Page 40 of Fish in a Barrel
“Mr. Cramer already told me what he had planned,” she said softly. “Is Mr. Gabriel all right?”
Jackson grimaced. “I was planning to go see, but since you’re here—”
“Oh no!” She patted his arm, blessedly not the arm he was carrying gingerly away from his stitched-up side. “You go and see to his well-being. If you could just tell me where I’m supposed to go….”
“Mrs. Frazier?” Jackson turned and saw, much to his relief, that Ellery had called in the reserves and Jade was there to help move people.
“Mrs. Frazier, this is our paralegal, Jade Cameron. She’s going to get you seated, and I’m going to check on our other witness,” Jackson said. Ellery was probably introducing the new witnesses even as they were speaking.
“Mr. Rivers?” Annette said, pausing with a touch to his injured arm. He tried not to grimace, and her sweet face darkened with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Sustained an injury,” he replied with a deep breath and then saw that her own injured arm was still in a sling. “You might recognize the pain.”
Her eyes widened. “That happened last night? Oh my goodness. That happened after you tracked down Mr. Gabriel? Did he—”
Jackson shook his head. “No, ma’am. Let’s just say that the people who ordered him to do what he did were not… pleased that he would be here to testify.”
She held her good hand to her mouth. “Oh no. Oh no! Is Mr. Gabriel okay?”
Jackson looked at her sadly. “Was he okay the day he hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No. Oh no. Will he be okay to testify?”
“He wants to. Before that day, he was a part of the community of the park too—he was working undercover. He knows Ezekiel, and he doesn’t want him in prison any more than you do. He wants to make things right.”
She nodded unhappily, probably because she heard what Jackson hadn’t said. That Cody Gabriel was going to have to walk through fire in order to do that and that the police officers who were supposed to be on their side were the ones leaving a trail of blood in their wake.
“Jackson,” Jade said, gesturing to the courtroom entrance, and Jackson nodded once more at Annette Frazier and hustled to the front entrance of the courtroom, anxious to get out of there before the judge arrived.
Outside in the main hallway, he took a right, then walked past two smaller rooms, antechambers to the courtroom he’d just vacated. Then he took one more right to the smaller elevators used by the judges and one more right to an alcove where a pay phone, of all things, was mounted to a wall. A tall, well-muscled blond man stood guarding the entrance of the alcove, along with his partner, a woman in a navy-blue suit with cunning little tennis shoes masked as women’s blue oxfords. Tucked away in the alcove, a small bench sat next to the pay phone, and Henry and Cody Gabriel were hunkered down there.
Gabriel had his head tilted back and his eyes closed, and Jackson at first wondered if he was asleep and then realized he was working hard to keep his breathing even.
“Where’s the dog?” he asked. Henry had smuggled the poor thing into the hospital the night before, and Cody had spent a lot of his time clutching it as the tiny creature licked Cody’s hands disconsolately and Henry kept feeding him jerky.
“He’s good,” Henry said. “Had one of the guys at the flophouse take him to the vet to get him some flea treatment and his shots.” He patted Cody’s shoulder. “I called the rehab facility John recommended, and you know what? They let you bring comfort animals with you. They’ve got their own wing. So after we get him all his shots and stuff, you can bring him to rehab if you want. I forgot to tell you that when you walked in.”
Gabriel’s face lit up. “You-you’d do that for me?” he asked, voice rusty.
“Well, yeah.” Henry shrugged. “I figure you need everybody in your corner you can get, right?”
Cody squeezed his eyes shut and nodded, and Jackson gave Henry a proud nod. “Good idea,” he mouthed. Then, louder, he said, “You’re looking pretty perky today, Junior. What’d your boyfriend put in your Cheerios?”
Henry made a face. “Notin—with. Vitamin packs. It was like rinsing down a holistic pharmacy with my orange juice.” He looked both ways like he was telling a national secret. “I swear to God, there were, like, a zillion B-complex vitamins in there. I got abonerwith my coffee!”
Before Jackson could respond, from behind them the male Federal Marshal, North Albright, said, “We can’t thank you enough for the coffee, by the way. Your paralegal said you asked her to bring it.” He hid a yawn against his shoulder. “Long night.”
“And good call on the pumpkin spice,” said his partner, Leah Foy. “And the whipped cream.” She gave an ecstatic little shiver. “And the donuts. You guys are the best. Saying.”
“Hey,” Jackson joked, “when we wake you out of bed to guard a witness, we do it classy.” He turned to Cody, whose eyes were on him now, wide, limpid brown, red-rimmed with the recent emotion and jittery with strain. Jackson dropped his hand to cover Cody’s. “Hey,” he said softly. “Look at me. You need to know, Annette Frazier was worried about you. I told her you were not okay. When you walk into that courtroom, you don’t need to be afraid of her, afraid of her judgment, afraid of the terrible thing you’ve done. I told her you were trying to make it right, and I think she knows how much it cost you. Does that help?”
Cody squeezed his hand. “Yeah,” he whispered. “It does. Thank you.” He swallowed and sat up a little straighter. He’d probably been handsome not too long ago, but now his makeshift buzzcut was patchy and his cheekbones stuck out from hollow cheeks. The skin of his jaw and chin were bright pasty white compared to the weathering of his forehead and the apples of his cheeks, and the hand he used to scrub across his mouth shook. This was a man who had lived on drugs and guilt and horror for too long on the streets.
And then his lean, cracked lips gave a twist. “Thanks for making my coffee that ginormous venti frozen thing. Gotta tell you, between the sugar and the caffeine, I’m gonna be vibrating right into rehab.”
Jackson managed a smile back. “Remember that, brother. Plenty of legal substances that’ll make your heart thunder in your ears.” He gave a conspiratorial grimace. “I just don’t get to drink any of them.”
“What did Ellery make you drink?” Henry asked, his customary evil grin in place.
