Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel Read online

  “I’ll need the address where this party took place.”

  “You told the Houston cops it was their case.”

  “I did, didn’t I? Their case for sure, but my daughter,” Caitlin’s father added, looking across the truck’s cab at her. “Where’d it happen?” he asked, squeezing the steering wheel tighter.

  Beads of sweat dappled his brow, and his cheeks were flushed red with a suppressed, simmering rage he fought hard to keep from spilling over.

  Caitlin’s throat felt like she’d swallowed a wad of cotton, no words making it through.

  “You want to talk about this later?” her father asked.

  She finally pushed her voice past the cotton. “No—now, while it’s fresh in my mind.” The clog started to come back and she forced it down, listening to her own voice as if it was someone else talking. “The party was at a condo, a town house, a few blocks from my apartment. A girl lives there I got to know in Forensics class. We had lunch a couple times at Bill’s Café. I don’t even know all the names of her roommates. I remember waking up in one of their bedrooms upstairs. I remember his smell all over me and realized it wasn’t just his smell. Then I blacked out again and next time I woke up I was on my own couch. Took some time to come all the way to, and then I drove myself straight to the hospital.”

  “Okay, so you don’t know Frank’s full name. What about whether he was a student or not?”

  “I don’t remember seeing him around campus.”

  Caitlin thought her father was writing all this down in his mind.

  “But you’d know him, if you saw him again.”

  “For sure. And there’s something else I just remembered: look for a man with scratches down his face, or neck maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I finally came to, I saw there was blood under my fingernails. The doctor at the emergency room took samples,” Caitlin had continued. “But he thought they might not yield much, when it comes to DNA.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know, something about degradation.” Caitlin could tell that upset her father, adding to his fury and frustration. “It was so hard for me to keep from jumping in the shower, I wanted to wash all of him off me so much,” she continued. “I was actually turning on the shower when I changed my mind. Never even took off my clothes before driving to the hospital.”

  “But you brought a change with you, because you knew they’d need the ones you were wearing for evidence,” Jim Strong noted. “Smart.”

  “I was thinking, just not very clearly.”

  “Understandable, under the circumstances.”

  Jim Strong let out a deep, growling breath, while Caitlin held hers briefly.

  “What are you gonna do, Daddy?”

  “Say my prayers that your granddad’s not still alive, or I’d have to cordon off the whole city of Houston.”

  Caitlin swallowed hard. “You know that talk we had about me not being sure about a career in law enforcement, becoming a Ranger, after all?”

  “I do.”

  “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

  8

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “You can tell all that from a preliminary report?” Caitlin asked Doc Whatley, finally finding her voice again.

  “Austin ME’s office are the ones who came up with the match from the database.”

  Caitlin felt the familiar clog return to her throat, pushing her words through it now, as she had done eighteen years ago. “Off the blood that was under my fingernails?”

  Whatley nodded. “Whoever hurt that girl last night was a surefire match for whoever it was that hurt you.”

  Caitlin shifted one way in her chair, then back to the other. “Austin police say anything about how the girl is doing?”

  “I didn’t ask. Sex crimes cops said they’ll be in touch with you to discuss anything you may recall from the crime scene. They believe the assault occurred on the same couch where you found her. They collected the cushions as evidence last night and also found a button that may have come from the assailant’s shirt.”

  “Victim say anything about him to the Austin PD?”

  “Caitlin…”

  “I’m just asking.”

  Whatley gave her a long look before responding. “She said she didn’t remember very much, couldn’t even be sure which of the guys she’d been dancing with it was, if any. Her blood test came back negative, but it’s pretty clear her assailant slipped her some GHB, or something like it.”

  “Figures,” Caitlin said, feeling herself grow stiff and anxious again. “What about the man I shot who was swiping the victim’s wallet and cell phone?”

  “I didn’t ask about him,” Whatley told her, his expression tightening in concern. “You don’t have any ideas about pushing yourself into this case, do you, Ranger?” Whatley asked her, the concern ringing in his voice.

  His phone rang before he could finish his thought. He lifted the receiver, listened more than spoke, and jotted down a few notes before his eyes retrained themselves on Caitlin.

  “Yes, Captain,” he said into the phone. “She’s here right now.… Sure, I’ll tell her. Maybe we can carpool.”

  Whatley hung up the phone, tore the top sheet off his notepad, and lumbered out of his chair.

  “Whatever you were thinking of doing, Ranger, it’ll have to wait.”

  “Where we going, Doc?”

  “What may or may not be a crime scene.”

  Caitlin rose, too. “Usually, Rangers don’t get the call until that’s been confirmed.”

  “Except in this case,” Whatley told her, “the local PD isn’t sure.”

  9

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “God’s supposed to be merciful, but I wouldn’t want to bet the farm on that,” Guillermo Paz said to the man holding the hard cardboard plate out before him in the soup kitchen’s line. “See, He’s got a temper and a mean streak, and a capacity for vengeance like you wouldn’t believe. You see where I’m going with this?”

