T. Parker: Black Water

Merci tried to imagine a life that secret, an intention so perfectly disguised.

"I don't see that he could kill a woman like that. His wife. What a beauty. What a voice, and she wrote songs. Look at those rocks he collected, the suiseki.

He had, what do you call it… appreciation."

"You can have all that, Merci, and still be desperate. That's what they all have in common-they don't see a choice. It's the last thing they can think of to do that's positive."

"Blowing your brains out is negative."

"I don't mean morally. It's positive in the sense that you do it. You act. You take back control of your life by ending it."

She thought this over, trying to split atoms like Zamorra. "Ass backwards," she said.

"Don't judge what you don't understand." Zamorra glanced at her and she saw the quick flash of anger in his eyes.

Merci stood in the Wildcraft bathroom for the first time. She held the crime scene photographs, looking down, then up. It no longer smelled of blood and guncotton, but, faintly, of soap and potpourri. The room was smaller than she'd thought, but plenty big for two. White walls, a shiny tile floor, a high ceiling with a skylight. Thick white towels lavender accents. And now, without the glare of light off the shower door, one nick in the glass that might have been made by an ejected casing.

She'd gotten there an hour early because she liked some time alone. Hess had told her how he saw his way into some tough cases by imagining a picture relating to what had happened. He'd let the picture grow and change, even if it wasn't making sense. He'd led them to a killer called the Purse Snatcher that way-the first thing he'd pictured was a woman in a cocoon. In the end, there were no cocoons involved in the case at all, but that picture kept growing and changing until Hess understood what the Purse Snatcher was doing and how he was doing it. She'd been in awe of him for that. So she'd practiced until she was tired, then practiced more. It was alien to her way of thinking because she'd never-even as a child-had any interest in make-believe. At first she couldn't do it, then she could. She realized that to understand some things you have to let them come alive in your mind first. This idea was the second most important thing he'd left her. Merci needed to be alone for it, with only the ghosts for company.

Now, alone in the house, it was easy for Rayborn to see Gwen in her purple robe. Alive. Vibrant. Frightened. Small face, smart eye but eyes that are afraid.

What is she doing?

Does she come in here to take her face off, use the pot? Or does she immediately back to the far wall?

She has the phone with her because she's afraid, but how afraid? She locks the door because she's afraid, but how afraid?

Fear of the next moment? Or cautious, just-in-case fear? Did she have the phone in her hand when he came through the door, or did she reach for it?

Either way, it ends up in the sink, which is the "his" sink because the cabinet beside it houses shave gel, an athletic-themed antiperspirant, aftershave and a box of condoms. They're all economy size generic brands, except for the prophylactics, which are ribbed for her pleasure.

And either way, Merci thinks, Gwen is not afraid enough to get the little white-handled twenty-two from Archie's sink cabinet. Maybe she's afraid of it. Maybe she doesn't know how to use it. Maybe she doesn't know it's there.

Or maybe she just wasn't fast enough.

It all could have happened in seconds: Gwen runs in and locks the door, looks down to dial the phone, the door splinters off its hinge something clubs her chest then a pistol is jammed against her high, intelligent forehead so hard the front sight takes a divot from her ballooning skin, one-two, bang-bang, you're dead.

Shot by her husband-a dimpled hunk she had had consensual sex with a few hours earlier, the man she'd fallen in love with in high school, helped through the Sheriff's Academy, posed with for portrait every year, with whom she shared a bed and a home in the hills?

She couldn't see it. Couldn't see Archie in this room with Gwen. He wasn't a player, not at this point.

But why not? She thought she knew why not, but that would wait for later. Right now, this first time through, she was going to try to see it like Gilliam and Buckley and probably everybody assumed it happened.

So she stepped back into the bedroom. August sunlight flew through the blinds, landing on the carpet in widening bevels. Smell of sheets, raised by the afternoon warmth. Bed unmade, blanket thrown back, pillows close enough together to make her wonder if Gwen had been sleeping on her side, face up against her husband. Or maybe the other way around.

Do what you have to

But don't say goodbye

Don't even joke about saying goodbye.

Okay, she thought. Archie did her and Archie's going on his death march now, out to the walkway. She tried to picture him but she still couldn't. It would have helped to have seen him in the flesh at some point, but Merci couldn't remember ever seeing the man. Which was hard to believe, with a face like his. Just the dimples were enough to make you remember.

She checked her notes to get the lights correct: one bathroom light on; one kitchen light on; one TV room light on; all other houselights off. The driveway light was on when Bill Jones made his call at five-o-eight in the morning but off when Crowder and Dobbs arrived at five-fourteen.

She walked down the hall, feeling the deep padding and springy carpet under her duty boots, nothing like the creaking hardwood floors of her rented house in the orange grove. She could hear the cats walking down the hall at home. So quiet here, she thought.

But Archie, she tells herself, has just murdered his wife and he comes down the hallway, leaving the lights off. She sees no reason for Archie to stop in the living room. His ears would be ringing and his nostrils would be sharp with burned powder and his eyes could see nothing but the red life of his bride spraying into the bathroom air. He would have some of her on his right hand, probably, maybe some on his face and robe. Archie doesn't see the stack of presents. Archie doesn't see the rock in the middle in the living room, thrown earlier that day in the terrible argument. Archie, she thinks, doesn't see anything but the black vastness that waits for him outside.

Why outside? He's already made a bit of a mess in the bathroom. Why not kill himself in the rock room, with his mute, graceful suiseki around him? Why not do it in the immaculately polished silver Porscl Boxster convertible that sat covered in his garage? Why not sit on one of the living room couches, get comfortable?

But no, Archie walks outside.

Merci opened the front door, stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind her. There is no sun at five in the morning, she thinks. She tries to picture the world dark, with the help of just a flashlight beam, just like Archie saw it. But this is difficult. In fact, she's thankful for the summer light because the walkway is steeper and narrower and more sharply curved than she remembers. If you weren't familiar with it, you could walk right off.

But Archie, she thinks, fresh from slaughtering his wife, and passing up a half dozen sensible and meaningful places to slaughter himself, takes a flashlight outside with him so he won't veer off the walkway and… what? Stub his toe? Get his bare feet dirty? Bang his head on the branch of a Chinese flame tree?

Apparently so. Because, as Gilliam demonstrated with the GSR and Buckley with his tool marks, Archie stops on the walk, understands that this is the place of places, turns around to face the direction he come and fires, hitting himself in the head.

Sure. Maybe.

Merci stood over the spot where Wildcraft had been found, the bloodstains darkened almost to rust on the concrete. Ants swarm over it, thick in the cracks.