Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) (23 page)

“Well, something occurred to me after you left. You were asking about those two little girls in the pictures you showed me, one of which was Maura Torres.”

“What about them, sir?”

“I believe I may have left you with the impression that they were born on my farm.”

“Not really,” Caitlin told him, realizing her oversight. “I never asked the question directly.”

“Well, the answer would’ve been that the Torreses and Cantús showed up for the season with those infants in tow back in the late spring or early summer of nineteen seventy-three.”

“I showed you a number of pictures, Mr. Tawls.”

“Both girls practically grew up on my farm. It’s how I knew time was passing, when they’d show up like clockwork every year for the planting and then again for the harvest. They must’ve been seven or eight when their daddies stole my plants.”

“Meaning marijuana.”

“Don’t make me confirm that over the phone, Ranger.”

“You’re not being investigated, Mr. Tawls.”

Caitlin could hear Tawls breathing loudly on the other end of the line. “Different times, Ranger.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations, sir. Your record’s clean as a whistle since then, not another spot on it.”

“That was my last experience with that kind of crop. After those two spics stole from me, burned my fields, and stole my truck I decided I’d had myself enough of that world.”

“Don’t call them that, sir.”

“What?”

“Spics. It’s beneath a man of your standing.”

Tawls took a big breath and let it out hard enough to make Caitlin think static had overtaken the line. “I suppose you’re right, then as well as now. I bulldozed that part of my fields and turned the whole stretch into a playground for the local kids. Might still be there today if the drought of nineteen-ninety hadn’t put me out of business for good.”

“Can you tell me where those girls were born, Mr. Tawls?” Caitlin asked him.

“Not for sure. But I do know the other farm they both frequented was located in the lower Rio Grande Valley. Believe the spread belonged to the McClellan family.”

“Mr. Tawls?”

“Ma’am?”

“I’m glad you stopped growing marijuana.”

Tawls sighed, the sound garbled by the speaker. “You ever need to check out some property, just give me a call.”

“Will do, Mr. Tawls,” Caitlin said, hitting “End.”

Tepper had already paid the check and they walked out of Denny’s together.

“The Rio Grande Valley,” he said, lighting his morning Marlboro. “Rangers got their own history down there during the farmworkers strike. My first assignment was greeted by a shovel swipe that almost splattered my skull like the melons they were growing. I remember counting myself fortunate to be alive.”

Caitlin plucked the cigarette from his mouth and stamped it out under her boot. “Too bad it didn’t stick, D.W.”

57

S
AN
A
NTONIO

“Why’s all this important?” Cort Wesley asked when she was finished, dusk already fading to night by then.

“I’m not sure yet. Something in those pictures…”

“Like?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re the Texas Ranger.”

“But this is all connected to someone trying to kill your kids, Cort Wesley,” Caitlin said, wishing she could snatch the words back out of the air.

Cort Wesley’s nostrils flared as his gaze narrowed. Big bugs called crane flies that had staked a claim in San Antonio buzzed the air around both of them. Cort Wesley started to raise a hand to swat one, then changed his mind.

“
My
kids, Ranger? You got as much say on their upbringing as me, and don’t try to tell me otherwise.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you
what,
Ranger?”

“About your visit to the bank.”

Cort Wesley turned away, swatting at the crane flies now. “I’m making believe this is Dylan. Spares me from doing it to him instead.”

“It wasn’t Dylan who told me.”

He stopped swatting and swung back toward her. “Luke? When did that boy grow a mind of his own?”

“While you weren’t looking.”

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

“You tend to lose me in moments like this, Cort Wesley.”

“You didn’t come here intending to even raise the subject. But once the opening presented itself…”

“Banks aren’t normally very hospitable to people like you.”

“You mean because I’ve been in jail on both sides of the border and register an incomplete on my credit score?”

“You need money.”

“You know any other reason to go to a bank? The bodyguard business has slowed down a bit, since I’m not exactly welcome anymore south of the border.”

Caitlin shook her head. “And you expected to find a sympathetic ear in Royce Clavins?”

