Black Water

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "Did Mendez threaten to kill him?"

  "Right there, in all the pain and noise, he probably said something to that effect."

  "What about later, in jail or the courtroom?"

  Reese shook his head. "No. Mendez wouldn't do that. The Eme puts a hit on a guy, they're not going to pound their chests about it. They'll just make sure it gets done."

  Merci knew he was right. "Does the Eme have a shooter so big he wears size-sixteen shoes and has to recline a Cadillac seat just to get in and out?"

  Reese's full attention again. She liked the bright humorlessness of his eyes. She'd always thought a cop's eyes should be like that.

  "Not that I know of," he said. "But you could talk to Gang Interdiction about that. If they've set foot in this county, Quevas knows them. The Eme would probably do what the other gangs do—use someone up-and-coming to do the hit. So, they could have a bigfoot coming up the ranks, somebody we don't even know about yet."

  "A youngster," said Merci.

  "Yeah," said Reese, with an echoing sarcasm. "Where did you find shoe prints that big?"

  "Under one of Archie's trees. About ten feet from where he fell."

  Reese shook his head. "I talked to Ryan Dawes yesterday. He's trying not to let it show, but I think he's gunning for Archie on this one. He spent a lot of time trying to discover that Archie had lost considerable money on his stock investments, not made considerable money. I told Jaws that the Wildcrafts were not in any kind of unusual debt that I knew about. They made a killing and that was that. Dawes still seemed to want to cast Archie as desperate. It's like he's got this story in his head and he's looking for facts to make it true. I told him considerably less than I told you, without seeming unhelpful."

  "I'm glad."

  "Why is he thinking Arch? Jaws wouldn't say one thing about the evidence, but he must have something."

  He looked at her and they both knew he was asking for information she shouldn't give him. But she trusted Reese and she liked him and he was the kind of guy she'd want in her department if she were in charge. You give to get. But sometimes you give just to give.

  "The physical evidence is almost all against him, Damon. Prints on the weapon. His gun hand was loaded when we did the GSR test. Her blood is on his robe. No solid evidence of anyone else being on their property at the time."

  "Jesus. Archie's gun kill her?"

  Merci nodded.

  "And the big footprints, what, something that might or might not be relevant?"

  She nodded again. "They could be the gardener's, for all we know

  "His memory's all messed up, isn't it?"

  "Well, it's somewhat messed up. Holes. Then, vague in some places but fine in others. It seems like the most recent things are harder for him to recall. But the older things—things from years ago—they're still in place."

  Reese looked away. "So Jaws sees an easy one. Prints on the murder weapon, GSR on the gun hand and a guy too messed up to take the stand in his own defense."

  "That's what I think. And high-profile, too. If you prosecute Archie Wildcraft for this, you're guaranteed headlines. I mean, it's been front page news for three days. Imagine a trial."

  She saw the uncluttered conviction on Reese's face. "I don't think he'd kill her," he said. "No way on Earth he'd kill her."

  "But if you're the prosecutor and you get the conviction, every body's going to know your name for fifteen minutes. And that's what it takes to fill Brenkus's empty DA's chair. Brenkus is old. Jaws want his job, whether he'll admit it or not."

  Reese shook his head again. "Yeah. That's the way it goes, isn't it? Something like this happens and people use it to move up. The Wildcrafts—rungs on a ladder."

  "Did he ever mention Julia?"

  "Never." Reese looked at her with guarded interest but nothing more.

  "Tell me about his temper."

  Reese nodded, as if he expected this question. "Yeah, he's got one. I've been his patrol partner for a year and a half and I still don't know exactly what's going to set him off. He's peaceful. He's alert. He's in the moment. Then, wham. You know those carnival games where you take a giant mallet and try to ring the bell with the weight? Well, that's Archie's temper, sometimes. Something just hits him a certain way and off it goes."

  "Is he violent with it?"

