Black Water (40 page)

Merci looked out at Tim and the deep green Valencia orange trees beyond. She wasn't much of an orange eater, but she loved the smell of the trees, and not just the orange blossoms that narcotized you late winter and early spring, but the astringent summertime smell leaves and fruit. She was content for a moment, then the feeling was gone.

"Gary Brice left two messages. And Mike called a few minute ago."

"Mike? What about?"

"Well, not to talk to me."

"Pretty obvious, Dad."

"I really don't know. I'm just telling you he called."

Merci heard a vehicle out on the dirt road that led to their driveway. Probably the grove manager, she thought. Odd that Mike would call, but one of them was bound to break the silence. You don't love someone then arrest that person for a murder he didn't commit, then just ignore each other for the next fifty years.

Clark checked his watch, popped up and headed back toward the house. "I'm going to go get the evening paper," he said. "See if they got pictures of Wildcraft in the chopper."

The screen slider slapped shut and Merci saw Mike McNally's pickup truck bump onto the driveway concrete. She quickly connected the phone call, the watch check, the need for a newspaper and Mike's arrival into a loose conspiracy theory.

She watched the truck come up the drive and park under the floodlights she'd had installed. Mike got out and waved at her, same as he used to. His blond hair was shiny in the light. She saw from the way his hands went suddenly to his hips and the chesty posture that he was nervous.

Danny came around from the passenger's side carrying a small clear box by a handle. Danny was eight now, an intense and humorless boy who had gone far out of his way to ignore Merci when she and his father were together. She'd admired Danny's loyalty to his mother, a woman who treated Mike pretty much like shit so far as Merci saw. Tim spoke often of Mike and Danny, having easily attached himself to a friendly man and a big brother. Merci had explained their departure in vague terms that had never satisfied him. Tim was precise, forgot little, and it angered him to get soft answers to hard questions. She despised herself for taking them out of his life and told herself that someday he would understand. Mike had taken up with CSI Lynda Coiner after the arrest and she'd wondered what Mike told Danny.

Tim bolted for the backyard gate.

Here goes, she thought, taking a large gulp of her drink and pouring the rest into a potted rose tree, leaving the glass upended against the trunk and the ice cubes in the soil. Merci slid the bolt and Tim pushed open the gate. Danny gave Tim the clear box: a small terrarium containing an alligator lizard he caught. Danny didn't look at Merci. Mike extended his hand like salesman and she shook it, increasingly flummoxed and wishing she had some warning on this, then feeling her anger brew because Mike and good old Dad had not extended that common courtesy.

"Thanks for the warning," she said.

"We can't stay, Merci. I told Clark we were just going to drop lizard off for Tim."

"Well, okay, there's no harm done, Mike. It's great to see you. You too, Danny."

He glanced at her.

"Play with the hose?" Tim asked, pulling Danny by the shirtsleeve. The boy looked to his father for an answer, and Mike looked at Merci.

"Okay," she said. Tim pretty much threw the lizard box at her and the boys bolted.

"We can't stay," Mike said again. "We were just, look, Merci know I should have said something to you before we bombed in. I didn't. But I need to talk to you and I thought... I figured you'd say no and I didn't want to hear that."

"Okay, okay. Come on in. Let's sit."

Mike lowered himself into one of the torturous Adirondack chairs and Merci offered lemonade.

"No, thanks, really," he said. "I won't be here long."

She sat in the chair next to his and for just a flash felt like a real couple, watching their children play in the yard. Tim had turned the hose on Danny, who dodged in and out of range. She could smell the dogs on Mike because Mike was the department bloodhound hand and three of the hulking monsters—Dolly, Molly and Polly—lived with him.

"It seems like a thousand years since I sat here," he said.

"It does. How are you, Mike?"

"Just fine, really. I'm glad to be out of Vice. Burg-Theft is hopping.

"You?"