  At nearly seven feet tall, Paz found himself looking down at the man named Benny whose eyes kept shifting this way and that, unable to focus on anything for very long at all. His hair was long and tangled into oily knots that smelled like rancid, standing water. The man had been banned for a week after starting a fight with those seated around a table in the Catholic Worker House courtyard, because he claimed it was his. Paz had evicted him as peaceably as possible, learning in the days since that Benny was a homeless veteran with a long record of petty theft and assault.

  This was Benny’s first day back, pushing his plate skittishly closer to the ladle with which Paz had scooped up some mashed potatoes.

  “I’m telling you this,” Paz continued, as the line backed up behind Benny, “because I’ve gotten into my own share of scrapes I’ve come to regret later, so many I can’t even count. Call me lost, if you want, call me the cold-blooded killer I’ve been for as long as I can remember. I’m still a killer, but not the cold-blooded kind anymore, since I found God or, at least, have kept looking.”

  Guillermo Paz was no better at dispensing advice here at the Catholic Worker House on Nolan Street than he was at doling out food. He gave out overly large portions, and spent so much time talking with the unfortunate souls who stopped in for lunch pretty much every day that the line, inevitably, snarled.

  But he was just trying to do the right thing here, feed their minds and souls, as well as their bodies. The food for the former being copies of passages from his favorite philosophers he made at Staples to hand to those who came through the line, because he believed they were in need of them. But, to a man and woman, visitors to the single-story, former residential home wanted to enjoy their food, use one of the computers free of charge, shower, do their laundry, or just go someplace where they could be part of a community. They sat at round wooden tables covered in white cloth, squeezed into a pair of adjoining rooms Paz took for the former residence’s living and dining rooms.<
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  Paz tried to get Benny to meet his stare, but failed. “See, the priest I’d been visiting for years at the San Fernando Cathedral lives in a nursing home now, after suffering a stroke. I was the one who found him outside the confessional, blood dribbling out one of his ears and staining his white hair red on that side. I wanted to pray for him while I waited for the paramedics to arrive, but I was too pissed at God for letting this happen.”

  Paz looked down again, saw Benny had moved on without his mashed potatoes, leaving him speaking to another man with one of his eyes narrowed into a slit. “That’s why I’m here,” he continued, anyway. “Because getting angry at God was to disrespect all I’d learned from my priest. I prescribed some penance for myself, figured that would make my priest happy. Give us something to talk about—well, me anyway, since he can’t talk anymore—next time I visit. I miss talking to him, so I’m talking to you instead. Just about the same thing, because my priest always let me ramble on. I think he wanted me to think things out for myself, instead of relying on him to do it for me. I’ve tried auditing college philosophy classes to expand my horizons, visited a psychic to expand my universe, taught English to new immigrants to expand my nature. But you know what?”

  Another figure stood sheepishly in Paz’s massive shadow now.

  “Tennessee Williams wrote that ‘Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.’ In other words, I started figuring I could help folks like you as much with words, as with meals. So I began making my copies over at Staples, figured I’d try my hand at being a spiritual guide and food server at the same time, since I never had any experience with either before. I’m probably too old for the seminary, and they probably have a strict no-gun policy there anyway. But this is the next best thing, even though not many of you take the handouts I leave on the tables. Nobody even noticed I made sure they were printed in both English and Spanish. I like to think I’m all-inclusive, since in my past life the ethnicity of my victims never made any difference at all.”

  Paz figured God’s tolerance for his murderous actions could only get him so far, the fact being that while he’d long ago lost track of the number of people he’d killed, the Almighty certainly hadn’t. But it was one he’d failed to kill that had changed his life forever, back when he was still with the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Service, better known as the Venezuelan secret police. He’d been retained to kill a Texas Ranger, a woman of all things, a fact that bothered Paz not in the least, until their eyes met in the midst of a gunfight, and he saw what had been missing in his own. He’d never returned to Venezuela after that, calling Texas and America home now, thanks to an arrangement with Homeland Security that kept Paz inoculated from prosecution. All he needed to do was the bidding of a shadowy subdivision, under the leadership of an equally shadowy man, chartered to keep America safe from within through any and all means necessary, means that often amounted to Guillermo Paz and the killers in his employ who’d formerly filled his ranks in Venezuela. Most didn’t speak English, and the ones that did didn’t speak much, anyway. They waited for his call, and when it came, they answered.

  Paz was grateful for their presence, as much as anything because it aided his efforts in keeping his Texas Ranger safe. The woman was a walking magnet for trouble. Paz was convinced that the multitude of threats continually plaguing the country owed their presence in Texas directly to her. In the cosmically charged universe, he believed nothing ever happened by chance alone, and Texas had somehow become the epicenter of efforts by an unholy assortment of villains to do America harm. As if the state lay at some metaphysical low point to which everything bad ultimately settled, to be dealt with by the likes of him and his Texas Ranger. Paz even figured the gunfight that had brought them together eight years before had been the work of the universe.

  “Where was I?” Paz asked the shape before him, looking up from his freshly packed ladle of mashed potatoes.

  “I need your help, Colonel,” Cort Wesley Masters told him.

  10

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Cort Wesley sat across from Paz at a table in the courtyard shaded by the thin shadows cast by some saplings. “I don’t think the supervisor likes you, Colonel.”

