Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) (20 page)

“At least that would keep me out of trouble. Bet my captain has already considered the possibility.”

Jones looked down at the SIG holstered on Caitlin’s hip, its clasp noticeably unsnapped. “Gunfighter hero or not, even you can’t bring the Old West back. That means going through channels and accepting the chain of command is there for a reason.”

“I don’t answer to you, Jones.”

“I want Sandoval back on the grid, Ranger. I’ll give you the rest of the day.”

“I don’t need it. The answer’s no.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

Captain Tepper stuck his head out the door running his eyes from one to the other. “I just got a noise complaint from the building across the block asking you two to tone it down.”

Caitlin’s phone rang, Cort Wesley’s number lighting up in the Caller ID. “I’m just taking out the trash,” she said with her eyes on Jones. “Can I call you back?”

“Don’t bother,” Cort Wesley said. “You know the Tuscany Centre Office Building?”

“Sure.”

“Then you better get over here fast, to the office of Regent Real Estate Partners, before I shoot somebody.”

46

S
AN
A
NTONIO

Cort Wesley snapped his phone closed, eyeing Dylan and Luke fidgeting in their reception room chairs, unread opened magazines fluttering on their laps with the batteries on their iPhones both drained. The long afternoon had taken its toll, even before the sun began to set outside.

“I told you I should’ve bought that case that’s actually a backup battery,” Dylan groused.

“Put a sock in it, will ya?”

“I’m just saying, that’s all.”

“Not today.”

“Wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t used up my battery finding that farm for you, Dad,” Luke sighed.

“So now it’s my fault.…”

Luke rolled his eyes.

“What?”

The boy blew the wavy hair from his face, just like his brother. When had it gotten so long? “I didn’t say anything.”

“When did you become such a wiseass, son?”

“While you were in that Mexican prison last year.”

That got the receptionist’s attention and Cort Wesley felt his skin grow even damper with sweat in spite of the air-conditioning, as he made his way back to her desk.

“Could you please tell Mr. Tawls I’m a bit rushed for time here?”

The receptionist regarded him with a scowl. “Mr. Tawls is still in a meeting. And I can’t promise you he’ll—”

Cort Wesley backed off, palms raised in conciliatory fashion before him until they dropped to his sides and clenched into fists. “Fine, that’s fine. But you can tell him there’s a Texas Ranger on the way who’s not nearly as patient as I am.”

She nodded dismissively, then turned her gaze on Dylan, who was only a few years younger than she. “Can I ask you a question? Haven’t I seen that boy on television? Doesn’t he play in a rock band or something?”

“Would getting you his autograph get me in to see Regent Tawls any faster?”

*   *   *

The shoe box Luke had found in their murdered aunt’s kitchen drawer was full of old photographs, many with the colors washed out and edges peeling back. The pictures were mostly of sisters Maura and Araceli Torres as babies and toddlers. A few showed them as young girls and some of the shots included the girls’ parents, Carmen and Mateo if Cort Wesley’s memory served him right. The snapshots had been developed back in the seventies, when photo processors still used a date stamp on each shot.

The shots that interested Cort Wesley the most pictured the girls on the migrant farm where Maura may have been born. This judging by the fact that some of the shots of her at six or so months old, dated 1973, were framed against the background of what looked like corn stalks in some and dilapidated shacks typical of migrant housing in others.

Assuming Maura and Araceli’s murders could be traced to the past, the original ties and roots might lie somewhere in this shoe box, starting with this farm and others on which their parents worked. But how to determine the exact locations from pictures as much as forty years old escaped him. There were no distinct clues in the form of a numbered address or convenient shot of the road running outside the property. He figured he could narrow down the list of possible farms to ten thousand maybe—not much of a help.

“I can help,” Cort Wesley heard Luke say.

“Huh?”

“You said something about help.”

“I did?” Cort Wesley said back, looking around to see if Leroy Epps might be somewhere in their midst.

