Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “Why do you keep glancing toward that door?”

  “What door?”

  “The one you’re trying real hard not to stare at right now.”

  Skoll yanked his gaze away from that door yet again. “Just the bathroom. I’m having a bit of a stomach issue.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “You should be, since your baseless allegations are causing a flare-up right now.”

  “Well, Mr. Skoll,” Caitlin said, moving toward the bathroom door, just to see how he’d react, “I’m sure Redfern manufactures a drug that can treat that. Maybe there are a few samples lying around.” She stopped, Skoll trying very hard to appear casual, when he looked anything but. “So what form is Axiol manufactured in? Do I need a warrant for you to tell me that?”

  “There’s a pill form, but we’ve found intravenous infusion to be the most effective.”

  Caitlin closed the gap between them, forgetting all about the bathroom Skoll kept glancing toward. “Most effective in killing your test subjects, you mean.”

  “That’s a baseless allegation, Ranger.”

  “Tell that to the eighteen subjects in your trial we know for sure are dead, sir.”

  Skoll bristled. “I believe we’re done here. You want anything else, get a warrant and talk to my lawyer.”

  “It’s unfortunate you want to play things that way, sir, because I thought we could both do some good here. And I was only getting started.”

  “And now you’re finished, now we’re finished.”

  Caitlin shook her head, expressing what looked like genuine regret. “That’s a shame, Mr. Skoll, because how else am I going to figure out where I know you from?”

  76

  WACO, TEXAS

  “Maybe you should step away from the window,” Skoll said to Armand Fisker, after Fisker emerged from the bathroom where he’d been hiding for the duration of Skoll’s conversation with Caitlin Strong.

  Fisker continued to gaze through the night at the Texas Ranger’s SUV, still parked in the company lot that rimmed the front of the building. “These are blackout windows and she’s two hundred yards away.”

  “Don’t discount her superpowers, Arm.”

  “Wonder Woman she’s not, Davey boy.”

  “No, she’s a Texas Ranger, and in these parts that’s worse.”

  Fisker held his ground and turned to look at Skoll. “You handled yourself okay with her.”

  “I’m still shaking.”

  “She’s got nothing on us, except suspicions.”

  “She’s killed men for less than that.”

  “You think you need to tell me that after last night?”

  Skoll swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. Have you scheduled the funeral?”

  “Sons of bitches haven’t even returned my son’s body yet, and you’re not coming anyway. Last thing we need right now are the Texas Rangers, or anybody else, figuring out that we’re associated.”

  “I understand,” Skoll said, grateful to be relieved of the obligation.

  “And you don’t talk to her or anyone else from the Rangers again without a lawyer present. If this goes bad, we need to string it out as long as we can to give you time to get the line up and running again to produce my Axiol. None of this intravenous shit, though. I want it in liquid form, maybe pill, too, not to mention aerosol. Imagine what a mass release of this shit could do to anybody who breathes it in.”

  “I’d rather not,” Skoll said, meaning it. “And I won’t be able to hold Caitlin Strong off that long.”

  Fisker forced a grin, wearing the gesture like an ill-fitting suit. “Then I guess it’s a good thing you got me watching your back. You know the size of the army I got backing me up across the world?”

  “You mean country.”

  “No, Davey, I mean the world.”

  77

  AUSTIN, TEXAS

  “You want to give me that again?” Jones asked from behind his desk in Austin.

  “You heard me,” Caitlin said, her mind still swimming with the summary she’d provided of Doc Whatley’s revelations on the drug that was killing transplant recipients, combined with her visit to Redfern Pharmaceuticals and David Skoll.

  “So let me get this straight,” Jones said, shaking his head. “You paid a visit to the man behind this drug, David Skoll, to investigate something you’re not authorized to investigate. Have I got that right?”

  “We’re talking about a potential weapon of mass destruction here, Jones.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. And in the process of questioning Skoll without authorization, you laid all your cards on the table. Why exactly did I think working for Homeland would change your behavior? You need to read the manual, Ranger.”

