Fish Out of Water (34 page)

She must have left home before she dyed it pink.

But Chisholm was sitting behind his desk, his tiny eyes narrowed flatly, and Ellery became acutely conscious of the fact that if he didn’t make his case here, in this room, he was going to be lucky to get out of the capitol alive.

“Would you like me to tell you what I think happened?” Ellery asked, breaking the congealed silence.

“I want to know about my daughter,” Chisholm growled, a bulldog or even a snake, but something tortured and mean.

“No,” Ellery told him, “you want to know why you shouldn’t let Bridger go and kill me. And my friends. And Kaden Cameron and his family. And Jackson Rivers, whom you tried to kill once already.”

Chisholm’s head jerked back, and he looked genuinely confused. “Jackson Rivers? What in the hell does he have to do with this? Did he kill her—was it revenge?”

All of that anger burning cold, white, and hot in the core of Ellery’s being, and it fountained through him, a geyser of incandescent rage. “
I have had enough
!” Ellery shouted, pounding Chisholm’s desk with both fists. “You will sit there and you will listen as I spill out the story of how you fucked up your life and destroyed your daughter—and you will sit there and listen—”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” Chisholm bellowed, standing and waving, so much bluster, and Ellery’s compassion, his plan, evaporated.

With shaking fingers, he called up that terrible picture, the one that Jackson had snapped while Ellery had been vomiting in the trash can. He enlarged it, focused it on the face of what had once been a pretty girl.

“
Look at that
!” He shoved the screen in Chisholm’s face, screaming loudly enough to spit. “Look at it. And listen.”

“Oh God.” Chisholm sank down slowly into his office chair, hand in front of his face. “Lulu-belle. Baby… oh God….”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it?” Ellery’s chin and his voice were shaking, but he just kept talking. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. You were an ADA, and you didn’t set the world on fire. Nobody cared about Bill Chisholm, honest lawyer, fighting the good fight. You just kept putting away junkies and petty thieves, and your world never changed. Your family wasn’t safer, and they weren’t any richer, and you… you were trapped. You had two kids and a wife who thought being married to a lawyer would be more glamorous than this, right? And then you had this… this kid stumble into your lap. He had a line on crooked cops, and his IA liaison was incompetent and earnest and well-meaning. You set up a sting operation, you and a few underlings, and before you know it you’ve got… everything. You followed Hanover
everywhere
. You know where he took his money, where he traded his drugs. You know—”

“Everything,” Chisholm muttered, choked. “Yeah.”

Ellery found strength, thinking about how brave Jackson had been walking into a snake pit with a wire taped to his underwear. “So you decide to take over Hanover’s operation. It’s so easy. First you hire a recruit to fill the void. You met him your last year in the service, right?”

Chisholm nodded, lost in that terrible picture. Ellery let it sit, let it mesmerize him, let it pulp his insides, turn him to hamburger, because it was no more than he deserved. “You’re very smart. I did one tour. Bridger did two.”

“Yeah. Happens. Guys get tight. I get it. So you wanted to take over the operation, but Hanover was losing his shit, and Jackson was a fucking wreck. You couldn’t keep him going in on a wire, he was going to get busted, and Bridger wasn’t out of the academy yet. So you… now here’s where I’m cloudy.” Ellery let out a humorless laugh. “It’s been an intense four days, you know. But don’t worry. I left the notes in the files—if my mother hasn’t figured it out, one of my partners will. But you managed to hire a sniper, someone from Hanover’s past, if I have my guess, and he took out your loose ends.”

Chisholm grunted, but he wasn’t going to spill the secret if Ellery didn’t know it, and it was too late to go back and tie up this loose end now.

“But it doesn’t matter. Hanover’s dead, Jackson is rebuilding his life one blood cell at a time, and you? You install Bridger in Hanover’s place. Within a year, you’ve got enough of a side business to fund your bid as Hallenbeck’s aide. And life is good. Life is
great
. No more criminals, no more shitty cases. Hours are long, yeah, but you get to take your kids on vacations, send them to college—that’s all you ever wanted. Buy the wife a new car now and then, remodel the house. You didn’t want the world, right? You just wanted to do for your family.” Ellery tried to be snide here, but he didn’t have it in him. That trapped feeling—he’d seen it enough times in the criminals he’d defended.

