Page 6 of Fish in a Barrel

“Trey Cartman,” Ellery said, not dropping his voice for respect or fear or anything else, because Jesus Christ, why would he?

“Fuckme!” Jackson kicked savagely at a rock, obviously recognizing the name of Sacramento’s newest district attorney, recently put into office by the special election that took place in July when Elaine Longley had to resign for health reasons.

“Would love to,” Ellery said, keeping his voice light, “but do you really think this is the place?”

Jackson gave him a dirty look. “Now who’s being cute.” Before Ellery could snipe back, Jackson cut to the chase. “Do you really think Mr. No Broken Windows is the one pushing to put Ezekiel in jail? I mean, it makes sense, but it feels so targeted. Why Ezekiel? He’s not going to win Cartman any popularity points.”

Ellery shook his head, not sure Jackson was right about that. “No Broken Windows”referred to Cartman’s advertising campaign and the well-known law enforcement policy of giving no quarter to the homeless population. The theory was that a house with a broken window attracted people to break more windows and trash the place, and it had been used to terrify homeowners into allowing the homeless to be bullied, beaten, and imprisoned instead ofhelped, which is really what they needed. When Effie had spoken of the way the police department addressed the homeless population in Harmony Park, she was specifically referencing this policy, although not many media outlets made the connection for the voting population that “no broken windows” also meant “no rest or humanity for the poor, hungry, and mentally ill.”

“You disagree?” Jackson pushed, and Ellery sighed.

“Everybody says they want to do something about the homeless,” he murmured, “but by ‘do something’ they really mean sweep them under the rug. You know the statistics as well as I do, Jackson—the population is growing and the resources to keep them housed are shrinking. Mental health resources, poverty resources, childcare to help workers earn a living wage are literally laughed at in Cartman’s circles. I mean, I can’t solve the crisis myself, and I don’t know all the answers, but if Cartman wants to make a mark for himself as being tough on crime—Mr. No Broken Windows, as you said—throwing Ezekiel Halliday in prison is the way to do it.”

Jackson responded with a grunt and another assault on the rock on the sidewalk. “Fucker,” he said, and Ellery had no doubt that if Mr. Cartman had been right there, Jackson would have hauled him by the scruff of the neck to Ezekiel’s care home and dared him to watch the man pour his soul into walking down the hallway to the dining room without leaning on the walls and dare Cartman to insist that Zeke had been the one to wave a knife around and threaten police officers while in what appeared to be a drug-fueled rage.

“So,” Jackson continued after a few more steps, “Cartman wants to be No Broken Windows—he’s young, he’s pushing his agenda, and he’s Arizona’s boss. Isn’t she a deputy district attorney? Doesn’t she have some say?”

“It would be nice to think so,” Ellery said with a shrug. “But she’s not elected. She’s appointed, and her job rests on Cartman’s sufferance. I think she’s been trying to tell them the truth the whole time, but nobody’s listening. Or they’re threatening her job. Judging by the way she was speaking to those police officers, she’s been telling them all along that they have no case.”

Jackson frowned. “They really don’t, so how did they get here?” He found his friend the rock and kicked it some more, down through the beginnings of fruitless mulberry tree leaves that would soon be massive piles along the usually shady sidewalks of the city.

“Same way police get away with everything,” Ellery said, because Jackson, with his complicated, often hostile relationship with the police, knew the answer to this.

“No….” Jackson’s temper had flared and receded, leaving one of the brightest minds Ellery had ever encountered to work. “No… those cops were entitled. I mean, remember this summer when I was working with some of them? They were unorganized. Their CO was green and didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, and some of those guys—whoooeee, incompetent as fuck. But this was different.”

Ellery narrowed his eyes and tried to see what Jackson was seeing. “They were talking to Arizona like they expected a specific outcome,” he said after a moment. “This wasn’t disorganization, or even entitlement. This was somebody telling them what should and should not happen to them during the trial.”

“Who’s in charge of our police union?” Jackson said grimly. “You’re right. We got super focused on ourselves, and it’s not like we didn’t need it, but we’re behind on our political landmines, and we’re this close to stepping on one.”

“Boehner,” Ellery said. “Officer Charlie Boehner. I think I met him at that dinner two weeks ago—you remember…?”

“The one I didn’t go to,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes.

Ellery studied Jackson as they walked, quiet for a moment, appreciating. He’d just turned thirty-one, and his hair was still the color of dark honey. His eyes—bottle green—should have been flat, unfriendly, and bitter, but they weren’t. Jackson’s life hadn’t been a picnic. Born poor, raised by a drug-addicted teenager until he was in middle school, he’d been shown kindness by Jade and Kaden Cameron, who had started out as kids in Jackson’s apartment building and who had become, along with their mother, Toni, family. Toni had passed away far too young, but Jackson, Jade, and Kaden had stayed tighter than many blood families Ellery knew. Ellery always wondered at the miracle that Toni Cameron’s kindness and decency, as well as the same solid moral compass she’d gifted Jade and Kaden with, had fallen on such fertile ground.

Jackson should have been a product of the streets—and parts of himwereangry, violent, and impatient for the wheels of justice to turn the right way. But so much of him was grateful that somebody in his life had turned kindness his way and almost desperate to make that count.

He was possibly the best man Ellery Cramer had ever known—but also the most frightening to love. Jackson didn’t set a high enough premium on his life, on his person, and both those things were becoming more and more dear to Ellery with every passing day.

“You really don’t like those functions,” Ellery said faintly, when he became aware too much time had passed.

Jackson shrugged. “That was the night I tracked down Effie, remember? I mean, she let me in the door, but she wasn’t going to talk to me if I bolted out again to go put on a suit.”

What he meant was that Effie was lonely and prickly, and her tiny barky dogs were the only constants in her life after she’d been forced to take early retirement as a high school science teacher because she actually said, “Creationism is bullshit, and I’m not teaching it,” during a staff meeting.

But yes, he’d also probably kept Ezekiel out of jail, and now that Effie was volunteering her time at the Sunshine Prayer Home for the Moderately Disabled, affectionate animals at her heels, he could also claim credit for helping her as well. Not that Jackson would ever claim credit for that sort of thing.

“Jackson?” Ellery said uncertainly, because he’d heard the self-recrimination in Jackson’s voice and didn’t like where it was heading.

“Yeah?” Jackson glanced at him sideways as they continued their stroll under darkening skies.

“You don’t ever have to apologize for not being a political animal. You know that, right?”

Jackson grunted and shook his head. “Talk to me about politicsafterwe get Zeke exonerated. He is too damned close to being back in jail for me to even think about going to that benefit dinner tomorrow night.”

Ellery sucked air in through his teeth. “Gods. Yeah. I’ll beg off—”

Jackson grunted again. “No. Aren’t the new DA and the policeman’s union there in full force?”