The Devil went down to Austin tn-4

by Rick Riordan

  She gave me this kind of dazed look-could've shot me if she wanted, or forced me to shoot her-but instead she put the pistol in her mouth-"

  Lopez made his hand into a gun, lowered his thumb. "My partner arrived six minutes later. I was not in good shape. The detectives told me the first shot was Ms. Doebler's test fire-getting up her nerve to do the real thing. When I walked up on her, she'd been writing her suicide note. The letter was to Jimmy. Said, Dearest son, I'm sorry. A few more lines, apologizing, what you could read through the blood."

  I stayed quiet for a long minute. "Rough thing to see."

  Lopez nodded. "I did my share of counselling."

  "The Doebler family-W.B.'s father-covered up the suicide. He had it swept under the rug."

  Vic made a popping sound with his lips. "I wasn't in homicide then. No one asked my opinion."

  "But that's why Jimmy called you for information," I said. "You were there."

  "Yes."

  "That's why you want to find Jimmy's murderer so badly."

  "Don't put too much stock in that, Navarre. You work patrol, you collect a lot of landmarks. You can't drive down the street anymore and see a row of houses. You see, 'that's where the kid was strangled,' 'that's where the drug deal went down.' Ms.

  Doebler's death-it was bad. But it was only one time."

  I couldn't tell if he'd really been able to get past the suicide as much as he claimed, but I got the feeling there was something else about it he wasn't telling me-something that still burned in his gut.

  "W.B. has a deputy working security for him-guy named Engels. You wouldn't know anything about that."

  "Not unusual. Lot of the guys work offhour jobs."

  "You don't see a possible conflict of interest?"

  Lopez reconstructed his usual smile. Whatever had been there, just below the surface, was submerged.

  "Conflict of interest-you mean like a homicide detective doing a PI a favour? Naw, man-that shit never happens in this county. Come on, Navarre. Let's get your sorry ass inside. We've got a bullet to look at."

  CHAPTER 26

  The window on the crime lab door was covered with fake stickon bullet holes.

  Ballistics humour.

  The guy who buzzed us in was around fortyfive, wearing jeans and a rumpled blue Tshirt, a laminated ID around his neck. He looked like he hadn't seen a disposable razor in eight weeks-his grizzled hair, beard, eyebrows, moustache, and sideburns all so copious it was impossible to tell where one crop of follicles stopped and the other started. I fancied you could peel one corner and rip the whole hair cover off in a single piece.

  He chewed on something underneath the moustache, knit his eyebrows at Lopez.

  "Which are you?"

  "Vic Lopez, Travis County homicide."

  The hairy man looked at me. "Then you're Navarre?"

  "Ben Quarles?"

  Quarles shook my hand. "Gene Schaeffer at SAPD vouched for you. Said you kept them supplied with some of their more humorous work."

  "That Gene," I said. "He's a sucker for knockknock jokes."

  Quarles looked at Lopez. "Told me Tres-TRES-I figured a Spanish guy."

  Lopez patted my shoulder. "You know, we're trying. We keep feeding him frijoles. So far he ain't turned brown. Now if you don't mind, Ben-?"

  Quarles' mouth twitched. "Come on in, gentlemen."

  Our host walked as if someone had shot him in both feet. He led us down a narrow corridor, past a couple of offices to a big metal door. He swiped his security card across the lock.

  The room inside looked like a Branch Davidian garage salepegboard walls hung floor to ceiling with weapons, all tagged, arranged by size from tiny. 22s on the left to rocket launchers on the right. In the back corner was an umbrella stand full of swords and tire irons and baseball bats.

  Quarles picked a small black and silver handgun off the wall. "Your suspect's Lorcin.

  Came in about an hour ago."

  My stomach went cold just looking at it. I hated the thing- hated the fact Garrett had been stupid enough to buy it. I wanted it obliterated, melted down, ground into rebar.

  Then I looked around the room at the two hundred, maybe three hundred other weapons-each the last stage prop in someone's life. Each had been cleaned, sanitized, impartially crossreferenced with a bright red tag. I was standing in a closetful of endings. Among them, Jimmy Doebler's murder was unremarkable.

