Strong Light of Day (17 page)

Tepper stuck a Marlboro into his mouth and struck a match against his boot heel. Eyeing Caitlin, he repeated the process when no flame sparked.

“What the…”

“Looks like somebody cut the match head, Captain.”

Tepper rolled the match before his squinted eyes to confirm precisely that, then tossed the match aside. “More great investigative work on your part, Ranger. I imagine that same somebody cut off
all
the match heads.”

“That would be my assumption, too.”

They both watched Cort Wesley jogging up from where he'd parked his truck, beyond the blockade formed by police and sheriff's department vehicles. He was breathing heavily by the time he got there, his face red in the cheeks and his brow creased from forgetting his sunglasses.

“Good thing the two of you aren't up for parents of the year,” Tepper groused, holding the unlit cigarette in his hand right now.

“Dylan came home,” Caitlin explained, reading the intent of his words. “He's watching Luke.”

“Alone?”

“What's that mean?”

“You call in anybody else; your own personal Frankenstein maybe?”

Caitlin looked toward Cort Wesley, then back at Tepper. “Something's going on here. You know that as well as I do.”

“That doesn't answer my question and, truth be told, I don't care. Guess you gotta be a hurricane to know which way the wind is blowing.”

“Anything worth snatching thirty-plus kids over is enough to tear the roof off buildings, D.W. You want to stand there and tell me whoever missed Luke and his friend won't bother trying again, go ahead. I'm just not willing to take that chance.”

“Nice to have Monsters Are Us on speed dial, I suppose,” Tepper scowled. He was about to say more when a man outfitted in black SWAT garb and body armor waved him over. “Dallas SWAT is handling the takedown. Last I heard, their thermal imaging hadn't picked up any movement inside the office in question at all.”

“But security cameras didn't show anybody leaving.”

“That's why I love technology,” Tepper said, starting away. “Maybe we were better off just kicking in doors and letting the chips fall where they may.”

Caitlin watched the Dallas SWAT team gathering outside their RV, all with their chests expanded by more than just the flak jackets, and couldn't help thinking of Waco, when the FBI instead of the Rangers had stepped in to deal with David Koresh.

“So long as it's us doing the kicking, Captain.”

“Not today,” he told her, scowling again.

 

35

E
ULESS,
T
EXAS

“You still haven't told me what you and Luke talked about last night,” Cort Wesley said, while they both watched the SWAT team circling into position before the building.

“I told you, he was asleep.”

“Which tells me it's something he didn't want me to hear. Or maybe you didn't. Should I take a guess?”

“Why don't you just talk to him yourself, Cort Wesley.”

“Because he doesn't talk to me about stuff like this.”

“Stuff like
what?
”

“Anything that bothers him. He saves that for you.”

“Jealous?”

“Not so long as you keep me informed, which you're not doing right now.”

Caitlin watched Captain Tepper remain at the forward command post while the Dallas SWAT continued their approach. The Fountain View building was located up on a slight hill from their position, beyond an overpass at its back side, in a tree grove out of sight from all the windows facing this direction. By now Dallas PD would've quietly and calmly evacuated the remainder of the building, removing bystanders through exits similarly with no view from the third-floor office suite occupied by a company called St. Petersburg Partners.

Caitlin hadn't recognized any of the names associated with it, and hated being out here playing spectator while the Dallas SWAT team handled the takedown. And there was something else nagging at her, as well, something Captain Tepper had just said.

Last I heard, their thermal imaging hadn't picked up any movement inside the office in question at all.

Security cameras had picked up four men entering the office late the previous night.

But not leaving.

Was there some secret exit? Maybe just a malfunction in the camera system or the thermal imaging scanners?

Something felt wrong here; something
was
wrong here. Caitlin could feel it as clearly as the warming breeze sifting through the trees and whipping ground debris through the air.

“You haven't heard a word I've said,” said Cort Wesley, his voice finally registering in her consciousness.

