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  "Because we're friends?" she asked with a quiet acidity. "Because I trust him and respect him? Because he's been like an older brother to me since I was fourteen?"

  "Those are good reasons, Priscilla. I was just asking, trying to get the feel of the conversation."

  "I apologize. I feel like I could bite somebody's head off. May as well be yours."

  "Accepted," said Merci. "And I apologize for being blatantly suspicious about everything and everybody. It's my job, and I'm good it."

  "Yes," said Priscilla. "You are."

  "Who threw the rock?"

  "Again?"

  "Who threw the rock through the living room window?"

  Priscilla eyed Merci with fresh suspicion and held the look for long beat. Merci expected her to color if she knew about the rock, she didn't, Merci wasn't sure: maybe a big surrendering sigh.

  With no change in color, Priscilla smiled a thrifty little smile, "What rock?"

  "The rock on the living room floor. It was thrown through the window and the blinds."

  "No. There was no rock. I think I'd have noticed. I will say, however, that I'm capable of missing things. But no rock, Detective, that I saw."

  An uncomfortable moment then, while the two of them cooled down and Zamorra said nothing.

  "Tell me about the future ex," said Merci.

  "Charles Brock of the Riverside office of Ritter-Dunne-Davis Financial. That's all you need to know. That's all I wish knew. Believe me.span>

  Merci waited. Then, "Sure. Thanks for everything. Really."

  Priscilla walked them to the door. Lee and Earla rose and came forward and shook their hands and thanked them.

  Merci had a parting idea. "You know, Priscilla, just a long shot, but did Charles Brock sell Archie and Gwen the OrganiVen stock?"

  Priscilla sighed. "Yeah. Charlie can sell anything to anybody. In fact, he sold some of it to himself."

  They stopped at UCI Medical Center and found the neuro ward. They waited for almost twenty minutes to speak with Dr. John Stebbins. Stebbins was short, young and tight-mouthed, looking at the detectives as if they were surgical complications.

  "We can't do it," he said. "We can't determine the caliber of bullet in Mr. Wildcraft's head."

  "We can, Doctor," said Merci. "If you just show us the pictures."

  "You don't understand. The spiral CT will give us a very close measurement of the object, down to one millimeter. But the bullet has fragmented. And if you figure in the one millimeter margin times four fragments, a caliber measurement becomes meaningless. See?"

  "When are you going to take it out?"

  He laughed curtly and sighed. He looked up and over her head as he spoke, as if it was easier for him to believe she didn't really exist. "The edema has been reduced somewhat. There is no infection at this time. Surgery now would be inadvisable. It's possible that we'll never remove the bullet from Mr. Wildcraft's brain."

  "And it's possible he'll die tomorrow," said Merci.

  "His condition is extremely critical."

  "I want to see him."

  "Absolutely not."

  "I'll push you aside and go in anyway." He still wasn't looking at her. "I will allow you exactly thirty seconds. Only one of you. Just one."

  "How about both of us, for fifteen?"

  "This way."

  "You just did the right thing, Stebbins."

  CHAPTER NINE

  A woman with dark eyes and hair looked down at him. Archie sensed that this must be Gwen, that she was in fact not lost and this was all just a very long bad dream.

  He looked up at her. Her expression was pitying but the pity looked like something she had to work at. More than anything else, she looked angry.

  "I'm Sergeant Merci Rayborn, Homicide," she said. "I'm investigating the murder of your wife. This is my partner, Paul Zamorra."

  When he realized it wasn't Gwen his heart wilted and he thought about going under again. Then Archie recognized them—minor players in ancient history. He wanted to say something but words exhausted him.

  So he closed his eyes and ducked under, hovering in the cool, pellucid river.

  We just wanted to introduce ourselves, Archie. That's all. You're going to get better. I promise.

  How do you know that? he wondered.

  He thought of Gwen and vaguely remembered a birthday party and a drive up Coast Highway and a rock through the window and a bright light in his eyes. Where had he last seen her? Was it in the bed? Wasn't she sleeping? Hadn't they made love? Or. . . the bathroom? Didn't they go into the bathroom for something? Gwen is dead, he remembered. My huge thing, gone. Why can't see your face? Please let me see her face.

