they realized he’d been engaged in an abusive relationship with his sister’s husband. Watching him put a little good ol’ boy in his voice for this nice woman who’d done them a favor made Jackson a little proud of his baby PI. When they’d met, Henry wouldn’t have been able to do that.
“Well, ice cream helps,” Sergeant Kensington said. “Please let me know what I can do to return the favor.”
Jackson thought about all those people excited about ice cream and how this woman should have been a little spoiled by her team long before two scruffy PIs came in looking for something. This place had a morale problem. Fetzer and Hardison were promising, but morale was raised by everybody.
“Are you in charge of sending flowers?” he asked abruptly. “Like if someone’s sick or hurt or something?”
Kensington frowned. “I’m not sure if anyone is. The captain—”
“Captain Green?” That’s who had been in charge the year before. He’d promised changes after Jackson and Ellery had busted a corrupt officer in his force, but Jackson had been skeptical.
“Captain Green’s on medical leave,” Kensington told them. “We’ve got an interim here, Captain Carlton.”
Jackson shook his head. “Well, you’ve got a detective in the hospital. Do what you can to rally around him, okay?”
She looked shocked. “Oh my God. Who?”
And Jackson had to say it again before he and Henry left, practically at a run because they were getting close to being late.
“AUGH!” JACKSON muttered. “I don’t know if they were crooked, but God their communication sucked ass!”
“Yeah,” Henry said. “My unit in Iraq was a lot tighter than that.”
“It’s new people. New, shifting in, uncertain. It’s… they need some fucking leadership there. It’s making me crazy.”
“You need to let it go,” Henry said as they got to the car. “You absolutely can’t solve everything in one day.”
“Oughtta be a fucking law,” Jackson grumbled. “God, it’s like I took that time off and the department fell to shit without me, which is stupid because I’ve only been here a handful of times since last year!”
“Except that’s any sort of system,” Henry explained patiently. “There’s always new people, there’s always uncertainty, and there’s always people who will make it in under the wire. Do you know why you know about this problem right now?”
Jackson slid into the vehicle and squinted at Henry in confusion. “Because we caught a case.”
Henry nodded. “Because there are checks in the system. So don’t get your panties in a knot. You can’t fix everything.”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “You are taking the fun out of my world,” he groused. “Nobody at the fucking hospital!”
“And you did fix that,” Henry told him. “God, were there not any kittens in trees for you to find?”
Jackson couldn’t help a small smile, but he wasn’t going to let Henry talk him out of his irritation. Fetzer and Hardison were both good cops, and they deserved better than Lindstrom and Craft.
But then, so did kids like Tage Dobrevk.
Jackson had Henry drop him off in front of the jail, telling him to go get their favorite nurses pizza and buffalo wings and check on Sean.
“You sure I can’t see you interview the kid?” Henry asked, and Jackson pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I wouldn’t mind you there,” he said honestly, “but until I know Kryzynski’s okay….”
Henry caught that and nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Buddy check. It’s all good.”
Jackson grimaced. “It’s not like I do anything spectacular. I mean, there’s secret arcane words and a few passes with a wand, but you can pick that up on YouTube.”
“Ha-ha. Fine. Whatever.”
“Besides,” Jackson said reluctantly, “it’s rough, seeing kids in jail.”
Henry grunted. “Yeah, I get that.”
Jackson shook his head. “No, man, it’s really rough.” He shuddered. “But it’s worse seeing them dead, so I gotta get a move on.”
He slid out of the car and into the lengthening shadows of late-afternoon August.
The jail facility in Sacramento was recently renovated and not nearly as squat as the PD’s office. White granite, with some graceful curves to the architecture and a stretch of lawn out front, Jackson imagined it was probably a comfort to family members visiting that it didn’t look like the dank cells of the Spanish Inquisition, but that didn’t make it a picnic either.
After submitting to a wanding and a pat down at the entrance, Jackson showed his ID and gave his name to the admitting officer, who escorted him down the hall to the conference rooms. Ellery was already there with the ADA, the stunningly beautiful and knife-edged