She sighed and looked at Clark. 'I don't think he did it. I don't think he put that bullet in his own head. Someone shot him, then took his weapon and shot his wife. Then came back and put the gun in his hand.'
'Fired it once, to get the metals on his skin?'
'Yeah.'
'Why?'
'I don't know. But Archie had no motive for any of this. He was happy, in love with his wife. Or so his friends say. Pretty house they lived in-you could tell they took pride in it. Someone threw a rock through the slider in the living room, and I think that's what got Archie out of bed that morning. I think that's why it was thrown. Neighbor saw a black Caddy driving away, just after he called in the shot. Patrol saw a black Caddy with two guys in it, leaving the vicinity at the same time. Cal plates, first two letters OM. We put out a countywide all-enforcement but nothing popped.'
Clark stopped whatever he was doing and stared at her. 'That's a heck of a frame job.'
She looked down at the paper. 'Yeah. We're smelling for enemies, but nothing hot yet. They had some big stock winnings last year- they ponied up twenty grand and made two million.'
'That kind of money creates its own problems.'
'The parents say it was all legal, all aboveboard.'
'But still-you turn a little money into a fortune in a few months, and all sorts of reactions take place. It's almost chemical.'
She nodded and noted that the stock market arrows were all pointing down on the business page. 'The sister's kind of interesting,' she said.
'Oh?'
'Younger than Gwen. Just as pretty. Was over at Archie's the day of the murder when Gwen was with her parents in Norco. The neighbor heard them arguing. Loud. What do you argue with your brother-in-law about, on your sister's birthday, while she's not there? The sister says they weren't arguing, it was just her going off about her future ex. Feels… not right. These two beautiful major babe sisters, the young hunk who's just raked in two million. I don't know. Just or of those feelings you get. But Archie doing that to Gwen and himself. That feels flat- out wrong. I hope to God he wakes up with a clear head and can tell us what really happened.'
Clark said nothing for a moment. His expression said don't count on that, but he had the good sense not to say it out loud. 'Your instincts are good, Merci.'
'When they're not bad.'
'Come on.'
'Well, yeah, they're getting better, I hope.'
'Daughter, do something nice for yourself-be a friend to you.'
'Yeah yeah yeah.'
Tim followed this conversation but said nothing. He stared into the space midway between his mother and grandfather with a dazed expression, which meant he was concentrating. She used to think he was drifting or working on a bowel movement until he started repeating things or asking about things she never even knew he'd heard. Shi loved the way his eyes looked when he was drinking in the world.
'I had one of the records deputies burn me copies of Wildcraft'; felony court transcripts in the last two years,' she said. 'I brought them home for some light reading tonight. Besides the huge income one thing you make being a deputy is an enemy or two.'
'One of those fringe benefits.'
'I wonder why nobody calls them fringe anymore.'
'I call 'em fringe,' said Tim, snapping out of it.
'Prove it.'
'Fringe.'
'You do. Very good.'
'Very not good?'
She smiled and leaned forward, right in his face. 'Okay, Mr. Negative.'
Tim laughed and pinched her nose and Merci asked him for a kiss. When he said no, she faked a pout and he gave in. His hands were soft and warm on her cheeks. It seemed like he got heavier every day, but still, she loved him on her lap, right up there close where she could smell his breath and his hair and touch the small parts of his perfect body. When she looked at Tim, then thought about her job, she wondered what happened to people. To start out so sweet and end up so dismal. She'd seen a lot of what the world does to people, and what they do to the world, but it had never engaged her sympathy until Tim Jr.
Precious little man, she thought: what will it do to you?
'First week I worked the jail an inmate promised to kill me when he got out,' said Clark.
'You never told me that.'
Which was typical of her father: he'd rarely spoken about his work when she was a girl, and he rarely spoke of it after he retired. Merci wondered at how different they were with regard to their work. For Clark, being a deputy was just a job. For Merci it was a passion. Clark left the job at headquarters. Merci dreamed it. Clark hardly talked about his work at all. But work was just about all Merci talked about. She understood that she'd gotten her drive and enthusiasm from her mother. Her stubbornness and general misanthropy, too. And she understood how difficult it must have been for them, such opposites in so many ways.
'It was strange,' he said. 'This guy was in on an assault charge. He was a biker, one of the Hessians, a skinny guy with red hair and freckles and a straggly little beard. Smitty. Smitty Cole. Cole took one look at me and started working me. Dissing me, you'd call it now. And he did a good job of it-he saw right through me. He called himself the Prophet, claimed that God told him what other people were thinking. He was maybe twenty-six or — seven, I was twenty-one or — two. Talking trash about me, talking trash about the job, talking trash about your mother. It got directly under my skin and one day I lost my temper and hit him in the stomach. Then across the chin. Hard. Knocked him clean out.'
Merci's father suddenly took on a new respect in her eyes. 'You punched him out?'
'Well, yes.'
'That's great, Dad.'
He looked at her with mild disbelief, an expression that she'd known as far back as she could remember.
'Back then, things were a little looser in the jail. We didn't pit gladiators like the guards up at Corcoran, but you know, it was tit for tat.'
'And you'd been tatted.'
'That was the only time I ever struck an inmate.'
'Well, I'm glad you clocked the creep. When he woke up, he said he'd kill you?'
Clark glanced at Tim on her lap. 'A few days later. Looked at me in the mess hall, pretty much rabid, and told me he'd, ah… deal with me when he got out. I believed him. Maybe because I was young. Bui it registered in a way I didn't like. Maybe because he'd said other things that were true.'
Merci waited for the punch line, which was fairly obvious, but she wanted to hear details, if there were any.
'Died in a drug deal gone bad,' said Clark, forking the chicken onto plates. He glanced at Tim again, then at Merci. 'Someone… removed his head area with a ten-gauge item made for waterfowling.'
'Bummer. Hungry, Tim?'
'Not hungry.'
'Too bad, little man. Let's eat!'
After dinner she poured a substantial scotch and water and turned on the living room TV for Tim. He liked Teletubbies — a PBS children's program that Merci considered hallucinogenic but harmless. It was about cuddly creatures with televisions implanted in their stomachs living in tunnels under a phony golf course that grew big plastic flowers and had radio broadcasts coming out of evil-looking speakers. The Teletubbies themselves scurried around like potbellied oldsters, squeaking to one another. Cottontail rabbits loitered on the greens. The accompanying music was repetitious and infantile in a bizarre way and Merci figured the creators were '60s acid casualties with fat grants from the Corporation. Then she tried to remove this idea from her head, just another useless and probably inaccurate opinion. So many of them. She watched the Teletubbies go to bed in their underground sleeping pods and saw how this absolutely fascinated her son.
