Strong Enough to Die: A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

“This is a closed hearing, Mr. Delladonne.”

  “With all due respect, Madam Chairwoman, the only things closed here are your minds.”

  “Sir,” followed Winstrom, her voice cracking slightly as the pitch picked up, “I’d like to remind you who signs your checks. And that ink will dry up just as soon as we give the word. I hope I’m making myself clear.”

  Delladonne nodded, apparently in concession until his dark eyes fixed forward. “And me thinking it was the American people who signed my checks. For doing my job. For doing everything I can to keep them safe.”

  “We are those people’s duly elected representatives, Mr. Delladonne. And, as such, you will answer to us.”

  “Whatever you say, Senator.”

  “And I’d like to add,” bellowed Senator Angelo Cataldi, his voice booming through the chamber even though he was seated too far back for his microphone to pick it up, “that right now the five of us are the American people.”

  “What a pity.”

  “Could you repeat that, please?”

  “You heard me, Senator. You hauled me in here because you don’t believe project Fire Arrow works. I’m telling you it does and, for your own good, to leave it at that.”

  This time Cataldi spoke into his mike. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’d like me to demonstrate the efficacy of Fire Arrow.”

  “I believe we’ve already made that point quite clear,” said Chairwoman Winstrom.

  Now it was Delladonne who leaned forward, close enough to his microphone to smell the metal and dried sweat. “Then, ma’am, how do you suppose your constituents would feel if they found out one of the Senate’s foremost pro-life advocates underwent an abortion last year?” Delladonne paused to hold the senator’s shocked stare. “Or your husband?”

  Winstrom drew the mike toward her but said nothing through her trembling lips.

  “You’re out of order, Mr. Delladonne!” Angelo Cataldi shot out through the silence.

  “As you are on the nights you visit your twelve-year-old stepson’s bedroom.”

  Cataldi seemed to lose his breath for a moment before his features flushed with a darkening hue of red. “You are heading toward a contempt citation, sir, along with slander.” He looked toward the other senators in search of support, but none met his gaze. “You think you can come into this chamber and intimidate us with your baseless allegations? This is the United States Senate, sir, not a corporate boardroom.”

  “Baseless? Perhaps, Senator, you’d like me to quote, for the record, the dates and times of your visits, starting with last Thursday at 1:25 A.M.” This time, Delladonne held Cataldi’s stare until the senator looked down, pretending to consult the pages before him. “Do you need to hear more, Senator?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Delladonne,” Senator Winstrom said, recovering her voice. “None of this display on your part is necessary. I remind you where you are.”

  “I know where I am, and I’ll tell you what is necessary, Madam Chairwoman,” Delladonne resumed, turning his gaze on Letroy Raskins. “Inspecting the financial records of the Third Baptist Church located in the honorable Mr. Raskins’s district. I wonder how the parishioners would feel if they learned a quarter million in unreported dollars from collection plates helped finance his last campaign.”

  “That’s a bold-faced lie!” yelled Raskins, rising from his chair so fast that he spilled over his water glass, soaking the papers before him. He seemed not to notice.

  “I can produce the passive surveillance that proves quite the opposite.” Not giving Raskins the opportunity to answer, Delladonne jerked his gaze toward Franklin Bayliss. “Or how about I produce the computer logs that reveal you, Senator, have a penchant for visiting pornographic sites specializing in bondage and sadomasochism?” Then, to William Gottlieb, “Or that you, Senator, struck your wife on four occasions last month and three the month before. I can provide the precise dates and times, if you wish,” Delladonne continued before Gottlieb could protest, “just as I did for Senator Cataldi. How about I do that for you, Senator?”

  Gottlieb breathed heavily into his microphone, the sound carrying over the room’s hidden speakers.

  Delladonne let the committee see him smile slightly. “Since you have all been so vociferous in your criticism of Fire Arrow, I thought it best to give you a demonstration of its effectiveness firsthand. Now I probably committed upward of a dozen violations of the current statutes in the process, but I don’t think we want the record to reflect that, do we? Nor did I think it wise to bring the visual evidence of your indiscretions here with me today. I thought it best to store them elsewhere, for safekeeping.”

