man who usually comes to get him when he’s gotten out—and left him to go on my way.”

“So that’s the last time you saw Mr. Halliday,” Ellery responded.

“That day, yes,” she said with a grimace, “because then I was walking through the park entrance, and that asshole with the knife was screaming, and I was trying not to shit my pants.”

Jackson watched Ellery as he slow-blinked, trying to digest what sheactuallysaid as opposed to what they’d beencoachingher to say for a week.

After a stunned silence in the courtroom, Ellery asked, his voice dry as toast, “Were you successful?”

Effie gave an embarrassed snort. “Not entirely. I did feel a powerful need to go home and change my britches, which is one of the reasons I didn’t stick around and talk to the police. Besides,” she added, sobering again, “I really wanted to call Arturo. If there was a lunatic loose in the park with a knife, I didn’t want Zeke out in that.”

“So you didn’t stick around to answer any questions?” Ellery reinforced.

“No, sir. Not my scene.” She gave a shrug. “Witnesses like me are invisible to police anyway. Just another fat brown woman with too many dogs. They didn’t want my opinion.”

“So what made you decide to come here and testify?” Ellery prodded, and Jackson let out a breath. They had to make this clear now or the prosecution would turn it into a “gotcha” question on the cross.

“Well, your man there,” she nodded toward Jackson, who waved, “got my name from one of the other witnesses. When he told me they’d fingered poor Zeke, I had to come forward. I’d called Arturo, and he was going to come get Zeke, but Arturo’s got no obligation to me. He hadn’t told me Zeke was in jail, which was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of.”

Jackson Rivers had known Ellery Cramer for nearing on nine years now, and they’d been sharing a bed for over a year of that. Ellery had slick brown hair and sharp features—nose, cheekbones, chin—along with hard, flat brown eyes.

Jackson knew Ellery’s every expression, including when those narrow lips went slack and bruised with passion and his brown eyes went from hard to limpid with need, and he knew that if he hadn’t known Ellery down to the last nuance, he might have missed the fury he was suppressing as they covered this next line of questioning.

“Could you explain why it’s a ‘stupid’ idea to think Zeke should be in jail for holding a knife to the victim’s throat.” Ellery asked, keeping that fury in check.

“Objection!” Arizona Brooks, the ADA in charge of prosecution, stood up hurriedly. “This witness is not a medical professional, and she is hardly qualified to tell us what conditions the defendant may have had that would hinder his ability to perpetrate a crime.”

Ellery and Jackson stared at her. Arizona was a fit woman, known for her zero tolerance for bullshit, who sported a spiky gray buzz cut, big silver earrings, and liked to wear white men’s-cut suits when she was in court.

She was sharp, surprisingly compassionate for an ADA, and willing to deal for the good of the victim and the perpetrator if she saw injustice being committed in the name of the law.

And she never, ever made a mistake.

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