Page 41 of Fish in a Barrel
“It was so damned cruel. Real coffee—the good stuff. Vanilla cream—like, the best. Sugar up the yang. And this… thismudthat he called a supplement but tasted like grass without the ‘gr.’ Seriously, the world’s biggest killjoy.”
“Why’d you drink it?” Cody asked, eyes wide.
Jackson shrugged. “’Cause when you crawl into bed at four a.m. to bleed all over your boyfriend’s sheets, you’d better drink his fuckin’ coffee in the morning, you hear me?”
Cody nodded. “I hear you. At least there was sugar and cream.”
Jackson’s pocket buzzed; it was a text from Jade.Annette sworn in. Time to make your entrance.
“Amen, brother. Let’s roll.”
Jackson had already discussed their entrance when he’d been getting stitched up in the hospital. He had to hand it to Ellery: North and Leah had been waiting for his and Henry’s arrival with Cody and hadn’t appeared dismayed in the least when they’d gotten Cody checked in first, assessed for health conditions, and given all sorts of vaccinations and vitamins to help get him back to health after his time on the streets.
Jackson had insisted on being in an adjoining cubicle while a PA he hadn’t met before had stitched him up, and two nurses who weren’t Dave and Alex butknewJackson’s favorite nursing couple talked about how he was just exactly what they’d expected.
“I’m going to get them for this,” Jackson had responded, talking through his teeth as the PA had worked hard to stitch one section of scarred skin to another.
The nurses—“gaybies” as Alex apparently called them—were Louis and Shane, and they had an obsession with boy bands that Jackson had never seen before or since. Their chatter had been diverting, although Jackson would never agree that the breakup of One Direction had been the “singular most defining moment of music, period, the end,” but he’d finally had Henry ask them to give him some time to talk to the Marshals about what he and Ellery would need the next morning.
What they really needed was for Cody to magically appear, in a puff of smoke, right when Annette Frazier was supposed to identify him. What they’d settled on was coming in single file—almost—into the outside of the seats in the gallery behind Ellery. Jade would be there to save a row for them, and if Cody walked next to Henry, they could close ranks and keep Cody’s face from the other side of the courtroom. That helped satisfy North and Leah’s need to flank their witness, along with the hope that they could keep the prosecution from knowing exactly who they were calling in.
So that’s what they did now, North and Leah flanking Cody until they got to the courtroom doors, and then Jackson and Henry sliding in like lettuce and tomato on the suspect sandwich. They walked quietly, making as little fuss as possible, and Jackson was relieved to see that the attention of Arizona—as well as her four rather battered witnesses—was focused in horror on Annette Frazier’s testimony, as opposed to the comings and goings in the courtroom.
Jackson rather enjoyed the idea that they thought their worst nightmare was in the witness stand at present, and it was a sweet, doughy-faced woman dressed in her best black suit, her fingers laced tightly together instead of stroking her beloved cat.
Silently they slid into their seats—oddly enough, theater seats with coarse woven red cushions, instead of pews—and sat, while Ellery kept the prosecution’s attention riveted on himself and Annette.
“So, Ms. Frazier—you’re doing wonderfully, by the way. I cannot thank you enough for walking us through this—you’ve told us that, as you were waiting for your friend, you saw two gentlemen talking together. What happened next?”
“Well, one man—he’s sitting over there, behind the counsel for the prosecution—he was putting pressure on another man, who looked as though he really didn’t want to do what the first man said.”
“Let the record show that Ms. Frazier has just pointed directly at Officer Engall Goslar, witness for the prosecution, who has given testimony to directly contradict what Ms. Frazier is saying now.”
“Objection,” Arizona said hotly. “Whether their testimonies contradict each other is for the jury to decide!”
“Withdrawn,” Ellery said smoothly, and then he gave a thin smile to let Arizona know she’d walked right into that one.
She rolled her eyes and sat down and then glared at her witnesses as they grumbled. Jackson took a covert look at their four choirboys and noticed that Brown and Freethy were both red-nosed and glassy-eyed, wielding Kleenex like party streamers, and McMurphy’s face was a mess. His eyes were black, his nose was taped, and Jackson would hazard he limped when he walked. Goslar’s face looked a little worse for wear, but he was also sporting a knee brace, and it looked like he might be catching Brown and Freethy’s cold.
“Let’s hear it for vitamin packs,” Henry murmured, barely loud enough for Jackson to hear, and Jackson shot him an amused look. He had to admit, he and Henry seemed to be doing better than their counterparts, and he was the one with the stab wound from the back of his shoulder blade to his waist.
Then Ellery started to speak again, and they quieted down.
“So, Ms. Frazier, you saw Officer Goslar speaking to another man—could you identify this man if you saw him again?”
“Yes, sir. I could.”
“What did this man do?”
“Well, first he went into the bathrooms while Officer Goslar drove away. He was in there for quite some time. I thought he was ill, perhaps. Then I walked down the sidewalk toward the park’s entrance to see if my friend was on her way….”
Annette went on to tell the same story she’d told Jackson, right down to the part where Officer McMurphy was going to shoot the dog—and the man behind it.
“Are you sure Officer McMurphy wasn’t being threatened from that quarter?” Ellery prodded.
“Most definitely,” she replied. “The man was squatting in a corner, his arm wrapped around his pit bull, his hand on the dog’s mouth to muzzle him. He was terrified.” She looked embarrassed. “You could see a little puddle of urine underneath him. He truly expected that police officer to shoot the dog, and that probably would have killed him too.”
“So what happened next?”
