Black Water

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "We've got an all-unit alert for him," said the sheriff. "All-agency, all-unit. Nobody's seen him. Yet. We've got surveillance teams watching both sets of parents and the sister."

  "He called from a pay phone, I believe. I heard road noise, two Harley-Davidsons."

  Abelera eyed her. "I've called a press conference for one o'clock today. That's enough time to get it out onto the evening news. I've got Public Information blowing up two department photographs of Wildcraft, to be put on easels beside the podium. I've got stills from

  the CNB video to show. I've got Dr. John Stebbins coming in to explain Wildcraft's precarious medical condition. And you will conduct the conference, telling our community that we need the deputy's whereabouts reported immediately. You have his trust."

  "I think so, at least some of it."

  "Then I want you to use it to get him in here."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You will indicate that we have no plans to charge Wildcraft with the murder of his wife. You may indicate that we do wish to question him in this matter. You will deny that the district attorney plans to charge him with threatening Mr. Brice but you will express deep concern about Mr. Wildcraft's apparently suicidal statement. You will be telling Mr. Wildcraft—because that's who this damned circus is really for—that we are concerned first and foremost for his well-being. You will order him to please report to the nearest law enforcement or medical facility as soon as possible. And when we get him, Sergeant Rayborn, I'll be turning this case over to Wheeler and Teague. Am I not clear on any of this?"

  "I think you're making a mistake, sir."

  "That's not what I asked you."

  "No, sir, you're very clear on what you want."

  "Sergeant, I don't care about your personal feelings regarding this deputy. He's a suspect, whether you choose to believe it or not. His prints are on his gun. His gun was used to kill his wife. He fired that gun. He left the hospital without our authorization and then he ran and hid. Those are facts."

  "Yes, sir, they are. But, sir, please let me continue as lead investigator. I've made mistakes but I'll correct them. I'll close it. This isn't a matter of feelings. Forget my feelings. I don't like them any more than you do. But I have to be successful on this case. It's absolutely necessary. If you pull me, you may as well write me out of Homicide Detail. That would be two disasters in a row, sir. Don't do that to me."

  In the silence that followed, Merci tried to think loud. Tried to make her thoughts clearly audible, because she would go to her grave never putting these thoughts into words, never saying the words to another living soul, true as they were. But Abelera needed to hear them, and she willed those thoughts into his ears while her dark brown eyes stared into his.

  I put you here. My blood and shame opened this office for you. I almost died for you. I need your help now. Give me your help.

  The sheriff broke off this time, looking out the same window Merci had looked out of, at the same damp, warming morning. He pushed back in the rolling chair and stood.

  "All right, Rayborn. All right."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  T he FBI Orange County Investigative Resident Agency is housed in four-story building not far from Sheriff's Headquarters. The building has other tenants besides the FBI, one of which is the Government/Courts Bureau of the Orange County Journal. The building wraps around a ground floor courtyard that is shaded by potted palms and is cool even on late August mornings. Merci was early enough to try the ground-floor ladies' room, but it was secured with a brawn lock system and she didn't have the numbers.

  Komer led Merci and Zamorra to his office on the second floor and closed the door. He poured three coffees from a pot on a stand and offered it black and without questions.

  "Well, it's obvious by now that Sistel is having some problem with MiraVen," he said.

  "I didn't know until this morning," said Merci.

  "Almost nobody did. Sistel kept it quiet as long as they could--- no reason to worry the shareholders until you have to."

  "What happened?" asked Zamorra.

  "I don't know yet. But Sistel is claiming that there's a major problem obtaining the snake poison. The short supply—they say—was conveniently omitted by OrganiVen during the purchase negotiations."

  "Fraudulently omitted?" Zamorra asked.

  "Sistel would like us to use that word. Then we can go after the OrganiVen people. That's my job, to determine if there's been fraud or not. And if so, take down the fraudsters. It takes time. Everybody's got a line. And the good fraudsters, they can steal a lot of money without leaving a trail."

  Komer folded his hands and leaned on his elbows. He was younger than Merci had expected, forty, maybe, with short straight brown hair, brown shoes and brown leather on his hip with what looked like a Smith nine inside it.