  Cataldi, Raskins and Bayliss all began to speak at once until Winstrom flipped a hidden switch to shut off their microphones.

  Delladonne rose from his chair casually. “If there are no further questions, Senators, I’ll be on my way,” he said, stepping back from the table. “If you need the documentation I spoke of, you have my phone number.” He started to turn away, then swung back toward the dais. “Just like I have yours.”

  Harmon Delladonne picked up the receiver as soon as the door to the limousine was closed behind him. No calls could either be received or placed from the phone; for security reasons it served only as a message board with encryption software that changed the number a dozen times per hour. Delladonne hit a single button and heard the recording of a familiar voice greet him.

  “It’s Clayton, sir. I’ve found Peter Goodwin.”

  9

  SURVIVOR CENTER, THE PRESENT

  Caitlin sat on a chair at the side of her husband’s bed. A husband who recognized neither her nor himself. She made sure her back was to the wall-mounted camera so as not to betray the conflicted agony twisted across her features in stark contrast to the tense stare etched onto Peter’s.

  She could not say why she hadn’t told Rita Navarro the truth immediately. And with each passing second, then minute, then hour, her lie of omission became so firmly rooted in her psyche that she couldn’t turn back.

  Why?

  Because she would’ve been removed from the case, if not from the center entirely. Because, knowing Peter as she did, Caitlin felt herself better equipped than anyone else to help him become the warm, sensitive and brilliant man he’d once been. Because at the heart of all this was a mystery the Texas Ranger in her needed to solve. And, down deeper, Caitlin wanted to find who had done this because, because . . .

  That was what she did, what she was.

  Except she wasn’t anymore, thought she was past it all until she saw her husband utterly helpless, his expression as pained as his once fertile mind was empty and his body broken in more ways than she could imagine.

  Peter Goodwin, government contractor pronounced dead in Iraq last year. Someone was behind the subterfuge. Someone had scrambled her husband’s brain and left him for dead.

  Someone Caitlin was going to make pay.

  . . .

  “Ms. Strong?” Rita Navarro had prodded when Caitlin’s eyes remained fixed on Peter in disbelief.

  Caitlin quickly brushed the shock from her face. “What’s wrong with him?” she managed to ask.

  Navarro led the way out of Peter’s room and spoke when they were back in the hallway. “It’s called Cotard’s syndrome.”

  “An identity disorder, right?” Caitlin managed.

  “I’m surprised you’ve heard of it. Not many have. A French psychiatrist named Jules Cotard treated several patients who suffered from a syndrome he referred to as délire de negation, characterized by the delusions that one is dead or the world no longer exists,” Navarro explained. “Some patients feel they have literally dissolved, that their brains have rotted away or their insides are gone.”

  Caitlin’s neck muscles had locked to the point where as much as she wanted to turn her head to look back at Peter inside the room, she couldn’t.

  Navarro unhooked a clipboard from a wall-mounted hook next to t
he doorway and consulted it before resuming. “In New York, the patient was treated with a regimen of haloperidol, followed by a combination of valproic acid and fluoxetine. When this regimen failed to produce any discernible results, the patient was treated with electroconvulsive therapy.”

  Caitlin shuddered, the heat in her throat turning cold in an instant.

  “That treatment resulted in further withdrawal and a transfer to the survivor center in Tampa. Once there, his dosages of haloperidol and valproic acid were tapered. Fluoxetine was increased to forty milligrams per day, and risperidone was initiated and titrated to three milligrams a day.”

  Rita Navarro hung the clipboard back on the hook and took off her glasses. “The Tampa center felt they were too short staffed to fully care for the patient’s needs and requested a transfer here. We have continued the recommended drug protocols while initiating a course of traditional psychiatric therapy, during which,” Navarro finished, “the patient has remained mostly unresponsive thus far.”

  Caitlin felt the need to say something, lest Navarro’s suspicions began to flare anew. “What happens if that continues?”

