by Rick Riordan
The murder weapon was never found, but Waco PD did recover the four casings-all with distinctive BOB markings. Almost an exact match to the one from Jimmy Doebler's murder."
"You're saying Garrett's gun was involved in a crime in 1987?"
"No. That model wasn't even made back then. What I'm saying is that a gun was used in Waco in 1987 that left an almost identical BOB marking to the casing you found in the lake. And the Waco gun was never recovered."
"Hell of a coincidence."
"Don't use the C word with me, Navarre. Another thing I found out, chatting with people up in Waco-police weren't careful with their information. They publicized that they were working an anomaly in the shell casing, put a quote to that effect in the local paper. Either they were desperate for leads, or maybe they wanted to sound like they were making progress. Maybe they just didn't see the case as important enough for tight security. Whatever, it wasn't any secret."
"I still don't-"
"What I'm saying, Navarre-if I were that killer, and I heard the police talking about my gun that way, I could have some fun with that information. I could examine my own casings, then deface another gun's firing pin area. I'm saying I could do this, a master gunsmith, somebody who knew what they were doing. In a couple of minutes, I could make another gun have the same BOB markings as mine-as long as it was a similar calibre and make. Potentially, you could play hell with ballistics-modify somebody's gun, commit a crime with your gun, and then frame the other guy. The BOB markings would be so rare, your frameup victim would seem like a dead ringer. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's sure as hell possible."
I looked at my friendly neighbourhood homicide detective, who was stonefaced, tapping his fingers against his sidearm. "Quarles, you share this information yet?"
"Yeah. And look, Lopez will tell you it's a farfetched idea. He's right. I'm just trying to give you something you could use. You get a good lawyer, maybe he could use this Waco case to cast some doubt on the evidence, point out that ballistics aren't exact.
Shit."
"What?"
"I can't believe I'm giving you advice to help a defence lawyer. God forgive me."
"Waco. What was the victim's name?"
I could hear Quarles shuffling papers. "Lowry."
Out the window of the sleeping cabin, the white barbecue smoke was streaking the tops of the trees. My chest felt like it was turning into something just as insubstantial.
"Ewin Lowry?"
"You know the case?"
I thought about the picture I'd seen in Faye Ingram's garden- the rakish gypsy gambler next to Clara Doebler, both of them smiling. I thought about the letter Clara had received from Waco in 1987, the letter she'd thought was from Ewin Lowry, promising retribution.
"Navarre?" Quarles asked.
"I've got to go, Quarles. Thanks."
I hung up, handed Lopez back his phone.
"Forget it, Navarre," Lopez said. "It's the longest of long shots."
I told Maia about the Waco case. Then I told Lopez who Ewin Lowry was, and about Matthew Pena's parentage.
It's hard to shake up a homicide detective, but Lopez's face completely deconstructed.
For once, he was without a reply.
"The bathtub," said Maia. "Water. Adrienne Selak drowned. Jimmy's truck was half submerged. Clara was shot by the lake. This man-Lowry-intentionally dragged into a bathtub. The girlfriend, the brother, the mother, the father…"
"And Ruby," I said. "Disappeared off a boat."
Lopez snapped his phone shut, clipped it to his belt. "I like criminal psych profiles as much as anybody, counsellor. But what you're suggesting…"
He stared at the photos on the nightstand-the smiling pictures of Ruby McBride.
"All right," he relented. "What are you saying-the water has meaning?"
"The killer submerges his victims," Maia said. "At least, he tries to. Water could mean cleansing. Absolution. My guess-he cares for the people he's killing."
"Cares for them," Lopez repeated.
"He's a sick individual. He wants to be close to these people. Maybe he even picks special places-Doebler's lakefront property, for instance. He killed Jimmy just where his mom died."
"Kills his victims and then washes them," Lopez said. "Tries to cover them in water. A purification ritual."
Maia nodded.
