Black Water

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The FBI Orange County Investigative Resident Agency is housed in four-story building not far from Sheriff's Headquarters. The building has other tenants besides the FBI, one of which is the Government/Courts Bureau of the Orange County

Journal.

The building wraps around a ground floor courtyard that is shaded by potted palms and is cool even on late August mornings. Merci was early enough to try the ground-floor ladies' room, but it was secured with a brawn lock system and she didn't have the numbers.

Komer led Merci and Zamorra to his office on the second floor and closed the door. He poured three coffees from a pot on a stand and offered it black and without questions.

"Well, it's obvious by now that Sistel is having some problem with MiraVen," he said.

"I didn't know until this morning," said Merci.

"Almost nobody did. Sistel kept it quiet as long as they could-no reason to worry the shareholders until you have to."

"What happened?" asked Zamorra.

"I don't know yet. But Sistel is claiming that there's a major problem obtaining the snake poison. The short supply-they say-was conveniently omitted by OrganiVen during the purchase negotiations."

"Fraudulently omitted?" Zamorra asked.

"Sistel would like us to use that word. Then we can go after the OrganiVen people. That's my job, to determine if there's been fraud or not. And if so, take down the fraudsters. It takes time. Everybody's got a line. And the good fraudsters, they can steal a lot of money without leaving a trail."

Komer folded his hands and leaned on his elbows. He was younger than Merci had expected, forty, maybe, with short straight brown hair, brown shoes and brown leather on his hip with what looked like a Smith nine inside it.

"I've been looking at OrganiVen for almost a week now. I didn't connect Gwen and Archie Wildcraft with OrganiVen until yesterday."

"They made almost two million from it," said Merci.

Komer nodded. "And you'll be interested to know they were more involved than just as investors. Gwen was, anyway. She became an employee for almost six months. She helped raise capital. I'm not sure how much. I'm not sure what her arrangement was. But she spent a lot of time at the OrganiVen building."

"We wondered," said Zamorra. "With all the promotional material we found in their home office."

Komer sat back and looked at them. "OrganiVen received early money from a venture company called SunCo Capital. Heard of it?"

Merci shook her head and saw Zamorra doing the same.

"You're not alone," said Komer. "It existed for roughly two years, then evaporated. I ran across it when I got into the financial side of OrganiVen. I recognized the players immediately. SunCo is actually spelled ROC."

"Russian Organized Crime," said Zamorra. Komer was already nodding. "Right here in the home of Disneyland and the master-planned community. SunCo was just two guys, as far as I can tell. Sonny Charles is an Anglicized alias for Sergei Cherbrenko. Nice guy. Came to the United States when he was twenty years old. A gay man. Did okay in insurance fraud up in L.A.-standard car accident stuff. But he really scored here in Orange County when he started up a company that bought out the life insurance policies of AIDS patients for fifty cents on the dollar. He called the company Rescue Financial. Heroic, isn't it? It was even legal. He was the scourge of Laguna Beach in the early eighties, made a lot of money watching his customers die. We got him on a boiler-room scam eight years ago-working senior citizens on a phony group medical insurance deal. He's been out for three years, so he obviously found gainful employment with SunCo Capital."

Komer handed Merci a file. Attached to the inside of the front cover were reasonably good booking shots-two profiles and a frontal. Sonny Charles was a sharp-faced blond who looked about as trustworthy as a scorpion.

"Of course Sonny didn't accomplish all this alone," said Kome "He's got a helper-Zlatan Vorapin. Vorapin's got half a dozen aliases, one of which is Al Apin-which he used for his SunCo dealing: He's also got a Soviet jacket-robbery, extortion, debt collection, extortive money lending. He came west in eighty-two. In eighty-eight we had a high-level ROC captain cold on an extortion case. But the victim was shot in the head before he could testify. We think Zlatan was the shooter but we couldn't prove it. LAPD got him on assault back in ninety-a nineteen-year-old girl. He was bringing poor young women in from the Balkans, making them work as prostitutes to pay off their transport. Nobody would talk to us, especially the women. Since then, nothing. We heard that he and Cherbrenko moved here to Orange County for a more affluent and trusting work environment. They're supposedly more into the white-collar things. Less violence, more profit. Vorapin's a hard guy to find, considering that he's six-ten, three thirty."

