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  "Hello, Archie, " said another.

  "I'll get Dr. Stebbins. "

  The conversation was much too fast and complex for Archie to follow. He understood two things. One was that he was terrified. The other was that he had lost something huge and it would never come back.

  He looked and saw monsters over him: eyes, nostrils, teeth. He tried to open his mouth but his will gave way before it could happen. His lips burned and his throat burned and the ferocious colors mage him close his eyes and settle back down into where he'd been for so long, hovering just below the surface, protected, safe in his river.

  Swim. Breathe. Rest.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Wildcraft's fingerprints are on the Smith nine. His right index finger, thumb and web were marked with barium, antimony, copper and lead. With corroborating evidence you can make a very strong case for him having fired the weapon. We do it all the time in court, as you know."

  James Gilliam, director of the Sheriff-Coroner Forensic Services Department, looked at Merci over his glasses, then at Zamorra leaning against the back wall of Gilliam's office. He was a quiet, scholarly man until you got to know him.

  It was eight the next morning. Merci had already talked to Sheriff Vince Abelera, who had talked to a neurologist at UCI Med Center. Archie Wildcraft had made it through the night. He had opened his eyes for approximately fifteen seconds. X rays had shown a small object lodged deep in his brain, smaller fragments throughout. The doctors would not let anyone interview the patient at this time. The man's life was in the balance. Merci had begged Sheriff Abelera to make the doctors tell them what caliber bullet was inside Archie's brain. But the x ray wasn't clear enough to measure fractions of millimeters, and the object, apparently, had fragmented.

  "I can't tell you what he shot with that gun," Gilliam continued. "Until we finish with the bullets from his wife. And unless they retrieve the bullet from his head."

  Rayborn felt her stomach sink: Gilliam was already believing that Wildcraft had done it. Plus she'd had her usual big-eaters' breakfast which her father cooked every morning for her, Tim Jr. and himself. She ate a lot, burned it off in the gym. But now it felt like she'd eaten nails and washed them down with battery acid.

  She tried to fight her dread with details. "How many microgram of lead in the residue, James?"

  "Point six five. After two hours, that's the persistence level you'd expect to find from a discharged nine-millimeter autoloader. Like the one they found next to him. Good thing they hadn't washed him up at the medical center yet."

  "Good thing," she said. "What about the blood on his robe?"

  "We're still cooking it to check against his wife's DNA. Give me a day or two."

  "Okay, I'm ready for Mrs. Wildcraft now."

  "I figured you would want to see her."

  "Absolutely."

  "Because it will make you angry and make you work harder."

  "Make me angrier."

  Gilliam smiled, then colored slightly and stood. A year ago he would not have smiled. That was back when he had a schoolboy crush on her and didn't know what to do with it. At first, Merci had been too obtuse and inexperienced to know what it was. Then, one day, right out of the blue, he just told her. It seemed noble but comic, Gilliam confessed that even his wife was teasing him about her. Things got better. It was further proof that she understood men poorly.

  "Ready, Paul?" she asked.

  Zamorra nodded and eased himself away from the wall with a little shrug of his back.

  Merci hated the autopsy room. Its stink of formaldehyde, bleach and blood. The hard edges of drains and blades, saws and suctions, scalpel and scales. The stainless steel and chrome and plastic. And those bright overhead lights that presented this torture chamber as just science. But most of all she hated it for the lightness it always brought to her head, for the cold sweat it brought to her temples, for the way it made her want to throw up, then sleep.

  Gwen Wildcraft was still tabled, but there was a sheet over her. All Merci could see were her feet—small and stiff and white as fence pickets.

  Gilliam lifted the sheet from Mrs. Wildcraft's face and pulled it down to just below her chin. Her skin was gray white and her eyes were closed. From the left side of her head they'd shaved a large patch of wavy dark hair. The shorn skin surrounded a small hole with ridges swollen around it. Above the hole was a brief vertical dash, like the top of an exclamation mark.

  "Don't be fooled by the skin blowback," said Gilliam. "That's the entry point."