  Quarles turned to Lopez. "Projectile's in my office. You're saying it was fired from this, right?"

  "Our man couldn't rule it out. You going to tell us different?"

  Quarles' eyes crinkled. "Haven't testfired yet. You want to come?"

  He took the gun and a box of. 380 ammo.

  We followed him out of the lab, around the parking lot, to a building in back. The test range was a concrete hall with a lead curtained trap at the far end, a paper target holder overhead on a motorized track. At the near end was a folding table with several sets of ear protectors and a staple gun.

  I picked up the staple gun. "You testfire a lot of these?"

  Quarles handed us the headsets. "Gene Schaeffer also said if you didn't amuse me, I could go ahead and shoot you."

  I decided against the peppy comeback.

  Lopez and I put on our ear protectors. Quarles didn't fire down range. Instead he loaded the Lorcin and went to a large tin box on the side of the room. It looked like the industrial bait tanks they use to stock lakes-about a twohundredgallon model, with a hollow spout sticking up on one side, high enough so that Quarles had to stand on a stool to put the gun into the opening.

  He fired six rounds-each a muffled boom and a flash of light in the tank's spout. He pointed at the floor. Lopez and I collected the ejected casings. Quarles dragged his stool around to the side of the water tank, opened the top, and fished around with a long piece of PVC pipe until he'd speared all the slugs.

  "Get me a lobster while you're in there," I said.

  I knew the comment amused him because he did not shoot me.

  Quarles showed us six little mushrooms of copper and lead. The water had slowed them down so the shapes were almost uniform, the lower ends retaining perfect striations from the gun's barrel.

  Lopez said, "They're just lovely. I figure we got about five more minutes before my sergeant gets here and makes us eat them."

  We adjourned next door to Ben Quarles' office.

  His window looked out on the asphalt parking lot, with a scenic side view of the DPS loading ramp. The walls were adorned with framed black and white photos of Geronimo and John Dillinger. A John Prine song was playing from the computer's speaker. On the shelf above Quarles' desk was a line of fired bullets, four Larry McMurtry novels, a red roll of evidence tape circled around a Play Doh can.

  Quarles picked up a Ziploc evidence bag from his desk, pulled out a slug. "This is the one from your victim's head. They cleaned the cooties off it."

  He threw it to me before I could protest. I looked down at it-a little bit of metal, small as a gumdrop. Quarles plucked it back from my palm, then put the slug and a test slug from Garrett's Lorcin under his comparison microscope.

  The machine looked like an oldfashioned icecream blender from a malt shop-same size, same turquoise and chrome finish. Quarles peered into the lens, turned some knobs, and said, "Yeah."

  "Match?" Lopez asked.

  "Come look."

  Lopez did, then turned away, his face stony. "Go on, Navarre."

  The image in the microscope was the left half of one bullet jutted up against the right half of another. You could turn a knob to move the dividing line, seeing less of one or the other bullet, comparing size, lines, markings. The bullets rotated slowly, and in the microscope light they were beautiful-gold and silver, like a piece of jewellery highlighted in a homeshopping ad.

  I was no expert, but even I could see that the ridges-the lands and grooves-were fairly well aligned.

  "You've got a rightsix GRC on the projectile that killed your friend,"
Quarles said.

  "That's the pattern of the spin, and the number of lands and grooves. The projectile we just fired from the suspect's Lorcin is compatible. The damage to the projectile is bad enough that Lopez's man is right-I couldn't swear it's the same gun, but it's definitely from a similar. 380."

  I had expected that. It did not dampen my spirits too badly.

  "The casing?" I asked, pushing my luck.

  Quarles produced another Ziploc bag from his desk drawer, took out the brass I'd found in the lake. "It's a. 380, all right. I put it in the microscope earlier-the crimp marks, where the projectile fits in the casing, line up beautifully. These marks are on the base of the projectile, you understand. Not as mangled as the top."

  "Meaning?"

  "The casing fits the projectile from the murder."

  "A casing in the lake," I said, "maybe a hundred yards from the scene. It was picked up by the killer, dropped in the water during his exit."

  Proof. Goddamn, perfect proof that Garrett was innocent. I looked at Lopez for vindication, but Lopez was staring at Quarles, apparently realizing there was more.

