The Devil went down to Austin

CHAPTER 25

I met Vic Lopez the next morning after my UT class. I had never wanted to get through a discussion of Gawain and the Green Knight with more haste.

The state crime lab was an unassuming yellow brick box wedged between two warehouses at the back of the Department of Public Safety complex. Black and white state trooper units lined the street. In the visitors' lot, Lopez sat on a loading bay between two stacks of crates, waiting for me.

He slid down from his perch. "You have any idea how many markers this cost me?

Putting my neck on the line to get evidence processed on a day's notice? It's goddamn irregular, man."

Lopez wore his normal smile, but his tone had an edge that told me joviality was not to be reciprocated.

"You drop the names I gave you?"

Lopez put his finger on my chest. "IRREGULAR. Word gets around I'm running to DPS 'cause some private dick found a piece of brass in the lake-I'm going to be laughed out of the deputies' quilting club."

"But if I'm right…"

He sighed, checked his watch. "Ten minutes. And these people are serious about appointment times."

He leaned back against the loading bay, fished a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket.

"You interviewed Garrett yesterday?" I asked.

"We had a friendly conversation. Hard not to be friendly, with Miss Lee present. I heard Matthew Pena learned that lesson."

"You still haven't filed charges."

Lopez plucked out a cigarette, pointed it at me. "I only smoke when I'm pissed off. Just so you feel honoured."

"You're waiting for ballistics on the casing."

He checked his watch again. "I told my sergeant to be here at 11:15. He wants to observe the test himself."

"You told me it was at eleven o'clock."

"I got to have time to look first, don't I?"

"And I'm irregular."

"And a bad influence. Did I mention that?" He sparked a flame from his lighter. "Your friend died early Friday A.M. This is Tuesday. Five days is a hell of a long time in homicide, you know that? They started throwing me new cases yesterday-a couple of drownings. A momandpop shooting. You think my sergeant likes me churning a case from last week?"

"That piece of brass was over a hundred yards down the shore, Vic-down a rocky path."

"We've got your word for that."

"And Ruby McBride's. You're going to tell me Garrett rolled down the shoreline in his wheelchair?"

"As I remember, you were at the lake that night, too."

"If you really thought I'd planted evidence, we wouldn't be here now."

He tried his cigarette, didn't seem to like the flavour much. "What I think, Jimmy's killer met him at the water that night. The killer was able to drug him-maybe a laced beer, some kind of drink. That meant spending some time together, talking in the truck for more than a few minutes. Drugs start to kick in, Jimmy starts to fade. Killer took a. 380, put the muzzle about two inches from Jimmy's head, and told him goodbye. It was intimate, Navarre. Like an old friend. You want to tell me Matthew Pena could pull that off, get that close to Jimmy Doebler?"

I looked at the lines of highway patrol cars.

The hell of it was, I agreed with Lopez. The setup of the crime was too personal.

I told Lopez about Jimmy's call to Dwight Hayes the week before he died. I told him about Ruby, the strong possibility that she'd help Matthew Pena sabotage her own company for a sellout.

Lopez slid his lighter into his pants pocket. "And she just happened to walk with you straight to the place where you just happened to find this casing."

"I wasn't implying-"

"Like hell you weren't," Lopez said. I could almost see the homicide detective gears turning in his head. "Sounds like I should pay another visit to Ms. McBride."

"The night Clara Doebler died," I said. "You were the reporting officer. You were there."

I told him about Maia and me visiting Faye DoeblerIngram- how she'd treated us to tea and homicide reports.

Lopez looked less than ecstatic.

"I thought I told you, Navarre. You need a report, ask me for it."

"I'm asking. Jimmy was killed at the same spot his mother died. What happened with Clara Doebler?"

He pulled himself up on the ledge of the loading dock. "Five years ago, the Doebler property was a good place for patrol cops to hang out. Before Jimmy built on it, a lot of deputies used it. You could sit there in your car and catch up on paperwork and be within striking distance for most calls in the David Twenty sector. One night I was finishing B shift, pulled in at the Doebler property about 2100. My partner's unit was a few miles south, and he was on the way to rendezvous with me. I was sitting there doing paperwork when I heard a shot from down the hill. First I figured it was nothing-just a hunter, or some kid screwing around-but I called it in, got out to investigate. There was this pickup truck by the water, this woman sitting on the tailgate with her back to me, and she was playing with something, like she was rolling a joint.

She was talking to herself, mumbling.

"I walked up around the side, called to her. She got startled and turned. It was Clara Doebler. She wasn't at her property much, but she'd called patrol a few times-poachers, drunk drivers running down her fence, that kind of stuff. So I knew who she was. She had a pistol next to her on the tailgate, and what she was fiddling with was pen and paper in her lap. She looked at me, kind of frightened, then picked up the gun. I drew my weapon, told her to put it down.

She gave me this kind of dazed look-could've shot me if she wanted, or forced me to shoot her-but instead she put the pistol in her mouth-"

Lopez made his hand into a gun, lowered his thumb. "My partner arrived six minutes later. I was not in good shape. The detectives told me the first shot was Ms. Doebler's test fire-getting up her nerve to do the real thing. When I walked up on her, she'd been writing her suicide note. The letter was to Jimmy. Said, Dearest son, I'm sorry. A few more lines, apologizing, what you could read through the blood."

I stayed quiet for a long minute. "Rough thing to see."

Lopez nodded. "I did my share of counselling."

"The Doebler family-W.B.'s father-covered up the suicide. He had it swept under the rug."

Vic made a popping sound with his lips. "I wasn't in homicide then. No one asked my opinion."

"But that's why Jimmy called you for information," I said. "You were there."

"Yes."

"That's why you want to find Jimmy's murderer so badly."

"Don't put too much stock in that, Navarre. You work patrol, you collect a lot of landmarks. You can't drive down the street anymore and see a row of houses. You see, 'that's where the kid was strangled,' 'that's where the drug deal went down.' Ms.

Doebler's death-it was bad. But it was only one time."

I couldn't tell if he'd really been able to get past the suicide as much as he claimed, but I got the feeling there was something else about it he wasn't telling me-something that still burned in his gut.

"W.B. has a deputy working security for him-guy named Engels. You wouldn't know anything about that."

"Not unusual. Lot of the guys work offhour jobs."

"You don't see a possible conflict of interest?"

Lopez reconstructed his usual smile. Whatever had been there, just below the surface, was submerged.

"Conflict of interest-you mean like a homicide detective doing a PI a favour? Naw, man-that shit never happens in this county. Come on, Navarre. Let's get your sorry ass inside. We've got a bullet to look at."