Archie was sweating visibly.
'Who took care of the finances, bills, money stuff?' Merci asked
'Gwen. Ever since we were married. In the music room, there's a desk and file cabinets. It's all there.'
'Tell us about OrganiVen.'
Wildcraft sat on the bed. He looked around the room like he was new there. Merci could see it in his posture, in the earnest, uplifted face, the inquisitive eyes. Like he was discovering new things every second. Maybe he is, she thought. Eyes like Tim's.
'It was a company that was new. We invested some money, but I'm not sure how much. It was called that because they made a cancer treatment from snake venom. We got to see slides and pictures of what it did to tumors and it was amazing. So, then the company got bought up by a bigger company and we made a lot of money by selling our shares.'
He looked at her, raised his eyebrows unenthusiastically, then looked away.
'How did you find out about it?'
'I'm not sure. I believe we worked with Priscilla's husband, Charlie Brock. He works for a big stockbroker, but I can't think of the name.'
'Ritter-Dunne-Davis.'
Archie smiled and his eyes sparkled. 'Yeah. You should have seen that stuff, eating those tumors. It would kill the cancer, right while you watched. On a camera, I mean, a video.'
'You and Gwen put almost everything you had into that company. Didn't you?'
'I think so. I don't remember particulars. Or maybe I never knew them, because Gwen did all the finances.'
'I'd like to see those financial things,' said Zamorra. 'Take some with me to look over closely.'
'You're welcome to them. I'm sorry I couldn't help more. I feel sleepy and thick. Kind of dumb. Maybe the swelling started up again.'
'Let's get you back to the medical center, then,' said Merci.
'I'm thinking about that. But I want some more time here. I look at her pictures and I see her things. And I smell her. And it feels like a light is about to go on. Like I'm about to bring something up out of black water.'
'We can't post those deputies outside forever, Archie,' said Zamorra.
'I know.'
'You'd be helping us if you went back to UCI,' he said. 'Yourself too.'
'I need to do a few things here. Make a few calls. Look at some pictures. Try to… try to just remember.'
Zamorra left the room with a hard look at Archie.
Wildcraft was still sitting on the bed. He touched the sheet as i for the first time, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and fingers. When he looked at Merci, his hand stopped moving.
'You going to charge me with it?'
'If you did it, I will.'
'Then you don't believe me.'
'We're still investigating.'
'I can see why you suspect me. With all the evidence you told me about.' He smiled. The light caught his eyes and filled them with something innocent and childlike and sad. 'I feel guilty.'
Rayborn's antenna snapped upright at one of her favorite words 'Why, Archie? Tell me what you did to feel guilty.'
At first he looked angry, then offended, then just defeated. 'I let it happen. I didn't protect her.'
'They call that survivor's guilt.'
'Do they?'
She studied his guileless eyes, trying to see behind them, into his; mind. Nothing like this had ever happened to Rayborn, and it unnerved her. She'd never chatted with a suspect about whether or not she was going to arrest him, except to disarm. Or talked about the evidence except either to intimidate or mislead. Or stood in a suspect's bedroom and smelled his tangled sheets and wondered if this was the last place he'd had sex with his wife, or if it was in their car, pulled off of Coast Highway, stars in her hair.
All of that was bad enough. But what made it worse was this was the only time she'd ever looked at a suspect and thought he was beautiful. Something to do with those dimples and the nice baseball muscles? Maybe. Something to do with him defending her in a bar fight? Okay. And something to do with the bullet in his head, too and all of the sad mystery it signified? Yes. But mostly the fact-the apparent fact-that this guy had loved his wife with passion. That was what made Wildcraft seem so genuinely, naturally, uncomplicatedly beautiful.
Christ, she thought: get a grip.
'What's wrong?' he asked.
'Nothing. Why?'
'Your expression. I don't know.'
'No, you don't.' Then, anything to break the hold of this moment. 'Why isn't your gardener here today?'
'He must not work here on Mondays.'
'Describe him.'
'Dark skin and dark hair. I think he's Mexican but I'm not sure.'
'How tall?'
'Short and heavy. Maybe five-eight, two hundred. Why?'
'I was wondering who left size-sixteen shoe prints under your tree out there.'
'I don't know.'
Wildcraft turned to look at the pillows. He leaned over, picked something off one of them, then held it out to her. She could see the hair: four inches, dark, a gentle bend in it.
'That's Gwen's,' said Wildcraft.
'Who else's would it be?'
'Well, either hers or mine. But mine was short before they shaved it.'
Wildcraft turned to the pillow again and placed the hair back where it had been.
'Were you happy with her, Archie?'
He studied her for just a moment. 'Yes, I think so. If she's this large to me being gone, I think she must have been even larger being here.'
'How big is she, gone?'
'Huge, Detective. Gigantic.'
She believed him. But she still pressed him. Maybe he was just fooling himself.
'But you didn't want more, Archie? Run up some numbers, like some of you guys like to do?'
'I don't remember ever doing that.'
'Gwen inclined that way?'
'You mean make it with other guys?'
'That's what I mean.'
He shook his head. 'Oh, I don't think so. No. Do you want to hear something very weird?'
'Sure.'
'She talks to me. I hear her voice in my head, so clear I turn around and look to see where she's standing. Once I felt her breath on my neck.'
Rayborn knew other people who heard from their departed. Personally, she'd only heard Hess's voice one time after he was gone and that was in a dream. He'd said: It's okay. At first she'd felt bad about her deafness, attributed it to some failure of emotion or imagination. But as the months passed she learned to forgive herself for what she didn't hear. Why should she be blamed for the silence of the dead? It was one of the things she'd talked about with Zamorra. He had never heard from Janine, either, except once, like her, in a dream.
'You're lucky,' she said.
'But it's kind of torture,' said Archie. 'It… gets your hopes up.'
'I can see how it would.'
'I wonder if there's a way to see her, too. If you can actually hear why can't you actually see? I don't think it's impossible.'
Merci said nothing. What could you say to that? But for one extremely brief moment-the time it took to let out
