Black Water mr-3 Read online

  Black Water

  ( Merci Rayborn - 3 )

  T. Jefferson Parker

  T. Jefferson Parker

  Black Water

  CHAPTER ONE

  Archie pushed the gearshift into third and set his hand on her knee. Coast Highway, southbound. Man in the moon big and close, like he was tilting his head for a peek down into the convertible. Archie glanced up, couldn't tell if the guy was smiling or frowning. Didn't care because Gwen's skin was warm through the dress, a few degrees warmer than the breeze gusting through the car.

  He looked at the speedometer then at her. Saw her hair moving her face sketched in the orange glow of the dashboard lights. A silver champagne flute in one hand, a smile.

  Archie pretended he'd never seen her before. Pretended he trying to look at something else-the squid boat off of Crystal Co in a pool of white light, say-only to have this Gwen creature drop into his world like some special effect. There she was. What luck.

  He lifted the hem of her dress up over her knees and slipped his hand under. She eased back in the seat a little and he heard the breath catch in her throat. He caught the faint smell of her, windblown but unmistakable. Archie had a sharp nose and loved what it brought him. Like right now, the milk-and-orange-blossoms smell of Gwen, bass scent of his life. All the other notes that came to him-coastal sage and the ocean, the new car leather-were just the riffs and fills.

  She smiled and tossed the plastic champagne flute in the air, the darkness stealing it without a sound. Then she slid her hand under there with his, popping up the cotton dress and letting it settle like a bedspread while she trailed a finger down his forearm and over his wrist.

  "Long way home, Arch."

  "Five whole miles."

  "What a night. It's cool when we mix our friends and they get along."

  "They're all great. Priscilla drank a lot."

  "The cops put it away, too. Thanks, Arch. You spent a fortune for all that."

  "Worth it. You only turn twenty-six once."

  Gwen's curls lifted in a random swirl and she pulled his hand in a little closer. She didn't speak for a long moment. "Twenty-six. I'm lucky. Will you love me when I'm thirty-six? Eighty-six?"

  "Done deal."

  "I'm really sorry about earlier."

  "Forget it. I have. Damned temper."

  A serene moment then, as the roar of the engine mixed with the comfort of forgiveness.

  "I can't wait to get home, Arch. I'll be outrageously demanding, since it's my birthday. It is still my birthday, isn't it?"

  "For about three minutes."

  "Hmmm. Maybe you ought to pull over."

  Archie downshifted and looked for a turn off the highway. There was one at the state beach, one for the trailer park, another one back by the juice stand. They'd used all of them, just one of those things they loved to do. She'd sit on his lap with her back to him. Up that high she looked like a tourist craning for a view of something, one hand on the armrest and the other on the dash. The great thing about the new convertible was he could look up past the back of Gwen's head at the stars, then at her again, put his nose in her hair or against her neck and wonder what he'd done to deserve her. For a young man, Archie Wildcraft was not a complete fool, because he understood, at thirty, that he'd done nothing at all to deserve her. Dumb luck, pure and simple. "There's the turn," she said, pointing. "I love you," he said. "I love you, Arch. You're always going to be my man, aren't you

  It wasn't really a question so he didn't answer. He braked and steered off the highway and into the darkness.

  Four hours later, Deputy Wildcraft jerked awake when he heard something loud in the living room.

  Gwen slept right through it, so Archie cupped one hand firmly over her mouth as he raised her from sleep. Her eyes grew large as he whispered what he'd heard. He prodded her out of the bed and toward the bathroom, which was where Archie had told her to go if something like this ever happened. All the time Archie was trying to listen but he heard nothing from the living room, the house, the whole world.

  He watched as she pulled her new purple robe off the floor and moved through the room shadows toward the bath. Archie got a nine-millimeter autoloader from under the bed. He set it on his pillow while he pulled on his underwear-comic, "Happy Birthday, I'm Yours" boxers with a big red ribbon printed around the opening. They'd made her laugh. Him too, and they'd made love again and fallen asleep damp and tangled in the sheets.