Merci's heart was beating steady and true and she felt it in her temples. Vora peen, she thought: like a hammer. She looked over at Zamorra, who wore a cold smile.

"We got size sixteen shoe prints by the Wildcrafts' walkway," she said. "About eight feet from where Archie went down."

Komer looked at her and said nothing.

"And more prints by an abandoned Cadillac with plates similar to one seen leaving the Wildcraft’s crime scene. Two witnesses say huge, dark hair, short beard, thick glasses. The other blond and slender."

A smile crossed Komer's face as he handed Merci another file. She opened it and studied the enormous head, the unimpressed eyes and the wronged, infantile lips of Zlatan Vorapin. The top set of mugs showed him with his shaded rectangular eyeglasses, the bottom set without.

"Oh, man," she said quietly. Vorapeen.

Komer just shook his head.

"SunCo is long gone, Sergeant. Hit and run, these guys-they start a new company for every new scam. Our last contact with Cherbrenko was early nineteen ninety-nine. For Vorapin, two years before that. They're the most accomplished bureau-rats in the world. They just vanish into the system-multiple ID's, driver's licenses, credit cards. Burn companies within burn companies. The whole thing. We got four different sets of pretty good ID off of Vorapin. Five off of Cherbrenko. And that's just what we found."

"I don't imagine their fellow Russians are too helpful in finding them for you."

"Nobody knows anything. Let me tell you, the Russians are great at stock scams because they're educated to survive in a bureaucracy. So they can find a way to use the system. They love the taste of red tape. Seventy years of life under the KGB makes you resourceful. Life as KGB makes you ruthless. Put people like that together and you get very effective bad guys."

"But you don't know what the scam was?"

"I'm looking. I'm working it. Sistel's squawking about the supply of the venom, and that's all I should say right now."

"You'd think rattlesnakes are pretty easy to get," said Rayborn. "All those reptile farms in Florida with the big ugly things crawling over each other. Those roundups in Texas and Oklahoma. You know, belts and key chains and snake chili."

"Yeah. But according to Sistel, not true."

Merci tried to think this one out-can't they milk the damned things, put the stuff in the refrigerator with the butter and cheese?"

"I know the scam was good," said Komer. "It had to be to fool B. B. Sistel. Whatever it was, it just started coming home to roost a couple of months ago. That's when Sistel launched their own investigation. A month later they contacted the FTC, which vetted the story, then contacted us. Sistel tried to time the announcement of the restructure with an optimistic earnings forecast for the fourth quarter. Didn't really work. I know for a fact that when Sistel cries foul and guys like Charles and Apin are involved, it spells fraud. Capital letters. And when a murder victim was working for these guys, well, I don't know what to think. Nothing good, I can tell you that."

Komer shook his head and sat back.

Merci looked at the pictures again. "Can I get file copies?"

"You're looking at them. They're yours."

"Thank you."

"Sergeant, as far as I'm concerned, this is your murder and my stock fraud. I'll help you all I can. And I'd sure appreciate your help back."

"You'll have it."

"May I have a copy of your file, when it's convenient?"

"I'll have one on your desk by two this afternoon. Would it be possible for you to clear Ron Billingham over at Sistel to talk with me? He asked me to call back when I'd talked to Ardith Day."

He looked hard at her. "I'll clear it. Ron's a good guy. He was with us for quite a few years."

"Can you connect Apin to a local limousine service?"

Komer thought for a moment, eyes roving the ceiling. "No. But the ROC had their hands in some of the Los Angeles limo operations back in the early nineties. Give me a couple of days, I'll see if there a local angle."

"Agent Komer, thanks again."

They stood. Komer regarded her with the casually optimistic look that in law enforcement always means suspicion. "Is Deputy Wildcraft still at large?"

She nodded.