  And again he tried to picture Gwen but he could see nothing b the black immensity that had swallowed her.

  I got shot in the head, didn't I?

  No one answered, so he asked again.

  No one answered this time either, and he realized he was thinking, not talking. He realized he was far away from everyone. But he also realized they were right there, just a few feet away from him. It was like existing in a world that was taking place in the same time and place as theirs, but not connected to it.

  He tried to swim back up so he could talk, find out what had happened, maybe help Detective Rayborn. Up. Up.

  But there was still water over him and he couldn't go the last few feet.

  Then the voice that had gotten him through all this:

  Breathe. Rest. Breathe, Archie. Rest

  CHAPTER TEN

  Awchie is okay?"

  "Archie is in the hospital."

  "He's not in the hospital?"

  "He is in the hospital."

  "He's not in the hospital?"

  "I just told you, Tim, he's in the hospital."

  Tim Jr. looked away with false disinterest. "Oh."

  Merci squeezed the washcloth over his head and Tim smiled up at her.

  "Awchie is not in the hospital?"

  At twenty-seven months of age, Tim's new favorite thing was to be negative and contrary. He loved to defy Merci, even when it was counter to his self-interest. He loved to say he didn't like things that he clearly did. Loved to ask questions that contradicted information he was just given. Over and over and over. Merci enjoyed it: Tim's first taste of the power of no. His other new thing—this had started a few months ago—was that he was developing sudden deep interest in people who seemed far from his daily experience. For instance, the ranch manager who occasionally worked in the Valencia grove that surrounded Merci's house. His name was Rodas, and Tim, after meeting him once, still asked about him constantly. Or Tad, who ran the breakfast house Merci occasionally took them to on Sunday mornings. Or Paul Zamorra, who had come over to the house a few times—though never with Kirsten.

  Tim's new passion was Archie Wildcraft. Just the night before, she had told Tim a little about what had happened. She always tried to talk to him as a young person rather than as a toddler, for reasons she wasn't completely certain were good. Something to do with giving him a realistic sense of the world and what happens in it. Mainly, she just figured that if he asked how her day was, he deserved a halfway accurate answer. Not that she got graphic about things, and there was plenty she just left out. She always tried to explain things in gentle ways, ways that wouldn't harden or frighten him. Archie got hurt in the head and went to the hospital And his wife is now all gone.

  "All gone" being the term she applied to Tim's father, Hess. A bit more of her heart crumbled away every time she had to use it.

  Last night, after Merci's first long day on the Wildcraft property Tim had asked many questions about Archie. This morning he'd asked more. After lunch, when Merci had called Tim, as she did almost ever day, he'd asked immediately if Awchie was in the hospital. For reason that Merci clearly understood, her son had fastened his interest to man he knew almost nothing about and had never met.

  Which is exactly what his father was.

  Whatever, thought Merci: better than asking
about the moronic toy and junk food he saw on kids' TV.

  "Awchie is all gone?"

  "No, Archie is okay."

  "Is all gone?"

  "Is okay."

  "Awchie is ... a car?"

  "He's a policeman."

  "Is not a policeman?"

  "Time to get out of the tub now, Tim. Let's get out."

  Clark, her father, heated up the night's dinner while Merci sat a the table with Tim. It was an old farmhouse with a big kitchen and this time of year they left all the windows open in the evenings to take in the cooling air. A black cat jumped onto Merci's lap and she petted it once, then set it down on the squeaky old floor. They had six or eight cats but Merci could never remember their names. She liked them in a general rather than an individual way, as she did most human beings. And likewise found them annoying more often than not.

  She had the newspaper open in front of her but no interesting crimes had made the pages this day. Out of curiosity she checked the business section for the B. B. Sistel activity. The ticker symbol was BBS and it was even at fifty-three and three-quarters dollars a share on the NYSE.

  "What chances are the doctors giving him?" asked Clark.