  As always, Merci found it hard to fathom that a body without life had once been so full of it. Such an immensity of difference. It was like standing in a desert while the sun beat down on you—how could you believe it was once underwater? She noted with rising anger that even dead and mutilated, Gwen Wildcraft was almost beautiful.

  "Now, two gunshots," said Gilliam. "One to the heart and one to the head. Both apparently nine millimeter, fired from up close. We recovered both bullets, and Buckley's working them up with the crime scene gun. The one here in the brain was a real mess, I can tell you. Mushrooming, fragmentation. Heads are hard, thank God."

  Not hard enough, thought Rayborn.

  Late yesterday afternoon she had run the serial number of the weapon found beside Wildcraft, confirming its registered owner as Archibald Franklin Wildcraft.

  "Excuse me," muttered Gilliam, pulling the sheet down to the waist. Merci swallowed hard when she looked at the inverted Y incision, obscenely large, loosely stitched back together. The final insult, she thought.

  "The other shot," Gilliam continued, "bounced off a rib and stopped inside her heart—back in the right atrium. It cut the pulmonary artery on its way by. Cause of death was coronary failure. Hard to tell whether it stopped because a bullet tore through, or because her brain was ruined. Either shot would have been fatal—the heart certainly, and the brain almost certainly. The shots came very close together in time. She died quickly, that from the histamine level and the blood loss. She still had almost four liters of blood."

  "How close was the shooter?" asked Zamorra.

  "Very. The heart was a Zone Four—the barrel was somewhere from six inches to two feet away. From the powder particles on her robe I'd put it at the closer end, but there still isn't any sooting. I think the heart shot occurred first—farther out, bigger target, gave the shooter a chance to get even closer for the next. The head shot was Zone One, direct contact, significant blast destruction. There's even front sight impression above the flesh tear, caused by the flesh to looning back against the barrel. The gun you got at the scene did havea very small particle of bloody flesh stuck to the top of the front sight. And the barrel is heavy with blood and flesh particles. DNA to come. She might have been supine by then, and he just pushed the barrel right down against her head. There was some powder driven into the wound. We're running the same DNA comparison for Mr. Wildcraft, also."

  Merci stared and let the ugliness fuel her. The waste. The arrogance. The sickness of spirit that it takes to regard another life as cheap and disposable. The fact that he would do this to another body, while his was still out there, alive and eating and smiling and sleeping and shitting like the rest of us.

  She nodded almost imperceptibly, eyes steady and unblinking, lips pressed in tight between her teeth.

  "You personally removed both the bullets, right, James?"

  "Yes."

  "Then are they nines or not?—God knows you've seen enough them."

  "I'm almost sure they are, but Buckley's the man for that."

  "Okay, James—you figure Wildcraft is good for her, then himself. His gun, his prints. Is that what you're seeing?"

  "It fits, so far. But I wouldn't presume to do your job, Merci. Mime is enough for me."

  "Paul?"

  Zamorra hesitated. Merci saw that he was looking at Gwen Wildcraft's face too, with an expression that looked like hers felt.

  "I talked to a couple of Wildcraft's friends last night on the phone."


  He held her gaze and she knew this meant more bad news, news that Zamorra didn't want to give her in front of Gilliam.

  Fucking great.

  She felt her anger coming but couldn't stop it. Didn't want to. It wasn't sharp and clean like they tried to say in the books, wasn't purifying. It was heavy and cumbersome as a wagon full of rocks. Like once you pointed it in one direction and let go, you'd never get it back, never change its course. She wanted to point it at Wildcraft, for making her suspect him. She wanted to point it at Gilliam and Zamorra, for smugly assuming the worst about a fellow deputy. She wanted to point it at Mike McNally, for helping her make the worst judgment of her life, a judgment that kept on judging.

  Most of all she wanted to point it at the killer of Gwen Wildcraft, but she didn't know who that was.

  Yet.

  "Give the woman some privacy," she said. "We'll finish in your office."

  "Whatever you want," said Gilliam.

  "Whatever I want is not a guilty deputy."