Mention of the banker left Cort Wesley raising his brow. “Luke didn’t know the name of the man I met with.”

“No, I figured that out all by myself. Clavins is an asshole, Cort Wesley. Always was, always will be. Next time he goes out of his way to help somebody will be the first. All the more reason you should have come to me first.”

“You think it’s easy?”

“You damn near bit my head off when I didn’t acknowledge my stake in the boys. So you bet I think it should have been easy.”

She watched his shoulders stiffen, the veins in his neck pulsing with tension, the crane flies suddenly steering clear of him. “I’m not touching Maura’s insurance money, Ranger. Not borrowing against it either.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. I did fine when I sold my condo and bought the house where I grew up for a song in one of those short sales. Anyway, I got Clavins to agree to let me be co-signer on a loan that doesn’t have to go anywhere near the insurance money.”

“What’d you have to threaten him with, Ranger?”

“Nothing. I just reminded him about what he smelled like after you stuffed him in the trash can on a regular basis in high school. Believe he’d do just about anything to avoid that experience again.”

“Get back to those pictures you were talking about,” Cort Wesley said, eager to change the subject.

“Not until you get back to Dylan wanting to play in the championship game tomorrow night.”

“You first, Ranger.”

Caitlin went back to her most recent conversation with Regent Tawls and the two girls in the pictures being born at a farm in the Rio Grande Valley in 1973. “I think whatever’s got the boys targeted begins down there, where their mother was born. Something maybe we can use.”

“Against who?”

“I haven’t figured that part out yet. But there’s something all wrong about this I haven’t got my mind around yet. Two farms, two little girls the same age, the stolen marijuana…”

“I don’t think Maura ever said a word to me about her father.”

“Maybe that’s the reason. Because he was a drug dealer in league with a relative of the man who started it all by bringing Chinese opium through Baja.”

“So how does a guy with that kind of heritage, like Cantú, end up working migrant farms through Texas?”

“Well, his grandfather Esteban Cantú didn’t hold on to all his power very long. He was forced out as provincial governor of Mexicali in nineteen-twenty and not a peep was heard from him after that. Like he flat-out disappeared.”

“Not surprising, given that I seem to recall you mentioning your granddad and his father went up against him right around then.”

“Except my grandfather never finished telling me the story.”

“Doesn’t mean the Strongs didn’t have a part in ending his political career. Your family does have a pretty decent record when it comes to taking down the worst bad guys unlucky enough to cross its path.”

“Right now,” Caitlin told him, “the only bad guys I care about are the ones we’re after today. How’d you like to take a drive down to the Rio Grande Valley and the McClellan farm tomorrow?”

“With you?”

Caitlin shook her head. “I’ve got other plans,” she said evasively. “You ready to talk about Dylan?”

“Sure, if I knew what to say.” Cort Wesley plopped himself down on the porch swing, forcing it to rock backward. Caitlin watched him shaking his head, the toughest man in Texas brought to his figurative knees by his headstrong son. “Normally when I’m backed into a corner, I come out fighting. But this kid’s got me boxed in against the ropes.”

“You sound like your friend Leroy Epps.”

“Damn ghost wasn’t around when I needed him this afternoon.” Cort Wesley’s gaze sought Caitlin out, looking more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him before. “Dylan didn’t tell me he wants to play, Ranger, he didn’t ask me if he could play. He told me he
was
playing. Plain and simple. No room for argument. Then he asks if he can take my truck to get new tape for his damn stick. What the hell did I do wrong here?”

“You shoot him?”

“Nope.” Cort Wesley slapped his knees loud and suddenly enough to send the crane flies scurrying in the porch light. “Way things are going I figure I’m gonna need all my bullets, starting tomorrow in the Rio Grande Valley.”

