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  "Keep Tim warm and dry," she said. "I miss you guys."

  "We miss you. It's chaos out there on the freeways. Be careful."

  CHAPTER TEN

  The rain heaved down and made freeway lakes in the low spots, cars planed off the asphalt or into each other. Merci couldn't see dick out the windshield even with the wipers pegged and the defroster on full blast. All just water and red lights and the roar of rain on sheet metal three inches from her head. It took over an hour from the sheriff building to Aubrey Whittaker's apartment in San Clemente. Zamorra left headquarters after Merci did but got there first.

  He was already inside, standing in the living room, still wearing his black overcoat, watching the storm roil the Pacific. She saw a pink shiver of lightning branch into the dark water. She flipped on some lights, Aubrey's dry cleaning hooked in one of her hands, hangers digging into her fingers.

  "Okay," she said. "A black wool and Orion mix garment, possibly a sweater, knit cap, gloves or muffler."

  "I'll take the kitchen," he said. "It's been bothering me." So be it. She hit the bedroom lights, placed the dry cleaning on the bed, slid open the mirrored closet door, then hung the clean clothes at one end. Starting at the other end, she began taking out hangers three or four at a time, laying them on the bed.

  Merci, not a good judge of the cost of clothing, estimated several thousands of dollars on the first twenty hangers—dresses by designers of whom she was only vaguely aware. A smart red leather outfit with gold buckles on the straps still had a price tag attached! $1700.

  The most Merci had ever paid for a dress was $335 a little over two years ago. It was long, black and simple, worn just once.

  The smell of perfume wafted up as she lifted the hangers. After dresses came the skirts, then the blouses, then the more casual tops. On the other side of the closet were coats and jackets, pants, some frankly provocative leather and vinyl items. Merci wasn't sure how they were put on. She wanted to be able to imagine herself in such a thing, but couldn't.

  You don't touch. You don't kiss. You don't dream.

  A scared, sexless cow, she thought: There're worse things to be, aren't there? Maybe she would be heading up the Homicide Detail by age forty.

  She had an urge to try on some of Aubrey Whittaker's clothes, just see how they looked. The red leather getup would be the one. She ranked this among the top ten most stupid ideas she'd had in her life. Banished it. Banished it again.

  The sweaters were folded and stacked on the left side of the top shelf. Black cashmere, black cotton, black angora. No black wool. On the right-hand part of the shelf she found some knit caps and berets, pairs of knit gloves and three mufflers. Lots of wool there, but only the gloves were black, and no Orlon in the mix according to the labels

  She checked the dry cleaning next. Nothing that matched what the lab had found.

  Then she searched the laundry basket in the corner: lots of underwear and clothes but no wool. She noted the shoes and boots, the sandals and slippers, the 240-count box of condoms beside the leather thigh-highs. What a thing to do for a living, thought Merci. She figured that Aubrey Whittaker had probably spent more time in sexual intercourse in one year than she herself would in her whole life. She felt about this, in indefinite ways.

  You don't plan. You don't dream. You don't do anything.

  The dresser on the opposite side of the room contained more underwear than Merci thought one woman would ever own. You name it. Aubrey had it. But the socks were cotton or cotton/Lycra. The athletic clothes were more of the same.

  Underneath the Lycra shorts in the top drawer she found a stack of opened mail. It looked like mostly greeting cards. She sat in the chair in the corner and turned on the reading lamp next to it. She checked for return addresses on the colored envelopes, none. She checked the postmarks—Santa Ana. They were addressed by hand in small, neat print that immediately sent her heart into a quick acceleration. She put them in chronological order and started with the earliest.

  Blue envelope, matching blue card with a bird on it.

  Hang in there. Rough times, but worth it.

  —A Supporter

  Green envelope, matching green card with whale on it.

  Sometimes it's hardest to do what's right.

  —A Supporter

  Red envelope, matching red card with a pine tree on it.

  The heart heals best in the broken places.

