Strong Cold Dead (14 page)

Paz realized his priest's lips were trembling in anticipation of more oatmeal, and he quickly readied the next spoon, scooping too much up for the old man to manage and needing to shake some of it back into the bowl.

“I know what you'd say, if you could still speak, Padre,” Paz told him, gently dabbing up the stray oatmeal with a napkin. “You'd tell me that was my job, that my lot in his life is to tighten a noose on the necks of all the pissants before they can do the same to the world. Problem is, there's just too many of them for me, my Texas Ranger, and her outlaw to contend with now.”

Paz's words froze there. He was thinking of the apartment he'd raided this morning and the kid who lived there. The spoon froze, too, suspended in the air halfway between Paz and his priest, the excess oatmeal concoction dribbling down to the bedsheet. Paz thought of the cold feeling that had enveloped him as soon as he crashed through the apartment door, a vague sense of discomfort, coupled with a certainty that something very, very bad was coming—a product of this kid now gone missing. The ratty apartment stank of body odor and unwashed clothes. It was infested with ants, thanks to the stray candy wrappers strewn about. But it was the residue of something else that plagued Paz the most.

The kid's thoughts.

They seemed to hang in the air, and now they clung to Paz's consciousness the way the stench had clung to his clothes.

“Yup, there's more pissants than ever looking to do damage. And you know what, Padre?” Paz resumed, starting the spoon toward his priest's waiting mouth again. “I've got this feeling the worst is yet come.”

 

27

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“Love the new digs, Ranger,” Jones greeted her, the next morning, when Caitlin reached the back corner of the open first-floor office space of Texas Ranger Company F headquarters. His shiny new cowboy boots were propped up on the still drying varnish coating her desk.

“Glad you approve,” she said, twisting the back of his chair around so his feet flopped back to the floor. “Nice boots, by the way.”

“Had some business up in Austin, so I picked them up at Allen's, just like you recommended.”

“I recommended you buy them a size too small.”

“The sales clerk frowned on the notion. He said it would make my feet go numb. Cause a fall maybe.”

“A girl can hope.”

“Homeland Security is no longer investigating your use of an alleged weapon of mass destruction.”

“Should I say thank you?”

“Not to the people whose houses still smell like roadkill. Next time you unleash a stink bomb, you may want to advise people to close their windows.”

“I'll keep that in mind. And I appreciate you making this go away.”

“Speaking of which…”

Jones popped up out of his chair, reaching for something inside his jacket. He looked to be in better shape than the last time Caitlin had seen him. She couldn't say exactly what Jones did with Homeland Security, especially these days, and she doubted that anybody else could, either. He operated in the muck, among the dregs of society plotting to harm the country from the inside. Caitlin doubted he'd ever written a report or detailed the specifics of his operations in any way. He lived in the dark, calling on the likes of Guillermo Paz and the colonel's henchmen to deal with matters, always out of view of the light. When those matters brought him to Texas, which seemed to be every other day, Jones would seek out Caitlin the way he might a former classmate.

She'd first met him when his name was still “Smith” and he was attached to the American embassy in Bahrain. Enough of a relationship had formed for the two of them to remain in contact and to have actually worked together on several more occasions. Sometimes Jones surprised her, but mostly he could be relied upon to live down to Caitlin's expectations.

This morning, the thin light kept Jones's face cloaked in the shadows, where he was most comfortable. Caitlin tried to remember the color of his eyes but couldn't, as if he'd been trained to never look at anyone long enough for anything to register. He was wearing a sport jacket over a button-down shirt, and pressed trousers, making him seem like a high school teacher, save for the tightly cropped military-style haircut.

Jones finally started to ease his hand from his pocket, withdrawing a heavy, shiny piece of paper folded in two. “You're about to thank me, Ranger,” he said.

“For what?”

“Getting you out from behind this desk.”

Caitlin glanced at the chair he'd just vacated. “Your message last night said you had something important to show me,” she said.

