Black Water (17 page)

"But after that he always had a blank spot inside him," said Natalie, "Like something had gone away and wouldn't come back. Which was exactly what had happened."

Merci knew about blank spots from Hess. She often thought of a person's soul as something lunar—the craters were good things lost, the mounds were good things not lost, and the plains in between were things that didn't matter that much. "How did he react when the police questioned him?"

George chuckled. "He told us that night that if he couldn't be a major-league pitcher when he grew up, he was going to be a missing-persons detective. And he wasn't joking. Archie wasn't a joker that way. Always was real serious about what he was going to do. Well, that's exactly what happened, isn't it? He dropped out of ball and became a deputy."

Merci made a note of this, circled it, watched her pen form the long oval on the paper, once, twice.
Be a missing-persons detective.
Because his first love disappeared off the face of the Earth. Because he loved her enough to change himself for her.

"Tell me about Gwen."

Archie knew immediately, said Natalie. Told them a couple weeks after he met her that he was going to marry her. Was a little embarrassed that she was sixteen and he was twenty, playing college ball for UCR. But that was all. He had the long view. He knew four years wouldn't be anything when they were older.

George and Natalie weren't too happy about the age thing, Natalie said, but when they met her they couldn't help but like her. When two people love each other like that you pretty much have to get out of the way. Gwen looked like Julia.

"We had to trust Archie," she said. "We
did
trust him. It's not much of my business but I'd bet she was still a virgin the day they got married."

"What about Archie?"

Natalie shook her head and looked at her. "Lots of girlfriends in high school and early college."

"Before Gwen," said George.

George looked into near space as if his son's lack of honeymoon virginity was a problem that needed solving. Natalie looked at Merci blankly.

"You going to charge him?"

"Nobody's been charged."

"I said are you
going
to?"

"I don't know."

Natalie's hard eyes locked onto Rayborn's again. "Well, the one more thing we should talk about. Just so you know. Long time ago Archie took out life insurance policies on Gwen and himself. Seemed smart, with the profession that Archie had chosen. I think policy was worth about a quarter million. They told us about it, cause if something happened to both of them, the money would split between Gwen's parents and us. George and I don't need money, so that's not what I'm getting at. It's just something else should know."

Merci thought about a quarter million dollars, what it would and wouldn't do. "I wonder if they increased those death benefits when they hit it rich with OrganiVen."

Natalie looked over Merci's face from bottom to top. "Far as I know, they spent their money on nice things. Archie bought us a new car. A Mercedes C430. Red. We'd loaned them two thousand dollars to buy the start-up stock, before the big drug company bought them out."

"Archie and Gwen bought us a computer, too," said George.

It sounded to Merci like they believed the more things their son had bought for them the more innocent he was. And it must have sounded that way to them, too, she thought, because of the awkward silence that followed.

"He wanted to fly," said George. He looked at Merci with a wry smile. "Not professionally, just, well. . ."

"He jumped off the garage roof when he was seven," said Natalie. "Had broomsticks with cloth on them for wings. Broke an ankle, climbed up and jumped again, broke the other. Just hairline fractures they didn't have to be set."

"Lucky," said George.

"Stubborn," said his wife.

"Loved rocks, too," said George. "Brought them home in his pockets, then later, in backpacks. Read up on them. Bought some fancy Japanese ones when they got rich."

"The
suiseki."

"Yes."

"Imagine that," said Natalie. "Buying rocks."

Another pause then as the Wildcrafts' memories of their son collided with the reason for them being there.

"Well, thank you," said Rayborn, wondering at the passions of A. F. Wildcraft. "You've both been very helpful."

"Gwen's funeral is Wednesday, Detective," George said. "The Catholic cemetery in Laguna Hills. Two o'clock. On behalf of Archie and Gwen's family, we're inviting you."

"I'll be there. And let me get this, please."

She paid and they stood.

"What are your chances of catching the guy who did this?" George asked.

She thought about that while she put down another dollar on the tip tray. "Better than anyone else's."

"Yeah, he was worried," said Damon Reese, Archie's patrol partner. At thirty-six, he was six years older than Archie. He had a thick, handsome face, a strong nose and the scars of adolescent acne still sharp on his cheeks and neck. When he looked at you, you got all of his attention.

"Archie's a worrier. He worries about his appearance. He worries about gaining weight, losing muscle tone. He worries about the things he owns—his house and cars and all of that. What color paint. What kind of trees to plant. What kind of carpet to get. He worries about his investment in that company that's supposed to cure cancer. He worried about Gwen being happy. About Gwen's music. About Gwen's family. And that's for starters."

"Quite a lineup."

"Merci, Archie's a fix-it guy, an improvement guy. He thinks he can fix anything, and I'll give him credit—he does everything guts-out, does his homework and he never gives up. Me, I'm just the opposite. I know I can't improve hardly anything. I don't care what color my house is painted, and I can't change people. I don't have a wife to worry about anymore. So I take things easier. I'll bet my blood pressure is half of Archie's, and I probably sleep a lot better than he does. I'll never live up there in the hills, but that's fine. I like it where I am. We make a good patrol team because we're different."

Merci listened and watched Reese turn the hose on the hull of his Boston Whaler. The boat was on its trailer in his driveway. Damon had gone fishing out of Dana Point this morning and he was back by ten for their talk, just like he said he'd be.

The water drummed against the aluminum and dripped off in glittering streams. It was too loud to talk over, so Merci just watched Deputy Reese hose the ocean off his boat and the life vests and the bait tank and the tackle. When he was done she watched him back it into the garage and helped him lift the trailer off the ball on his pickup.

Reese carried two big plastic bags of bass fillets into the house unworried about the pink drips. Merci carried his Lowrance sonar.

"Just set it on the counter there, Merci. Thanks."