I had to, don’t you see? My kids needed clothes. They needed a chance!

Wasn’t legal. In Chisholm’s case it wasn’t defensible—but it wasn’t monstrous. Not at first. Not until the blood began to spill.

Human. Just… human. Corrupt and fallible.

And fucked.

“My daughter?” Chisholm begged. “Lulu-belle?”

The pet name was going to break Ellery, damned if it wasn’t. “She lost her way, didn’t she? Ended up on the street, one of the junkies you used to put away. And you asked your friend Scott Bridger and his buddy Owens to look for her. Bridger put out some feelers, right? Knew the junkie haunts. Who to suss out. But in the meantime, Collin Miles went to Bess Carillo, who, against all common sense, was the
union lawyer
and not the liaison anymore. And Bess, she’s still not great on figuring shit out. Collin Miles asks her if he’s covered when he gives evidence against his partner, and she—she asks Bridger if maybe the boy is just deluded. Did he misunderstand something? Because God, this couldn’t be happening again.”

“Collin Miles?” Chisholm broke his terrified stare at his dead daughter. “What’s this have to do with anything?”

“You knew,” Ellery said, confirming by Chisholm’s reaction, even if he had no evidence. “Well, that’s handy. See, Bridger told you he was going to have to take out Miles—maybe even told you where. What he didn’t tell you was that Luanne was there, probably waiting in the back of the gas station, and she saw Uncle Scott shoot down a cop.”

“Oh my God,” Chisholm said, voice cracking. “
Luanne
!”

“She was brave, your daughter,” Ellery told him. “Because she took a picture and was probably going to send it to someone—just like I sent my files all over God and creation these last few days. But she didn’t get a chance. Uncle Scott caught her, you know. He grabbed her phone and hey! Hello! He had the perfect crime-scene photo—didn’t have to call in the forensics team after all.” Ellery paused and shook his head. “Not bright, Uncle Scott. But pretty fucking brutal. Assembled the evidence, called the ambulances and his own buddies to come in and try to make things look kosher. And in the meantime he’s got the girl—don’t worry, guys, going to make sure she gets home okay. Just a junkie. It’s all good.”

“Oh God,” Chisholm muttered, staring at the picture again. “Lulu—she knew him. She
knew
him.” His voice rose, crackled, and pitched. “She
trusted him
!”

He broke down. Broke down into great gulping sobs.

Ellery walked to the door and peered outside and saw Kryzynski, eye blackened, shirt askew, talking pleasantly to Gloria.

“You have backup downstairs?” he asked, and Kryzynski nodded.

“Okay. We have enough to arrest Bridger and his friend, uh, Owens—”

“Tim Owens?” Kryzynski asked, horrified.

“Is there another cop named Owens that hangs out with Bridger?”

“No,” Kryzynski said softly. “No. He’s just… young. That’s all. Young as Miles. I… you expect it to be the old guys, the guys who get tired.”

Ellery looked at Chisholm, who was sobbing over the picture on Ellery’s phone. “Some guys are born tired,” he said. “Mr. Chisholm?”

Chisholm looked at him, face swollen, crumpled like toilet paper, destroyed.

“You can testify against Bridger and risk jail time for your own involvement. Or you can deny everything and risk him going free.”

“Arrest me,” Chisholm said, brittle as the cellophane around an empty carton of cigarettes. “Have Gloria call my lawyer and tell him to meet me downtown. My baby.” He started to weep, soundlessly this time. “My baby.”

Kryzynski got on his phone and called for backup, and Ellery watched as he cuffed Chisholm and walked him out of the office. Ellery grabbed his phone on the way out, exiting from that terrible testament to greed and corruption as quickly as he could.

THE REST
of it seemed to take forever. Chisholm and Bridger were perp-walked across the capitol mall and taken away in police cars, and Ellery had a moment to realize that this was it. After the DA deposed him, he was out of this circle. All he had to do was deliver the evidence of the new case against Chisholm and Bridger and get Kaden released.

And maybe talk to the press a little too and turn public opinion in Kaden’s favor.

