Strong Darkness

by Jon Land

  Kincannon nodded.

  William Ray removed his Colt but held it firm. “Now, who’s the man that sewed those tent flaps for you?”

  33

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “I’ve shot that Colt,” Caitlin told Sharon Yarlas, when she finally stopped. “My great-granddad William Ray gave it to his son, my granddad Earl.”

  “But I’d bet you never stuck it in a man’s mouth.”

  “No, not that gun anyway,” Caitlin winked. “I still own it and it still shoots.”

  “Well, being old doesn’t mean you can’t work as well as you need to. I can tell you that much from personal experience.” Sharon started playing with the kerchief strung round her neck again, taking notice of Caitlin watching her. “I’d like to go on, Ranger,” she said, suddenly sounding impatient, “but the next part of the story’s kind of a fog.”

  “You mind taking off that kerchief, ma’am?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Caitlin pointed toward the red cotton with her finger.

  “Well, I don’t see why.”

  “I’d like to see what you’re hiding beneath it, if you don’t mind.”

  Sharon frowned, but finally started to unwrap the kerchief with a deep sigh that seemed to compress her chest.

  The glass door leading from the next car opened and the four clowns entered, yammering it up with the seated patrons enjoying the ride in odd counterpoint to what Caitlin found herself looking at.

  A neat line of raw, inflamed tissue ringed Sharon Yarlas’s neck like a collar. It made Caitlin think of the ligature marks she’d seen on victims of strangulation and recalled how Doc Whatley described what an awful death that was.

  “Who did that to you, ma’am?” she asked the older woman, fresh laughter from the middle of the passenger car telling her the clowns were making their way up the aisle.

  “It’s my husband,” the older woman finally said, with another sigh, her voice cracking with subdued tears. “He’s not … well.”

  “Are we talking about Alzheimer’s, ma’am?”

  Sharon Yarlas started to take a deep breath and let it out halfway in. “Early stages. He’s still aware enough to know what’s happening to him, how he’s deteriorating, and his lucid moments are full of anger and rage. He takes it out on me because he doesn’t know what else to do.”

  Caitlin looked into the woman’s sad, moist eyes, seeing in her a portrait of unrecognized heroism standing by a loved one no matter what because it’s what people were supposed to do.

  “I’d like your phone number,” Caitlin told her.

  Sharon dabbed her eyes with the kerchief she’d unwrapped from her neck, then looped it back into place. “I want to keep this private, Ranger.”

  “I understand. But there are programs and funds available in some places for those who know how to look for them. I’m pretty good at such things and, if you’ll pass on that number, I’ll check into things on your behalf.”

  Caitlin started to ease the cell phone from the pocket of her jeans to switch it back on. Her gaze spotted a father using an identical phone to snap a picture of his son between two of the clowns just fifteen feet away from her now. The train continued shimmying over the uneven track bed, bending into the curve that jostled the clowns across the aisle with the young boy still between them. As Caitlin waited for her phone to power up, she glimpsed the clowns steadying their sneakered feet and then realized what had seemed all wrong before.

  Where were their clown shoes?

  The sneakers were all wrong, and the presence of the clowns had come as a surprise earlier to Sharon Yarlas, Caitlin remembered as her eyes locked with one of the clown’s in the same moment the two she’d lost sight of stormed up the aisle with pistols drawn.

  34

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

  Dylan clearly didn’t want to talk much about whatever had happened between him and the Chinese girl Kai, but Cort Wesley didn’t give him a choice.

  “This her?” he asked, unfolding the picture one of Dylan’s friends at Delta Phi had printed out for him and Caitlin.

  “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” the boy said, still achy after a nurse had removed his catheter.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “What, you can read my bladder now?”

  “Nope, I can read you.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes, the simple motion enough to send a bolt of pain that tightened his features into a grimace that straightened only when the boy settled himself with some deep breaths.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Cort Wesley said when he thought Dylan was ready again, leaving the picture atop his bedcovers in the same place the pink rose had been. “If this were Caitlin asking, would you answer then?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a Ranger.”

  “And I’m your father.”

  “You just made my point.”

  Cort Wesley was left shaking his head. His oldest son having been away for over two months now, since late August, left him with only the good memories and allowed him to push the perpetual conflict between them into the far recesses of his mind. Cort Wesley figured it was just part of the process of the son growing up and the father not ready to let go. He’d had so much time to make up for and Dylan’s high school years just hadn’t lasted long enough.

  “You said her name was Kai,” Cort Wesley persisted. “What else can you tell me about her?”

  Dylan tried to meet his gaze.

  “You still seeing double?”

  The boy nodded, not looking at him as he took the shot lifted off the porn video in hand again. “Where’d you get the picture?”

  “One of your friends in that fraternity printed it out for me after showing us the video.”

  “Us? Caitlin saw it too?”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “But it’s all right, ’cause she’s a Texas Ranger. I figure the next question she’d ask you is when exactly you first spotted this girl, Kai, you recognized from the video.”

  “At Viva.”

  “That be the place across from Spats, both managed by your friend Theo.”

