Page 127 of Fish in a Barrel
Jackson grunted. “I wouldn’t havemindedkilling him,” he hedged.
“I wouldn’t have minded seeing him die,” Henry said, no bullshit, and since Henry had fought in the infantry and had seen men die, Jackson took him at his word. “But before we go commit murder for the cause, I’d like to know who should be standing in his place.”
Jackson’s anger drained out of him abruptly, and he looked at his bleeding knuckles and grimaced and then pulled down the visor to check out his face. Swollen jaw, split lip, and a graze on his cheek. The guy had led exclusively with his right. Jackson had a vague memory of snapping his wrist. Well, he wouldn’t do that again.
“We did an interview this morning,” he mumbled. “Let his girlfriend’s four-year-old overdose on his meth. It… touched a nerve.”
“Oh,” Henry said softly. “Oh. Damn. That’s… that’s awful.”
“Yes.”
Henry took a breath, and Jackson could hear all the things he was trying not to ask—like, what was it like to grow up with a junkie for a mother, and had something like that ever happened to Jackson.
“I got the shit kicked out of me if I touched the coke mirrors,” he said after a moment. “Celia wasn’t a great mother, but she didn’t want me to die either. Small mercies.” He touched his aching jaw and felt an echo from something that had happened a long time ago. Very, very small mercies.
“And you thought it was a good day to go out on the streets?” Henry asked, the sharpness in his tone soothing.
“I’m not broken,” Jackson snarled, his anger up again. Oh God. When was he going to get a handle on this? He’d been working on it; weekly visits with Rabbi Watson when he wasn’t even Jewish—or religious. All of that soul-baring honesty with Ellery. If he wasn’t good at his job, what was any of that other bullshit worth?
“Oh, Jackson,” Henry said softly. “We’re all broken. You taught me that. Sometimes you just have to accept those edges will never really heal.”
“Fuck off,” Jackson said, giving up on trying to fix his knuckles, his face, his life. Wasn’t going to happen right now. He leaned back and sighed. “You know, you can say what you like about this haunted piece of shit, but it is damned comfortable.”
“As long as it’s not trying to eat me,” Henry muttered darkly.
“Or the alarm doesn’t go off at fuck-you in the morning,” Jackson added. It happened about once a week.
“When do you get your car back?” Jackson had given the thing to a friend of a friend to fix—it had needed bodywork. But apparently the bodywork had gone a little far, and then it needed a new radiator. And then the radiator had broken when they’d been giving it a test drive, and now it needed a new engine.
“Next week,” Jackson said glumly. “Maybe. We may end up with the crap-mobile forever after.”
“Maybe if we do,” Henry said, sounding unreasonably optimistic, “we could paint it something besides brown. Then it won’t be the crap-mobile anymore.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Junior,” Jackson warned. “This thing will never be anythingbutthe crap-mobile. You could paint it sky-fucking-happy-assed blue, and it would be the sky-fucking-happy-assed-blue crap-mobile.”
Henry sighed. “But at least it runs.”
Jackson patted the dashboard. “Good crap-mobile,” he crooned. He could swear, sometimes it heard the tiniest bit of praise and that was all that kept it running. “What time is it?” he asked, head tilted back against the headrest, eyes closed against the autumn sun coming in the windshield.
“Six thirty.”
“Drop me off at home and keep the crap-mobile for yourself,” Jackson told him. Henry still didn’t have a car, but given that part of their days were often spent at the office and the other part out and about, they ended up sharing custody of the vehicle. Henry said it was comfier than his boyfriend’s car, so it seemed to work. “It’ll save everybody half an hour of driving.”
“And give you a chance to clean up the blood before Ellery sees you,” Henry said, because he wasn’t stupid.
“And give me a chance to clean up the blood before Ellery sees me,” Jackson agreed.
“But you’ll still tell him, right?”
Well, Jackson wasn’t stupid either. “Yes. But you can’t make it bigger than it was when you tell Jade about it at the office.”
Henry grunted. “Ha!”
Well, it wasn’t like Jackson didn’t deserve it.
ELLERY SATon the couch, knees drawn up to his chest, and watched Jackson doze off, one cat on either side of his neck, both of them purring. Maybe… maybe this time it would take.
It was getting so Ellery knew when the nightmares would come just as sure as Jackson would, and he certainly didn’t have to be a shrink to know there’d be a doozy this night. Ellery figured if he was sleeping right now, he’d be having his own.