  —A Supporter and Fan

  They were all in Sergeant Mike McNally's neat printing. She should know.

  Her own card would read:

  My trembling heart says fuck you, you two-timing asshole, eat

  shit and die.

  —Merci Rayborn

  White envelope, matching white card with a cactus on it.

  Proud of what you did today. Thanks.

  —MM

  Yellow envelope, matching yellow card with a bumblebee

  on it.

  I can't express how highly I think of you.

  —Not So Secret Admirer

  "I could vomit," she said to no one. She heard a cabinet shut out in the kitchen, Paul trying to figure the struggle between a live man and a dead woman lying ten feet away.

  She put back the cards and found another collection in the drawer, under the workout T-shirts.

  The envelopes were legal size, plain white. Same postmark, no return address. They were addressed by computer or a good typewriter, she couldn't tell which.

  The writing inside was typewritten or computer-generated, Double-spaced, a common-looking font.

  November 11

  Dear Aubrey,

  Just wanted you to know you did the right thing. Moladar needs to go and you need to help me get him. It might not fee like it now, but you're doing the RIGHT thing. When we've taken care of him, it's going to help us take care of YOU.

  Take Care

  Mike

  November 17

  Dear Aubrey,

  Funny to write a fan letter to someone I hardly know. It's got to be a first. I don't mean to harp on things, but I wanted you to know how PROUD I am of you and what you're doing. Every once in a while when I'm around a person I get a strong feeling that there's some kind of blessing in store for them. I feel they're going to get out of their trouble, rise and fly, become the great person they were destined to become. I see that in YOU. I'm thankful to have some small part in it. It's a pleasure just to watch. I'll help you think of a plan when this is all over. I want very badly for you to be free of the chains that hold you. I want to see you FLY up into the sun and disappear into its light.

  All Best,

  Mike

  Merci shook her head and dropped the first two letters to the floor.

  November 28

  Dear Aubrey,

  Had a nice Thanksgiving dinner and I said the prayer before the meal. I thanked God for all the blessings in this world, for this life around us, for the bounty and the goodness. I thanked God for people like YOU. I hoped you were doing something that would bring you nearer God. I wished you could have been with us. Though I've got no idea what my fiancee would think of that! Some things are hard to explain! I'm just fantasizing now, but I hold you in my thoughts.

  True Best,

  Mike

  Dec. 3

  Dear Aubrey,

  You're right, I am a dark cloud and if you want to call me D.C. that's fine with me. At least you see what's inside me. Sometimes I think I'm a dark cloud trying to be a sunny day, but you know, all the stuff I see all day makes me serious and then I get gloomy and then I get sad. There's actually a lively HEART in here somewhere, though I don't feel it all the time. Anyway, just was thinking about you and wanted to communicate. I hope you don't find these cards and letters to be a nuisance. Sometimes when I write to you I feel like I'm writing to someone I've never seen or met, someone I never will see or meet, some ideal kind of woman you have in your head but never really see. It's strange, what emotions do to the way you feel. Your bones and blood feel d
ifferent inside. Like your body is running on a different kind of fuel. I've never been good at expressing myself but it's easy for me to write to you. Easy to just say what's on my mind. Like I said before, when I see you I see a person who's going to FLY

  someday. Someday soon. It's nice to see you starting to doing it. Nice to see Aubrey Whittaker growing into who she can be. I'll do everything I can to help you.

  Your D C.

  Dec. 5

  Dear Aubrey,

  I have to say that what you talked about yesterday disturbed me QUITE a lot. It's one thing to joke a little about my fiancee and what she should or shouldn't be doing for me, but that crack about exposing "my relationship with prostitute" to the people I work with sent a bad shiver down my spine. I HOPE you were just joking. You've got sharp tongue and a fine mind, young lady, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. But some places you have to go carefully. I'm proud of my relationship with you—because I'm proud of you—but there are so many ways it could be misconstrued by my co-workers, not to mention my fiancee. Anyway, I don't mean to OVERREACT to what you said. I just want you to know that I hold all my relationships—ours, all of them—sacred. Don't mess with that.