"That video was damaging. I understand the evidence against him is strong, and he talked suicide. But if the size sixteens were Vorapin' maybe he was there that night. Maybe these gentlemen framed Wildcraft for it."

"I think it's possible," she said. And she thought: nobody's framing a fellow deputy on me again, ever.

She felt the skin on her face betray her but she didn't care.

Komer offered his hand and she shook it.

They walked down Flower toward the Sheriff's Headquarters. The noon heat was close and personal, and Rayborn was thinking about the Russians.

"I talked to Priscilla after work yesterday," said Zamorra. "I don't think she was after Archie. I think she had her hands full with her own husband."

"Does she seem like the type who'd yell about him to her brother-in-law?"

"The night before Gwen's birthday Brock told Priscilla that he was having an affair. She was furious about it. Still is. When she picked up Archie the next day, she snapped, blew off steam."

"You believe that?"

"Yeah. She had to do something, or go crazy."

"I'd have blown it off on Brock."

"She couldn't. He spent the night with the new girl."

The press conference was held in a first-floor courthouse conference room. Merci stopped in the doorway, unhappily baffled by the crowd.

George and Natalie Wildcraft were there, sitting with Gwen's parents, Lee and Earla Kuerner. Who told them?

Likewise, civil rights lawyer Connie Astrahan and a cadre of three women who sat at the end of the front row of fold-up chairs, murmuring like conspirators,

Likewise, the head of the Sheriff Deputy Association, an attorney named Dave Dunphy, who glanced at her dismissively then turned back to his group of deputies. She knew them-all sergeants or higher-loyal remnants of Chuck Brighton's old guard who thought that she had betrayed the department by telling the truth about it.

Likewise, at the other end of the chairs, a loose coalition of what Merci privately referred to as "my people," mostly younger deputies who had stuck with her through those dark and agonizing days winter.

Dr. John Stebbms sat at a table beside the podium, talking Gary Brice.

CNB's pretty Michelle Howland was there, as were reporters two of the networks. Merci recognized half a dozen print journalists who specialized in the crime beat, and attendant photogs. And two columnists who specialized in human interest, cheer-the-underdog stories. A magazine writer. And the publisher of Orange County's native newspaper,

County Weekly.

CBS and KFWB radio were there, even a reporter from the campus PBS station at UC Irvine.

The podium was already awash in light, the twin blow-ups of Wildcraft easeled on either side like candidate posters at a political rally. The one on the right was taken from Brice's video footage, and showed Archie by the pool in one of his less maniacal moments, crop the shoulders to omit the shotgun.

"I hate these things," she muttered to Zamorra.

"Never let 'em see you sweat."

"That's all they see me do."

Merci butted between Stebbins and Brice, nodding to the surgeon and turning to the reporter. "That stunk, what you did to Wildcraft."

"I didn't plan it that way."

"You made him look crazy for a story."

"I did? But not the shotgun or the threats or the somewhat destabilized glare in his eyes?"

"I wish you knew your place," she said. "But you don't, too late for you to learn. Will you excuse me for a minute while with the doctor? Beat it, Gary."

Brice tried to cover his humiliation with a smile but his red face a giveaway. Merci looked at Stebbins and shrugged. She didn’t have anything to say to him, her words to Brice were just a way of shoving him around a little.

"Sorry about this," she said.

"It's okay. Do I have to answer questions?"

"You can tell them about Archie's medical condition, then walk out of here if you want. The marshal will let you through the back door."

"I'm going to take you up on that."

She walked over to the Kuerners and the Wildcrafts and said hello to them. The men shook her hand, but Earla looked away and Natalie peered at her like a wolverine ready to jump. Merci felt the new chill, the clear message that she was out to get Archie, under the guise of wanting to protect him.

Rayborn reluctantly squared herself behind the podium and waited for everyone to take a seat.

She thanked them for coming.

She introduced Dr. John Stebbins, who nervously took Merci's place at the microphone and spoke of Deputy Wildcraft's medical condition: threat of infection, threat of edema, threat of seizure, threat of bleeding; loss of memory, possible hallucination, confabulation and erratic behavior.

