Page 123 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“Get her the fuck out of here,” Manning told the agents holding her arms, “before I kill her myself.”

Ellery stared at him in surprise. “That sounded sincere,” he said.

“It was,” Manning said, his face twisted in disgust. “Now what about…. Jesus, that guy’s in the California State Assembly, isn’t he?”

“Gannet Hoover,” Ellery said, as the pathetic blob of a man was hauled away. He hadn’t stopped sobbing. He could barely breathe. “He was one of Conway Schmitt’s—aka Newton Dwayne’s—first victims. When Schmitt got out of prison for abusing choirboys, he showed up on Hoover’s doorstep, and Hoover and his wife gave him a place to stay. And he came up with the idea of moving to California so Gannet could run for office. Schmitt brought his ex-wife along, and she formed the Moms for Clean Living with all her old sorority sisters, and between her and Schmitt, they laundered Super PAC money and ran real-estate scams and abducted kids from their parents on the promise of ‘curing’ their sexuality so they could collect school voucher money. And they got to funnel kids—boys for Schmitt,girls for the two gentlemen I understand Jackson took out—to be abused.”

Manning looked ill. “This is… gross. Atrocious. Absolutely disgusting.”

Ellery felt like the sour expression on his face would never go away. “Don’t sit on any of the furniture,” he said. “And, uhm, stay away from the rug.”

Manning shuddered, and Ellery started wrapping the last of his gauze around Jackson’s bicep. “This one’s going to haunt me,” the agent said frankly, his face bleak.

“Us too,” Jackson said, his shoulders seeming to sag. “We never would have known—not any of it—if one of the kids who’d escaped their clutches hadn’t tried to solicit Galen and his partner as they were taking a walk one evening.”

Manning gazed at him curiously. “Are we ever going to meet this witness? What did he see?”

Jackson shook his head. “Isn’t this enough?” he asked bitterly. “You have so much evidence, you’re swimming in it. Can’t we let that kid go and be a kid?”

Manning nodded slowly. “I’ll tell you, normally I’m a by-the-book guy, but you’re right. I’m sure there’s a way you came by all this information that has nothing to do with that kid, right?”

Ellery felt a small smile twitch at his lips. “It all started,” he said softly, “when Piper Lutz came to my office, trying to sell Moms for Clean Living to a law firm populated with a lot of gay lawyers. And I shut her down.”

Manning’s face lit up. “Did that really happen?” he asked.

“And then she set one of the ‘outside’ kids on us with a Molotov cocktail,” Ellery said. “We have the kid in custody, being tended to by one of the advocates. We’ve already taken his statement. Will that do?”

“Oh yeah.” Manning swallowed hard. “All those kids you guys rescued—the ones from last night, the ones from here—the more we can do to keep them out of the system and just get them help, the happier I’ll be. There’s a lot of guilt to go around in this hellhole, but none of it is theirs.”

Ellery felt like a band around his chest had loosened, and he nodded. It wasn’t justice—there could neverbeadequate justice for this atrocity—but Conway Schmitt and his wife were going away for a long time.

It was a start.

At that moment, there was a scuffle at the door, and Jade’s voice chimed loudly.

“Would you people let me in? I’ve got three kids here who were hiding out in that garage with the ATVs, and I promised them some goddamned food. And my brother’s in there, and his stupid fiancé, who happens to be my boss.”

“Three more kids,” Jackson said, his own face relaxing. “Alive.” He raised his voice. “Guys, let her in! And for fuck’s sake feed those kids!”

Manning snorted inelegantly. “So glad we brought you along,” he said. “It’s good to have someone in charge.”

Blue Fish

THERE WEREmore questions, from the FBI and from the state’s attorney general and from the police—lather, rinse, repeat.

Jackson, Ellery, Lucy Satan, Jade, Cody, and Galen were finally allowed to be escorted home around ten o’clock that night, long after the kids Jade and Jackson had found had been taken to the local hospital and church to be fed, clothed, and tended to.

All of them fretted about the kids getting adequate treatment, adequate debriefing, adequate care after all they had undoubtedly been through, but Manning had irritably told them that sometimes, the government actually knew what the fuck it was doing and had made them go home.

Sometimes there was only so much they could do. They all knew that.

As it was, the next day was going to be a massive effort at the office as the lot of them tried to deal with the paperwork and postponed appointments that the past two—or was it three?—days had created.

Nobody, Ellery had said,nobodywas going to go out of the office to do anything or talk to anybody, and none of them were to be there any earlier than ten o’clock.

One of their best moments was on the ride home, when K-Ski had texted them pictures of Isabelle Roberts, her arms around a shyly smiling Cowboy, standing in front of the iconic Disneyland gardens, each wearing a set of ears.

They’re inseparable. She’s already promised him her spare room when they get back.

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