The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(103)

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."