  Paz shifted uneasily on a chair too small to accommodate his vast bulk. “If I wasn’t a volunteer, she’d fire me. Thinks I talk too much.”

  “You do.”

  “Words are less painful than bullets, and I’ve been too free with dispensing both for too long. So this help you need, does it have something to do with our Ranger, outlaw?”

  “No. My son Dylan.”

  “He’s in trouble,” Paz said.

  “Nothing new. Boy seems to attract it.”

  “Now who does that remind you of?” Paz asked lightly, not really seeking an answer.

  “If it’s not over a girl,” said Cort Wesley, “it’s for standing up for someone else or some cause.”

  “I’m guessing the latter in this case,” Paz said.

  Cort Wesley watched Paz’s eyes gleam in the narrow bend of light, weighing every word as if he were fixing his aim on a target. “He’s taking some time off from college—a semester, something like that. I got him a job working at Miguel Asuna’s body shop. Apparently there’s a gang menacing the local Latino population. In a word, Dylan told them to go fuck themselves.”

  “That’s more than a word, outlaw.”

  “It’s also a problem. Miguel thinks the gang may have Dylan marked. He keeps pushing things, they’re sure to push back.”

  Paz nodded. “You tell the Ranger about this?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “She and I have different approaches to such things.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you, Colonel. And I’m wondering if you or your men could keep eyes on him for a time, until I sort through this and learn a bit more about this gang.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I trust your discretion.”

  “You didn’t always, outlaw,” Paz said, holding his stare now. “Miguel Asuna’s brother, Pablo, was the one whose face I held against a fan belt to get him to tell me where I could find you. He never did, as I recall.”

  Cort Wesley felt himself stiffening. “People change.”

  “I’ve been doing my best.”

  Cort Wesley looked around him, another set of homeless men taking an unshaded table that had just been cleared by a volunteer staff member. “Explains why you’re here.”

  “I miss my priest.”

  “How’s Father Boylston doing?”

  Paz looked surprised. “You know his name?”

  “You told me, Colonel. I remembered.”

  “He’s still breathing. That’s about all I can say. I think he’d be pleased that I’m working here.” Paz rocked forward, his arms so big they almost rubbed up against Cort Wesley’s when he laid them on the table. “I’m happy to help, outlaw.”

  “I’d do it myself, but it would piss Dylan off something crazy, if he found out. You know Asuna’s body shop?”

  “I’ll find it. Handle the bulk of the watching myself, and have my men fill in as needed.”

  “First time I’ve heard you mention that you needed anyone, Colonel.”

  Paz leaned back again. “Only from noon to two. That’s when I work here.”

  11

  ELK GROVE, TEXAS

  Armand Fisker laid the revolver down atop the old-fashioned blotter and moved behind the teacher’s dusty desk, crossing his arms.

  “One way we could do this,” he said, addressing the three big men squeezed into a trio of tiny desks across the front of the classroom, their faces shiny in the glow of the bright overhead lighting, “is to let the three of you assholes go for the pistol and see who gets there first. The other is to grow up, grow some balls, and keep making ourselves a shitload of money.”

  Fisker ran his gaze from one man to another, the three of them leaders, respectively
, of the Bandidos, Cossacks, and Hells Angels biker gangs in Texas. To a man, they were reluctant to look back, their stares ranging from indignant to petulant. But none of them made a move for the gun, which left Fisker shaking his head.

  “You boys talk a hell of a good game when you’re spraying a Waffle House with machine-gun fire,” he continued. “Let loose, have at it, and let the bodies fall where they may. Know what? Let’s try this a different way.”

  And, with that, Fisker retrieved the revolver, popped open the cylinder, and yanked out three of the cartridges. Then he spun the cylinder, so the gang leaders could see the three cartridges still tucked into their slots, before snapping it back into place.

  “Let’s play a little Texas roulette,” he said, grinning at the term he’d just coined.

  Thunder was rumbling over the mesas looking down over Elk Grove, a storm coming that darkened the day to near night, enough for the windows to throw Fisker’s reflection back at him. His hair was jet-black and combed straight back to wipe out any semblance of curls or waves, and better highlight the icy blue eyes that were sharp enough, somebody once mused to him, to cut a man’s throat. His arms bore the tightly banded, sinewy muscles bred by plenty of hard labor, his shoulders naturally broad and chest inflated by the weights he continued to push up, uncompromised by age. The window glass’s distortion made his neck look thin and birdlike, an illusion cast in contradiction to his block-shaped head that featured a ridged jawline and protruding forehead. His jowls looked puffy, and when Fisker smiled, the reflection of his teeth was so gleaming white, he thought maybe it had been a flash of lightning in advance of the storm.

  Fisker rotated the .357 Magnum’s barrel from one man to the next, holding it briefly on each. “Any of you don’t want to play Texas roulette, I understand. Feel free to get up and walk out of here. Just don’t think you can ever come back. Once you’re history, you’re a name in a book and nothing more. Take all that money I’ve made you and go sun your fat ass in some tropical paradise.” Fisker held the gun steady. “So who’s staying and who’s going?”