“No, sorry. I was…”

“Yeah, you had that look.”

“What's that mean?” she asked, looking at him now.

“Couldn't tell you. It's what Dylan always says to me. ‘You've got that look, Dad.' Usually as he's rolling his eyes.”

“He's a good kid, Cort Wesley,” Caitlin said, figuring Dallas SWAT must be in position to breach the building by this point, just moments from battering their way into the office of St. Petersburg Partners. “With a good heart,” she added.

“Wonder how he and Paz are getting along.”

“Just fine would be my guess.”

Caitlin turned away again, half expecting to hear the distant clacking din of gunfire. But none came. Nothing came at all, until she spotted D. W. Tepper signaling from the forward command post, waving for her and Cort Wesley to come up.

 

36

E
ULESS,
T
EXAS

Caitlin smelled the blood, first, its coppery stench thick in the office building's third-floor hallway as Tepper led her and Cort Wesley through the collection of milling police officers. The overhead lighting was off and the air felt clammy, as if somebody had shut the power immediately preceding the breach and had neglected to switch it back on.

She spotted SWAT officers milling about, their rifles slung across their chests and expressions mixed between disappointment and befuddlement. The kind of look displayed by kids who don't find what they were hoping for inside their presents on Christmas morning.

Inside the office suite belonging to St. Petersburg Partners, Caitlin saw why.

The corpses of four men sat on a combination of chairs and a matching couch in the reception area. They all wore dark suits and might have been mistaken for simply waiting to be summoned, if not for the neat, dark holes dripping with dried blood in the center of each of their foreheads. Three looked to have been shot in the chest as well, and one, who likely had tried to run, in the back, dead center between the shoulder blades.

“Jesus H. Christ,” she heard Tepper mutter.

She looked his way and saw him scratching at his scalp through his thin hair with his free hand, Stetson clutched against his hip in the other. Caitlin took hers off too, continuing to process the scene, so many of the questions she'd posed outside to herself now answered.

The thermal scan showed no one moving because the four men security cameras showed entering the building late last night were dead.

“Security cameras didn't show them coming out,” Tepper said, having moved alongside her, “and also didn't show anyone else coming in or out. You mind telling me how anybody other than the Invisible Man could have pulled this off, with that in mind?”

Caitlin didn't have an answer for that yet. “Dallas PD do a thorough search of the premises?”

“In the process now. Every nook and cranny, Ranger.”

“Shit.”

“That was my thinking, too.”

“What about IDs on the victims?”

“I can help you there,” Cort Wesley said, having advanced ahead of them to get a closer look at the bodies.

“How's that, Mr. Masters?” raised Captain Tepper.

But Cort Wesley aimed his response toward Caitlin. “The older one, sitting on the chair? His name is Alexi Gribanov. He's the Russian I bugged yesterday.”

 

37

E
ULESS,
T
EXAS

Caitlin had trouble for a long moment processing what Cort Wesley had just said, like a desktop computer exceeding its RAM. She heard his words clearly enough but they didn't register, at least not right away.

“You're sure?”

Cort Wesley had fixed his gaze again on Gribanov, after briefly studying two of the other corpses, which he recognized as the men he'd left in broken heaps outside the Pleasure Dome strip club. “You bet.”

“That mean anything to you, Captain?” Caitlin asked, turning toward Tepper, who looked as if he was someplace else altogether. “Captain?”

“Yeah,” he said, without quite looking at her. “It means plenty.”

“You intend on going on?”

“Not here and now I don't. Topic for another time and place, Ranger. Right now I want to hear more about what Mr. Masters has to say on the subject of the victims.”

“I put two of the other three down yesterday.”

“Say that again, please.”

“He was working something with Jones, Captain,” Caitlin interjected, before Cort Wesley had the chance.

