The Devil Went Down to Austin

Page 44

Armand climbed aboard, cranked the engine to life, then swung the machine around.
Lopez fired once, ineffectually, then had to scramble to get out of the way.
Armand's turn was too tight. The forklift slammed into the lowest rack of boats and its Stingray payload keeled sideways, slipping off the prongs. Mr. McMurray's pride and joy hit the warehouse floor with a sound like a fortyton Tupperware bowl. It slid to a stop right next to the unconscious Deputy Geiger.
Lopez spilled onto the ground behind the forklift. He'd lost his borrowed gun. He was trying to get to his feet, but it looked like he'd broken something.
Armand slammed the forklift in reverse, trying to free it from its tangle in the racks.
Another spray of shots came from the back of the warehouse— probably meant for Lopez—but one of them hit Armand's thigh in a burst of red mist.
Armand bellowed, lost control of the machine. The forklift was now backing up toward Lopez, who was scrambling to crawl out of the way, much too slow.
I cursed, ran to the forklift.
I jumped aboard and Armand paid me no attention. He was clutching his thigh, rocking, screaming more Cajun obscenities. I tried to hold on to him and keep us both on the forklift while figuring out the controls fast. I did it, sort of. I managed to slam the thing out of reverse and back into full forward, which sent us away from Lopez but on an unfortunate collision course with Deputies Geiger and Engels.
I tried for a turn, slammed full steam into Mr. McMurray's Stingray—pushing it toward the warehouse doors with an immense fiberglass GRRRRRINNNND. We hit the doors? the corrugated tin bowed, gave way. Then we were in the open, pushing the boat along the asphalt.
When I finally got the forklift stopped, the boat jockeys were staring at us in horror. The rich Mr. McMurray was gaping at his boat, which had just been delivered the hard way.
Armand was still yelling, his blood soaking his pants.
Out of the warehouse came Lopez—rearmed with Clyde's Bizon2, limping, leading Clyde Simms at gunpoint. Garrett wheeled along behind. Garrett looked okay, but Clyde sported a large new welt on his temple.
Sirens were wailing far off in the hills.
I exhaled for the first time in several minutes, then looked at our audience.
"Mr. McMurray," I said, "your boat is ready now."
CHAPTER 38
The front of the Travis County Jail is a severe concrete triangle, jutting toward West 11th Street like the prow of a battleship.
Vic Lopez led Maia and me inside the tiny foyer. He deposited his gun in a police locker, then signalled the security guard behind the bulletproof glass. We were buzzed through the double airlock door.
The guard on duty was busy explaining parole forms to a guy in a threadbare suit.
I looked at Lopez. "Do we sign in?"
"Yeah," he said. "Take a tag—doesn't matter what colour."
It's not often I get to be someone's attorney. I took a red tag.
"Bad enough you don't invite me to your parties," Maia murmured. "Now you want to replace me."
Her mood had not been sunny since she received word of our expedition to the marina. Lopez had, amazingly, gotten off with only a mild censure, thanks again to his prominent attention in the press for bringing in three dangerous men. Deputies Engels and Geiger had been taken to the hospital, where they, too, were receiving accolades from the press.
I'd been released after questioning, with no punishment but cold stares. Lopez had vouched that I'd saved his life by stopping the forklift, but I wasn't sure that had won me any points with Lopez's superiors. The marina had been closed until further notice.
Clyde Simms and Garrett had both been taken here—the county's maximum security facility for violent offenders.
Strangely enough, Armand, who'd started the whole thing, was the only one who got out on bail. Perhaps that was part of his plea bargain for copping to assault charges—something Clyde had not been willing to do. Perhaps the police simply failed to provide a Cajun interpreter when they read Armand his rights.
As for Garrett, his bail had been revoked. The fact that he hadn't directly resisted arrest was ignored. Maia's best speeches and tirades didn't help. Wheelchair or not, Garrett had now graduated to hardcore incarceration.
The prison corridors smelled like dayold meat loaf. The walls were brown and beige, in keeping with Travis County's Hershey Bar patrol colours. We walked past the med ward—the psych patients, the newbies waiting for their TB tests to pass. Guards in white lab coats did their rounds, slipping food and drugs through the little slots in the cell doors. All the deputies knew Vic. They highfived him, asked him what was up, gave Maia Lee appreciative glances.
We waited for the elevator with four inmates in bluegreen scrubs who were helping a deputy transport a supply cart.
Lopez looked at one of the inmates, a young Anglo guy with starchwhite hair and a pasty face and a nervous smile. Vic said, "How you doing, Hans?"
The jail deputy grinned, as if pleased by some inside joke.
Hans said, "Fine, sir. I'm fine."
"These boys treating you okay?" Lopez asked.
I looked down at Hans' feet. He was the only one of the inmates without shoes.
"They're treating me fine," he said.
Two of the other guys—both Latinos with hair nets—grinned at each other.
Hans mumbled, "I got hope. My boss knows he ain't going to get his deposits in the bank next Friday without me. I got hope."
"You got to have hope," the other deputy said.
