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  For the Gregorys

  Life’s a beach

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Must be that time of year again, and I promise you another great ride this time. Before we start, though, I need to give some much-deserved shout-outs.

  Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but let’s start at the top with my publisher, Tom Doherty, and Forge’s associate publisher, Linda Quinton, dear friends who publish books “the way they should be published,” to quote my late agent, the legendary Toni Mendez. Paul Stevens, Karen Lovell, Patty Garcia, and especially Natalia Aponte are there for me at every turn. Natalia’s a brilliant editor and friend who never ceases to amaze me with her sensitivity and genius. Editing may be a lost art, but not here, and I think you’ll enjoy all of my books, including this one, much more as a result.

  Big thanks also to Mireya Starkenberg, a loyal reader who now suffers through my butchering the Spanish language in order to correct it. My friend Mike Blakely, a terrific writer and musician, taught me Texas firsthand and helped me think like a native of that great state. And Larry Thompson, a terrific writer in his own right, has joined the team as well to make sure I do justice to his home state. I’m also indebted to my cousin George Mencoff for introducing me to the principles of the Deep Web and to Time magazine for publishing a perfectly timed cover story.* You’ll also find more info on how Strong Darkness came to be in my author’s note that follows the epilogue here.

  Check back at www.jonlandbooks.com for updates or to drop me a line. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank all of you who’ve already written or e-mailed me about how much you enjoyed the first five tales in the Caitlin Strong series. And if this happens to be your first to visit to the world of Caitlin, welcome and get ready for a wild ride. Right now it’s time for me to stop talking so you can start reading.

  P.S. For those interested in more information about the history of the Texas Rangers, I recommend The Texas Rangers and Time of the Rangers, a pair of superb books by Mike Cox, also published by Forge.

  *“The Secret Web: Where Drugs, Porn and Murder Live Online,” Lev Grossman and Jay Newton-Small, Time magazine, November 11, 2013

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Three

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part Four

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Part Five

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Part Six

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Part Seven

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Part Eight

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Part Nine

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Part Ten

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by Jon Land

  About the Author

  Copyright

  In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

  —FRANCIS BACON

  PROLOGUE

  “They knew their duty and they did it.”

  —Ranger John S. “Rip” Ford (1815–1897)

  LANGTRY, TEXAS; 1883

  “Well,” said Judge Roy Bean from behind the greasy bar in his cramped saloon that doubled as a courtroom, “I’ve researched this matter from the best resources available and have concluded that there ain’t no law in Texas against killing a Chink. So with that in mind, this court finds the defendant not guilty.”

  The overflow crowd, hoping to a man for a quick resolution so they could get back to the business of drinking, was already applauding the verdict when Bean banged his gavel. The judge stripped off the black robe covering his bulbous frame and laid his palms atop the bar on either side of the single law book upon which he relied.

  “Now,” he said, slapping the wood hard enough to kick a blanket of dust into the air, “who wants a drink?”

  * * *

  In the bar’s rear, Texas Ranger William Ray Strong was the lone man not celebrating. He stood shaking his head, eyeing the famed frontier judge who liked to proclaim himself the only law west of the Pecos. Just a few days earlier, William Ray had been summoned to an area on the outskirts of El Paso where the Chinese victim had been found hanging from a cottonwood tree. Arresting the culprit had been as easy as walking into an El Paso bar with the intention of posing some questions, only to over
hear a cowboy with rotting teeth and the worst breath he’d ever smelled boast of doing the deed.

  “Can I take that as a confession?” William Ray asked, approaching the table.

  “You can take it as the drunken word of Cole Varney,” the cowboy said, toasting him with his beer, “the only word I know.”

  Varney watched William Ray hitch his barn coat back to reveal his Colt Peacemaker.

  “What are you, some kind of lawman?” Varney asked, drawing a collective chuckle from those crowded at the table with him.

  William Ray pulled the barn coat further to reveal his Texas Ranger badge, forged out of a Mexican Cinco Pesos coin. “I suppose you could say that.”

  The chuckling seemed to freeze midbreath, the whole bar going silent. William Ray noticed men who’d eased their hands a bit closer to their holstered pistols draw them back, leaving those hands in evidence for him to see.