  "I've been looking at OrganiVen for almost a week now. I didn't connect Gwen and Archie Wildcraft with OrganiVen until yesterday."

  "They made almost two million from it," said Merci.

  Komer nodded. "And you'll be interested to know they were more involved than just as investors. Gwen was, anyway. She became an employee for almost six months. She helped raise capital. I'm not sure how much. I'm not sure what her arrangement was. But she spent a lot of time at the OrganiVen building."

  "We wondered," said Zamorra. "With all the promotional material we found in their home office."

  Komer sat back and looked at them. "OrganiVen received early money from a venture company called SunCo Capital. Heard of it?"

  Merci shook her head and saw Zamorra doing the same.

  "You're not alone," said Komer. "It existed for roughly two years, then evaporated. I ran across it when I got into the financial side of OrganiVen. I recognized the players immediately. SunCo is actually spelled ROC."

  "Russian Organized Crime," said Zamorra. Komer was already nodding. "Right here in the home of Disneyland and the master-planned community. SunCo was just two guys, as far as I can tell. Sonny Charles is an Anglicized alias for Sergei Cherbrenko. Nice guy. Came to the United States when he was twenty years old. A gay man. Did okay in insurance fraud up in L.A.—standard car accident stuff. But he really scored here in Orange County when he started up a company that bought out the life insurance policies of AIDS patients for fifty cents on the dollar. He called the company Rescue Financial. Heroic, isn't it? It was even legal. He was the scourge of Laguna Beach in the early eighties, made a lot of money watching his customers die. We got him on a boiler-room scam eight years ago—working senior citizens on a phony group medical insurance deal. He's been out for three years, so he obviously found gainful employment with SunCo Capital."

  Komer handed Merci a file. Attached to the inside of the front cover were reasonably good booking shots—two profiles and a frontal. Sonny Charles was a sharp-faced blond who looked about as trustworthy as a scorpion.

  "Of course Sonny didn't accomplish all this alone," said Kome "He's got a helper—Zlatan Vorapin. Vorapin's got half a dozen aliases, one of which is Al Apin—which he used for his SunCo dealing: He's also got a Soviet jacket—robbery, extortion, debt collection, extortive money lending. He came west in eighty-two. In eighty-eight we had a high-level ROC captain cold on an extortion case. But the victim was shot in the head before he could testify. We think Zlatan was the shooter but we couldn't prove it. LAPD got him on assault back in ninety—a nineteen-year-old girl. He was bringing poor young women in from the Balkans, making them work as prostitutes to pay off their transport. Nobody would talk to us, especially the women. Since then, nothing. We heard that he and Cherbrenko moved here to Orange County for a more affluent and trusting work environment. They're supposedly more into the white-collar things. Less violence, more profit. Vorapin's a hard guy to find, considering that he's six-ten, three thirty."

  Merci's heart was beating steady and true and she felt it in her temples. Vorapeen, she thought: like a hammer. She looked over at Zamorra, who wore a cold smile.

  "We got size
sixteen shoe prints by the Wildcrafts' walkway," she said. "About eight feet from where Archie went down."

  Komer looked at her and said nothing.

  "And more prints by an abandoned Cadillac with plates similar to one seen leaving the Wildcraft’s crime scene. Two witnesses say huge, dark hair, short beard, thick glasses. The other blond and slender."

  A smile crossed Komer's face as he handed Merci another file. She opened it and studied the enormous head, the unimpressed eyes and the wronged, infantile lips of Zlatan Vorapin. The top set of mugs showed him with his shaded rectangular eyeglasses, the bottom set without.

  "Oh, man," she said quietly. Vorapeen.

  Komer just shook his head.

  "SunCo is long gone, Sergeant. Hit and run, these guys—they start a new company for every new scam. Our last contact with Cherbrenko was early nineteen ninety-nine. For Vorapin, two years before that. They're the most accomplished bureau-rats in the world. They just vanish into the system—multiple ID's, driver's licenses, credit cards. Burn companies within burn companies. The whole thing. We got four different sets of pretty good ID off of Vorapin. Five off of Cherbrenko. And that's just what we found."

  "I don't imagine their fellow Russians are too helpful in finding them for you."