He was waiting for Kryzynski to give him the all clear and escort him to his car, but that was taking a while. They were short one Dodge Durango and one crooked cop. Ellery didn’t like the thought of Owens out there. He’d been the one who killed Coulson and had tried to ram Ellery’s car. A wingnut, a loose bullet, and a dangerous one at that, but Ellery couldn’t just cool his heels in the lobby of the capitol building, smiling nervously at the lawyers, aides, and politicians walking in and out, until they found him.

When Kryzynski strode up to him, his relief almost gave him leave for a whole and unfettered smile.

“How you doing, flatfoot?” he asked, and Kryzynski blushed.

“I… uh. Crap. You know, I took the detective’s exam, right? I think this right here might have just gotten me a chance—at twenty-six, which isn’t bad.”

“Congratulations,” Ellery said dryly. “Can I go now?”

That young, fair face aged ten years. “Look, a couple of us are going to escort you. Don’t make a thing of it. We’ll escort you to the DA’s office so you can give your official statement—you know the drill. But I don’t want you unprotected until we get this guy in the hole, you hear me?”

Ellery sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. I really hope we find this guy, because I’m telling you, this has been the longest week of my life.”

A week ago Jackson had been an unattainable sex symbol full of mystique and danger—and Ellery had thought wistfully that they would never touch.

Now they had touched, and Ellery hungered for another touch, and another, touches in peacetime, time to know each other better.

He really wanted to tell Jackson that their theories, half-articulated, not even fully researched, had been right. That they’d worked together successfully and not only cleared Kaden, but gotten to the bottom of Jackson’s own trouble.

God help Ellery—he liked Kaden, but he
really
wanted to tell Jackson that his own mystery had been fully solved and that he could put it away now. Maybe the nightmares that shook him would ease just a little once he knew it hadn’t been random—there had been a plan all along.

“Yeah,” Kryzynski was saying into his radio as they cleared the steps. “We’re coming down the northeast stairs, heading toward the garden. SWAT teams, are you in place? We want an escort across the street and….” He continued on, cop-speak, and Ellery wondered when had he gotten a radio? And in charge of the op? Ellery was reluctantly impressed. Not enough to give young Sean a second look, but impressed.

And then panicked.

A radio!

“Are you crazy?” he hissed as they cleared the stairs and set off down the garden walks. “We are dealing with
policemen
here. Do you not think they have
police scanners
in place?”

Kryzynski gave him a look of blank surprise.

And Ellery heard the backfire of a large vehicle.

And then, in a hellish parody of the previous morning, another good-looking man leaped on him and threw him to the ground.

Or, in this case, the rosebushes. Just as all hell broke loose.

JACKSON LISTENED
to Ellery’s story with increasing agitation. Part of it was the pain—he
needed
his fucking morphine—but part of it was….

“You… you just walked in there?” he said for the thousandth time.

“I had backup,” Ellery said, Popsicle cool.

“Yeah, some young cop who’s apparently hitting on you.” Ugh. Jackson needed to not be in a relationship if it meant he felt like
this
when his lover got hit on. He did
not
like this roiling in his stomach, oh no, he did not.

“You’ve slept with half the city,” Ellery said flatly. “And most of them would jump back in bed with you again—
with
their significant others. So just let me have one guy crushing on me, and deal.”

Jackson jerked his head and tried not to howl, but Ellery saw through it anyway.

“You need medicine!” he gasped, and,
thank fuck
, pushed the call button for the nurse.

“Well done,” Jackson said, scowling. “Your mother just pushed the morphine button until I passed out.”

“I can
do
that?”

Jackson could see it—a little bit of power went a long way with this one. “No. It’s illegal. She should be imprisoned.”

Ellery pushed the red button once and looked at him. “How much does it hurt?”

Like the hounds of hell are gnashing my bones and tissue and skin between dull bovine teeth.
“Not as much as my burning curiosity,” Jackson muttered. “So you heard the backfire, and your new boyfriend jumped you in public—”

“And shoved me into the rosebushes.” Ellery gestured to the scratches all over his face, hands, and arms.

Jackson winced, which, he thought, made him a really decent human being.

“You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?” Ellery demanded.

“No,” Jackson said sincerely. “I am currently in so much fucking pain, I wouldn’t wish bloodshed on another human being.”