  “Which manual would that be?”

  “The one that details how to conduct an investigation involving something as serious as a weapon with the kind of potential you’re describing. We could have used David Skoll as an ally, something you’ve taken off the table.” He gave her a long look, so cold and dry that the air seemed to crackle between them. “I’m starting to think the state of your current psyche is turning your judgment to shit.”

  “You want to say that in English, please?”

  Jones tried to look compassionate, not quite succeeding. “Something really bad happened to you eighteen years ago, something you couldn’t help but revisit after it happened to another girl who’s the same age as you were at the time. I think that impaired your thinking. I think you’re chasing boogeymen.”

  “You’ve said that to me before, Jones, and it turned out there really were monsters under the bed.”

  “This isn’t Halloween, Ranger. You can take off that costume.”

  “What costume would that be?”

  “The one with a mask of a person who’s the only one that can see the light, while the rest of us are stumbling around in the dark.” He hesitated, as Caitlin let her stare harden into a glare. “Sit down, please.”

  “I’ll stand, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Jones sat down and waited for her to join him, resuming even though she didn’t. “The DNA tests came back on Frank Doyle’s blood we lifted off your shirt. It doesn’t match the DNA of the man who attacked you or Kelly Ann Beasley.”

  Caitlin felt her shoulders slump.

  “I want you to know I personally showed her the mug shot taken by the Austin police,” Jones continued. “Even with all the bruises and cuts you put there, Kelly Ann was sure she’d never seen him before in her life, and that includes the night she was sexually assaulted at Stubb’s.”

  “Did you run David Skoll’s file for me?” Caitlin said, doing a bad job of hiding her exasperation.

  “Can we deal with one mess at a time? Like the shit show Cort Wesley Masters and his son have officially unleashed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We already had this discussion, but let me highlight the bold points again. You think Armand Fisker isn’t on Homeland’s radar? You think we don’t take someone who’s associated with some of the most serious whack jobs the world over seriously? You think this shit show Team Caitlin has unleashed hasn’t let the genie out of the bottle? Because, Ranger, here’s the kicker: in the past twelve hours or so, a bunch of those associates who are pushing Fisker’s dope across their own countries have dropped off the map.”

  Jones paused to let his point sink in, Caitlin left trying to fit these new pieces into the puzzle she was already assembling.

  “Allow me to elaborate,” he resumed, when she failed to respond. “The world is truly going to shit. Mein Kampf is a number one bestseller in Germany again, because neo-Nazi movements are sprouting up all over the world. That’s really nothing new. What is new is the fact that they’re thriving, and expanding, because they are swimming in cash.”

  “All thanks to drug profits from product supplied by Armand Fisker,” Caitlin picked up. “That’s where you’re going with this, right?”

  “As r
ain, Ranger. Armand Fisker’s taken his father’s work and gone it one better. A national movement of criminal reactionaries who make up biker gangs has become an international movement of the same, organized in a way that makes around a dozen of the most dangerous people in the world beholden to Fisker. It’s a true nightmare scenario. And you know the most amazing thing of all? It really does run in the family. Fisker picking up where his father left off, just like you’re picking up where your grandfather did in 1944.”

  “You locate that missing box, Jones?”

  He held his gaze out the window for a time, as if there was something to see through the darkness, before fixing his eyes on her again. “Turns out the file wasn’t in a real box at all, just a metaphorical one it took some arm-twisting to release on the condition I keep the material under lock and key, strictly classified.”

  “Which, of course, you’re not going to do.”

  “You remember what I told you about chasing the past, Ranger?”

  “The difference being I may be close to finally catching it this time.” Caitlin finally took a seat and settled back in her chair, feeling the tension in her muscles gradually let go. “So what happened next, Jones? What happened when my granddad got back to the German POW camp in Hearne?”

