The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #4)

Men, Maia thought. You'd better be drugged out of your mind, Detective.

She loosened the first belt, got it off his chest, heard the underwater plink plink as it hit rock at the bottom. She started looking for the second catch when Lopez's hands groped up her shoulders and found her neck. He started to squeeze.

Maia pushed herself away, fought to control her panic.

She breathed several times very slowly, listening to the exhales explode around her.

All right. So now he's trying to kill me. He's weak. Ignore it.

She got next to him again, and again he started working his hands up her body toward her neck.

She founded the second catch, lost it, found it again. It was stuck on something—the strap of the air tank maybe. She tugged.

Lopez's fingers found her throat, started to choke her. His grip was light, palsied, but his thumbs still found her trachea, made her want to gag. She pushed his hands away, went back to work.

The second belt was off his chest. Now just the ones around his waist. These are supposed to be easy latches, she remembered, for quick removal. Yeah, right.

Lopez kept strangling her. She wrestled the third belt off, groped for the final one, tried not to gag.

She imagined her grandmother in China, learning the news of Maia's death—strangled underwater by a drugged man who was feeling her body. Drowned in the beercanpolluted muck under an American restaurant. Maia tried to think how she could translate that into Mandarin and make it sound dignified—something that would save face for the family. She couldn't think of a way.

The last belt came loose.

She tugged at Lopez, trying to get him to move.

Then she realized it was no use. She would have to let the BC do the work.

Could she ascend straight up? She didn't know. Had no clue how deep she was. But then she felt her own air starting to thin— the first sign that she had a few breaths left at most. She had no choice. She wrapped one arm around Lopez's waist, used her other hand to hit the BC inflator and let it inflate all the way.

Suddenly she felt as if her whole chest was in one big blood pressure tester. The vest tightened, expanded with a rush of sound, and she and Lopez were rising, too slowly.

Lopez's hand touched her regulator, yanked it out of her mouth.

She clenched her teeth—tried to find the backup onehanded. No luck.

She inhaled a mouthful of water just as she broke the surface, coughing up half the lake.

Her entire body was shaking. She kicked and paddled with her one free hand, cursing at Lopez.

Sirens everywhere. She was at the corner of the restaurant. There were smeary lights on the shore—blinking red and blue.

She yelled for help.

Then two men in uniforms were coming for her—paramedics, splashing into the water, wading out to meet her.

And when she collapsed on the shore, staring up at the stars, more men moved around her, pulling at her straps, trying to loosen her equipment, and she tried not to tremble.

She pushed back the sensations of the water—the cold brown light, the mossy shelves of rock, the hiss of her own breath through the regulator.

As the lump formed in her throat, she spoke to herself silently, thinking the words in Mandarin so that she might believe them: They will not see me cry. They will not see me cry.

CHAPTER 42

Mrs. Hayes was a mountain of grief—black slippers, black sweat pants, black Tshirt advertising a tent revival. Her face was pasty from weeping, the skin under her eyes as dark as apple bruises.

"Excuse us, children," she said.

The younger ones continued to throw blocks. The two older kids, Amanda and Clem, stabbed each other with Tinkertoy swords.

Mrs. Hayes looked over at Chris, who was sitting next to her on the couch. He was scowling, copying verses from a King James Bible onto a yellow legal pad.

"Chris?" she said. "Take the children in the other room, please. There's a video loaded."

Chris' face brightened. He shoved the Bible and pad aside and herded the troops into the living room, leaving me alone with Mrs. Hayes and the portrait of Jesus.

She studied me, gave me plenty of opportunity to see the misery in her eyes. "You have nerve coming here, Mr. Navarre. After the lies you've told about my boy."

"Your boy," I said.

She closed her eyes. Her lips trembled.

"I've told the police all I need to," she said. "Dwight was my son. I did nothing wrong."

"The police have already gotten a warrant to search your bank records. William B.

Doebler, Sr., made a payment to you and your husband in 1967—$30,000—plus smaller payments over the next five years—1,000 here, 500 there. You probably told Doebler the

baby that Clara was giving up would go to a good home. The Doeblers didn't care enough to check—as long as you made their problem go away. So the boy stayed right here. You and your husband raised him, collected the money."

"Dwight was not that child."

"The computer disk Dwight left, explaining why he killed. Among other things, he admitted he was Clara's child, talked about a private investigator who unwittingly handed him the information. Dwight also wrote about growing up in this house. Your husband was a strict disciplinarian—used to enjoy submerging children in the bathtub until they nearly drowned. And you let it happen."

Her eyes opened, focused on me steady and hot. I knew how Chris must've felt, the moment Mrs. Hayes assigned him those Bible verses. I knew how Clem had felt getting caught with Mrs. Hayes' wallet, how Dwight must have felt his entire life.

