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or boot. Mr. Snappy-Dressed Businessman coming home to his
family. I think our earwitness little too stoned to keep things straight."
    "He liked
her," Merci said. "He's trying to help her by helping us.”
    "If
he wants to help us he could just admit he's a little foggy on some of this.
You know, a half-assed witness is worse than none at all sometimes."
    Merci
just shook her head. "I know that. But I want to know happened here. I
mean I really want to know."
    Zamorra
knelt and looked at the loose handle of the still-open sink cabinet, then to the
drawer that was pulled out and stranded on its bent runners.
    "I do too,"
he said, almost like it surprised him.
    Merci
wondered what it must be like to investigate a murder while your wife was
dying. There was a time when she had believed she could use her will to keep
people from dying, but now she didn't. Zamorra didn't seem like the kind of guy
who'd believe in that. It was naïve.
    What
she came up with was that Paul must want to run away times, to make his own
hurt stop. When Merci was in her greatest pain—after Hess and her mom died,
after a monster named Colesceau had almost killed her, right after Tim, Jr.,
was born—she pictured a small house on a Mexican beach, with bright purple
bougainvillea potted on the deck and herself sitting there in the shade.
    She
imagined that beach house in Mexico now, then she was in Aubrey Whittaker's
kitchen. What did Aubrey Whittaker picture, when the paying guys were doing
their thing? A house with a beach? Eternal fire?
    "The
fingerprints," Paul said, like he'd come to a conclusion. "And her
little black book. There's going to be a straight line in there, somewhere.
And it's going to point right at this creep."

CHAPTER
FOUR
    M erci sat with Tim on her lap and let Clark clear the
dishes. The house was cold this December, and she could feel the draft on her
ankles through her socks. Past the windows she could see, in the beams of the
yard lights, the big patio with the baby's trike and the barbecue, the cats on
the wall and the orange trees beyond. The lot was surrounded by the grove and
the grove was surrounded by housing you couldn't see until you walked right up
to them. She'd rent house for its privacy, and because it was cheap.
    Tim had on a knit
cap, half against the cold and half because he looked cute in it. It reminded
her of Hess, Tim's father, because worn a hat the last couple of times she had
seen him. Tim, Jr., looked like Hess. It was hard to think of him without
thinking of all that gone wrong.
    She
banished Hess from her thoughts, trying to be gentle about it.
    "Poker
night," said Clark. She knew it was poker night because her father was
washing the dishes fast, eager to make his eight o' game. It was Clark and his
old retired friends from the Sheriff Department. Every Wednesday.
    "Win lots,"
she said absently. Her mind was on the work of the day, no matter how hard she
tried to forget it. "Hey, we homicidals got our Christmas bonus
today."
    "Your very own
unsolved?"
    "Mine's from
nineteen sixty-nine. A woman named Patti Bailey. I brought it home for pleasure
reading tonight."
    Clark was scrubbing
away at a saucepan. He was a tall, lean man with nice gray hair and glasses.
She watched him scrub. Merci wondered at what year a man entered the age of
sharpened elbows. Hess had sharp elbows, even though he had been built heavy
and her father was built slender. Clark looked back over his shoulder at her.
    "Buy
a novel if you want pleasure."
    "You
remember it?"
    "Barely. I was
just starting burg-theft in sixty-nine. I think Rymers and Thornton got that
one."
    "They
still around?"
    "Thornton's
up in Arrowhead, I think. Rymers died."
    "How?"
    Clark turned again.
When he smiled the lines in his face changed direction and he looked sweet and
wise. "Stroke."
    Merci said nothing.
Her dad was always telling her to leave her work at work. To leave alone the
things she couldn't change. To understand that not every death in the world