Strong Light of Day (26 page)

Dane fought to show no reaction, but his lower lip dropped slightly, quivering. “Anything else, Ranger?”

“Another circle on that map I told you about included a site outside of Houston where a bunch of kids went missing two days ago. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, sir?”

Dane took a step forward, close enough for Caitlin to smell the sweat soaking through his clothes and blanching his skin, its odor gone rank now. “So now I'm a kidnapper, as well as an arsonist and murderer?”

He held his ground, glaring at her as if surprised she hadn't backed off or flinched. Instead, Caitlin slid close enough to Dane to feel the heat of his breath as well as what felt like steam rising off him, with the dank stench. She thought she saw something waver in Dane's eyes, as if he was the one flirting with taking a step backwards in retreat.

“I was only wondering if you'd heard about it, sir.”

“Of course I have. The whole state's talking about it. I think it's Muslims. Have you looked into that angle yet?”

“I'm sure the FBI will, sir,” Caitlin said, angling for the glass-door entry/exit to Dane's private gym. She fit her Stetson back in place just short of it and looked back at Dane. “Any idea how missing kids might be connected to a pesticide factory fire and dead livestock?”

“I'll leave the answers to such questions to the professionals, Ranger.”

Caitlin yanked the glass door open; the two plainclothes security men standing there, facing the opposite wall, seemed to barely notice her. “You've got my number, Mr. Dane. If you think of anything, give me a call.”

*   *   *

Two of Dane's security guards joined Caitlin in the elevator and escorted her to the rooftop helipad, where the pilot was waiting patiently for her return. He was already throwing switches and toggles, prepping for takeoff, when she closed the passenger-side door.

“Bit of a bumpy ride back to San Antonio, Ranger,” he told her. “Gonna have to circle round a bit to avoid some sand storms that sprang up.”

“No matter, because we're not going back to San Antonio yet. Got another stop to make first.”

“Where's that?”

“Near Houston. Armand Bayou.”

 

58

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

“Where we headed again, Bubba?”
the ghost of Leroy Epps asked from the passenger seat, as soon as Cort Wesley pulled away from the house.

“To meet up with Jones.”

“Leaving your youngest on his own again despite this peril he may be in.”

“I trust Dylan to protect him, champ.”

“Do you now? I never known you to trust nobody with something of such a magnitude.”

“Dylan gets it.”

“Gets what?”

“You know.”

“Do I? Maybe you need to explain it to me. Maybe you need to explain a whole lot of things to me, starting with where we're headed.”

“I told you, to meet up with Jones.”

“That ain't a place; it's a person.”

“I don't know where we're headed. Just that something big happened connected to what all this is about.”

“And what exactly is all this about, Bubba?”

“Damned if I know.”

Epps leaned back and eased his eyes closed, seeming to enjoy the feeling of the cool morning air blowing against his face through a window Cort Wesley couldn't remember sliding downward.

“You wanna tell me what else is eating at you, Bubba?”

“You weren't around to hear it for yourself last night?”

“Prefer hearing it from you.”

“You gotta take a test to get your driver's license, gotta jump through hoops to cast a vote, and fill out a mess of paperwork to buy a gun from a legit dealer. But the only requirement for being a parent is knowing where to stick your pole.”

“That's what's got your nads all twisted?”

“I'm still trying to process things, champ. If you weren't paying attention, that's not my fault.”

“Why don't you refresh my memory, Bubba?”

*   *   *

“
Agro-
what
?
” Leroy Epps said, when Cort Wesley was finished with his tale.

“That's not what you asked me about originally.”

“Well, I'm asking now.”

“Jones hasn't explained everything to me yet.”

Old Leroy rolled his eyes, the whites still creased by red streaks of veins bulged by his diabetes, which made it look as if the lower lids were drooping.
“The man's oily enough to dress a salad, Bubba.”

“No doubt about that, but he's also our best chance of making some sense out of all this.”

Leroy's gaze wandered toward the empty cup holder.
“Say, you think we could stop and pick up a root beer on the way to wherever you're going?”

“I don't think it works that way, champ.”

“No, it don't, but twist the cap off and the smell will do me just fine. Ease the stress a bit.”

“I didn't think ghosts had to worry about such things anymore.”

“Most don't, Bubba. But most don't have you around them, neither.”

*   *   *

Cort Wesley bought the biggest bottle of Hires Root Beer that would fit in his truck's cup holder, adding a pack of gum to ease his own dry mouth, when he got to the checkout line at the local CVS. The chain had stopped selling cigarettes, but for some reason, in Texas anyway, continued to sell snuff and chewing tobacco.

Just a pinch between your cheek and gum is sure to get you cancer.…

Old Leroy was nowhere to be found when he got back to his truck, so Cort Wesley tucked the root beer into a cup holder to await the ghost's return. His phone rang and he dragged it to his ear; he still hadn't figured out how to use the built-in Bluetooth device.

“Where are you, cowboy?” Jones demanded, not bothering with a greeting.

“Pulling off the airport exit now.”

“Private terminal, don't forget.”

“How's it feel to be back in the government's good graces, Jones?”

“Shitty, to tell you the truth, thanks to where we're going and why.”

“Where would you like to start?”

“With a little field trip I made with the Navy SEALs to the caves of Afghanistan in 2002.”

 

59

A
RMAND
B
AYOU,
T
EXAS

Caitlin approached the team of crime scene techs scouring the area of the Armand Bayou docks, which fronted the Gulf of Mexico. A trio of pontoon boats was currently moored in place, bobbing slightly atop the currents.

“Looks like your hunch was right, Ranger,” said the head of the team, a man named Kilcoyne, who she'd met at a conference once with Doc Whatley. “So far we've got fresh paint scrapings and diesel fuel residue that's an entirely different grade than those pontoons use.”

