Page 28 of Fish in a Barrel
At that moment he heard a distinct sound over the rainy traffic noise that had permeated the conversation—loud enough to make both Billy Bob and Lucifer spring to attention on the couch and hiss.
“Henry? Was that a dog?”
“Mm… well, yes. But Poppy is incidental.”
“Poppy? You brought adogwith you to a stakeout?”
“We’ll talk about Poppy later,” Henry said. “Ellery, he needs me in his ear. Listen.”
Ellery’s hands were shaking. “Listening.”
“We found Gabriel. He’d been living in the homeless encampment by the police station. He’s been high for a month. But while Jackson was pulling him in, thosesame four copsshowed up and rounded up the singles—mostly men, but not all—and put them on two buses. And drugged the food. I’m following the buses now, and Jackson thinks they’re going to Redding.”
“The actual fucking hell—”
“Yeah,youlook it up. You’re the one at home with a computer and a phone. This is not the first time they’ve done this. They had drugged food at the ready, Ellery. The whole bus was stoned, and they made the entire encampment by Harmony Park disappear as well. Annette Frazier was really fucking upset about that, but I can’t investigate that now because I’m following him to Redding because, like you said, I got his back.”
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck….” Ellery sank into one of the kitchen chairs and stared at the words he’d written:Cody Gabriel, paid to cause trouble, same four cops, GOING TO REDDING.Where to fucking start?
“Well, yeah,” Henry conceded. “It’s not ideal. Look, could you call Galen and have him call the flophouse guys? They think I’m gonna be there later for movie night. I don’t want them to worry. I gotta go. Jackson was calming Gabriel down and—”
“He needs you,” Ellery said, sounding sharp and together when he was anything but. “I’ll call Galen. Drive safe.”
And with that he hung up and tried to catch his breath.
What to do, what to do, what to do….
He must have hit the button without paying attention. Galen Henderson came on, silky smooth, with all of Savannah sweltering in his voice.
“Why, Ellery, what can I do for you this evening?”
Ellery managed to calm his rampaging panic. “Well,” he said, his voice tight, “Henry asked me to have you call the boys he mentors, and possibly Lance, and tell them he had to go out of town this evening and might not make it back in time for movies.”
Galen was no fool. “Out of town? Where, pray tell, have Mr. Worrall and Mr. Rivers gotten themselves off to? Did they decide, perchance, to try their luck in Vegas? Visit Disneyland? Take a tour through Central California and inhale the lovely cowshit bouquet? We gave you a semifunctioning, almost literate PI in training, Mr. Cramer. What did you do with him?”
Some people, Ellery thought irritably, could have just said they wereworriedabout Henry, but no, not Galen Henderson.
“My boyfriend is on a bus full of drugged homeless people who have been rounded up and shipped off to Redding,” Ellery said, still not able to comprehend it himself. “Henry’s riding backup. He, uhm, has a dog?”
Silence.
“Galen?”
“I heard you. I just… I’m at a loss.”
“You think?”
“Hey, hey, don’t get testy,” Galen said, like suddenlyhegot to be the voice of reason. “What, exactly, is Jacksondoingon said bus?”
Ellery let out a breath. “Chasing down our suspect,” he said. And with that, he told Galen everything Henry had told him, along with Arizona’s warning, and when he was done, the silence on the other end of the line was no less worried.
“This… this is not good,” Galen said, pondering. “Ellery, somebody had to be giving those trained seals their balls and horns, you know that, right? They were told that somebody was going looking for Cody Gabriel, so they found him first. But more than that—they had a plan. Shoving half a homeless encampment onto a bus isn’t a spur of the moment thing. Right down to drugging the food. They’ve done this before. And this little circus needs a ringmaster. Someone with a higher paygrade and maybe even a guy who owns the whole shebang.”
“That’s what Henry said,” Ellery told him, calming down just having somebody to discuss it with. “He said that the encampment near Harmony Park disappeared as well. We knew there were a number of indigents on the witness list, but they’re hard to track down—”
“Those cops were counting on that,” Galen muttered. “Counting on how hard it would be to track them down, particularly after they’d been moved.”
“They were,” Ellery said bitterly. “And they were also counting on us not having time to do anything about it. We had three weeks to prepare, on top of our regular caseload, and that included picking a jury. Arizona didn’t challenge a single one of my picks, and that’s fishy. It was like she’d been told that rushing the case was more important than the jury selection. That’s not right at all.”