Page 55 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

That them?he asked.

Think so. Three more minutes?

Yeah. I don’t think they’d think twice about taking out folks at a rehab center.

Fuckers.

You don’t even know.

As his fingers flew, he heard a quavery voice in the dark.

“Can we go yet?”

“Two more minutes,” Jackson said softly. “We need everybody hidden until they’ve pulled away. They’re manhandling an injured woman—they might not move quickly.”

“Should we call the police?” she asked shakily.

“What would happen if we did?” he probed, although he planned to call Fetzer and Hardison just as soon as they were in the clear.

“I’d lose my health-care license,” she said. “I treated that woman without a doctor’s supervision. I gave her painkillers I’m only supposed to give addicts when they’re having severe DTs, so I misused medications—”

“Why?” Jackson asked, feeling safe enough to straighten his legs and start to scooch out of the tight confines. “Why would you do that for her?”

“She… she kept threatening to pull the license on the facility” came Cora’s almost tearful response. “This is the only rehab facility for two miles, and it’s one of the most heavily trafficked in the city. She… her friend—”

“Twitty?” Jackson asked, because yeah, he’d caught that.

“Her name is—was—Melanie Schnarf,” Cora muttered resentfully. “And God, the worst thing that ever happened to me was lending her a pen in an English class we had together at Florida State.”

That brought Jackson up short.

“Youknowher? Twitty? The person in charge?” He remembered Cowboy’s terror, how “Twitty” had seemed bigger than life somehow, right down to the ridiculous name.

“Iknewher,” Cora said, and Jackson heard disbelief and disgust in her voice. “Just enough for her to remember my name when she moved to Sacramento. God, when I found out her and her fucking Moms for Clean Living were holding up my funding, I almost committed my own damned crime spree.” She let out a breath. “They told me they’d push it through. All I had to do was let Retty have access to the facility, to the groups.”

They were standing by now, and Cora started to rip off the bloodied gloves she’d still been wearing as they’d hidden.

Jackson held up a finger as he hovered by the door and gave the room a once-over before motioning her back into the infirmary.

“What was she doing here?” Jackson asked as she put on another pair of gloves and started to clean up the bloodied gauze on the floor. Jackson didn’t have gloves, so he shook out a trash bag and held it open while she cleaned.

“Looking for blackmail,” Cora said without hesitation.

“You know this because…?” He was pretty excited about how much this woman was talking, actually. Perhaps Retty could have not been such a twunt if she hadn’t wanted Cora to spill like a waterfall.

“Because it’s what they did in school,” Cora muttered. “I worked the student union medical office to help pay my tuition, and it got me hours toward med school. I loaned Twitty a fucking pencil, and she said, ‘Hey, aren’t you the girl who gives out tampons,’ and that was it. Her entire fucking clique showed up, one at a time, to get free pads, except they didn’t just get pads. They’d stay. They’d slip into the bathroom, or into one of the cubicle stations while I was busy with something else, and pickup on… well, fucking everything. Who was going on the pill, who was getting an abortion, which guy had the clap, how many girls he’d given it to. Next thing you know, Twitty’s getting elected student body president and getting into the rich girl’s sorority when she didn’t have the grades, the brains, or the charm.”

Jackson moved the bag to catch a particularly vicious throw, and then whistled through his teeth. “That’s harsh. Was that how Retty got into her group? Blackmail?”

Cora ripped the plastic sheeting off the gurney with unnecessary force. “Retty? She’s been Twitty’s lapdog since middle school. I think—and I could be wrong here because neither of them talks about it—but I think Retty’s mom sucked Twitty’s father’s dick. I’m not sure if it was once, or if it kept going while Retty’s parents were still married. I know Twitty’s father paid for Retty’s tuition, and there seemed to be pressure to include Retty. So Twitty made her the… you saw her. The enforcer. She wasneversmart enough for college, but….” Cora shook her head and shoved the sheeting in the bag.

“What?” Jackson asked, wondering when the rage and the adrenaline would wear off and Cora would quit talking.

“Everyone has pressure points, whoever you are,” Cora said shortly, and Jackson got it.

“What was yours?” he asked, no judgment at all.

“I let them listen,” she said angrily. “I mean, I didn’tletthem. I didn’t realize what was going on at first. But once I realized what they were doing, I told them to stop, and they just laughed and told me if I didn’t want to lose my job, my scholarship,everything,I needed to help Retty pass her sophomore year so they could get out of my hair. And I caved. I….”

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