“What color were those paint scrapings?”

“Black.”

“And the fuel would've been the kind recommended for high-performance engines?”

Kilcoyne took off his Houston Police cap and smoothed his hair back into place. “Looks like I could've just stayed home today.”

“If you don't mind, sir, have your men sweep the woods leading up to the field those kids went missing from. There's a few trails that cut right through them,” Caitlin said, turning to judge what the scene might've looked like to Luke and Zach when they got turned around in the nearby woods. “I think the kidnappers were shining flashlights ahead of them, the lights those boys spotted.”

*   *   *

“I didn't know this case was Ranger jurisdiction,” the young crime scene tech said to Caitlin a few minutes later, as she stood over him, shrouded by sunlight in the field the kids had vanished from.

“FBI's running point now, but we're still following up on a few leads,” she told him, coming just close enough to the truth.

“Wait a minute,” said the kid, who didn't look much older than Dylan, as he stood up slowly. “You're Caitlin Strong, aren't you?”

“Yes, sir, that would be me.”

The kid extended his hand, forgetting it was sheathed in a plastic glove, and then pulling it back. Around him, the entire field had been staked off with yellow crime scene tape strung all the way around it. Uniformed officers were posted at regular intervals to secure the site; one of them had held the tape up so Caitlin could pass under it, as soon as he spotted her Ranger badge.

“Well, I'm not a ‘sir.' Name's Robbie Fontaine.”

“Nice to meet you, Robbie,” Caitlin said, taking his hand anyway.

“Wow, they call you in special, on account of this is such a big case?”

“Nope, just doing my job. Following up a lead, like I told you.”

Robbie's eyes strayed briefly to the SIG Sauer holstered on her hip. “So how can I help you?”

Caitlin had diverted the chopper here, unable to get parts of what Doc Whatley had said about his inspection of Karl Dakota's cattle remains out of her mind.

It's insect dung, better known as frass. What you're looking is consistent with beetle frass, specifically bess beetles. I found it all over the skeletal remains of those cattle, which makes sense, since this kind of beetle uses its dung as a kind of defense mechanism.

“I was curious to hear if there were any new developments.”

“Nothing specific.” The young tech frowned, reluctant to continue. “Anyway, nobody seems to care.”

“About what?”

“That the grass is dying, just like those fields over there,” Robbie said, gesturing toward the interactive farmland Caitlin recalled from her last visit, which looked dried out and bleached.

Caitlin crouched and smoothed her hand around a patch of ground in the quadrant Fontaine was cataloguing and sampling in search of clues. “Looks green to me.”

The kid crouched before her and plucked some blades from the area Caitlin had just smoothed. “See the browning here? Root system has been compromised.”

“That common in these parts?”

“In a drought it would be. But we've had plenty of rain this season. And an external stimulus, like a pesticide or grass killer, would brown the grass from the outside as it kills the root.” Fontaine rotated the blades he was holding to so Caitlin could better view them. “These are dying from the root up. How much you know about grasses, Ranger?”

“Well, Robbie, I know it grows. Beyond that, not very much.”

The kid grinned, swiped a gloved hand across his brow. “Roots fall generally into two categories. The primary roots develop from the embryo during seed germination, while the adventitious roots emerge from nodes of the crown and lateral stems during the growth process. Now, the primary roots are pretty much history after the first season, but the adventitious ones stick around throughout the grass's entire life span.”

“But not these,” Caitlin noted, recalling something else Doc Whatley had said about Karl Dakota's plucked-to-the-bone cattle.

That farmer's herd wasn't wiped out by coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, or the boogeyman, Ranger. It was wiped out by something we can't identify, and what we
can
identify doesn't make any damn sense at all.

And here was something else that might not make any sense.

“No,” Fontaine echoed, “not these. But the adventitious roots didn't die; they're gone. Another week or so,” he continued, brushing off his gloved hands, “and this field'll be nothing but dirt. Just like that land over there,” he added, gesturing toward the farmland that now looked like a desert.

“You got a shovel, Robbie?”

Fontaine produced a small trowel from his lab kit and handed it over.

“I have your permission to do this?” Caitlin asked him.

The young tech shrugged. “Hey, you're a Texas Ranger.”

Caitlin worked the trowel slowly, careful not to disturb the ground any more than she needed to, until it sank into a gap between what appeared to be subterranean layers of the soil itself.

“What the hell…”

“Can you explain this, Robbie?” Caitlin asked him, jogging her phone to its video function.

“I majored in botany in college, Ranger, and I've never seen anything like it.”

Caitlin hit Record, readying her trowel to widen the small trench.

*   *   *

“Hey, Doc, it's your favorite Texas Ranger,” she said, after getting Doc Whatley on the line a few minutes later.

“I'm in the lab, Ranger. You got me at a bad time.”

Caitlin followed the same path out of the field she'd taken in. “You need to have someone check something out at the field where that rancher's cattle got picked to the bone and get word to whoever we use in Zavala County to do the same with the fields where Christoph Russell Ilg's cattle were grazing.”

“Sure, Ranger, and while I'm at it, how about I do your Christmas shopping for you? Anything else?”

“Yes,” Caitlin told Whatley. “Get somewhere to look at a video I'm sending you.”

“Why?”

“Because I think I may know why those kids got snatched from Armand Bayou.”

 

60

S
KIES OVER
T
EXAS

His swagger back, with Homeland Security punching his time card again, Jones laid it out for Cort Wesley on the flight to Kansas State University.

“We had a firm lead on Bin Laden, probably only missed him by a few hours. He left in so much of a rush that he left a whole bunch of papers and documents behind, evidence of whatever they were still cooking up at the time.”

“Which, I'm guessing, brings us to agroterrorism and the reason for
this
field trip, right?”