"You use children," I said. "You raised Dwight to become what he was, stood by while your husband punished him, taught him to believe in a God that drowns. When the Doeblers stopped making payments—maybe because you tried to blackmail them, maybe because they decided you'd bled them enough—you began raising Dwight to hate his birth family. You told him—stories. Poisoned him. You knew what he would do, someday. You let children steal for you, lie for you. When they grow up, they might even kill."

"I parent them," she said coldly. "These children need a real parent. They get nothing at home, if they have a home. They need what I give them. They needed what my husband gave them."

"Pain. Fear. Hate."

"They get what they need."

The curtains ballooned in with a limp breeze. In the den, Star Wars lasers blasted away.

"The last thing Dwight told me," I said. "He said he'd left the most important thing undone. He loved and feared you as much as he hated you, Mrs. Hayes, and so he could only kill your reflection. The others died in your place."

Mrs. Hayes put her hand on her knee, scraped her fingernails against the black cotton of her sweat pants. "My son is dead. He was my son. I've told the police everything."

"And the others who have died?"

"It was God's will."

"No, Mrs. Hayes. No, no, no."

The front door opened. Maia Lee came in, walking stiffly from the orthopaedic hardshoe she now wore on her left foot. She was followed by two uniformed APD

officers, then a businesssuited woman named Reyes from Child Protective Services.

"Dwight's last request," I told Mrs. Hayes. "To shut you down. It's amazing how helpful CPS can be when you bring them documentation on an unlicensed day care, run by a woman who raised a psychopath."

In the next room, Reyes started talking with the children, explaining that she was here to help. Maia Lee came up next to me. One of the officers stood impassively by the door while the other came into the living room and dropped a search warrant on Mrs.

Hayes' King James Bible, then a ceaseanddesist order from the State Attorney's office.

"They'll want a statement, Mrs. Hayes," Maia said, her voice cold. "Mrs. Reyes will want these officers to escort you to her office."

Mrs. Hayes looked at Maia, then the officer, then me.

She gave me a meagre smile. "You're so sure of yourself, aren't you? You think you know what is right."

In the next room, Reyes was talking to the children—recording their names and ages, where they lived.

"It's over, Mrs. Hayes," I said. "You won't raise any more children."

"Ask the police, Tres. They're so intent on paperwork, bending the facts to fit, ask them to check his blood."

"Dwight's body hasn't been found, Mrs. Hayes."

"Yes," she agreed easily. "But that's not what I meant. And you don't understand that simple fact."

Then she rose and let the deputy lead her out. On the couch where she'd been sitting, the dent of her form was embedded in the cushions as deep as footvalleys on cathedral steps.

Maia put her hand on my shoulder. "She's just trying to hurt you. Trying to shake you up."

I listened to the voices of the children in the other room. Two weeks—Every night—She's mostly nice—Only sometimes she gets mad— Bible readings—And one time I stole something—She calls me son.

"They'll be all right," Maia told me. "Reyes knows her work."

She started toward the door, but I couldn't move.

Dim light filtered through the windows of Mrs. Hayes' living room, but I felt I might as well have been back in Ruby McBride's pecan orchard, one hundred feet underwater?

or at Jimmy Doebler's waterfront? or even at the train crossing near my father's house in Olmos Park. I realized, as Dwight must have realized, that the cold dark weight of those places was no different, no less horrible. It would be easy to lose one's strength to ascend. And then the will. And finally even the desire.

I stared at the shaggy green staircase that led to the second floor. Then, half in a trance, I walked upstairs.

"Tres?" Maia called.

I looked in the doorway of Dwight Hayes' room. His car magazines and books had been scattered on the floor, the football posters taken down, the boysized mattress overturned.

In the bathroom opposite the stairs, I flipped the light switch and saw only myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. I looked at the bathtub—a small porcelain model, nothing special. Chrome fixtures, a permanent grime ring, faded 1970s flower decals on the bottom. The drain was wet.

The walls of the bathroom were avocado tile from waist down, yamcoloured wallpaper from the waist up. I imagined how high a small boy could reach, ran my hand along the wall. I hit the soft spot just in the middle of the right wall—an area no bigger than a doorknob, where the wallpaper felt like membrane.

I punched through, ripped away the edges. There was a layer of lightercoloured wallpaper underneath, and a dark void eaten into the wall behind.

I stared at it for a long time, until Maia came up behind me.

"What?" she asked.

I said, "A hole somebody never filled in."

CHAPTER 42

The rains had been good for Faye DoeblerIngram's front garden. Patches of wild rosemary had shot up to four feet. The bees were going nuts around her red and white hibiscus. Whitebrush was blooming, permeating the air with a scent like Christmas trees.

Maia Lee picked a blackeyed Susan. I got the morning paper off the porch, shook the dew off the plastic sleeve.

For an abandoned house, Faye's place looked pretty lively. An old yellow Honda and a brown sedan were parked in the driveway. Light shone through the living room window, flickering from the blades of a ceiling fan. The screen door was latched, but I could smell coffee inside, baking cinnamon bread. The stereo was playing an acoustic instrumental.