"Is he suicidal?" asked Michelle Howland.

"That's not my area. I can't answer that."

"Is he dangerous?"

Stebbins cast a panicked glance at Rayborn, who shrugged encouragingly, trying to indicate the doctor could answer or not, up to him.

"I can't answer that, either. He's unpredictable," said Stebbins. "We just don't know. We've got to get him back under medical care. That is the only thing I can tell you for certain. I'm due in surgery in one hour. Thank you."

Stebbins banged his knee on the table leg on his way toward the back door, but the marshal had it open and waiting, and the doctor sidled out like a spy.

Rayborn went to the podium, looked up and focused on the CNB shooter because she'd never met him and he was a neutral being to her. She tried her best to sound like the cops she'd seen on TV, but she wasn't very good at talking that talk.

"We called this conference because we need Deputy Wildcraft to turn himself in to the nearest medical or law enforcement facility as soon as possible. We ask that anyone who has information on Mr. Wildcraft's whereabouts contact us immediately. It's for his own good. Mr. Wildcraft has a bad head wound, and as you know, the bullet still lodged in him. He needs medical attention, as Dr. Stebbins said. I want to stress that Deputy Wildcraft is not under warrant for arrest. We want to talk to him about the murder of his wife, Gwen, because he's a possible witness. No charges have been filed in regard to the confrontation with Mr. Brice on Monday morning. We need to question Deputy Wildcraft. We understand that the deputy is despondent over the death of his wife, is suffering a bad wound, and possibly feel hounded by certain members of the media. We're with you, Archie," she said, mustering a small smile. "Come back and talk to us. Questions?"

Perfect, she thought: that came out just right.

CBS News Radio: "Has Deputy Wildcraft contacted you since disappearing?"

Rayborn: "Yes. He appears to be feeling fine but is reluctant seek medical care."

"Why?"

"He is angered by a reporter trespassing on his property early on Monday morning. He thinks he may be seen as a suspect in the dead of his wife."

He thinks his wife is talking to him and he thinks he can track down a three-hundred-pound killer named Vorapin but I'm not at liberty to tell you this. And if I were, I wouldn't anyway.

"Is he a suspect in Gwen Wildcraft's murder?"

"I already told you he isn't."

"Sergeant Rayborn! Sergeant Rayborn-Michelle Howland, CNB. Can you tell us why Deputy Wildcraft is not a suspect in the death his wife, if his gun was used to kill her, and his fingerprints were on that weapon, and a paraffin test for gunshot residue came up positive

Rayborn could have killed her, would have if there weren't many witnesses around. She felt like blood was boiling out of her ears. She imagined Howland being run over by a speeding armored c; then by a steamroller, then by a…

"Sure," she said evenly. "Because there's a lot more to a homicide case than fingerprints and gunshot residue. Come on, even you know that."

A hush, then.

"That's all you're going to say?"

"What else is there to say?"

Merci had already traced the invisible path of disclosure from Jim Gilliam's crime lab to the rosy red lips of Michelle Howland: DA Clay Brenkus to ADA Ryan Dawes to news rat Gary Brice to Michelle the Belle. She imagined Dawes freefalling through a canyon again, his extreme-sports shorts tightly gripping his butt in the fatal descent.

But Michelle wasn't done: "I was wondering why you claimed recently that the weapon was stolen from Arizona, and that the fingerprinting was inconclusive. We have those statements on tape. Which of your stories is the true one, Detective?"

"Those were preliminary findings, later disproven," she said calmly. "I did say those things, but I shouldn't have. It was too early for a statement. One of these days I'll learn to keep my mouth shut around you people."

This, meant as a self-deprecating joke, drew a weak media chuckle.

Then, Natalie Wildcraft, her voice cutting through the tension like a rusty ax: "Archie didn't kill her, you stupid women."

Cameras swung toward her, shooters re-aiming at the far end of the seats, where the Wildcrafts and Kuerners sat in a sudden wash of bright light. A chair tipped over and landed with a metallic bang that was louder than it should have been.