  "Only once, with me around. But you see it. You hear it. You feel it. You also feel him controlling it."

  Like Zamorra controlling his, Merci thought.

  "So, you don't know exactly what's going to set him off, but how about in general?" she asked. "What gets him?"

  Reese nodded again. "Bad treatment of women or girls. That royally pisses Arch off."

  Merci thought about that for a moment.

  "We roll on a domestic, Archie won't pay much attention to the guy's point of view. He's always pulling for the woman, no matter how drunk or violent or wrong she is. I mean, he took a lot of verbal abuse from Michelle Mendez before he cuffed her. If Archie smells a woman-hater, look out."

  "He got in a fight defending me."

  Reese nodded. "That was the one time I saw him not control it. One minute, a somewhat rational talk about whether the department is better off under Vince Abelera or Chuck Brighton. Next, some wiseass and not very fair words about you, Detective Rayborn. Next, Deputy Mark Stump coldcocked and lying on the floor. Archie already bending over him, trying to slap him awake."

  "Where did that happen?"

  "High Rollers, down on Katella. We tried to keep it quiet. That's just a regular bar we were in, not a cop joint."

  "Sticking up for me. That's funny."

  "Why is it funny?"

  "Unexpected, I meant. Surprising."

  "A lot of people think Brighton had it coming to him, and God knows McNally's dad did. And your father, well, he was involved and he admitted it. It was one of those rare times when people got what they deserved."

  "Some got a little more."

  "You got fooled on Mike. You almost got fooled."

  "That's a generous interpretation of events."

  "And Brighton's house needed a little cleaning, Merci. You were the one who did it."

  She liked hearing Damon Reese sum things up that way. It put him in a good light and made things seem simple. The truth was a lot more complicated than that, and part of the truth was that she had been fooled into the unfair treatment of a fellow deputy—a man she'd been trying hard to love. She'd believed the worst of him because the evidence had told her to. Some people forgave her and some didn't. Mike had forgiven her as he shut the door of his Modjeska Canyon home on her one very cold night last winter.

  Since then she had forgiven herself, but she didn't trust herself. Not all the way. And what good was trust if you couldn't, well, trust it? She second-guessed now, and second-guessed again. It was humiliating. That's what was yanking her chain about this Wildcraft thing she was trying not to believe the worst of him even though the evidence was telling her to. Her self-trust was trying to outmuscle her self-doubt but it didn't have the heft and the whole thing was being pushed by what had happened before. What if she was wrong again?" What if Archie's innocence was just another one of her useless opinions?

  Shut the fuck up, woman, she thought. She sighed, feeling the heat rise into her face. "Thanks for saying that."

  "I should have months ago. I figured I was more valuable with my mouth shut."

  "Not being a fix-it guy."

  "Correct," he said with a smile.

  Damon Reese insisted that she take a small cooler filled with ice and a bag of the bass fillets. Then he walked her out. She saw two little boys with scooters standing on the sidewalk not far from her car.

  Reese stopped at the planter beside the garage and used his pocketknife to cut a few white daisies. While she held open the lid he set them inside the cooler with the bag and ice.

  He shook her hand and looked at her with a calm intensity. "Call if you think of anything," she said.

  "I will. I'd
call just to say hello and talk, if I thought you'd pick up."

  She'd seen the question coming, but the directness of Reese's phrasing still caught her not quite ready. It wasn't the kind of question you had to think about. You knew the answer, whether you could predict it or not.

  "I'd pick up."

  He touched her cheek very softly with his fingers and brushed the hair off her forehead. She stood still for this, the sensation of his skin on hers much stronger and more exact than she had expected. She could smell fish and ocean and just a trace of gasoline. In the rearview mirror of the Impala she watched him wave goodbye, and without thinking she raised her right hand off the wheel and waved good-bye back. She glanced at the two young boys standing on the sidewalk, silver Razors propped against their legs. Both smiled: gaps and gums, teeth too big for their faces. One blew a kiss at her and they both took off, laughing and furiously pumping away down the concrete.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday’s were usually Merci and Tim time. But with this Saturday cut short by work, all they had time to do was to go to a fast-food kids' place for lunch, then down to Laguna Beach to cool off in the brisk ocean. Tim chased seagulls until he was panting. Merci sat in the sand and let the sun tingle her bare shoulders and her back.