  Navarro frowned, regarding Caitlin’s question with a grimness that seemed to turn her expression sallow. “Then we’d have no choice but to conclude that a convalescent or nursing home might be better suited to take care of his needs. That’s where too many torture victims end up. And once there, they almost never leave.”

  Caitlin held up a picture in front of Peter of him happy and smiling, her hand trembling slightly. The picture had been taken just before he left for Iraq, and she’d peeled it out of its frame at her apartment that morning. If Rita Navarro noticed, she’d likely assume the picture had been part of his file.

  “Do you know this man?” Caitlin asked Peter, feeling the hot clog forming anew in her throat and forcing her to push her breath past it.

  Peter regarded the picture vaguely. “No.”

  Now, instead of pushing her breath, she pushed herself to remain professional. “Does he look familiar?”

  “No.”

  “A little maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Does he look like you?”

  “There is no me.”

  “Tell me something you remember.”

  Peter’s eyes flickered back to the picture. “Looking at that.”

  “What about before?”

  “There is no before.”

  “We met yesterday. Do you remember that?”

  “There is no yesterday.”

  Physically, Peter had aged a decade in the eighteen months since he left. His once long glossy brown hair had been cut short and had thinned noticeably, whitening at the temples. His skin had a sickly gray tone to it, and all the life and color had been bled out of his eyes.

  “Physically, the patient has suffered multiple hairline fractures of the hands and feet, clearly inflicted to induce pain,” Rita Navarro told her. “Both his rotator cuffs have been torn from being placed in a stress position for long periods of twenty-four to forty-eight hours at a time, and he suffers from a heart condition consistent with hypothermic distress from similarly prolonged exposure to freezing water, also known as ice baths. Lung scarring and diminished function indicates repeated so-called waterboarding techniques meant to simulate drowning—”

  “In your experience,” Caitlin interrupted, “who would use those kinds of techniques?”

  “As in?”

  “As in countries, nations, governments.”

  “Well, we’ve only had experience with two Americans prior to this one and both of those were soldiers who’d been prisoners of war, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.”

  “And?”

  Rita Navarro looked as if she didn’t want to answer Caitlin’s question. “Ranger Strong—”

  “It’s ‘miss,’ ma’am.”

  “Is it? Because right now you sound more like an investigator than a therapist. The source of our patients’ suffering is germane only when it pertains directly to their treatment. If you want to find out who did this to him, I suggest you rejoin the Rangers.”

  Caitlin thought about pressing things but didn’t, afraid that would result only in her being removed from Peter’s case. Better to let the string play itself out and find the truth from the best source of all: Peter himself.

  10

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS, THE PRESENT

  Cort Wesley sat in the car across from the neat Mexican-style ranch house in a cul-de-sac in Shavano Park. Twenty miles from San Antonio was close enough for him to keep an eye on the two sons he’d never actually met and far enough to keep his enemies away. He had parked in the shade of some brugalia trees, not planning to stay long since trespassers in such suburbs were inevitably noticed and reported. Especially if they were driving a beat-up Ford with bad plates lent to them by Pablo Asuna.

  Asuna had also gotten Cort Wesley a Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter. Not his favorite gun, but a reliable firearm generally with a fifteen-shot magazine and polymer frame normally reserved for law enforcement. The gun was tucked under the passenger seat now, well out of view of any dutiful cop who might happen to approach.

  Cort Wesley never sent his boys cards or gifts for birthdays or Christmas, sent his ex-girlfriend Maura extra cash around that time of year so she could buy them something nice instead. Maura’s father was Mexican and his sons had gotten most of their dark, brooding looks from her, although he felt certain, even at this distance, that the oldest boy had his eyes.

  Dylan, almost fourteen now, was so middle class it almost made Cort Wesley smile. He and his younger brother Luke used their mother’s last name Torres, which suited Cort Wesley just fine. Arranging money for them while in prison had grown increasingly difficult, Pablo Asuna shedding light on a situation that had his former employers gone from the area. Out of sight, out of mind, as far as they were concerned regarding him. Since Cort Wesley’s services were no longer required, they had no need to honor their commitment to keep funneling money through Asuna to his sons. That thought left him gripping the faded, steamy dashboard covering just over the console hard enough to leave fingertip impressions in the vinyl.