  "Ain't had the real test yet," Quarles said. "The BOB markingsbreech or bolt face-on this here casing. Give me one of the casings we just fired."

  Lopez handed one over, and again Quarles adjusted the comparison microscope.

  "Royal flush," he told us.

  When it was my turn to look, I saw a circle of brass, cratered in the middle. Nothing exciting.

  "The firing pin impression can't always tell you much," Quarles said. "They're circular, pretty much featureless, all the same. One thing, though-look at the outer ring. Those score marks. Now look at the other casing."

  I saw what he was talking about-tiny breaks in the circle around the crater. They were similar on both casings.

  I pulled away from the microscope. "But you said BOB marks all look the same."

  "Mostly," Quarles amended. "For the same type of gun. Usually the firing pin strikes the back of a bullet in a Lorcin, you get a pattern of concentric circles that isn't very distinctive. This casing here, though, has some gaps in those circles-three distinctive gaps, maybe from the gun being cleaned improperly, I don't know. The thing is, your suspect's gun leaves the same kind of marks."

  My chest turned cold. "Meaning-"

  "This is ballistics. You don't usually get one hundred percent. But the chances of two guns making that same BOB pattern on a casing-they're astronomical. Without that casing you found, I couldn't be very certain, if I had to testify in court. But with the casing-well, the projectile fits the casing, and the casing fits the gun. I'd say your suspect's gun just got pinned to that murder about as well as you can pin it. About ninety percent."

  Quarles treated us to a coffeestained grin. Then he noticed my expression. "I hope I helped. You ain't looking too happy for somebody just solved a case."

  "He's ecstatic," Lopez promised. "You'll do a Drugfire search for matches on the casing?"

  "Yeah," Quarles promised. "That'll take a few more days. Christ, Navarre, I thought I was repaying some favours. You look like I just stabbed you in the back."

  John Prine started singing about flag decals on Mr. Quarles' computer.

  Lopez looked out into the parking lot, where a maroon LeBaron was just pulling in. A large militarytype AfricanAmerican man in a coat and tie was getting out of the LeBaron, glowering.

  "Come on, Mr. Navarre," Lopez told me. "Thanks for your time, Quarles."

  In the hallway, Lopez said, "There's a back way through the CODIS office. Take it."

  "A hundred yards away, Lopez. I showed you where I found the bullet. You know this is wrong."

  His eyes were burning. "I know what ninety percent means, Tres. I know what it'll mean to my sergeant, who's about to walk through that door. And Tres-the bad things I said about Miss Lee? Forget them. Your brother is going to need all the help he can get."

  CHAPTER 27

  At sunset, the top windows of Ruby McBride's dream house glowed orange.

  Most of the yachts were out enjoying an evening cruise. The restaurant was nearly empty. The boat jockeys had little to do except smoke cigarettes, recline on their massive forklift, play cards at the lakefront.

  I sat in my truck, idling at the bottom of Ruby's private driveway, trying to decide if I really had enough courage to face another human being.

  I'd spent the afternoon at Jimmy's dome, hiding from reporters' phone calls, hiding from the news reports, finishing Jimmy's kiln at the waterfront.

  Because of me, because of one brass casing, the investigation had gained lethal momentum. At 2:00 P.M., my brother had been formally charged with murder.

  I should've called our sister, Shelley, in Wisconsin, broken her long, selfimposed exile from the family to give her the news. I should've called my mom in Colorado, ruined her vacation. As of yet, I hadn't done either.

  At the top of Ruby McBride's driveway, her blue Miata glistened-noseout, ready for action. Up on Ruby's deck, I saw a flicker of red hair go past.

  I put the F150 into gear, rumbled up the drive, and skidded to a diagonal stop, blocking the Mazda.

  I got out of the truck, walked up the stairs. I heard two voices before I got to the top-Clyde Simms mumbling something, Ruby answering, "No!"

  Clyde sat on the railing bench, looking about as happy as a fourthstring quarterback.

  Ruby stood by the hot tub, running water over her hands with a garden hose. She'd been crying. Her hair hung in a stiff red mesh around her shoulders. She was barefoot, and an apron covered her Tshirt and shorts.