  The boy’s eyes widened, then narrowed again when holding them that way made his head hurt. “Theo? Is there anyone at Brown you didn’t talk to about this?”

  “I was with a Texas Ranger, remember?”

  “Where’s Caitlin again?”

  “She had to go back home for some Ranger business. I already told you that.”

  “When?”

  “A while ago.”

  “I don’t remember. I got a concussion, don’t I?”

  “That’s what the doctor says.”

  Dylan shook his head deliberately. “Avoided one all season in football and look what happens. Sucks.” He paused and steadied himself with another series of deep breaths. “I want to call Caitlin.”

  Cort Wesley handed him his phone. “Give it your best shot, son.”

  Dylan held the handset, smirking. “I thought you were gonna get a new one.”

  “What’s wrong with what I’ve got?”

  “Dad, it’s a piece of shit. You don’t even have any apps on it, except that flashlight one you never use.”

  Cort Wesley was left staring at his oldest son as if the boy had just landed from another planet. “How do you know I don’t use it? I can’t wait until you have kids of your own, son.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can share in my misery.”

  Dylan had the phone pressed up against his ear now. “Very funny, Dad.”

  “You see me laughing? I want to hear more about this Kai.”

  “Like what?”

  “You met up with her the night you got jumped.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She texted you after your meetings and she met you at Spats.”

  Dylan nodded.

  “Your pals in the fraternity had the feeling she was in trouble or something, that you were trying your best to help her.”


  “She was in trouble for sure,” Dylan affirmed and extended the phone back toward Cort Wesley. “Straight to voice mail.”

  And that’s when all the lights in the hospital went out.

  35

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Caitlin shoved Sharon Yarlas all the way behind her and whipped out her SIG Sauer. One of the clowns being photographed brought a young boy in close against him for cover, fumbling his own pistol from its holster in the process.

  Thoughts and visions whiplashed through Caitlin’s mind, holding on the image of the clown makeup melting off the impersonators’ skin, revealing splotches of flesh color amid the white. She shot the trailing clowns first before either managed to get off a shot. Her bullets punched them backward, into and over seats where several train riders bore the brunt of the impact.

  The rest of the car, though, thought this was hilarious, part of the show for which they’d purchased an overpriced ticket. Well, not so overpriced anymore it seemed, what with a gal Texas Ranger shooting it out with four clown gunmen in a pretend gunfight.

  Applause rippled through the car as the clown holding the boy in one hand and a pistol in the other got off a shot that splattered an EXIT sign and sent shards of the red letters spraying in all directions. Several ended up in Caitlin’s hair, clinging there, and drawing more applause from an audience captivated by the show that now featured trick shooting.

  One of the clowns she thought she’d put down for good was stirring in the aisle and the fourth had thrown himself over a seat. He opened fire from there, kill shots for sure, if Caitlin hadn’t stooped low, dragging Sharon Yarlas down with her. She couldn’t shoot him through the cushion since the seat behind which he was crouched was occupied by a red-haired girl busy recording the whole thing on her cell phone, impervious to the bullets flying around her. To a man, woman, and child, no one in the car had yet realized this was very much the real thing.

  Until Caitlin dropped down all the way to her stomach, SIG steadied in two hands, and shot the clown square in the face, sending gory pieces of blood and bone flying through the air. The corpse was thrown backward onto the riders he’d squeezed himself among, coating them in brain and skull matter.

  The applause stopped.

  The screams began.

  Caitlin rolled sideways, fortunate to avoid the misaimed bullets fired by the clown still clutching the boy before him as a shield. No way she could risk a shot now, certainly not from her back where she’d ended up, so Caitlin did the next best thing.

  She shot out the car’s overhead skylight, one of the many new features added since she’d ridden the train as a girl. The safety glass disintegrated in a single instant, raining shards downward all over the clown where they settled into his red wig, the pieces shiny against the matte finish of his hair. Still dragging the boy with him, he shook them free, firing off shots until his revolver clicked empty, while retreating to the door separating this car from the next.

  He surged through it as Caitlin pushed herself back to her feet, greeted by errant fire from the wounded clown leaking blood out his baggy white costume. She was dimly aware of desperate cries and screams, the riders gone invisible to her after ducking down beneath their seats for protection.

  Caitlin fired two shots purposely low into the floor before the wounded clown, stilling his fire long enough to take better aim and put her last three bullets into him, one blowing part of his scalp into a wall patch between two windows. Then she started down the aisle, becoming aware of the screams and cries coming from the car through which the final clown was now moving with his young hostage in tow.

  A hand suddenly reached out and grasped her arm.

  “That’s my son, Ranger, my son!” a man blared, eyes wide in panic. “Please, please!”

  Caitlin shook herself free and moved on.

  36

  PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

  The room’s only illumination came from the streetlamps breaking the darkness beyond and the glow of headlights cruising along nearby Route 95 that splashed moving shadows across the walls of Dylan’s room.

  “Where’s your goddamn gun?” Dylan asked, sitting further upright in bed.

  “Back home, son. Airlines got a thing about civilians carrying them on flights.”