  "I understand."

  "Since the last one I arrested for murder was totally goddamned innocent."

  "I do understand," said Gilliam.

  "I know you do."

  With two hands he replaced the sheet over Gwen Wildcraft, looking at Merci, the gleam in his eyes lost in the glare of the lights overhead.

  Back in Gilliam's office Merci stood against one wall and Zamorra another. She felt anxious and nervy and physical, like she wanted to kick somebody. "Was she raped?"

  Gilliam flipped back through his notebook, then stopped and smoothed a page.

  Merci wondered why you'd have to look up the answer to a question like that, but she knew Gilliam was only finding his facts. Still it irritated her that he couldn't just get to the bottom of things sometimes.

  "She'd had vaginal intercourse within the last three hours of her life. There was no genital bleeding, bruising, tearing or abrasions. No sign of a struggle. No semen in the mouth, throat or anus. Mrs. Wildcraft did have some light scrapes, perhaps bite marks, on the back her neck. I can't explain them. They may be sexual in nature, or they may not be. This doesn't appear to have been a sexual attack. It's possible that she was coerced into intercourse some other way than force. Or maybe the killer was interrupted. Maybe it was never his intention. That's just speculation."

  "I guess that means she wasn't raped."

  "That's my opinion."

  The anger fanned by seeing Gwen Wildcraft's tortured body wouldn't leave her, it just sped her up, made her want to fight. "Well, is it Deputy Wildcraft's semen or isn't it?"

  "I'm cooking the DNA gels right now, Merci."

  "What did the tech see on the driveway—any good tire tracks?

  "Nothing he could use."

  "What about the footprints under the trees?"

  "The imprint casts came out beautifully," he said. "Size-sixteen casual shoes made by Foot Rite. They're not widely available—and like the same shoe in a size ten, say. You're looking at specialty store and catalogues. Ike might be able to get some useful manufacture information for you."

  "Fingerprints from the bathroom?"

  "Lots of them, as you'd guess. We're running them all against his and hers, but nothing's popped out at us. That's eyeball work, so it's taking time. Vince told me last night he wants all this fast-track. Buckley did the test shooting last night, so he might have some fittings by now."

  When they walked into the firearms examination room, Buckley was sitting at a table next to one of the comparison microscopes. He'd been looking across the room, his chin up on one fist, and seemed slightly apologetic for it.

  On the table beside him was a two-foot square of plastic bubble wrap upon which sat Deputy Wildcraft's gun, the brass casing found by Zamorra and the two casings from the Wildcraft bathroom. A clear plastic box held what looked to Merci like a small-caliber bullet sheared into two fragments. The box beside it was empty. A larger one held perhaps fifty empty nine-millimeter casings: Buckley's comparison brass, Merci thought, fired through various guns.

  Buckley was a wiry Georgian who had what Merci thought were impeccable manners, and a skeet shooting medal from the '72 Olympics. As usual, his shirt was plaid and his tie was a solid knit and his hair was sprayed into a perfect brown helmet.

  "All three nine-millimeter casings from the scene were fired through the automatic registered to Deputy Wildcraft," he said quietly. "The breech face left two easily distinguishable marks. I haven't photographed any of this yet, so you'll have to take my word on it until I do."

  "Your word's good, Buck, even if it isn't what I wanted to hear."

  He sighed and shook his head. "It wasn't what I wanted, either. Makes me wonder if I could have done something. Should have seen something. But I didn't. Locked in my own little world, I guess."

  Buckley's shoulders slumped. Merci saw him draw a deep breath and straighten his back.

  "The slugs from inside Mrs. Wildcraft came from cartridges fired through that gun, too. The land and groove marks are good because the original cutting blade had a big anomaly that shows through on every bullet the gun projects. I say big—you need a microscope to see it. To a good examiner it looks like a street sign."

  Tracking the freefall of her hope, Rayborn said nothing. And looking for refuge in details again, she thought to point out that the cutting tool used to create the rifling in the gun barrel would have been used to create the rifling in the next barrel on the S&W production line. And the previous one. But she knew the chances of any two of those barrels showing up in the same state at the same time in the same murder investigation were smaller than the breech face marks. By quite a bit.