“Uh-huh,” his fourteen-year-old son nodded. “Let me see those pictures, Dad. See, I’ve got an app for that.”

47

S
AN
A
NTONIO

Gazing at Luke now while he waited for Caitlin to arrive, Cort Wesley remembered how the boy had used his iPhone to take pictures of the pictures he then pasted into some Google application. Then he started filling in a bunch of blanks with what Cort Wesley figured must be answers to questions.

They were in the airport waiting for their flight home, the police certain to be scouring Araceli Ramirez’s house and property by now, when an e-mail arrived from Google in Luke’s in-box just before his battery died. Fortunately, he’d had the search request forwarded to Dylan’s phone as well.

“It’s an address near Devine, Dad. Doesn’t look much like a farm, though.”

Luke held the phone up for Cort Wesley to see, but he needn’t have bothered.

“We’ll check it out ourselves when we get home.”

*   *   *

The farm in question turned out to be located in Medina County outside of Devine, little more than a scorched cornfield just off Route 90. Amid the now-dead acreage, Cort Wesley spotted foundations and building slabs that had never been completed, taking strange comfort in the fact that he wasn’t the only one experiencing financial hard times. Besides that, the sole hint the property had any life at all was a
FOR SALE
sign with the phone number of Regent Partners.

“Guess we’re headed back to the city, boys,” Cort Wesley said, flipping open his cell phone to find out where the company was located.

*   *   *

The afternoon sun was clinging to the sky by the time they had pulled into the parking lot near the Stone Oak Parkway just off Loop 1604, where Regent Real Estate Partners occupied half the third floor of the Tuscany Centre. The building had been finished in modern elegance with a circular extended entryway that spiraled up all three floors, having more the look of an antebellum Southern mansion than a Texas office suite. It was located within easy view of both Frost and IBC bank branches, filling Cort Wesley with fresh concern over the disaster of a meeting he’d had with Royce Clavins at Wells Fargo the day before.

He hadn’t called for an appointment because he knew he wouldn’t get one. Cort Wesley was used to having people see him when he wanted them to, letting them or their gatekeepers know there was really no choice to be had.

Amazing what you could accomplish with the right look, as effective a weapon as a bullet.

The difference today was that he had his boys with him and somehow he couldn’t be that person, the one who breathed intimidation and could chew through people like they were gum. But he’d had enough of waiting to see Regent Tawls to forget they were there. Focused on the inner office he intended to storm straight into, he stopped as Caitlin stepped through the entry door and let it close behind her.

“I didn’t miss anything, did I?”

48

J
UÁREZ,
M
EXICO

Locaro hadn’t killed in a very long time, unless his time spent in Cereso Prison was included in the count. It didn’t seem fair to do that, given that with few exceptions he’d had little choice and had extracted no pleasure at all from the process. And if he hadn’t enjoyed it, how could it count?

Part of the thrill of killing came from the possibility of the same happening to him. That’s why Locaro enjoyed battle so much, charging into opponents with gun firing even as their rifles clacked off rounds that whisked so close to his head he could feel the heat. He loved to look death in the face so he could spit in its eye. Beating it back meant beating God, and beating God made him …

What did it make him exactly?

Locaro’s thinking on the subject pretty much ended there. He thought God in particular and religion in general was a crock of shit.

Look at me, I believe in nothing, and no one can kill me. If there is a God, how could I exist?

A fair question and one he had come to ruminate over for long stretches while in solitary in Cereso. Solitary deprived the senses of natural light, the passage of time, and normal cycles. It had left Locaro with no company other than his thoughts, filling him with a vast appreciation for life led without limits and rules. He was not a great thinker, was barely literate in fact, but thoughts and words were nothing compared to deeds, and Locaro preferred to measure himself by their sum as calculated by the bodies he left behind.

He’d served his sister well in her battles to consolidate enough of Mexico’s warring drug cartels to keep them, at the very least, from undermining her efforts or threatening her subtle hold on power. With the possible exception of Colonel Guillermo Paz, the mythical
Angel de la Guarda
of the peasants, no one was more feared by the cartels than Locaro.

