Black Water mr-3

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Then he headed for Air Glide Limousine Service in Newport Beach.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Cancun is a deputy hangout on Seventeenth Street in Santa Ana, not far from headquarters. The food is Yucatecan, good and cheap, the drinks are strong. At any hour there may be from one to twenty deputies there, and though they dress in plain clothes, there is still the bulge of weapons under jackets and trouser calves. Eyes are sharp. Conversation is quiet, and hearty smiles issue from beneath mustaches. The restaurant is crime-free.

  Merci walked in at six-fifty and found Brad Eccles waiting in corner booth. Some of the deputies nodded or smiled to her as she went past the entrance to the cantina, some of them stared through her. The restaurant was a microcosm of the department itself, divided its opinions. She hated the feeling of walking a gauntlet, but stubbornly patronized the place so as not to surrender. She would never forget the first time she'd gone in with Hess, and the smug looks she'd gotten from the men. That was before she'd come to love him, and it still irked her that people could assume things about her that proved to be true.

  Eccles was Archie Wildcraft's best friend in the department, according to everyone Merci had talked to. He was thirty-two, just off patrol and assigned to Fraud Detail. He'd been the first to toast Gwen at the party at the Rex that night.

  "So I raised my glass and said there was no way anyone as beautiful and smart as her deserved a guy like Wildcraft," he said. He took a drink off his beer and shook his head. "Just one of the ten million things I've said in my life that I wouldn't mind taking back."

  "It was a joke," she said, writing in her blue notebook.

  "Yeah."

  "Have you seen him today?"

  "No."

  "Has he called?"

  "No."

  "Anyone called you about him?"

  "Well, people wondering if I'd talked to him. Nobody knows where he is and they're worried. He didn't look too good on CNB this afternoon. He said he'd kill himself and it looked believable."

  Eccles was balding and stocky, with dark hair combed straight back. Mustache, shortsleeved blue shirt with a paisley tie, corduroy coat. Thick fingers, wedding ring. He took another drink and wiped a beer bubble off his mustache with his palm.

  Rayborn, who didn't drink unless she was at home, sipped a lemonade. "Was he a jealous husband?"

  He looked at her with a gentle frown. "Some. He was extremely proud of her. He never said anything bad about her. Gwen wasn't… um… a topic of humor with Archie. He never said this, Sergeant Rayborn, but I knew that if anyone messed with Gwen, Archie would put an end to it real quick. You didn't monkey around with Gwen, is what I'm saying. But you know, I never saw him threaten anyone, or say anything to anyone about, you know, what he'd do to them. It just wasn't a topic. Archie wasn't the kind of guy you messed with that way. Not about his wife. Very intense about her. Very serious."

  "So how did he take your toast?"

  "No problem. Archie can take a ribbing about himself. He knows who he is."

  "Was Gwen a flirt?"

  "Well… happy, cheerful. She'd touch you while she talked to you. You know, a hand on your arm or something. Hug you hello and goodbye. But not a flirt. Not a woman who would tempt you on purpose."

  "How about on accident?"

  "She was really beautiful. A guy could maybe get the wrong idea."

  "Which guy?"

  "No, that's not what I'm saying. I never saw that."

  "But you could imagine it."

  Eccles nodded.

  "What did your wife think of her?"

  He looked at her, shook his head quickly. "They got along. No problem. My wife was a little envious of their house, all the money they made. That's all."

  "What did the other wives think of her?"

  "I really can't say. I don't know."

  "How was Gwen that night?"

  "Embarrassed at first. You know, twenty people for drinks and dinner. All these packages at her place at the table. Probably a three or four-thousand-dollar evening. She grew up poor. Wasn't used to things like that."

  "And after her embarrassment?"

  "She was just… happy. Lit up. Very thankful that Archie would organize something like that. Thankful for their friends and all."

  "Drink a lot?"

  "A fair amount. We all did. Not Archie, though. He never overdoes it, that I've seen."

  "What was he like that night?"

  Eccles looked at her and drank again. He started to speak, the stopped. Another drink.

