Red Light (14 page)

"It's
absolutely amazing to me how much faith we humans can put into long shots. I
guess it's just hope. Hope to the max, stretched out as far as you can stretch
it. 'Til it's as big around as a hair."

"Then we try to
walk on it. Across the Grand Canyon or something.”

"Yeah, and back
again. What did you find in the bedroom?" She held up the tape.
"Let's see."

• • •

Merci plugged the tape
into the VCR atop the big TV in the living room and sat down on one of the black
leather sofas. Zamorra sat on the other. The screen filled with gray static
then popped into living color.

Aubrey Whittaker
walking on a beach in the evening. A man's voice establishing time, date and
location.

Aubrey Whittaker
in-line skating in a park. The same voice narrating again.

Aubrey Whittaker
sitting roughly where Paul was, talking about the first time she rode a horse.
The same guy, laughing at a comment.

Most of the shots
were in close and on her face. Merci was surprised by how beautiful she was.
Her skin was fair and her lips were red and her body was effortlessly graceful
and her eyes looked like something you'd see in a magazine. The camera must
have been on full zoom. Close, closer, then blurred when it got too close.

"Now, why are we doing this again?"
Aubrey asked the camera.

"So you can
see how lovely you are,"
answered the guy,
"when you're just being you."

"And I'm
supposed to watch this thing every time I feel like blowing my brains
out?"

"Every time."

Laughter.

End
of feature presentation. Gray infinity.

Neither said anything
for a long moment. Merci looked out at the black sky and the black water, heard
the rain still falling hard, saw one tiny light on one tiny vessel flickering
south to north far out on the sea.

"That's
McNally's voice, right?" he asked.

"Yes."

What
Zamorra said next surprised her.

"What she has is
a big growth in her brain matter. Nobody knows why she got it. Or how long it's
been there. Glioblastoma. It's the size of a lemon. It's a level four tumor,
which means it's growing fast. This kind of tumor is one hundred percent fatal.
They've told us how long she'll live. Fourteen months if it's treated by
surgery, chemotherapy radiation. Six if not. You add the eight months, but they
can be eight months of hell."

Merci
watched him watch the storm.

"But they've got
this new experimental thing. A new protocol, they call it. It's a combination
of radioactive seeds and chemicals they put down into the thing. It's supposed
to kill it. They know exactly much damage each seed can do, and they plant them
so they won't ruin the good brain cells. That's our hope. Hope again, but this
time it’s stretched out to the size of a radioactive, chemical-laced pellet.
And know what I think?"

"Tell
me."

"I
think it's going to work. And you know something else?"

"Go."

"She
does, too."

Merci watched the
tiny boat light disappear. She felt an incommensurate grief over this, like the
storm had not just swept away one light but had extinguished light itself. She
told herself that if the light showed up again it would mean Janine Zamorra was
going to get a miracle. Half a minute later, there it was.

"So
do I."

"Thank
you. I'll be gone all day tomorrow. Maybe the next."

"I
know. I'll pray. Can I visit?"

"Let's
see how it goes."

Merci got up, rewound
and ejected the videotape. Her legs heavy now, like she'd been in the gym for
hours. She thought of Tim Jr., and couldn't remember ever missing him so much
or wanting to him so badly. Tim. Dad. The Men. A smile and some laughter, a
glass of wine. Then to bed while this whole miserable shitstorm blew itself
out.

But no, tonight was
her social night, the monthly get-together she herself had instigated in order
to build a loyal army around her---was it just to break the aloneness she felt
at times? An obligation was an obligation.

Zamorra's
voice had an edge. "Mike's got problems."

"They seem to be
getting worse every minute. He told me today he killed her. He also told me he
didn't."

"Which is
it?"

"He didn't kill
her. It's not something Mike McNally has in him."

Zamorra
looked at her. His eyes were sharp and unforgiving. "Maybe you don't
really know what he's got in him."

"I realize
that."

"Maybe I should
talk to him."

"Not yet."

"Maybe
we should just fire a round through his gun and see what the lab says."

"I thought of
that, too."

"Let me talk to
him. I'll get the gun. It's not a problem."

She
hadn't thought it through, and she didn't have time to think it through right
here, so she said what she thought was right. Hoped was right. Hope, now
stretched out to the diameter of an opinion.

"No.
Not yet. I will if we need to. He couldn't kill her, Paul. I know that."

"People
get fooled all the time. Look at Aubrey."

S
he ran through the Cancun parking lot with a
newspaper over her head but her shoulders and hair were wet by the time she got
inside. She found her group in the back, seated in the usual big booth beneath
the fronds of the mock
palapa.

Sheriff's
Unsocial Deputies Society was Merci's gig all the way. She invited who she wanted,
excluded others, served as hostess and MC, made sure the tab got paid and the
waitress got tipped. It was a wholly self-serving venture, she admitted, a way
of
networking
—a word she’d long mistrusted.

She
understood enough of office politics to know you had to play in order to get
ahead, so SUDS was her handpicked team, the people who would rule the
department someday: Merci's People.

Her
two hard rules for admittance were only that she like them and they like her,
and they had to be good at their jobs. Beyond that, anything went. At first it
was Ike Sumich, Lynda Coiner and a young deputy named Joe Casik. Then Evan
O'Brien and one of the young burg-theft detectives—Ed Mendez. Kathy Hulet from
vice was a welcome addition, though she was a draw for some unwelcome male
deputies who learned about the SUDS from the unending department gossip. Merci
didn't want a singles club, which is why she'd not included Mike. After a
couple of meetings she had to add some oldsters, guys like Gilliam from the
lab, Stu Waggoner over in Fraud and Ray Dunbar. Merci had actually had a few deputies ask if they could come.
She'd let two out of three feel welcome, the other not.