"Hands full with Wildcraft." She had the lizard box on her lap and she saw the creature peeking out at her from under a piece of bark.

"The press conference was bad. Sorry."

"Yup."

"But that's one of the reasons I'm here. I mean, not directly, but related."

"What's up?"

"It's time for the Deputy Association to elect its reps for next year. Pretty much whoever gets nominated gets elected. I'm on the nominating committee and I want to nominate you."

A wrinkle of joy wobbled through her, followed by a hot flatiron of suspicion. She set the terrarium beside her chair.

"Why me, Mike? Half the department hates me."

"It's kind of hard to explain. I'll try, though."

She watched Mike's forehead knit, saw in his clear blue eyes his enduring struggle with words. He'd told her once that he liked being around dogs more than people and meant it.

"Merci, some of it's about you and me. See, what happened wasn't all your fault. And not all Evan O'Brien's fault, either. Some of it was
mine.
So, skip forward until now, and a lot of the deputies, they blame you. And a lot of them took my side, like you just said. But not many of them knew that I fell in love with that girl, and that I deserved to get my ass kicked for it. Not that I deserved exactly how it went down, but. .. well, they just don't know. Am I making sense?"

"Some."

"So I hate it like this, half the guys pulling for me when they don't know what happened, and half of them hating you for no good reason. It's all. .. simplified and stupidified. Like a bunch of children. It's like we're symbols for something. But what you did with Brighton and my dad and yours, God, it must have been hard for you. And it had to be done, Merci. I know it did. I'm glad you did it, even though my dad suffered. He deserved to suffer. Clark deserved to. Brighton deserved to. So what I'm saying is, I was behind you then, even though everybody pulled us apart. And I was too wrapped up in you and the girl and getting arrested to see clear, you know? I just let the crowd carry me along like some kind of wounded hero. It was easy. But I'm sick of it now. It's degrading. I don't want the department torn like this. I want us all at least halfway together. What you did, it cleaned us out, but now nobody gets along. I can't write a memo about all this because it's hard plain all the emotions I was going through back then. Too personnal. I'm sick of my emotions, I really am. But I want you on the of deputy reps. And if I'm the one to make the nomination, then that just sets all this stuff straight. It says two people who disagree agree. I don't mean to sound like I'm important or anything, but it sends a message. I can send a message to this department—forget. forgive, move on. Actually, I can send half that message to the department. And you can send the other half by accepting the nomination and letting it go to a vote. I'll be explaining to the other deputies what happened, as much as I can. I'll be pulling for you. For us. You know, I mean, for the whole department."

He was a little breathless by then, blinking fast like he did when his mind was working hard.

"I haven't said that much at one time in my whole life," he said, smiling. His forehead was relaxed now, but covered in a shine of sweat. "Except maybe to one of my dogs."

A large and basic movement took place inside Rayborn then, and she could feel it, plates of hope and history in realignment. It was like breathing a new way, or having your nerves cleaned and straighten and freshly laid into place.

"I accept."

"You've got a couple of weeks to think about it."

"I accept."

Mike stood but said nothing.

She opened her mouth to say she was sorry, that she was so sorry for everything that had happened, but this was not quite true and she knew it; and she was also about to say she thought he was a man, really a very good man, but there were a million wrong ways to take that; and she wanted to hold him like you'd hold a brother or old dear friend or an aging mother or father, but again there was so much that could go wrong. She wiped away a small tear and called upon all her will to keep more from coming.

"Damned
hot
today, wasn't it?"

He turned and looked at her. "Ninety-two at Civic Center, about average for this time of year. Good seeing you, Merci. You look terrific."

"Thanks. How's Lynda?"

"She said she'd break it off if I came over here and asked you to run. I told her it was off already, then. It shouldn't have gotten to that point. Even I'm smart enough to know that."

