T. Parker: Black Water

She tried to fight her dread with details. "How many microgram of lead in the residue, James?"

"Point six five. After two hours, that's the persistence level you'd expect to find from a discharged nine-millimeter autoloader. Like the one they found next to him. Good thing they hadn't washed him up at the medical center yet."

"Good thing," she said. "What about the blood on his robe?"

"We're still cooking it to check against his wife's DNA. Give me a day or two."

"Okay, I'm ready for Mrs. Wildcraft now."

"I figured you would want to see her."

"Absolutely."

"Because it will make you angry and make you work harder."

"Make me angrier."

Gilliam smiled, then colored slightly and stood. A year ago he would not have smiled. That was back when he had a schoolboy crush on her and didn't know what to do with it. At first, Merci had been too obtuse and inexperienced to know what it was. Then, one day, right out of the blue, he just told her. It seemed noble but comic, Gilliam confessed that even his wife was teasing him about her. Things got better. It was further proof that she understood men poorly.

"Ready, Paul?" she asked.

Zamorra nodded and eased himself away from the wall with a little shrug of his back.

Merci hated the autopsy room. Its stink of formaldehyde, bleach and blood. The hard edges of drains and blades, saws and suctions, scalpel and scales. The stainless steel and chrome and plastic. And those bright overhead lights that presented this torture chamber as just science. But most of all she hated it for the lightness it always brought to her head, for the cold sweat it brought to her temples, for the way it made her want to throw up, then sleep.

Gwen Wildcraft was still tabled, but there was a sheet over her. All Merci could see were her feet-small and stiff and white as fence pickets.

Gilliam lifted the sheet from Mrs. Wildcraft's face and pulled it down to just below her chin. Her skin was gray white and her eyes were closed. From the left side of her head they'd shaved a large patch of wavy dark hair. The shorn skin surrounded a small hole with ridges swollen around it. Above the hole was a brief vertical dash, like the top of an exclamation mark.

"Don't be fooled by the skin blowback," said Gilliam. "That's the entry point."

As always, Merci found it hard to fathom that a body without life had once been so full of it. Such an immensity of difference. It was like standing in a desert while the sun beat down on you-how could you believe it was once underwater? She noted with rising anger that even dead and mutilated, Gwen Wildcraft was almost beautiful.

"Now, two gunshots," said Gilliam. "One to the heart and one to the head. Both apparently nine millimeter, fired from up close. We recovered both bullets, and Buckley's working them up with the crime scene gun. The one here in the brain was a real mess, I can tell you. Mushrooming, fragmentation. Heads are hard, thank God."

Not hard enough, thought Rayborn.

Late yesterday afternoon she had run the serial number of the weapon found beside Wildcraft, confirming its registered owner as Archibald Franklin Wildcraft.

"Excuse me," muttered Gilliam, pulling the sheet down to the waist. Merci swallowed hard when she looked at the inverted Y incision, obscenely large, loosely stitched back together. The final insult, she thought.

"The other shot," Gilliam continued, "bounced off a rib and stopped inside her heart-back in the right atrium. It cut the pulmonary artery on its way by. Cause of death was coronary failure. Hard to tell whether it stopped because a bullet tore through, or because her brain was ruined. Either shot would have been fatal-the heart certainly, and the brain almost certainly. The shots came very close together in time. She died quickly, that from the histamine level and the blood loss. She still had almost four liters of blood."

"How close was the shooter?" asked Zamorra.

"Very. The heart was a Zone Four-the barrel was somewhere from six inches to two feet away. From the powder particles on her robe I'd put it at the closer end, but there still isn't any sooting. I think the heart shot occurred first-farther out, bigger target, gave the shooter a chance to get even closer for the next. The head shot was Zone One, direct contact, significant blast destruction. There's even front sight impression above the flesh tear, caused by the flesh to looning back against the barrel. The gun you got at the scene did have

^ a very small particle of bloody flesh stuck to the top of the front sight. And the barrel is heavy with blood and flesh particles. DNA to come. She might have been supine by then, and he just pushed the barrel right down against her head. There was some powder driven into the wound. We're running the same DNA comparison for Mr. Wildcraft, also."

Merci stared and let the ugliness fuel her. The waste. The arrogance. The sickness of spirit that it takes to regard another life as cheap and disposable. The fact that he would do this to another body, while his was still out there, alive and eating and smiling and sleeping and shitting like the rest of us.

She nodded almost imperceptibly, eyes steady and unblinking, lips pressed in tight between her teeth.

"You personally removed both the bullets, right, James?"

"Yes."

"Then are they nines or not? — God knows you've seen enough them."

"I'm almost sure they are, but Buckley's the man for that."

"Okay, James-you figure Wildcraft is good for her, then himself. His gun, his prints. Is that what you're seeing?"

"It fits, so far. But I wouldn't presume to do your job, Merci. Mime is enough for me."

"Paul?"

Zamorra hesitated. Merci saw that he was looking at Gwen Wildcraft's face too, with an expression that looked like hers felt.

"I talked to a couple of Wildcraft's friends last night on the phone."

He held her gaze and she knew this meant more bad news, news that Zamorra didn't want to give her in front of Gilliam.

Fucking great.

She felt her anger coming but couldn't stop it. Didn't want to. It wasn't sharp and clean like they tried to say in the books, wasn't purifying. It was heavy and cumbersome as a wagon full of rocks. Like once you pointed it in one direction and let go, you'd never get it back, never change its course. She wanted to point it at Wildcraft, for making her suspect him. She wanted to point it at Gilliam and Zamorra, for smugly assuming the worst about a fellow deputy. She wanted to point it at Mike McNally, for helping her make the worst judgment of her life, a judgment that kept on judging.

Most of all she wanted to point it at the killer of Gwen Wildcraft, but she didn't know who that was.

Yet.

"Give the woman some privacy," she said. "We'll finish in your office."

"Whatever you want," said Gilliam.

"Whatever I want is not a guilty deputy."

"I understand."

"Since the last one I arrested for murder was totally goddamned innocent."

"I do understand," said Gilliam.

"I know you do."

With two hands he replaced the sheet over Gwen Wildcraft, looking at Merci, the gleam in his eyes lost in the glare of the lights overhead.

Back in Gilliam's office Merci stood against one wall and Zamorra another. She felt anxious and nervy and physical, like she wanted to kick somebody. "Was she raped?"

Gilliam flipped back through his notebook, then stopped and smoothed a page.

Merci wondered why you'd have to look up the answer to a question like that, but she knew Gilliam was only finding his facts. Still it irritated her that he couldn't just get to the bottom of things sometimes.

"She'd had vaginal intercourse within the last three hours of her life. There was no genital bleeding, bruising, tearing or abrasions. No sign of a struggle. No semen in the mouth, throat or anus. Mrs. Wildcraft did have some light scrapes, perhaps bite marks, on the back her neck. I can't explain them. They may be sexual in nature, or they may not be. This doesn't appear to have been a sexual attack. It's possible that she was coerced into intercourse some other way than force. Or maybe the killer was interrupted. Maybe it was never his intention. That's just speculation."