Which is exactly what his father was.
Whatever, thought Merci: better than asking about the moronic toy and junk food he saw on kids' TV.
"Awchie is all gone?"
"No, Archie is okay."
"Is all gone?"
"Is okay."
"Awchie is… a car?"
"He's a policeman."
"Is not a policeman?"
"Time to get out of the tub now, Tim. Let's get out."
Clark, her father, heated up the night's dinner while Merci sat a the table with Tim. It was an old farmhouse with a big kitchen and this time of year they left all the windows open in the evenings to take in the cooling air. A black cat jumped onto Merci's lap and she petted it once, then set it down on the squeaky old floor. They had six or eight cats but Merci could never remember their names. She liked them in a general rather than an individual way, as she did most human beings. And likewise found them annoying more often than not.
She had the newspaper open in front of her but no interesting crimes had made the pages this day. Out of curiosity she checked the business section for the B. B. Sistel activity. The ticker symbol was BBS and it was even at fifty-three and three-quarters dollars a share on the NYSE.
"What chances are the doctors giving him?" asked Clark.
"Apparently he's stabilized. So that makes him extremely critical rather than hour-to-hour."
"Where did it lodge, exactly?"
"I don't know. It's all just yellow goo to me."
"Goo?" asked Tim.
"Goo," said Merci. "Your brain."
"Oh."
Clark pulled a baking dish from the oven, his ropey arm lost in a huge mitt. Merci thought of Lee Kuerner and his bass fishing. She wished her father had some hobby he loved, some passion, even for something as silly as fishing. The only thing that seemed to matter to him anymore was being useful.
"If it damaged the left side of his brain," he said, "the right side of his body might be impaired. You know, one side of the brain controls its opposite side of the body."
Merci thought about this. She could see the B volume of the encyclopedia open in the cookbook holder. Clark liked to think of himself as helpful in her work.
"That bullet could take away his memory," he said. "Or his math skills, or his ability to see colors or to reason deductively. Anything."
"I wonder if it can lodge in there and not really do any damage."
"A lot of brain matter goes unused."
"The doctor said that they might not even try to remove it. That would be riskier than leaving it where it is. I thought the lead would dissolve and kill you, but that's not a big problem. The leads in paints can kill you but not the lead in bullets. That's a surprise."
"It has no feeling, the brain. They can operate on it with the patient sedated but awake, carrying on a conversation. They'll do that they're near the speech area. If the guy starts talking funny, they back off."
"Big of them. What's for dinner?"
"Chicken."
"That moron Dawes brought in Al Madden to check my work. Say he wants the evidence properly handled this time."
He looked at her steadily. "Dawes took advantage of you to make a splash for himself. What he said about you was really about himself.
It never failed to astound her that her father defended her side in an action that brought shame upon himself and disgrace to two of his friends. And it wasn't as if the whole miserable thing had come as surprise: both Merci and Clark had known that if she testified to the grand jury, Clark's head would roll. Over something that had gone down thirty-three years ago, she thought. Thirty-three years ago: prostitute with secrets, powerful men frightened for their careers an their families, a deputy forced into doing the unspeakable. And a soft spoken gentle man who closed his eyes to what he knew was going on. Clark. What was it he had said? I knew there was blood on my hands, but I didn ^f t know how much.
"Moron?" asked Tim.
"It's a person who is not very smart," said Merci.
"A person who is very smart?"
"Never mind," she said. The idea of Tim obsessing about Ryan Dawes curdled her nerves.
"I'm not going to put my soup on my head," her son said thoughtfully.
"Very good, Tim. That's excellent."
Clark checked something steaming in a pot, stirred it with a big wooden spoon, then set it back on the stove. The kitchen smelled of roasting sage and chicken. It was warm so Merci held up her hair. Tin took one look at her and slid off his booster seat, claiming that he'd be back. Tim loved missions.
"Did you get any fingerprints off the gun?"
"Wildcraft's. He came back with GSR, too."
"Could the lab match the gun to the bullets in his wife?"
"They could and they did."
"And you said the gun was registered to the deputy?"
"Dad, you know exactly what I said."
"Her blood on his clothes?"
"Gel cooking, jury out."
Tim sprinted back into the room with a small elastic hair band in his hand. Merci took it with a smile and got her heavy dark hair up off her neck. He climbed into her lap.
"Looks bad for him, doesn't it?"
She sighed and looked at Clark. "I don't think he did it. I don't think he put that bullet in his own head. Someone shot him, then took his weapon and shot his wife. Then came back and put the gun in his hand."
"Fired it once, to get the metals on his skin?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I don't know. But Archie had no motive for any of this. He was happy, in love with his wife. Or so his friends say. Pretty house they lived in-you could tell they took pride in it. Someone threw a rock through the slider in the living room, and I think that's what got Archie out of bed that morning. I think that's why it was thrown. Neighbor saw a black Caddy driving away, just after he called in the shot. Patrol saw a black Caddy with two guys in it, leaving the vicinity at the same time. Cal plates, first two letters OM. We put out a countywide all-enforcement but nothing popped."
Clark stopped whatever he was doing and stared at her. "That's a heck of a frame job."
She looked down at the paper. "Yeah. We're smelling for enemies, but nothing hot yet. They had some big stock winnings last year- they ponied up twenty grand and made two million."
"That kind of money creates its own problems."
"The parents say it was all legal, all aboveboard."
"But still-you turn a little money into a fortune in a few months, and all sorts of reactions take place. It's almost chemical."
She nodded and noted that the stock market arrows were all pointing down on the business page. "The sister's kind of interesting," she said.
"Oh?"
"Younger than Gwen. Just as pretty. Was over at Archie's the day of the murder when Gwen was with her parents in Norco. The neighbor heard them arguing. Loud. What do you argue with your brother-in-law about, on your sister's birthday, while she's not there? The sister says they weren't arguing, it was just her going off about her future ex. Feels… not right. These two beautiful major babe sisters, the young hunk who's just raked in two million. I don't know. Just or of those feelings you get. But Archie doing that to Gwen and himself. That feels flat-out wrong. I hope to God he wakes up with a clear head and can tell us what really happened."
Clark said nothing for a moment. His expression said don't count on that, but he had the good sense not to say it out loud. "Your instincts are good, Merci."
"When they're not bad."
"Come on."
"Well, yeah, they're getting better, I hope."
"Daughter, do something nice for yourself-be a friend to you."
"Yeah yeah yeah."
Tim followed this conversation but said nothing. He stared into the space midway between his mother and grandfather with a dazed expression, which meant he was concentrating. She used to think he was drifting or working on a bowel movement until he started repeating things or asking about things she never even knew he'd heard. Shi loved the way his eyes looked when he was drinking in the world.