Black Water

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Brice: What are you going to do?

  Archie: I'll kill. . . myself.

  Halfway through that sentence the camera jerked wildly and Archie's face flew out of the frame. When the camera steadied, he offered a demented smile.

  Brice: Did you shoot her and yourself sir?

  Archie: Go to hell, you little BLEEP.

  Merci felt her heart fall and she got a quick, bitter taste of what it would feel like to be wrong about this man.

  The last few seconds of footage showed Archie way up on his property, shotgun still in hand, staring down at the camera. He looked like a menace.

  "Oh, man," said Merci, but what she was thinking was considerably worse.

  "He certainly looks and acts innocent," said Dawes.

  Merci heard Brice ask, Maybe someone should explain why the police haven't formally questioned this man.

  "Pick him up right now," Abelera ordered Knox.

  "Wait," said Merci. "Let us go get him. We've got rapport and he might be ready to talk. Please, sir—don't send in the uniforms. He's very ... extremely messed up."

  "Oh, really?" asked Dawes.

  Rayborn saw the anger flash in Abelera's eyes. "Arrest him, Sergeant. Before he kills himself, or someone else."

  "Yes, sir." She swung around the couch and followed Zamorra out the door, her heart pounding out three beats of anger at herself for every one at Dawes and Gary Brice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The two Sheriff's Department cruisers were still blocking the Wildcraft driveway. The four deputies stood beside them, beating the heat. They said that Archie had been inside the whole time, no one had tried to come or go except for his parents, who parked on the street at noon and left at ten after one.

  No answer at the front door, so Merci knocked again. She tried the door and found it unlocked.

  She pushed in, popping the thumb snap on her hip rig. With her left arm she reached behind her back and gathered a low handful of jacket material out of the way of the gun. She didn't think Wildcraft would come out shooting but she wasn't wearing armor and didn't want the ceiling to be the last thing she saw on Earth.

  "Archie!" she called with kind authority, as if she was hupping a wayward pointer. "Archie—it's Rayborn and Paul Zamorra!"

  Silence. She moved across the entryway, noting that Wildcraft's cut-down shotgun no longer rested in the corner. She leaned through the kitchen entry then angled quickly in. "Arch?"

  She looked to the counter and saw that his prescription bottles were gone. Through the mullioned windows of the breakfast nook she looked out to the pool, where Archie had conducted his press conference with Gary Brice. Sky-blue water, the yellow hibiscus in bloom, no Wildcraft. They quickly searched the house. Still no Wildcraft. There were two photographs missing from the music room wall, and three stone missing from the rock room. The master bedroom looked the same to Merci, except for a blank spot on one wall where a portrait of Gwen Wildcraft had hung.

  In the master bath Merci found a loose wad of faintly bloodstained gauze lying on the counter.

  "He took rocks, pictures, the riot gun and split," said Merci.

  The garage still housed Archie's silver Boxster and Gwen's new white Durango. They checked the pool area and the grounds around the house.

  They stood in the shade, not far from where Wildcraft had faller "What did he do, Paul, walk out of here?"

  Zamorra looked at her.

  They picked up a set of footprints leading down to the steps that wound through the wildflowers. The steps led to the gate. It was easy to see where the gate had been opened because it was out of plum and had scraped a fresh gash in the earth.

  "That's where Brice came in this morning," she said.

  "And probably where Archie went out. There's a car rental franchise down on Moulton Drive," said Zamorra. "It's not far. Put the stuff in a duffel. Leave it by the gate, walk down, get a car and come back for it. The deputies wouldn't even know he'd left the house."

  "Goshdamnit, Paul. I should have seen this one coming."

  "I didn't think he'd run. He had plenty of opportunity to do that earlier."

  "It didn't cross my mind until Brice's stunt."

  "It might not have crossed Archie's until then, either," said Zamorra. "That's why he didn't tell us Brice had been here. And Archie might have thought we didn't buy all his stories this morning. Which we didn't."

  "It's too much to hope that he checked himself back into UCI Med Center, isn't it? Or went to his parents, or out to the Kuerners in Norco?"

