Black Water by T. Jefferson Parker

him but she still couldn't. It would have helped to have seen him in the flesh at some point, but Merci couldn't remember ever seeing the man. Which was hard to believe, with a face like his. Just the dimples were enough to make you remember.
    She checked her notes to get the lights correct: one bathroom light on; one kitchen light on; one TV room light on; all other houselights off. The driveway light was on when Bill Jones made his call at five-o-eight in the morning but off when Crowder and Dobbs arrived at five-fourteen.
    She walked down the hall, feeling the deep padding and springy carpet under her duty boots, nothing like the creaking hardwood floors of her rented house in the orange grove. She could hear the cats walking down the hall at home. So quiet here, she thought.
    But Archie, she tells herself, has just murdered his wife and he comes down the hallway, leaving the lights off. She sees no reason for Archie to stop in the living room. His ears would be ringing and his nostrils would be sharp with burned powder and his eyes could see nothing but the red life of his bride spraying into the bathroom air. He would have some of her on his right hand, probably, maybe some on his face and robe. Archie doesn't see the stack of presents. Archie doesn't see the rock in the middle in the living room, thrown earlier that day in the terrible argument. Archie, she thinks, doesn't see anything but the black vastness that waits for him outside.
    Why outside? He's already made a bit of a mess in the bathroom. Why not kill himself in the rock room, with his mute, graceful suiseki around him? Why not do it in the immaculately polished silver Porscl Boxster convertible that sat covered in his garage? Why not sit on one of the living room couches, get comfortable?
    But no, Archie walks outside.
    Merci opened the front door, stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind her. There is no sun at five in the morning, she thinks. She tries to picture the world dark, with the help of just a flashlight beam, just like Archie saw it. But this is difficult. In fact, she's thankful for the summer light because the walkway is steeper and narrower and more sharply curved than she remembers. If you weren't familiar with it, you could walk right off.
    But Archie, she thinks, fresh from slaughtering his wife, and passing up a half dozen sensible and meaningful places to slaughter himself, takes a flashlight outside with him so he won't veer off the walkway and . . . what? Stub his toe? Get his bare feet dirty? Bang his head on the branch of a Chinese flame tree?
    Apparently so. Because, as Gilliam demonstrated with the GSR and Buckley with his tool marks, Archie stops on the walk, understands that this is the place of places, turns around to face the direction he come and fires, hitting himself in the head.
    Sure. Maybe.
    Merci stood over the spot where Wildcraft had been found, the bloodstains darkened almost to rust on the concrete. Ants swarm over it, thick in the cracks.
    Sure. Maybe.
    Bullshit.
    She walked briskly back to the front door, swung it open and continued on to the master bath. She stood there again where Archie would have stood. Looked at the lavender hand towels, the blood on the floor, the fingerprint dust everywhere in sight. Take it fast, now, Merci thought. Take it like a man who's just killed his wife and now plans to kill himself.
    Down the hallway then, not turning on the lights because he's walked this hallway thousands of times. He's got the gun and the flashlight. Gun in the right hand, light in the left. At the door he slides the flashlight under his right arm to free a hand. Steps outside, closes the door behind him.
    No lights on still, and he doesn't bother with the flashlight because he knows where he's going.
    But where is he going?
    Merci stopped just short of the place where Archie bled. She looked at the walkway behind her and at the walkway ahead of her. She looked at the near wall of the house, saw the big