"She's right," said Earla Kuerner. "You people ought to be ashamed. All of you."

The nonreporters-Merci's friends and enemies-stood simultaneously for a better look, which gave a sense of things unraveling.

Natalie shielded her face from the lights with her small, bony hand, her big engagement ring flashing. "Good gracious, turn those damned things off."

The shooters pressed in close and fast, not about to lose position to each other. The reporters fired questions at the same time, then fired them louder, then began shouting them as the marshal at the back door shook his head and hustled bulkily around the table to restore order.

Natalie Wildcraft rasped furiously through the din, "Get away, you leeches, you gutless leeches!"

Rayborn, thankful for something physical, rounded the podium help the marshal.

"Be easy," said Zamorra, also stepping toward the little riot.

Merci restrained Michelle Howland by the arm but Howland wheeled and hissed, " Take your hands off me or I'll sue you out the department, bitch. "

"Cool it, Sergeant," snapped the marshal, moving toward her. Shocked and accelerating toward anger, Merci veered into Natalie Wildcraft, who had fought her way through the bristle of bodies and mikes to make for the door.

Natalie Wildcraft slapped her hard in the face, left side. Rayborn saw it coming but couldn't pull herself away from the focused fury the mother's eyes.

"Stupid women," Natalie barked again. "She acts like a judge and you act like a friend."

She raised her hand again but Zamorra in one impossible motion caught the wrist and delivered it with something like grace into beckoning paw of her husband. George Wildcraft eased out of room, pulling her behind him.

Rayborn looked over at the video shooter who, alone in his group had turned to watch her and catch the action.

She shook her head and looked down to avoid the glare of video light.

The slap and the words and the exit of Natalie Wildcraft left a sudden silence in the room.

Earla and Lee Kuerner scuttled away like cold refugees.

Rayborn got behind the podium, threw back her thick dark hair and took a deep breath. She wondered if her cheek was as red a felt.

"Any more questions? Good. We'll talk again in, oh, how about.. never. Does never work for you?"

At that moment the door opened and a sunny, overweight woman in a blue dress smiled at Merci. A legion of girls, all dressed in identical brown uniforms, swarmed in ahead of her.

"Brownie Troop seven-eight-eight, Tustin," she said. "Courthouse tour?"

"Please retreat to the information desk," said Merci. The Brownies had come to a communal stop when they saw Merci and the podium and the posters of Wildcraft and the video shooters and celebrity reporters.

"Girls! Girls-this way, please!"

Merci sat in the pen, waiting for Abelera to call or come over, fire her, take her badge and her gun, maybe whip her with his Sam Browne in the middle of the homicide pen.

She stared down at the recent arrivals on her desk: a department-wide notice of a birthday party for Assistant Sheriff Collins, suggested gift donation, twenty dollars; this month's newsletter from the Deputy Association; the "FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin"; blank timecards for the coming week.

She pushed them all aside for a look at Don Leitzel's neatly written note regarding the addresses in the navigational computer of the abandoned Cadillac STS.

Sgt. Rayborn Addresses contained in Sand Canyon car, in order of entry into the navigation system, are 83 Osier Lane, La Jolla (University of San Diego School of Medicine); 212

Saltair, Newport Beach; 4143 Agate, La Jolla.

I took the liberty of hitting the Orange and San Diego counties assessor's offices to see who the owners of these places are-hope you don't mind. These addresses belong to 1) the University of California,

2) Mr. Wyatt Wright, a single man, and

3) Dr. Sean Moss, a single man.

The Wright and Moss home purchases were both within the last year, 6.8 and 4.5 million dollars, respectively.

Don L.

"I'll be damned," she said out loud. Inside her the embarrassment of the press conference was whirling up against the excitement of this new evidence, and Merci felt a giddiness that went straight to her head "Cherbrenko and Vorapin used the Caddy."

"Huh?"

Sergeant Teague wheeled in his chair and looked at her.