"That's right, brother," Lopez said.
At the top of the elevator, the inmates let us get out first. One held the door for us.
Everybody called Maia "ma'am."
Lopez and I walked up to the guard station. The sentry, a Weebleesque woman, was talking on the phone.
We waited.
The deputy from the elevator led his four charges to their cell block and told them it was time to declare contraband items. The inmates started patting down their clothes.
There were no bars anywhere, just plexiglass walls and big brown metal doors. Inside the block, I could see a metal picnic bench with welded seats, like at a highway rest stop. A little TV was mounted from the ceiling. Along the back wall was a row of tenbyten cells, each with its own brown metal door, each crammed with books and magazines. The whole block was intensely quiet. Much quieter than any jail I'd ever been in.
Three of the inmates showed the deputy their empty hands. One of the Latinos, almost bashfully, offered up a spoon and a comb— two potentially deadly weapons.
The deputy looked satisfied. He took the spoon and the comb and buzzed the cell block door open.
"You bust Hans?" I asked Lopez.
"It isn't Hans, Navarre—it's Hands. Only been in here a couple of days. Killed a guy he owed money to—dumped the body in the woods and thought we'd never be able to track the victim's identity if he cut off the hands and threw them in the Colorado River.
Absolute stupidity. Local fishermen found the left hand. Catfish probably ate the right."
"And he's really getting out of here?" Maia asked.
Lopez laughed. "Not a chance. His boss wouldn't touch him. But that's how easy it is, getting suckered into the logic of losers. Other guys you shared an elevator with are real sweethearts, too— that was a drug dealer, a hit man, and the Barton Creek rapist.
But you talk to them for a minute, you can almost buy that they're rational, nice human beings. Scary."
The inmates filed into their cell block. Hands looked reluctant to go. The deputy gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, turned him around, then gently pushed him into the block. The door slid closed.
The sentry behind the glass finally ended her call. She said, "Sorry, gentlemen.
Ma'am."
"Hey, Peg." Lopez grinned. "How's your fun factor today?"
"Oh, real high, Vic. Real high."
"We need to see Garrett Navarre."
Deputy Peg barked a laugh. "It just got higher. What room you want?"
Lopez looked at us. "I hate those interview rooms. You want to put your mouth on one of those greasy phones? Look, Peg—how about you bring him upstairs to the rec area.
Can you do that?"
She shrugged. "You know the way."
The outdoor rec area was on the top floor—a cagedin basketball court that looked out over the city. The panorama was obstructed by a tenstory Justice Department building to the left, but we could still see the wooded hills of Clarksville, clusters of apartments at the edge of UT, the green ribbons of undeveloped land that marked Shoal Creek and Barton Creek.
"Nice," I said.
"Oh yeah," Lopez agreed. "This was an apartment, you'd have to pay big bucks for a view like this. You kill somebody, you get it for free."
The door opened behind us. A guard came out with Garrett.
His bluegreen prisoner scrubs were way too big for him, the pant legs tucked under him in neat blue squares. His beard had been trimmed severely, his ponytail cut off.
He had a shiner for a left eye. He hadn't had that this morning.
"If it isn't my brother," he said. "Captain of the Good Ship Forklift."
"Your eye," Maia said. "What happened?"
Garrett touched the bruised skin. "Don't worry about it. Clyde's in the cell block with me—we've got things under control."
The jail guard smiled amiably, moved off to one side, picked up a basketball. He started twirling it on his finger.
"Don't suppose you've come to get me out," Garrett said.
"You decided the odds on that," Lopez told him. "Soon as you eloped with Clyde Simms."
Garrett grunted. "Yeah, Lopez. I should've stayed and taken the rap for another murder—with my kid brother finding all the evidence against me, my counsellor telling me to pleabargain, your deputy friends treating me to some of that countystyle justice. At least with Clyde, I know whose side he's on."
The jail guard yelled, "Heads up, Navarre."
He threw Garrett the ball.
Garrett caught it without much enthusiasm, dribbled it a couple of times in front of his wheelchair.
"Lopez was pulled off your case," I told him, "mostly because he stopped believing you're guilty. He wants to help."
"He wants to help," Garrett repeated. "He'll have to queue up, won't he? Whole fucking world wants to help me."
Maia told him about the tox reports, the ties between the murders of Clara Doebler, Jimmy, and the woman in the lake, the woman we assumed was Ruby.
Garrett's face reminded me of a wall I'd been trying to repair at the family ranch—crumbling stone washed over with plaster so many times I was afraid to scrape away the outer layer, for fear the whole structure would collapse. "It wasn't Ruby down there."
"We should know in a few days," Lopez said.
"It wasn't her. Clyde and I—we've had time to talk. Ruby wouldn't let her guard down like that. She can't be dead."
For a moment, his eyes softened with the same sad, broken hopefulness I'd seen downstairs, in the face of a polite young inmate who severed body parts.
"Garrett," I said, "the murders are connected. There's a poisoner at work. Adrienne Selak, Pena's girlfriend—she was probably drugged the same way as the others."