  "We'll see," he said, pulling the phone from his pocket.

  "Dawes is going to love this."

  "Everyone's going to—detectives let armed and dangerous murder suspect drive away." Zamorra mimicked the grave tone of a TV news intro: "Or did the cops want him to get away? "

  "Dial Abelera, Paul. And don't forget the partner, Damon Reese. Archie saved his life."

  She looked out to the pale blue sky and listened to a hawk crying and cursed herself again for letting this happen.

  They walked back to the driveway so Merci could quiz the deputies again. While Merci learned nothing at all, Zamorra used his cell phone and found out that the Wildcrafts hadn't seen Archie since leaving here just after one.

  William Jones, legs spindly but head purposefully angled, crossed the street toward them. Merci saw the huge purple plastic tumbler in his hand, heard the clink of the ice as he raised it in salute to the uniforms.

  "Detective Rayborn," he said. "And of course, Detective Zamorra over there with the phone."

  "Hello, Mr. Jones," she said.

  "Archie was home last night, wasn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "The news said he checked himself out yesterday afternoon. Got a ride home from Gwen's sister."

  "Can I help you, Mr. Jones?"

  He sipped his drink and eyed her. "I just came over to tell you a couple of things. One, the gardener works Tuesdays. I know that because Tuesdays are trash days and I remember seeing him putting the empty trash cans back on the curb so he could park his truck. So, soon as he gets here tomorrow, I'll call you."

  "I'd appreciate it."

  Jones gave her his cagey, sideways look. "CNB made it sound like he killed her. You saw the show, didn't you?"

  "Part of it."

  "First they had that guy here with his camera, pestering Arch.. Archie said he'd kill himself. Then afterwards they had him on—the reporter, I mean—saying how scary Archie was. How he thought Arch was going to blast him. Then the prick says what he thinks happened that night. He thinks Archie killed Gwen and tried to kill himself, and now he's trying to get out of it. And he says you guys don't want t arrest him because he's a cop. Because of the big scandal last year. But you'll get a chance to see the whole thing because they'll show again. You know how they do at CNB."

  Zamorra walked toward her, pressing down the antenna of the cell phone and shaking his head.

  "Good evening, Detective Zamorra."

  "Jones."

  Jones smiled wickedly, turned away from Zamorra then looked at Merci. "I got a tip for you, young lady."

  "Shoot."

  "Two and a half hours ago, four o'clock this afternoon. I went down to get some smokes and vodka. I ride my bike because they too my license away. So I coast down and push the thing back up, right? Well, down the road about three hundred yards there's a little park with a table and some trees. Seen it?"

  "I've noticed it," said Merci.

  "Well, on my way down, there was nobody in the park. On my way back up the hill, pushing the bike, I saw a guy standing by the table, looking back through the trees. He had binoculars and he didn’t hear me until I was almost across from him. When he heard me, he turned, gave me a drop-dead look and raised the binoculars the other way. This is what I'm saying: go down to that park and stand beside the table—the south end of it—and look through the trees. What you see is the back of Archie and Gwen's place."

  "Describe him," said Merci.


  "Second biggest guy I've ever seen in my life. I met Refrigerate Perry once. Anyway, he was dressed in a blue jogging suit, dark hair and beard, sunglasses. Not a big mountain-man beard, but a close cropped one. Ugly and huge is how I'd describe him."

  "What about his car?"

  "White Lincoln Town Car. There was another guy in the driver' seat, blond hair, staring at me, face like a stone. I did not look at the plates."

  "Why not?"

  "I had this feeling they'd kill me if I did."

  "Mr. Jones," said Merci, "if we had a couple thousand more citizens like you in this county, we'd be crime-free."

  "Thank you. I was about to call you when Archie came on the TV. After that I figured it would take you about fifty minutes to get here. It took you thirty-four."

  "You're something," she said.

  "I'm a harmless drunk trying to help the cops catch the guy who shot my neighbors. Tell your partner I'm not a bad guy, no reason to look at me like I'm an unflushed toilet."