  Always Your Friend,

  D.C

  Merci read the letter again. She thought: I don't mean to get overly SUSPICIOUS, but I wonder if this WHORE was talking about blackmail.

  Dec. 8

  Dear Aubrey,

  I'm really sorry for blowing up on the phone, but when you talked about "payment for what I'd been getting" I just saw red. I thought what I was "getting" was being offered free of charge. I've treasured every minute of it! You can't charge people money for EVERYTHING, you know. And

  please, don't even joke about my fiancee, or the people I work with, anymore. Those areas are off-limits for some things. If I've been taking advantage of you in some way, I'll be the first to "make a payment" to make it right, but I honestly don't see that I have. What have I taken? What could I owe? You know, we need to talk. Will call soon. I do honestly miss you in ways I've never missed anybody. I really AM looking forward to dinner at your place.

  Your Admirer,

  Mike

  You missed her and you were afraid of her and she was yanking your chain. And three nights later, thought Merci, just after the dinner she made for you, she was dead.

  Merci felt like taking a scalding shower with oven cleaner and a wire brush. It was like all of Mike's earnestness and naivete and colossal stupidity had turned to tar and she'd been dipped in it.

  Means, motive and opportunity, she thought. The three textbook requisites for homicide, and Mike had them all.

  She collected the letters and put them back. In the same drawer, close to the back, she found an unlabeled VHS tape. She actually shuddered, thinking what you'd get on a private video belonging to Aubrey Whittaker. She took it and went to find her partner.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, facing the still-open drawers and cabinet. No overcoat now. His elbows were on his knees and his face rested on his fists and he didn't move when she came in. There was a little dustball directly in front of him.

  "Why the lower two drawers?" he asked quietly. "Why the cabinet under the sink? There's a struggle of some kind in the kitchen, between who and who we don't know yet, but the stuff on the counter is fine. The upper drawers aren't open. The toaster and spice rack and utensils weren't disturbed. The counter TV wasn't knocked down. The notes and cartoons stuck to the refrigerator with magnets weren't knocked off. But the wood screws on the cabinet handle were wrenched out. The metal runner on the drawer was bent too bad to close. There was some real strength there. Something fierce between them."

  She went with the obvious. "They hit the floor fast, and that's where they fought."

  He shrugged. "I told myself that. I just couldn't picture it. Two grown humans. Not children. Not snakes."

  Merci tried to picture the scene, but it wouldn't form for her, either. Hess had taught her to picture things. She could do it, but she couldn’t do it well, yet.

  The obvious again: "CSIs must have dusted the living shit out of it.”

  "They got the handle, the drawers—zip. Wiped clean."

  "No, I mean everything. Everything lower than the top of the cabinet. Two people fight like that, how's the winner going to remember everything he touched? That's good paint. The floor's got a good finish. The appliances are perfect. They'll hold prints."

  Zamorra was nodding. He looked back at her, then down at the dust ball on the floor in front of him.

  "That, they didn't do. Coiner and O'Brien were thorough, exhaustive. I didn't see anything in the file about the drawers that were open, the bottom of the refrigerator, the trash compactor, the dishwasher, the floor. Look at all the good surfaces in here that weren't tried."

  She did. Some were dusted. Some were tagged where the prints been lifted. Some were not.

  "Even the best CSIs miss things," she said. She'd requested Coiner and O'Brien because they were the best the department had. Her people. She would trust them with her life.

  "It's not a criticism," he said. "This little ball of dust here, it's what I got out of the corners, from under the reefer and the compactor and dishwasher. I'm going to cut Gilliam loose on it. Just eyeballing, I see a couple of clothing fibers that don't look like the others. Months old, probably. But if there was a struggle in here, something came loose. It's worth a try."

  Zamorra stood, then bent over and used his pen to slide the dust ball into a plastic bag. He looked at it, then at Merci.

