by Jon Land
By then, Cort Wesley had taken the other thug’s leg out, the leg attached to the very same foot that had pummeled his ribs. Turned out the cliché about the bigger they are, the harder they fall couldn’t have been more accurate. The bigger thug went down with a force that seemed to rattle the very parking lot, coughing up a thin cloud of gravel and dust on impact.
“How’s it feel, bub?” Cort Wesley asked from over him, before bringing his boot down against the side of the same knee, feeling something in the joint snap.
The bigger thug was screaming, rolling back and forth across a swatch of the parking lot that was now cleared of debris, sticking to his suit instead. His flailing hands seemed to have trouble grasping his wounded knee.
The smaller thug’s guttural roar alerted Cort Wesley he was coming, a millisecond before he would’ve realized it anyway. The man lashed out with one wild strike, and then another, the second missing so badly his momentum actually cracked him against the same wall he’d already struck once. Ready to hit him again, Cort Wesley simply watched as he slumped to the asphalt, one side of his face riding the brick the whole way.
Cort Wesley made sure to free the still-writhing thug’s gun from its holster and toss it into a nearby Dumpster, which stank to holy hell. Then he cut a straight line across the parking lot, back to Jones’s SUV, not noticing or caring if anyone saw him.
“You are one piece of work, cowboy,” Jones said, shaking his head when Cort Wesley closed the door behind him.
Cort Wesley opened the glove compartment and felt around for the cell phone he’d left in there. He had six missed calls and two voice mails, all from Luke’s school, which had come in while he’d been getting his ribs worked on inside the Pleasure Dome and then had paid the kicker back in spades.
“Okay if we leave now?” Jones asked him, starting the engine again.
“You mind shutting up for a minute?” Cort Wesley said. “I got a call I need to return.”
8
ARMAND BAYOU, TEXAS
The empty school bus sat in a cordoned-off area of the parking lot, surrounded by more law enforcement officials than students who’d been inside the bus when it departed the Village School thirty minutes away yesterday. Luke Torres, just short of his sixteenth birthday and a sophomore now, had chosen the Houston-based prep school himself, after his older brother, Dylan, had been accepted to Brown University. Luke wasn’t half the athlete his older brother was, but he was twice the student, and he knew he’d need all of that to follow Dylan to an Ivy League university, maybe Brown too.
And now he was missing, along with thirty-five of his classmates.
* * *
“Could you give me that again, Captain?” Caitlin had asked, once the helicopter was airborne over Christoph Russell Ilg’s farm.
“Luke Torres, thirty-five other students, two teachers, and three chaperones are missing from an overnight field trip in the Armand Bayou Nature Center,” Tepper told her, moving his mouth as if he were chewing gum for want of a Marlboro. “Parents reported receiving phone calls and texts right up until around midnight, when the adults likely got fed up with all the chatter. After that—nothing. They were camping out on the preserve farm at the time. According to reports, their stuff and supplies are gone, too, like they just flat-out vanished into thin air and took everything with them.”
“What else, Captain?”
Tepper took off his hat and scratched at the bald patches of his scalp that looked red and scaly. He sucked in some breath and let it out as a sigh that dissolved into more of a growl. “That’s all we really got right now. The Ranger chopper was available, so as soon as I got the word Luke Torres was one of the missing, I commandeered it and headed to pick you up. Just do me one favor when we get to the scene, Ranger,” Tepper said, glancing down at the scene below, where the big trucks had arrived to tote Christoph Ilg’s stolen cattle away. “Stay away from anything that even looks like a camera.”
* * *
The chopper’s landing pod settled with a thunk, Caitlin needing no coaxing to throw open the door and step down, starting toward the lot where the bus was parked without waiting for Captain Tepper.
“There’s been no ransom demands,” he said, breathing hard from the mere effort of keeping up with her.
“Not yet,” Caitlin told him, the school bus square in her sights. “How about we go have a talk with the driver?”
9
ARMAND BAYOU, TEXAS
The Armand Bayou Nature Center boasted an ideal and beautifully bucolic setting in which to fulfill its mission statement, which was to open the door to numerous elements of the natural world, cutting across various disciplines. It was situated in its own little world, right on the Texas Gulf Coast, which didn’t feel like Texas at all. Essentially, the 2,500 acres the center now claimed was an outdoor classroom rich with virtually every ecosystem imaginable, available for study. Amazing how so much of the food chain that made up the world and helped define civilization was contained in various parts of the grounds, from the coastline and further in. All a mere thirty-minute drive from the city of Houston.
A bit more for a school bus.
Nestled in the Clear Lake area, Armand Bayou strove to make visitors appreciate the various wetlands, prairie, forest, and marsh habitats enough to join the fight to preserve them in their pristine form. A trio of sophomore science classes from the Village School had taken a field trip to learn about plant and animal inhabitants, bird-watch, hike on the trails lifted from another time, or view live animal displays of snakes, alligators, turtles, hawks, and bison.
