Strong Cold Dead (16 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” the presiding judge continued, “in the first count of the indictment, People of Lynchville, North Carolina, versus Rawls Energy, Petroleum, and Chemical, or REPC, also known as REPCO, how say you?”

“We find the defendant, Cray Rawls, not guilty.”

Rawls could hear the murmurs of surprise spreading through the jam-packed courtroom, continuing until the judge rapped his gavel.

“In the second count of the indictment…”

Rawls listened intently, but his mind drifted elsewhere. He hadn't been overly concerned about the verdict because the state clearly hadn't met its burden in trying to prove his company was responsible for poisoning the tainted drinking wells. Under his direction, his legal team had opted for a risky strategy of conceding REPCO's coal ash storage ponds had indeed leaked nearly forty thousand tons of toxic ash into a major river basin. Coal ash, containing such toxins as arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium, was what was left over when coal was burned to generate electricity.

Even the company's concession that this was among the worst such spills in history still left the burden on the state to prove REPCO had poisoned the class action complainants' well water. Experts called by both sides proved to be a study in contradiction and confusion. Then, Rawls had surprised opposing counsel again by not taking the stand in his own defense. They had elected to name him as a defendant in the suit, so he could face jail time even as his company faced ruin. In doing so, though, they had removed the option of calling him to the stand, relying on an inevitable cross-examination that had proven not so inevitable at all.

“We find the defendant not guilty.”

The media was as disappointed by the unexpected turn as the prosecution. Rawls had denied them the show they were anticipating. One national outlet had nicknamed him the Dark Prince, poking fun at his dark hair and Mediterranean features, marred by scars and pits—the pits had been left by acne, the scars from when a well cap blew on an offshore rig and sent steel bits into his face. When the first wells he invested in struck big, he let his investment ride, like a bettor on a hot streak, building the stake for founding his own company, which would ultimately grow into REPCO.

“… not guilty.”

The media never focused on that, choosing instead to belabor the various rumors and tall tales that had accompanied Cray Rawls on his climb up the corporate ladder. How he had punched out rivals who underbid him, sabotaged the rigs of competitors who encroached on his perceived territory, and burned down an East Hampton country club that had denied him admission. To them, he was no more than Texas trash, even though that experience was mired in a long-forgotten stage of his life.

“In the eleventh count of the indictment…”

Cray Rawls wasn't going to let rumors or lawsuits spoil his day, especially not while he was on the verge of something that would catapult him to the forefront of American business moguls. He would be a billionaire many times over, thanks to the greatest scientific discovery ever known to man. He would buy the goddamn East Hampton country club that had denied him admission and make those behind his ridicule and embarrassment kiss his feet if they wanted to stay members.

Literally.

“… not guilty.”

“… not guilty.”

“… not guilty.”

Once he'd been acquitted on the nineteenth and final charge, the jury was dismissed with the thanks of the court and the bailiff offered to have Rawls spirited out of the courthouse via a rear entrance. Rawls declined, thirsting for the whir and click of the cameras, the microphones shoved in his face, and the media outlets begging for interviews.

True to form, his journey down the front steps of the Wake County courthouse was a portrait in sticking it in the face of both overzealous prosecutors and their parade of holier-than-thou “harmed” who had put all their problems at REPCO's doorstep. He'd sent them bottled water by the truckload and had knocked on hundreds of doors himself to check on their well-being. And in return he got the blame for everything from autism to Down syndrome to cancer, even if such maladies had struck before any of REPCO's coal ash had allegedly polluted the groundwater. One woman went so far as to blame him for her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, breaking down on the stand when his lawyers reminded her, under cross-examination, that exposure to coal ash doesn't cause that.

Having entertained the media's questions just long enough to stick it in her face and the faces of all the others, Rawls climbed into the back of the limousine, and then noticed the man already seated there.

“What are you doing here, Sam Bob?” he asked the minerals broker from Houston.

“Your driver thought it best I wait in the car.”

“I'm not talking about the car. I'm talking about here in North Carolina.”

Sam Bob Jackson swallowed hard, his heavy breathing pushing his stomach in and out over his belt as if there was something trying to free itself from inside. “We've got a problem, Cray. A big one.”

 

33

A
USTIN,
T
EXAS

Daniel Cross stood next to Razin Saflin as Ghazi Zurif knocked on the back door of Hoover's Cooking.

“Health inspectors,” Zurif said, showing his fake identification to the man who answered.

“Why didn't you use the front door?” the man wondered, adjusting his apron as Cross and Saflin flashed their fake IDs, too.

“It's procedure with surprise inspections,” Saflin explained.

“Since we don't want to disturb your customers,” Zurif added. “Cause as little disruption as possible.”

And there are security cameras in the front of the restaurant, but not here in the back,
Daniel Cross thought.

He returned the ID wallet to his jacket, hand closing around the capped syringe filled with ten milliliters of clear liquid in his front pants pocket. Ten milliliters seemed a safe estimate; a bit on the high side, in all probability, but he'd opted for it to make sure the demonstration his ISIS handlers had requested achieved its desired results, and then some. Truth was, everything up until today had been theoretical. Even Cross wasn't sure exactly what to expect, once things got rolling—how many would die, or how fast. He hadn't conducted any tests on humans, for obvious reasons. So, little did the diners about to lunch at Hoover's Cooking realize that they were about to become part of the living fabric of history.

Well, the
dying
fabric,
Cross thought, trying not to smile.

“We'd like to start with the kitchen, if you don't mind,” he heard Zurif say to the man in the apron.

 

P
ART
F
OUR

The Rangers have done more to suppress lawlessness, to capture criminals, and to prevent Mexican and Indian raids on the frontier, than any other agency employed by either the State or national government.

