The Devil went down to Austin

CHAPTER 35

The Flagship of Fun was tame compared to the party the media was throwing.

We made shore at Windy Point around four o'clock, hoping to evade the bulk of spectators and reporters. No such luck. The Point's foottrafficonly road was lined with news vans from Austin, Waco, San Antonio-all the network affiliates and several cable stations.

The usual contingent of scubacampers looked bewildered by the invasion.

Cameramen clambered around, knocking over air tanks and pup tents, setting up portable generators and satellite dishes and tripod lights. Reporters fussed with their makeup, lamented their winddestroyed hairdos, and forcefed microphones to anyone and everyone coming up the ladder from the water.

Maia and I got through the gauntlet only because Vic Lopez was right behind us.

"Detective!"

And the feeding frenzy began. The reporters' questions told me that every important fact had already leaked out. A woman's body had been recovered from one hundred feet of water. She had been stabbed, weighted down. Had she been dumped overboard? Had the body been positively identified as Ruby McBride, exwife of the recently murdered Jimmy Doebler? Was it true her former business partner Garrett Navarre, already a suspect in Doebler's murder, was still at large?

As Maia and I were leaving, the PR director for the Sheriff's Department was trying to organize the chaos into a formal news conference. He got a lieutenant and a couple of sergeants to line up on one side of him, Lopez on the other side.

From the expressions of the brass, I got the feeling Lopez would've gotten chewed into catfish bait had the press not been present. But the press was present, so Lopez was the star of the moment.

I gave Maia the keys to my truck. The rain started to fall.

While Maia drove, we listened to the news conference live on an AM station. The police refused to release the identity of the victim. They refused to speculate on suspects, though they promised they were "actively pursuing leads." I tried to focus on the hills, the trees, the arc of rain outside the sweep of the windshield wipers-anything but what had happened at the bottom of the lake.

The anger had left me. Nitrogen was venting from my system, sapping every bit of energy my body had left. I drifted in and out of sleep.

When Maia and I got back to Jimmy's dome, my need for a scuba nap overrode all other concerns. I crawled up the ladder to the sleeping loft and passed out.

I'm not sure how long I was unconscious. When I opened my eyes the daylight was gone. Rain pounded steadily on the roof of the dome.

Maia's voice said, "I was about to put a spoon under your nose, check if you were still breathing."

I looked toward my feet. She was sitting on the corner of the bed, Robert Johnson pacing back and forth on her knees, purring smugly.

I grabbed an extra pillow, stuffed it behind my head. "News?"

"Not much. Lopez called, said he was taking a lot of heat. Said he should have the ME's report by morning."

"Garrett?"

"I'm sorry. Nothing."

I studied the Beatles poster on the ceiling. The Fab Four looked mad at me.

"It isn't your fault," Maia said. "If nothing else, it got Lopez on your side."

"Yeah, the minute I punched him."

"He knows Garrett couldn't do… what you saw down there. There's no way. Lopez got a revised statement from Dwight about

Adrienne Selak's drowning. He's talking to SFPD. Momentum is starting to shift."

The rain kept drumming on the roof. The only one comfortable in the loft seemed to be Robert Johnson, now snugly nestled in Maia's lap, getting his ears scratched.

"Ruby wanted to fix things," I said. "She met with Pena, tried to reverse her deal with him. But she wasn't any use to him anymore. So he killed her. Just like Adrienne."

Maia picked at a fold in the bedspread. "We don't even know it's her yet, Tres. The condition of the body-"

"Yes, we do."

"We'll bring Pena down."

"You were right. It would have been better if I'd stayed out of this, let you handle it."

"No," she said. "That was my bitterness talking."

She slid Robert Johnson out of her lap, scooted onto the bed, lay down next to me.

She put her arm across my chest, her chin resting on my shoulder.

We lay like that, the fan at the top of the dome pin wheeling shadows across the ceiling, for a long time. I thought about dark green water through the branches of frozen pecan trees.

She kissed my neck. "Stop, okay?"

"Stop what?"

"Thinking."

She slid the sheet down, away from my chest.

"You're running up a bill at the Driskill," I said. "For a room you aren't using."

"Mmhmm."

She put a finger on my chest, ran it up to my collarbone, traced the starburst of pink scar tissue just below my right clavicle. "What's that?"

"Gunshot."

"I can see that." Three fingers now, tracing the skin. "But it's new. How?"

"An old friend. He gave it to me last spring."

She exhaled a laugh against my shoulder. "Figures."

I kissed her and she didn't object. Then another kiss-longer, more earnest.

I looked in her eyes-amber, bright, defying me to stop.

"I'm pretty sure this is a reaction to trauma, here," I warned her.

"So react," she said.

She shifted her weight onto me.

I crossed my arms around her neck, pulled her face down to mine.

Robert Johnson murred, protesting an obvious error in the direction of our affections. I nudged him with my foot, as gently as I could, to the edge of the bed, and then thump.

After that I didn't care much what the cat did all night. And he extended us the same courtesy.