  I could see why she wanted to wash off. Her apron and her hands were stained with blood.

  "Damn you, Tres," she said. "Not now."

  I pointed at the streaks of red on her apron. "What the hell-"

  She dropped the hose, grabbed a bucket of pink water on the edge of the hot tub.

  "We blew it," she told me. "We really blew it, didn't we?"

  A big yellow sponge sloshed angrily around the bucket as she stormed off toward the kitchen area.

  Clyde stared at me. "She's right, you know. You and that fucking brass casing."

  A week's worth of anger surged inside me. I followed Ruby, yelling at her back, "I didn't sell out my own friends, Ruby. I didn't-"

  And then I stepped inside and saw the problem.

  Most of the room hadn't changed since I'd been here Sunday night. It was still a bare box of walls and windows, the floor littered with odd bits of lumber and power tools.

  The far wall, however, looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. The sheetrock was marred with swathes of dark, sticky redbrown-crusty and thick and splattered. It smelled like a rending plant.

  Ruby dropped her bucket, tried to wring pink water out of the sponge.

  "When did it happen?" I asked.

  She ignored me, tried to scrub the blood off the wall. She only managed to turn more of the sheetrock pink.

  Clyde came up behind me.

  "Wee hours," he said. "Workers didn't go to the upper level all day. They were doing wiring on the bottom floor. Ruby always goes up to the deck when she gets home in the afternoon."

  "Somebody knew the workers' schedule," I said. "They wanted Ruby to be the one to find this."

  Ruby kept working-rubbing at the stains, cursing, splattering herself with pink water.

  "Found the deer about fifty yards downhill," Clyde told me, "gutted with a sharp knife.

  My Dobe Miata ain't good for much, but she's got a decent nose. Bastard who did this carried a bucket of blood all the way here. He spilled some on the steps."

  "Did you call the police?" I asked.

  "The police," Ruby spat. She crushed the sponge in her fists, lines of red leaking down her forearms. "Tres, the police are fitting your brother's neck for a noose. They'd explain how he did this, probably lugged his wheelchair all the way up the stairs."

  She kicked the sheetrock, then kept swiping at the blood.

  "That's
not doing anything." Clyde said it gently.

  "My-goddamn-house." Every word was more elbow grease with the sponge.

  "Ruby," Clyde said. "I told you I'd deal with it."

  She flung the sponge in the bucket. "You will not deal with anything, Clyde. GET. OUT."

  I kept my eyes on Ruby. I didn't so much see Clyde leave as I felt it-his gravity suddenly missing from the doorway.

  "Who did this?" I asked Ruby.

  She wiped her hands on her apron. Her fingernails were scarlet crescents. "I don't know."

  "Of course you don't. You don't know how Matthew Pena got inside Techsan's program. You don't know how Jimmy got shot. You don't know what that damn bullet casing was doing in the lake."

  She’ closed the distance between us in two steps, then slapped me across the face. I didn't try to stop her. The sting was the first real sensation I'd had all day.

  From somewhere out on the deck, Clyde called Ruby's name.

  It wasn't an offer of help. More a warning.

  Ruby stared back at her splattered wall, then at all the other places she'd managed to smear pink-the floor, the doorframe, the new kitchen counter.

  "This is my house," she murmured. "No one can do this to my house."

  "Someone did."

  She closed her eyes. Her lips were trembling. "I'm all right. I just have to take care of things."

  I tried to cup my hand around her elbow, but she yanked away, wrestled off her apron.

  She washed her hands again, gathered up her shoes and purse, held them against her stomach like a melting football.

  "Ruby-"

  She brushed past me. "I'll fix it. Goddamn if I won't."

  Clyde stood motionless at the railing, letting Ruby go.

  I followed her down the steps.

  When she got to the drive and found my car blocking hers, she headed down the hill, cursing as she stumbled barefoot over sharp pieces of broken limestone.

  I followed about fifteen steps behind.

  "Ruby," I called. "GO-AWAY!"

  She'd made it to the marina parking lot now, started limping toward the docks. She dropped one of her shoes but kept walking- one parking space, two parking spaces.