  “And you, Cole Varney,” he resumed, drawing close enough to stand over his suspect, “are under arrest for the murder of Han Chu.”

  “Was that the Chink’s name?”

  William Ray kicked the chair out from under Varney and he hit the floor hard, blowing out some breath that stained the air with the stench of stale onions and eggs gone bad. Light spilling from dusty tin lanterns strung overhead flickered at the impact that coughed a dust cloud into the bar’s already grimy air.

  “Doesn’t matter if he was a Chinaman or the goddamn man from the moon,” William Ray said, jerking Varney to his feet by the scruff of the neck. “You confessed to murdering him, sir, and the awful stench you give off should be enough to arrest you on its own.”

  “I didn’t confess to nothing. Anybody hear me confess to something?” Varney asked anyone in the bar who was listening.

  To a man, including those at his table who’d kept to their chairs with their hands remaining where William Ray Strong could see them, nobody answered Varney’s question one way or another.

  “You’re under arrest, sir,” William Ray said, snapping his handcuffs into place on the suspect’s wrists.

  “Who the hell are you?” Varney spat, clinging to his bravado.

  “A Texas Ranger, and if that ain’t enough for you, we can each try our guns and see who’s still standing after the smoke clears.”

  * * *

  While William Ray had been riding with the famed Texas Ranger captain George W. Arrington of the Frontier Battalion, fighting renegade Indians and Mexican bandits, a steady stream of Chinese workers had moved into West Texas to continue laying track for the Central and Southern Pacific Railroads’ expanding routes through Texas and into Utah, Nevada, and California. There weren’t enough workers to handle all the area that needed to be covered, and it had reached the point where the railroad companies were actually negotiating with prisons to turn their incarcerated into virtual slave labor.

  When the Frontier Battalion was disbanded the year before, William Ray had found himself busting up those illegal chain gangs. But the charges never stuck and those truly responsible were too powerful and far away to arrest anyway. While that frustrated him to no end, it in no way softened his commitment to make sure the laws of the land were applied to this new wave of immigrants on both sides. As far as he was concerned, American or not, they had to be answerable to justice whether they were the perpetrator or the victim.

  Chinese crews relocated their campsites regularly to keep up with track laying progress. The particular camp they occupied here in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas had served as home longer than usual, thanks to the need to build an earthen dam to help stabilize the rail bed before ties and tracks could be spiked. It had been an unusually wet year for West Texas, stopping the railroad in its tracks until the Chinese crews completed the nearly quarter-mile-long, fifty-foot-high dam.

  Work on the tracks, though, still had yet to resume, the land deemed too wet to drive the ties into place to properly secure the rails. By then, William Ray imagined the Chinese had worn out their welcome as far as the locals, never known in these parts to be friendly toward strangers, were concerned. A local sheriff had called in the Rangers as soon as Han Chu’s body was found, and William Ray had ridden through the night to pick up the trail that had brought him to this bar and Cole Varney.

  It turned out the tree from which Varney had hung the Chinese victim actually lay in Langtry, home of the infamous Judge Roy Bean. Bean was known for hanging more than his share of men himself, just not any who were patrons of the saloon that doubled as his courthouse, which the accused clearly was. William Ray didn’t expect much from Bean and, true to form, the judge didn’t disappoint.

  “Yo there, Ranger,” he heard Bean’s voice call, when he was halfway out the door in the wake of the verdict being announced.

  William Ray turned slowly, watching the judge comb his long gray beard with the fingers of his right hand. “What can I do for you, Judge?”

  “You’re real good at holding your tongue, ain’t ya, son?”

  “I did my job, sir. Not for me to tell others how best to do theirs.”

  “No matter, Ranger. You heard me say there’s no law in Texas against killing a Chink, I imagine.”

  “I did indeed. Imagine you got it out of that single law book of yours.”

  “Well, that same book’s got nothing to say about killing a whole bunch of Chinks neither,” Bean said, his expression tightening to the point where the spiderweb of red veins across both his cheeks smoothed a bit. “Chink ladies more to the point.”

  “Sounds like you’re about to tell me something I oughtta know, Judge.”

