School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,71

suddenly Jackson said, “I can’t believe it didn’t hit us about the high school.”

“Yeah. Not the same guy as the scary CI, though.”

“No, but German. I’m afraid I don’t know my Russian mob/German criminal past well enough.”

Ellery thought about the first place Suzanne Mayer had gone to piss them all off and about Ty as a distraction. That thinking—that tribalism—didn’t just extend to prejudice. Sometimes it extended to community too. “Maybe it’s enough that they’re all pale people who don’t kiss the wrong pale people.”

Jackson snorted. “Pale people?”

“You know what I mean,” Ellery said. “They’re white. They think that’s a link.”

Jackson frowned. “You know, I had an exchange teacher once from a Slavic country. She walked into our classroom on the first day of school, and her eyes got really big and she ran out. She’d apparently never seen real people of color before. She was terrified.”

Ellery made a choked noise. “Did you all educate her?” he asked, horrified.

“We ate her alive,” Jackson confirmed. “And the white kids were the worst at it. Jade and Kaden kept their heads down. They knew the white kids could do it and not get in trouble. But they’d get taken apart because the system was inclined to believe the teacher, and she was already….” He trailed off thoughtfully.

“Biased?” Ellery supplied, trying to help.

“No. I mean, yes. But that kind of blank ignorance is… dangerous. Because if someone doesn’t educate you the right way, it becomes a way to make people who don’t look like you less than human. So if we’re working with a group of mobsters who are already dehumanizing POC, that could explain what they did to Ty, using him as a distraction. His future didn’t matter, and it was obvious. ‘Go to party. Find the Black kid.’ It’s first-grade-level prejudice because they don’t know enough about the people they’re screwing over—or screwing with—to do anything more sophisticated.”

“And if you’re already dehumanizing people,” Ellery said, following his line of reasoning, “it becomes easy to regard them as a product, like cattle. So shipping them off to Vegas or LA to work as underaged sex workers wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”

“Children aren’t much use to them, especially the girls,” Jackson agreed. “So assets but not….” His voice choked a little. “Not children.” He shuddered hard. “Okay. I need a toilet brush for my brain now.”

Ellery’s stomach churned. “Make that two, thank you.”

“But you were right. Pale people. But one of them is placed close to the source of studen—” Jackson stopped abruptly, and Ellery followed his line of thought and felt cold sweat prickle the back of his neck.

“Oh God,” Ellery said, horrified. “We need to check the middle school and high school. How many kids have they had go missing lately?”

“Except it’s August,” Jackson said, also in horror. “How many people around this high school have gone missing since June?”

“Oh dear God.” Ellery held on to his breakfast, but it was a near thing.

“Don’t you hurl on me,” Jackson snapped. “Come on, Ellery. We need you at full force today. You need to get Ty Townsend off that fucking charge without bringing any of this shit into it, or he and his mother are going to be on the chopping block next. They’ll have to move out of state and change their names if this becomes a mob thing. You know that, right?”

Ellery nodded. “I need you to talk to Ty’s best friend,” he said. “I know you’ve got other things to do.”

“That’s where Henry and I are going next,” Jackson told him. “And then we’re planning to hit Lindstrom and Craft again to ask them about Ty’s case. And then….” His voice dropped and grew grim.

“Coaches and principals, oh my?” Ellery supplied.

“Yeah.” Jackson closed his eyes and smacked his head back against the headrest. “I hate the thought that there’s someone attached to the school doing this. I know some pedophiles work as coaches, but Kaden’s a coach too, and I know a lot of coaches who have given up nights and weekends just because they want to see kids do well. It’s such a shitty thing to do, abuse that sort of trust.”

Ellery grunted. “Like, say, your partner and academy sponsor trying to get you to be a dirty cop?”

Jackson sat up straight, his eyes practically popping out of his head. “I wasn’t a child,” he almost snarled.

Ellery didn’t flinch. “You were still a victim,” he said. “And it colored the way you thought of authority for the