“Actually,” Jones corrected, “I said ‘vital.' And the voice mail I left said we needed to play a little show-and-tell. I show and you tell, starting with this.”

Jones unfolded the picture he was holding and held it so Caitlin could see a tall, gangly young man with a bad case of acne.

“Holy shit,” Caitlin said, not believing her eyes.

“Recognize him, I see.”

“I spotted him yesterday bird-dogging a protest outside the Comanche Indian reservation near Austin.”

Jones shook his head, as if he were having trouble processing what Caitlin had just said. “What time?”

“Early afternoon. You need me to be more specific?”

Jones shook his head again. “I don't believe it.”

“What?”

“How you find shit to step in, no matter how well the pile is hidden.”

“Did I miss something here?”

“No, I did.” Jones looked down at the picture. “On a major terrorist suspect yesterday, because he happened to be in the same place as you. Then again, nothing just
happens
when it comes to Caitlin Strong, does it? You are a genuine force of nature, Ranger.”

“Maybe we should start this conversation again.”

“So you really don't recognize this kid?”

“Should I?”

Jones held the picture up again. “We lifted this picture off social media.” Then he reached into his pocket and came out with a second photo, which he slowly unfolded. “This is a copy of one we found framed atop a bureau in the suspect's apartment. Let's see if it jogs your memory.”

“Oh, man,” Caitlin said, looking at it.

 

28

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

Caitlin was still shaking her head, moments later, unable to lift her eyes from the shot from ten years ago, of her standing next to a younger version of the kid she'd spotted outside the Comanche reservation yesterday. They had their arms around each other's shoulders.

“Well, I guess that explains why he looked familiar to me,” she told Jones, finally raising her eyes.

“Remember his name?”

“Daniel Cross, I believe.”

Jones nodded. “Currently age twenty-four, lifelong resident of Austin, and recent frequenter of ISIS-related social media. In fact, you could call him a genuine fanboy, enough of one to hit our radar, with all the pinging he'd been doing.”

“You saying he's a convert?”

“Sure. Straight to the terrorism watch list. The bureau's been keeping tabs on a couple of hardcore ISIS homegrown operatives with ties right up to the organization's top. They're the ones who pinged Daniel Cross back.”

“Why?”

“Apparently, the kid's a frigging genius, with degrees in molecular and chemical engineering. Most of the time, losers like him who hate the world can't even steady an assault rifle long enough to do any real damage. But what put Daniel Cross on our radar was his brains, not his bullets. And in case you didn't get the message, we've got ISIS seriously on the run. They're desperate, and that's given their midlevel operatives operational freedom to ditch the purity test. Whatever Cross put on the table before the two on the FBI's radar was obviously more than enough to compensate for the fact that he doesn't pray five times a day.” Jones stopped there, leaning slightly forward. “That makes this a good time for you to tell me the basis of your association with him.”

“I don't think you really want to hear it.”

“Try me.”

“Cross got himself into a scrape, just before I left the Rangers for a time.”

“Yeah, I heard the death rate in Texas dropped precipitously those couple of years.”

“Anyway, Jones, I tried to help the kid.”

“What kind of scrape was it, exactly?”

Caitlin swallowed hard. “He was planning to blow up his high school.” She paused, then continued, “I don't think I've ever seen a worse case of bullying.”

“So the kid tries to blow up his school and you give him a shoulder to cry on?”

“It never got to the ‘trying' stage, Jones. Cross left a page of some manifesto he was writing in a lavatory stall. Somebody found it and Rangers got the call.”

Jones took the picture back from her, wanting to crunch it into a ball so much his hand was shaking. “A kid does something like that today, it's him who gets flushed down the toilet.”

“I notice you haven't said anything about the bullies who pushed him to the edge.”

“Maybe because they're not the ones who reached out to ISIS, Ranger. And I can't wait to shove my fist down the throat of whoever left out of Daniel Cross's file the fact that he was a bomber.”

“He was a juvenile at the time, and last time I checked, nobody's a bomber until they actually blow something up.”