  I'd pick up. God, now what?

  That night was a typical one in the Rayborn household: a big dinner cooked by her father, popcorn, videos, scotch and water on ice, the police band scanner turned low in the background.

  Tim, brandishing a now-stringless bow that Merci had bought for him at an amusement park, wanted to watch Robin Hood for the something-hundredth time. Merci put it in.

  "Robin Hood is real?"

  "Robin Hood is not real. He's a character in a movie."

  "Prince John is real?"

  "Prince John is not real. He's a character in a movie also."

  "He's in a movie also?"

  "Correct."

  "Oh."

  Tim bellowed and gushed tears when the endless coming-to-video clips started, so Merci fast-forwarded it to the feature presentation.

  "He's got strong opinions," said Clark.

  "Wonder where he gets those."

  Still blubbering and clutching his bow, Tim climbed into his grandfather's recliner—his new favorite place to sit. Merci stretched out on one of the couches, taking most of it up, nothing but shorts and a tank top in the hot August evening, her hair up in chopsticks. She balanced the cocktail glass on her stomach, which soon made a ring of sweat on the material. I'd pick up. She looked down at her legs, and her big feet propped one on top of the other on the arm of the sofa. She wondered if her legs were good ones. She'd been told they were good ones, but that was back in college.

  She browsed the newspaper but found no good crime stories. She checked to see how the Angels were doing: fair. She had no interest at all in baseball but felt obligated to follow them because so many of the deputies did. She checked the stock page for B. B. Sistel's Friday performance: up a buck and a half.

  She watched Robin Hood and Little John outrunning the sheriff's cartoon arrows. Merci didn't approve of entertainment that glorified lawbreakers, but her father had shown Tim the animated movie one day while she was gone and Tim had glommed onto it like something holy. It was too silly to take seriously, and the actors reading the parts were funny.

  But she didn't really watch the movie, and she didn't really listen to the dialogue, or even to the police band scanner on the shelf just behind her. She thought instead about Archie Wildcraft and Gwen Kuerner. And their parents. And Julia and Priscilla and making two million dollars in six months on an investment of twenty grand. And what it must be like to lie in a bed knowing your wife was murdered two days ago, and that you have a bullet in your brain. That you may be a suspect. To ask for another picture of your own wife, for Goodness-sakes, because one wasn't enough to jog your bullet-riddled memory. She felt her blood pressure rise, cooled it off with a swallow of scotch.

  "The Sheriff of Nottaham is bad?"

  "Yes, he's bad."

  "The Sheriff of Nottaham is good?"

  "No, he's bad."

  "He's good?"

  "You know what he is, Tim."

  Dinner was good and it left her feeling heavy and warm and a little restless. She watched Tim watch Robin Hood again and sipped her third drink.

  Around nine, Gary Brice from the Journal called, something he been doing on most Saturday nights for the last couple of months. At first she had just let the machine pick up, but then she started answering because Brice amused her. He'd been trying to date her for almost a year now, and she'd always said no. No because he was flip and a womanizer and ten years younger than she was and she didn't find him attractive other than as an intriguing form of male energy. The calls started off as chides about her being home on Saturday nights, then escalated into crazy invites to join him, right now, at what ever club or lounge he was drinking in. Or join us right now. Gary had "tons" of friends, both female and male, and had guaranteed her she'd like somebody in his circle. She wondered why she just hadn't told him to quit calling, but the answer lay at the heart of her Saturday nights and she wasn't sure she wanted it.