  "I'll tell him."

  Jones drank from his enormous purple tumbler and winked at her, then turned and headed back across the street toward his son's garage, his white legs faintly luminous in the early-evening light.

  On their way down the hill Rayborn and Zamorra stopped at the little park. There was a concrete picnic table and benches, a green mesh trash can holder with a lidded steel can in it and a drinking fountain back by the trees. Merci stood to the south side of the concrete bench and looked through the sycamore trees. In the middle distance she could see the slope of wildflowers in Archie's backyard, the gate through which he had escaped, the roof of the house, some of the windows and the pool area surrounded by the big Canary Island palms.

  Zamorra rang off his cell phone, then paced the grass with his head down and his hands behind his back. Merci walked into the little grove of sycamore and oak. She found a crumpled soft drink can that had been there for a lot more than three hours, a couple of old cigarette butts, a horse magazine with its pages dimpled and cracked by dew and sun. She lifted the trash can lid by its edges and set it on the grass. Inside she saw a bicycle inner tube, a fast-food sandwich box with the sauce stains gone almost to black, a white fast-food bag beside it, a black banana peel, a paper soft drink container with the lid still on and the straw stuck through it. The drink container was from a different fast-food chain than the box and bag.

  Ike Sumich got there half an hour later. She explained what William Jones had told her. "Size Sixteen again," said Ike.

  "Maybe."

  "These guys aren't birdwatchers."

  "Dust the tabletop," she said. "Extra careful on the south end. Ger the stainless push-button on the drinking fountain and the bottom and top side of the trash can lid handle. I hate to send you on a wild-goose chase, Ike, but there's a drink container with a straw in the can over there. There might be saliva or epithelial cells on that straw. If Size Sixteen used it, we can DNA print him, then check the markers against the shop rag we got at the STS on Sand Canyon. Shoot some stills this place, will you, show the angle up to the Wildcraft house. Maybe stand by that smaller sycamore and shoot up at the pool area."

  Ike nodded and grinned. "And I thought I was an anal-retention control freak with grandiose delusions of power."

  "We control freaks are still the best at what we do, Ike. No matter what they say."

  "Where do you think Wildcraft got to?"

  "I've got no idea. Do you?"

  "I take it you tried partner, friends and family?"

  "No luck, or one of them was lying."

  Sumich shook his head. "When's her funeral?"

  "Not until Wednesday. I think they wanted to wait until he was out of the hospital."

  "I'll bet you a hundred bucks he'll show."

  Rayborn tried to guess the chances of Wildcraft showing his face at the funeral now. Slim and none? "I want him before then."

  "I can see why. Disaster on CNB today, and you know the networks will pick it up."

  Rayborn hadn't thought it through quite that far until now. The idea of Archie all over the networks made her heart feel heavy. And who would they be coming after for statements, to answer why the cops hadn't arrested him—or at least brought him in for a formal interview—before he could vanish?

  "I watched it with Abelera and Clay Brenkus," she said. "It was right up there with the stupidest I've felt in my life. Here I am, half defending this guy and he shows up on TV ready to blow away reporter. I wondered, Ike. I wondered if I completely misread the man and what happened up there."

  Sumich looked up toward the Wildcraft house, then shook his head. "Brice spooked him. Archie's not right. Not your fault, but it made him look bad. Us too. I hope to God he doesn't kill himself. Or someone else."

  "He can't. I won't let him."

  Ike turned his attention to the table, then up at the lowering sun. "Well, I need to get started while there's still some sunlight left. Any dog shit in that trash container you want me to process for possible latent fingerprints?"

  "Actually, Ike, you're standing in it."

  Sumich looked down and Merci clipped his forehead with her knuckle.

  "Grandiose delusions of power my ass," she said.

  Twenty minutes later, Todd at Economy confirmed that they had rented a vehicle to Archibald Franklin Wildcraft that afternoon at 3:05.

