Page 12 of Fish in a Barrel
Henry’s grunt had a thoughtful quality to it. “Is Zeke going to be all right?”
Jackson thought about his quiet presence during the trial and Arturo’s gentle, unobtrusive pain management. “Physically, probably. But….” Jackson sighed. “He was sort of a rebel—kept trying to push his boundaries to be independent. I-I wouldn’t be surprised if he never pushed another boundary after this, and you know me. I think that’s a shame.”
Jackson tried the wipers on the car, and after a few swipes, he figured the mostly not-blurry and not-foggy image of the road was about as good as his view as going to get.
“Time to head out,” he said. “I looked up directions to Annette Frazier’s house. You need to get on the horn.”
HARMONY PARK,where the attack had happened, was near the river, close to the bike trail and the levee, and it was no surprise when Annette Frazier’s house turned out to be within walking distance of it. The majority of the park was used for soccer fields, but there were trees and underbrush on the river side of the fields, near the levee, where Jackson had scouted for the place Effie had first seen Zeke. She’d been walking her dogs, hugging the shade, and Zeke had been sitting back underneath a tree.
As Jackson piloted the minivan through ever-slickening streets, he found himself grateful that Zeke was at least cared for right now. He and Ellery had been inside the care home, seen the staff interact with the residents, and knew the level of dedication it took to be patient and professional and kind twenty-four seven.
Zeke might someday get some more independence, but right now he was safe, and safe counted.
“She was okay with us stopping by?” Jackson asked.
“Yeah,” Henry said. “In fact, she was surprised nobody had interviewed her before now.”
Jackson grunted. “Arizona is too good not to—she must have been acting on orders. God… this whole thing stinks to high heaven.”
“You know, the world is a pretty fucked-up place when the DA would rather prosecute a man with a disability than find the actual perpetrator.”
“What’s fucked-up is that he thinks this makes him look tough,” Jackson muttered. “But we’ve seen it in the news, on TV. Thirty-three percent of the country thinks it’s okay to mock the disabled, or scapegoat their troubles on people who need social services. And they’re loud and obnoxious about it. If you’re the kind of politician who panders to that crowd, this isn’t about you being a fucking lowlife bully, it’s about you proving you’ve got the biggest straight white penis.”
“My bent white penis objects to these people.” Somehow Henry managed to make him laugh, although the fury churning in his stomach was enough to nauseate him.
“God, all penises should object to these people. A penis without compassion and a brain is just a dick. There’s our house.”
The houses clustered in the blocks around the park were older—they’d been built in the 1960s—and small, but they tended to have adorable gardens. Annette Frazier must have loved her roses, because her yard was full of them, growing rampant without anybody to tend them and reaching out spiked tendrils in the blowing rain.
Jackson parked the minivan in front of the house, and he and Henry fought their way up the walk, much like the prince in the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale was said to have done, only wielding their denim-jacket-covered arms instead of shields.
When they knocked on the intricately carved white door with paint barely starting to peel, they were greeted by a white man in his midfifties with a classic dad bod—pouchy little stomach, thin legs in baggy, no-assed jeans, and narrow shoulders underneath a hooded sweatshirt much like theirs, but his read Engineers Do It Repeatedly for Quality Checks. His graying hair was receding a bit, but his smile pushed at the lines by his eyes, and Jackson thought that made him a little bit sexy.
“Come in,” he said. “I’m Larry Frazier, Annette’s husband. Annie’s still taking it easy—no leaping up from the chair for her, is there, Annie?”
Annette Frazier was a soft, round, biscuit-dough counterpart to her husband, with grays peeking out from the dark brown dye job and lines around her eyes that made the hair color a lie anyway. She was holding a black cat on her lap, sleek and imperious, and Jackson had a moment of missing Lucifer, the new kitten.
“Hello, handsome boy,” he said softly, extending his fingers. “May I pet?”
“If he’ll let you,” Annette said, smiling a bit. Jackson held out just two fingers, close enough to whisker level for the cat to feel his presence. Very intentionally he rubbed his whiskers against Jackson, and Jackson smoothed them back again. The cat retreated, and Jackson smiled.
“I think that’s enough. His royal highness is satisfied,” he said, grinning at the woman. She gave him a tired smile back, and he took in the bandages then, underneath her flowered sweatshirt. They were taped at the neck and along the shoulder and bulged at the front of her chest, before the breast tissue started. Oh, he needed to tread carefully here. This woman, this nice woman, had been hurt. He needed to respect that.
“So nobody has come by to interview you?” he asked after he and Henry had made themselves comfortable on the corduroy couch. The living room was small and structured around a mid-sized flat-screen television, but it was cozy. The furniture was worn but still comfortable, although the coffee table was a heavy lacquered maple relic to a bygone age.
“Not after the initial incident,” Annette said, looking worried. “They said they caught the guy, but the sketches I’ve seen on television haven’t looked like him at all.”
“Nobody asked you to identify him?” Jackson asked, looking at Henry in dismay.
“No. Is that normal?” Annette was chewing her lip, and Jackson took a breath.
“No. That’s not normal at all,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Look, I need you to give meyourversion of events that day, and then I’m going to show you a picture and ask you to identify the man in the picture. So far, all I’ve heard is the police report, and I don’t really trust those.” He gave his most charming smile. “I work for the defense—I’m not supposed to.”
“As you should not,” Annette said staunchly. “I teach middle school. We try to tell them to use their critical thinking skills when interpreting literature.”
“That’s my kind of teacher,” Jackson said, winking. “Now I’m going to record this,” he said, setting his phone on the table, set to record. He stated the date and the time and who it was in the room. “Now, Annette, all you have to do is tell me about the day at the park.”
Annette nodded. “Well, it was early Saturday, late September. I wanted to get my walk in before it got too hot. I usually meet my friend at the park around nine—she’s got a big golden retriever—but it’s not a rule or anything. We just try to be there at the same time, same place. So I was waiting by the bathrooms, where we usually see each other, right where the underbrush opens out.”
