Black Water (36 page)

He swept the knife lightly. Charles wrenched his head but couldn’t move it far because he was contained, chin to tiptoes, by the carpet roll from the home-improvement center. The roll was snugged up him with ten triple-wrapped belts of duct tape and five flat nylon straps with quick-release fasteners. Inside, his hands and ankles were secured by plastic department-issue restraints. He leaned upright in the bathroom corner, stiff as a mummy. Out in the bedroom was the mechanic's creeper on which Archie had wheeled him from the garage, along the side walkway, into the kitchen, down the hall and into the master bath. And the gag, freshly cut away to encourage free speech.

A line of blood jumped to Sonny's forehead, then washed down over and ran into his eyes.

"God," said Gwen.

"Be strong," said Archie. He reached over the carpet collar to touch the blade to Charles's carotid. A tight fit. Blood from the cut forehead eased over the knife blade and Archie's knuckles. "You've got five seconds to start talking. I don't really like this kind of thing, so I’m getting it over quick either way."

"I drove," said Pretty Blond. "Zlatan shot you and killed her. There, now you will let me go?"

"He put the gun in my hand?"

"Yes."

"And her blood on my robe."

"Yes."

Archie stared into the hard blue eyes, now blinking through the curtain of blood.

"What kind of bullet is in my head?"

"Twenty-two."

"A silenced automatic?"

Sonny nodded as the blood ran off his chin and onto the backing of the carpet.

"You'll need to tell me every detail of that night. Every small detail. And where I can find Mr. Apin when I need to. Then, if what you say turns out to be true, I'll let you go. But you'll never drive a getaway car for another murder, I can promise you that."

Archie watched the hope drain away from Sonny Charles's eyes. He turned on the small tape recorder that he'd set on the bathroom counter between the sinks.

"You've got my word, Mr. Charles. Here, let's get a bandage on that cut while you tell me what you did. Honey, do we have any rubbing alcohol?"

_R
ayborn and Zamorra sat in the blue department sedan outside Ascension Cemetery on the hope that Archie would cruise his wife funeral. They got there half an hour early for the eleven o'clock service, rolled down the windows and waited.

A few minutes later the guests began arriving. Merci watched the park near the chapel for the memorial service, saw the black suits and dresses moving with slow respect through the inland heat.

The Kuerners and the Wildcrafts arrived separately but walk into the chapel together. George drove the Mercedes, a gift from the son, with an almost sacred caution. Rayborn saw Brad Eccles--- Archie's alleged best friend—arrive with a big-hipped woman in wide black hat. A moment later Damon Reese pulled up in a new black pickup truck with pipes that made it rumble and a vinyl bed cover that gave off heat waves. Merci watched him shut the door and make his way alone into the chapel. She felt his touch on her forehead; again, wondered if he'd call like he said he would, wondered if she answer it.

"How's Kirsten?" Merci asked. She asked about Kirsten irregularly, but now seemed as good a time as ever.

"She's fine. She told me we should get married."

"What did you say back?"

"That I'm not ready."

"It's only been a year."

Zamorra was quiet for a long beat. Then, "Funny how the same amount of time can seem like a year or five minutes, depending on your mood. How about you and Frank?"

"I see him occasionally. Movies, dinner. He's real good with Tim."

"I'd like to meet him."

"One of these days we'll have you two over for dinner. Dad's a good cook. Tim would like to see you again."

"I'd like that."

"How about when we catch these Russian gangsters? That'll give all of us reason to celebrate."

"Perfect."

But she wouldn't invite Paul and Kirsten over, and she knew it, and that was fine with Rayborn. When she looked at Zamorra she felt interest and attraction, but less than before. She felt disappointment, but less of that, too. Merci did not believe that people came together "for a reason," or, certainly, that things always "happened for the best." She thought a lot of decent people got together for bad reasons, that much was obvious. But she also thought that she and Paul would be good, and it dented her pride to think that she somehow hadn't made the grade. But what
exactly
was missing? Ask him, she thought.

Priscilla Brock arrived with her husband. Merci watched them walk in, nominally together, Charles ahead by two steps, oblivious to her. Priscilla seemed not to care. Merci wondered if Gwen had had the same casual radiance.

A minute later a panel van with a wheelchair lift parked and an orderly helped a very old woman position her chair. The lift engine groaned and the woman descended to the asphalt. Merci watched her: white hair and white hands, head cocked sideways, brand-new black shoes that had never been and never would be walked in. The orderly slammed the van door shut and pushed the woman toward the chapel.

Then a group of young deputies who looked about Archie's age, fashionable guys, not meat-and-potatoes cops like Damon Reese. The kind of men who liked a little style and could pull it off. Archie's friends, she thought, and Gwen's admirers. She gave them credit for coming.

"I've heard lots of talk about this funeral the last couple of day “ said Zamorra. "Half the deputies have Archie good for the murder. The other half thinks he got himself mixed up in something he shouldn't have."

Merci watched as one of the cool young cops conferred with the woman in the wheelchair, then took over for the nodding orderly.

"That's what I got, too," said Merci.

Left unspoken was the fact that half the department wouldn't talk to Rayborn in the first place. Those who did tended to be the young men and women who had advanced and profited from Rayborn's testimony about a corrupt phalanx in Chuck Brighton's old guard. The most awful side effect of that testimony, in Rayborn's opinion, was that some good old deputies had gone down with Brighton while some undeserving younger ones had risen to replace them. By the end her grand jury appearance Merci had been ready to disclaim everybody, cash out her meager savings and take Tim down to Mexico in search of the pink house on the white beach that she had often thought about but never seen. Zamorra had not allowed her to throw away her badge.

"These deputies who've come," she said, "I respect them for showing."