  He put on his robe and picked up the gun. Then he got the phone and carried it toward the bathroom, where a thin horizon of light shone under the door. He opened it and gave her the phone and whispered don't worry this guy picked the wrong house to burgle maybe just a bird flew into a window if something goes wrong call 911 but let me check it out first.

  I'll call it now, Archie.

  Don 't call it until I tell you to call it. Turn out the light the twenty-two's under the sink with a full clip and one in the chamber.

  The safety's down by the trigger guard push it 'til the red shows.

  Be careful.

  I'll be careful.

  Archie got his flashlight and walked out of the room and into the familiar hallway. Carpet, bare feet hardly making a sound. There was a light switch at the end of the hall, where it opened to the living room. He flipped it on but didn't step in, just stood there scanning right to left then back again over the sights of the automatic: wall, sofa, window blinds with a big hole in them, chair, wall with a painting, Gwen's birthday presents on the floor. Then the same things again, but in reverse.

  He looked down at the big rock in the middle of the living room carpet. Size of a grapefruit. Saw the shards of glass twinkling near the sliding glass door. Saw where the wooden blinds had been splintered when the rock came through. Offed the light and listened. The refrigerator hummed and car tires hissed in the distance.

  Archie moved quietly into the kitchen and hit another light. Empty and undisturbed. Breakfast nook the same. Little family room with the TV and fireplace looked fine, too, just the VCR clock glowing a steady 4:28 A.M.

  He checked the bath and the laundry room. Went back to the living room and shined his flashlight down on the rock. Kind of a rounded square, red and smooth with clear skinny marbles running through it like fat. Gneiss, thought Archie, veined with quartz. Common.

  He wondered who'd do something infantile and destructive like this. Kids, probably-don't know who lives here, just want to bust something up, video it, have a story to tell. Maybe some forgotten creep he'd shoved around in Orange County jail when he started work eight years ago. Cops make enemies every day and Archie had made his. They all came to his mind, though none more than any other. The crime lab could get latents off that gneiss.

  All of this sped through Archie's brain as he unlocked the front door, slipped outside and quietly pulled the door shut behind him.

  The moon was gone so he turned on the flashlight, scanned the porch and the bushes around it. A rabbit crashed through the leaves and Archie's heart jumped. He stepped down to the walkway. It was lined with Chinese flame trees and yellow hibiscus and bird-of-paradise. The drooping branches of the flame trees made a tunnel. Archie followed the walk around to the back, moving his light beam with his left hand, dangling the nine millimeter in his right. He stayed on the walk and it led him around the swimming pool. The water was flat and polished and Archie remarked for maybe the millionth time what a beautiful home they lived in now, big but plenty of charm, on a double lot in the hills with this pool and a three-car garage and palm trees fifty feet high leading up the driveway. An extra room for his viewing stones. An extra room for Gwen's music. A extra room for the baby someday.

  He continued along the curving walkway then stopped in front of
the slider where the rock had come through. The beam of his flashlight picked up the big ragged hole and the gleam of fissures spreading all directions. He saw no footprints, no disturbance of the grass.

  Archie stood still and listened, clicked off his flashlight. Never did hear a getaway car. Kids, he thought again: they would throw the rock, haul ass giggling along the west fence, jump it at the corner and be down the hill before he'd gotten Gwen into the bathroom. He thought of her just then, standing in the hard light with her robe on, hair all messed up, scared as a bird and listening to every little sound, the twenty-two probably still in the cabinet under the sink because she didn't like guns. And he thought what a jealous little jerk he'd been for a few minutes at the party. Married to her for eight years and he still feel his anger rise when his own friends hugged and kissed her.

  He missed her. Wondered what in hell he was doing out here with his happy birthday boxers and a gun and his wife afraid in a locked bathroom a hundred feet away.

  He turned back up the walk. Past the pool. Into the tunnel of tree Then a beam of sharp light in his eyes and by the time he found the flashlight button it was too late.

