The Devil Went Down to Austin (34 page)

They would go in hard and fast. They would be quick to shoot and they'd cry no tears if there was any resistance.

"I'll go to the marina with you," I told Lopez. "But you forgot one thing."

The cords of his neck muscles stood out like bridge cables. "Yeah?"

"Clara Doebler supposedly killed herself," I said. "Unless you saw something that night you didn't put in the report."

Something in Lopez's demeanour changed, like a tide reversing, drawing back in.

"Heard," Lopez murmured. "I heard something. And yes, Navarre, I reported it. Every day for five years, I've tried to convince myself that my superiors were right—that I was imagining things. I went along with what the brass told me. I went along with my shrink, telling me it was just frayed nerves. But when I walked up to Clara Doebler that night, while she was writing her suicide note, I could hear her talking—whimpering, almost.

There was nobody

with her. If there had been, for me not to see them, they would've had to have been in the trees—ten, fifteen feet away, standing in total darkness. But just for a second, as I was coming up, I could swear I heard a second voice. A man's voice. Real gentle."

The tide was still pulling in Lopez's direction, washing out the patio stones under my feet.

"What did the voice say?" I managed.

Lopez shifted, pulled the sunglasses off his shirt collar.

"It wasn't a conversation, Navarre. More like the voice was instructing Clara Doebler, telling her what to write."

Date:Thurs 15 Jun 2000 03:17:54 0500 From
: [email protected]
ReplyTo: none XMailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; I; PPC) XAcceptLanguage: en To: [email protected] Subject: search patterns

What was the hardest part, Detective?

Talking to the family? Those pinched faces. The old grandmother crying, cupping her hands over a grimace. They are chattering at you in Chinese, and the ones who can translate, the adolescents, are telling you with embarrassment that the family believes in evil spirits, that something down there took a liking to their child.

The victim's family always wants so much from you. You arrive on the scene and they have knives and forks ready to dig in—taking whatever they can from you. They want reassurance. They want answers. They want you to bring their little boy back to life.

And so you dive, day after day—such a small area on the surface, one little cove in one public park. You could throw a football across it and hit the opposite bank. But you dive the entire area and find nothing. You comfort yourself with formulas, buoyancy charts, DPS manuals that tell you where the body should be, what it should look like, how the currents might have moved it. But you find nothing.

Every evening you come up from your third, maybe fourth dive that day, and the family is still there, holding vigil on the shore, looking for any sign—anything in your face, any gesture.

You have to be a wall, completely impassive. You wish somebody would tell the family,

"You don't want to be here. You don't want to see the thing when we finally find it." You wish you could tell them that the real find will be quiet. When it happens, the diver will say nothing. He will quietly direct the boat around, place it between the spectators and the surface site. They will bag the body underwater. They will do everything they can to keep it hidden.

You can't tell the family that. The only thing they want to hear is the one thing you can't tell them—that their kid is okay.

But that's not the hardest part, is it? The job isn't so bad. It's a community project.

You're never alone, never more than a few inches from the neon gloves of the next diver on the line. You can think of the lake in grids, tidily partitioned by weights and yellow strings, flags and GPS coordinates. It's impersonal. Scientific. And when the time comes to call it quits, to face the facts that enough taxpayer money has gone toward finding one little Chinese boy, that eventually he'll surface anyway—the decision isn't yours. You don't have to tell the family. You just roll up your line, fold the unused body bag.

Afterward, you sit on the rocks at sunset, thinking about the boy, what he must have felt like that Saturday—a sunny picnic, the cool water such a welcome relief after lunch, no one worried about that extra hot dog he ate. Maybe he heard his mom calling to him—"Be careful." And he looked down the shore, way out past the bend where the rich yachters were eating lunch on the decks of the restaurant, and he thought how fun it would be to go there. It didn't look far.

That moment comes when you realize what the kid was doing, what he felt like when he ate water, then found he couldn't surface.

And for all your mapping, your talks with the parents, your days of searching—it all comes down to one horrible realization. You're alone, and you decide to do one more dive.

You find him there, the glint of his gold necklace in your flash light. The rest of him is fuzzy, white, unhuman—a child turning into a cloud.

