The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(54)

Engels kept walking. "Three years."

"And now back to patrol. Must be hard to swallow."

The sunglasses told me nothing.

"Doebler's money can't make up for the demotion," I said. "What was it—you do something out of line? Fail the psych profiling?"

When we got to the elevator, Engels pressed the button. He watched the elevator numbers creep up.

"How much can he buy, Engels? Who else besides you?"

The elevator doors dinged, then opened.

"Right now," Engels said, "while we've been talking, I could've killed you five, maybe six times."

I stepped inside the elevator, smiled at Engels. "Missed opportunities. They suck, don't they?"

Those chrome lenses gave back my reflection as the doors slid shut.

CHAPTER 21

Dwight Hayes was a natural.

Not only had he found my truck in the Met garage, he had discreetly parked right next to it. I walked around behind his Honda and came up on the open passenger'sside window.

Dwight was occupied looking at the F150, craning his neck, trying to see through the tinted glass of the back window.

"What are those?" he muttered. "Swords?"

"Yeah."

I guess he wasn't expecting an answer. He jumped so hard he bumped his head on the Honda's ceiling.

I said, "Hey."

He cut his eyes to either side, seemed to come to the conclusion he was cornered.

"I followed you here," he blurted.

"Really? You did that?"

He blushed. "When did you spot me?"

"About the time we left the entrance of the Techsan parking lot. Until then you were tailing me flawlessly."

He put his elbow on the window of the Honda, rubbed his forehead.

His face had the same slightly nauseated expression as yesterday. The colourfulness of his blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt didn't do anything to offset the morose poodleeyes, the chevrons of Band Aids patching cuts on his neck and forearms.

His floorboard was littered with cassette tapes—Lightnin' Hopkins, B.B. King, Fabulous Thunderbirds. Points for Dwight on the tasteometer.

On the passenger's seat was a yellow legal pad, a pen, half a pack of Hostess Snoballs. From the rearview mirror hung a small plastic Jesus, its arms spread like the Rio de Janeiro model. It seemed to be making some kind of pathetic promise—Some day, Dwight, you'll catch a fish this big.

"Don't worry," I told him. "Any fired employee of Pena's is a friend of mine."

Dwight scowled. He gave his rearview mirror Jesus a tentative nudge. "I shouldn't have called Maia."

"Pena was so true to you. So loyal."

Dwight's scalp glistened under his fuzzcap of brown hair. Sweat was trickling down my back. The summer midday parking garage was getting about as comfortable as the mouth of a Labrador retriever, but I waited while Dwight did his internal wrestling.

"He was my roommate at UT," Dwight said. "That's how far we go back. Freshman year. He kept track of me when he went out to California. When I was looking for work he sort of—adopted me. I owe Matthew a lot. Not just my job. I never expected to be as successful as him, but I've watched him. I've tried to learn some things about business."

It was almost verbatim what Dwight's mother had said. I decided not to point that out.

"Pena fired you, Dwight. You'd had enough, you argued with him, and he fired you."

"I shouldn't have pushed him."

"He used you like a dowsing rod for new victims. You saw the results."

Dwight thought about that. "I followed you—I don't know, I guess after I talked to Miss Lee this morning, I started thinking about all the things I'd left out, things I should've told her."

"I can take a message."

"If I tell you something about Techsan's software, what can you promise me? I mean, about confidentiality. Protection."

"I can promise that if you're desperate enough to talk to me, Dwight, it's going to come out anyway. You might as well tell me."

He blinked, then gave me that wobbly smile again, that same illfed sense of humour I'd seen at Windy Point when I'd borrowed his wet suit. "You always make your informants feel this good?"

"Wait until I get rolling. You got airconditioning in this thing?"

I climbed inside and shut the door.

Dwight turned on his engine, let it idle. I slanted one of the little air vents my way, got a blast of cool that smelled like old Silly Putty.

Dwight said, "Jimmy Doebler called me about the software, about a week before he died."

Dwight was staring out the window, watching the concrete columns of the parking garage as if he expected them to move.

"Why you?" I asked.

"Jimmy and I met when Matthew first approached Techsan about a deal. We spent an afternoon going over the code so Jimmy could show me it was solid. He treated me really nice. Even after Techsan rejected Matthew's offer, Jimmy stayed cordial, told me I could come out to his place sometime for barbecue."

"When he called you two weeks ago, what did he say?"

"He thought Matthew was sabotaging their program. And he thought he knew how."

I felt like a hunter who'd just had a sixteenpoint buck sit down next to him. I wanted to shoot the thing pretty bad, but I didn't dare move. I let Dwight take his time.