  Up close, an orange explosion.

  Bright white light and Archie watching himself fly into it, a bug in the universe, a man going home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sergeant Merci Rayborn nodded at the two deputies standing at the front door of the Wildcraft house. One of them handed her an Order-of-Entry log, which she signed after checking her watch. She was a tall woman with a dark ponytail that rode up the orange letters on the back of her windbreaker as she wrote, then down again as she handed back the clipboard.

  "Who got here first and where are they?"

  "Crowder and Dobbs, Sergeant. In the kitchen area, I believe."

  The other uniform looked past her head and said nothing.

  In the entryway Merci Rayborn stood still and received. Smell of furniture wax and wood. Smell of flowers. Murmur of voices. She looked at the entryway mirror, the living room furniture, the carpet. She looked at the hole in the blinds, which suggested a hole in the glass behind. She looked at a rock the size of a newborn's head lying near the middle of the floor. At the little pile of gift boxes. No alarm system-kitchen, maybe.

  "Merci."

  Paul Zamorra came softly down the hallway, light on his feet. And dark in his heart, Merci thought. He had the gentle deliberateness of an undertaker. And the black suit, too.

  She turned to her partner. "Paul. Do you know this guy?"

  "Not well. You know, just a friendly face. We'd talked."

  "Wildcraft. I'm sure we talked, too."

  Though she wasn't sure of that at all. The department was sharp divided into people who approved of what Merci Rayborn had do and people who didn't. Everyone had an opinion. Some of the deputies wouldn't talk to her, nor she to them unless she had to. This hurt Merci deeply, as if the two halves of her heart detested each other. She had come to distrust all opinions, even her own.

  But Deputy 2 Archie Wildcraft? She remembered nothing about him but his unusual name. Now he was in the hospital with at least one gunshot to his head and little chance of living.

  "His wife is the other, Merci. Gwen Wildcraft. She's in the bathroom."

  Merci led down the hallway, noting the textured plaster, the black and-white Yosemite photographs in brushed stainless-steel frames, the way the track lights were aimed to display them. She stopped at the thermostat and saw that it had been set at seventy. She walked past another deputy then down into a large bedroom with French doors a gauzy curtains. Big sleigh bed with the covers messed up. Smell perfume and human beings.

  The bathroom door was open. The doorframe was splintered a the lock plate dangled by two screws. Merci leaned over the crime scene tape and looked in.

  Here, very different smells-the sharp after burned scent of nitrocellulose and something faintly metallic and sweet. Gwen Wilder lay beside the toilet, back to the floor but her head against the wall a hard angle, facing down and to her right. Eyes closed, mouth open arms and legs spread, purple robe almost matching the blood on the wall, the floor, the shower door, the counter and mirror. More from her nose and mouth. Merci noted the cell phone lying face up in right-hand sink.

  This was Rayborn's sixty-seventh homicide scene as an investigator for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. For the six seventh time she told herself to see, not feel. Think, not feel. Work, not feel. But, not for the first time in her life, Rayborn told herself she couldn't keep on looking.

  "Let's get Crowder and Dobbs."

  "All right," said Zamorra.

  The four of them stood in the breakfast nook. Looking into the kitchen, Merci noted the fresh pot of coffee on the maker, unpoured, the machine still wheezing. A timer, she thought, confidently programmed to make coffee that Archie and Gwen Wildcraft would never touch. A red colander filled with oranges sat on the counter and a curved wooden stand dangled a bunch of pale bananas. The word waste came to her mind, as it often did.

  Crowder was a big man with short gray hair brushed into a severe 1950s flattop. He reminded her of a man she'd been in love with many years ago-three to be exact. Crowder watched as Merci brought out a new blue notebook and her good pen, and she wondered if he hated her.

  "We were down on Moulton, stopped for coffee. Dispatch said possible gunshot reported in Hunter Ranch. Wasn't a nine-one-one but we rolled right then. It was five-ten. We came in quiet because it's a good neighborhood, wasn't a hot call. Got here at five-fourteen. The house looked okay from the outside. Nobody around, no neighbors, nothing. Houselights showing from a couple of places inside."

