Black Water

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "Anything good?"

  "Lots of correspondence with Sean Moss. He was one of the four founders. Their talks seem to relate to one or two topics, but the language is vague. Like they're worried about privacy."

  "Read a couple."

  " 'Hello Gwen: No problem at all on the cerastes rum. We've got some ideas on how to keep plenty around. Don't worry. Be happy Later, Sean.'

  " 'Hello Sean: I'm sure there's a way to get more. I'll leave it you guys and do my job. Brought in another eight K today—some good friends from high school. Thanks for being cool. You be happy Best, GW.' "

  Merci asked Zamorra to spell cerastes and he did. She pictured the word, knew she'd never seen it, frowned. "What's cerastes rum?"

  "No idea. I've got a friend who's a bartender at the Ritz-Carlton, though. He'd know. It comes up a lot in these e-mails. I think they liked each other, Gwen and Sean."

  "Is he married?"

  "The company bios said he was single. Here—Gwen refers to getting twenty dollars an hour to 'rep a treatment I've come to believe in.' Then Sean, he says she's worth fifty and he'll see about getting her a raise. Then she makes a joke about bringing in one hundred and eighty thousand dollars for OrganiVen 'so far.' "

  Merci looked up at the four remaining photographic portraits of Gwen and Archie through the years. "She brought in eight thousand dollars for OrganiVen in one day, and didn't make that big a deal about it. I wonder how much she got for them, total. I wonder how much she got for herself."

  "I'll let you know. But at twenty bucks an hour it wasn't a fortune."

  "Unless she took the payment in stock."

  Zamorra looked at her. "Then it's a different story."

  Ten minutes later Merci's cell phone rang.

  "Hello, Sergeant, this is Bill Jones. Archie's gardener just pulled up in front of his house. Is that your unmarked in his driveway?"

  "Yes, Bill, it is."

  "I haven't seen that big ugly guy or his ugly little partner since they were at the park."

  "Meet me in the driveway in one minute."

  "Consider it done."

  Merci held back the file cover to show Jones the FBI photographs of Sonny Charles and Al Apin. Jones angled them to catch the sun better. He moved to one side, then the other. He never took his eyes off them.

  "That's them. The ones I saw at the park."

  "Any doubt?"

  "None. They're older now."

  "Thank you, Mr. Jones."

  "I'm here to help. If I see them again, I think I know what to do. I've got your numbers in my wallet."

  "Keep me posted."

  "I will. I don't have anything better to do. By the way, when you ask the gardener about Archie and Gwen yelling at each other day the day she died, remember that he wears ear protection when he's blow leaves and a tape player when he's pulling weeds."

  "Thank you, Mr. Jones."

  "Bring you coffee, a soft drink, anything?"

  "No again. But thanks."

  "Doughnut? Heh, heh, just kidding. Ten-four."

  The gardener was small and stout, tan jeans and a white T-shirt, no size sixteen. He was looking around like he wasn't sure what to do. He's heard, she thought. He's heard what happened and doesn't know if he's still got a job.

  "Over here," she called, waving.

  He came her way, stopped six feet away. Black hair and eyes nice smile, two silver-capped teeth front and top.

  Merci told him who she was. He nodded and said he was Jesus and that he spoke English.

  "Let me show you something."

  She led him down the walk to the Chinese flame tree where Size Sixteen had stood. "Did you rake in here last Tuesday?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you stand under this tree—right here, like this—and face this direction?"

  She stooped under the foliage and arranged herself where the man had stood.

  "Here, like this?"

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  "I don't stand. I rake."

  Merci considered. "What shoes were you wearing?"

  He looked down at his worn brown boots. "This boots."

  "Did you wear some other boots over them? Mud boots, maybe, or boots to repel water?"

  "No. I wear this boots. I don't stand there."

  "Did you hear Archie and a woman arguing that day?"

  "No. Did not hear argue."

  "Did you see a woman here?"

  "Gwen sister. I don't know her name."

  Jesus said that he first saw the sister around three. He heard no argument, no conversation. He said he had a cassette player he listened to when he worked.

