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

by Land, Jon

  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

  SAN ANTONIO

  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

  JUÁREZ, MEXICO

  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 yawne
d.

  “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

  SAN ANTONIO

  “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?”

  “I guess so, though I don’t know why’d you want one from a simple law enforcement agent like myself. Right now, I’d like you to buzz Mr. Tawls and tell him there’s a Texas Ranger here to see him.”

  The receptionist had the phone at her ear. “There’s someone here to see you, Mr. Tawls.… No, someone else. A Texas Ranger.” Eyes glued to Caitlin now. “Caitlin Strong.” She hung up the phone. “You can go right in.”

  And Cort Wesley followed her through the door without asking if it was okay.

  * * *

  Caitlin smelled the cologne before she even glimpsed the big man swathed in it. Regent Tawls had played on the defensive line in college back in the sixties and had gone soft in all the wrong places. His big-boned frame now sagged in the middle, his considerable stomach pushing the boundaries of his suit coat and shirt. A crackling sounded as he pushed himself from the chair, the seat of his pants peeling up off the upholstery, to which perspiration had glued it. His face was plump and round, looking like an overgrown baby’s. Drawing closer, Caitlin saw it was shiny with sweat that similarly blotched his shirt in discolored patches.

  Tawls wiped his hand with a handkerchief and extended it across his desk, eyeing Cort Wesley with no small degree of trepidation. “A pleasure, Ranger, a pleasure to meet a true hero of the state of Texas.”

  Caitlin took his hand, finding it still damp and wondering what it had felt like before Tawls had dried it. “Ranger Caitlin Strong, sir, and this is Cort Wesley Masters. Mr. Masters has uncovered some information pertaining to a current investigation I’d like to ask you about.”

  “I’m all ears, Ranger,” Tawls said, forcing an overly bright smile born of some extra-strength teeth whitener.

  “Sir, your family once owned a farm just outside of Devine off Route Ninety, a property you are currently attempting to sell through your real estate interest. I believe you took over its management sometime in the early to mid seventies. Is that correct?”

  The moment froze between them, the smile slipping off Tawls’s face and leaving Cort Wesley to wonder exactly how Caitlin had come by that information.

  “Yes or no, Mr. Tawls?”

  “Yes, Ranger, yes.” He forced another smile. “Some of the best feed corn you ever saw.”

  “But that’s not all you grew, sir, was it?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I believe you had occasion to meet my father, who was also a Ranger, sometime around nineteen-eighty. Jim Strong.”

  Tawls stood there, his breathing so loud it sounded like a vacuum cleaner powering down. His eyes suddenly looked small, twin holes drilled in his flabby face. The smell of sickeningly sweet aftershave was overpowering this close to him and Caitlin caught just a whiff of the sour odor he’d doused himself to hide.

  “I was asking you about your past encounters with my father, Mr. Tawls. I believe they involved you reserving a substantial stretch of your acreage in Medina County for marijuana growing.”

  Cort Wesley felt the floor go wobbly beneath his feet.

  “I’ve heard it told you were one of the most prominent marijuana growers of your time. My father wasn’t able to do much about it, since the local law and political types earned plenty off your profits. But he did investigate that suspicious fire that burned almost all your bud crops to the ground. Don’t believe his hard work ever did yield the perpetrator, though, did it?”

  Tawls’s only response was even louder breathing that had turned wet and wheezy.

  “Mr. Tawls?”

  “No, Ranger, it didn’t.”

  “A damn shame.” Caitlin aimed her gaze back at Cort Wesley. “Now, Mr. Masters here has some photographs that may help us finally nail the man who cost you all those millions in lost profits.”

  It took a few moments for Tawls to realize Caitlin was waiting for a response.

  “I sold my farm a decade later and went into real estate. Since then, the property’s gone through a bunch of owners who never did much besides flip it, the most recent of which gave me the listing a few months back. He didn’t even know I was the original owner,” Tawls added, shaking his head.

  “Cort Wesley,” Caitlin prompted.

  He laid a series of photographs down on Regent Tawls’s desk blotter picturing what could only be Maura Torres as a baby, toddler, and young girl in the company of her own parents and sister in photographs dated between 1973 and 1980.

  “Do you recognize these people, Mr. Tawls?” Caitlin asked him, hesitating just long enough before continuing. “Please, take your time before you answer.”

  “Yes,” Tawls said, after putting on a pair of reading glasses and studying the pictures closer.

  “Do you know who they are?”

  Tawls eased a few of the pictures back toward her, leaving damp fingerprint stains atop the likenesses. “I believe the man’s name was Mateo Torres. His wife was named Carmen. I don’t recall either of the children’s names.”

  “Could the baby have been named Maura?”

  Tawls shrugged. “Could have been anything. I don’t believe we were ever introduced.”

  Caitlin ignored the snippiness of his remark. “But your memory is strong otherwise. I think that’s because you have a reason to remember Mateo Torres, don’t you?”

  Tawls drummed the desk with his fingers before answering. “Is this off the record?”

  “We’re not investigating you here, sir. At least, not yet.”

  He swallowed hard, having trouble meeting Caitlin’s gaze now. “Mateo Torres and his business partner stole from me, Ranger.”

  “You report that to my father?”

  “I couldn’t
, on account of what it was he stole.”

  “Marijuana,” Caitlin figured. “How much marijuana, Mr. Tawls?”

  “A whole truck full. They stole the truck too.”

  “And this would have been…”

  “Nineteen-eighty, just like you said. Torres’s daughter you’re so interested in must have been about seven at the time.”

  Caitlin stole a quick glance at Cort Wesley. “What about this business partner of his?”

  Tawls searched out another picture with his eyes and pointed at it. “That’s him there standing with Torres, his little girl about the exact same age as … Maura, was it?”

  “You recall the other man’s name, sir?”

  “Cantú,” Tawls told her, “Enrique Cantú.”

  PART SIX

  Night and day will the ranger trail his prey, through rain and shine, until the criminal is located and put behind bars where he will not molest or disturb peaceful citizens. For bravery, endurance and steadfast adherence to duty at all times, the ranger is in a class by himself. Such was the old ranger, and such is the ranger of today.

  Ranger James Gillet, Western Horseman Magazine (1881)

  50

  SAN ANTONIO

  “I know what you’re thinking, Ranger,” D. W. Tepper said from the other side of the Denny’s booth where he’d met Caitlin for breakfast the next morning. The restaurant was situated just short of the River Walk and still offered the best breakfast in town.

  “What am I thinking, Captain?”

  “That this Enrique Cantú was somehow related to Esteban Cantú, the provincial governor who started the whole damn Mexican drug smuggling business by bringing opium into California through Baja.”

  “Man gets celebrated as a hero for all these public works projects he undertook to build the roads that made life a snap for his smugglers. But I don’t think that at all, sir…”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “… I know it. I did some research to confirm my suspicions, D.W. Turns out Enrique Cantú, business partner of Mateo Torres, was Esteban Cantú’s grandson. That means we now have something directly linking Maura Torres’s father to the drug trade.”