  "Apparently he's stabilized. So that makes him extremely critical rather than hour-to-hour."

  "Where did it lodge, exactly?"

  "I don't know. It's all just yellow goo to me."

  "Goo?" asked Tim.

  "Goo," said Merci. "Your brain."

  "Oh."

  Clark pulled a baking dish from the oven, his ropey arm lost in a huge mitt. Merci thought of Lee Kuerner and his bass fishing. She wished her father had some hobby he loved, some passion, even for something as silly as fishing. The only thing that seemed to matter to him anymore was being useful.

  "If it damaged the left side of his brain," he said, "the right side of his body might be impaired. You know, one side of the brain controls its opposite side of the body."

  Merci thought about this. She could see the B volume of the encyclopedia open in the cookbook holder. Clark liked to think of himself as helpful in her work.

  "That bullet could take away his memory," he said. "Or his math skills, or his ability to see colors or to reason deductively. Anything."

  "I wonder if it can lodge in there and not really do any damage."

  "A lot of brain matter goes unused."

  "The doctor said that they might not even try to remove it. That would be riskier than leaving it where it is. I thought the lead would dissolve and kill you, but that's not a big problem. The leads in paints can kill you but not the lead in bullets. That's a surprise."

  "It has no feeling, the brain. They can operate on it with the patient sedated but awake, carrying on a conversation. They'll do that they're near the speech area. If the guy starts talking funny, they back off."

  "Big of them. What's for dinner?"

  "Chicken."

  "That moron Dawes brought in Al Madden to check my work. Say he wants the evidence properly handled this time."

  He looked at her steadily. "Dawes took advantage of you to make a splash for himself. What he said about you was really about himself.

  It never failed to astound her that her father defended her side in an action that brought shame upon himself and disgrace to two of his friends. And it wasn't as if the whole miserable thing had come as surprise: both Merci and Clark had known that if she testified to the grand jury, Clark's head would roll. Over something that had gone down thirty-three years ago, she thought. Thirty-three years ago: prostitute with secrets, powerful men frightened for their careers an their families, a deputy forced into doing the unspeakable. And a soft spoken gentle man who closed his eyes to what he knew was going on. Clark. What was it he had said? I knew there was blood on my hands, but I didn ft know how much.

  "Moron?" asked Tim.

  "It's a person who is not very smart," said Merci.

  "A person who is very smart?"

  "Never mind," she said. The idea of Tim obsessing about Ryan Dawes curdled her nerves.

  "I'm not going to put my soup on my head," her son said thoughtfully.

  "Very good, Tim. That's excellent."

  Clark checked something steaming in a pot, stirred it with a big wooden spoon, then set it back on the stove. The kitchen smelled of roasting sage and chicken. It was warm so Merci held up her hair. Tin took one look at her and slid off his booster seat, claiming that he'd be back. Tim loved missions.

  "Did you get any fingerprints off the gun?"

  "Wildcraft's. He came back with GSR, too."

  "Could the lab match the gun to the bullets in his wife?"

  "They could and they did."

  "And you said the gun was registered to the deputy?"

  "Dad, you know exactly what I said."

  "Her blood on his clothes?"

  "Gel cooking, jury out."

  Tim sprinted back into the room with a small elastic hair band in his hand. Merci took it with a smile and got her heavy dark hair up off her neck. He climbed into her lap.

  "Looks bad for him, doesn't it?"

  She sighed and looked at Clark. "I don't think he did it. I don't think he put that bullet in his own head. Someone shot him, then took his weapon and shot his wife. Then came back and put the gun in his hand."

  "Fired it once, to get the metals on his skin?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. But Archie had no motive for any of this. He was happy, in love with his wife. Or so his friends say. Pretty house they lived in—you could tell they took pride in it. Someone threw a rock through the slider in the living room, and I think that's what got Archie out of bed that morning. I think that's why it was thrown. Neighbor saw a black Caddy driving away, just after he called in the shot. Patrol saw a black Caddy with two guys in it, leaving the vicinity at the same time. Cal plates, first two letters OM. We put out a countywide all-enforcement but nothing popped."

