The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(81)

He must've been a cute little guy—talkative, funny, always the one who made up our games. I remember he ran to get something I'd thrown in the bush—another plastic dinosaur, maybe—and I heard car sounds in the alley.

Then there was a woman at the back gate, and she asked me to come with her, quickly.

I wasn't really startled. I was too young to understand that strange women weren't supposed to sneak into your backyard. Her face was tight with emotions I didn't even know the words for.

She asked me again, more desperately, to come with her. This was all happening in a few seconds.

And now, God knows, I wish I'd taken her hand.

But then she looked over my shoulder—at my friend, coming out of the bushes, grinning with a blue triceratops in his hand—and she realized her mistake. She told my friend, "Come on. Come with me." She said a whole bunch of other soothing things.

Her voice was so kind, so loving, that it hurt. I wanted to go.

Her back was to me. My friend gave me one confused grin. And then they were gone together, through the gate, and the car sounds disappeared down the alley.

I don't remember the rest of the afternoon. I think I went back to playing. I must have caught hell when I was finally called for dinner, when I was found alone. I must have been punished.

But here's the strange thing.

I remember the seats of the woman's car, her lavender smell, the kindness in her voice. I can close my eyes and see trees going by, neighbourhoods of tidy houses and blooming honeysuckle fences. I can see the house she took me to, a big swing in an old oak tree, lemonade on the porch. I can close my eyes and be in that place again, a long way from the mud table and the chewed plastic dinosaurs.

There are times I can't remember which child I was.

CHAPTER 34

Lopez cut the engine, let the boat drift into the swell.

Two in the afternoon, and another thunderstorm was threatening. The temperature had risen into the steamy high nineties. Boat traffic was almost nonexistent. There was nobody to admire our fortysixfoot party pontoon, which was probably just as well.

Lopez had impressed Clyde Simms into service, and Clyde had reluctantly agreed to furnish dive gear and a boat. But in passive aggressive revenge, Clyde had given us topoftheline in big, slow, and clunky, insisting that the Flagship of Fun was the only thing in working order. The twolevel pontoon normally rented for $120 an hour, he assured us. Ninety horsepower engine, benchsofa seating for fifty people. We had a barbecue grill, a rest room, a tendisc CD changer, a 150quart cooler, and a water slide that went from the top deck into the lake. I'd pushed for a mirror disco ball, but Maia Lee told me to shut up.

Lopez came out from behind the wheel.

He wore only a swimsuit. With his dark, muscular build, he looked like a Polynesian fire dancer. All he needed were some tiki torches, and I was pretty sure we could find those somewhere aboard the Flagship of Fun.

He picked up a net bag stuffed with yellow polypropylene line, dug out one end and looped it through the eyehook of a small anchor that looked like a lopsided dumbbell.

Despite the scanty clothes, Lopez somehow looked more serious and professional doing this task than he ever had in coat and tie.

Clyde stood at the wet bar at the stern. He wore a fivemillimetre suit peeled to the waist, and was loading a revolver. Lopez had been none too happy about Clyde bringing the gun, but Clyde had started quoting the Second Amendment at him, calling him a fascist, and Lopez had given up.

As for Maia, she sat on the centre couch, as far from the water as she could get. Given the options of not coming along at all, going into the water, or going out on the boat, she'd chosen the least of three evils.

So far she'd done a good job not getting sick, despite being surrounded by scuba gear.

Lopez crouched next to his regulator, checked his hand console— a topoftheline dive computer, complete with GPS locator.

He said, "We're here."

I looked across the water. We were only about fifty yards out from the marina.

Upstream I could see Jimmy's cove—his old boat dock, his dome. A quarter mile farther up, the limestone cliffs of Windy Point. Downstream was Defeat Hollow, where Ruby's boat had been moored. Then Mansfield Dam, a concrete curtain across the lake. Everything seemed so close together.

Clyde finished loading his revolver, clicked it shut.

I said, "You expecting aggressive catfish?"

"I expect you to f**k up, man. One way or the other." He looked at Lopez. "Let me go down with you."

"Thanks all the same, Mr. Simms. But if Navarre is right, I don't want you down there to see what we find. And I need an experienced person up top as safety diver."

"You don't trust me," he said.

Lopez busied himself with his gear, tested the polypropylene line.

Maia made one last pitch. "Let me call in the dive team."

"And tell them what, counsellor? Lopez is running leads from Magnum, P.I., now?

Lopez thinks corpses float upstream?" He shook his head. "No thank you. I'll check it out first myself."

He turned to me. "You've done this before, you said."

"Diving, yes. Recovery, no."

"Tell me again—when and where and how deep?"

"Recreationally, as a kid. Salt water in the Caribbean. Once as an adult in Hawaii, down to sixtyfive feet."