Page 119 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“I didn’t send him out to find anybody,” Hoover continued, in that same lost shocky voice, and Ellery heard the words again.I loved her. She was kind. But you turned me into thisthing….

“Whydidyou send him away?”

Ellery thought he was going to die, because that was hismothertalking to Gannett Hoover, and he had agun!

“I wanted space,” Hoover said softly to Ellery’s mother. To Ellery’s simultaneous relief and horror, Hoover turned the chair so he was facing the hidden staircase and scooted the chair a little as well. If he lay on his stomach—an appalling thought—Ellery could weasel out and be behind the man in the chair.

The man in the chair with the gun, facing his mother.

Reluctantly, Ellery got to his hands and knees and began inching his way out of the gap between the chair and the desk.

“Space to do what, young man?” Taylor Cramer asked softly. “Because it’s notmeyou’re pointing that gun toward.”

Ellery froze, hoping he was reading her signals right. Oh. Oh no.

“I… my wife never knew,” Hoover said apologetically. “But you people—you people know, don’t you?”

“That your old choir director sexually abused you?” Taylor’s voice was kind, Ellery thought in a panic. So kind to this man who had done so many terrible things.

To this man whose level of choice had been arrested, as he probably had, in the moment when his agency and innocence had been stripped away.

“I was a bad boy,” Hoover whispered tearfully. “And… she was so sweet. She… she didn’t like Schmitty, but she kept saying he could stay at our house. That’s what good Christian women did, right? Offer a place for the disenfranchised. And he kept… he kept….”

“And you were like a little boy,” she said. “You felt like you couldn’t say no.”

“I couldn’t!” There was a sob, and Hoover muttered, “Oh God. Oh God….”

“Son, I wish you wouldn’t do that with the gun,” Taylor said, and Ellery’s stomach lurched. He’d paused, because his mother had sounded like she had it under control, but at the throbbing note in her voice, he started to creep out from under the desk again.

“And then he came up with a scam—that’s what he called it. A scam. That I should run for office. He said it was the greatest grift of all time. We had a president who did the same thing, right? And I couldn’t say no, and he… he sold Bibles and gold watches that never came, and I cashed in my retirement, and we came out here, and I ran for office and… and it just got… big. And his wife started sending kids here…. I… God help me, I needed somefucking space.”

“So you gave the victimized children to your abuser,” Taylor said, and while her voice remained neutral, Ellery could tell she was having problems not saying something awful, not asking him what the hell he was thinking, or not demanding that he find a backbone.

Ellery’s mother had always been one to show compassion but also demand accountability—but nobody wanted to see the inside of Gannett Hoover’s brain pan. Justhearingit was awful enough.

“And it all got so much worse,” Hoover whispered. “And this morning… this morning he had his… hisgoonshauling Retty out to the mines, and my wife…. Ginny finally saw. She came out and asked why they hadn’t gotten Retty an ambulance, like she’d told them, and he… he shot her.”

Hoover collapsed into tears then, obviously distraught, and from Ellery’s angle on the floor, he was almost clocked by the gun as Hoover let his hands dangle by his sides.

Very gently, scooting so he was in no way in the line of fire, Ellery disengaged the gun from Gannett Hoover’s hand, and still holding the thing—safety on, mindful of the many times Jackson had taken him to the gun range in their off-hours—he managed to scramble out from under the desk.

His mother let out a breath. “You know what you’re doing with that, son?” she asked.

He nodded, adding, “It’shorriblein there.”

She grimaced. “I… I get the feeling this is a place of significance for him.”

Hoover was still sobbing, head in his hands, and Ellery shuddered.

“There’s just… there’s no justice for a guy like this,” he muttered. What? They put him in prison where he would continue to be everybody’s meat? But he’d facilitated the trafficking of children, and odds were had predated on them himself. There was no penalty, no justice, that would make up for what he’d done, other than the hell he’d been condemned to when he was just a child and had apparently lived in ever since.

“We should move,” his mother—ever practical—said, before they could start trying to change the world for the unforgivable sinners as well. “Do you hear anything out front?”

Ellery moved to the french doors, which had been shattered at the lock and frame, and peered cautiously into the foyer. “The FBI is completely absent,” he muttered. “Whatever jammer they’ve got working apparently starts at the threshold and doesn’t budge.”

“What about—”

At that moment two things happened.

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