I'll sue you out the department, bitch. '
'Cool it, Sergeant,' snapped the marshal, moving toward her. Shocked and accelerating toward anger, Merci veered into Natalie Wildcraft, who had fought her way through the bristle of bodies and mikes to make for the door.
Natalie Wildcraft slapped her hard in the face, left side. Rayborn saw it coming but couldn't pull herself away from the focused fury the mother's eyes.
'Stupid women,' Natalie barked again. 'She acts like a judge and you act like a friend.'
She raised her hand again but Zamorra in one impossible motion caught the wrist and delivered it with something like grace into beckoning paw of her husband. George Wildcraft eased out of room, pulling her behind him.
Rayborn looked over at the video shooter who, alone in his group had turned to watch her and catch the action.
She shook her head and looked down to avoid the glare of video light.
The slap and the words and the exit of Natalie Wildcraft left a sudden silence in the room.
Earla and Lee Kuerner scuttled away like cold refugees.
Rayborn got behind the podium, threw back her thick dark hair and took a deep breath. She wondered if her cheek was as red a felt.
'Any more questions? Good. We'll talk again in, oh, how about.. never. Does never work for you?'
At that moment the door opened and a sunny, overweight woman in a blue dress smiled at Merci. A legion of girls, all dressed in identical brown uniforms, swarmed in ahead of her.
'Brownie Troop seven-eight-eight, Tustin,' she said. 'Courthouse tour?'
'Please retreat to the information desk,' said Merci. The Brownies had come to a communal stop when they saw Merci and the podium and the posters of Wildcraft and the video shooters and celebrity reporters.
'Girls! Girls-this way, please!'
Merci sat in the pen, waiting for Abelera to call or come over, fire her, take her badge and her gun, maybe whip her with his Sam Browne in the middle of the homicide pen.
She stared down at the recent arrivals on her desk: a department-wide notice of a birthday party for Assistant Sheriff Collins, suggested gift donation, twenty dollars; this month's newsletter from the Deputy Association; the 'FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin'; blank timecards for the coming week.
She pushed them all aside for a look at Don Leitzel's neatly written note regarding the addresses in the navigational computer of the abandoned Cadillac STS.
Sgt. Rayborn Addresses contained in Sand Canyon car, in order of entry into the navigation system, are 83 Osier Lane, La Jolla (University of San Diego School of Medicine); 212
Saltair, Newport Beach; 4143 Agate, La Jolla.
I took the liberty of hitting the Orange and San Diego counties assessor's offices to see who the owners of these places are-hope you don't mind. These addresses belong to 1) the University of California,
2) Mr. Wyatt Wright, a single man, and
3) Dr. Sean Moss, a single man.
The Wright and Moss home purchases were both within the last year, 6.8 and 4.5 million dollars, respectively.
Don L.
'I'll be damned,' she said out loud. Inside her the embarrassment of the press conference was whirling up against the excitement of this new evidence, and Merci felt a giddiness that went straight to her head 'Cherbrenko and Vorapin used the Caddy.'
'Huh?'
Sergeant Teague wheeled in his chair and looked at her.
'Those creeps that Crowder and Dobbs saw coming down the hill from Wildcraft's in a Cadillac at the crack of dawn-the same creeps were dialed in with home addresses for two of the OrganiVen founder and the UCSD medical school, where another founder was working. The arrogant shitheads stole an STS for transportation and dumped out on Sand Canyon.'
'So?' Teague, large and only apparently sluggish, specialized dumb skepticism and Rayborn generally loved him for it.
'Gwen worked for OrganiVen. It's a stock fraud,' she said. She was thinking out loud now, and things were making sense. 'Everybody got rich, but now something's going wrong. Archie didn't kill her. And he didn't shoot himself. I'm damned sure of it now.'
'What are you going to do with all his fingerprints on the gun?'
'Wipe them off.'
'Good. I knew Arch didn't do it. He's a good kid.'
Teague wheeled back around and burped quietly. 'But let me guess-they wiped the STS clean.'
'They sure did. Ike and Leitzel couldn't get a single print.'
'Pros.'
'But still dumb enough to leave the addresses on the navigatior system.'
'Geniuses don't go into crime.'
'A goddamned stock fraud,' said Merci, still thinking out loud.
Teague spun around again. 'So Archie's got the proof in the back of his mind, you might say. But nobody can get to it. Because to take out the bullet, it would probably kill him.'
'The brain scans can't tell a thirty-eight from a thirty-two twenty-two or a twenty-five or a nine. They're not quite precise enough to show an exact diameter, with the mushrooming and fragging and all. But yeah, if you could get it out, you'd see it didn't come from his nine. It came from something one of those two guys in the car was packing. I'd bet my house on it.
'Teague shrugged. 'So, when Archie dies of natural causes at the age of ninety-six, they can autopsy him, get the bullet and button down this case once and for all.'
'Give me a break, Teague, I'm going to button this thing down by the time you quit burping.'
'Feels like that could be a month.'
'Give me a week.' 'Get 'em, Rayborn.'
'I'll get 'em cold.'
But Leitzel the Thorough wasn't the only good fairy to have visited Merci's desk while she was being slapped and cussed and pushed around by a marshal.
A note from Ike Sumich lay just under Leitzel's:
Sergeant R-After many long-distance phone minutes I was able to determine that the shoe imprints were left by a size 16 Foot Rite 'Comfort Strider.' Two tread patterns were marketed in this country. What we found at Wildcraft's is the 'Versa-Terra' by Markham.
NOTE: FOOT RITE ONLY SOLD THE COMFORT STRIDER IN SIZE 16 THROUGH CATALOGUES. NOT EVEN SPECIALTY BIG AND TALL STORES CARRIED SUCH A LARGE SIZE IN STOCK.
Here are the six most popular catalogues through which Foot Rite offered the shoe for sale in California.
Sumich listed the catalogue companies, their addresses, phone and fax numbers and Web site addresses.
'I love our crime lab guys,' she said. 'They're all cuties.' Teague turned back to his desk. She got Sumich on the phone and thanked him for the good work. 'This is what I need now,' she said. 'Get back to Foot Rite and find out if any of their catalogue retailers are specialty outfits.'
'The ones I gave you are all specialty outfits-big and tall.'
'Go a step further. Big and tall executives, because this guy might see himself as a businessman. Big and tall, ethnically targeted-look for European, Russian, Balkan, Slav. Try military surplus because alot of them have been selling Soviet stuff since the breakup. Try b and tall outdoorsmen, too-hunters and fishermen.'
'Got it. Why a European businessman who likes Soviet surplus catalogues and loves to hunt and fish?'
'He's a Russian, Ike. A gangster, a fraudster and probably a killer. The hunting and fishing idea is pure hunch. Nothing more.'
'Do you have a weight on him, by any chance?'
'I heard three-thirty, but that was as of a few years ago.'
