The Devil went down to Austin tn-4

by Rick Riordan

  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."

  "I parent them," she said coldly. "These children need a real parent. They get nothing at home, if they have a home. They need what I give them. They needed what my husband gave them."

  "Pain. Fear. Hate."

  "They get what they need."

  The curtains ballooned in with a limp breeze. In the den, Star Wars lasers blasted away.

  "The last thing Dwight told me," I said. "He said he'd left the most important thing undone. He loved and feared you as much as he hated you, Mrs. Hayes, and so he could only kill your reflection. The others died in your place."

  Mrs. Hayes put her hand on her knee, scraped her fingernails against the black cotton of her sweat pants. "My son is dead. He was my son. I've told the police everything."

  "And the others who have died?"

  "It was God's will."

  "No, Mrs. Hayes. No, no, no."

  The front door opened. Maia Lee came in, walking stiffly from the orthopaedic hardshoe she now wore on her left foot. She was followed by two uniformed APD officers, then a businesssuited woman named Reyes from Child Protective Services.

  "Dwight's last request," I told Mrs. Hayes. "To shut you down. It's amazing how helpful CPS can be when you bring them documentation on an unlicensed day care, run by a woman who raised a psychopath."

  In the next room, Reyes started talking with the children, explaining that she was here to help. Maia Lee came up next to me. One of the officers stood impassively by the door while the other came into the living room and dropped a search warrant on Mrs.

  Hayes' King James Bible, then a ceaseanddesist order from the State Attorney's office.

  "They'll want a statement, Mrs. Hayes," Maia said, her voice cold. "Mrs. Reyes will want these officers to escort you to her office."

  Mrs. Hayes looked at Maia, then the officer, then me.

  She gave me a meagre smile. "You're so sure of yourself, aren't you? You think you know what is right."

  In the next room, Reyes was talking to the children-recording their names and ages, where they lived.

  "It's over, Mrs. Hayes," I said. "You won't raise any more children."

  "Ask the police, Tres. They're so intent on paperwork, bending the facts to fit, ask them to check his blood."

  "Dwight's body hasn't been found, Mrs. Hayes."

  "Yes," she agreed easily. "But that's not what I meant. And you don't understand that simple fact."

  Then she rose and let the deputy lead her out. On the couch where she'd been sitting, the dent of her form was embedded in the cushions as deep as footvalleys on cathedral steps.

  Maia put her hand on my shoulder. "She's just trying to hurt you. Trying to shake you up."

  I listened to the voices of the children in the other room. Two weeks-Every night-She's mostly nice-Only sometimes she gets mad- Bible readings-And one time I stole something-She calls me son.

  "They'll be all right," Maia told me. "Reyes knows her work."

  She started toward the door, but I couldn't move.

  Dim light filtered through the windows of Mrs. Hayes' living room, but I felt I might as well have been back in Ruby McBride's pecan orchard, one hundred feet underwater? or at Jimmy Doebler's waterfront? or even at the train crossing near my father's house in Olmos Park. I realized, as Dwight must have realized, that the cold dark weight of those places was no different, no less horrible. It would be easy to lose one's strength to ascend. And then the will. And finally even the desire.

  I stared at the shaggy green staircase that led to the second floor. Then, half in a trance, I walked upstairs.

  "Tres?" Maia called.

  I looked in the doorway of Dwight Hayes' room. His car magazines and books had been scattered on the floor, the football posters taken down, the boysized mattress overturned.

  In the bathroom opposite the stairs, I flipped the light switch and saw only myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. I looked at the bathtub-a small porcelain model, nothing special. Chrome fixtures, a permanent grime ring, faded 1970s flower decals on the bottom. The drain was wet.

  The walls of the bathroom were avocado tile from waist down, yamcoloured wallpaper from the waist up. I imagined how high a small boy could reach, ran my hand along the wall. I hit the soft spot just in the middle of the right wall-an area no bigger than a doorknob, where the wallpaper felt like membrane.

