Black Water Read online

  He smiled and let out a quick little snort. "Cut the crap, Rayborn I know what to do with a crime scene. We don't like each other. Fine I can play this your way if I have to."

  "My way is not to whine to the papers."

  "I should have kept my mouth shut."

  It didn't sound like an apology, or even the preamble to one.

  "You kicked my ass when it was down, Jaws."

  "I should have stayed quiet."

  "Don't mess up my crime scene."

  "I won't. I need to get the evidence right this time."

  She could have killed him. Thought she might. But she held her tongue and imagined Jaws slipping from a toe-hold and pinwheeling down the face of Half Dome toward his death.

  Then she heard footsteps on the walk. It took her a moment to recognize Al with no sport coat on, and a pair of aviator shades hiding his eyes.

  Al Madden was former head of the Sheriff's Department Homicide Detail, and now the district attorney's top investigator. He was big, smart and tireless. Hess had spoken highly of him.

  The DA prosecutors used Al when they needed more than what the case detectives got. Or to tie things up, nail things down. Clear up the details, connect the last few dots.

  Or when the DA thought the detectives just might have gotten something wrong. Al was there to help them win cases. And to keep the People from getting humiliated in court because of bad police work. Or sued into oblivion by the ACLU.

  She nodded and shook Al's hand but said nothing. Like greeting your executioner, she thought. She wasn't going to make polite chatter In the uncomfortable silence Al pulled off the sunglasses to reveal gray eyes rimmed in red.

  "Look, Merci, everything looks tight on the reports. I'm just here to take some measurements, confirm a couple of small things. Clay knows this is a delicate one, with Wildcraft being one of ours."

  "I understand. Small things like what? Measure what?"

  "Nothing in particular."

  Then everything in general, she thought: a wholesale dismissal of my casework.

  "Let's do it, Al," said Dawes.

  "Do you mind, Sergeant?" Madden asked, a hint of apology in his voice.

  She shook her head and walked past them toward the driveway.

  She walked through it again with Zamorra, once with Archie as the shooter and once with him not. Then again as burglars, noting all the things they could have taken but didn't. When they were finished they stood for a moment near the swimming pool and watched Al Madden and Ryan Dawes.

  The two DA men were kneeling, Al on the walkway and Dawes over where Zamorra had found the casing. Dawes checked one of the crime scene drawings on the clipboard beside him, dropped his end of the tape and spread both arms to point out where the brass had been found. Madden nodded. Then Dawes hooked his right hand toward his head, pointed a finger and jerked his head.

  "Did Wildcraft shoot himself, Paul?"

  "I still don't know."

  "Well, does he fit the damned profile, or whatever you call it?"

  "Not so far. But the evidence fits him. You know that. Merci, if we have to take down a guilty deputy, nobody's going to crucify you for that."

  "And what if he isn't? Then that's two in a row. I hurt a good man and lost half my department on the first."

  "Talk to the sheriff."

  "About what?"

  "Giving it to Wheeler and Teague. Let somebody else take it."

  Merci understood that she wanted Wildcraft's innocence for herself as much as anything else. As a way to show the people who hated her that she was a good cop, one of them. One of us. If she was proved wrong about him as she'd been wrong with Mike, she'd resign. Probably wouldn't have to, she thought: reassignment to traffic would be swift.

  "No," she said.

  "I knew you wouldn't."

  "What would you do?"

  "Find out more about Wildcraft. Nobody does this without a reason. Usually, more than one."

  She said nothing as she watched Jaws run his hand through his hair, then absently scratch his head. Cute little puke, she thought.

  "Merci, I got some of their banking records, canceled checks and credit card statements. The last two months of last year, and the first two months of this year, the Wildcrafts spent about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars on fun stuff—the new Porsche in the garage, new furniture and carpet, a remodel on two of the bathrooms. Trips to Grand Cayman, Tahiti, Costa Rica. That's beside the fact that they live in a million-plus house in a million-plus neighborhood. Wildcraft was making fifty grand a year and his wife made eight."