“There's maybe a quarter-million people with that name scattered across this state,” Tepper said, holding an unlit Marlboro between cigarette-stained fingers. “And I'm hoping this particular Jones is one of them, but I got a feeling it's not.”

“And you'd be right.”

“Care to elaborate, Mr. Masters?” Tepper said, turning back to Cort Wesley.

“He wanted an old-fashioned tin ear bug planted in Gribanov's office. That's all I know.”

“So Jones remains a man of few words, and the ones he gets out are still laced with shit. That's what you're saying.”

“I suppose I am, Captain.”

“How do you read this, Ranger?” Tepper asked Caitlin, who'd begun moving between the corpses, as if she were measuring off distances, something like that.

“Their guns are still in their holsters, shirts tucked neatly down their slacks, which tells me they never even had time to go for them.”

“You figure they were outnumbered? Sat here and executed?”

“No, sir. I believe they were posed, the killer's idea of a sick joke.”

“Killer
singular?
”

“The shots are nearly identical and so are the holes. Twenty-two-caliber hollow points is what the Dallas M.E. is going to pull out of them. I'd bet next month's salary that they came from the same gun.”

“You don't make enough for it to matter, Ranger, but I hope you're not suggesting this was the work of a single gunman.”

Caitlin regarded the wound in Gribanov's forehead more closely. “There's something else: a downward angle to this entry wound. Cort Wesley, how tall you figure Gribanov was, standing?”

“Half-foot shorter than me. Say five-eight.”

Tepper started to raise the Marlboro toward his mouth, then stopped. “So what you're telling me somebody bigger than six feet tall shot him.”

“Plenty bigger. Six inches at least.”

“Sounds like your personal Frankenstein monster.”

“Posing his victims isn't Colonel Paz's style, Captain.”

“No, he prefers to just leave them littering the streets wherever he goes, like some human video game.”

“He enjoys it,” Cort Wesley said suddenly, looking at neither of them.

“What was that, Mr. Masters?”

“The killer enjoys his work, revels in it even,” he answered, still moving his eyes among the victims. “That's what this scene is all about.”

“This before or after he made himself invisible, since we got nothing on the security tapes showing anybody else coming in or out?”

“I think this is some kind of message,” Cort Wesley said, as if Tepper had made no response at all. “The man's a pro.”

“You mean like a hit man, Mr. Masters?”

“No, I mean a pro.”

“You keep using the singular.”

“Because one man did this. Killed them all and then took the time to arrange their bodies this way.”

“And why's that?” Tepper asked, not sounding convinced.

“Because he wanted us to know he's here, that he can do anything he wants and we won't be able to stop him. That he doesn't give a shit.”

Tepper felt about his pockets for a stray match but came up empty. “So, Ranger,” he said, looking toward Caitlin again, “King Kong's already settled down here, and now, according to Mr. Masters here, Godzilla has moved into Texas to join him. This whole state is turning into a goddamn horror movie.”

“There's more,” Cort Wesley said. “Russian special forces are called Spetsnaz. I've fought both with and against them, back around the time of the first Gulf War. Saw this kind of thing on both sides, a message basically saying, ‘Fuck with us at your own peril.'”

“Wait a minute; you're saying another
Russian
did this?”

“Looks like their handiwork, that's all I'm saying. Russian version of psychological warfare.”

“Last time I checked, we weren't at war against Russia.”

“Maybe we should check again, Captain,” advanced Caitlin. “Cort Wesley already said our old friend Jones was trying to dime these guys for something. He give you any notion as to what?”

“Not a hint or a clue,” Cort Wesley told them both.

Captain Tepper drew closer to the two men Cort Wesley had dropped outside the Pleasure Dome. “And the bruises a couple are wearing on their faces, one of whom's got his leg all wrapped up at the knee—they look that way before you met, Mr. Masters?”

“I didn't bother checking before I kicked the shit out of them.”

Tepper just shook his head. “Anybody got a lighter?” he called out, flashing his Marlboro.