T. Parker: Black Water

Sure. Maybe.

Bullshit.

She walked briskly back to the front door, swung it open and continued on to the master bath. She stood there again where Archie would have stood. Looked at the lavender hand towels, the blood on the floor, the fingerprint dust everywhere in sight. Take it fast, now, Merci thought. Take it like a man who's just killed his wife and now plans to kill himself.

Down the hallway then, not turning on the lights because he's walked this hallway thousands of times. He's got the gun and the flashlight. Gun in the right hand, light in the left. At the door he slides the flashlight under his right arm to free a hand. Steps outside, closes the door behind him.

No lights on still, and he doesn't bother with the flashlight because he knows where he's going.

But where is he going?

Merci stopped just short of the place where Archie bled. She looked at the walkway behind her and at the walkway ahead of her. She looked at the near wall of the house, saw the big bulge of the chimney and the windows on either side. Saw the wall of trees to her right. She looked down at one of the photographs.

A possibility: this was as far away from her as Gwen would allow him. Any farther down the walk, he'd be circling back in her direction. Pulled back in her direction. Even dead, she's more powerful than he is, that's part of why he had to do this. But here, right here, Archie is at the apex of his orbit. The end of his leash. And he can't be seen from inside. Gwen, the insufferable witch, the monster who finally got what she asked for so many years, won't be able to see him right here because he's behind the chimney. She has no idea what he's up to. He's free now.

Merci sees that, having come down the walkway this far, Archie's back is to his wife. This seems natural, that he would turn his back on her one final time.

He's shivering by now, she thinks, his fury and resolve and mad logic are delaminating and he's beginning to feel true horror at what he's done. And what he still has to do.

He turns around, facing the way he came. Why? As if he could go back, undo things? Make a fresh beginning? Go confess to Gwen that he really doesn't hate her? Say a simple hello? Or goodbye?

He takes a deep breath. He swings quickly and confidently, and fires. Never hears it. Sees nothing. Feels nothing. Maybe an owl watches the brass flicker into the violets, the brief puff of smoke as the gun clatters on the walk at the same time the heavy human bulk of Archie Wildcraft slumps like a fountain turned off for the night.

Thus, just what we found, Merci thinks: one brass nine-millimeter casing to the right side of the walkway, where the ejector on the Smith would logically throw it.

Okay. I can believe this. I can believe this. But I still can't see it.

What about Size Sixteen, waiting under the Chinese flame tree? What about all the footprints on the other side of the walk? Who made them and what were they looking for?

She felt her heart beating fast and the sweat cooling on her scalp. Her fingers were slick on the photographs so she wiped them on her chinos. She smelled herself and her perfume and the sweet stink of some flower or vine and the rich damp smell of earth with things growing in it.

She continued down the walkway, trying to clear her thoughts. She stopped by the swimming pool for a moment and watched the clear blue water. She looked at the two chaise lounges, touching lengthwise and the little round tables on either side. So they can touch, she thought. Drowsy in the sun. Sweet smell of flowers. Reach. Touch. Quiet words. Eyes still shut, sun orange and warm on the lids. Let go inside. Oh, yes.

Near the far end of the pool were two eucalyptus trees. Stretched between them was a hammock big enough for two. Merci looked across to the patio, where Zamorra had sat at the end of that long first day here. There was the little cafe table and, of course, two long-legged cafe chairs.

It's everywhere I look, she thought: two young people in love. That must be what it's like, you arrange the world around yourselves. Us. Us. Us and them.

She started out in the bedroom again. But this time, Archie wasn't going to be the shooter. And the first thing she thought was: Gwen wasn't shot first. The rock hadn't been lying on the carpet since afternoon. It had come through the window just after five in the morning, and Archie got out of bed when he heard it. He made sure his wife was in the bathroom with the cell phone. He wouldn't let her call 911 yet because he's a cop, a young cop with a handgun and a flashlight ready for something like this. If there's a dragon in his castle, Archie's going to slay it himself. Chop off its head and parade around the grounds with it.

Merci rechecked her lights list, imagining Archie as a home defender instead of a murderer. But the lights wouldn't tell her much about what Wildcraft had done because, if she was right, someone had been in the house after him.

Down the hallway again, flashlight in his left hand and gun in his right. He's alert, heart beating hard. Quiet on the carpet in his bare feet.

She could picture Archie now, even though she could not remember ever seeing him. The portraits, she thought. The big boyish face and the dimples and the strong neck. But more than that, too. He was easy to picture because he'd done this. He had been here. He was true.

Or so her imagination said. Which won't cut ice in court, she thought.

In the living room she stared again at the carpet where the rock had been. Archie would have stared too, would have seen the rock and the shattered wooden blind.

Outside now, Merci walks along behind him. She remembers the moon phase map from today's paper and knows it was gone by two that morning. So it's easy to picture the flashlight and its beam moving from the crooked little walkway to the bushes to the trees, then back again.

She heads down the walkway to the place where Archie has fallen. She wonders if Wildcraft heard something here, something that made him turn around. Or if he just kept walking out and around to where the rock had come through the window. He'd want to see the point of entry. Human curiosity. A cop's training. Absolutely, that would have been his destination. She tries to picture him but can't get details now. Can't tell how far he would have walked. Can't tell if he'd stopped and turned just before he was given the surprise of his life, or if he was walking back from the broken window. Might never know, she thinks, unless Arch wakes up and has enough of a brain left to remember.

But this was where he bought it. Almost bought it. Facing up the walk, in the direction of the front porch, the front door, the entrant to his home. In the direction of his wife, who has just turned twenty-six, whom he has recently made love with and left alone and frightened in the bathroom at five in the morning with a cell phone that probably doesn't work well in these hills, and a gun that she's not likely to use.

All this is charging through Rayborn's mind as she looks down again at the ant-covered blood, then to where the size-sixteen shoe prints lie, still visible, back under the down-hanging branches of the flame tree.

I will identify you, she thinks.

I will know who you are and will deliver you to experience the full course of criminal justice: special circumstances, lying in wait, capital crime, guilty as charged, your honor, a lethal hot shot and you're gone.

You got one of us, but the Orange County Sheriff's Department isn't done with you, you bucket of piss.

She stands under the tree where Size Sixteen has stood. Places her feet where his have been.

What a view. Not just hidden behind branches heavy with leave but hidden between them. Easy to slide through, when you were ready. Archie came past here, she thinks. Size Sixteen would have trouble seeing him on his way by. But coming back Archie was an easy mark. Maybe Archie was less alert by then. Maybe his eyes were used to the dark and he'd turned off his flashlight. Maybe he was shining it somewhere else. All it took from Size Sixteen was, what, two long stride