—Alex Sweet,
Texas Siftings
magazine, 1882

 

34

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“So what is it you're saying, exactly?” Caitlin asked Doc Whatley, Bexar County medical examiner, from the side of the sink in his lab.

Whatley finished washing his hands for the second time and went to work on the third.

“That I'm tired of the days ending too late or starting too early on account of you,” he groused.

“I didn't kill that man, never mind tear him apart, Doc.”

“No, Ranger, you didn't.” Whatley shook his hands free of water, then pulled a long stream of paper towels from the dispenser over the sink. He dried his hands yet again and then rolled the sleeves of his lab coat back down. “And if you came here this afternoon expecting me to tell you what did, I'm afraid you wasted the drive.”

Frank Dean Whatley had been the Bexar County medical examiner since Caitlin was in diapers. He'd grown a belly in recent years, which hung out over his thin belt, seeming to force his spine to angle inward at the torso. Whatley's teenage son had been killed by Latino gangbangers when Caitlin was a mere kid herself. Ever since, he'd harbored a virulent hatred for that particular race, from the bag boys at the local H-E-B supermarket to the politicians who professed to be peacemakers. With his wife lost, first in life and then in death, to alcoholism, he'd probably stayed in the job too long. But he had nothing to go home to, no real life outside the office, and he remained exceptionally good at his job.

The body currently covered up on one of the room's steel slabs represented the remains of the victim found just outside the Comanche reservation earlier that day. Whatley had certainly completed at least his preliminary examination quicker than she ever expected, perhaps coaxed by this being a Homeland Security matter, thanks to Jones.

“If you can't tell me what
did
kill the man, Doc,” Caitlin ventured, “maybe you can tell me what didn't.”

“You notice anything about the wounds?” Whatley asked her.

“I couldn't tell much about them through all the blood and mess.”

“Let's take a walk,” he said, starting for the door.

*   *   *

In his office, Whatley switched on his computer and positioned the screen so that Caitlin could follow along without standing over his shoulder. He inserted the drive containing the pictures he'd shot of the victim, enlarging one that showed a deep wound that had shredded skin and flesh all the way to the bone.

“Tell me what you see, Ranger.”

“Three individual tears, one starting above the other two.”

“If this were a bear, there'd be five. If a mountain lion had done this, there'd be four. And in both cases the claw cuts would be symmetrical—more shallow for the bear, and teeth marks clearly evident for the mountain lion.”

“What about this case?”

Whatley hesitated, looking as if he had no intention of responding at all. “If I didn't know better,” he said finally, “I'd say you were looking at wounds that could only have been made by talons, as opposed to claws. And the depth and width of the wounds are indeed consistent with some kind of raptor.”

“As in, what, a bird of prey?”

“If I didn't know better, Ranger, yes.”

“But you do know better, right, Doc?”

Whatley turned the monitor more her way. “What I know is that whatever did this would need to be maybe ten to fifteen times the size of the talons of a hawk or osprey. The curvature of the wounds tells me that whatever ripped the victim apart did so while standing on two feet before him.”

“So what am I looking for, Doc?”

Whatley's expression crinkled, like someone had balled up his skin. “Something I sure as hell can't identify. Didn't your great-grandfather come up against something like this in his time?”

“It was my great-great-grandfather. And what he went up against turned out to be nothing like this.”

 

35

A
USTIN,
T
EXAS; 1874

Jimmy Miller stumbled his way down the street from the saloon, toward the hotel where he shared a room with three men who smelled even worse than he did when they took off their boots. They'd made him drink more than his share of whiskey and couldn't stop laughing when he puked his guts up all over the woman who was supposed to be his first.

He was halfway down the dark street before he realized he had no idea where the hotel actually was, even as his stomach was turning again. He leaned over just as a flood of vomit poured up his throat, splattering his boots and leaving his mouth tasting like cow shit. That's when he saw the match flare on the plank walkway across the street, a cigar coming to life.

“I got me a gun,” Jimmy managed, fumbling for his Colt. “Don't you move!”

“I'm not going anywhere, son,” Steeldust Jack Strong said from the shadows, puffing away.

“I know who you are,” Jimmy said, recognizing the voice, which for some reason made him think of a hot blacksmith's anvil. He managed to get his gun out, but the world before him was teetering too much to hold it steady. “I'll shoot you dead I will, Ranger.”

“Good shot, are you?”

“Damn good. You don't want to test me.”

“I'm sure I don't, least not sober. Ever kill anybody, son?”

The gun felt like a lead weight in Jimmy's hand. “What if I have?”

“It's a lot harder under these conditions is all I'm saying. The night, the rain and all.”

Jimmy looked around him. “It ain't raining.”

“And in the time it took you to look, I got my own gun out. Know the difference between us, son?”

“You killed more men than me?”

“I'm sober and you're drunk. Not equal ground for a gunfight; trust me on that.”

“I ain't scared of you none!”

“It's not the man you need to be scared of, son, it's his gun.” Steeldust Jack stepped down off the plank walkway and tossed his cigar aside. “You got two choices, son: either you take your best shot here and now, or you tell me what I want to know.”

Jimmy Miller lowered his Colt just a little. “What is it you want to know?”

“Who you and those other boys are working for. Who sent you onto that Indian land.”

The Colt started back up. “Nobody. We was looking for who killed our friend is all.”

“Man who got himself mangled, you mean. What was his name again?”

Jimmy searched his drunken mind for the answer. “Can't say.”

“Must've been a really good friend, then.”

Only then did the kid realize Steeldust Jack had drawn closer to him, close enough to make out his features through the flickering firelight behind the nearest windows.

“Think I'm close enough for you to shoot now, son? Here's your choices: either start talking or start shooting. There isn't a third, and only the first leaves you alive. Second means I'll be the last thing you'll ever see.”