And rationally, you realize what happened. He dove under the deck, thinking of the novelty of swimming beneath a building. He didn't realize the old spools of wire were down there, bricks, fishnets, hooks, crayfish traps. And then he became tangled, and realized that the sounds above him were the last he would ever hear— people walking, the voices of diners, the clink of dropped plates, all amplified through the aluminium pontoon floats and the water. He drowned in the dark, and stayed there for days while above him, rich folk toasted the sunset with Chardonnay. Yacht purchases were discussed. Engagement rings were unveiled over crabcakes and microbrewery beer.

Businesses were planned, incorporation papers signed. And nosy spectators watched the divers at the public access beach down the shoreline, wondering what the fuss was about, complaining how it affected their speed boating.

Rationally, you understand how it happened. You understand that this is just one more bad memory to associate with a place— another policeman's marker.

The worst part is, you can't help thinking that the old Chinese grandmother was right—some spirit, some dark thing in the water, took a liking to that boy. And it bothers you that you were the one who knew where to look.

"I don't know any Clyde," the boat jockey insisted.

He couldn't have been over nineteen, but he appeared to be the man in charge. He was frantically filling out paperwork while two even younger jockeys worked the docks—using the forklift to lower a Fountain 32 Lightning into the water.

Several affluentlooking couples stood behind us, waiting their turn.

"Clyde Simms," Lopez said. "You know—big ugly white guy. Runs the place."

The boat jockey shook his head. There were two twentydollar bills folded in his fingers, a tip from the previous customer.

"Yes, sir," he said. "If the manager's name is Clyde, I'll take your word for it. I don't know him. He isn't around."

"That the office?" I asked.

I pointed to a set of stairs on the side of the warehouse, leading up to a secondstory door. Parked below the stairs were two Harley Davidson VTwin hogs—both FLSTF

models, black and chrome. Leather cones jutted up behind each seat—perfect for holding either longstem bouquets or shotguns. I was betting that the owners, wherever they were, were not florists at heart.

The boat jockey said, "I'm sorry, you can't—"

Another customer shouldered his way to the counter and put his elbow between the boat jockey and me. He brandished a claim ticket.

"My boat," he said. "It's three o'clock and my boat isn't in the water."

"No, by all means," I said. "You go right ahead."

The newcomer gave Lopez and me the briefest sideways glance, just long enough to determine we weren't members of his country club, then turned his attention back to the boat jockey. "Well?"

The jockey looked up and just about had a paperworkshuffling coronary. "Mr.

McMurray."

"That's right," Mr. McMurray said, with more than a little satisfaction. "Now where's my boat?"

The jockey launched into some explanation about how the bottom paint wasn't dry yet and Mr. McMurray started smiling, no doubt anticipating a really good asschewing on the hired help.

Lopez said, "We'll just help ourselves, thanks."

We made a beeline for the outer stairs of the warehouse. When we got to the top, I glanced back. The boat jockey was watching us nervously, trying to get our attention, but he didn't dare yell or leave the nottobepissedoff Mr. McMurray.

Lopez opened the door and we went inside.

The room was a fifteenfoot square—one interior door, one chair, one metal patio table. There was a pile of boatcleaning supplies in the corner. The old grizzled biker who'd been talking to Garrett at the Jimmy Buffett concert was sitting at the table play

ing solitaire, which struck me as weirder than anything else I'd seen that day.

Lopez got a twinkle in his eye. "Well look who's here. If it ain't Armand."

Armand studied us from head to toe, then slowly got up. His beard reminded me of Garrett's, except it was longer, braided with lug nuts.

He nodded toward Lopez. "Who the fuck you?"

His Cajun accent was as grimy as the Cafe du Monde's dumpster.

"How quickly they forget," Lopez lamented. "You don't remember Del Valley, Armand?

Our little talk about that double knifing? Man, I'm hurt."

Armand's eyes narrowed. "Ain't no cop, you."

I couldn't tell whether Armand was being obtuse or stubborn or what, but he was pressing Lopez to pull a badge Lopez didn't have. He'd intentionally not brought it—wanted no accusations later that he'd been here under colour of law.