The thought brought a smile to his lips as he approached the cantina located in a kind of netherworld, perched as it was between the old and new cities of Juárez, known to be a hangout for the soldiers of the cartel based there. The cantina boasted no sign advertising its presence, its sole patrons drawn from those who already knew of its existence.

Locaro hitched up his safari jacket to better hide the sheathed machete hidden beneath it. The blade was old, slightly rusted, and tarnished, but honed to a razor’s edge. He preferred the machete because he’d killed with it before, the first time as a mere boy. And Locaro was a firm believer in the spirit of such weapons; like a man, one that has already killed took to killing again much easier.

And this machete had killed very often indeed.

Locaro didn’t believe it was imagination alone that made it feel lighter to the touch, seeming to thirst to be drawn from its sheath and whipped around through the air.

He entered the bar as if he were air, drawing no initial attention at all. Locaro liked bars because they were dark, and in dark places people did not notice the oddities of his appearance as quickly, did not notice his powerfully squat build and his face, which one Mexican cop had once mused looked like a rotten tomato field.

Locaro had hacked all four of the cop’s limbs off with this very machete while he was still alive.

He stopped in the center of the bar, counting the number of patrons as the sour, rancid smell rising off him finally drew their attention. Many looked toward his face, turning away at the sight of the scaly lumps of flesh dotting his cheeks, oozing the viscous pus that was the source of the stench, not wanting to risk meeting his eyes. Locaro made no move from there until the first pair approached him smiling, their hands on the butts of their holstered revolvers. Their gait slightly drunken, their eyes full of disinterest and breath reeking of cheap tequila.

“Buenos días, señor.”

Locaro said nothing.

“¿Quién es usted?”

He just stood there.

“¿Qué quieres?”

Locaro shifted his shoulders to bring the machete within easy drawing range.

“¿Cual es el problema?”

Locaro yawned.

“What’s the problem,
señor
?” the second man asked him in English this time. “Why you smell like my ass?”

Locaro was looking at both of them when the other man went for his gun.

*   *   *

Had anyone been outside in the street, they would’ve heard a single gunshot followed by a scream shrill enough to bubble eardrums.

But it was nothing compared to the ones that followed, intermixed with gunshots whose muzzle flashes lit up the windows like strobe lights, and the screams lingering well after the echoes of the rounds had ceased. In the naked light of the bar marred by cigarette smoke and thick, putrid air, glints of steel were caught through those same windows, accompanied by a strange crunching that sounded like stone being cut by a jigsaw.

When he was finished, Locaro exited still holding the machete, now covered in so much blood it looked as if someone had tossed a red blanket over him. He continued on down the street, when the cell phone his sister had given him rang. He lifted it from his pocket in a blood-soaked hand and flipped it open.

“How are you,
mi hermano
?” Ana Callas Guajardo asked him.

“Readjusting to life on the outside,
mi hermanita,
” Locaro replied, his breathing and pulse rate having already returned to normal.

“Can your adjustment be completed by tomorrow night?”

Locaro wiped the blood from his forehead with the already speckled sleeve of his safari jacket and gazed back at the cantina, the door flapping against its frame now.

“I believe so.”

“Then have your men ready,
mi hermano.
It is time for the Torres children to die.”

49

S
AN
A
NTONIO

“Miss anything?” Cort Wesley asked, as Luke rushed to hug Caitlin, followed in more leisurely form by Dylan. “Do you ever?”

“From time to time.” Caitlin could feel the receptionist’s eyes glued to her. “I see you still haven’t been granted an audience.”

“And I’m about to start tearing down the walls.”

She separated herself from Dylan and started toward the receptionist’s desk. “I got this, Cort Wesley.”

But he fell in behind her anyway, the young woman following her approach every step of the way.

“Ma’am,” Caitlin said, “I believe you know who I am.”

“Are you allowed to give autographs?”