The Devil Went Down to Austin - By Rick Riordan Page 0,13
about to make him a millionaire, he's so stupid he deserves to die." Mr. Pena: big warm fuzzy.
January of this year. A glimpse into Pena's private life. His girlfriend of six months, Adrienne Selak, disappeared off a privately chartered dinner cruise boat in San Francisco Bay. Selak had been seen arguing with Pena earlier in the evening. The couple had gone off alone toward the back of the ship. Thirty minutes later, Pena called for help, claiming that Ms. Selak had fallen into the Bay. A search was launched, but her body was never recovered. Selak had been a competent swimmer. In fact, she and Pena had met because of their shared interest in scuba. After her disappearance, one of Selak's girlfriends informed the police that Selak had complained about Matthew "getting creepy" on several occasions, threatening to kill her.
One of Pena's employees, Dwight Hayes, gave a witness statement supporting Pena's assertion that the fall had been accidental.
Pena hired the best legal counsel money could buy. As near as I could tell from followup articles, the investigation was still open, but no formal charges had been filed against Pena.
In March of this year, Matthew Pena's services had been contracted by AccuShield, Inc., a Cupertinobased company that made security software - virus protection, encryption, network firewalls. Pena had apparently sold AccuShield on the idea of expanding into the Austin market, and one of Pena's first buyout targets was Tech
san Security Software: Garrett, Ruby, and Jimmy's startup.
The AmericanStatesman chronicled Techsan's betatest problems, which began shortly after Techsan rejected Pena's first buyout offer of twenty million. I tried to get my mind around the kind of optimism, hubris, stubbornness, whatever, that had made my brother and his two partners turn down twenty million dollars. What were they thinking?
Then I thought about the guy from Menlo Park who had been offered millions by Matthew Pena, then went into his garage and ate his shotgun.
The latest article I could find, dated last week, talked about Pena's second offer - a rescue buyout proposal to the nowbeleaguered Techsan for four million in stock of the client company, AccuShield. Techsan had been wavering on whether or not to accept it.
And now Jimmy Doebler was dead.
There were no available pictures of Matthew Pena. I had no luck finding solid information on his background except for what the business articles told me secondhand - nothing that made Matthew Pena human for me. I liked that just fine. It made it all the easier for me to hate the bastard.
That evening, I wanted to go out to the ranch. I wanted to honour Garrett's wishes to butt out of his problems. Instead, I packed and unpacked my bags for Austin three times.
Sunday morning, after fortyfive minutes on the road, I was still reconsidering. I pulled over on the side of 135 at the Onion Creek rise, just inside the Travis county line.
I looked down the valley, up the opposite hill from which I'd first be able to see the silhouette of downtown. Last chance. Once up that hill, the gravity of Austin would pull me in. There was no avoiding it.
I could call UT, cancel the damn extension course. My department head at UTSA had pushed me to take the job, to get some more upperdivision teaching experience under my belt, but he could live with the disappointment.
I let the engine idle. Next to me, Robert Johnson meowed complaints in his carrying cage. My Ford shuddered as a semi rig barrelled past.
I opened my backpack and pulled out the page and a half of notes I'd gleaned from my search on the agency computer. I read through them again, hoping I might be able to interpret them differently.
Unfortunately, Matthew Pena wasn't the thing that bothered me most. The real worry was down there at the bottom of my notes - the name of the law firm that had represented Pena in the Menlo Park shotgun suicide, and then successfully shielded him from charges in the Adrienne Selak drowning.
Pena had good taste. His legal firm was Terrence & Goldman of San Francisco.
Unless things had changed at Terrence & Goldman, they had only one criminal lawyer, a junior partner whose sole job was to defend their less socially upright corporate clients from their own vices, shield them against criminal inconveniences so they could continue to make millions. That lawyer was, unfortunately, the person I would have to call if I wanted more information on Matthew Pena.