"Shit." Lopez scowled. "Now you got me doing it. Okay. So you've got a crazy theory.
Now what?"
"The killer has contacted you," Maia said. "Made himself known to the investigator in charge. Usually, that means one thing. He's preparing for the endgame."
I studied the Lake Travis wall map-the white topographic lines etched into the blue.
"There," I said.
Maia and Lopez turned. I went to the map, counted up the arc of red pins, the submerged property line that Ruby had been mapping. I put my finger on the sixth pin-the one farthest out from the shore.
"A special place," I said. "A submersion. Call your recovery unit. Tell them to dive there."
"In the middle of nowhere," Lopez said. "Upstream from where we found the boat. You want me to call Search and Recovery and tell them that?"
"Tres," Maia said. "Why there-why that pin?"
"Because," I said, "when I broke into this boat, two nights ago, that pin wasn't there."
XeGroupsReturn: sentto375227171 958727973 returns@shell_list. com MailingList: Murder@shell_list. com DeliveredTo: ‹mailing list› ListUnsubscribe: mailto: Murderunsubscribe@shell_list. com Date: 14 June 2000 09:19:32 0000
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Subject: dinosaurs
I was in the backyard. This is my earliest memory.
My friend and I were playing. We'd taken an old card table and covered it with mud, stuck some plastic dinosaurs in it.
I don't remember what my friend looked like back then, which is funny, because he is such a presence for me now. Later images have superimposed themselves on that first memory-years of hating and wishing.
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 thr
eatening. 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 fuck 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."
Lopez and Clyde exchanged looks.
"Oh good," Lopez said. "A blackwater expert. Lake Travis is the clearest lake in Texas, Navarre, which means your visibility here will be three to ten feet rather than zero.
Unless you stir up the bottom, in which case you're blind."
"Stop the scare tactics," Maia snapped. "Tres can handle it."
Lopez turned, the muscles in his neck tensing. "That's good to know, counsellor.
'Cause he and I, we're dive buddies now. If he freaks out down there and gets me killed, he's going to need a damn good defence attorney."
The boat bobbed. Lopez grabbed a Body Glove shortie, threw it to me, then another wet suit-a Farmer John style. "You'll need both," he said. "Layer them. We'll probably hit three thermocline layers on the way down. Even in June, the bottom is going to feel like an icebox."
"What's underneath us?" I asked.
Clyde and Lopez exchanged another look, but neither responded. Clyde started unlatching a med kit.
I said to Lopez, "You've been down there before, haven't you? This spot in particular."
Lopez picked up a mask. "There's about a hundred and ten feet of water under us, Navarre. We're floating on top of a pecan grove."
"The McBride farm."
Lopez spit in his mask, rubbed the glass. "It's an eerie place, Navarre. It's a fucking forest at the bottom of the lake. It's so deep, we'd bust the charts if we went down with the regular pressure gauges, the SPGs. We'll go on computer-more accurate nitrogen allowance. Even then, we've only got about ten minutes at the bottom.
Probably less."
He put the mask down, took the dumbbell anchor to the side of the boat, and dropped it over with a sploosh. The line fed out.
"What we'll do," Lopez said, "is a modified circular search. You're going to be anchorman, Navarre. All you got to do, you follow the line down, float just above the bottom. Not on the bottom. Don't touch that. It's about three feet of silt and muck, and you put so much as a fin in it-poof. We'll be in a blackout."
The line went slack.
"Snag." Lopez tugged at it, moved down the boat a few feet, then kept lowering it. "There. That should be the bottom. Looks like a hundred five feet.
We'll let the silt settle for a few minutes."
Lopez cut the top end of the rope, tied it to a yellow inflatable buoy the size of a bike tire. It had a diverdown flag fastened to the top. Lopez made the line taut and set the buoy over the side.
"I go down with you," he said. "I take a second line out from the anchor-a tender line.