  "I don't hear drunks and bad music in the background," she said, "Did you take your date to the morgue?"

  "I'm at the office. I've got a Sunday 'Lifestyle' piece that needed sudden attention. Our heroine, fighting an inoperable lung tumor but living life to its fullest by counseling psychotic bums—I mean mentally disordered homeless persons—just went into sudden cardiac arrest. Doesn't look good."

  "So your article will either get a little longer or a lot shorter."

  She wondered at how easily Gary Brice's glib pessimism rubbed off on her. And his curt delivery.

  "Yes," said Brice. "These 'Lifestyle' articles are tough sledding. I loathe the upbeat do-goodism of this paper. But I love the police beat, Give me a petty scammer or a psychopath instead of someone trying to make society better. Any day."

  "You comfort the afflicted, but finance the articles with ads for liposuction and plastic surgery."

  "Precisely. You should have been a cynical reporter instead of cynical cop."

  "I can't write," she said.

  "Come have a drink with me. We'll meet somewhere you'll feel safe."

  "I always feel safe around you."

  "Then it's settled. We'll drink single malts at the speed of light, then, when you can't resist me anymore you can take me into your car and have your way with me. That big Impala would be perfect. Or you can take me to a nice hotel."

  "Do you actually have sex as much as you talk about it?"

  "Almost. There's no refractory period between sentences."

  "You deserve someone racier for your Saturday-night calls."

  "This isn't about sex, Merci. It's about degradation and suffering."

  She smiled. "Whose?"

  "Merci, let's experience those beautiful things together."

  "You ever try the phone sex numbers?"

  "You're cheaper."

  She smiled again. "What's new in the news?"

  "I can tell you what isn't."

  She stiffened a little, felt it coming.

  "An arrest in the Wildcraft killing," she said.

  "Correct. My editor asked about it. The publisher even asked about it. Believe me, by the time my bosses think of something, a lot of other people have too."

  "And what are they thinking?"

  "They see a guy making fifty grand a year as a deputy, his wife not working at all, and they live in a million-five cottage in Hunter Ranch. He's got a temper and an earnings cap. He's got a new Porsche. She looks like a movie star and wants more pretty things. He can't pay the bills or take the pressure, and he's sure enough not going to let her divorce him. Wham—he ends it for both of them. Or tries to. But he flinches at the last second and wounds himself. Three days later, no word of a suspect. No talk of a motive, not even the aforementioned obvious. Awfully damned quiet in
the Sheriff's Public Information Office. So people do what people do—they start to wonder, are the cops trying to protect one of their own?"

  "I can't talk to you on the record. Not before an arrest, you know that."

  "So he is a suspect."

  "We're questioning everyone who knew her."

  Brice was quiet for a moment.

  "You really think there's a chance he didn't do it—off the record?"

  "At this point, the evidence is pointing away from him," she

  "You must have fingerprinted the weapon by now."

  "Inconclusive."

  "It wouldn't happen to have a registered owner, would it?"

  "Stolen from a gun shop in Arizona," she lied again. "And this all absolutely off the record, Gary."

  "Sure. I've never burned you, Merci."

  "I understand that."

  "So if there's evidence pointing away from him, what evidence is it?"

  "I can't tell you that, Gary. You know I can't go into the particulars."

  "Even off the record?"

  "Even off the record."

  "But you've got them?"

  "Don't call me a liar, Gary."

  "I'm not. But you can make mistakes. You can see things that you want to see things. I mean, we all—"

  She had felt the need for a little levity on this, a hot summer night. She did not feel the need to be reminded of things that she'd wrong about and had paid for with flesh, blood and spirit. Was paying for.

  She hung up on him and didn't pick up when he called right back. When he called yet again, she picked up on the first ring and Brice started in again.

  "Okay, I have a big mouth and a small brain. I'm sorry. You're the best investigator they've got and you know it. I love you always will."

  "Good night, Gary."