  Merci led him around the walkway, past the pool and into the rear yard. She pointed to the hole in the window, now blocked by a piece of plywood held in place by duct tape.

  "Was this glass broken when you were here last week?"

  Jesus stared mournfully. "I don't see. I don't look at this."

  "You don't know."

  "I don't know. Mrs. Gwen is dead?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh. Bad. Mr. Archie get shot, too?"

  "He's alive. That's about all I can tell you, Jesus."

  "I like. Archie and Gwen is good family."

  "Yeah. I know."

  She asked him about people looking onto the property, very big men in specific, but Jesus had not noticed any. No unfamiliar vehicles, nothing out of the ordinary with Archie or Gwen. He had worked for Archie for six months, and for the previous owners for six years.

  She got his full name, address and phone number, and thanked him.

  Rayborn closed by saying Vaya con Dios because she thought the expression was elegant and meaningful, but Jesus himself looked at her as if the words were pointless.

  Two hours later, midway through OrganiVen I, Merci picked up the trail she was looking for. In yellow highlighter, Gwen had begun to mark certain passages in the promotional literature, then keyed those passages to the research stats found in the research folder.

  From the OrganiVen Company Overview brochure, dated March 2001: OrganiVen researchers have found the extracted pure-form venoms of many vipers to be effective in the animal trials, especially the from animals indigenous to the deserts of the American southwest.

  Gwen's handwritten note referenced the SeruCure research date from October of the previous year: The results of double-blind test series 12-C and 12-D strongly suggest that the serum obtained from C. cerastes is the only serum with toxicity levels necessary to destroy carcinoma cells at an acceptable rate with acceptable damage to surrounding tissue. Venom compounds using C. ruber, C. viridis and atrox resulted in significantly lower anaerobic reactions but high healthy cell destruction. See charts for comparative venom strengths and collateral tissue damage.

  "Paul," she said. "Cerastes rum isn't liquor, it's a kind of venom Serum."

  He looked at her. "Okay, that tracks with what I'm getting here through the e-mail. Gwen was worried there wasn't enough of it, wasn't going to be enough of it. Lots of correspondence between her and Sean Moss. Something about a breeding program to make sure the supply would last."

  Rayborn's heart jumped when she read one of the cross-referenced statements in an OrganiVen brochure. "She's marked up the promotional lit and cross-referenced statements to the research. All it talks about here is viper serum, nothing specific. So the research and the brochures are saying two different things. Let me see what I can find on a breeding program."

  "Look for Dailey, or Dan, or Harvesters—all three seem to be the game."

  God rest Gwen Wildcraft's orderly soul, thought Merci, because she found a purple folder dedicated to Harvest Specialists. Inside was what looked like a hastily produced company brochure and a letter Sean Moss from Harvest Specialists president Dan Dailey of Temecula California.

  In the letter, Mr. Dailey talked about his education as a biologist, his lifelong interest in herpetology, and his familiarity with the reptiles of the American Southwest.

  Two
months later, he wrote Sean Moss a short note saying that of all the rattlesnakes we can supply you, only the sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes) is difficult to harvest in significant numbers. They're small, nocturnal, spend their days under the sand or in rock burrows, do not overwinter in dens." Their venom glands are small. It figures they're the ones with the best juice. I'll see what I can do!

  Shortly thereafter, Dan Dailey began a breeding program for the sidewinders. His start-up costs totaled $5,345, billed to OrganiVen: lamps, tanks, "hot rocks and heating elements," water dishes, plastic-coated aquarium gravel, individual cage thermometers, reptile vitamins, breeding mice for food, etc. He promised results—twenty grams of pure fresh cerastes venom each week—beginning in six months. More after that, as the captive cerastes bred.

  "How much does a gram weigh in English?" she asked.

  "Three one-hundredths of an ounce. A little over."

  "Wow. That's not much. I've got the breeding stuff here, Paul. Stand by."