  I punched through, ripped away the edges. There was a layer of lightercoloured wallpaper underneath, and a dark void eaten into the wall behind.

  I stared at it for a long time, until Maia came up behind me.

  "What?" she asked.

  I said, "A hole somebody never filled in."

  CHAPTER 42

  The rains had been good for Faye DoeblerIngram's front garden. Patches of wild rosemary had shot up to four feet. The bees were going nuts around her red and white hibiscus. Whitebrush was blooming, permeating the air with a scent like Christmas trees.

  Maia Lee picked a blackeyed Susan. I got the morning paper off the porch, shook the dew off the plastic sleeve.

  For an abandoned house, Faye's place looked pretty lively. An old yellow Honda and a brown sedan were parked in the driveway. Light shone through the living room window, flickering from the blades of a ceiling fan. The screen door was latched, but I could smell coffee inside, baking cinnamon bread. The stereo was playing an acoustic instrumental.

  We knocked on the screen door, got no answer, called hello. Still no reply.

  Maia kindly offered her key chain knife, which I used to unlatch the door.

  The living room was bright with morning sun. Pothos and ivy crowded the windows. I put the newspaper down on the sideboard.

  A suitcase lay open and empty on the sofa. On the coffee table was the large brown binder Faye had shown Maia and me the week before.

  Maia went to the stereo, checked out the case on the CD player. She might've been waiting in a doctor's office, for all the anxiety she showed.

  I sat next to the suitcase, opened the memory book. The picture of Ewin Lowry and Clara Doebler stared up at me-Clara smiling, her hand resting on the hood of the '65

  Mustang as if it were a favourite horse. Ewin Lowry's smile was more devilish, his teeth perfectly white. Small build, dark skin-not really olive, as I'd speculated before, but the hue of cinnamon.

  Something shattered.

  I looked up. Faye Ingram was standing in her kitchen doorway, shards of a Jimmy Doebler coffee cup at her feet.

  Her fingers were flaked with mud. She wiped them absently on her gardening apron, then touched her face as if to make sure her mascara and jewellery and pennyred hairdo were still in place.

  "Mr. Navarre," she said. "Miss Lee. What are you doing in my house?"

  "You haven't disappeared," Maia said. "I'm glad to see that."

  Faye glanced behind her, into the kitchen. "I'm fine, thank you. I think you should leave."

  "He's here," I said. "Isn't he?"

  She knelt down, began picking up pieces of the cup, using her apron as a collection pouch. "I'm afraid- I'm not quite awake yet, Mr. Navarre. I haven't had my second cup of coffee, haven't had my thirty minutes in the garden. I'm afraid I'm not following you."

  I slipped the picture of Ewin and Clara out of its plastic pocket. "The resemblance is there, isn't it, if you blend the two of th
em together? I just wasn't looking for the right connection."

  "You shouldn't be here."

  She stood, the pottery shards in her apron. Plucking up the ends of the fabric, she looked as if she were about to curtsy.

  "Twentyfive years ago," I said. "You saved your sister's child."

  "Please don't ask me this."

  "Clara had her second son, but it was another battle she couldn't win against the family, wasn't it? They forced her to give the baby away. W.B.'s father made the arrangements-no paperwork, no embarrassment, just discreet payments to a family that would keep the secret and ask no questions as long as the money kept coming.

  The Doeblers either didn't know or didn't care what kind of operation the Hayeses were running-what kind of hell they inflicted on their charges. But you found out. You'd watched Clara unravel-you knew that she was unfit to take care of herself, much less a child, but you also knew her misery. You resented the family for what they'd done to her."

  Faye pressed her lips tight, turned her face toward the door jamb. "I never married, Tres, never had children. I saw how the family's expectations destroyed my sister-how she kept giving them more rope to strangle her with."

  "But you found a way to save something of your sister. You found a way to have a family, too. By the time your nephew was six, it was clear to you what kind of monsters the Hayeses were. Their own son Dwight was being twisted, misshaped by an abusive father and a dangerously unstable mother. Your nephew was not faring much better.