  “I am indeed, son. Regular customer of mine who supplies beef to the railroad spilled it in the saloon just the other night ’fore he puked all over his shoes.” Roy Bean stopped long enough to stuff a thick wad of tobacco into his mouth, his left cheek puckering and then filling out with what looked like a round rock wedged in place there. “Four Chink women he said, all killed deader than dead in the past few weeks since the rains come, their bodies left like you wouldn’t believe. Chinks figure the rains brought something else with them.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Southern Pacific man heard them blame a ‘black guy,’ meaning we could be looking to put a nigger in our sights, if that makes any sense.”

  “It doesn’t. Bahk guai is what the man meant by those words.”

  “Huh?”

  “Chinese for ‘white devil.’”

  Bean stiffened. “That ain’t right at all.”

  “’Course the phrase could mean something else entirely, more literal.”

  “Like what?”

  “An actual devil, a demon.”

  “Well, son, I never put one of them on trial.”

  “First time for everything, Judge. In any event, I’ll head out to the Chinese camp and have myself a look straightaway.”

  Roy Bean looked as if he were running the prospects of that through his mind. “I’m of a mind to ride along with you on this one, Ranger.”

  William Ray hocked up some spittle. “Rangers are used to working alone.”

  “Land west of the Pecos got its own law, son, and that law’s me. Trouble here is you ain’t gonna be facing Injuns or Mexicans, no sirree. You ever get yourself snared in barbed wire?”

  “Can’t say I have, Judge.”

  “’Cause that’s what this investigation is gonna be like. You’re gonna be dealing with a whole bunch of interlopers and invaders, from the Chinese to the Southern Pacific goons, to their bosses in starched suits coming to our land like they can do whatever they want with it. Pays to have a man of my esteem standing by your side with a pair of wire cutters should the need arise.”

  William Ray considered Bean’s proposal, working his tongue around his mouth from the left to right and sweeping it across the inside of both cheeks, pushing one out and then the other. “On one condition, Judge: any man I arrest stands a fair trial.”

  “Aw, hell, I only sentenced two men in my whole career to han
g.”

  “Were they guilty?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Close enough don’t cut it in my book,” William Ray groused. “I can’t stop you from holding your court in a saloon. But if booze dictates your justice, I’ll burn the place down with you in it.”

  “I’m offering you a helping hand here, Ranger,” the judge said, frustrated by the lack of embrace to his proposal.

  “Which has got a mite too much blood on it for my tastes.”

  Roy Bean made a show of wiping both his hands on a vest missing half its buttons. “That oughtta do the trick. So let’s ride out to that camp and catch us a killer, a demon, or a black guy.”

  “That’s bahk guai.”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  CHINA, 1998

  “You understand there is a stern price you must pay for such grand ambitions.”

  “Wo yuan yi,” Li Zhen said in his native Mandarin, forcing himself to bow slightly. “I do.”

  Zhen stood reverently in the center of the deceptively simple room formed of a bamboo floor and walls covered in rattan and tightly woven straw. The harsh light shining in his eyes nearly blinded him while the three men seated at the table before him remained lost to darkness. Mere shadows wearing expensive dark suits, formless and lacking any texture at all, visible only in the slight motions and mannerisms they allowed themselves. A fourth chair had been placed behind the table but it remained empty.

  “I am willing to offer you anything in my possession,” Zhen said to them, bowing again so they wouldn’t notice him visibly cringe at this necessary show of deference.

  “In your case,” another voice said to him, “anything may not be enough. You are not of the proper social class to pursue such ambitions. You should consider yourself fortunate to even be permitted in this room.”

  “I understand.”

  “No,” snapped the third man hoarsely. “If you understood, you would not have bothered wasting the Triad’s time, er bal wu.”

  “Perhaps it is my own time I am wasting,” Zhen said, hardly bothered by being called a fool.

  He had been directed to this room inside a decrepit building rising from the refuse of what the Chinese government referred to as “inner-city villages.” Slums like this had been settled in crumbling neighborhoods by rural migrants in search of any work the factories and plants nearby had to offer, the truly poor and destitute. Many of the homes and structures had been built illegally, the government turning a blind eye to the challenges posed by evicting and then resettling huge masses of residents. Sometimes it was easier to leave well enough alone.