'Prince John is not real. He's a character in a movie also.'
'He's in a movie also?'
'Correct.'
'Oh.'
Tim bellowed and gushed tears when the endless coming-to-video clips started, so Merci fast-forwarded it to the feature presentation.
'He's got strong opinions,' said Clark.
'Wonder where he gets those.'
Still blubbering and clutching his bow, Tim climbed into his grandfather's recliner-his new favorite place to sit. Merci stretched out on one of the couches, taking most of it up, nothing but shorts and a tank top in the hot August evening, her hair up in chopsticks. She balanced the cocktail glass on her stomach, which soon made a ring of sweat on the material. I'd pick up. She looked down at her legs, and her big feet propped one on top of the other on the arm of the sofa. She wondered if her legs were good ones. She'd been told they were good ones, but that was back in college.
She browsed the newspaper but found no good crime stories. She checked to see how the Angels were doing: fair. She had no interest at all in baseball but felt obligated to follow them because so many of the deputies did. She checked the stock page for B. B. Sistel's Friday performance: up a buck and a half.
She watched Robin Hood and Little John outrunning the sheriff's cartoon arrows. Merci didn't approve of entertainment that glorified lawbreakers, but her father had shown Tim the animated movie one day while she was gone and Tim had glommed onto it like something holy. It was too silly to take seriously, and the actors reading the parts were funny.
But she didn't really watch the movie, and she didn't really listen to the dialogue, or even to the police band scanner on the shelf just behind her. She thought instead about Archie Wildcraft and Gwen Kuerner. And their parents. And Julia and Priscilla and making two million dollars in six months on an investment of twenty grand. And what it must be like to lie in a bed knowing your wife was murdered two days ago, and that you have a bullet in your brain. That you may be a suspect. To ask for another picture of your own wife, for Goodness-sakes, because one wasn't enough to jog your bullet-riddled memory. She felt her blood pressure rise, cooled it off with a swallow of scotch.
'The Sheriff of Nottaham is bad?'
'Yes, he's bad.'
'The Sheriff of Nottaham is good?'
'No, he's bad.'
'He's good?'
'You know what he is, Tim.'
Dinner was good and it left her feeling heavy and warm and a little restless. She watched Tim watch
Robin Hood again and sipped her third drink.
Around nine, Gary Brice from the
Journal called, something he been doing on most Saturday nights for the last couple of months. At first she had just let the machine pick up, but then she started answering because Brice amused her. He'd been trying to date her for almost a year now, and she'd always said no. No because he was flip and a womanizer and ten years younger than she was and she didn't find him attractive other than as an intriguing form of male energy. The calls started off as chides about her being home on Saturday nights, then escalated into crazy invites to join him, right now, at what ever club or lounge he was drinking in. Or join us right now. Gary had 'tons' of friends, both female and male, and had guaranteed her she'd like somebody in his circle. She wondered why she just hadn't told him to quit calling, but the answer lay at the heart of her Saturday nights and she wasn't sure she wanted it.
'I don't hear drunks and bad music in the background,' she said, 'Did you take your date to the morgue?'
'I'm at the office. I've got a Sunday 'Lifestyle' piece that needed sudden attention. Our heroine, fighting an inoperable lung tumor but living life to its fullest by counseling psychotic bums-I mean mentally disordered homeless persons-just went into sudden cardiac arrest. Doesn't look good.'
'So your article will either get a little longer or a lot shorter.'
She wondered at how easily Gary Brice's glib pessimism rubbed off on her. And his curt delivery.
'Yes,' said Brice. 'These 'Lifestyle' articles are tough sledding. I loathe the upbeat do-goodism of this paper. But I love the police beat, Give me a petty scammer or a psychopath instead of someone trying to make society better. Any day.'
'You comfort the afflicted, but finance the articles with ads for liposuction and plastic surgery.'
'Precisely. You should have been a cynical reporter instead of cynical cop.'
'I can't write,' she said.
'Come have a drink with me. We'll meet somewhere you'll feel safe.'
'I always feel safe around you.'
'Then it's settled. We'll drink single malts at the speed of light, then, when you can't resist me anymore you can take me into your car and have your way with me. That big Impala would be perfect. Or you can take me to a nice hotel.'
'Do you actually have sex as much as you talk about it?'
'Almost. There's no refractory period between sentences.'
'You deserve someone racier for your Saturday-night calls.'
'This isn't about sex, Merci. It's about degradation and suffering.'
She smiled. 'Whose?'
'Merci, let's experience those beautiful things together.'
'You ever try the phone sex numbers?'
'You're cheaper.'
She smiled again. 'What's new in the news?'
'I can tell you what isn't.'
She stiffened a little, felt it coming.
'An arrest in the Wildcraft killing,' she said.
'Correct. My editor asked about it. The publisher even asked about it. Believe me, by the time my bosses think of something, a lot of other people have too.'
'And what are they thinking?'
'They see a guy making fifty grand a year as a deputy, his wife not working at all, and they live in a million- five cottage in Hunter Ranch. He's got a temper and an earnings cap. He's got a new Porsche. She looks like a movie star and wants more pretty things. He can't pay the bills or take the pressure, and he's sure enough not going to let her divorce him. Wham-he ends it for both of them. Or tries to. But he flinches at the last second and wounds himself. Three days later, no word of a suspect. No talk of a motive, not even the aforementioned obvious. Awfully damned quiet in the Sheriff's Public Information Office. So people do what people do-they start to wonder, are the cops trying to protect one of their own?'
'I can't talk to you on the record. Not before an arrest, you know that.'
'So he is a suspect.'
'We're questioning everyone who knew her.'
Brice was quiet for a moment.
'You really think there's a chance he didn't do it-off the record?'
'At this point, the evidence is pointing away from him,' she
'You must have fingerprinted the weapon by now.'
'Inconclusive.'
'It wouldn't happen to have a registered owner, would it?'
'Stolen from a gun shop in Arizona,' she lied again. 'And this all absolutely off the record, Gary.'
'Sure. I've never burned you, Merci.'
'I understand that.'
'So if there's evidence pointing away from him, what evidence is it?'
'I can't tell you that, Gary. You know I can't go into the particulars.'
'Even off the record?'