She let Tim stay up an extra hour to watch the late CNB report. Clark settled in early for it, like it was a playoff game. Merci sat on the couch beside Tim and stroked his soft hair while Michelle Howland blabbed her intro over a montage of the annual portraits that the Wildcrafts commissioned of themselves:

"Was it love or hate? Did the deputy kill his wife? Or did he try to save her—and get the bullet that is still lodged in his brain? This is Michelle Howland and tonight we'll have a special look inside the life of county Sheriff Deputy Archibald Wildcraft—a man many believe was responsible for shooting to death his beautiful young wife, Gwen. But whom many others believe is a man misunderstood, a man too deeply in love with his wife to ever do her harm. In the next hour we'll talk to Archie's and Gwen's parents and friends, to the people they worked with. You'll hear from doctors and lawyers. We'll show you how Deputy Wildcraft attended Gwen's funeral today without touching the ground, and we'll show you exclusive CNB footage of Wildcraft himself taken just hours after his dramatic funeral appearance. Stay tuned for 'Hero or Killer—the Mystery of Archie Wildcraft.' "

That
shithead
Brice, Merci thought, even as she was dialing the reporter's home number. Brice had located Wildcraft but not bothered to call her, not even
after
he'd gotten his interview. She got the machine and tried his
Journal,
cell and CNB numbers but got machines for those also.

"Maybe he was calling here to tell you," said Clark.

"Unbelievable."

Tim looked at her hopefully. "Awchie throws the flowers?"

"Yeah. Right."

She stood abruptly and walked into the kitchen, her bare heels heavy on the hardwood floor. Tim thumped in behind her, still in his rubber mud boots. His brow was furrowed, his eyes wide with alarm.

"You are mad?"

"I'm not mad at you."

He looked away from her and his bottom lip swelled, then trembled. She picked him up but it was too late. The tears jumped from his eyes like living diamonds. Plenty of volume to his wail. She hugged him and told him over and over that she was mad at
Gary
not at
Timmy
and after a while this worked. She silently cursed her temper and her selfishness. She felt her heart beating against his little pot belly. He stopped crying as quickly as he'd begun, pushed away and looked her very seriously.

"Why did Awchie throw flowers?"

"Because he loved Gwen."

"Loved Gwen?"

"Yes."

"I down, please."

She set him on the floor and watched him pad purposefully along the hallway toward his room. Another mission. When she got back the sofa Michelle was interviewing the Kuerners and the Wildcraft;

"Tell me how Archie and Gwen first met. Mrs. Kuerner, was it love at first sight? "

Why, thought Merci. She tried the CNB after-hours number but the receptionist wouldn't say whether Brice was in the studio or not. She tried his cell and
Journal
numbers again but there was still no answser. Zamorra answered and she gave the news to him.

She tossed the phone into the sofa cushion and paced while she watched, too rattled to sit. Earla Kuerner had tears in her eyes. Natalie sat still and sharp-eyed as a kestrel. Lee talked about his daughter falling in love with a college ballplayer, smiling at the memory while his hands wrung themselves in a dissenting agony. George Wildcraft; stared at the floor.

"Watch," said Clark. "Here comes the grave.

"Merci saw the cars filing into the memorial park, then longshots of the mourners disembarking for the chapel. She had not been aware of the CNB van coming up behind them and it angered her now that she hadn't thought to look for them. But what would she have done? It wasn't Michelle Howland's or Gary Brice's fault that Wildcraft had put on a show. Maybe Archie enjoyed the attention, she thought, maybe he was courting public opinion like everyone else on Earth.

Take a deep breath, she told herself. She took two. Didn't help, never did.

She heard Tim pulling his wheeled suitcase down the hallway. It was one of his favorite things, easily transporting small toys, snails, fallen oranges. Or the heavy newspaper, which he would roll right up to the kitchen table and deliver to Merci on Sunday mornings. Then the kitchen slider rasped open and slammed shut. Merci saw that the patio lights were on, noting that she'd need to look out on Tim in a minute, two at the outside.