Page 75 of Fish in a Barrel
“Mm-hmm.”
“You don’t sound surprised.” Ellery was. Ellery’s blood was thundering in his ears from shock.
“I’m not. Now I don’t think Cartman did it—because that would be much too easy—and also because Sandra was pulling out around eight thirty in the morning, and Cartman would have no reason to be here at eight thirty if he blew Charlie Boehner away in the sweaty balls of the a.m.”
“But still,” Ellery pondered. “We could check the car’s location out if we can have him brought in.”
“I’ll have the cops collect him,” Jackson said. “And quickly. It’s ten a.m., and I doubt he’s had time to get his car fixed. You do the legal voodoo that you do, and I’ll call some cop friends who would probably love to be the ones picking him up.”
“Fair,” Ellery said, writing everything down on his legal pad so he could remember what to tell Galen and Henry. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. They made it sound like Boehner was shot dead in his living room by somebody who walked in the front door. Even Christie and de Souza thought so. But we got a good look at the crime-scene photos, and Sean got a pic from the autopsy, and that’s not what happened at all.”
Oh Lord. “Tell me.”
“A goddamned sniper, Ellery. The entry point was through the top of a window in a second-story apartment, aimed down. His front looked like he got hit with a nine-millimeter, but his back looked like a grenade went off in there. It was a sniper. We need to look at our players—everyone, including Brentwood, although I know you’re developing a soft spot for the guy—and figure out who’s got training, military or otherwise, in long-distance target shooting. Sean, Billy, and I are going to scope out the buildings around Boehner’s apartment to try to figure out where the shot come from, and then maybe we can take a look at the primary shooting site. Yeah, I know every yahoo who plays a game thinks they’re a sharpshooter, but it is, in fact, avery specificskill. Someone who hunts might be able to do it, if they’ve practiced enough, and it will be a lot easier to narrow it down once we get a line on the ammunition, but this is going to help us pinpoint our bad guy by quite a lot.”
Ellery nodded, making a list of things to have Crystal run. “It will. And thank God, because I was going to go blind tracking down phone records without something specific to go on.”
At that moment there was a soft knock on his door, and Jade stuck her head in. “Your ten fifteen?” she asked.
He held up one finger and then gestured her into the room.
“Jackson, I’m going to hand Jade my cell so you can tell her what you just told me and I can talk to this client. But in the meantime, I want you to stay put, okay? Only go—”
“Sean and Billy with me the whole time. Backup, Counselor. I haz it.”
Ellery gave a tight smile. “I’m sending Henry out to you,” he said. “I want you to have more of it.”
Jackson grunted. “Doesn’t Henry have something better to do today?”
“Yeah. Keep you safe,” he said. “Here’s Jade. Love you.”
“Love you back.”
And then Ellery had to go.
HIS TENfifteen was heartbreaking—a nineteen-year-old picked up for a handful of party drugs and charged with possession with intent to sell. It was the kid’s third nonviolent criminal offense, and even a guilty plea would get him sent away for twenty-five to life. Ellery was going to have to tap-dance quickly—and maybe even take the kid to trial—in order to get a sentence that would fit the crime, but that wasn’t what his mind was on after the appointment.
“Did you send Henry?” he asked Jade, and she nodded while handing him a sheaf of papers with phone numbers highlighted on them.
“But Galen is co-opting AJ for some surveillance he’s desperate to have done. I okayed that, and he’s grateful for the hours.”
AJ was a sweet kid, back in college now, who had almost died the year before, caught in the Dirty/Pretty Killer’s web. Jackson had befriended him, helped him get clean, and then had given him a job in Ellery’s fledgling law firm. He was smart, resourceful, and as good at computers as Jackson’s other friend Crystal. Since Crystal was in recovery as well, she and AJ had formed an almost instant bond and were even rooming together, last Ellery had heard. Crystal worked for Jackson and Ellery’s old firm, and although she wanted to join Cramer and Henderson as soon as they could afford her, her present situation gave her information they might not ordinarily have access to.
She was also—Ellery could admit it now—psychic as hell.
Ellery wasn’t sure if Crystal’s warning to Jackson had been funneled to her through Pfeist, Langdon, Harrelson and Cooper, or if she’d had some sort of vision or something, but Ellery knew Crystal would use both data and anything else at her disposal to keep Jackson safe.
He was fine with that. And he was fine with not leaving Galen in the lurch.
But he was… uneasy with Jackson, Sean, and Henry out in the world together. Sean had been a steadying influence when he’d worn a badge, but he was a civilian now, and Ellery had cause to know that the once rule-toeing, box-loving young officer he’d met over a year ago had done some very out-of-the-box things since he’d been released from the hospital.
“Jade?” he said thoughtfully. “Do I have any other meetings today?”
“Three,” she said promptly. “Eleven thirty and one. I figured we’d do lunch around two, and then you could leave after your three o’clock.” It was early—usually he’d be working at the office for another three or four hours to put his notes in order, make phone calls, and begin the preliminary work on the cases he’d accepted that day. Most of the time, Jackson would be done when he was, but he wasn’t sure if that was by design or causality. It could be that Jackson just stopped working when Ellery was ready to go home, or it could be that if the caseload was high, they both worked late, and if it was light, they could cut out early. Ellery had simply been grateful for the company—he’d never asked.
He only knew Jackson was damned good at his job so that Ellery could be good at his.
