The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(86)

She didn't even ask what I wanted. She tossed me a fifth of Cuervo Gold.

We all drank, except for Maia. The gun was enough for her.

I glowered at Lopez. "You were saving me, huh?"

"Yeah. Not that it was worth it."

"That what you were doing with the knife, Vic? Saving me?"

Maia watched for signs of new trouble, but Lopez just shook his head in disgust.

He stormed over to where my gear lay and yanked a broken branch as thick as a golf club out of my BC strap.

"Actually yes, Navarre. You stupid son of a bitch. I was trying to cut you free. And three tugs—that's your signal to call me in, not the other way around. You never leave the main line. Never. I was asking you for more slack so I could cut the corpse free, put a loop around it. Now Search and Recovery's going to have to do it, and you and I just royally f**ked up an underwater crime scene."

Maia watched both of us, unsure what to do. Clyde looked like his only uncertainty was deciding which of us to kill first.

I said, "Lopez, I'm—"

I couldn't make myself say it.

Clyde spat a mouthful of gin over the side. "Somebody's going to pay, Lopez.

Somebody's going to pay for Ruby, and his name ain't going to be Navarre."

"Shut up," Maia decided. "Let's just shut up."

And we did.

We paced around the deck in hostile silence, Maia holding the gun, the rest of us drinking liquor from the Flagship of Fun's premiumstocked bar while the sirens of the LCRA and Sheriff's Department boats got closer and closer over the water.

CHAPTER 35

The Flagship of Fun was tame compared to the party the media was throwing.

We made shore at Windy Point around four o'clock, hoping to evade the bulk of spectators and reporters. No such luck. The Point's foottrafficonly road was lined with news vans from Austin, Waco, San Antonio—all the network affiliates and several cable stations.

The usual contingent of scubacampers looked bewildered by the invasion.

Cameramen clambered around, knocking over air tanks and pup tents, setting up portable generators and satellite dishes and tripod lights. Reporters fussed with their makeup, lamented their winddestroyed hairdos, and forcefed microphones to anyone and everyone coming up the ladder from the water.

Maia and I got through the gauntlet only because Vic Lopez was right behind us.

"Detective!"

And the feeding frenzy began. The reporters' questions told me that every important fact had already leaked out. A woman's body had been recovered from one hundred feet of water. She had been stabbed, weighted down. Had she been dumped overboard? Had the body been positively identified as Ruby McBride, exwife of the recently murdered Jimmy Doebler? Was it true her former business partner Garrett Navarre, already a suspect in Doebler's murder, was still at large?

As Maia and I were leaving, the PR director for the Sheriff's Department was trying to organize the chaos into a formal news

conference. He got a lieutenant and a couple of sergeants to line up on one side of him, Lopez on the other side.

From the expressions of the brass, I got the feeling Lopez would've gotten chewed into catfish bait had the press not been present. But the press was present, so Lopez was the star of the moment.

I gave Maia the keys to my truck. The rain started to fall.

While Maia drove, we listened to the news conference live on an AM station. The police refused to release the identity of the victim. They refused to speculate on suspects, though they promised they were "actively pursuing leads." I tried to focus on the hills, the trees, the arc of rain outside the sweep of the windshield wipers—anything but what had happened at the bottom of the lake.

The anger had left me. Nitrogen was venting from my system, sapping every bit of energy my body had left. I drifted in and out of sleep.

When Maia and I got back to Jimmy's dome, my need for a scuba nap overrode all other concerns. I crawled up the ladder to the sleeping loft and passed out.

I'm not sure how long I was unconscious. When I opened my eyes the daylight was gone. Rain pounded steadily on the roof of the dome.

Maia's voice said, "I was about to put a spoon under your nose, check if you were still breathing."

I looked toward my feet. She was sitting on the corner of the bed, Robert Johnson pacing back and forth on her knees, purring smugly.

I grabbed an extra pillow, stuffed it behind my head. "News?"

"Not much. Lopez called, said he was taking a lot of heat. Said he should have the ME's report by morning."

"Garrett?"

"I'm sorry. Nothing."

I studied the Beatles poster on the ceiling. The Fab Four looked mad at me.

"It isn't your fault," Maia said. "If nothing else, it got Lopez on your side."

"Yeah, the minute I punched him."

"He knows Garrett couldn't do . . . what you saw down there. There's no way. Lopez got a revised statement from Dwight about

Adrienne Selak's drowning. He's talking to SFPD. Momentum is starting to shift."

The rain kept drumming on the roof. The only one comfortable in the loft seemed to be Robert Johnson, now snugly nestled in Maia's lap, getting his ears scratched.

"Ruby wanted to fix things," I said. "She met with Pena, tried to reverse her deal with him. But she wasn't any use to him anymore. So he killed her. Just like Adrienne."