  A series of brief printed e-mails over the next five months chronicled the ups and downs of Dan Dailey's Harvest Specialists sidewinder breeding program. He had trouble harvesting the necessary specimens. He blew up the engine of a new pickup in the one-hundred and-ten-degree Snow Creek heat. He had trouble telling the males from the females. He got bit by one and spent half a day in the hospital, billing OrganiVen for the expense. The specimens failed to eat in captivity and Dailey spent "significant hours" catching lizards for them because they wouldn't eat the mice, live or frozen. The sidewinders wouldn't eat the lizards, either. Only two mated females became gravid, and of the fourteen newborn rattlesnakes, only six were living at birth. Four of these died within one hour, the other two within twenty-four. The older snakes faced starvation and were released.

  I'm totally frustrated by these fuckin' sidewinders, man, Dailey wrote to Sean Moss in March of the previous year. If you had asked me for atrox or viridis venom I could have gotten you a gallon of it by now. I'll keep trying."

  He struck out," said Merci. "Sidewinders are what OrganiV needed, but Dailey couldn't catch enough of them and they wouldn’t breed in captivity. He even got bit by one." "That tracks," said Zamorra. "Listen to this:

  Dear Sean, All I can tell you is the more control SunCo gets of your company and the less cerastes rum comes in from DD, I'm getting nervouser and nervouser about repping us. I've got a golden touch for you, but I can't sell what I don't believe in. Imagine if the Feds found out that you (and I) knew the rum bummer—they'd hang us. I strongly advise you to get the SunCo heavies to back off and put the rum problem back into the current prospectus and business plan, or find a solution fast. Charles and Apin are talking about redrafting all the research results to leave out the distinction in base serums. They think I'm nothing more than the typist, and they'll say anything around me. I just may set up a meeting and confront them. Don't redraft the research—that would be criminal. You should spend more time in the office and less in the lab if you really want to know what jerks these guys are. If it was my company I'd give SunCo their money back and tell them to get lost. AI Apin is not human, and I don't mean to insult dogs, pigs, dolphins, doves, millipedes or sidewinders.

  Your Pal, Gwen.

  "The date on that one is April of last year. Five months before the sale to Sistel."

  Even though Merci's heart was beating fast with excitement, it sank at the end of Gwen's e-mail to Moss.

  "If the Russians knew she knew this, Paul, if they even dreamed that Gwen might spill, that's motive to kill her."

  "But why would they wait until last week to do it? The scam was over. The OrganiVen sale to Sistel went through back in September of last year. Everybody got rich, including Cherbrenko and Vorapii They're long gone. Sistel's left holding the bag, they fold the loss into their annual billions, call it a restructure."

  Merci thought it through. "Well, Sistel is just now starting to cry foul. Maybe she had just started singing. For a while, she played along, made her money."

  Zamorra was nodding. "Which might be her inclination, after getting friends and family to invest."

  "But she changed her mind. She did something they found out about. Or they thought she was going to do something, went proactive."

  He looked at her. "With these guys, you don't change your mind. You don't get in the way of business."

  "Then why did she, Paul? Why change her mind when everybody's paid, fat and sassy? Why would she do that?"

  "A guilty conscience."

  "It wasn't that guilty when she was making the money."

  "Pressure," said Zamorra.

  "From where?"

  "Family?"

  "She'd never tell them what she'd done. Especially if they'd invested, or loaned her and Archie money to invest."

  "Friends?" he asked.

  "The same."

  "Maybe she didn't understand good old Sonny and Al. Didn't know how dangerous they were."

  Merci knew that ignorance often supplies the opportunity for a murder. Not seeing the threat. I didn't know. "I'd give her more credit than that. And you know Archie would have understood it."

  "But did Archie know? Did Archie know his wife was elbow deep in a stock fraud while she was making them rich?"

  Rayborn, a believer in the right to keep and bear secrets, had to think about that one. What she came up with surprised her. "He was a cop. A straight arrow. She might have told him she was worried. She did tell him the SunCo guys were creeps—he told us that. But she wouldn't have told him details. Because he would never have let her do it. No. Archie never knew what these guys were up to. Because Gwen could never bring herself to tell him."

  A moment of silence in Gwen Wildcraft's music room. Then an understanding came to Merci as clearly as one of Gwen's melodies coming through the speaker.