"Those creeps that Crowder and Dobbs saw coming down the hill from Wildcraft's in a Cadillac at the crack of dawn-the same creeps were dialed in with home addresses for two of the OrganiVen founder and the UCSD medical school, where another founder was working. The arrogant shitheads stole an STS for transportation and dumped out on Sand Canyon."

"So?" Teague, large and only apparently sluggish, specialized dumb skepticism and Rayborn generally loved him for it.

"Gwen worked for OrganiVen. It's a stock fraud," she said. She was thinking out loud now, and things were making sense. "Everybody got rich, but now something's going wrong. Archie didn't kill her. And he didn't shoot himself. I'm damned sure of it now."

"What are you going to do with all his fingerprints on the gun?'

"Wipe them off."

"Good. I knew Arch didn't do it. He's a good kid."

Teague wheeled back around and burped quietly. "But let me guess-they wiped the STS clean."

"They sure did. Ike and Leitzel couldn't get a single print."

"Pros."

"But still dumb enough to leave the addresses on the navigatior system."

"Geniuses don't go into crime."

"A goddamned stock fraud," said Merci, still thinking out loud.

Teague spun around again. "So Archie's got the proof in the back of his mind, you might say. But nobody can get to it. Because to take out the bullet, it would probably kill him."

"The brain scans can't tell a thirty-eight from a thirty-two twenty-two or a twenty-five or a nine. They're not quite precise enough to show an exact diameter, with the mushrooming and fragging and all. But yeah, if you could get it out, you'd see it didn't come from his nine. It came from something one of those two guys in the car was packing. I'd bet my house on it.

"Teague shrugged. "So, when Archie dies of natural causes at the age of ninety-six, they can autopsy him, get the bullet and button down this case once and for all."

"Give me a break, Teague, I'm going to button this thing down by the time you quit burping."

"Feels like that could be a month."

"Give me a week." "Get 'em, Rayborn."

"I'll get 'em cold."

But Leitzel the Thorough wasn't the only good fairy to have visited Merci's desk while she was being slapped and cussed and pushed around by a marshal.

A note from Ike Sumich lay just under Leitzel's:

Sergeant R-After many long-distance phone minutes I was able to determine that the shoe imprints were left by a size 16 Foot Rite "Comfort Strider." Two tread patterns were marketed in this country. What we found at Wildcraft's is the "Versa-Terra" by Markham.

NOTE: FOOT RITE ONLY SOLD THE COMFORT STRIDER IN SIZE 16 THROUGH CATALOGUES. NOT EVEN SPECIALTY BIG AND TALL STORES CARRIED SUCH A LARGE SIZE IN STOCK.

Here are the six most popular catalogues through which Foot Rite offered the shoe for sale in California.

Sumich listed the catalogue companies, their addresses, phone and fax numbers and Web site addresses.

"I love our crime lab guys," she said. "They're all cuties." Teague turned back to his desk. She got Sumich on the phone and thanked him for the good work. "This is what I need now," she said. "Get back to Foot Rite and find out if any of their catalogue retailers are specialty outfits."

"The ones I gave you are all specialty outfits-big and tall."

"Go a step further. Big and tall executives, because this guy might see himself as a businessman. Big and tall, ethnically targeted-look for European, Russian, Balkan, Slav. Try military surplus because alot of them have been selling Soviet stuff since the breakup. Try b and tall outdoorsmen, too-hunters and fishermen."

"Got it. Why a European businessman who likes Soviet surplus catalogues and loves to hunt and fish?"

"He's a Russian, Ike. A gangster, a fraudster and probably a killer. The hunting and fishing idea is pure hunch. Nothing more."

"Do you have a weight on him, by any chance?"

"I heard three-thirty, but that was as of a few years ago."

"I estimated three-fifty from the soil and the print depth. I didn't want to say anything because it was so much. I figured my estimate was just flat-out wrong."

"Vorapin. Zlatan Vorapin. Also known as Al Apin."

"Al Apeman."

"He's going to be hard to find."

"Set a trap. Use bananas."

"I'll think about it."