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"Merci, what in hell
is going on with Mike McNally?"

• •

They sat at a counter in
the big kitchen. It was littered with unopened mail and newspapers. There was a
bright red colander filled with oranges, and a blue one brimming with nuts
still in their shells. The only thing that looked used was the coffee pot and a
half-empty bottle of tequila over by the sink.

She told him about
McNally—the boots with the blood, the letters and the silencer. She told him
about the gun. She even implied how it was she managed to get that gun, fire it
and replace it without him knowing. She told him every damned thing she could
think of, even what the silencer was wrapped in, because she felt that since
Paul had had to tell her his worst, she should tell him hers. It was a
primitive and girlish feeling—like she'd had in the fifth grade with her best
friend Melanie—but it had the same cathartic power now, maybe more.

"Mike's been at
headquarters since this morning, getting the grill," she said. "I
think, when it's over, they'll probably arrest him."

Zamorra listened
without interrupting. Nothing about him looked surprised. "Gilliam matched
the Whittaker shell and your shell Mike's gun, one hundred percent, no
doubt?"

She
nodded.

"That
still doesn't explain the kitchen. The struggle in the kitchen

"No."

"I ran the
prints I lifted from the kitchen—where the struggle took place. They're not on
file. Remember the dustball I collected? I examined the fibers, but I don't
know enough to say what they are. Some kind of clothing, I'd think. I'm going
to get Gilliam to look at them me. I don't get along with him, but he's the
only one in that lab I trust anymore."

"Why
not Coiner and O'Brien?"

Paul swept the
counter in front of him with his palm. It looked like he was smoothing a sheet.
His voice was quiet and flat, but she could hear his anger at the bottom of it.

"Coiner's sweet
on Mike, okay? It's easy enough to notice. She lets him kick around that place
like it's his sandbox. She's also the last one to see the handwriting
sample—that friendship card—and three of fingerprint cards that disappeared.
O'Brien? He's got the little dog complex—we can't swear him as a deputy, so he
overcompensates. He thinks he knows everything. He thinks he runs that place.
But he gets into Aubrey Whittaker's kitchen where the signs of a struggle are
clear as day, and what's he do? Nothing. No prints. No photographs in original
crime-scene reports. No mention of the bent runners, the drawers out. He's
arrogant and sloppy, is what I'm saying. I'm not giving my fingerprint cards to
people who lose things, people who think they're too smart to learn. It's that
simple."

She didn't say that
she thought he was wrong. What bothered more than Zamorra's distrust was what
it said about Mike McNally.

"You
don't think Mike did it."

"I
think there's more to the story than who did it."

"Meaning
what, Paul?"

Zamorra
poured more coffee for each of them. "Two sets of footsteps on the stairs,
according to the neighbor. Both of them within minutes of when she got shot. We
can only account for one set, if it’s was Mike. A struggle in the kitchen, but
who's there to struggle? Then, we get the evidence into the lab and it gets
lost. Gilliam squawks to Brighton and together they throw everybody out.
Everything we have points at Mike. But if Mike did it, a
cop
for
Chrissakes, how come he left his prints everywhere and his brass in the flower
vase? If you're going to cap somebody and get away with it, you don't sit down
to dinner with them, leave, come back five minutes later and shoot them.
That's the stupid way, that's the high-risk way. I'm not saying Mike didn't do
it, but why would he do it like that? No, something's wrong. There's more than
one guy involved, or more than one
person,
at least."

"Coiner? She
found the brass, Paul. It's what led us to the gun, the gun to Mike."

"But she could
still be trying to cover for him. Doing her job with one hand, undoing it with
the other."

For a long moment
neither spoke. Merci was trying to weigh the tonnage of Zamorra's
implication—that she, Merci, was not only losing Mike to a prostitute, but that
Mike had inspired Lynda Coiner to cover a murder. Mike McNally: killer, master
manipulator. Merci Rayborn: idiot.

"This
isn't about you," said Zamorra, apparently reading her mind.

It startled her. She
stood and walked to the window, looked out at the rippling blue swimming pool,
watched the palm fronds swaying high overhead against the fast white clouds.

"It's
a flaw I've got, thinking everything on earth is about me."

"We've all got
it. I feel worse for myself than I do for Janine sometimes."

She saw two black
crows wheeling across the blue. When the wind changed it caught them hard,
their feathers flaring like someone had shot them. Even birds can't see a
change in the wind, she thought.

She acknowledged for
the first time just how damaging Mike's arrest was to her, to her plans and
dreams, to her still-fragile psyche. On the inside she felt betrayed and
belittled, like she didn't have a right to feel anything about anybody because
she'd been so far off about a man she'd called her lover, like her heart was
stupid and blind and unreliable.

From
the outside, she just looked like a fool.

"I just realized how
bad this arrest is for me," she said. "The fact that I believed in
him, loved him, maybe. Trusted him, certainly. What terrible judgment. You
can't trust a person like that very far. You can't have her running a detail or
a section. Can you imagine someone with black spots like mine, wanting to run
the department someday?"

Zamorra looked at
her. When he spoke next, it was with a gentler she had rarely seen in him.
"Think how bad you'll look if he's innocent.”

"I haven't
entertained that idea. I wouldn't have gone to Brighton with the evidence if I
had. It went away when I found out Mike's gun fired the shell we found at
Whittaker's."

Zamorra shook his
head. "We'll never know
what
gun fired the bullet that killed her."