  Clark stopped whatever he was doing and stared at her. "That's a heck of a frame job."

  She looked down at the paper. "Yeah. We're smelling for enemies, but nothing hot yet. They had some big stock winnings last year— they ponied up twenty grand and made two million."

  "That kind of money creates its own problems."

  "The parents say it was all legal, all aboveboard."

  "But still—you turn a little money into a fortune in a few months, and all sorts of reactions take place. It's almost chemical."

  She nodded and noted that the stock market arrows were all pointing down on the business page. "The sister's kind of interesting," she said.

  "Oh?"

  "Younger than Gwen. Just as pretty. Was over at Archie's the day of the murder when Gwen was with her parents in Norco. The neighbor heard them arguing. Loud. What do you argue with your brother-in-law about, on your sister's birthday, while she's not there? The sister says they weren't arguing, it was just her going off about her future ex. Feels ... not right. These two beautiful major babe sisters, the young hunk who's just raked in two million. I don't know. Just or of those feelings you get. But Archie doing that to Gwen and himself. That feels flat-out wrong. I hope to God he wakes up with a clear head and can tell us what really happened."

  Clark said nothing for a moment. His expression said don't count on that, but he had the good sense not to say it out loud. "Your instincts are good, Merci."

  "When they're not bad."

  "Come on."

  "Well, yeah, they're getting better, I hope."

  "Daughter, do something nice for yourself—be a friend to you."

  "Yeah yeah yeah."

  Tim followed this conversation but said nothing. He stared into the space midway between his mother and grandfather with a dazed expression, which meant he was concentrating. She used to think he was drifting or working on a bowel movement until he started repeating things or asking about things she never even knew he'd heard. Shi loved the way his eyes looked when he was drinking in the world.
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  "I had one of the records deputies burn me copies of Wildcraft'; felony court transcripts in the last two years," she said. "I brought them home for some light reading tonight. Besides the huge income one thing you make being a deputy is an enemy or two."

  "One of those fringe benefits."

  "I wonder why nobody calls them fringe anymore."

  "I call 'em fringe," said Tim, snapping out of it.

  "Prove it."

  "Fringe."

  "You do. Very good."

  "Very not good?"

  She smiled and leaned forward, right in his face. "Okay, Mr. Negative."

  Tim laughed and pinched her nose and Merci asked him for a kiss. When he said no, she faked a pout and he gave in. His hands were soft and warm on her cheeks. It seemed like he got heavier every day, but still, she loved him on her lap, right up there close where she could smell his breath and his hair and touch the small parts of his perfect body. When she looked at Tim, then thought about her job, she wondered what happened to people. To start out so sweet and end up so dismal. She'd seen a lot of what the world does to people, and what they do to the world, but it had never engaged her sympathy until Tim Jr.

  Precious little man, she thought: what will it do to you?

  "First week I worked the jail an inmate promised to kill me when he got out," said Clark.

  "You never told me that."

  Which was typical of her father: he'd rarely spoken about his work when she was a girl, and he rarely spoke of it after he retired. Merci wondered at how different they were with regard to their work. For Clark, being a deputy was just a job. For Merci it was a passion. Clark left the job at headquarters. Merci dreamed it. Clark hardly talked about his work at all. But work was just about all Merci talked about. She understood that she'd gotten her drive and enthusiasm from her mother. Her stubbornness and general misanthropy, too. And she understood how difficult it must have been for them, such opposites in so many ways.

  "It was strange," he said. "This guy was in on an assault charge. He was a biker, one of the Hessians, a skinny guy with red hair and freckles and a straggly little beard. Smitty. Smitty Cole. Cole took one look at me and started working me. Dissing me, you'd call it now. And he did a good job of it—he saw right through me. He called himself the Prophet, claimed that God told him what other people were thinking. He was maybe twenty-six or -seven, I was twenty-one or -two. Talking trash about me, talking trash about the job, talking trash about your mother. It got directly under my skin and one day I lost my temper and hit him in the stomach. Then across the chin. Hard. Knocked him clean out."