From the itinerary D. W. Tepper had explained to her, the day had finished with a visit to the center’s Martyn Farm, which elegantly recreated the lifestyle just as it had been in late-1800s Texas. They were to set up camp in an open field and sleep under the stars. The next morning they’d take a ride on the Bayou Ranger, a pontoon boat moored at the nearby docks, prior to heading back to school, with a stop for lunch planned on the way. The students, faculty, and chaperones were to rendezvous at the bus promptly at eleven o’clock and, toward that end, the driver made sure she was back in the lot by ten thirty.
“Bad weather would’ve brought me back here earlier,” the woman explained to Captain Tepper and Caitlin from the school bus’s shadow.
Her name was Sara Ann Hoder and she had mousy blond hair that looked fashioned from thin string, reaching just past her ears. She had a big, round face and blue eyes that looked too small for it. She was dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a baggy top that couldn’t quite hide the muffin shape of her midriff. Caitlin noticed she was wearing worn sneakers that looked like a man’s and smelled of a combination of musty clothes and cigarettes that might’ve been Marlboros, just like Captain Tepper smoked.
Caitlin checked the bus’s markings again. “So you don’t work for the school.”
“No, the bus company. First Student. We’ve got a contract with the school for sporting events, field trips, and the like.”
Caitlin glanced at Tepper, making a mental note of that. “So who would know you were coming out here?”
“My gosh, all kinds of people. Places like the Village School reserve buses long in advance. Of course, they may provide the itineraries later, closer to the ride in question. But to answer your question, let’s see, the dispatcher for sure, the booking office—heck, pretty much anyone at the company who’s got a computer.”
“Let’s turn our attention back to the events of today, when you came to pick the kids up, and yesterday, when you dropped them off. Did you notice anything that sticks out in your mind?”
Sara Ann Hoder tucked her hands into the pockets of her smock Caitlin had taken for a shirt, waiting for her to continue. “No, Ranger, I didn’t.”
“On either occasion, especially yesterday, did you notice anyone lingering about, maybe in a way that made them stand out in your mind?”
The woman puckered her lips, features squeezed taut as if she were searching for just that, and
looked disappointed when she didn’t find it. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Sara Ann. You’re doing great here. This isn’t your doing in any way whatsoever. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t something that sticks out, something maybe just a little off, that could help us get to the bottom of things.”
The bus driver swallowed hard. “You figure something bad happened to those kids?”
“It’s too early for speculation of any kind, but they’re missing, and that’s bad in itself. What about vehicles?”
“Vehicles?”
“In the parking lot, when you pulled in yesterday.”
“I didn’t pull in then. I let the kids out at a drop-off point, like a staging center.”
“Okay,” Caitlin said, keeping her tone reserved and gentle. “There then.”
“Other vehicles, you mean?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Hmm, let me think some more on that. It’s all I’ve been doing since the kids didn’t show up when they were supposed. Running things through my head, knowing somebody’d be asking me these very questions.”
“Take your time, Sara Ann.”
The woman buried her face in her hands, starting to break down. “It’s so darn hard. My brain’s all seized up like a bad bearing.”
“Then let’s leave it for now. Try again later. How’s that sound?”
The woman nodded, sort of. Caitlin tried to look reassuring before she slid away with Tepper in tow.
“Any security cameras, Captain?”
“Not a single one back out on the road, and just four to cover all these grounds, one of which is inside the souvenir shop that just opened.” Tepper ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, pushing it about as if feeling for something. “Guess shoplifting around here is considered a bigger crime than thirty-six missing students and their chaperones.”
“Let’s go have a look at the campsite where they were last seen.”
10
ARMAND BAYOU, TEXAS
The Martyn farmhouse offered a perfect re-creation of the past, specifically life on an 1890s farm. One of the few trips her father had taken Caitlin on was highlighted by a stop in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, featuring an actual working farm and exhibit residence that, like this, was period perfect. No electricity or running water, which was also how the Amish continued to live today.
The Martyn farmhouse reminded Caitlin of that. Only a bit too staid, perfect, and clean—more like an exhibit lifted out of a museum. The actual farm displays, including various gardens, were scattered through other areas of the grounds that, in Caitlin’s mind, made for the possible routes the perpetrators had used to make forty-one hostages vanish into nowhere. The lone exception was a single interactive field a stone’s throw from the farmhouse, laid out to allow visitors to work the crops as if they were real farmers. Only there were no crops, just a dead field with only dried, untended soil where whatever had once grown here had been. The field was rimmed on three sides by trees known as desert willows, which looked weak and sallow, as if starved of nutrients by the parched ground.
“There’s rooms upstairs you can arrange to sleep in,” Tepper told her when they entered the stuffy confines of the replica farmhouse, the windows closed against the day’s building heat. “School administrator I talked to told me that was the plan for the kids.”
“Probably too hot, too steamy. And it was a beautiful night to sleep out.”
“They all had sleeping bags with them, part of the stuff everyone was supposed to bring.”
“You got that list, D.W.?”
“Why?”
“Because it may be helpful to our cause. Won’t know exactly how until I see it.”
“I’ll order it up.”
“Let’s check out where the kids did end up sleeping, first.”
