She stood abruptly and walked into the kitchen, her bare heels heavy on the hardwood floor. Tim thumped in behind her, still in his rubber mud boots. His brow was furrowed, his eyes wide with alarm.
"You are mad?"
"I'm not mad at you."
He looked away from her and his bottom lip swelled, then trembled. She picked him up but it was too late. The tears jumped from his eyes like living diamonds. Plenty of volume to his wail. She hugged him and told him over and over that she was mad at
Gary not at
Timmy and after a while this worked. She silently cursed her temper and her selfishness. She felt her heart beating against his little pot belly. He stopped crying as quickly as he'd begun, pushed away and looked her very seriously.
"Why did Awchie throw flowers?"
"Because he loved Gwen."
"Loved Gwen?"
"Yes."
"I down, please."
She set him on the floor and watched him pad purposefully along the hallway toward his room. Another mission. When she got back the sofa Michelle was interviewing the Kuerners and the Wildcraft;
"Tell me how Archie and Gwen first met. Mrs. Kuerner, was it love at first sight? "
Why, thought Merci. She tried the CNB after-hours number but the receptionist wouldn't say whether Brice was in the studio or not. She tried his cell and
Journal numbers again but there was still no answser. Zamorra answered and she gave the news to him.
She tossed the phone into the sofa cushion and paced while she watched, too rattled to sit. Earla Kuerner had tears in her eyes. Natalie sat still and sharp-eyed as a kestrel. Lee talked about his daughter falling in love with a college ballplayer, smiling at the memory while his hands wrung themselves in a dissenting agony. George Wildcraft; stared at the floor.
"Watch," said Clark. "Here comes the grave.
"Merci saw the cars filing into the memorial park, then longshots of the mourners disembarking for the chapel. She had not been aware of the CNB van coming up behind them and it angered her now that she hadn't thought to look for them. But what would she have done? It wasn't Michelle Howland's or Gary Brice's fault that Wildcraft had put on a show. Maybe Archie enjoyed the attention, she thought, maybe he was courting public opinion like everyone else on Earth.
Take a deep breath, she told herself. She took two. Didn't help, never did.
She heard Tim pulling his wheeled suitcase down the hallway. It was one of his favorite things, easily transporting small toys, snails, fallen oranges. Or the heavy newspaper, which he would roll right up to the kitchen table and deliver to Merci on Sunday mornings. Then the kitchen slider rasped open and slammed shut. Merci saw that the patio lights were on, noting that she'd need to look out on Tim in a minute, two at the outside.
On-screen the helicopter lowered and sent some of the mourners running. The deputies drew down and hats flew and the orange dirt dusted up around the blue tarp. Then the first faint bomb of color burst in the air and Archie Wildcraft waved down at the crowd. Merci hadn't seen him do that. Gwen's music kicked in and the flowers fell and Archie was back at the open cargo door of the chopper disgorging an entire bedsheet full of blossoms.
"Incredible," said Clark. "Look at that."
Thanks to the beauties of zoom and stop-action the incident was more detailed on video than it had been live.
"Natalie Wildcraft, what did you think when you saw that? "
"1 thought, get 'em, Arch. Show 'em what you 're made of. "
"What is he made of, Mrs. Wildcraft? "
"Guts and flowers, lady. "
Clark turned and smiled back at her. Merci caught the pride of fandom in it and she realized that Clark was pulling for Archie the way he'd pull for the Angels or the Dodgers or the Lakers.
The TV picture changed to the back view of the Wildcraft property.
Merci went to the window and saw Tim out on the edge of the patio, trying to catch the moths that rose up from the margarita daisies whenever the back lights were on. The suitcase lay behind him, zippered open and waiting for the treasures he might find.
"But is Archie Wildcraft truly the wounded hero he appears be?"
Then came the video footage of Archie and his twelve-gauge a Gary Brice. Merci watched again as Wildcraft, unshaven and bandaged, the head wrap dirty and bleeding, his clothes wrinkled and his eyes furious, leveled the big barrel at the reporter's chest and hiss out something about killing himself or killing them himself or whatever it was. Try as she could, Merci couldn't make out his words because of Brice's near fall and the air crackling around the mike. Then the press conference in which Michelle Howland tried to pin Merci on the specifics of the physical evidence:
"Can you tell us why Deputy Wildcraft is not a suspect in the death of his wife if his gun was used to kill her, and his fingerprints were on that weapon, and a test for gunshot residue came up positive?"
Merci listened to her reasoned, slightly condescending answer:
"Because there's more to a homicide case than fingerprints and gunshot residue."
A shot then of a dapper, gray-haired man sitting in a law library, with Michelle Howland's voice-over.
"But is there? Attorney Giles Newman has prosecuted scores murder cases, and defended hundreds more. As a private attorney now working in Denver, Colorado, Newman is immersed in the details homicide virtually every working day of his life. "
Dapper gray:
"Fingerprints and residue tests positive? Suspect apprehended at the scene with the weapon in his hand? That's powerful evidence in a courtroom. I'm not going to comment on this case any other, but generally, when a prosecutor gets his hands on that kind of evidence, you 're looking at a conviction. "
Merci shook her head and looked back through the window. Tim was over by the roses now, suitcase still open. It looked like he was brushing ladybugs off into his luggage.
Then a forensic expert from Washington, D.C.; a psychiatrist from Los Angeles; a neurosurgeon from Baltimore. Michelle explained that neither Assistant DA Ryan Dawes, Sheriff Vince Abelera nor Dr. John Stebbins were able to go on record for this CNB report.
"And what does Archie Wildcraft have to say? He requested an interview with CNB just a few hours after showering his wife's grave with flowers…"
Merci took a deep breath as Archie appeared on the screen. Free of the gauze turban, his head was close-shaven and somehow vulnerable rather than menacing. His eyes were pale and he looked exhausted. He wore a shortsleeved white shirt buttoned all the way up, like a youngster. There was a big beige bandage over his wound, the kind you can get at a drug store. Merci tried to make out the background but all she could identify with certainty was a brick wall. They were outside.
"1 want to tell Mom and Dad and Lee and Earla that I'm fine. I'll have this case wrapped up pretty quick now. Just don't worry, guys. "
He smiled a smile such as Merci had never seen: innocence, cunning, danger and serenity all in one brief flash.
"And everybody? Gwen says hello. She's just fine. I promise you that."
"Deputy Wildcraft, did you murder your wife? "
The same perfectly contradictory smile.
"After reviewing all the evidence, I'm now certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I did not. Turn off the camera now. That was the agreement. Now."
"Oh wow," said Clark.
Back to Michelle in the studio, sitting with, of course, Gary Brice.
"Gary, what do you make of Deputy Wildcraft's strangely unemotional and less-than-positive defense? "
Merci shook her head and looked back outside. Tim had zipped up the little suitcase and extended the handle, which he now used to pull it across the patio toward the slider.
"I think he's delusional. And he's probably an extremely unreliable witness to the events of that night. I don't mean to condemn him, but the man has a bullet lodged in his brain. "