'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 Victor 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.
Maia and I walked down the red granite steps that rounded the side of the Poseidon fountain.
Matthew Pena was waiting for us at the bottom.
He was in a wheelchair, his lower half swathed in a crinkly black blanket. His face looked sunburned, as if he'd fallen asleep under a heat lamp. His moustache and goatee had started to spread into a full beard. It looked like he'd actually gained weight from his week in the hospital.
Behind him, at the curb, a milky green Lexus was idling. A young Asian chauffeur was talking into a cell phone.
Matthew and I shook hands unenthusiastically. Then Maia offered hers and Matthew clasped it. Maia sat on the granite lip of the fountain, her knees a few inches from the wheels of Pena's chair.
'I leave at one o'clock,' Matthew said. 'You have an answer for me?'
'The doctor give you a prognosis?' Maia asked.
Pena rubbed his fingers against the chrome of his armrests. 'Does it matter for your decision?'
'No.'
'Then it's too soon to tell. I still have no feeling in my right leg. This morning I had a slight tingle in my left. The doctors say that's a good sign, but they don't know. I'll start physical therapy as soon as I get back.'
He did a pretty good job suppressing the fear in his voice.
'Encouraging,' Maia said. 'But my answer is no, Matthew. I can't work for you.'
His face paled in a slow wash, like wet sand around a footprint. 'I have leverage with Ron Terrence. If you won't work for me directly, I can get you your old job back.'
'No, Matthew. Thank you.'
'You could do very well as my lawyer. You could make millions in a very short time.'