  "A little on edge. Something was bothering him. I asked him and he said just some money shit."

  "Those were his words?"

  "Yes. Exactly. He didn't want to talk about it. But Archie worried a lot, so I figured it was just, well… another worry."

  She wrote money shit and underlined it twice. Then she circled it twice, the pen carving deep into the paper. She felt a warm flood of anger come through her. It had been building for almost a week now, quietly multiplying while she was busy with other things.

  Merci sat back and looked at the cane chairs and tables, the waitresses in their short skirts, the palm trees and ceiling fans. She wanted to throw something at something.

  "This is wrong," she said. "I talk to you, I talk to his partner, I talk to his parents, his in-laws and his neighbor, and you all tell me the same thing. You tell me how great Archie is. Archie saved my life. Archie adored his wife. Archie's not overly jealous. Archie struck it rich but it didn't go to his head. Archie pays his taxes. Archie never drinks too much. Archie always sticks up for women. According to all of you, Archie's perfect. I don't believe it. I don't believe that about anybody."

  Eccles smirked, no teeth, just his mouth curving up and the mustache going with it. "Then there you have it," he said.

  "Have what?"

  He sighed and shook his head. He put his hands on the table and looked down at them.

  "Archie is… different. He's got a wall around him ten feet high. And the outside of that wall is perfect. It's totally bizarre that everyone told you I'm his best friend, because I don't know him very well at all. I like him. I respect him. I even try to be a friend. Like when I asked him what was bothering him that night. But I felt like I was prying, really pushing it, asking him something that simple. I don't talk to Archie about real things. He doesn't talk to me about them. We talked baseball and work and cars, you know-guy stuff."

  Eccles sat back and looked at her. She saw a hundred years of disappointment in his thirty-two-year-old eyes. "Maybe that's why I like him. Because I know there's so much more to him, things he won't tell me. Archie has weight, Sergeant Rayborn. He's got depth. Maybe he has secrets. Maybe some not-so-good secrets."

  "What about his temper?"

  "Oh yeah, short fuse. That's what gives him away. He's smiling and perfect, then look out. He usually controls it. He's got strong willpower. But sometimes not enough. You should have seen him take out Mark when they argued about you."

  She waited and he said nothing. Instead, he sighed, watched a waitress go by. "Are you going to arrest him?"

  "Yes."

  "Did he kill her?" Eccles asked.

  Merci sighed and watched two Burg-Theft Detail detectives head for the cantina. Burg-Theft was Clark's old detail. She leaned in close to Eccles.

  "Shit, Brad," she said quietly, "he's your best friend and you're asking me that?"

  As soon as she said this she realized that she'd made the same mistake before-sold her trust in a man too easily and too quickly.

  Eccles leaned forward. "He's not my best friend, Sergeant. I'm his best friend. And when he was smiling at Mark one second and knocking him out the next, I wondered what else he might be capable of.'

  And when Mike McNally had confessed to falling in love with nineteen-year-old prostitute who turned up dead after one of their secret little dinners at her place, Merci had wondered the same of him

  She nodded. Suspicion. Wonder. Surprise. Certainly, Eccles was e
ntitled to them. "Okay. What do you think-Archie and Gwen, bottorn line?"

  Eccles tapped his beer glass on the table. He looked at her with cold hurt in his eyes.

  "I don't know, Detective-that's what I'm trying to say. Based on what I've heard of the evidence, and what I know of Archie,

  I just damn don't know what to think."

  His face colored and his gaze caromed off of hers.

  "Well, if CNB and Gary Brice come snooping around, you don't need to say that to them," she said. "You can give him the benefit of the doubt."

  "Don't worry. I'm just suspicious, Sergeant. I don't understand people who hold out. Especially on people who are trying to be the friends. But I'm not dumb enough to talk about it on TV. Listen- how do you think this sits with me? To say what I just said about him? My friend's got a bullet in his head. I feel like Judas. But I had to say it because it's what I've seen and it's what I believe. And because Gwen's dead. Maybe Fraud is getting to me. All you hear are lies and scams."