  "They weren't after Archie that night," she said, quietly. "They were after Gwen. They got him out of the house because they knew he was a cop and he was dangerous. Then they went in and took car of business. Because she changed her mind."

  Why did she change her mind?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dr. Sean Moss lived in a bashful mansion overlooking the Pacific at La Jolla. It was redwood and smoked glass, horizontal layers hugging the hillside, trying to look inconspicuous. The winding driveway was concrete, lined with Torrey pines and breeze-swayed grasses.

  The voice from the gate speaker was youthful and high-pitched: "Yeah?"

  "Detectives Rayborn and Zamorra, OCSD. We want to ask some questions about Gwen."

  "You didn't make an appointment."

  "You didn't answer your phone. Open the gate, Doctor, we don't have all day."

  "This is not cool."

  But the gate shuddered and began its slow roll across the concrete.

  Beyond the gate the lot was level. Merci saw the tennis court, the helipad, the rock-climbing arena, the swimming pool with a ten-meter board, the sand volleyball court complete with a sunning beach with bright yellow umbrellas. These playing areas were connected to each other by lawns of thick green grass. Merci thought Ryan Dawes would probably wet his extreme shorts just seeing Sean Moss's setup. She wondered why men were slow to give up boyhood while girls raced to be women. The house was bigger than it looked from down the drive, segmented into three stories that rose and dipped with the hill face. There were decks and more yellow umbrellas, clay pots of tropical plants the rails. Merci parked near the volleyball court and they walked up gravel trail bordered by the dense damp grass.

  The front door was enormous and slotted with windows of tinted glass. One side of it opened and a skinny young man in shorts, a bright shirt and clunky sandals with ankle straps came to the front of the porch. He looked down at them. His hair was thick and straight, hanging down from the top of his head, then cut straight across his forehead and ears, as if the barber had used a mixing bowl as a template. His legs were dark and bony.

  "I'm Sergeant Rayborn and this is Sergeant Zamorra. Are you Dr. Moss?
"

  "Yes. I only have like ten minutes."

  "You young hotshots are always in a hurry," said Rayborn. "What are you a doctor of, anyway?"

  "Organic chemistry." Moss smiled either boyishly or nervously and let them into his house.

  The entryway was towering, three stories to the skylights, Rayborn guessed. Lacquered redwood floors, huge redwood stanchions rising to the distant ceiling. Moss lifted the lid of what looked like an old steamer trunk.

  "Shoes, please."

  They sat on a redwood bench along the entryway wall and took off their shoes. Moss kept his sandals on. Merci looked to the opposite wall, where shining, colorful surfboards rose in ranks of six across. She padded across to look closer at the writing on them: Wardy, Greg Noll, Hobie, Velzy, Dewey Weber.

  "Surf up today?" she asked.

  "It's a weak south. Trestles was okay."

  Sean Moss, bowlegged as a bull rider, led them through to the kitchen that was done up in new stainless appliances and white everything else. Shiny blond wood floor. An island work table with a checkerboard hardwood top. He opened a wooden slider that led outside a deck, offering them chairs at a long redwood table under a yellow umbrella..

  Moss sat with his back to the sea, giving them the ocean view. He slipped on a pair of thin silver sunglasses that, with the bowl haircut, gave him a mushroom-from-outer-space look. He had a neat goatee.

  "We think Gwen Wildcraft might have gotten herself into some hot water at OrganiVen," said Merci.

  Moss looked at her and said nothing.

  "Any thoughts on that?" Zamorra asked.

  "Gwen and her husband bought some shares during our friends-and-family offering, then she became involved in the company. Really liked the idea of fighting cancer. She brought in over a quarter of a million in start-up money. We offered her hourly compensation, but she took her pay in stock. You don't think her work with OrganiVen had anything to do with her murder, do you?"

  "It had everything to do with it," said Merci. "Who was the friend who got them in?"

  "A stockbroker named Trent Gentry. I mean, the 'friends' definition was loose. I went to school with Trent, and he was vouching for the Wildcrafts."