"Listen," Lopez said. "No need to get any more gray hairs. My friend here just wants to see his brother."

Armand studied me again, did not seem overcome with compassion. "S'pose to know your brother?"

"Garrett," I said. "Just tell him I'm here."

The lug nuts gleamed when he shook his head. "I see anybody named Garrett, I tell him."

Lopez sighed. He pulled over a folding chair, propped his foot on it. "I could call your name in, Armand. I'm sure I could find some warrants. But that's not the way we're trying to play it. Why don't you just take us downstairs, we'll talk to Clyde, see if he doesn't see things our way. Otherwise, I guarantee you, you're going to have half the Sheriff's Department around this place faster than you can kickstart a hog."

Armand scratched his beard.

"D'accord," he decided, pointing his thumb toward the interior door. "But you still an asshole, Lopez, hear?"

Lopez grinned at me. "See? I knew he remembered me."

Armand led us downstairs into the warehouse. Boats were stacked in threestoryhigh tiers, with an open space in the middle the size of a basketball court.

The forklift was in the warehouse now, its engine rumbling like the world's largest lawn mower. It had a twentyfoot Stingray balanced on its prongs, probably Mr. McMurray's plaything, and the jockey was desperately trying to get it out the door, but there were two uniformed deputies blocking his path.

Armand froze when he saw the cops. He glared at Lopez, who spread his hands, tried to look mystified.

"They ain't with us, man," Lopez vowed. "Je ne sais rien."

Armand let out a string of Cajun curses, but apparently didn't see much choice except to keep going down the stairs.

The kid on the forklift was shouting at the deputies over the noise of the motor, asking them to please move. The uniforms ignored him.

I recognized one of them now—Engels, the one who worked parttime security for W.B. Doebler. That did not reassure me. The other guy I didn't recognize, but both had obviously ordered their facial expressions from the same online catalogue.

We got to the bottom of the steps.

"You can't be in here!" the kid on the forklift was saying, exasperated.

"Deputy Geiger," Lopez said, trying for a grin. "Deputy Engels. What brings you two here?"

Deputy Engels took his eyes off me long enough to say, "Detective. I heard you were on leave."

"I am," Lopez assured him pleasantly. "That's why I'm at a marina. Y'all want to split the cost of a day cruise?"

Geiger and Engels did not look tempted.

"I'm telling you—" the kid on the forklift started to shout.

Geiger said, "Cut your engine."

The kid opened his mouth to protest, but Geiger's expression shut him up.

He cut the engine.

"Now get off," Geiger said. "And get out."

The kid did both.

Outside, the other boat jockeys converged on him and started asking what the hell was going on. The kid said, "You talk to them!" In the background, Mr. McMurray was screaming how important he was.

Engels nodded to his compatriot, Geiger.

Geiger walked to the warehouse doors and rolled them shut, to the renewed protests of the boat jockeys outside.

"Chain it," Engels said.

Geiger took a length of chain off a hook, ran it through the door handles.

Engels pulled out his asp, extended it with a rapid flick of the wrist. He looked at Lopez and me. "There's the staircase, Detective. I suggest you and your friend use it. Leave the piece of shit here."

I hoped that the friend reference was for me, but I wasn't sure.

"This is dumb, gentlemen," Lopez said. "You got a warrant?"

"No need," Geiger said. "Possible officer in trouble. I just called it in, based on a witness I talked to outside. I came in. My partner Engels was here. The backup unit will be here in about ten minutes, I'd guess. Plenty of time."

"Mr. Doebler know you're here, Engels?" I asked. "You getting a bonus for this?"

Engels ignored me. He stepped up to Armand. "Give us Garrett Navarre, everything's fine. Don't give us Navarre, then you are about to assault an officer. It's going to get a little rough when I have to subdue you."

From the back of the warehouse, Clyde Simms' voice said, "Engels, you prick."

Clyde appeared from between two motorboats, wearing white shorts and white Tshirt and flipflops—like an overweight, Aryan Jesus coming out of the tomb. He was holding his weapon of choice—the Bizon2—down by his side. Garrett was with him, a few steps behind, wheeling along in his chair. Garrett looked okay, better actually than I'd seen him in quite some time.