  She considered this, laying some money on the table. "What you said was hard to admit. I respect it."

  "I hope I'm wrong. Like you were."

  She looked at him sharply but what was the point? "I do, too."

  A long silence then, observed by the ghosts of Rayborn's memory. Eccles brought out his wallet. "By the way, McNally's a racquetball friend of mine. He talks about you. Not a lot, but more than a little."

  "Don't."

  It was Merci's turn to color now, and she felt it happen.

  Eccles shrugged. "He admires you."

  "That's not possible."

  He looked at her with a level, open expression. "Maybe you know less than you think you do. I know you're a good detective. Everybody knows that. But you ought to open up a little and see what's around you. What's possible. What can happen. People are surprising. Give him a call sometime."

  Merci looked at him, allowing some pleasantness into her face. "You don't sound like a Fraud guy now. Sure you're cut out for that detail?"

  Eccles shrugged and smiled. "That was the old me talking. I was a Boy Scout-literally. That boy's not quite extinct, yet."

  "Hang on to him."

  "I'm trying."

  She got home that night after eight. Clark and Tim were at the dinner table, facing each other, Tim in his booster seat and Clark leaning forward on his elbows.

  Clark looked at her with concern. Tim didn't look her way at all. It was a typical Monday, Tim displeased by his mother's absence after two days of togetherness.

  She hugged him and he ignored her, turning his head away when she went to kiss him.

  "Thanks a lot, you ungrateful little monster," she said.

  "He just missed you."

  "Funny way to show it."

  Tim turned to look at her now. "Hi, Mom!"

  She attacked him with kisses and hugs and Tim endured it, giggling as she tickled him under his chin. Merci plopped into the chair at the head of the table, Tim to her left and Clark to her right.

  "Whew," she said. "That was a day."

  Clark stood and put his hand on her shoulder as he pivoted around her and into the kitchen. "Monkfish tonight," he said. "The poor man lobster."

  "We're poor," she said. "Perfect."

  "I saw the CNB story this afternoon. Tim watched it, too."

  "Great, Dad." She shot a glance at her father, but Clark dodged by looking into his skillet. He let Tim see and do things that she would not, and that was simply the way it was. She'd spent a year scolding her father for his permissiveness, then given up. So far as the TV was concerned, anything went.

  "Awchie is not okay?"

  "No, Archie is not okay. He's missing."

  "He is missing?"

  "Yes. For now he's missing."

  "Is not missing?"

  "You're exhausting, Tim," said Merci. "Cute, but exhausting."

  "Gary Brice called here twice," said Clark.

  "That asshole." Too late.

  "Not an asshole?"

  "I quit."

  After dinner she bathed her son. She put short pajamas on him for the heat but he insisted on wearing his cowboy boots. He sat on her lap in the bedroom rocker while she read to him. The first three stories kept him intensely focused, but then his boot heels started sliding down her leg and his body grew heavier as he tired.

  The last story was

  Da Grouchy Moocher Boogie Man, which Merci found too dark and coincidental for her taste. But Tim liked it, studying the colorful illustrations as the old man dies and the young girl holds his craggy head.

  Tim yawned and clumped across the floor to bed. Merci pulled off his boots and put them on the floor where he could see them. She pulled a sheet and one light blanket over him and turned off the light. She went back to the rocker then, for the last few words she'd have with Tim that day. This was a favorite time for her, talking to her son with the room darkened but the light from the hallway coming in. She wished it could last for hours.

  "Grouchy Moocher Boogie Man is dead?"

  "Yes, he dies in the story."

  "He is all gone?"

  "All gone. But he's just a character in a story."

  "He is not real?"

  "Exactly."

  "Daddy is all gone?"

  Her heart sank again because she'd heard this line of questioning before. There seemed to be no satisfying it for Tim, and she had come to realize that this is how the dead remain active on Earth.

  "Yes, Daddy is all gone."

  "Is dead also?"

  "Yes."

  "Is not a character in a story?"

  "Correct. He was real. Your daddy was real."

  "Name is Tim?"

