Black Water Read Free Page A

off about this, Sergeant. Archie wasn't a close friend of mine but I liked him. He was a good guy."
    "Then let's work together and get the creep who did this a nice stiff death sentence."
    "Yes."
    "Okay. Now—French, German, Latvian, Croat, Russian, Finn or Dane? I'm confident that any Orange County sheriff deputy could tell the difference in two seconds at five in the morning under a weak streetlamp."
    Dobbs smiled but still colored. Merci stepped away with a very minor grin.
    "Deputies," she said. "Call Dispatch and get us an all-county stop-and-question on that car. Sheriff's Department only. Tell them to use the computers and not the radios, because Sergeant Rayborn doesn't want any gawkers involved. We're one hour cold but it's worth a try. If they're tourists, maybe they got stuck in our famous traffic."
    "Yes," said Dobbs.
    "Then, go round up the caller. If he won't come over, tell him I'll be knocking on his door real soon and real loud. On the way back, one of you should count your steps between his place and this one."
    In her small blue notebook—blue because the man who had taught her to be a homicide detective used blue, and because she had loved him—she scribbled the name and address of the caller who'd reported hearing gunshots, tore off the small sheet and gave it to Dobbs.
    "Go ahead, and hear him out on your way back here."
    She saw that Dobbs understood her vote of confidence, her encouraging him to informally question the witness. She winced inwardly at what the muscular but not stupendously bright Dobbs might come up with on his informal interview. But in her experience two versions from the same witness were always better than one because contradictions stood out like billboards.
    Dobbs nodded and they walked away. At the front door they parted and stood back for District Attorney Clay Brenkus and one of his prosecutors, Ryan Dawes. Merci swallowed hard, tried to keep her blood pressure from going berserk. Dawes was the DA's most aggressive and best homicide prosecutor and he had a conviction rate of ninety-six percent. He was mid-thirties and looked good in what Merci considered a men's magazine kind of way. An "extreme" athlete, whatever that was, rock surfing or sky skiing or some such thing. His nickname was Jaws and he liked it. He was the only person in the district attorney's office who'd spoken out when Merci was going through her own public and private he less than a year ago. Jaws had told the Orange County Journal that what Merci was doing was "a self-serving disgrace."
Rayborn and Zamorra watched the crime scene investigators shoot video and stills of Gwen Wildcraft and everything around her. The coroner's team removed the thermometer and fastened clear plastic bags around her hands, feet and head. Then the CSI turn again, to measure the distances between body and wall, body and door, body and tub, etc. Then, grunting and slipping in blood, four of them pushed and pulled her into a plastic bag. Rayborn saw two small, round wounds—one at the hairline, just above the left temple; one under, and toward the inside of, her left breast.
Rayborn felt great disgust and pity for the human race. She imagined a pink casita on a white beach in Mexico. She had never been to such a place but liked to picture it sometimes. She could see it now. She pictured her son, whom she had seen less than one hour ago, splashing happily in the ocean by the pink house. She watched the engagement ring on Gwen's finger, a small diamond caked in dark red, disappear as a tech worked her arm inside the bag ahead of the advancing zipper.
"Rectal temp ninety-seven degrees, Sergeant Rayborn," said the deputy coroner.
"Then she's been dead for less than an hour."
"Maybe longer, if her BT ran high."
A CSI Merci had never worked with handed her two small clear evidence bags. Each contained an empty cartridge case—a nine millimeter by the look of them. One was labeled "1" and the other "2," The CSI stared at the bags as he