  "It's absolutely amazing to me how much faith we humans can put into long shots. I guess it's just hope. Hope to the max, stretched out as far as you can stretch it. 'Til it's as big around as a hair."

  "Then we try to walk on it. Across the Grand Canyon or something.”

  "Yeah, and back again. What did you find in the bedroom?" She held up the tape. "Let's see."

  • • •

  Merci plugged the tape into the VCR atop the big TV in the living room and sat down on one of the black leather sofas. Zamorra sat on the other. The screen filled with gray static then popped into living color.

  Aubrey Whittaker walking on a beach in the evening. A man's voice establishing time, date and location.

  Aubrey Whittaker in-line skating in a park. The same voice narrating again.

  Aubrey Whittaker sitting roughly where Paul was, talking about the first time she rode a horse. The same guy, laughing at a comment.

  Most of the shots were in close and on her face. Merci was surprised by how beautiful she was. Her skin was fair and her lips were red and her body was effortlessly graceful and her eyes looked like something you'd see in a magazine. The camera must have been on full zoom. Close, closer, then blurred when it got too close.

  "Now, why are we doing this again?" Aubrey asked the camera.

  "So you can see how lovely you are," answered the guy, "when you're just being you."

  "And I'm supposed to watch this thing every time I feel like blowing my brains out?"

  "Every time."

  Laughter.

  End of feature presentation. Gray infinity.

  Neither said anything for a long moment. Merci looked out at the black sky and the black water, heard the rain still falling hard, saw one tiny light on one tiny vessel flickering south to north far out on the sea.

  "That's McNally's voice, right?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  What Zamorra said next surprised her.

  "What she has is a big growth in her brain matter. Nobody knows why she got it. Or how long it's been there. Glioblastoma. It's the size of a lemon. It's a level four tumor, which means it's growing fast. This kind of tumor is one hundred percent fatal. They've told us how long she'll live. Fourteen months if it's treated by surgery, chemotherapy radiation. Six if not. You add the eight months, but they can be eight months of hell."

  Merci watched him watch the storm.

  "But they'v
e got this new experimental thing. A new protocol, they call it. It's a combination of radioactive seeds and chemicals they put down into the thing. It's supposed to kill it. They know exactly much damage each seed can do, and they plant them so they won't ruin the good brain cells. That's our hope. Hope again, but this time it’s stretched out to the size of a radioactive, chemical-laced pellet. And know what I think?"

  "Tell me."

  "I think it's going to work. And you know something else?"

  "Go."

  "She does, too."

  Merci watched the tiny boat light disappear. She felt an incommensurate grief over this, like the storm had not just swept away one light but had extinguished light itself. She told herself that if the light showed up again it would mean Janine Zamorra was going to get a miracle. Half a minute later, there it was.

  "So do I."

  "Thank you. I'll be gone all day tomorrow. Maybe the next."

  "I know. I'll pray. Can I visit?"

  "Let's see how it goes."

  Merci got up, rewound and ejected the videotape. Her legs heavy now, like she'd been in the gym for hours. She thought of Tim Jr., and couldn't remember ever missing him so much or wanting to him so badly. Tim. Dad. The Men. A smile and some laughter, a glass of wine. Then to bed while this whole miserable shitstorm blew itself out.

  But no, tonight was her social night, the monthly get-together she herself had instigated in order to build a loyal army around her---was it just to break the aloneness she felt at times? An obligation was an obligation.

  Zamorra's voice had an edge. "Mike's got problems."

  "They seem to be getting worse every minute. He told me today he killed her. He also told me he didn't."

  "Which is it?"

  "He didn't kill her. It's not something Mike McNally has in him."

  Zamorra looked at her. His eyes were sharp and unforgiving. "Maybe you don't really know what he's got in him."

  "I realize that."

  "Maybe I should talk to him."

  "Not yet."

  "Maybe we should just fire a round through his gun and see what the lab says."

  "I thought of that, too."