  Hard to get more obvious than that. She shook her head and said nothing.

  Zamorra shrugged and glanced outside. "I've got us lined up with her parents for five o'clock."

  "What about his?"

  "They came in last night from Northern California. The father said they'd be at the hospital all day tomorrow. He said they'd be here until we put the guy who did this in a coffin."

  "That will be a wonderful day."

  Rayborn had no guilt over her beliefs on crime and punishment. You do the crime, you do the time. So far as murderers lying in wait well, off with their heads.

  She once had the idea that there should be a countywide tax fund for victims of the worst crimes. Their survivors would get lots of money. Even at only five dollars per capita, you'd come up with fifteen million a year for the fund. She would implement it when she was elected sheriff, sometime around the age of fifty-eight. But she'd thought of all the people who'd kill each other just for that money and shook her head. Human nature, she thought. Don't get it.

  And she'd never be sheriff of Orange County anyway. That had been a dream. Before Mike McNally and a man she'd killed, before the grand jury testimony she gave. Now she was awake.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That afternoon Archie woke again for a few seconds, heard the sounds, saw the faces. So bright here, so loud.

  He understood that he was Archie Wildcraft, Deputy 2, Orange County Sheriff's Department. That he was married to Gwen. That they lived in a nice home in the hills. These facts struck him as weightless and breakable.

  Then dark water.

  An hour later he woke again, to see his father and mother looking down at him. He felt tears burning down his face. His father held his hand and told him that Gwen had been shot that night, too, didn't make it. Archie knew this was what he had lost that would never come back. This was the huge thing that he was missing. Gwen. His wife He couldn't picture her face, exactly. And her absence left in him something very large and very black.

  So he swam down, deeper than he'd ever been. Trying to get to the bottom and stay there, to just join the darkness forever. Struggling to get to the depths. Down in the murk, burrowing through the silt and mud and rock, Archie heard the woman's voice again.

  Swim. Breathe. Rest. Swim. Breathe. Rest.

  The voice had the ring of authority so Archie, a young man use to taking orders, obeyed it. He trusted. He believed. He turned around pushed off the black hard bottom and swam back up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rayborn drove her Impala down the on ramp to the Riverside Freeway, looking ahead at four lanes of crawling, belching cars. Like the border at TJ, she thought, everything but the kids selling piggy banks and churros. What a mess. She barged her way in and finally got over to the car-pool lane, which was doing thirty.

  Zamorra sat neatly beside her, suit coat still on, looking out the side window. She'd never seen him with his tie so much as loosened, even when he'd come back from seeing his dying wife in the hospital and his face looked like he was dying too.

  In the eight months since then Merci had come to love and respect him. For the first two months after Zamorra's wife had died, Merci had watched him thicken with booze and lassitude. He never complained about what he was going through. He seemed hungover every day, though she didn't think he always was. She suspected he had a string of temporary girlfriends, and some evidence to support this suspicio
n, but she never asked and he never told. Everything else, they talked about. Tentatively at first, like panelists. But as the early months dragged on, Merci was able to talk to him about the death of Hess, and Zamorra about the death of Janine. It was easy, talking with someone who'd lived through something similar. Like exchanging terrible, valuable gifts. And though Merci blamed herself for what had happened to Hess and Zamorra blamed God for Janine, there was enough loss, rage, sadness and guilt between them to begin a friendship. It never felt to her like the losers' club, though. The Loss Club, maybe. She thought there was something noble in their sufferings, hard as it sometimes was to locate.

  After a couple of months Zamorra must have quit the heavy booze She knew he'd gotten himself back to his beloved boxing gym in Westminster. He started to look like himself again, even if he often seemed to be a thousand miles away in his mind. She admired the toughness that allowed him to climb out of the hole that he'd fallen into. And she admired the depth of feeling that had allowed him to fall into that hole to begin with.