* * *
The field between the Martyn house and the sample farmland reminded Caitlin of the one where the chopper had landed, except the grass was browning here as well. The entire perimeter where the kids had bedded down had been sectioned off by yellow crime scene tape looped between sawhorses arranged in a de facto circle. Police, both uniformed and plainclothes, swarmed the area, along with crime scene technicians covering every square inch of area. Several of these held high-intensity lights that could detect blood or other secretions. Others dabbed at the ground with brushes that made them look like some kind of artists. Still more were taking samples of grass and soil at regularly spaced junctures, clacking off photograph after photograph, or measuring some impression they’d found in the grass.
A Houston patrolman in uniform held up the crime scene tape at their approach, Caitlin watching it stiffen and then flutter in the wind above her.
“What do you notice, D.W.?” she said to Captain Tepper.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“Right. No sleeping bags, backpacks, personal items. Whoever took them wanted to make it seem like they were never here. You ever know, seen, or heard of a kidnapping scene like this?”
Caitlin ran her eyes about, hoping to see something that had escaped her so far. The grass flattened or broke away under her boots, and the sound of the wind rustling through the trees that enclosed the field on three sides would’ve sounded even louder after dark last night. A few of the law enforcement types nodded toward Tepper and Caitlin as they passed, the crime scene techs paying them no heed at all.
“Not exactly,” Tepper said finally. He took off his hat and fanned himself with it. “Closest was a case I worked with your dad once. Couple kids got snatched from a playground. Whoever did it doused the scene in bleach. I could smell it as soon as I stepped out of my truck. I don’t smell anything like that here.”
“What happened to those kids?”
“Found dead in the perp’s trunk a week later. He’d pulled his car into the garage in midsummer. A neighbor called the locals when the stench got to be too much.” Tepper turned his face to the sun, then swung it away just as fast, as if that brief moment was all it took to burn his skin. “Guy takes bleach to a crime scene and then leaves the bodies to rot in the trunk of an old Chevy. Can you explain that to me?”
Caitlin couldn’t, something else on her mind. “What kind of security they have at night here?”
“Couple rent-a-cops crisscrossing the roads, doing routine rounds. Only one of them was on duty last night. The other called in sick and is already in custody. Locals are sweating him, but so far they’ve got nothing except a trash can full of vomit. I guess he really was sick.” Tepper paused and felt about his pockets for his Marlboros, until he remembered he’d left them somewhere else. “Maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way.”
“How’s that, Captain?”
“Maybe we should be focusing on how they got them out and away from here. Would have taken another bus or a truck, and the two-lane offers only two choices once they were off the grounds: right and left.”
Caitlin continued to survey the scene, picturing forty-one students and adults bedding down for the night, climbing into their sleeping bags, with some sweeping their flashlight beams across the night sky. “This all goes down and not one of the now missing managed to get any word out?”
“So?”
“Assume they were all asleep. Assume they all got snatched so fast nobody had a chance to make a call or send a text.”
“What we got is what you see,” Captain Tepper told her. “No footprints, tire tracks, socks, underwear. No evidence whatsoever anybody was ever here. Jesus H., Ranger, maybe those kids got sucked up into the sky by space aliens.”
“Or a team of professionals who’d done this kind of thing before, not necessarily in these parts.”
“Foreign terrorists?”
Caitlin shrugged. “Something we need to consider.”
“Then where’s the ransom call, Ranger, or call to the press to claim credit?”
“Give it time. How long did it take when that nut job grabbed a school b
us and buried it in the ground, kids and all?”
Before Tepper could respond, walkie-talkies started squawking across the field. The uniformed officers canted their heads toward their shoulder-mounted radios and the detectives jerked the handheld variety from their belts, one of them turning toward Tepper and Caitlin as he jogged past.
“Two of the missing kids just wandered out of the woods,” he said.
11
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Guillermo Paz leaned across the plank-wood table, his huge legs squeezed uncomfortably beneath it, with knees left to rub up against the underside. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I need to know you’re not a fake.”
Madam Caterina narrowed her gaze at him. “Test me, child.”
“It’s been a long time since anyone called me ‘child,’” Paz reflected, still wondering what exactly had attracted him to this storefront off East Houston Street in east San Antonio, which featured a sign outside that read, “Psychic Readings by Madam Caterina. Satisfaction Guaranteed.”
“We’re all God’s children, and God knows no age,” Madam Caterina told him.
She was a shapeless woman, her bulk concealed beneath a baggy black dress that looked more like a housecoat. Her face was patchwork of tone and texture, darker skin intermixed with lighter, as if her genes couldn’t make up their mind which race actually claimed her for its own. Her eyes were light, almost silvery, a strange complement to her raven hair. But her eyes seemed to change color depending on how the light from the single lamp dangling directly over the table struck them, sometimes seeming as dark as her hair. The lighter patches of her complexion looked shiny, almost translucent, as if she was the result of an unfinished portrait. Her hair was tied tightly up in a bun, with a woven silk scarf concealing it tight against her scalp.
The plank table before them, Paz noted, was empty. No crystal ball, tarot cards—not even a Ouija board. Just a box of tissues.