Merci knew that La Eme had climbed into power in just the last two decades, as the Hispanic prison population had grown. In the California prisons, they ruled. They were exceptionally violent, well organized and thorough. They were loyal to each other, and all but silent to the law. And although their power base lay hidden in the cells of the huge penal system, their reach went far beyond the walls and razor wire.
Sure, thought Merci, La Erne could hit Archie Wildcraft if they wanted him hit. And sure, Felix Mendez would not have been too happy about having his left hand blown apart in his own home while his wife watched, by a handsome young deputy with dimples. But why Gwen?
Merci flipped back through to read about the disturbance call. An anonymous neighbor had phoned it in, and the deputies had walked into the middle of a cocaine-addled dispute between the couple. Sure enough, when Michelle Mendez had spit in his face and bitten him, Archie Wildcraft had shoved her into a wall and cuffed her. Made her nose bleed. And that was when Mendez produced the pistol from under his bathrobe.
Merci flagged the transcript with a red paper clip.
She leafed through The People versus Goudee, a rape case, but rapists were cowards. And The People versus Viznaska, a car thief, but Viznaska was twenty years old, apparently not mobbed up, had no violent priors. And Rhonert, a burglar; Nelson, a boiler-room phone fraud scammer; Vasquez, a fugitive female shot-caller whom Archie and Reese had easily matched to a briefing mug while she walked three pitbulls down Fourth Street, about five blocks from headquarters, in broad daylight.
Another hour and she'd finished off the felony criminal cases in which Wildcraft had testified in the last two years. She fingered through the arrest forms-mostly drunk-in-publics, drunken drivers, disturbing the peace, fights. The same shit that's coming over the radio right now, she thought. Meat and potatoes, everyday stuff.
One drunken driving stop almost two years ago was of a man named Trent Gentry, who happened to work for the Newport Beach office of Ritter-Dunne-Davis Financial. She pulled and flagged this with a red paper clip too, strictly on the coincidence of Priscilla Brock's beloved Charles working for the same global company. Small world, she thought.
Small World, Big Opportunity
— wasn't that the RDD slogan you got sick of on TV? At any rate, Archie had done the right thing and busted the drunk.
She sighed and sat back and looked out at a bright moon checkered by the window screen. So many creeps, she thought. But how man of these are capable of this? One? Maybe two?
She clicked off the radio, checked Tim, made another drink, s; outside on the back patio. She looked out at the dark groves and marveled at how they just ended a hundred yards in three of four directions, at the ten-foot salmon-colored wall of a housing development. Merci loved the wall for all the people it kept in.
She had not chosen the farmhouse for aesthetics, and in fact she didn't care for orange juice, but she'd grown to like the still sweetness of the tree and semi-feral cats that moved silently through the grove, like thoughts. Her father had been offered the place by an acquaintance who owned it, and the rent was cheap. That was long before Clark had entertained any notions of moving in. The old farmhouse came with the warning that it could and would be sold to the first bidder with the right price, but that had yet to happen. Merci wondered how many millions her five acres were worth. What, six or eight grand for every orange?
Zamorra called at eleven-fourteen.
"You weren't listening to the police band."
"What."
"Irvine cops found a black STS, license QM742JN abandoned the end of Sand Canyon. You know, out there by the strawberry fields-past the new hospital."
"Jones said OM."
"Os and
Qs not the first time."
"I want to see that car."
"Gilliam and Ike Sumich are on their way."
"I'm on mine. Thanks, Paul." She poked a cat out of the way, tossed the drink and nuked a cup of instant coffee, dressed quickly, told Clark the score. She kissed Tim. She remembered the CSI who was doing such good, thorough work the Wildcraft scene, Don Leitzel. So she called him and told him get on it double time. He said, "I'm there," and hung up. Twenty minutes later Merci came to the end of Sand Canyon Road, braking her Impala well outside the ring of white light cast by three big tripod floods. The floods were being run by a big generator that half deafened her as she got out of her car. It was so loud she could barely hear herself think, but the light was bright and true, and Zamorra came from light to darkness to greet her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The STS was parked off the road, on a wide beach of dirt and loose gravel that separated the asphalt from the strawberry field. When Merci stepped out of her car she could smell the fruit. The roaring generator had been set up maybe twenty yards from the front end of the Caddy. One light tripod was positioned a solid ten yards away from each end of the car, Merci noted: good.
She also saw the crime scene tape, a big rectangle of it with the car in the middle.
"You'll like this," said Zamorra.
"A confession letter and video evidence?"
"Not quite. Your pal Dobbs was first one here again."
"My luck."
"Look at the crime scene he marked off, it's the size of Yankee Stadium."
The floodlights made her think of a baseball stadium, too-the bright, clean white light. She followed him to the tape, then under it, but Zamorra took her by the arm and stopped her.
Then Merci saw the flashlight in the gravel, pointing toward the road. Less than a yard away lay a citation book. Then a sunglass case. Then, closer to the STS, a bundle of road flares, unlit.
Her heart sped up and she thought of young Dobbs and wondered what all this debris was.
"What's this stuff doing everywhere?"
"He'll want to tell you."
Dobbs was already trotting toward her-head steady, up on his toes-but staying way out by the perimeter of the tape. She saw the triangle of his torso, the big chest and arms.
"Sergeant Rayborn," he said crisply.
"Deputy."
He knelt and picked up the flashlight and aimed its beam down into the dirt and gravel. It barely showed up against the fierce light of the floodlamps. She knelt, too.
Dobbs traced a small circle on the dirt with his light. In the middle of the small circle was a large footprint.
"I found a total of ten indentations, leading from the car toward the road. I marked the best ones with whatever I had handy. None of them are very good, but the first four, up by the car, are better. Two people. One set starts from the passenger side of the Caddy. The other from the driver's side. I took the liberty of holding my duty boot over the ones from the passenger side-don't worry, I didn't even come close to touching one."
Dobbs stared intently down the beam of his light.
"I wear a twelve," he said. "And these are bigger than mine. A lot. Big dude."
"Very."
"I approached on the passenger side, from the rear, checked for anything suspicious, then taped the whole scene off before I called in. Got into kind of an argument with one of the CSIs over how close the generator should go. After that driveway thing, nobody's getting too close to my crime scenes. Including me."
"You with Crowder tonight?"
"He called in sick so I'm solo. Sergeant, guess what's laying on the front seat of the Cadillac?"