  It felt dismal to find herself thinking like a defense lawyer.

  "I guess there's some flesh and blood that Jimmy took off the barrel end of the automatic, which he's going to try to put with the cut her forehead," said Buckley.

  Neither Rayborn nor Zamorra spoke until they were outside the Coroner's Facility. It was almost noon and the late-August morning was; humid and hot.

  Merci looked up at the pale blue sky and wondered what Tim Jr. was doing exactly now. Watching TV. Helping Grandpa doing something around the house. Driving his favorite birthday present from three months ago: a stationary car-like contraption with a mock video obstacle course he could "steer" through. It had sound effects: start, idle and an engine shriek that rose in pitch and volume according to what gear you shifted into.

  She loved the way that Tim Jr. carefully locked the seat belt around his waist before he turned on the ignition, took the wheel then floored the accelerator and threw the shifter down into third. She interpreted this as a mixture of intelligence and courage. But then, she'd come see that he was marked for greatness. All her acquaintances who had children thought the same of theirs, but in Rayborn's opinion Tim was superior in obvious ways.

  "I'm ready to hear what you got on Wildcraft from his friends, I don't suppose it's terrific news, if you didn't want James in on it."

  Zamorra shrugged. "He was high-strung, happy and worried."

  It was like a window had been opened in a sweltering room and puff of cold clean air had blown through.

  Happy?

  "Worried about what, Paul?"

  "They were spending a lot of money. He liked nice things and did she. He worked all the overtime he could get. Did some bodyguarding and security work once in a while. I'd expect to find some nice credit card bills when we check their finances."

  She waited while a faint smile crossed Zamorra's face. "And was in love. Still is, technically.

  "She braced herself even as the words came out. "With whom?"

  "Gwen. All three of the guys I talked to told me they'd never seen a guy that much in love with his wife. Two of them actually used the word 'insanely.' She was just out of high school when they got married. He had just graduated from state college with a degree in geology. Baseball scholarship. Gwen helped put him through the Sheriff's Academy singing in a rock band. Archie
was proud of all that."

  Zamorra laughed quietly. It wasn't something that he did very often and it made him look different. The darkness fled and he looked like a guy you wanted to know, maybe even touch.

  "Okay, Paul, cough it."

  "Archie has strong opinions and he stands up for them. A temper, too. There's a group of young deputies he hangs out with, some cops he met in the academy. Archie and one of them got pissed off at each other, had a fistfight in a bar and Archie knocked him out with one punch."

  "What was the fight about?"

  "You. The guy said you were wrong and Archie said you were right and it just got out of hand. They made up later but, according to the friends, neither one of them changed his mind."

  For just a moment, her dread wavered and Rayborn enjoyed the warming breeze of approval. From a guy she didn't know. A guy very possibly guilty of murder, a guy with a bullet in his brain and not likely to live out the day.

  "That's funny," she said, hearing the lameness but not caring. "Well, was Wildcraft a good candidate for a murder-suicide or wasn't he?"

  Zamorra looked at her and shook his head. They had a running dispute about the way they looked at things. Merci tried for black or white, and absolutes. Zamorra was prone to colors and gradients. Merci judged quickly; Zamorra sometimes didn't judge at all.

  "Was he or wasn't he, Paul?"

  She looked at Zamorra with a small smile because she knew how long an answer might take. Hess had been like her and Zamorra put together: he'd bury himself in details and facts, gathering instead of judging, then his gut would kick in and guide him through. She wished she could be more like Hess, less opinionated and huffy, but decisive and effective when she needed to be. He had told her to be kind to herself because that's who she was stuck with for the next fifty year:

  "I need to keep looking," he said finally. "Some people have other levels, whole lives that take place in secret. Those are the tough one: No one sees it coming. Rare, but it happens. They don't ask for help. They don't announce it. They usually leave a note."

  Merci tried to imagine a life that secret, an intention so perfectly disguised.