'Ryan Dawes isn't seeing it quite your way either,' said Gilliam.
'Yeah. And A Madden's hovering over me like a driving teacher.'
'Look, Merci, whether to arrest and charge Wildcraft with this is Vince and Clay Brenkus's call. Let them do their jobs, and we'll do ours.'
Again, she pictured Wildcraft in court:
I have no memory of that… I don't think so… we made love by the beach that night… wait, I just remembered.
Christ, she thought: and his fingerprints all over the gun that killed her, and her blood on his robe? The jury may as well bring an electric chair and an extension cord with them.
She thought for a moment. 'Okay, you think he did it. But what would you do if you were me? If you believed in your heart that he didn't?'
Gilliam said nothing for a beat, then he cleared his throat. 'I'd just ask him lots of questions and listen hard to his answers. If Wildcraft did it, it's going to come out. He can't talk his way out of it with a bullet in his head. I mean, he'll never be able to keep his story straight. The way I see it, he tried to kill himself. He wasn't planning on being around to help with his defense, so to speak. 'She agreed with that, but said nothing.
'And I'd look for a pair of size-sixteen Foot Rites somewhere on his property. The bottom of a trash can would be a likely place to start.'
'Do you really think he set it up to look like a third party?'
'No. But it's possible, and if he did, he didn't have to work very hard at it-some footprints and a rock through his own window.'
'Then off himself? Why bother with all the extra work if he was going to do that?'
'Because he didn't want to get caught. He's a cop. Even dead, he didn't want to get caught.'
'Death before dishonor.'
'That's part of it. Vanity, arrogance and pride come to mind, too.
'I thought was cynical.'span›
'Give yourself about twenty years.'
She thought about that. Twenty years from now she'd be fifty-seven. Once, she believed she'd be running for sheriff of Orange County about then. Now, after her grand jury appearance, the drear seemed bitter and comic.
'The rumor is, he had a temper,' said Gilliam.
'I've heard that, too.'
'Used to, anyway. God knows what that bullet left him with.'
She thanked Gilliam and punched off, feeling the exit of sweet hope as it pinwheeled down and away.
She got out her blue notebook and dialed William Jones's number. She got a rather ditzy sounding young woman who laughed and said she' check but usually Bill was, well, not exactly sober this late.
Actually, he sounded pretty good to Merci, and he remembered he immediately. She asked him if he knew what day the Wildcrafts' gardener usually came.
Mondays or Tuesdays, pretty sure, said Bill. Could always tell b the little truck and the loud leaf blower.
'What's he look like?' she asked. 'Like a gardener. Mexican, regular size. He gets here around sever leaves about three. I'll call you next time he's here. Tell me how Archie's doing. The papers don't tell you very much and the nurses say the same thing every time I call.'
'I just saw him. He's awake and lucid, but tired.'
'He's going to make it. Archie's strong as a horse. I'd see him washing his car out here on Sunday mornings and he had muscles on him you wouldn't believe. Not the gym kind, the baseball kind. Long muscles for running and throwing. I know because I played some ball back in high school. That was quite a while ago.'
'For me it was, too.'
She gave him her office and pager numbers, then thanked him again and hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
George Wildcraft was a tall, wiry man with an outdoorsman's face and patient green eyes. Merci was right about the teeth and tan. She'd made him for a salesman by his phone attitude, but now saw that she had been wrong. Weathered hands with dark creases, scarred fingers. She put him at sixty and in one of the building trades- carpentry, maybe, or electric or plumbing.
Natalie looked ten years older. She was very petite, leathery, and pretty in a miniaturized kind of way. Her hand seemed no larger than a monkey's when Merci shook it. Her engagement diamond was enormous.
They sat at a round glass table in the atrium coffee shop of a hotel in Newport Beach. The August sunlight filtered down through a frosted skylight and reaching palm trees. Merci knew they were staying at a Best Western in Santa Ana but it didn't matter to her where they talked.
The waiter who took their drink orders looked like a guy from a magazine ad.
'What do you have?' asked Natalie. 'What evidence?'
Merci sat back. 'We have a lot of evidence, Mrs. Wildcraft.'
'Natalie.'
'Natalie. Too much to go into specifically. Not all of it seeming to point to the same thing. That's the way it is in lots of cases.'
'Who did it?' she asked. For a small woman her voice was rough and low. From that and the lines on her face Merci figured her for a thirty-year smoker. Rayborn herself had smoked a pack a day for ten years but had quit four years back. She missed the cigarettes heartily and still dreamed about smoking. But she wanted to live longer for Tim and had always hated the smell of tobacco smoke on her fingers and clothes. And the wheeze high in her lungs when she lay down at night. She still thought that the smell of a freshly opened pack of cigarettes was one of the three best in the world, right behind a pouch of fresh good coffee and the top of Tim's head.
'We don't know.'
'Is Archie a suspect?'
'No.'
'That's a common thing for cops to do, though, kill themselves and their wife.'
'Not common, Natalie. But law enforcement officers do end their lives more often than others.'
'He didn't.'
'I don't think he did, either. But there's some hard evidence that points at him.'
'What evidence?'
'I can't tell you.'
'Can't or won't?'
'Both.'
Natalie latched her hard brown eyes onto Merci's. 'No one knows him like George and I know him. From when he was young until right now, he's been honest and truthful and good. Completely honest. I can read him like a book. He never could fool me, not for a second. He told me he didn't do it, and I guarantee you he didn't.'
The waiter brought the coffees but nobody wanted breakfast. He looked disappointed.
'What did you think of Gwen?' Merci asked.
Natalie sat back, looked at her husband, then at Merci again. 'We thought she was a wonderful girl. George?'
George Wildcraft nodded. His green eyes were full of expression. 'She was a fine girl. We loved her and so did Arch.'
With this, George looked down at the glass tabletop, as did Natalie.
Like it had said something. Merci watched them, attuned to their private frequencies of grief. Neither spoke.
'Tell me about Archie,' said Merci. 'You said he was honest and truthful and good?'
Natalie finally looked up, a tear in the corner of one eye. She smiled. 'Well, not all the time, Detective Rayborn. He was a handful when he was young. He was all boy. You know what I mean.'