“A mere formality, in my line of work.”

“In mine, we actually try to help people from time to time, Jones.”

“Whether they deserve it or not.” Jones's face had reddened, his cheeks seeming to puff with air as he shook his head. “So I guess your experiment in mentoring failed.”

“I lost touch with Daniel Cross after my sabbatical from the Rangers.”

“So we'll have you to blame if whatever this kid is up to comes to pass. Did you know Cross's real mother was a prostitute who tried to abort him with a coat hanger, after one of her johns raped her?”

“I knew she was a prostitute.”

“The kid was born a stain on the entire human race. Fits the classic loser profile, ends up courting favor with anybody who'll give him the time of day on social media.”

“But a group like ISIS wouldn't give him the time of day unless he had something to give them, Jones.”

“Hence the raid on his apartment yesterday, Ranger. I've got a team working on the contents of his computer as we speak, but so far they've found squat. Don't ask me to explain the details, but the gist of it is he's probably carrying around whatever got ISIS's attention on a thumb drive in his pocket.”

“Meaning you've got no idea what.”

Jones let the shot picturing Daniel Cross and Caitlin together dangle between them. “I might, if we can figure out what the kid was doing at that Indian reservation.”

“So you're drawing a link between ISIS and the Comanche?”

“I'm drawing a link
from
Daniel Cross and the Comanche. You're a jump ahead of me, and I'll leave it to you to fill in the gaps, now that you're personally involved and officially off desk duty.”

“I haven't seen the kid in over ten years, Jones.”

“And I've been avoiding tall buildings ever since nine eleven. So what's your point?”

Caitlin's phone rang,
CORT WESLEY
lighting up the caller ID, as if his psychic radar was switched on. “You're not going to believe this, Cort Wesley,” she greeted him.

“That's my line. I'm back at the reservation. You better get up here.”

“More trouble?”

“You might say that. That construction work foreman I beat up yesterday was found murdered, Ranger, and I think I'm about to be arrested.”

 

29

B
ALCONES
C
ANYONLANDS,
T
EXAS

“We didn't call for the Rangers,” Travis County sheriff Tom Winkmeister told Caitlin, after she slipped inside the cordoned-off crime scene.

“I'm here, all the same,” she said, not even breaking stride.

She'd glimpsed the protesters, milling about before the entrance to the reservation instead of arranged in a neat line, and spotted Dylan and Ela among them, but she didn't stop to greet either.

“Tell you what,” Winkmeister said, holding his gaze on Cort Wesley, who was standing on the other side of the yellow crime scene tape, “if you can view the remains without losing your breakfast, I'll listen to what you've got to say. But he stays right where he is, right where I can see him,” he continued, pointing toward Cort Wesley. “On account of the fact that I expect he'll be in custody before the day is out.”

“Find anything here to support that theory yet?”

“You mean besides the fact that he busted the victim up yesterday?”

“And that would be thanks to the victim inciting his workers to break your police line and attack those Comanche protesting peacefully, right?”

“You implying something, Ranger?”

“No, Sheriff, just stating a fact. I might even go as far as to say that Cort Wesley Masters saved you a heap of trouble by preventing an all-out riot.”

The sheriff puckered his cheeks and let the air out of them through his mouth like a balloon deflating. “Maybe a little dustup would've made those protesters see the error of their ways.”

“I was referring to one of them being Cort Wesley's oldest son. If anything had happened to him, the wrath of God would be nothing compared to what you'd be facing. Now, about that body…”

*   *   *

The remains were so mangled that they best resembled a human form after being dumped in a blender. Caitlin could tell from the size of the twisted limbs that the victim was big, and she thought she spotted a beard on the parts of his face left recognizable, trying to match that up to the foreman of the construction crew she'd glimpsed yesterday. He lay with his limbs askew, one arm detached and the other hanging by sinew, his mouth hung obscenely open as if his lower jaw had been broken away, the bone separated from the rest of his skull.