T. Parker: Black Water

Quickly, she slid from the green to the edge of the walkway. Easier and faster than she thought it would be. Little resistance, little noise.

Yes, two giant-sized strides brought her to the edge of the cement walk. For what-a three-foot shot at a human head? Give him another year and Tim Jr. would be able to do that. He could probably do now. God, I love him.

She took the two steps again with her nine millimeter out in from of her, just one hand to aim it because the other held the photographs. And because Size Sixteen had probably done it that way. Leave one hand free to part foliage, she thought. Did he have a flashlight too? In the dark, on another man's property, on another armed man's property? Oh, yes. He did.

But the trouble with all of this was the casing. If it had gone down this way, and if the shooter had used an automatic of some kind, his ejected shell wouldn't have landed where Zamorra found it.

No. It would have landed where all the overlapped, partial footprints were.

And the bullet that was still inside Archie Wildcraft's head-was it from his nine or something else? That was the key. Still no word from Sheriff Abelera. Still no word from the hospital.

She heard a car pull up and park on the street. Zamorra, she thought. She walked toward the driveway and saw Ryan Dawes slamming the door of his convertible.

Merci watched him come down the sidewalk toward the drive: gray suit, black shirt open at the collar, sunglasses and a black briefcase. Tall, lean, strong in the leg and butt. He ran a hand back through his honey-colored hair.

She backed into the foliage again. Found the size-sixteen prints, placed one duty boot in each and stood still as Dawes walked past her. On his return trip, Merci stepped out and aimed her finger at his head.

"Gotcha, Jaws!"

Dawes jumped backward and dropped his briefcase to the walk.

"Shit! You scared me, Ray… scared the shit out of me. "

"What are you doing here?"

"My job."

"You're just a lawyer."

He said nothing but he was breathing quickly and there was sweat on his forehead.

"You'll be fine, Mr. Dawes. Look-when you get the pee scared out of you, breathe deep. Deep."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Got it?"

"I get it."

"What are you looking for?"

He said nothing while she tried to look past his glasses and take a read on him. But the silver-blue lenses threw her own face back at her

"This is a crime scene and we're still processing it. So stay on the beaten path and don't touch anything. Not one thing."

He smiled and let out a quick little snort. "Cut the crap, Rayborn I know what to do with a crime scene. We don't like each other. Fine I can play this your way if I have to."

"My way is not to whine to the papers."

"I should have kept my mouth shut."

It didn't sound like an apology, or even the preamble to one.

"You kicked my ass when it was down, Jaws."

"I should have stayed quiet."

"Don't mess up my crime scene."

"I won't. I need to get the evidence right this time."

She could have killed him. Thought she might. But she held her tongue and imagined Jaws slipping from a toe-hold and pinwheeling down the face of Half Dome toward his death.

Then she heard footsteps on the walk. It took her a moment to recognize Al with no sport coat on, and a pair of aviator shades hiding his eyes.

Al Madden was former head of the Sheriff's Department Homicide Detail, and now the district attorney's top investigator. He was big, smart and tireless. Hess had spoken highly of him.

The DA prosecutors used Al when they needed more than what the case detectives got. Or to tie things up, nail things down. Clear up the details, connect the last few dots.

Or when the DA thought the detectives just might have gotten something wrong. Al was there to help them win cases. And to keep the People from getting humiliated in court because of bad police work. Or sued into oblivion by the ACLU.

She nodded and shook Al's hand but said nothing. Like greeting your executioner, she thought. She wasn't going to make polite chatter In the uncomfortable silence Al pulled off the sunglasses to reveal gray eyes rimmed in red.

"Look, Merci, everything looks tight on the reports. I'm just here to take some measurements, confirm a couple of small things. Clay knows this is a delicate one, with Wildcraft being one of ours."

"I understand. Small things like what? Measure what?"

"Nothing in particular."

Then everything in general, she thought: a wholesale dismissal of my casework.

"Let's do it, Al," said Dawes.

"Do you mind, Sergeant?" Madden asked, a hint of apology in his voice.

She shook her head and walked past them toward the driveway.

She walked through it again with Zamorra, once with Archie as the shooter and once with him not. Then again as burglars, noting all the things they could have taken but didn't. When they were finished they stood for a moment near the swimming pool and watched Al Madden and Ryan Dawes.

The two DA men were kneeling, Al on the walkway and Dawes over where Zamorra had found the casing. Dawes checked one of the crime scene drawings on the clipboard beside him, dropped his end of the tape and spread both arms to point out where the brass had been found. Madden nodded. Then Dawes hooked his right hand toward his head, pointed a finger and jerked his head.

"Did Wildcraft shoot himself, Paul?"

"I still don't know."

"Well, does he fit the damned profile, or whatever you call it?"

"Not so far. But the evidence fits him. You know that. Merci, if we have to take down a guilty deputy, nobody's going to crucify you for that."

"And what if he isn't? Then that's two in a row. I hurt a good man and lost half my department on the first."

"Talk to the sheriff."

"About what?"

"Giving it to Wheeler and Teague. Let somebody else take it."

Merci understood that she wanted Wildcraft's innocence for herself as much as anything else. As a way to show the people who hated her that she was a good cop, one of them. One of us. If she was proved wrong about him as she'd been wrong with Mike, she'd resign. Probably wouldn't have to, she thought: reassignment to traffic would be swift.

"No," she said.

"I knew you wouldn't."

"What would you do?"

"Find out more about Wildcraft. Nobody does this without a reason. Usually, more than one."

She said nothing as she watched Jaws run his hand through his hair, then absently scratch his head. Cute little puke, she thought.

"Merci, I got some of their banking records, canceled checks and credit card statements. The last two months of last year, and the first two months of this year, the Wildcrafts spent about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars on fun stuff-the new Porsche in the garage, new furniture and carpet, a remodel on two of the bathrooms. Trips to Grand Cayman, Tahiti, Costa Rica. That's beside the fact that they live in a million-plus house in a million-plus neighborhood. Wildcraft was making fifty grand a year and his wife made eight."

Hard to get more obvious than that. She shook her head and said nothing.

Zamorra shrugged and glanced outside. "I've got us lined up with her parents for five o'clock."

"What about his?"

"They came in last night from Northern California. The father said they'd be at the hospital all day tomorrow. He said they'd be here until we put the guy who did this in a coffin."

"That will be a wonderful day."

Rayborn had no guilt over her beliefs on crime and punishment. You do the crime, you do the time. So far as murderers lying in wait well, off with their heads.

She once had the idea that there should be a countywide tax fund for victims of the worst crimes. Their survivors would get lots of money. Even at only five dollars per capita, you'd come up with fifteen million a year for the fund. She would implement it when she was elected sheriff, sometime around the age of fifty-eight. But she'd thought of all the people who'd kill each other just for that money and shook her head. Human nature, she thought. Don't get it.