T. Parker: Black Water

He continued along the curving walkway then stopped in front of the slider where the rock had come through. The beam of his flashlight picked up the big ragged hole and the gleam of fissures spreading all directions. He saw no footprints, no disturbance of the grass.

Archie stood still and listened, clicked off his flashlight. Never did hear a getaway car. Kids, he thought again: they would throw the rock, haul ass giggling along the west fence, jump it at the corner and be down the hill before he'd gotten Gwen into the bathroom. He thought of her just then, standing in the hard light with her robe on, hair all messed up, scared as a bird and listening to every little sound, the twenty-two probably still in the cabinet under the sink because she didn't like guns. And he thought what a jealous little jerk he'd been for a few minutes at the party. Married to her for eight years and he still feel his anger rise when his own friends hugged and kissed her.

He missed her. Wondered what in hell he was doing out here with his happy birthday boxers and a gun and his wife afraid in a locked bathroom a hundred feet away.

He turned back up the walk. Past the pool. Into the tunnel of tree Then a beam of sharp light in his eyes and by the time he found the flashlight button it was too late.

Up close, an orange explosion.

Bright white light and Archie watching himself fly into it, a bug in the universe, a man going home.

Sergeant Merci Rayborn nodded at the two deputies standing at the front door of the Wildcraft house. One of them handed her an Order-of-Entry log, which she signed after checking her watch. She was a tall woman with a dark ponytail that rode up the orange letters on the back of her windbreaker as she wrote, then down again as she handed back the clipboard.

"Who got here first and where are they?"

"Crowder and Dobbs, Sergeant. In the kitchen area, I believe."

The other uniform looked past her head and said nothing.

In the entryway Merci Rayborn stood still and received. Smell of furniture wax and wood. Smell of flowers. Murmur of voices. She looked at the entryway mirror, the living room furniture, the carpet. She looked at the hole in the blinds, which suggested a hole in the glass behind. She looked at a rock the size of a newborn's head lying near the middle of the floor. At the little pile of gift boxes. No alarm system-kitchen, maybe.

"Merci."

Paul Zamorra came softly down the hallway, light on his feet. And dark in his heart, Merci thought. He had the gentle deliberateness of an undertaker. And the black suit, too.

She turned to her partner. "Paul. Do you know this guy?"

"Not well. You know, just a friendly face. We'd talked."

"Wildcraft. I'm sure we talked, too."

Though she wasn't sure of that at all. The department was sharp divided into people who approved of what Merci Rayborn had do and people who didn't. Everyone had an opinion. Some of the deputies wouldn't talk to her, nor she to them unless she had to. This hurt Merci deeply, as if the two halves of her heart detested each other. She had come to distrust all opinions, even her own.

But Deputy 2 Archie Wildcraft? She remembered nothing about him but his unusual name. Now he was in the hospital with at least one gunshot to his head and little chance of living.

"His wife is the other, Merci. Gwen Wildcraft. She's in the bathroom."

Merci led down the hallway, noting the textured plaster, the black and-white Yosemite photographs in brushed stainless-steel frames, the way the track lights were aimed to display them. She stopped at the thermostat and saw that it had been set at seventy. She walked past another deputy then down into a large bedroom with French doors a gauzy curtains. Big sleigh bed with the covers messed up. Smell perfume and human beings.

The bathroom door was open. The doorframe was splintered a the lock plate dangled by two screws. Merci leaned over the crime scene tape and looked in.

Here, very different smells-the sharp after burned scent of nitrocellulose and something faintly metallic and sweet. Gwen Wilder lay beside the toilet, back to the floor but her head against the wall a hard angle, facing down and to her right. Eyes closed, mouth open arms and legs spread, purple robe almost matching the blood on the wall, the floor, the shower door, the counter and mirror. More from her nose and mouth. Merci noted the cell phone lying face up in right-hand sink.

This was Rayborn's sixty-seventh homicide scene as an investigator for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. For the six seventh time she told herself to see, not feel. Think, not feel. Work, not feel. But, not for the first time in her life, Rayborn told herself she couldn't keep on looking.

"Let's get Crowder and Dobbs."

"All right," said Zamorra.

The four of them stood in the breakfast nook. Looking into the kitchen, Merci noted the fresh pot of coffee on the maker, unpoured, the machine still wheezing. A timer, she thought, confidently programmed to make coffee that Archie and Gwen Wildcraft would never touch. A red colander filled with oranges sat on the counter and a curved wooden stand dangled a bunch of pale bananas. The word waste came to her mind, as it often did.

Crowder was a big man with short gray hair brushed into a severe 1950s flattop. He reminded her of a man she'd been in love with many years ago-three to be exact. Crowder watched as Merci brought out a new blue notebook and her good pen, and she wondered if he hated her.

"We were down on Moulton, stopped for coffee. Dispatch said possible gunshot reported in Hunter Ranch. Wasn't a nine-one-one but we rolled right then. It was five-ten. We came in quiet because it's a good neighborhood, wasn't a hot call. Got here at five-fourteen. The house looked okay from the outside. Nobody around, no neighbors, nothing. Houselights showing from a couple of places inside."

"What about outside?"

"No."

"The driveway?"

"No."

She asked twice because two floodlights had been on when she first walked up the Wildcraft driveway. That was just after six, on the cusp of sunrise.

Merci made notes in a loop-crazy shorthand, her subjects separated by slashes like lyrics quoted in a review. CK meant check, always capitals and underlined, sometimes circled if the question seemed extra important. She wrote, drive lights mo-det? CK/, then looked up at Zamorra.

"Paul, how many cars in the driveway when you got here?"

"Four."

"Let's have a look where they're not before we leave tonight. The concrete's new and it could hold a track. Make sure the CSI examine it before the battalion moves out."

"Yes."

Crowder looked out one of the mullioned breakfast nook window Merci followed his gaze to a large fenced yard, patio and orange tree all sharp with color in the August morning.

Dobbs let out a short sigh. He was young and hard-jawed, with arm muscles that almost filled out his green uniform shirt. Smoot ruddy face. "Look. We called for backup and paramedics when we found Archie on the other side of the house. We searched the house and found his wife in the bathroom. We taped it off. And by that time the driveway was full of vehicles, new concrete or not."

Merci looked at him. "Next time think before you open a parking lot."

Dobbs looked away.

"Anyway," said Crowder. "We rang the bell but didn't get an answer. Porch lights off, but lights on inside. Decided to walk around the house, see what we could see. Wildcraft was on his back on the walkway, about halfway around. Bleeding from the head but still breathing. Wearing a robe. Handgun beside him. Then, like Dobbs said, we called in, went inside and found the wife. I left two footprints and a knee print in that bathroom somewhere. You know, checked her artery, but there was nothing."