  78

  HEARNE, TEXAS; 1944

  “I’m under orders not to talk to you, sir,” Captain Lowry told Earl Strong from behind the desk in his office inside the camp headquarters. It had been hastily erected out of unfinished plywood and still smelled of fresh lumber, all of the beams left exposed.

  “Well, then, can you tell if those orders came from none other than the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation? A nod will do just fine, son.”

  Lowry didn’t nod or answer, his gaze flitting from Earl to Henry Druce, the presence of a foreign serviceman clearly unnerving him. But Earl knew something else was unnerving him as well. He’d gotten the same feeling yesterday, during his initial visit to the camp, but had passed it off to three inmates being murdered on his watch. Now Earl understood the source of the man’s anxiety, thanks to Witchell Long telling him of Lowry’s complicity in whatever was going on here.

  “I need to repeat my question for you, Captain?”

  “Asking me again won’t change the fact that I’m not at liberty to talk to you, Ranger.”

  Earl glued his eyes to Lowry. “How much they pay you to facilitate Gunther Haut’s escape?”

  Lowry’s lips were quivering now, his teeth beginning to chatter. Earl noted an even deeper sense of anxiety and unease in the way he was clutching the edge of his desk with both hands.

  “Now,” he resumed, aiming his remarks at Druce this time, “what Captain Lowry may not have a grasp of is that it’s one thing to be a traitor to the country, it’s quite another to be a traitor to the state of Texas. Rangers have been dealing with that sort of thing for a hundred and twenty years now. Walk fifty feet and you’ll probably find yourself over the graves of one or more of the traitors we’ve run up against.”

  “You don’t understand,” Lowry said, his expression desperate and pleading.

  “Make me.”

  Lowry looked stuck between a swallow and a breath. “They’ve got them.”

  “Got who?”

  “My wife and boys. If I talk, my family will be killed.”

  Earl moved closer to the desk. “By whom?”

  “They didn’t introduce themselves. Just showed up in my office with pictures.”

  “When?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “The day before Gunther Haut escaped. Any notion as to what they found out, what made Haut so important to a whole bunch of people?”

  Lowry shook his head.

  “And what about these pictures those boys showed you?” Earl resumed. “You recognize anything besides your family?”

  Lowry nodded. “My home. Just outside of Abilene.”

  Earl made a puckering sound, smacking his lips and letting the air from his mouth in what sounded like a low growl. He stole a glance at Druce, then looked back across the desk at Lowry.

  “How about you let us help you out of this, Captain?”

  * * *

  Captain Lowry’s family lived in a tract home on a parched piece of land in a large plot reserved for families from the nearby military base on the outskirts of a town Earl had never heard of near Abilene. He thought his years as a Ranger had brought him to every square foot of settled Texas, even if he was just passing through. But he never recalled being in these parts, not even once.

  It looked as if these identical one-story homes had been dropped one at a time out of a cookie cutter atop parched prairie ground where any landscaping at all would never have taken. As a result, the homes were unshaded, roasting by day in the sun and radiating a collective heat that made the entire neighborhood feel like a sauna. The fact that the housing was temporary, and probably free, likely kept complaints to a minimum. And when they arose, it was doubtful anyone paid attention to them.

  Earl edged up to Lowry’s address in the mail truck he’d “borrowed” in his capacity as a Texas Ranger, the postman huddled in the truck’s rear, stripped down to his skivvies so that Earl could don his uniform. He checked the nearby poles for telephone wires, none in evidence snaking into any of the cheap homes. Not that it mattered, since he couldn’t imagine Lowry calling to alert his family’s captors that a Texas Ranger was coming. He’d know if he did that, all Earl would find when he got there were bodies and blood.

  Earl also figured Lowry knew this might be the only lifeline he got, the only chance to see his family survive their captivity. These weren’t the kind of men likely to leave any semblance of a trail back to them, meaning his family’s fate was sealed and Lowry damn well knew that. Just as he knew that if he confessed his part in this, to his own superiors or J. Edgar Hoover, his military career would be summarily over.

