The Devil Went Down to Austin (25 page)

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.

"You think you can stop him, Ruby? You think he'll allow that?"

Three parking spaces.

"You told me Pena understood people," I called after her. "I guess you're right. He's sure got your number."

She whirled to face me.

The nearest boat jockeys had stood now, their poker game forgotten. One of them called, "Ms. McBride?"

"I'm all right!"

I picked up her Adidas, brought it to her.

"No one has my number, Tres," she told me. "No one."

"Pena wouldn't do something randomly. He'd pry into your past, look for weaknesses, pick something he knew would rattle you. Why deer blood, Ruby?"

"I didn't—" She choked, forced a shaky inhale. "No one destroys my property. That wasn't ..."

"Part of the deal?"

She snatched the shoe, hobbled over to the nearest car, slid down against the bumper, and started fumbling with her laces. "I can make things right, Tres.

At least I'm going to try."

It was the same thing Garrett had told me five days ago.

There was blood between two of Ruby's toes—her own blood now—but she didn't seem to notice.

One of the boat jockeys called, "Ms. McBride? You sure—"

"Leave me alone!" She tugged on a shoe, started picking at the laces of the other.

"You can't confront Pena," I told her. "Not by yourself. Don't be stupid."

"I'm not confronting Pena."

Her purse lay in the gravel. The black butt of a gun—probably the one I'd seen on her boat the day before—peeked out the top.

"I can fix this," she told me again. "But I have to do it. Carefully. You can't help me, Tres. Neither can Clyde. I'm not asking you to understand—"

She stopped, looked out toward the water. "Maybe I am asking you to understand.

Jimmy is dead. Garrett doesn't have a clue what's really going on. I can fix this. But that can't happen if I don't go out tonight—by myself."

Ruby got her other shoe on, stood up. The setting sun turned her shadow into stilt person.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"You could follow me, Tres. You could seriously screw this up. But I'm asking you—if it were the other way around, would you want me to stop you? Would you like it if I barged in, assumed I had the right to tell you what was safe, what you needed to do?"

The boat jockeys had gone back to their game and their cigarettes. Clyde hadn't moved from the top of the deck.

"I want to make amends," Ruby said. "I was serious about that, Tres. You were right.

It's my fault—I opened the door."

"The back door."

She closed her hand into a fist. "All right. Yes. Now let me stop it."

She shouldered her purse.

She seemed to be part of the sunset—her entire form glowing red. I felt like I could touch her, and I would disappear into the glare.

"Be careful," I told her.

She let out a long, relieved exhale, came up and kissed me roughly on the cheek, exactly where she had slapped me. "I'll make it all right."

She turned and walked toward the docks—toward the Ruby, Too.

I watched her until she got to the pier, then I headed back up the drive, toward the tower where Clyde was still playing gargoyle.

I wouldn't say he was exactly waiting for me at the top of the stairs, but he was there—leaning against the redwood railing, looking over the tops of the live oaks toward Mansfield Dam.

Ruby's hot tub cover had been peeled off. I hadn't remembered it being like that a few minutes before. Water bubbled and rumbled and small objects bobbed in it—pecans, though where these would've come from in early June I had no idea.

"Where's she running off to?" I asked.

Clyde shook his head. "She wanted me to know, she'd tell me."

"So much for protection."

Clyde was silent. In the sunset, his eyes were so blue they were translucent, like bottle glass. "You shook her up yesterday. There was no talking to her. I tried ... I'd do anything for her."

"Same as you'd do for my brother."

He stared at the churning water in the hot tub, the dark little orbs of pecans bobbing in the foam. "Garrett might kill a guy who took his woman. He wouldn't do that—" He waved toward the open door of the kitchen.

"I ain't going to let nobody mess with my friends anymore," Clyde decided. "Not the cops, not Pena. I'm going to call a few of my buddies, have them come around tonight, just in case."

"In case what?"

No sound but the hum of the hot tub. The daylight was almost gone.

"I'm not going to trust the police, man," Clyde said. "That's all I'm saying."

"You going to form a human chain of bikers around Garrett?"

"You're not a biker—not a onepercenter. You don't know."

I felt like I was talking to my brother, which suddenly made me realize why Garrett got along with bikers so well. For both, conversation is like spinning wheels in gravel. It doesn't matter if you get anywhere, as long as you make noise and shoot out a bunch of rocks.

"Best of luck, Clyde," I said. "Have a good evening."

I started to leave.

He put a massive paw on my shoulder, pushed me back a step.

"I know you don't like your brother much. But you should respect him. The man says he'll be there for you, he will. The guys in my club know that."

"You're right, Clyde. Garrett's a regular Eagle Scout."

"He going to be out on bail for the Buffett concert tonight?"

"He got a quick hearing. The wheelchair helped, the fact he's got no priors. Maia Lee took care of things the best she could. He'll be out."

Clyde looked somewhat mollified. "Buffett music—Buffett knows what it's all about, man. Renegades got to stick together."

He stepped out of my way. "I expect you to be there for Garrett, Tres. You got some makeup work to do."

Part of me wanted to slug Clyde because he assumed he knew what I needed to do, as if he knew the history—who had abandoned whom over the years. Part of me wanted to slug him because I thought he was probably right.

"Call me," I said. "Let us know Ruby got back safe."

He nodded. "End of the day, man, you better stand with your family. And guess what: the end of the day is here."

Southpark Meadows was throbbing with canned music by the time we pulled in.

The parking lot smelled of hay and mown grass. Headlights cut across a haze of dust.

A few late tailgaters hung out drinking beer— women in cutoffs and bikini tops, men in Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts, humanoids of indeterminate gender dressed as Caribbean life forms. Even the lobsters had drinks in their hands.

Garrett pushed his wheelchair along between Maia and me, occasionally getting his wheels snagged on a rock or a tire rut. Dickhead the Parrot sat on his shoulder, flapping his wings helpfully whenever the chair got stuck.

When we got to the rise, we could see the stage two hundred yards downfield—a wired black box of Mecca, the pilgrims swirling around it a sea of drunk pirates and Key West outcasts. A huge rainbow beach ball bounced over a forest of hands. Caribbean music played from buildingsized speakers. Stage lights pulsed. Around the perimeter, long lines snaked away from the beer booths.

We passed a guy in a foam shark suit, a couple making out in matching crustacean hats, a woman dressed as a tequila bottle.

"Like the BaytoBreakers race in San Francisco," I said to Maia.

She gave me an icy look. I'd been getting my share of those from her today.

"A little," she agreed, "except no one is naked."

"Give it an hour," Garrett promised.

We wove our way around the periphery of the crowd. The smell of ganja was everywhere, the field strewn with beach blankets and lawn chairs and coolers.

Every few yards somebody would recognize Garrett and we'd have to stop for introductions and compliments about the parrot and, invariably, a proffered swig from somebody's secret flask. If anybody knew about Garrett's newfound celebrity status as a murder suspect, no one mentioned it.

Maybe the murder charges didn't matter. At the rate we were going, I figured we'd be dead from alcohol poisoning by the time we found a place to sit anyway.

We finally settled on a knoll to one side of the stage, close enough so Garrett could park his chair and have a fair chance of seeing, far enough away so he wouldn't blast out the parrot's eardrums. Garrett settled back on his Persian cushion and proceeded to get out his jointrolling kit.