  A secret love began to grow. Secret because she still loved Hess and because Paul still loved Janine. Secret because only a few short months earlier she had been fooled into betraying Mike McNally whom she knew—even while she was betraying him—loved her. How do you offer an unfaithful, mistaken heart to someone who'd remained so true? And secret because they were partners. Their arrest record was eighty-four percent, highest in the detail. Why risk screwing up a good team and complicating the life of yet another man? Were her uncertain emotions worth that?

  But Rayborn couldn't reason away her feelings. As the weeks went by she was struck by all of Zamorra's good qualities—his good manners and good looks, his skill as an investigator, his personal neatness He was gentle, unselfish, considerate. He was sensitive to other people's feelings. He was slow to answer but concise when he did. He was observant, often gathering more than her in shared encounters. He understood subtleties that, in her opinion, would have to be explained to most other men. She was also drawn to the darkness in him—no the grief, but the violence he concealed. The anger. More than once she saw it flare up in him at suspects and informants and convicts and belligerent citizens. He always controlled it, but it was there. She believed it to be considerable. And she respected him for keeping it safe but ready, like a gun.

  She liked the way he smelled. She liked the little curves that made double parentheses around his occasional smiles. Even the nasty lump: he got in the gym. And how in profile his eyelashes looked sad. She imagined touching him and being touched. Wondered how his cleanly shaven cheek would feel against her neck. Wondered how his wiry arms would feel around her, what his flat boxer's chest would feel like against hers. Sometimes she'd picture him and herself together and she'd smile inwardly because he was two inches shorter than she was. This amused her and made her think of the famous actors she'd heard about who were shot from heightening angles. In particular Yul Brynner standing on a box in The King and , according to her mother, who saw the movie something like twenty times.span>

  Merci couldn't help imagining what their children might look like. And how terrific it would be for Tim Jr. to have a brother or sister. She liked to picture that pink house on the beach in Mexico, but instead of just her and Hess and Tim Jr. staying in it, now there were also Paul and their child, a girl she'd named Ann, in fact. Ann and Tim Jr. got along beautifully. As did Hess and Zamorra. Merci loved them all equally but in different ways and they were always exceptionally happy.

  So she waited to see if Paul was feeling the same way. She doubted it. She pictured him with someone petite, blonde and not associated with law enforcement. She would be elegant and feminine, but not showy about it. She would be devoted to him instead of her career. She would have that little bit of class that Paul had—a genuine appreciation for fine things. She would be eager to please him and would instinctively understand how, or find out. Merci tried not to be prejudiced toward the moronic slut. If she was good for Paul she would support them in every way she could.

  But Zamorra showed no signs of interest in Merci. At least any that she could find. She toyed with the idea of telling him, or showing him what she was feeling. But it seemed wrong. Zamorra would love her when he was ready, or he would not. She believed there was nothing she could do about scheduling a man's heart, nothing she had a right to do. Love was an act of nature. Nature would take care of itself, as it had been doing for quite some time.

  Then, in June, just a couple of months ago, Zamorra had shocked her.

  After lunch they were walking around the old courthouse and Paul had told her that he'd found someone. Her name was Kirsten.

  Merci was thankful she'd had her aviators on because she was certain her eyes would betray her disappointment. But she kept everything else under beautiful control—her voice and choice of words, he mild exclamation of joy for him, her gently protective questioning about this, this . . . person.

  She'd never known what a good actor she was. And the longer she walked along on that warm spring morning and played the part of happy friend, the better she got. By the time the walk was over Merci had arranged a three-way lunch when it was convenient for Paul and Kirsten. She also revealed to Paul that she was seeing someone, too. He was in real estate, she said, mentioning his name only once: Frank.

  Zamorra looked at her oddly, then. The only thing she could read for certain in his eyes was relief.

  Zamorra had known.