  "Nobody knows anything. Let me tell you, the Russians are great at stock scams because they're educated to survive in a bureaucracy. So they can find a way to use the system. They love the taste of red tape. Seventy years of life under the KGB makes you resourceful. Life as KGB makes you ruthless. Put people like that together and you get very effective bad guys."

  "But you don't know what the scam was?"

  "I'm looking. I'm working it. Sistel's squawking about the supply of the venom, and that's all I should say right now."

  "You'd think rattlesnakes are pretty easy to get," said Rayborn. "All those reptile farms in Florida with the big ugly things crawling over each other. Those roundups in Texas and Oklahoma. You know, belts and key chains and snake chili."

  "Yeah. But according to Sistel, not true."

  Merci tried to think this one out—can't they milk the damned things, put the stuff in the refrigerator with the butter and cheese?"

  "I know the scam was good," said Komer. "It had to be to fool B. B. Sistel. Whatever it was, it just started coming home to roost a couple of months ago. That's when Sistel launched their own investigation. A month later they contacted the FTC, which vetted the story, then contacted us. Sistel tried to time the announcement of the restructure with an optimistic earnings forecast for the fourth quarter. Didn't really work. I know for a fact that when Sistel cries foul and guys like Charles and Apin are involved, it spells fraud. Capital letters. And when a murder victim was working for these guys, well, I don't know what to think. Nothing good, I can tell you that."

  Komer shook his head and sat back.

  Merci looked at the pictures again. "Can I get file copies?"

  "You're looking at them. They're yours."

  "Thank you."

  "Sergeant, as far as I'm concerned, this is your murder and my stock fraud. I'll help you all I can. And I'd sure appreciate your help back."

  "You'll have it."

  "May I have a copy of your file, when it's convenient?"

  "I'll have one on your desk by two this afternoon. Would it be possible for you to clear Ron Billingham over at Sistel to talk with me? He asked me to call back when I'd talked to Ardith Day."

  He looked hard at her. "I'll clear it. Ron's a good guy. He was with us for quite a few years."

  "Can you connect Apin to a local limousine service?"

  Komer thought for a moment, eyes roving the ceiling. "No. But the ROC had their hands in some of the Los Angeles limo operations back in the early nineties. Give me a couple of days, I'll see if there a local angle."

  "Agent Komer, thanks again."

  They stood. Komer regarded her with the casually optimistic look that in law enforcement always means suspicion. "Is Deputy Wildcraft still at large?"

  She nodded.

  "That video was damaging. I understand the evidence against him is strong, and he talked suicide. But if the size sixteens were Vorapin' maybe he was there that night. Maybe these gentlemen framed Wildcraft for it."

  "I think it's possible," she said. And she thought: nobody's framing a fellow deputy on me again, ever. She felt the skin on her face betray her but she didn't care.

  Komer offered his hand and she shook it.

  They walked down Flower toward the Sheriff's Headquarters. The noon heat was close and personal, and Rayborn was thinking about the Russians.

  "I talked to Priscilla after work yesterday," said Zamorra. "I don't think she was after Archie. I think she had her hands full with her own husband."

  "Does she seem like the type who'd yell about him to her brother-in-law?"

  "The night before Gwen's birthday Brock told Priscilla that he was having an affair. She was furious about it. Still is. When she picked up Archie the next day, she snapped, blew off steam."

  "You believe that?"

  "Yeah. She had to do something, or go crazy."

  "I'd have blown it off on Brock."

  "She couldn't. He spent the night with the new girl."

  The press conference was held in a first-floor courthouse conference room. Merci stopped in the doorway, unhappily baffled by the crowd.

  George and Natalie Wildcraft were there, sitting with Gwen's parents, Lee and Earla Kuerner. Who told them?

  Likewise, civil rights lawyer Connie Astrahan and a cadre of three women who sat at the end of the front row of fold-up chairs, murmuring like conspirators,

  Likewise, the head of the Sheriff Deputy Association, an attorney named Dave Dunphy, who glanced at her dismissively then turned back to his group of deputies. She knew them—all sergeants or higher—loyal remnants of Chuck Brighton's old guard who thought that she had betrayed the department by telling the truth about it.