  In one incident, he almost died. That decided you. You rescued the child, kidnapped him. You placed him in a home of your choosing, supported by your money, and you made sure he was treated well. He became your son more than Clara's, and as he grew, you were not about to tell your sister-to see the one good deed of your life be tainted by the Doeblers. They would find a way to interfere again. Clara would insist on raising the child, and she would screw it up, the way she'd screwed up everything in her life. The child was yours now. That's why the payments to the Hayeses stopped.

  Because the child was no longer there."

  In the kitchen, a coffee machine gurgled and steamed as it let out the last of its water into the filter. Faye clutched her apron. One tear was making its way down her cheek.

  Her mascara streaked like a smear of ashes.

  "He warned me. He said the best we could hope for was a few more quiet days. I so hoped- Oh, Tres. You don't understand. Until Clara's death, we had so many good years. Even after, when he was worried for my safety, when he was so busy guarding our lives and our secret that he could barely enjoy my company-even then, every day was a gift. I would give anything to protect him. Everything else failed to matter long ago."

  I could barely speak. The unequivocal love in her voice was humbling. "We need to see him, Ms. Ingram."

  She hesitated, then nodded, resigned to the inevitable. She led us through the kitchen and into the yard.

  The grass was dappled with light through the oak tree. A new jar of sun tea glowed on the sidewalk. Another Jimmy Doebler coffee cup and two plates of cinnamon toast sat on the patio table.

  He was working near the tomato cages, cutting dead sunflower stalks with a machete.

  Nearby on the grass, a flat of lantana waited, ready to be planted in the sunflowers' place.

  He wore swim trunks, flipflops, a plain white Tshirt smeared with dirt and sweat and plant pigments. When he turned, expecting to see only Faye, his face was the most content I'd ever seen it- calm, happy, at peace with his morning's work.

  Then his expression went absolutely blank.

  "Hello, Vic," I said.

  Vic Lopez raised his machete hand, used the back of his glove to wipe a sweat droplet off his chin. He studied us, the blade of the machete hovering over his left shoulder like an insect wing.

  "Navarre. Maia. I was just giving Ms. Ingram a hand. Amazing the things you can do once you quit the day job."

  "He knows," Faye told him.

  Lopez met her eyes, had a silent conversation, looked back at us.

  "Dwight's revenge," I said. "It wasn't against his family-it was against yours."

  Faye moved to the patio table, sank into one of the chairs. She began putting the shards of the broken cup on the table.

  "You're the friend Dwight lost," I said. "You were snatched out of the Hayes house when you and he were only six. You were rescued, and Dwight was left behind. He never forgot."

  Lopez lowered his machete.

  "I didn't know," he said. "Until very recently, I didn't understand who was doing the killing. I was too young when I-when I got free of that place. Thankfully, I don't remember much. The name Hayes meant nothing to me. He was just another interviewee."

  Faye said, "He never told me about Dwight. If he had, perhaps I would've made the connection. But perhaps not… it was so long ago. It was something we put behind us."

  "But it shaped Dwight's life," I said. "He never forgot. You were his personal quest, Vic.

  He resented you, hated you, but somewhere in the back of his mind he also loved you, identified with you the way he identified with Matthew Pena. Dwight thought he was you. He wanted to do for you what he wished someone could do for him-kill the family who had let him down."

  Lopez turned the blade of his machete, watching it reflect the sunlight. "I never knew my father."

  "Ewin Lowry was Hispanic," I said. "That was part of the reason the Doebler family didn't want him around. His name-"

  "Was changed to something nice and Anglo when he was young," Lopez interrupted.

  "His surname was originally Lopez, which is the name Faye decided to give back to me. That's really all I know about him. When Dwight found Lowry in Waco, he killed a man who meant nothing to me. Clara-my mother-that was different, but mostly her death hurt me because she was Faye's sister, because I watched her die. I don't mean to be cold, Navarre, but you've got to understand-Faye has always been my mother.