  By the time she got to one of the ladies' rooms back at head quarters her heart was pounding and she was sweating but cold and she had only just lifted the toilet seat when she vomited. After wiping up she'd sat on the seat and wept into a huge wad of toilet paper that shredded and broke away and stuck to her face. She hadn't vomited since the night she'd seduced Mike McNally in order to gather evidence to charge him for murder. This felt worse but she didn't know why. Maybe because back with Mike she'd been disgusted by what she was doing but she had believed it was the right thing to do. Now she was just crying for her own wretched, pathetic little heartbreak.

  Before leaving the ladies' room she'd looked at the mirror and seeing what she always saw: a tall, big-boned woman with unruly dark hair and a face that was not quite pretty. She had nice skin, correct? Looking back into her own dark eyes she saw anger and disappointment and humiliation. Zamorra had known. She took a deep breath and thought, screw it: I've got Tim Jr. to think about anyway, and the last thing my sorry ass needs is a romance with another cop whose wife has just died of cancer.

  And that was that.

  "What did you get on her family, Paul?"

  "I got their names and address off one of the Wildcraft loan forms. Earla is the mother, Lee's the dad. Last name is Kuerner. Earla said they'd be there at five. They had funeral arrangements to make."

  Merci remembered the GK in the bottom right corner of some of the paintings in Gwen Wildcraft's music room.

  "How did she sound?"

  "Numb."

  The Kuerners lived in Norco, a small city not far from the county line. Zamorra used a map to navigate. Merci got off on Lincoln in Corona, picked up River Road, made a right on Second Street.

  "I've never been out here," she said, looking out at a dairy farm, rows and rows of black cows lined up at the feed bars.

  "It's interesting."

  The houses along Second were mostly beat-up, the grass mostly dead. Chain-link fences, cars on blocks, corrugated metal tool sheds with brown rain stains on their flanks. One place still had the Christmas lights sagging from the roofline and faded, oncered bows sagging from the stucco. A spray-painted sheet of plywood advertised pygmy goats for sale. Merci looked at the stubby, big-bellied little goats, wondering what they were good for and what they cost. One yard was nothing but junk—automobile doors stacked like pancakes, dozens of rusted-out lawnmowers, piles of old steel fence posts, a collection of decrepit cement mixers. An ostrich stood in a child's wading pool and looked at Merci like a cop. The smell of the da
iry farm came through the air-conditioned car, dark and mammalian and foul.

  "Scenic," she said.

  "Norco's a contraction for North Corona," said Zamorra.

  "It looks like a contraction."

  "They're poor on this end of town."

  "Lazy, too, by the looks of it."

  "There you go again, Merci."

  He had a point. She'd enlisted Zamorra to help purge herself of glib opinion and rapid judgment. She'd gotten so exhausted with endless opinions of others about herself—she busted Sheriff Brighton, for her career, she did it because she hated him and he didn't promote her, she busted her father because she hated him, too, no, it was cause she loved him, she got suckered about McNally and had to blame it on somebody else, she did it because she's amoral, because she's too moral, blah fucking blah, blah, blah—that Merci had even grown exhausted by her own.

  It was just so hard sometimes, to keep from making up her mind before she had all the facts. You saw what you saw, thought what you thought, smelled what you smelled. She thought of Archie Wildcraft, and what he had either done or not done to his wife and himself. There she was again, making up her mind before all the facts were in.

  "Yeah," she said. "Yeah. I'm sure a lot of them work hard for A they have."

  "I wore the same shirt for my second and third-grade school pictures. My big brother had worn it for his second-grade shot."

  "How many wrecked cars in your front yard?"

  She smiled slightly and Zamorra did, too.

  "I know," she said. "I just have to remind myself to, when in doubt, shut my trap."

  The Kuerner house off of Cherokee was a pale blue bungalow white porch columns. There was a white picket fence around the small front yard, stepping stones leading to the porch. Two big pine trees stood on either side of the stones and held the house in shadow, place was neat and clean.

  The driveway gate was open so she pulled in and parked in front of the garage. When she got out the smell of cattle hit her hard so did the heat. Ninety-five at least, she thought.