"That's cutting
it pretty thin, Paul. Brass at the scene, fired from gun carried exclusively by
the accused. A silencer. Motive. Opportunity. Physical evidence a mile high.
There's everything but a video. You think a jury's going to let him walk?"

"No. But I'm not
talking about juries. I'm talking about who killed Aubrey Whittaker and who
didn't."

"What
are the options then? Mike's gun, but Mike didn't use it?'

"That's one. You
borrowed it for an hour. Maybe someone else borrowed it for two hours. Or
someone else shot her with a different weapon. Someone who was hoping the
bullet would fly out the window or was willing to dig it out of the plaster if
it didn't. That would account for the ten minutes between the time our man
knocked on the door the time he left the apartment—he didn't find the hole in
the glass right off. Or maybe this: Someone took the gun, just like you did,
fired a round in some private place, and took the empty with him."

"Then he put it
in the flower vase in Aubrey Whittaker's apartment? Who?"

Zamorra was shaking
his head but Merci couldn't tell if it uncertainty or disgust. "Someone
made a joke about that yesterday, I wasn't supposed to hear it. They said,
maybe it was Merci Rayborn who killed the girl—she knew what Mike was up to
with the whore."

She looked long and
hard at Zamorra. "That's venom. Why would you pass it along?"

He didn't look away.
"To let you know what you're up against. Because I'm on your side."

Merci answered her
cell phone. It was Brighton.

"We arrested
Mike half an hour ago," he said softly. "We'll have weapons charges,
tampering, obstruction and murder. No announcement until tomorrow morning.
Glandis and I will handle the press conference. You might want to be scarce
around here. I'm giving the case to Wheeler and Teague. Work with them,
Rayborn. We got the warrant, so I want you to help with the search."

Merci had trouble
finding her voice. When she did, it was so weak she sounded like someone else.
"I will."

"You did the
right thing. And I know it was the hardest damned thing you've ever done in
your life. Someday you'll be better off for this. Until then,
survive.
That's a direct order."

"Yes, sir."

When she hung up
Zamorra was looking out the window. "We arrested him," he said.

"We
did."

M
erci waited until ten that night to go see Mike. She
had to go through Brighton to get clearance into the protective block at jail.
He thought she was crazy, but she prevailed.

The jail was almost
quiet that late, but she could see that security had been stepped up—two guards
outside the protective block instead of the usual one. They let her through
like she was a VIP, thanks to Brighton's call. Give them a day or two, she
thought, until they find how the case against Mike was made. Then see how hard
the rank and file would land on her.

The suicide guard had
his own chair and table set up in the hall, was reading a paperback, chewing
gum.

Mike was on his back
on the cot, still in the street clothes she'd seen him in, handcuffed, staring
straight up. His head turned her when she got to the bars.

There are thousands
of expressions the human face can register, the one that Mike gave her now was
unlike any she'd ever seen. Defeat and pride; alertness and resignation; fear
and triumph. But most of all
disappointment.

"Mike."

He
stared at her. "Hi."

"Hi."

She could hear the
muted metallic shuffle of the jail around her, the slamming and clanging and
the voices of men. It sounded like the soundtrack for hell, played from far
away.

Mike
lifted his feet, swung them off the cot and sat upright. No shoelaces. No belt.
No tie. He held up his cuffed hands.

"I'd have to
swallow my tongue."

"Don't."

"No. I'll need
it to defend myself."

"Did you get Bob
Rule?"

"He
jumped at the chance. Innocent client. High profile. Or it will be, by noon
tomorrow."

She
looked at him, and she listened to his voice, and she understood his words, but
she could think of nothing at all to say. She felt again like she was on the
bullet train in a tunnel, everything just a blur of velocity.

He
watched her, eyes heavy beneath the blond forelock, mouth frozen downward.

"I forbid you to
ask me anything about Aubrey Whittaker, ever again."

"Agreed."

"You
never agreed to anything before. I should go to jail more often. Why are you
here? Just to gawk?"

"No. To ... see
you."

"It's
curiosity, isn't it? You're looking for what you missed. For the one thing that
would tell you I could do something like that. For the dead giveaway. You
think, since you were so blind for so long, that now it must be visible."

"No. Just to see
you."

"You've done
that."

"And to see if
there's ... anything I can do to help you."

Mike smiled like a
skull.
"Help me?"

"Yes. There's
Danny and Big Pat and—"

"Taken
care of, woman. All taken care of. I am actually a man capable of taking care
of my family. I even have dinner being delivered, because the slop they serve
in here is so bad."

Merci
felt a great flush of shame and sadness break over her face. She wanted to run
and run and run some more, never come back, never have to look this man in the
eye again.

"Okay.
Then that's all, I guess."

He stood. She could
see how red his hands were from the cuffs. He held them up beneath his chin to
let the blood run down. He looked little like he was praying.

"Wait. There is
one thing you can do. Feed the dogs. I got everything covered for the next few
days, but I forgot the dogs."

"I'd
be ...
I mean, sure. I've got that.
Long as you need it."

He looked at her.
"Use your key. I'm sure you've got your warrent by now, so maybe you can
combine it with your evidence search.
Save
yourself a trip."

"It's
Wheeler's and Teague's now."

"No. This is ours,
Merci. Yours and mine."

« • •

On her way through the parking lot Merci saw Lynda
Coiner walk toward the jail entrance. She moved with purpose but not hurry,
eyes straight ahead, her purse slung over her shoulder and a white paper bag in
her hand.

• • •

Merci entered Mike's home
in the blackness of Modjeska Canyon, just the glow of the porch light to guide
her way.