Free Black Water by T. Jefferson Parker Page A

by what she was doing but she had believed it was the right thing to do. Now she was just crying for her own wretched, pathetic little heartbreak.
Before leaving the ladies' room she'd looked at the mirror and seeing what she always saw: a tall, big-boned woman with unruly dark hair and a face that was not quite pretty. She had nice skin, correct? Looking back into her own dark eyes she saw anger and disappointment and humiliation. Zamorra had known. She took a deep breath and thought, screw it: I've got Tim Jr. to think about anyway, and the last thing my sorry ass needs is a romance with another cop whose wife has just died of cancer.
    And that was that.
    "What did you get on her family, Paul?"
    "I got their names and address off one of the Wildcraft loan forms. Earla is the mother, Lee's the dad. Last name is Kuerner. Earla said they'd be there at five. They had funeral arrangements to make."
    Merci remembered the GK in the bottom right corner of some of the paintings in Gwen Wildcraft's music room.
    "How did she sound?"
    "Numb."
    The Kuerners lived in Norco, a small city not far from the county line. Zamorra used a map to navigate. Merci got off on Lincoln in Corona, picked up River Road, made a right on Second Street.
    "I've never been out here," she said, looking out at a dairy farm, rows and rows of black cows lined up at the feed bars.
    "It's interesting."
    The houses along Second were mostly beat-up, the grass mostly dead. Chain-link fences, cars on blocks, corrugated metal tool sheds with brown rain stains on their flanks. One place still had the Christmas lights sagging from the roofline and faded, oncered bows sagging from the stucco. A spray-painted sheet of plywood advertised pygmy goats for sale. Merci looked at the stubby, big-bellied little goats, wondering what they were good for and what they cost. One yard was nothing but junk—automobile doors stacked like pancakes, dozens of rusted-out lawnmowers, piles of old steel fence posts, a collection of decrepit cement mixers. An ostrich stood in a child's wading pool and looked at Merci like a cop. The smell of the dairy farm came through the air-conditioned car, dark and mammalian and foul.
    "Scenic," she said.
    "Norco's a contraction for North Corona," said Zamorra.
    "It looks like a contraction."
    "They're poor on this end of town."
    "Lazy, too, by the looks of it."
    "There you go again, Merci."
    He had a point. She'd enlisted Zamorra to help purge herself of glib opinion and rapid judgment. She'd gotten so exhausted with endless opinions of others about herself— she busted Sheriff Brighton, for her career, she did it because she hated him and he didn't promote her, she busted her father because she hated him, too, no, it was cause she loved him, she got suckered about McNally and had to blame it on somebody else, she did it because she's amoral, because she's too moral, blah fucking blah, blah, blah —that Merci had even grown exhausted by her own.
It was just so hard sometimes, to keep from making up her mind before she had all the facts. You saw what you saw, thought what you thought, smelled what you smelled. She thought of Archie Wildcraft, and what he had either done or not done to his wife and himself. There she was again, making up her mind before all the facts were in.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah. I'm sure a lot of them work hard for A they have."
"I wore the same shirt for my second and third-grade school pictures. My big brother had worn it for his second-grade shot."
"How many wrecked cars in your front yard?"
She smiled slightly and Zamorra did, too.
"I know," she said. "I just have to remind myself to, when in doubt, shut my trap."
The Kuerner house off of Cherokee was a pale blue bungalow white porch columns. There was a white picket fence around the small front yard, stepping stones leading to the porch. Two big pine trees stood on either side of the stones and held the house in shadow, place was neat and clean.
The driveway gate was open so