'Maybe.'
'These guys aren't birdwatchers.'
'Dust the tabletop,' she said. 'Extra careful on the south end. Ger the stainless push-button on the drinking fountain and the bottom and top side of the trash can lid handle. I hate to send you on a wild-goose chase, Ike, but there's a drink container with a straw in the can over there. There might be saliva or epithelial cells on that straw. If Size Sixteen used it, we can DNA print him, then check the markers against the shop rag we got at the STS on Sand Canyon. Shoot some stills this place, will you, show the angle up to the Wildcraft house. Maybe stand by that smaller sycamore and shoot up at the pool area.'
Ike nodded and grinned. 'And I thought I was an anal-retention control freak with grandiose delusions of power.'
'We control freaks are still the best at what we do, Ike. No matter what they say.'
'Where do you think Wildcraft got to?'
'I've got no idea. Do you?'
'I take it you tried partner, friends and family?'
'No luck, or one of them was lying.'
Sumich shook his head. 'When's her funeral?'
'Not until Wednesday. I think they wanted to wait until he was out of the hospital.'
'I'll bet you a hundred bucks he'll show.'
Rayborn tried to guess the chances of Wildcraft showing his face at the funeral now. Slim and none? 'I want him before then.'
'I can see why. Disaster on CNB today, and you know the networks will pick it up.'
Rayborn hadn't thought it through quite that far until now. The idea of Archie all over the networks made her heart feel heavy. And who would they be coming after for statements, to answer why the cops hadn't arrested him-or at least brought him in for a formal interview-before he could vanish?
'I watched it with Abelera and Clay Brenkus,' she said. 'It was right up there with the stupidest I've felt in my life. Here I am, half defending this guy and he shows up on TV ready to blow away reporter. I wondered, Ike. I wondered if I completely misread the man and what happened up there.'
Sumich looked up toward the Wildcraft house, then shook his head. 'Brice spooked him. Archie's not right. Not your fault, but it made him look bad. Us too. I hope to God he doesn't kill himself. Or someone else.'
'He can't. I won't let him.'
Ike turned his attention to the table, then up at the lowering sun. 'Well, I need to get started while there's still some sunlight left. Any dog shit in that trash container you want me to process for possible latent fingerprints?'
'Actually, Ike, you're standing in it.'
Sumich looked down and Merci clipped his forehead with her knuckle.
'Grandiose delusions of power my ass,' she said.
Twenty minutes later, Todd at Economy confirmed that they had rented a vehicle to Archibald Franklin Wildcraft that afternoon at 3:05.
'That would have been a white Durango,' he said, fingers flying over a keyboard. 'One week at eighty-nine a day with the Auto Club discount. He didn't take the insurance.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Archie checked into a hotel off Interstate 5 in Irvine at four that afternoon. He wore an Angels cap to cover his shaved head and big Band-Aid to hide the bullet hole, a stick-on mustache and dark sunglasses to change his face. The desk girl was polite and professor and gave not the slightest sign that she recognized him or found him odd.
He used the name Jim Green but otherwise filled out the application truthfully. He used the name Green because the girl's face was green. He paid cash for three nights plus a one-hundred-dollar deposit. She gave Archie a map to his room.
The hotel was a big barn-shaped concrete structure originally used as a granary and packinghouse. Archie remembered his father and mother staying here and liking it years ago when they visited over Christmas. He was upstairs on the end. The room was pentagonal shape-once a silo, according to the illustrated history in the lobby. From the window he could see red railroad tracks and a blue field and foothills in the distance. The blue hills were beautiful. There was burger joint across the parking lot and a gas station across the street. He easily carried the two big suitcases upstairs, then unpacked them: three portraits of Gwen, the shotgun and a box of ammunition, a couple of handguns, his three favorite suiseki, a laptop computer, his clothes and uniform, the pills, his shave kit and some miscellaneous things he just thrown in. He was surprised that carrying so much weight upstairs fatigued him so little. He'd come out of the hospital stronger, no doubt about it. He felt like he could pick up a car and throw it if he wanted to.
He put one of Gwen's old demo tapes in a little cassette player and turned the volume down low. Then tapped out his afternoon dose of Decadron and washed them down with some orange juice from the mini-bar, took an extra because of the colors getting mixed up.
But now my mind is playing tricks on me I close my eyes and you're all I see
Damn, isn't that true, he thought. It seemed that every line she wrote meant something more, or something different, now that she was dead. He propped her portraits along the wall beside the air conditioner and stared.
I won't let them take you away from me, he thought. I won't.
For every ounce of trouble I gotta pound of cure
When the tape was over he got the phone book from the nightstand and looked up medical supplies. He wrote down the two closest addresses, confirming by phone that both supply houses carried aluminum crutches for sale or rent. Specifically, he asked for the kind that have braces for the upper arm to give more strength and stability. The clerks referred to them as Canadian crutches and yes, they both carried them.
He thanked them and hung up and thought for a moment, staring out at the lapis blue hills. Red crows bickered in a yellow enamel sky. Wow.
Then Archie thumbed forward in the phone book to limousine services and called the first number.
'Hello,' he said. 'My name is Jim Green. I found five hundred dollar bills in my limo last night on our way back from a party. I picked up the roll and figured finders keepers, but I was drunk. I can't keep them. I probably earn ten times what your drivers do, not that I deserve to. Anyway, if it was your guy, I'd like to get them back to him.'
'What was your driver's name?'
'I don't remember. One of my friends sent the car as a surprise but I don't know which friend or which service he used. All I can tell you is the driver was a great big guy with dark hair and a beard, mean very big. And he's five bills short.'
'He wasn't ours.'
'Thanks, I'll try the other services.'
Half an hour later Archie hit pay dirt. The heavily accented front man for Air Glide Limousine in Newport Beach said, yes, they have one very large driver. This driver had in fact said something about ending the night short.
'What was his name again?' asked Archie.
'Al Apin.'
He pronounced it
Ah-peen.
Archie said he'd either drop by with the bills or mail them, thank you very much.
'I will be in the office until eight tonight. I will see that he gets these money.'
I bet you will, thought Archie.
He sat at the table by the window, where he'd arranged his three suiseki.
He looked at them, trying to concentrate on their grace and beauty. He knew that looking at them had once
