Page 87 of Fish in a Barrel
“No big deal? Is that what you were about to say?” she asked sweetly.
“Absolutely not,” he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and wincing. He squinted at the face of his phone—7:00 a.m. It was like a conspiracy of people trying to wake him up early. “It was… well, it was blown out of proportion in the legal community, but?”
“How’s your wound, Jackson?” she asked, voice flinty.
Jackson actually closed his eyes to assess. “Not bad? Stiff. Could use some vitamin E oil?”
“Good,” she said. “You’re at least being honest. How’s the fever?”
“How did you know I had a—”
“Because you told me yourself you’d been sick. It’s what your body does—first there’s trauma, then all your defenses get lowered, then you have a fever. It’s like a priming switch for your immune system. You bleed out all your antibodies, and your body needs more.”
“Said no doctor ever,” Jackson began, laughing.
“I am not interested in the medical community’s attempts to rein you in,” Taylor Cramer replied, in a voice like expensive wine frozen over. “What I care about, Jackson, is that neither of you bothered to call me and tell me you were hurt! Did you think I wouldn’t care?”
Jackson sighed. “I think Ellery was just too busy,” he said truthfully, because Ellery usually made time to call his mother during the weekend, and it was out of character that he hadn’t.
“And you?”
“I’ll live,” Jackson told her. “I didn’t want to worry you if it wasn’t important.”
“Jackson? It’s always important. Your new kitten is important. Having to expose a war wound in court is important. Being ill and feverish and being stuck on the sidelines and hating it is important. I… I know you don’t know how this entire process works, son, but I guarantee it doesn’t unless you tell me and Ellery’s father what’s happening in your everyday lives!”
“Most of the time it’s sort of boring,” he confessed, and she snorted. Ellery’s mother. Snorted. Into the phone—on purpose.
“Try again.”
He thought about it. “Well, yesterday I officially traded my mostly new and only a little bit battered CR-V with my friend’s sister’s ten-year-old Town & Country that Henry thinks is haunted,” he said. “That was fun. She, the sister, uhm, apparently had just been rear-ended by the city’s district attorney, who took one look at her and assumed nobody would believe her when she said he did it. Just drove off. Damnedest thing.”
He heard her counting under her breath. When she spoke, she sounded perfectly composed. “Jackson, about what percentage of the story is that?”
He thought about it. “Five, maybe seven percent. I have no idea how much Ellery’s told you.”
“Assume nothing and start at the beginning,” she instructed.
“Okay, but I’ve got to make it fast. Ellery and I are out of here in a couple of hours, and taping my back up before I shower takes forever.”
He heard her grunt of frustration, but he didn’t have an answer for it, so he started on the story without preamble.
She knew part of it, of course. Ellery’s contact at the DOJ was her contact at the DOJ, and he’d kept her filled in. She knew, for instance, that Cody Gabriel had been installed at a super-secret rehab facility for people turning over state’s evidence and that the DA’s office was under investigation.
But as Jackson detailed the bus ride and the DA’s attempts to implicate him and Ellery in the murder of Charlie Boehner, she grew frighteningly quiet on the other end of the line.
“Oh, this is not good,” she said softly. “I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell you how not good this is.”
“There’s no reason to think the sniper would be after Ellery,” Jackson said. “I don’t think Cartman would be so hot to implicate me if he thought the guy who took out Boehner would get rid of the two of us for him.”
“It’s possible that’s true,” she conceded. “But it’s also possible that there’s a sniper loose in your city, and he’s going after people connected to this case. And that your DA is looking for a reason to sweep the homeless displacement under the rug.”
“That’swhat has me worried,” Jackson said, sighing. “The story came out this weekend, and people made a big fuss about it, but without lawmakers pushing for an investigation—”
“Give your governor a chance,” she said. “He’s worked hard on this problem. And there is no easy solution. Remember, it’s easier to spot a disaster than to fix it, and our justice system is made to move slowly on purpose.”
Jackson emitted a low growl, because he couldn’t manage words for how frustrated he was, but Ellery’s mother apparently spoke that language too.
“Because if it moved faster it would be fascism, Jackson, and we’ve come damned close to that and would rather not.”