  I never knew Clara well, or any of the other Doeblers. I never wanted to. I know now that Dwight meant for me to be there the night he killed Clara."

  "He'd studied you, knew your patrol schedule. You realized Clara's death was more than a suicide. You went into homicide because of what you saw that night."

  "I knew there was something wrong."

  "And after Jimmy was murdered-"

  "I went off in completely the wrong direction-exactly the way Dwight wanted me to go.

  It's only when Ruby died, when I realized the connection to Ewin Lowry-it did look like Clara's son might be involved. But I was Clara's son. I thought maybe Pena was re sponsible, playing mind games with me. I didn't know what to believe." He gestured at Faye. "I insisted that Faye leave town for a while, until I could figure things out."

  "Dwight's plan," I said. "Those unsigned files on the disk. He wasn't claiming to be Clara's son? he was leaving that as your suicide note. He meant to get away, leave you the blame-a dead man at the bottom of the lake, killing yourself the same way you'd killed your victims, your family."

  "Except Maia saved me."

  Maia said nothing-exactly what she'd said about her trip underwater for the past three days.

  Victor tugged off his leather gardening gloves, threw them on the dirt. "So what now?"

  Faye had arranged the pieces of broken cup into a line, the same way she'd done with the poisonous coral beans on my last visit. I wondered if Faye always tried to organize things into straight lines.

  "No one will charge you with a crime," Maia said. "The police can't fire you for misrepresenting your identity if you've already quit. But the tabloids will have a field day. It's only a matter of time before the reporters find out the truth."

  Vic nodded. "When it happens I'll deal with that. Until then, I plan on spending my time here."

  The summer heat had started to burn through the morning.

  Soon the garden would be a hundred degrees, fit only for cicadas and dragonflies and herbs. But I could picture Faye and Vic
tor out here again this evening-drinking freshly brewed sun tea, enjoying the catmint and sage that had infused the air during the afternoon, watching the blue glow of the moonlight tower take over from the sunset.

  Like all Texans, they had learned to make the most of the edges of the day.

  "There is a lot I regret," Lopez said. "But the important things had to survive. Do you understand?"

  I told him I did. I shook his hand and said goodbye.

  But as we left him to his gardening, as we accepted Faye DoeblerIngram's hugs and then headed back into her house, I wasn't at ease with my own jealousy.

  Faye and Victor had salvaged a family from the ruins of a clan.

  Maia laced her fingers in mine.

  I looked at her.

  Something about her smile made it easier to go down the front porch steps.

  CHAPTER 44

  I was spoiling the guys in English 301. This was the second time in two weeks I'd brought Maia Lee to class.

  All through my lecture on Coleridge, the flipflop dudes checked her out.

  I thought about ways to recapture their interest-maybe get a dead bird and a rope and use Father Time as a visual aid for the Ancient Mariner. But in the end, I decided just to let them be distracted. They had a test next week. I had a red pen.

  At the end of class, the students filed out. Maia Lee stepped down from the back of the room.

  "All right," she said. "I must admit you do this rather well. I haven't fallen asleep either time."

  She'd succumbed to the Texas summer-abandoning her business attire in favour of walking shorts, tank top, sandals. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders.

  "The teaching career that might have been," I lamented. "Had I not been stolen out of the warm bosom of Academia by a certain lawyer."

  "You were in the warm bosom of a bartending job," Maia reminded me.

  "Technicalities."

  "You ready?" she asked.

  "Do I have to be?"

  She held my eyes.

  "Yeah," I said. "I suppose I'm ready."

  We walked across campus together-under the shadow of the clock tower, through the South Mall. The distribution boxes for the Daily Texan and the Austin Chronicle had been filled with new issues, both carrying lead stories about the family scandal that had recently rocked Doebler Oil-the discovery of an heir the family had shuffled aside, apparently because they didn't like his Latino father. The Chronicles cover featured a huge closecropped photo of W.B. Doebler's face, with the title: "Oil or Slime?" I promised myself I'd stop by the Met Club later, get W.B. to autograph a copy for me.