  "That would have been a white Durango," he said, fingers flying over a keyboard. "One week at eighty-nine a day with the Auto Club discount. He didn't take the insurance."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A rchie checked into a hotel off Interstate 5 in Irvine at four that afternoon. He wore an Angels cap to cover his shaved head and big Band-Aid to hide the bullet hole, a stick-on mustache and dark sunglasses to change his face. The desk girl was polite and professor and gave not the slightest sign that she recognized him or found him odd.

  He used the name Jim Green but otherwise filled out the application truthfully. He used the name Green because the girl's face was green. He paid cash for three nights plus a one-hundred-dollar deposit. She gave Archie a map to his room.

  The hotel was a big barn-shaped concrete structure originally used as a granary and packinghouse. Archie remembered his father and mother staying here and liking it years ago when they visited over Christmas. He was upstairs on the end. The room was pentagonal shape—once a silo, according to the illustrated history in the lobby. From the window he could see red railroad tracks and a blue field and foothills in the distance. The blue hills were beautiful. There was burger joint across the parking lot and a gas station across the street. He easily carried the two big suitcases upstairs, then unpacked them: three portraits of Gwen, the shotgun and a box of ammunition, a couple of handguns, his three favorite suiseki, a laptop computer, his clothes and uniform, the pills, his shave kit and some miscellaneous things he just thrown in. He was surprised that carrying so much weight upstairs fatigued him so little. He'd come out of the hospital stronger, no doubt about it. He felt like he could pick up a car and throw it if he wanted to.

  He put one of Gwen's old demo tapes in a little cassette player and turned the volume down low. Then tapped out his afternoon dose of Decadron and washed them down with some orange juice from the mini-bar, took an extra because of the colors getting mixed up.

  But now my mind is playing tricks on me I close my eyes and you're all I see

  Damn, isn't that true, he thought. It seemed that every line she wrote meant something more, or something different, now that she was dead. He propped her portraits along the wall beside the air conditioner and stared.

  I won't let them take you away from me, he thought. I won't.

  For every ounce of trouble I gotta pound of cure

  When the tape was over he got the phone book from the nightstand and looked up medical supplies. He wrote down the two closest addresses, confirming by phone that both supply houses carried aluminum crutches for sale or rent. Specifically, he asked for the kind that have
braces for the upper arm to give more strength and stability. The clerks referred to them as Canadian crutches and yes, they both carried them.

  He thanked them and hung up and thought for a moment, staring out at the lapis blue hills. Red crows bickered in a yellow enamel sky. Wow.

  Then Archie thumbed forward in the phone book to limousine services and called the first number.

  "Hello," he said. "My name is Jim Green. I found five hundred dollar bills in my limo last night on our way back from a party. I picked up the roll and figured finders keepers, but I was drunk. I can't keep them. I probably earn ten times what your drivers do, not that I deserve to. Anyway, if it was your guy, I'd like to get them back to him."

  "What was your driver's name?"

  "I don't remember. One of my friends sent the car as a surprise but I don't know which friend or which service he used. All I can tell you is the driver was a great big guy with dark hair and a beard, mean very big. And he's five bills short."

  "He wasn't ours."

  "Thanks, I'll try the other services."

  Half an hour later Archie hit pay dirt. The heavily accented front man for Air Glide Limousine in Newport Beach said, yes, they have one very large driver. This driver had in fact said something about ending the night short.

  "What was his name again?" asked Archie.

  "Al Apin."

  He pronounced it Ah-peen.

  Archie said he'd either drop by with the bills or mail them, thank you very much.

  "I will be in the office until eight tonight. I will see that he gets these money."

  I bet you will, thought Archie.

  He sat at the table by the window, where he'd arranged his three suiseki. He looked at them, trying to concentrate on their grace and beauty. He knew that looking at them had once been enjoyable to him. The same way that putting big cool boulders in his garden had been enjoyable, which was the same way that carrying around pocketfuls of rocks had been enjoyable when he was a kid. And just when he was ready to look away, the suiseki shaped like a water buffalo sparked something in his mind and for a few moments Archie understood everything about the animal—that he was a warrior, a leader, a patriarch.