58

S
AN
A
NTONIO

With the moon directly overhead, Guillermo Paz stood outside the San Fernando Cathedral on Main Plaza in San Antonio, studying the plaque that proclaimed it to be the oldest cathedral sanctuary in the United States. Jim Bowie was married here before dying at the Alamo at the hands of Santa Ana, who used the building as an observation post. The cathedral claimed that Bowie, along with Colonel William Travis and Davy Crockett himself, had been ceremonially buried in the church’s graveyard as their official resting places. But Paz knew of other locations that made the same claim. Since the heroes’ bodies had all been burned after the famous battle, he supposed anybody could claim anything they wanted to.

Paz mounted the stone steps and entered the chapel to the smell of age, dust, and the lingering scent of cheap perfume left over from visits by tourists in the late afternoon. The last time he’d been here, the floors had just been refinished with a fresh coat of lacquer, the wooden pews restored to their original condition as well. That was a source of great pride to Paz, given that the money he’d left behind on a previous visit had funded the improvements. He’d even done some of the work on the roof himself, enjoying the hot sun burning his naked back and shoulders along with the view of the world provided from up on the hot slate.

Paz smelled candles and light incense, wondering why exactly he’d stopped his search for meaning here in favor of trying night classes at local colleges. Those classrooms lacked the scents of warm lavender and sandalwood, which partially explained his discomfort within them, even before the pompous professors started talking. It was the same smell he recalled from his youth growing up in the slums of Venezuela, where the local church provided the only refuge from the gang-riddled streets, making him feel truly at home as he made his way to the confessional perched in the church’s rear.

Paz squeezed himself into the confessional and eased the door closed behind him. An armrest lay just below the confessional window, on which he had once carved the letters P-A-Z with a twelve-inch commando blade to leave some trace of his presence behind. The renovation his donation had financed had allowed that armrest to be refinished or replaced, and tonight Paz set about replacing his original mark. He was working the tip of his knife carefully to form the base of the “P” when the confessional window slid open, leaving only the screen between him and the priest.

“Have you missed me, padre?”

Paz could hear the slight gasp and shuffle, as the old priest shifted his legs to be able to leave his side of the confessional quickly if need be.

“I wanna apologize in advance for defacing church property,” he continued. “But I realized that maybe it was a mistake giving up some of the things I used to do. Like maybe I was after more change than I really needed.”

“My son?”

“You’re probably wondering why you haven’t seen me in so long.”

“Well, I…”

“No worries, Father. Coming back here feels like coming home.”

“Have you been … somewhere else?” the old priest asked, still groping for words.

“That’s a good question, the answer being yes, in a figurative sense, anyway. My mind and spirit have been other places because I wasn’t sure I could find what I was looking for in places like this anymore.”

“Finding what you seek from God takes time, my son,” the priest said sternly, finding his voice.

“And that’s the point, padre. I was looking for easy answers, the kind that reinforced what I was already thinking. Believe I’d forgotten what places like this are all about.”

“That it’s not about the finding,” the priest picked up, “it’s about the seeking. The process bears its own rewards.”

“You know me too well,” Paz told him, “and I guess that was a lesson I needed to learn on my own.” He finished the loop on the “P” and moved his knife to begin carving the “A.” “That’s why I decided to go back to the things that got me this far to begin with. Don’t worry, I’m gonna leave another sizable donation to let you repair whatever needs to be fixed. Too bad it’s not that easy with the soul, eh, padre?”

“Amen, my son.”

“You know why I’m here?”

“I know why you’ve come in the past.”

“And here we go again. My Texas Ranger and her outlaw need me in a big way. It’s nice to be needed.”

“Exactly as God feels,” the priest tried to joke.

“Well, He’s got me beat there for sure. But the thing is, it’s different this time.”

“Different how?”

Paz started carving the center bar of the “A” in his name on the armrest, brushing the stray shavings aside. In the confessional’s dim light, he watched the wood specks sprinkling the air like faerie dust and hoped they left their own kind of magic.

“You remember me telling you about my mother?”

“You believed her to be some kind of witch, I seem to recall.”

“What we call a
bruja
in our language, Father. She saw things,
felt
things. Her crazy warnings kept me alive as a boy, helped me steer clear of trouble. I already told you about that priest from the slum where I grew up in Venezuela, right?”