Rick Riordan - The Devil went down to Austin

Father's name LOWRY, or UNKNOWN.

I thought about what Ruby had said-how Clara had hung out with men her family didn't like. Given the years she'd been separated from her son, Jimmy, how little he must've known about her, the queries for a lost sibling struck me as sad. I could imagine the psychology-an only child, taken from his mother and overseen by relatives who primarily wanted him out of the way, raised in boarding schools. At a younger age, Jimmy probably fantasized about "real parents" somewhere else-parents who cared for him and would someday rescue him. At an older age, when the terrible reality set in that his mother was in fact for real, he could harbour a more mature fantasy-a sibling, someone out there who at least could share his misery, maybe someone who needed rescuing by Jimmy. And maybe, deep down, Jimmy had needed a reason for Clara stopping her journal to him in 1967. A baby would've been a less painful explanation than the idea that Clara just had stopped making the time.

I set the folder aside. I tried to remember Jimmy the way I'd always thought of him before-the permanently dazed beach bum, the wellmeaning screwup, as impervious, rootless, and free from worries as a chunk of driftwood. I couldn't quite reconstruct the image.

The last thing I reviewed from yesterday was the list of phone numbers Jimmy had called in April-his cousin W.B., the Doebler Oil offices, Aunt Faye, Garrett.

I scanned it again, kept coming back to one number I almost recognized-an Austin number, a twominute call on April 16, sandwiched between two shorter calls to Garrett. On a lark, I picked up my cell phone and dialled.

The pickup was immediate. "Homicide. Lopez."

I hesitated.

"Hello?" Lopez's tone told me he was about to hang up.

"This is Navarre." Then I added, "Tres."

"Well. Aren't we the early birds?"

The only thing that didn't surprise me was that a homicide detective would be at his desk at 6:30 A.M. That was the only time they could catch up on paperwork.

I stared at Jimmy Doebler's phone bill. Two minutes, twelve seconds. April 16.

"Just got off the phone with Detective Angier in San Francisco," Lopez told me. "She sends her regards."

"The Selak drowning?"

"Angier said we're welcome to keep Pena and his attorney, the lovely Miss Lee, in Texas just as long as we want."

"She look at the inhouse files for you?"

"Nothing earthshaking. Pena and his girlfriend were bickering at dinner. Boat had a few dozen people on it, mostly computer execs. It was one of those big commercial charters-room for several hundred, so when Pena and Selak went for a walk they didn't have to go far to get out of range of witnesses. There's general agreement that Adrienne Selak had had too much to drink. She was slurring her words, stumbling, was plenty pissed at her wonderful millionaire boyfriend. Pena's account, he took her aft to cool off and to sober up. She was embarrassing him. She wasn't rational, kept calling him names, trying to hit him. Anyway, the boat was cruising the north part of the Bay, due east of Sausalito. Pena and Selak left the stern bar around 11:00 P.M. Around 11:30, Pena's employee, guy named Hayes, got worried, decided to go aft. The way Hayes told it, he heard the couple arguing, turned a corner and there they were Pena with his hands raised, trying to calm Selak down. She was throwing weak punches at him, crying. Then she turned like she was going to run away from him but she stumbled against the railing, hit one of those spots where it's a rubbercoated chain-where they put the stairs up for boarding, right? And she fell over the side.

Hayes swears Pena lunged for her, caught her sleeve for a second, but over she went-about a twentyfoot drop from the deck. Hayes ran for help. Pena threw a life preserver, yelled for the boat to stop. But Selak never surfaced. Straight over and she was gone. Coast Guard helped with the search, but no body was recovered. Then your friend Maia Lee got involved in the case. That's it."

"Angier think Pena pushed Selak overboard?"

"You know how it is, Navarre. We detectives are totally objective. We go simply on the facts."

"Uhhuh. You think he pushed her?"

"I wouldn't doubt it. This guy Hayes-he either saw nothing, or he saw the push, and his boss bribed or forced him into silence. But can SFPD

prove it? This happened in January. Mr. Pena is still a free man. What do you think?"

"Dwight Hayes ever treated as a suspect?"

"Not that I heard. The only thing Angier said about him, what troubled the investigators the most, is that they couldn't shake Hayes' story, no matter how they tried. They couldn't catch him in an inconsistency, and Hayes didn't strike them as the ironwilled type. He was shaking, sweating, terrified of the cops. If he'd been hiding a lie, they should've been able to get it out of him, you know? He was the best proof, the only real proof Pena was innocent."

"You filing charges on my brother?"

Half a minute of silence. "Navarre, there was something else the good folks at SFPD told me, about your friend Maia Lee."

"Such as?"

"I hear you two used to be together. Sorry if you don't want to hear this. Your exgirlfriend apparently burned an awful lot of bridges in San Francisco defending Pena. A lot of people who used to respect her, they're in agreement that Miss Lee crossed the line on that case, sold her ethics. Happens to every defence lawyer eventually, Tres, even the decent ones."

"You sound like a homicide cop talking."

"Take it or leave it. What I'm saying, if that case bothers herif she is down here trying to make some kind of moral amends-her motives are suspect. Her judgment might not be too clear. I'm not sure you should encourage her to represent your brother."

I looked down at my cold eggs, then the phone bill.

"Lopez, why did Jimmy Doebler call you in April?"

"What?"

"April 16. A short call, about five in the afternoon."

Lopez was silent, as if thinking back. "He wanted information- the files on the death of his mother."

"That didn't strike you as strange?"

"Jimmy said he'd been gathering information about his mom, wanted to understand her life. What makes a guy do that? I don't know. Jimmy's past with his mom ain't what you should be worried about, Navarre. It's Jimmy's past with your brother."

"Meaning?"

"The accident. Your brother blamed Jimmy for what happened to him."

I didn't respond.

"Come on, Tres. I've been doing my homework. Jimmy taught your brother how to jump trains. Then Jimmy didn't show up one night, left Garrett on his own, went up to see his mom. Your brother got maimed, didn't speak to Jimmy afterward for what years, right?"

"That was a long time ago, Lopez."

"Soured him pretty bad on the Doeblers. Maybe Garrett didn't take out his hostilities at the time, but there's no telling how long somebody's fuse is, or what'll finally set it off.

Ruby McBride, for instance. I suppose you know Garrett and she met at UT? they took some upperdivision math courses together. I suppose you know they were an item before Garrett had his accident."

"Yeah," I lied. "So what?"

"If that was an old wound," Lopez continued, "if Garrett got into business with Ruby and Jimmy after all those years, thinking he was okay, and then Jimmy started to get romantic with Ruby-a lady Garrett used to love… You see how it could go?"

"I see where you could put it, Lopez."

"Just tell Garrett I'd welcome a phone call, okay? Be good if he came to me voluntarily.

Maybe we could work something out."

Before I could respond, Lopez had hung up.

I checked my watch, found that my hands were trembling.

I grabbed my tai chi sword and went down the trail to the lake.

The morning was as cool as an oven door, just before the knob is turned to preheat.