Hard to get more obvious than that. She shook her head and said nothing.
Zamorra shrugged and glanced outside. 'I've got us lined up with her parents for five o'clock.'
'What about his?'
'They came in last night from Northern California. The father said they'd be at the hospital all day tomorrow. He said they'd be here until we put the guy who did this in a coffin.'
'That will be a wonderful day.'
Rayborn had no guilt over her beliefs on crime and punishment. You do the crime, you do the time. So far as murderers lying in wait well, off with their heads.
She once had the idea that there should be a countywide tax fund for victims of the worst crimes. Their survivors would get lots of money. Even at only five dollars per capita, you'd come up with fifteen million a year for the fund. She would implement it when she was elected sheriff, sometime around the age of fifty-eight. But she'd thought of all the people who'd kill each other just for that money and shook her head. Human nature, she thought. Don't get it.
And she'd never be sheriff of Orange County anyway. That had been a dream. Before Mike McNally and a man she'd killed, before the grand jury testimony she gave. Now she was awake.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That afternoon Archie woke again for a few seconds, heard the sounds, saw the faces. So bright here, so loud.
He understood that he was Archie Wildcraft, Deputy 2, Orange County Sheriff's Department. That he was married to Gwen. That they lived in a nice home in the hills. These facts struck him as weightless and breakable.
Then dark water.
An hour later he woke again, to see his father and mother looking down at him. He felt tears burning down his face. His father held his hand and told him that Gwen had been shot that night, too, didn't make it. Archie knew this was what he had lost that would never come back. This was the huge thing that he was missing. Gwen. His wife He couldn't picture her face, exactly. And her absence left in him something very large and very black.
So he swam down, deeper than he'd ever been. Trying to get to the bottom and stay there, to just join the darkness forever. Struggling to get to the depths. Down in the murk, burrowing through the silt and mud and rock, Archie heard the woman's voice again.
Swim. Breathe. Rest. Swim. Breathe. Rest.
The voice had the ring of authority so Archie, a young man use to taking orders, obeyed it. He trusted. He believed. He turned around pushed off the black hard bottom and swam back up.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rayborn drove her Impala down the on ramp to the Riverside Freeway, looking ahead at four lanes of crawling, belching cars. Like the border at TJ, she thought, everything but the kids selling piggy banks and churros.
What a mess. She barged her way in and finally got over to the car-pool lane, which was doing thirty.
Zamorra sat neatly beside her, suit coat still on, looking out the side window. She'd never seen him with his tie so much as loosened, even when he'd come back from seeing his dying wife in the hospital and his face looked like he was dying too.
In the eight months since then Merci had come to love and respect him. For the first two months after Zamorra's wife had died, Merci had watched him thicken with booze and lassitude. He never complained about what he was going through. He seemed hungover every day, though she didn't think he always was. She suspected he had a string of temporary girlfriends, and some evidence to support this suspicion, but she never asked and he never told. Everything else, they talked about. Tentatively at first, like panelists. But as the early months dragged on, Merci was able to talk to him about the death of Hess, and Zamorra about the death of Janine. It was easy, talking with someone who'd lived through something similar. Like exchanging terrible, valuable gifts. And though Merci blamed herself for what had happened to Hess and Zamorra blamed God for Janine, there was enough loss, rage, sadness and guilt between them to begin a friendship. It never felt to her like the losers' club, though. The Loss Club, maybe. She thought there was something noble in their sufferings, hard as it sometimes was to locate.
After a couple of months Zamorra must have quit the heavy booze She knew he'd gotten himself back to his beloved boxing gym in Westminster. He started to look like himself again, even if he often seemed to be a thousand miles away in his mind. She admired the toughness that allowed him to climb out of the hole that he'd fallen into. And she admired the depth of feeling that had allowed him to fall into that hole to begin with.
A secret love began to grow. Secret because she still loved Hess and because Paul still loved Janine. Secret because only a few short months earlier she had been fooled into betraying Mike McNally whom she knew-even while she was betraying him-loved her. How do you offer an unfaithful, mistaken heart to someone who'd remained so true? And secret because they were partners. Their arrest record was eighty-four percent, highest in the detail. Why risk screwing up a good team and complicating the life of yet another man? Were her uncertain emotions worth that?
But Rayborn couldn't reason away her feelings. As the weeks went by she was struck by all of Zamorra's good qualities-his good manners and good looks, his skill as an investigator, his personal neatness He was gentle, unselfish, considerate. He was sensitive to other people's feelings. He was slow to answer but concise when he did. He was observant, often gathering more than her in shared encounters. He understood subtleties that, in her opinion, would have to be explained to most other men. She was also drawn to the darkness in him-no the grief, but the violence he concealed. The anger. More than once she saw it flare up in him at suspects and informants and convicts and belligerent citizens. He always controlled it, but it was there. She believed it to be considerable. And she respected him for keeping it safe but ready, like a gun.
She liked the way he smelled. She liked the little curves that made double parentheses around his occasional smiles. Even the nasty lump: he got in the gym. And how in profile his eyelashes looked sad. She imagined touching him and being touched. Wondered how his cleanly shaven cheek would feel against her neck. Wondered how his wiry arms would feel around her, what his flat boxer's chest would feel like against hers. Sometimes she'd picture him and herself together and she'd smile inwardly because he was two inches shorter than she was. This amused her and made her think of the famous actors she'd heard about who were shot from heightening angles. In particular Yul Brynner standing on a box in
The King and, according to her mother, who saw the movie something like twenty times. span›
Merci couldn't help imagining what their children might look like. And how terrific it would be for Tim Jr. to have a brother or sister. She liked to picture that pink house on the beach in Mexico, but instead of just her and Hess and Tim Jr. staying in it, now there were also Paul and their child, a girl she'd named Ann, in fact. Ann and Tim Jr. got along beautifully. As did Hess and Zamorra. Merci loved them all equally but in different ways and they were always exceptionally happy.
So she waited to see if Paul was feeling the same way. She doubted it. She pictured him with someone petite, blonde and not associated with law enforcement. She would be elegant and feminine, but not showy about it. She would be devoted to him instead of her career. She would have that little bit of class that Paul had-a genuine appreciation for fine things. She would be eager to please him and would instinctively understand how, or find out. Merci tried not to be prejudiced toward the moronic slut. If she was good for Paul she would support them in every way she could.
But Zamorra showed no signs of interest in Merci. At least any that she could find. She toyed with the idea of telling him, or showing him what she was feeling. But it seemed wrong. Zamorra would love her when he was ready, or he would not. She believed there was nothing she could do about scheduling a man's heart, nothing she