Merci had never seen admin so quiet on such a hot department issue as the Wildcraft case. There had been no official guidance, meetings or memos, none of the unofficial "policy" that often leaked from behind the closed doors of the sheriff's office. Those who thought Archie was innocent were staying low, and the ones who thought was guilty were staying even lower. Lots of I-told-you-sos waiting be spoken, Merci thought. Lots of bets covered.

She watched a couple of young deputies and their wives or girlfriends stepping out of a van. The driver waited until they were out then locked the vehicle with a chirp. He looked at one of the dark windows and ran his fingertips along the hair behind his ear.

Maybe it was Wildcraft's own fault, she thought: he had built the wall around himself, he had brandished his weapon at Brice, he had the temper and the pretty wife and had stubbed his toe on more money than the guys he worked with would ever see. Maybe if Archie had been a little more open, a little more forthcoming, then people could rally behind him now, take up his cause. She had long suspected that being open and forthcoming were often methods for self-advancement rather than signs of good character, but what did this matter?

More opinions, she thought. More loud, useless opinions.

Rayborn, too young for wisdom but old enough to become tired of herself, sighed and shook her head slowly and stared out through the heat as the door of the chapel swung closed.

"So you get a deputy shot in the head," she said. "And his wife takes two in her own bathroom. He can't go to his wife's funeral because he thinks we'll put him in the hospital or under arrest or both. He's out trying to catch the creeps himself because he doesn't think we are. That isn't right."

After the memorial service the mourners drove to the grave site. The cortege moved slowly through the cemetery and Merci stayed far behind so as not to annoy the Wildcraft and Kuerner families any more than she had to. She wanted to march over there to the hole in the ground and tell them she was sorry about Gwen, that she was really pulling for Archie every way she could, really wanted to button down this case and get a little justice done for their girl. But instead she parked by the rounded curb and endured a long hostile stare from Natalie Wildcraft as she walked from her Mercedes to the grave.

From the car Merci could see the dark mourners and the green hillock and a pile of red earth covered by a blue tarp. There were two big black boxes that looked like loudspeakers—far too much power, she thought, for the meager audience. The casket was gunmetal gray with gold accents. She flashed on Gwen in her bathroom—the robe and her blood and the cell phone in the sink, and thought: what a way to go to the satin. Twenty-six years old.

She was too far away to hear what the preacher was saying. Merci caught the earnest baritone coming across the grass and asphalt to her and it seemed like that sound must always be here, part of nature, like the breeze. Why not use the speakers?

At eleven fifty-seven Merci saw the helicopter waver into view and she wondered if Archie had friends with the air patrol. Her second thought was network news. The bird squatted in the blue sky and lowered upon the graveyard, tail swinging around like a cat's as it came closer to the ground.

By then she saw it wasn't a Sheriff's Department or a news chopper, at least it wasn't marked that way. She wrote down the numbers on the tail.

It leveled off a couple of hundred feet above the grave and she could see hair and black clothes rippling and jumping in the rotor wind, and hear the bone-tickling
whump whump whump
of the blades. Down it came, another fifty feet. The dirt swirled up from the edges of the tarp and the tarp jittered against the mound.

Then the oddest thing: Natalie Wildcraft beside the preacher, holding him by the arm with one hand and raising her other one high, waving it back and forth as she tried to shout above the roar to the mourners.

Merci could see the guy in the chopper, not the pilot but the man behind him in a baseball cap, bracing himself behind the open door of the passenger bay. He threw something from what looked like a bucket. A faint pink burst spotted the air, then exploded in the turbulent wind from the rotors.

Two of the deputies drew down on one knee, aiming up with the sidearms.

Some of the mourners covered their heads and ran in one direction others running the opposite way.

Rayborn scrambled out of the car, popped the thumb brake and started to draw her H&K, but it didn't make sense so she left her hand on the grip and watched. Another burst from above, and another, looked like the man was airing out a bedsheet next, and the air filled again with a pale storm of color that blew apart like a pastel firewood when it hit the chopper's wind.

Natalie Wildcraft stood with both hands raised to the machine.

Merci understood. The mourners who hadn't run were waving and cheering and the helicopter dipped a little lower. More buckets of color dumped into the sky then, as the first bits settled down over the gravesite and the mourners, and the deputies stood with their sidearms now literally at their sides.

Rayborn was trotting toward the chopper, looking up as Wildcraft threw another bucket into the air. She watched the confetti wobble down, and when she was close enough to catch some she got flower blossoms and rose petals and bits of curled gold ribbon. Daisies and marigolds and periwinkles and zinnias and gazanias and geraniums and a lot she couldn't ID.

Natalie went over to the speakers, bent for a moment, then music burst forth. Merci recognized Gwen Wildcraft's soft clear voice through the mechanical percussion of the blades. Archie threw out another bucket of blossoms, then another, then what looked like another bedsheet full. Where had he gotten them all?

I've got to get through to you

I've got to get next to you

Zamorra stood beside her, a red rose petal stuck in his black hair and a look of disapproving awe on his face.

"Sonofabitch," he said quietly.

"Son of a something," said Rayborn.

She watched the sky rain flowers, jumped forward to catch a few more, but it was harder than it looked, the way the petals zigzagged in the wind and the blossoms bobbed like parachutes.

Tiny Natalie Wildcraft faced her from the grave site, her fists clenched and raised over her head like a new flyweight champion, her mouth open in exultation or challenge—no way to tell over the hugely amplified post-mortem voice of Gwen Wildcraft or the thump of the helo—but what Merci got out of it was that Natalie was offering Archie's attendance as the latest proof of his love and devotion and innocence.

A white-and-orange CNB van leaned around a curve behind them and skidded to a stop. Out spilled a shooter and Michelle Howland.

"We're in the air for this," said Zamorra. "Abelera wanted a helo on call in case the news people used choppers."