Page 38 of Fish in a Barrel

Jackson grunted. “But they’ll take him to rehab? And set a guard until we know he’s okay?”

Ellery nodded. “There’s… it’s like when you were under, Jackson. There’s no guarantee he’ll be safe after the trial is over. You know that, right?”

Jackson turned, and Ellery put a hurried finger on his shoulder to keep him still.

“We have to keep digging,” Jackson said after he was situated again. “Getting Zeke out of jail is our focus now, but once he’s safe, we need to—” He let out a breath. “I mean, weknowwhat’s going on, right?”

“Yeah.” One more piece of gauze. One more piece of tape. Ellery helped Jackson into a worn-thin T-shirt with a logo so old he couldn’t read it anymore. He thought it might be for a Green Day tour. “Someone—and at this point, it’s got to be coming from the DA’s office or higher—but somebody, probably the new DA, but that’s not provable at this point, is giving orders to move the homeless populations to another county. It’s a protocol that was banned a couple of years ago. They used to be escorted to the county borders, and then everybody had the collective bright idea that all they were doing was shuttling people from one place to another and trading populations. But someone’s doing it now, moving them out of the capital city to a place with less press and less prestige. Probably so a politician somewhere can claim they got rid of the problem.”

He patted Jackson’s shoulders, and Jackson turned around this time and pulled him close, swaying on his feet with exhaustion.

“I need to finish saying it,” Jackson mumbled, “or I’m not getting to bed. So our douchebag tells the DA, or the DA decides to do it himself, buddies up with the police union, and says, ‘Hey, let’s make it sort of an underground mission. It will make us look good when reelection time rolls around, right?’”

“Indeed,” Ellery said, leaning his temple against Jackson’s again, just to smell him, to realize they might not have had a chance to do this ever again, and to be grateful. “And the union leader turns to his cop buddies and says, ‘Ship them out of town.’ But… that’s where I’m at a loss.”

“I’ve got this one.” Jackson kissed his forehead. “But you get in bed and let me get out of my scrubs. I need skin to skin, Counselor, and I need to be big spoon.”

God, Ellery wanted that more than he could say. He did as Jackson asked, and Jackson stripped down and slid under the covers while he was talking.

“So Harmony Park isn’t like the street with the police station on it—it’s not all concrete and vacant lots and sidewalks. It’s a nice little pavilion and places to camp. The people who visit there are engaged. They bring the homeless Thanksgiving dinner and clean socks and… you know. They watch out for their neighbors. So they don’tlikethe police rousting the homeless. It feels like their friends are being assaulted. The cops figure these people need convincing. Let’s get a homeless man to go apeshit in broad daylight, they think. Let’s let him scare people. And they even know who. How about that young queer cop who’s tasting the candy. Sure he’s been undercover for far too fucking long, but let’s leave him there and use him. So they have him go apeshit at Harmony Park, but he realizes they’re too strung out on their own power. They are going to waste somebody—and his dog. He cuts Annette Frazier as a distraction—she swears he apologized before he did it—and then he runs away.”

Ellery grunted and wriggled back against Jackson, tangling their legs together, while Jackson wrapped a stringy, powerful arm around his chest and held him tight. It was all a man ever wanted in a lover, that feeling of safety, of intimacy, and Ellery felt it, deep in his bones, that this—this was worth the worry. A man who would talk to him, hold him, try to make him laugh even when things sucked. Thiswasn’tlast year. Jacksonwasthat man. Not “could be.” Not “had potential.” Jackson was exactly the man Ellery had dreamed of for his entire life.

“So Cody is feeling guilty and awful,” Ellery murmured. “And he’s already using. He… just sort of drops off the grid.”

“Yeah.” Jackson’s shoulders rippled around Ellery’s as he sighed. “He spends the last month in the homeless encampment right next to safety. It was… God, so sad. He stayed there and probably watched the people he’d thought were his family, his home, come and go, and they… they didn’t know what to do. Was he undercover? Could they go get him? What was going on? Adele Fetzer had seen him. That’s where I got his name, but that’s between you and me, Counselor. No giving up sources.”

“I hear you,” Ellery said. “But how awful. So close to the people who should have helped him. So far away.”

“Yeah. So I went to talk to him tonight, and he’s just… copping a squat. Getting ready to go fix in a couple of minutes. And I talk to him, call him by name, and he just starts crying. And I was getting ready to bring him to the van where Henry’s waiting and… fuck me. Suddenly we’re eyeballs deep in supposed witnesses-slash-fucking-asshole-cops who are herding us onto buses and giving out drugged food. I wasn’t going to eat, but everybody else was starving. They were halfway asleep before I think it hit anybody that they’d been dosed. Cody figured it out and used it to keep from going into withdrawal, eking a little out at a time on the bus ride.”

Ellery felt him shudder, and he also heard the gentle slurring of Jackson’s speech. They had to be at the courthouse around eight thirty to meet Annette Frazier, which meant they should be up at seven. Three hours? Two and a half? After a night and a day like they’d both had?

“How’s he doing?” Ellery asked, knowing Jackson would want to tell him before he fell asleep.

“Grateful to be clean,” Jackson mumbled. “Cleaned up in the hotel room after he fixed. We shaved his head with a beard trimmer, got rid of his beard. I think he shaved his pubes too—apparently there were critters everywhere. Henry’s fumigating the back seat of the minivan.”

Ellery shuddered involuntarily. “Ew!”

“Yeah, well, I was just glad he didn’t need our help to do it. He’s not a bad-looking guy, but, you know. Ukus are the suckus.” Jackson played with the pronunciation of the Hawaiian word for “lice” to make that rhyme, and Ellery let out a tired laugh.

“What about otherwise?”

Jacksonhmmed. “He’s going to need people in rehab,” he said. “He knows I’m taken. Is it okay if I visit?”

“Yeah,” Ellery mumbled. “We can both visit. I’m sure other people will want to. Maybe not cops, but we can tell AJ and Crystal and….” His voice wandered as he thought about the people Jackson had known who’d had substance abuse problems, and of course there was John and Galen. “You know people. You’ll make it happen.”

“Maybe the Rabbi,” Jackson murmured, referring to the man he’d sort of adopted as his counselor. Jackson wasn’t religious in the least, but because he was Jackson, and he respected a good heart, the two of them had clicked. “He’s good at making you feel better. Or me feel better. Whatever. Sweet guy. Good to talk to.”

“Say good night, Jackson,” Ellery ordered gently.

“Good night, Jackson,” he said, letting out a soft chuff of air at the eternal joke. “Love you, Ellery.”

“I love you too.”

THE ALARMrang far too early. Ellery climbed out of bed first and felt Jackson’s forehead, knowing that a night like the one he’d had often had results such as infection and fever. Warm, yes, but not frighteningly so. An ibuprofen for the day might keep the worst of it at bay, Ellery figured clinically. Jackson had spoken of stopping at a hotel to clean up, and his hair smelled of something cheap and chemical, but it was still clean, so Ellery was going to give him a pass on the shower and let him have another half an hour’s sleep.

Long enough for Ellery to shower himself, cook breakfast, and—while Jackson was waking up and brushing his teeth—scroll through the news.