  Dylan looked down at Cort Wesley’s phone, which he was still holding after his call to Caitlin that had gone straight to voice mail. His finger rolled across the screen, activating the flashlight app that shone on a white-coated figure, a doctor, standing in the doorway.

  An Asian doctor.

  He started into the room, was halfway through the door when he whipped out something black and shiny from beneath his lab coat. Cort Wesley recognized it as a mini-submachine gun, with a sound suppressor affixed to its barrel, as he threw himself into motion, crashing into the door and slamming it hard into the Chinese gunman, pinning whatever kind of gun it was against the wall. Cort Wesley jerked the door backward, cracked an elbow into the smaller man’s skull, and then went for his weapon. He had reached and managed to grab hold of the cold steel much too easily, he realized, because the Chinese gunman had let him.

  Cort Wesley let the weapon go flying from his grasp and felt a blow slam into his ribs with the force of an iron bar. He recognized the move as some kind of martial arts strike, thrown with an open hand so what hit him was the palm and heel with enough force to rattle his ribs. Cort Wesley felt the air burst out of him, but clung to his calm even as his breath fled him.

  The Chinese man was a whirling blur of muscle and bone, no features Cort Wesley could lock on to long enough to focus a strike. And before instinct could take over, the smaller man unleashed a wild flurry of blows that Cort Wesley blocked, deflected, dodged, ducked under, yet still felt enough land to leave him dazed and disoriented.

  Cort Wesley felt the back of his head slam into something that shattered on impact and realized momentum had carried the two of them into the bathroom. Mirror glass rained all around him, the biggest shard of it catching the dim reflection of a can of disinfectant spray sitting atop the toilet bowl. Cort Wesley groped for it, missing on the first two flails and nearly knocking it to the floor with a third, until he locked it into his grasp with the fourth.

  The Chinese man was twisting in close, for what Cort Wesley vaguely recognized as a move that would snap his neck like a twig, when he found the activator and snapped the can before the smaller man’s eyes as he hit it. He sprayed and kept spraying, his assailant wailing up a storm as his deadly hands sprang upward to his burning eyes.

  Cort Wesley gave no quarter from there, pummeling the smaller man’s ribs and face, and then driving him backward, back into the room where only Dylan’s bed stopped his pitch and held him upright. He seemed to be slumping to the floor, Cort Wesley just realizing the bed was empty, when a knife flashed in the Chinese man’s hand.

  Spittle flew from the man’s mouth, his eyes wide with fury, as he slashed the knife sideways, its blade struggling to glint in the near darkness of the room. Cort Wesley narrowly avoided the first blow and managed to deflect the second, but a third followed a feint that left a gash down his side. Light exploded before his eyes, the pain following fast, and Cort Wesley felt his wounded side was freezing up solid. Hobbled, he was still able to knock the next blow aside while managing only a halfhearted counter with his other arm.

  Then he saw the knife rearing back, nothing he could do to stop its surge from the angle at which it was coming. Still he tried to twist, tried to get his arm up when …

  CRACK!

  … the muffled sound coming from inside him, it seemed, until the Chinese man froze in place before him. His eyes locked open and glassy before he keeled over forward to reveal Dylan perched on the floor holding the silenced mini-machine pistol in hand. Holding it steady in case the would-be killer moved again.

  Cort Wesley moved gingerly across the floor as hot pain continued to seer his side where the knife had grazed him. Dylan clung to the weapon, holdi
ng it straight and still as if he still had a target in his sights. A thin wisp of smoke bled from the barrel and drifted past him before dissipating in the stale room air.

  He took the mini-machine pistol from his son’s grasp, the boy only then snapping alert as if roused from a dream. He met Cort Wesley’s gaze, but couldn’t hold it.

  “We gotta move, son.”

  He helped Dylan to his feet as a vast shadow appeared in the doorway, blocking what little light the corridor had to shed.

  37

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  The clown was halfway down the aisle of the rearmost train car, revolver in one hand and hostage boy in the other, when Caitlin surged through the door and caught him in her sights.

  “Let the boy go and drop the weapon!” she called out, SIG steadied before her.

  The clown was almost to the back door marked EMERGENCY EXIT, no place else to go from there.

  “Now! You hear me? Let him go now!”

  Caitlin wanted to shoot then, but the boy was just too close and she was still too far away to be sure of hitting the right target.

  “Last chance!” she shouted anyway, thinking of something else.

  Her hand was already stretching upward, reaching for the emergency brake pull her grandfather had told her about yanking one day to forestall a robbery on a train even older than this one. She pulled downward and heard the screech of the train’s huge brakes engaging just before the initial jolt of displaced gravity threw all the passengers forward.

  Including the clown.

  But he latched on to a handhold just in time, the boy separated from his grasp as the clown burst through the door at the train’s rear and vanished an instant ahead of Caitlin’s bullet shattering the glass window. She figured he’d jumped off the train for sure, but reaching the remnants of the window provided no view of him fleeing beyond, meaning he’d chosen another route of escape from the slowing train: The roof.

  With that, Caitlin surged through the door and grabbed hold of the highest ladder rung she could grasp, following the clown’s path up onto the train’s roof.