  "What about outside?"

  "No."

  "The driveway?"

  "No."

  She asked twice because two floodlights had been on when she first walked up the Wildcraft driveway. That was just after six, on the cusp of sunrise.

  Merci made notes in a loop-crazy shorthand, her subjects separated by slashes like lyrics quoted in a review. CK meant check, always capitals and underlined, sometimes circled if the question seemed extra important. She wrote, drive lights mo-det? CK/, then looked up at Zamorra.

  "Paul, how many cars in the driveway when you got here?"

  "Four."

  "Let's have a look where they're not before we leave tonight. The concrete's new and it could hold a track. Make sure the CSI examine it before the battalion moves out."

  "Yes."

  Crowder looked out one of the mullioned breakfast nook window Merci followed his gaze to a large fenced yard, patio and orange tree all sharp with color in the August morning.

  Dobbs let out a short sigh. He was young and hard-jawed, with arm muscles that almost filled out his green uniform shirt. Smoot ruddy face. "Look. We called for backup and paramedics when we found Archie on the other side of the house. We searched the house and found his wife in the bathroom. We taped it off. And by that time the driveway was full of vehicles, new concrete or not."

  Merci looked at him. "Next time think before you open a parking lot."

  Dobbs looked away.

  "Anyway," said Crowder. "We rang the bell but didn't get an answer. Porch lights off, but lights on inside. Decided to walk around the house, see what we could see. Wildcraft was on his back on the walkway, about halfway around. Bleeding from the head but still breathing. Wearing a robe. Handgun beside him. Then, like Dobbs said, we called in, went inside and found the wife. I left two footprints and a knee print in that bathroom somewhere. You know, checked her artery, but there was nothing."

  "Was there a bathroom light on when you went in?"

  "Yeah," said Crowder. "I could still smell the gun smoke."

  Merci smelled nothing of guncotton out here, just the faint sweet smell of wood polish and coffee.

  "What did you see driving up?" Zamorra asked.

  Dobbs crossed his big arms. "Yes, sir. A black, late-model Cadillac made the north turn at Jacaranda when we were turning up. That would be
an expected car in this neighborhood, but it was still just a little past five in the morning. Two white males-early-to-mid-thirties, plus or minus five. There's a streetlight at the intersection, but it's weak "See faces?"

  "Very briefly, sir. Passenger was dark-haired, bearded, big face, thick black glasses-you know, I mean the frame part was black and thick. What I thought was, heavy. The driver was blond, and I thought businessman. I mean, these were instant impressions, sir, just… flashes. But they both looked unusual."

  "How?" Merci asked.

  Dobbs ignored her and spoke only to Zamorra.

  "Unusual facial structures."

  "What do you mean?" Zamorra asked.

  "You know, like when you're down in Laguna on the boardwalk and you can spot the tourists from other countries? Just the faces, you know, the way they formulate. I read in a magazine it's from the facial muscles used to pronounce different languages. You know, like a French face looks different from an American one because their face muscles help make different sounds."

  "So, they were French?" asked Zamorra, with a small smile.

  Dobbs chuckled. "I couldn't say, sir."

  "Take a guess," said Merci.

  "I wouldn't guess with so little information," Dobbs said, finally looking at her. "That would be pointless."

  Merci felt the blast of anger go through her. After thirty-seven years of trying to stop it she still couldn't, but she'd learned to put her anger into thoughts that could contain it. And sometimes amuse her. What she thought about Dobbs and his condescending arrogance was give him the guillotine.

  "Since you're big on points, Dobbs, what was the point of parking your car in the driveway of a homicide scene and letting everybody else do the same?"

  Merci felt ashamed at harping on this but she had to say something and that was what came out. It was her nature to grab and not let go. If Dobbs disliked her for what she'd done, that was even more reason for him to suck it up, get along, do the job. In her opinion, anyway.