  Maura had let the boys build a skateboarding half-pipe, sharply sloped twin sides fashioned out of plywood already showing marks and wear from the wheels, in the front yard. Cort Wesley found himself transfixed as he watched Dylan ride it. Doing air-grabbing tricks that left him soaring toward the sky only to land back on his board, his long black hair flying in all directions. Inside The Walls, Cort Wesley had known a number of Latino gang members with hair like that, often tied back into ponytails. He remembered this now because he’d used a plastic knife to cut off the ponytail of an especially irksome one in the middle of the cafeteria for all the maximum security cons to see. Not one of the punk’s fellow gang members came to his aid or so much as moved a muscle, not about to risk a substantially worse fate at Cort Wesley’s hands.

  Cort Wesley pushed his fingers deeper into the console, while one of Dylan’s friends took a turn on the half-pipe, wondering what he was feeling here. It felt like pride that his son was the leader of the boys assembled, the biggest and best of the group. He could tell how the others demurred to him, thirsting for his attention and approval the way cons inside would do anything to win a glance or a nod from Cort Wesley. He also noticed a klatch of neighborhood girls gathered nearby, doing everything possible to get Dylan’s attention without appearing to.

  The half-pipe had been built to take as much advantage of the yard’s shade as possible. But the angle of the late-afternoon sun sliced through the branches, splaying a combination of light and shadow across his son’s face. The effect was to make him seem like two people in one and Cort Wesley couldn’t help but wonder if there was some crazy reason why he thought of that.

  He wanted to be the same man he was before he went inside. Longed for the simplicity and clarity his old life had provided. But something had changed in him inside The Walls, something he didn’t t
otally grasp yet.

  Cort Wesley hated his efficiency room at the Alamo Motel because it was too big, not too small. After making forty square feet home for the better part of five years, five or six times that seemed massive. Made him feel like he was going to get swallowed up by all that space he couldn’t fill. First night in, he had to shove the bed up against the wall, like his bunk in Huntsville, in order to sleep. Ended up turning the light on because it was never really dark in the corridors of The Walls.

  He knew the esteem that his well-earned reputation had earned him. Knew cops would never risk pulling him over after running his plate. Knew gang-bangers would switch to the other side of the street or duck down an alley if they saw him coming.

  But his kids didn’t know him at all. And it was too dangerous to start now, especially with the umbrella of protection provided by his former employers gone with them to New Orleans. The same gang-banging assholes that used to cross the street might think differently now. He’d like to move Maura and the kids somewhere safe, like a Caribbean island or a bank vault. Maura had never married, and the thought of another man in his sons’ lives left Cort Wesley gnashing his teeth and tightening his grip on the rim of the dashboard. Before he knew it, his fingers had dug into the vinyl covering and began peeling it back like flesh off a bone.

  Cort Wesley wondered if things would be any different if he hadn’t been inside for so long which made him think of Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, as Dylan took to the half-pipe again. Soaring in loose-fitting jeans and a baggy T-shirt.

  Releasing his hold on the dashboard, Cort Wesley figured he’d take care of the past first, then go from there.

  11

  SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT

  Peter was seated in a chair today in one of the downstairs treatment rooms, still wearing his bathrobe. He had wrapped his arms about himself and was shivering slightly as if frightened by what he registered. A breeze blown through an open window sent the blinds clacking against one another, the sound startling Peter enough to make him lurch from his chair. He glanced about, eyes brushing across the room’s contents without seeming to really take anything in. Then he settled back with a pained grimace stretched across his expression, evidence of just how little tolerance his broken body had for movement of any kind. A combination of his current drug regimen and their desire to keep him reasonably coherent had kept the Survivor Center’s physicians from prescribing painkillers stronger than Tylenol for now.