Page 14 of Fish in a Barrel
“Red,” she said promptly. “Like the end of a fat, red—”
“Annie!” Larry wailed, and Jackson wondered if this was going to be him and Ellery when they reached paunchy middle-age.
He sort of hoped so.
“So, moving on,” Jackson said, holding on to himself. “What happenednext.”
“Well, the long-haired guy went to the bathroom, and I got a text from my friend that said she’d be there in about five minutes. I started to walk up to the park entrance to wait for her. We usually do the full block around the park—if you add in parts of the neighborhood, it’s about two miles.”
“Nice,” Jackson said, because he knew exercising wasn’t always everybody’s favorite.
“And as I was walking up, I noticed that the picnic pavilion… you know, the covered tables beyond the toys?”
“Yeah, they were using a power hose on it when I went to scope out the scene,” Jackson said, and to his surprise, Annette put a hand to her mouth, a look of anger and sadness crossing her face.
“Of course they were,” she said vehemently. “Because now they’ve got an excuse to kick the homeless out, right? One guy theythinkwas homeless goes on some sort of rampage and they relocate everybody to Redding, don’t they!”
Jackson blinked at her. “Redding?”
“There’s an agreement with the prison system to drop their released prisoners in Redding. Apparently the murder rate there is very scary.”
Jackson blinked. “Is that true?” he asked. “Or a liberal urban myth?”
Larry held his hand perpendicular to the floor and wiggled it back and forth in the classic “maybe” gesture. “We have a friend who lives there who swears that the mayor has a thing going with Folsom Prison, but it’s true their homeless problem is horrific.”
Oh Lord, there went his stomach again. “One city at a time,” he said grimly. “Tell us about the homeless population in the park.”
“They tended to hang out in the pavilion,” Annette Frazier told him. “There’s an overhang to shelter them from the elements, and there’s picnic tables for socializing. You can….” She grimaced. “You can smell pot there a lot, but, you know, it’s not shooting up, so better that. Anyway, a lot of the time they’ll hang out there or stash their gear. But it’s not comfortable to sleep, so they sleep near the tree line, in the underbrush. The place is almost always in shadow.”
Jackson nodded. “And you felt safe walking there?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Well, there’s bad people everywhere,” she replied, “so I know it’s not always safe. But I know some of the folks by name. I chat. In the summer, I bring big flats of water, and in the winter, I’ll go early on holidays and bring containers with real turkey dinners in them.” Her smile at her husband was winsome. “Larry helps me put them together, and we buy socks and toothbrushes and things and give them as gifts.”
“She makes fleece scarves for everybody,” Larry said fondly. “I mean, yes, it’s not great, which is why she tends to find friends to walk with, but being recognized there makes her feel safe.”
Jackson nodded. He understood too. Homeless encampments weren’t safe—there was no escaping that. But like Effie, Annette had refused to drive out people in need.
“So this long-haired guy—the actor—he wasn’t a part of the usual crowd?” Jackson asked, to make sure.
“Oh, I hadn’t seen him there before,” she said. “And the people at the park wouldn’t look at him, just like they wouldn’t look at the cop in the street clothes.”
Jackson was still thinkingundercover—it practically screamed from his pores—but he had to keep that supposition to himself.
“So he went into the bathroom, and the other guy left, and you went near the pavilion to wait. What happened next?”
“So I was looking toward the street, and I guess the long-haired guy came out of the bathroom. He was there about four minutes.” She let out a sigh. “Long enough to get high—I mean, really high. He started charging people, just getting in their face and yelling, like he was trying to incite them to violence. He terrified the people in the pavilion. One guy had a dog, and he was crouched in the corner, hugging his pit bull and sobbing. So I turned and told him shame on him, shame on him for scaring all those nice people like that. And… and it was weird. I swear he was really high. He wasn’t faking it. His pupils were the size of UFOs. But he squeezed his eyes shut and rocked back and forth on his feet, and when he spoke, it was from far away. He said, ‘Lady, you don’t want any piece of this. Please. I beg of you. Go away.’”
Jackson’s breath caught. He could see it so clearly. “And then?”
“And I thought I had him.” Her voice shook. “I thought… you know, like the emotionally fragile students, I thought I’d talked him down. I said, ‘You don’t want to do this, honey. Why don’t you find a quiet place and let it all simmer down in your head?’ And for a minute, I thought he was going to do that. But then….” Her voice hardened. “Then the cops show up, sirens blazing, and they all screech to a halt like they think they’re starring in some sort of television show, and suddenly there’s six-dozen guns pointed inside that little pavilion. And he said, ‘Fuck!’ and that’s when the knife came out and he had me around the waist and the knife at my throat.”
She’d started to cry softly, and Larry, who had moved closer, tangled his fingers with hers in the cat’s fur. “And everybody was yelling, and he was yelling back and dragging me away from the pavilion and toward the underbrush. And then, just when I thought it was going to be okay, he was going to let me go, the dog started barking, and one of the young officers—blond and red-faced, you know, like that one actor? Jesse somebody? He turns toward the guy with the dog and shouts, ‘I’m gonna shoot you through your fuckin’ dog!’ and all the officers swivel their heads toward him. The guy goes, in my ear, mind you, ‘Sorry, lady. I’m so sorry.’ And then he cut me with the knife. Not even as hard as he could. I could feel him holding back, and I started to cry. Just as everybody turned back toward us, he shoved me forward and disappeared, and….” She buried her face into her husband’s waist as he stood next to her chair. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “Maybe this was why they didn’t call me to testify. They knew I’d be a big weenie and hurt their case.”
“I don’t think that was it,” Jackson said, and he and Henry exchanged furious looks. “Annette, we’re almost done. You’ve been so brave. Everything you’ve told us is so helpful. I’m sorry to have to drag you through this.”
She shook her head, taking the Kleenex her husband proffered her with a grateful little smile. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, her voice a little more solid.
“Don’t be,” Jackson told her sincerely. “You have helped so much. The police report said nothing about any of this—not the dog, not how you were injured. That’s all important stuff. Now I’m going to show you a picture of the guy they’re trying for this crime. I know you’ve seen drawn pictures, but this was taken last month, before all this happened. I need you to tell me your first reaction.”