  Likewise, at the other end of the chairs, a loose coalition of what Merci privately referred to as "my people," mostly younger deputies who had stuck with her through those dark and agonizing days winter.

  Dr. John Stebbms sat at a table beside the podium, talking Gary Brice.

  CNB's pretty Michelle Howland was there, as were reporters two of the networks. Merci recognized half a dozen print journalists who specialized in the crime beat, and attendant photogs. And two columnists who specialized in human interest, cheer-the-underdog stories. A magazine writer. And the publisher of Orange County's native newspaper, County Weekly. CBS and KFWB radio were there, even a reporter from the campus PBS station at UC Irvine.

  The podium was already awash in light, the twin blow-ups of Wildcraft easeled on either side like candidate posters at a political rally. The one on the right was taken from Brice's video footage, and showed Archie by the pool in one of his less maniacal moments, crop the shoulders to omit the shotgun.

  "I hate these things," she muttered to Zamorra.

  "Never let 'em see you sweat."

  "That's all they see me do."

  Merci butted between Stebbins and Brice, nodding to the surgeon and turning to the reporter. "That stunk, what you did to Wildcraft."

  "I didn't plan it that way."

  "You made him look crazy for a story."

  "I did? But not the shotgun or the threats or the somewhat destabilized glare in his eyes?"

  "I wish you knew your place," she said. "But you don't, too late for you to learn. Will you excuse me for a minute while with the doctor? Beat it, Gary."

  Brice tried to cover his humiliation with a smile but his red face a giveaway. Merci looked at Stebbins and shrugged. She didn’t have anything to say to him, her words to Brice were just a way of shoving him around a little.

  "Sorry about this," she said.

  "It's okay. Do I have to answer questions?"

  "You can tell them about Archie's medical condition, then walk out of here if you want. The marshal will let you
through the back door."

  "I'm going to take you up on that."

  She walked over to the Kuerners and the Wildcrafts and said hello to them. The men shook her hand, but Earla looked away and Natalie peered at her like a wolverine ready to jump. Merci felt the new chill, the clear message that she was out to get Archie, under the guise of wanting to protect him.

  Rayborn reluctantly squared herself behind the podium and waited for everyone to take a seat.

  She thanked them for coming.

  She introduced Dr. John Stebbins, who nervously took Merci's place at the microphone and spoke of Deputy Wildcraft's medical condition: threat of infection, threat of edema, threat of seizure, threat of bleeding; loss of memory, possible hallucination, confabulation and erratic behavior.

  "Is he suicidal?" asked Michelle Howland.

  "That's not my area. I can't answer that."

  "Is he dangerous?"

  Stebbins cast a panicked glance at Rayborn, who shrugged encouragingly, trying to indicate the doctor could answer or not, up to him.

  "I can't answer that, either. He's unpredictable," said Stebbins. "We just don't know. We've got to get him back under medical care. That is the only thing I can tell you for certain. I'm due in surgery in one hour. Thank you."

  Stebbins banged his knee on the table leg on his way toward the back door, but the marshal had it open and waiting, and the doctor sidled out like a spy.

  Rayborn went to the podium, looked up and focused on the CNB shooter because she'd never met him and he was a neutral being to her. She tried her best to sound like the cops she'd seen on TV, but she wasn't very good at talking that talk.

  "We called this conference because we need Deputy Wildcraft to turn himself in to the nearest medical or law enforcement facility as soon as possible. We ask that anyone who has information on Mr. Wildcraft's whereabouts contact us immediately. It's for his own good. Mr. Wildcraft has a bad head wound, and as you know, the bullet still lodged in him. He needs medical attention, as Dr. Stebbins said. I want to stress that Deputy Wildcraft is not under warrant for arrest. We want to talk to him about the murder of his wife, Gwen, because he's a possible witness. No charges have been filed in regard to the confrontation with Mr. Brice on Monday morning. We need to question Deputy Wildcraft. We understand that the deputy is despondent over the death of his wife, is suffering a bad wound, and possibly feel hounded by certain members of the media. We're with you, Archie," she said, mustering a small smile. "Come back and talk to us. Questions?"