  Was Tim or is Tim? She sighed quietly and felt a warm wetness in her eyes.

  "Yes. His name is Tim."

  "And he is all gone?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh."

  A few minutes later she said good night, I love you, and pulled the sheet up to his neck. Tim was silent but not asleep.

  A few minutes after nine the phone rang. It was Captain Greg Matson of Willits PD, returning her call.

  "Awfully sorry it's so late," he said. "It took me a while to get the file, then we had a shooting in a bar downtown. We get a shooting about every other year, but today was the day."

  "Get the guy?"

  "He was still in the bar when we got there. Jealous boyfriend. The woman's okay though, took a twenty-two slug through her arm.

  "It had always puzzled Rayborn that jealous boyfriends often shot their women first and their rivals second, or not at all. "Shooter had a record?"

  "Couple of D and Ds. Decent guy, really. Wife died on Lake Mendocino a few years ago. Boating accident. He never got it together after that."

  "Those are tough."

  "Yeah, but Julia Santos was even tougher."

  "Tell me."

  Captain Matson said he'd been with the Willits PD Homicide Unit back then, which led him into missing persons when foul play was suspected. Foul play was definitely suspected in the disappearance of Julia Santos, age ten. She'd left for school one morning at seven-fifty and was never seen or heard from again. Neighbors had seen an unfamiliar pickup truck but nobody got plates or even agreed on make and model.

  "The parents were clean," said Matson. "Single mom, Anna. Good lady. The father lived over in Fort Bragg but it wasn't him. He went to work that morning at seven-thirty, punched in, twenty people on the dock said he was there until ten o'clock, which was when I got there to question him.

  "We interviewed every neighbor in Julia's apartment complex. We interviewed every property owner between that apartment and the school. We polygraphed a few. We got some bloodhounds out of San Rosa and they followed a scent trail from Julia's front door to a place on Highway 101, about where it goes over the river. I always figure he got her there on the bridge, where she had less room to run."

  Merci thought for a moment. "What did you get with the polygraph? Anybody look good at all?"
>
  "No. I figured him for an out-of-towner, probably took her far away. By the time two days went by and we didn't have a girl or body, I had this damned awful feeling we'd never close it."

  "What about Archie Wildcraft?"

  "First of all, how is he?"

  "Wounded in the head, presently missing, possibly suicidal."

  "We got that video of him up here on ABC."

  "Grim."

  "I guess… well, I guess you would have arrested him before then if you had the goods."

  Merci heard the kindly accusation, but she didn't let it rattle her. "That's exactly right. I don't think he did it. But when his folks told me about Julia, it seemed worth asking you about him."

  Matson was quiet for a moment. Merci heard ice clinking in a glass. "He was eleven at the time. Big strong kid, quite an athlete. You know, it's funny. If that crime happened today I'd look at the boy real hard. I'd bring a lot of pressure. But back then, well, it was only eighteen, twenty years ago, but it was a different world. I never seriously suspected him, to be honest. I interviewed him and he struck me as a young boy who had a big crush on a cute girl. He was stunned. He was very, very serious about her and about what happened. And he never gave up hope, either. I kept in touch with George and Natalie for a few months after that, they told me about him going to the library to read news about her. He wrote her letters for half a year or so after she disappeared. Anna Santos let me read some of them-just break your heart. Like Julia had gone away on purpose and the kid was trying to talk her into coming home. But you know, the letters stopped and Archie got older and history became history."

  "Did you ever tail him?"

  Matson hesitated before he answered. "Actually, I did. He liked to take a shortcut to school through the woods, and I did follow him a couple of times."

  "Was the shortcut before or after you get to the bridge on the highway?"

  "Before."

  "And?"

  "Just a kid walking through the woods. That's all I saw. You know something-I never put that in my reports because I was ashamed I did it. But I was desperate."

  "Like you said, though, Captain, it was a different world."

  "I like the old one."

  "Me too," she said. She thought for a moment, now understanding that she was feeling like Matson had felt eighteen years ago-about the same man. "What do I need to know about Wildcraft? Captain can you tell me anything at all?"