I do a quick sweep of the area, as much as the trees will let me. The signals are like this. One tug from you or me means stop. Two tugs, take up the slack. Three tugs from you means come here. From me, it means let out some slack. Four tugs, pull me in slowly. Five tugs, I'm in trouble and can't get back. You get five tugs, pass that signal along to the surface by pulling hard on the main line, and Clyde comes in. He'll be fifty percent ready to dive the whole time we're down. Counsellor, you know enough to help Simms suit up?"
Maia nodded.
Lopez stared at me intently. "You got all that?"
"I think so."
"Give it back to me," he ordered. "All the signals." I did.
"Now the basic dive signals," Lopez said. "Let's make sure we're using the same ones."
I ran through the ones I remembered. I needed a little prompting, but in the end, Lopez seemed satisfied.
"We wear a minimum of gear," he told me. "It's easy to get snagged down there. You get caught, don't panic. You might get in a zerovisibility situation. You might not even be able to see the rope. In that case, you find east on your computer compass. The console is illuminated-stick it against your mask if you need to. Then you swim east.
You'll hit the shore that way no matter what, and you just follow it up. How fast do you ascend?"
"No more than thirty feet a minute," I said. "Safety stop twenty feet from the surface for at least fifteen minutes."
"All right," he said. "You know what nitrogen narcosis feels like?"
"One margarita for every thirty feet. Sort of like walking through the Texas Folklife Festival."
Lopez did not look amused. "You start feeling like you want to offer your regulator to the fish, the mud starts looking beautifulyou ascend to a higher level. Got it?"
"Got it."
He exhaled. "Now let's hope we don't need any of that. Suit up.”
Lopez walked over to Clyde, who was getting the tanks ready.
I sat next to Maia, s
tarted pulling on the legs of the shortie suit. "You okay?"
"Just get down there and get back up," she said. "Quickly."
She wouldn't meet my eyes. Her hair was tied back loosely, wisps of it trailing down in front of her ears like brown silk thread. She wore white shorts, an oversized blue Tshirt, flipflops. I could see the crescent scar on her calf that I'd traced with my finger many times, the single tiny mole on her forearm, the perfect diamond shaped corners of her eyes that had always reminded me of comet tails.
Maia caught me looking, gently pushed my face away. "I think you've got somewhere to go."
"Come on, Navarre," Lopez growled. "Get to it."
Two layers of fivemillimetre neoprene later, I understood why he was impatient.
Standing on the boat deck in the June heat, I felt like I was being microwaved in Saran Wrap. I pulled on the hood, attached the regulator to the tank, slipped a knife in one legholster and lineman's pliers in the other. I pulled on orange DayGlo gloves and wondered if they would blind the fish. Clyde hefted a steel tank for me while I got buckled into my BC.
Clyde said, "You watch it down there. You pay attention."
"Thanks."
Then he gave my straps a violent tug, made sure everything was too tight for comfort, and went back to his own equipment.
I doublechecked my gauges, reset the computer.
Clyde laid out a firstaid box, an emergency oxygen tank, and mask. I wished he'd waited until we were over the side.
"Right." In his hooded suit, all black except for blue stripes, Lopez looked like a buff, hightech sea lion. "Time to party."
"You want to use the water slide?" I asked.
"Shut up, Navarre."
Lopez checked my equipment. I checked his. There was an entry bench on the party boat, of course. Lopez looped his fin straps around his wrist. He sat on the bench, facing the deck, scooted his butt to the end, put one hand on his mask and the other on his weight belt, and did a backward somersault into the water.
Next it was my turn.
The splash imploded around me in a haze of cold, white foam. I was surprised at how fast I was sinking, then realized I hadn't inflated my BC. I groped for the button, kicked without the benefit of my fins, which still hung around my wrist. I had a moment of panic, then remembered that I could in fact breathe. I got under control, sent a burst of air into the vest, floated upward, and met Lopez on the surface.