"What about Felix Mendez?"

Reese stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor and looked at Merci with his considerable attention. "He would have killed me if wasn't for Archie. There's one thing I'm glad Archie was able to fix

He smiled, shook his head at the memory, got a clear baking dish out of a cabinet and set the bagged fish in it.

"Mendez wasn't a punk. He was a made guy, a ranking
Erne
lieutenant. He was loaded to the gills that night, or none of it would have gone down. Fighting with his wife, jacked up on coke, drunk. When his wife tried to go off on Archie and he pushed her against the wall and cuffed her, Mendez went for his iron. He had a one-shot, twenty five-cal derringer in his bathrobe pocket—so small it didn't even weigh the pocket down. At least not enough for either of us to notice. So Mendez had it out quick, took us totally by surprise. Swung on me because I was closer. But Archie was fast. Blew a hole in Felix's hand about the size of a pea going in and a quarter going out. Bones sticking out all over, what a mess. Made the shot from ten, twelve feet away. Saved my life. Fantastic."

"Did Mendez threaten to kill him?"

"Right there, in all the pain and noise, he probably said something to that effect."

"What about later, in jail or the courtroom?"

Reese shook his head. "No. Mendez wouldn't do that. The
Eme
puts a hit on a guy, they're not going to pound their chests about it. They'll just make sure it gets done."

Merci knew he was right. "Does the
Eme
have a shooter so big he wears size-sixteen shoes and has to recline a Cadillac seat just to get in and out?"

Reese's full attention again. She liked the bright humorlessness of his eyes. She'd always thought a cop's eyes should be like that.

"Not that I know of," he said. "But you could talk to Gang Interdiction about that. If they've set foot in this county, Quevas knows them. The
Eme
would probably do what the other gangs do—use someone up-and-coming to do the hit. So, they could have a bigfoot coming up the ranks, somebody we don't even know about yet."

"A youngster," said Merci.

"Yeah," said Reese, with an echoing sarcasm. "Where did you find shoe prints that big?"

"Under one of Archie's trees. About ten feet from where he fell."

Reese shook his head. "I talked to Ryan Dawes yesterday. He's trying not to let it show, but I think he's gunning for Archie on this one. He spent a lot of time trying to discover that Archie had
lost
considerable money on his stock investments, not
made
considerable money. I told Jaws that the Wildcrafts were not in any kind of unusual debt that I knew about. They made a killing and that was that. Dawes still seemed to want to cast Archie as desperate. It's like he's got this story in his head and he's looking for facts to make it true. I told him considerably less than I told you, without seeming unhelpful."

"I'm glad."

"Why is he thinking Arch? Jaws wouldn't say one thing about the evidence, but he must have something."

He looked at her and they both knew he was asking for information she shouldn't give him. But she trusted Reese and she liked him and he was the kind of guy she'd want in her department if she were in charge. You give to get. But sometimes you give just to give.

"The physical evidence is almost all against him, Damon. Prints on the weapon. His gun hand was loaded when we did the GSR test. Her blood is on his robe. No solid evidence of anyone else being on their property at the time."

"Jesus.
Archie's gun kill her?"

Merci nodded.

"And the big footprints, what, something that might or might not be relevant?"

She nodded again. "They could be the gardener's, for all we know

"His memory's all messed up, isn't it?"

"Well, it's somewhat messed up. Holes. Then, vague in some places but fine in others. It seems like the most recent things are harder for him to recall. But the older things—things from years ago—they're still in place."

Reese looked away. "So Jaws sees an easy one. Prints on the murder weapon, GSR on the gun hand and a guy too messed up to take the stand in his own defense."

"That's what I think. And high-profile, too. If you prosecute Archie Wildcraft for this, you're guaranteed headlines. I mean, it's been front page news for three days. Imagine a trial."

She saw the uncluttered conviction on Reese's face. "I don't think he'd kill her," he said. "No way on Earth he'd kill her."

"But if you're the prosecutor and you get the conviction, every body's going to know your name for fifteen minutes. And that's what it takes to fill Brenkus's empty DA's chair. Brenkus is old. Jaws want his job, whether he'll admit it or not."

Reese shook his head again. "Yeah. That's the way it goes, isn't it? Something like this happens and people use it to move up. The Wildcrafts—rungs on a ladder."

"Did he ever mention Julia?"

"Never." Reese looked at her with guarded interest but nothing more.

"Tell me about his temper."

Reese nodded, as if he expected this question. "Yeah, he's got one. I've been his patrol partner for a year and a half and I still don't know exactly what's going to set him off. He's peaceful. He's alert. He's in the moment. Then, wham. You know those carnival games where you take a giant mallet and try to ring the bell with the weight? Well, that's Archie's temper, sometimes. Something just hits him a certain way and off it goes."

"Is he violent with it?"

"Only once, with me around. But you see it. You hear it. You feel it. You also feel him controlling it."

Like Zamorra controlling his, Merci thought.

"So, you don't know exactly what's going to set him off, but how about in general?" she asked. "What gets him?"

Reese nodded again. "Bad treatment of women or girls. That royally pisses Arch off."

Merci thought about that for a moment.

"We roll on a domestic, Archie won't pay much attention to the guy's point of view. He's always pulling for the woman, no matter how drunk or violent or wrong she is. I mean, he took a lot of verbal abuse from Michelle Mendez before he cuffed her. If Archie smells a woman-hater, look out."

"He got in a fight defending me."

Reese nodded. "That was the one time I saw him not control it. One minute, a somewhat rational talk about whether the department is better off under Vince Abelera or Chuck Brighton. Next, some wiseass and not very fair words about you, Detective Rayborn. Next, Deputy Mark Stump coldcocked and lying on the floor. Archie already bending over him, trying to slap him awake."