On a night like this,
with her nerves rankled over Mike McNally's overtures to a high-line whore,
Merci wished she could just go home to The Men. But if you started something
you had to finish it, this was clearly evident.

Merci slid into the
booth next to Kathy Hulet. Attendance was light: Joe Casik, Evan O'Brien, Lynda
Coiner.

Tonight's topic
seemed to be nature versus the new Orange County toll roads, which cut through
thirty-something miles of unpeopled south county hills. Motorists had killed
two mountain lions, a dozen deer, eight wildcats and countless rabbits and
squirrels. Casik, an environmentalist, hiker, birdwatcher and photographer,
was haranguing about the fate of a toll roads agency plan to include
"wildlife corridors" under the road, to aid in the movement of deer
and big cats.

"The
idea
was okay," he was saying, as Merci nodded to the waitress for her usual
Scotch and water. "But the trouble is, the deer are scared of the damned
things. The corridors are just tunnels under a highway, with thousands of cars
roaring up on top. So the bureaucrats try to lure the deer into the tunnels with
something good to eat. Alfalfa. But they've got no idea that alfalfa is toxic
to deer, so the deer that the cars don't hit are being poisoned in the wildlife
corridors. We're growing some fat vultures, is all we're doing. I see 'em
everywhere on my hikes."

"Venison is
delicious," said O'Brien. "They could give the deer meat to the poor.
Issue them passes to prowl the corridors. Free forks and knives."

"Napkins,
too," said Coiner. "And they still charge three dollars and sixty
cents to drive that thing out to Green River."

Casik pointed out
that nature had scored two human lives to balance the sheets: a late-night
single-car colliding into a light stanchion because the driver was trying to
miss something in the road—most likely a deer.

"Too bad,
though," said Coiner. "It was an old lady and her
granddaughter."

"They have deer
sensors you can put on your car," said Evan. " let you know when
..."

Merci tuned out. The
bar music was loud and the lights were low and these faces—faces she usually
liked seeing—just made her feel alien and irrelevant. She wished Hess was here.
She wished The Men were here.

Hulet touched Merci's
arm while Casik and O'Brien talked about fire ants and killer bees. "You
all right?"

"Clobbered.
Long day."

Yeah, and you get
those Africanized bees after you and it's all she wrote ...

Hulet was a
long-legged brunette who couldn't disguise her looks and never tried to. She
was Vice Detail's best john-bait, and she had gotten herself into some hairy
situations and never lost her cool, played second base on the deputies'
slow-pitch softball team.

"You
look it," she said. "Go home, get some rest."

"I'm
going to, soon."

"What's
with Mike?"

Got a brother in
Texas who's got fire ants, they bite him and his, swells up for three days . ..

"I
got no idea," said Merci, though in fact she did.

"Damn, he's been
weird lately—stressed out and tired all the time. Looks like he's been awake
for a week. Gone sometimes when he ought to be at work. Says he's been in
church. Whatever. But this Whitaker thing really got to him. I've never seen
him so . . . guilty. You know, for letting it happen. I mean, she was his girl
and she was going to wear a wire for Moladan, and the next thing we know
somebody's capped her right in her own apartment. But Mike was weirding out
before that, so it's not just the Whittaker thing."

Plus the fire ants
eat a lot of bird eggs, just wiped out the quail in west Texas, where my
brother lives . . .

"I know,"
said Merci. "Believe me, I know. He's been leaning heavy on me this last
month, too. Real touchy, real raw."

"Well,
he's in love with you, so that's all that is."

"I
guess."

"You
look thrilled."

Collect a bunch
for a fire ant farm, send it to my nephew up in Seattle .. .

"Kathy, I wish I
lived on a tropical island sometimes. Me and Tim and a thousand paperback
novels. Rum and pineapple juice."

"Obedient
servant boys with tight brown buns?"

"They
come when you ring a bell."

Tight brown buns?
What the hell are you two talking about over there?

"Try
Club Med. I'll go with you."

"Hey,
I might take you up on that."

So Merci stuck it out
for an hour, the voices and faces blending and blurring as she sipped her
Scotch.

No, Glandis
doesn't have the balls to challenge Brighton for office. That'd be like a pit
bull biting his master.

Glandis just plays dumb.

Good actor, then.
You ever met his wife? Looks like Cruella DeVille. But look, Glandis needs
Brighton's backing. Nobody's going to be the next sheriff unless Brighton
endorses. He's the machine.

Either way,
Brighton's gotta step down before too long, I mean he's what, seventy,
seventy-one?

Seventy-two.
Glandis isn't any youngster. There's Vince Abelera in the marshal's office, he
seems okay. But I'll be dipped in red ape shit if we get a marshal as sheriff.
We need some young blood running this show. Some of our own blood.

"Merci, why
don't you just announce you're running for sheriff?" This from Joe Casik.

"I'm
not old and wrinkly enough yet."

"I'll
support you."

"Me, too,"
said O'Brien. "The rank and file of SUDS will weigh in behind you."

"You guys,"
said Merci, standing. "I'm sorry, but I'm definitely not running for
sheriff, and I'm definitely over this one. I've got an early interview
tomorrow—way up in Arrowhead."

"Bring
your chains," said Casik.

"I'm
planning on it. Sorry I'm such a dud tonight. 'Night, kiddies."