  In Earl’s experience, folks trusted the Rangers a lot more when it came to such situations, because of their reputation for getting done what was needed. He figured the unease he’d sensed in Lowry during his first visit to the prison camp in Hearne had been rooted in the captain coming close to telling him the truth then.

  He trudged up the walk with single letter in hand, making himself look casual amid the surroundings when viewed from the front window where drawn drapes had been parted so eyes could follow his approach. There was no doorbell, so Earl rapped loudly on the door. Stopped, and then rapped again when no one answered. Louder to make sure whoever was inside grew cognizant of the neighboring homes clustered tight to each other starting to take notice.

  Finally, the door creaked open and a sallow figure who smelled of stale sweat peered out.

  “I got a special delivery letter here for Myrna Lowry.”

  “I’ll take it,” the man offered, his voice spun through gravel.

  “I’m afraid it’s official government correspondence from the United States military. I’m only authorized to have Mrs. Lowry sign for it.”

  “She’s not home.”

  “I’ve delivered my share of letters like this. It likely has something to do with her husband, something she needs to know without further delay.”

  The man threw the door all the way open and got in Earl’s face from the doorjamb. His smell almost made Earl gag, and the only other thing the Ranger noted about him was that his eyes looked yellow.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear what I said.”

  “Yes, I did,” Earl said, pretending to stuff the letter back in his mailbag. “I sure did.”

  He came out with his .45 in the letter’s place and shot the man in the chest, blowing him backward into the small home’s foyer. He heard glass shatter in the next instant, indication that Henry Druce had burst in through the back. Two more shots rang out, followed by a third from a different caliber weapon, after which a thud sounded that could only be a body hitting the floor. Then kids were screaming and a woman was wailing unintelligibly, Earl tracking he
r voice inside the house to a bedroom doorway where a man with a face that looked tinted by charcoal held a young boy at gunpoint in the room’s corner.

  “Don’t hurt my son, don’t hurt my son!” Myrna Lowry pleaded.

  Earl leaped over the body Druce had shot in the hallway, making the man holding the boy before him as leverage the last of the three.

  “I’ll kill him!” the gunman ranted.

  “Go ahead,” Earl said. “He ain’t my boy. And as soon as he’s out of the way I’ll shoot your guts out and question you while you scream in the worst pain imaginable.”

  The man ran his eyes between Earl and Druce, trying to disguise the hopelessness he felt. “Kill me and you get nothing.”

  “You’re not German. Your accent says Texas and the way you’re holding that gun says you’re no stranger to it, but no friend either, the way Captain Druce here and I are. Your part in this ends when you tell me who put you up to it. That’s who I’m gonna inflict real pain on, and since you’re a Texan, you know well enough to take a Ranger at his word.”

  The man seemed to collect his thoughts. “I’m leaving and I’m taking the boy with me.”

  “You’re not going anywhere and neither is the boy.”

  “Please, please!” Myrna continued to wail.

  “You don’t let the boy go,” Earl continued, “and the best you can hope for is to hang for treason. We can run this like you didn’t know what you got yourself into, that you didn’t grasp the gravity of your actions. That’ll be enough to keep you from the end of a rope, providing you talk to me.”

  The man’s eyes skittishly scanned the room, as if trying to see what lay beyond it.

  “Nobody’s left except you. If dying wasn’t part of the assignment, I’d say you can consider the agreement severed. So far no one’s been hurt by your hand, and if we keep it that way, you can come out of this alive, if nothing else. Even better than that, lots better maybe, if you draw the right judge.”

  Earl didn’t know whether the charcoal streaks stemmed from the room’s lighting, grime, or some skin condition with which the gunman was afflicted. His coarse hair skewed in all directions, as if he’d cut it himself.