Strong Justice

by Jon Land

  Faye Magruder told him she hadn’t changed her cosmetics in fifteen years, even stopped using them altogether after her husband was killed by an IED in Iraq and she’d buried her favorite perfume with him in the ground. Anyway, cosmetics couldn’t explain the pounding headaches that had been racking her as of late. She’d never suffered from migraines, but imagined this must have been what they felt like. They were at their worst in school, especially bad by the end of the day.

  And having her young charges stuck inside while hailstones pounded the classroom windows wasn’t helping things either. The kids were wild and unruly and Faye Magruder was willing the day to end when Molly Beaumont approached her desk holding a pair of scissors and a cutout floral design she’d traced herself.

  “Now, what have we here?” Magruder said, spreading the floral design out before her.

  She never noticed the little girl raise the pair of scissors she was still holding, much less see them come down. Not until the blades had pierced the back of her hand and dug deep did she realize something had gone terribly wrong—and then only because her hand was literally stuck to the desk by the scissors that had dug into the wood beneath it.

  She felt her ears bubble and it took a moment for her to realize it was her own scream doing it, as little Molly Beaumont looked on, giggling with glee.

  3

  SWEETWATER, TEXAS; THE PRESENT

  “You understand why I asked you to meet me here, Meeks?” Hollis Tyree III said to the man keeping pace with him down Main Street of Sweetwater, Texas.

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “That’s right, you haven’t been with me long enough. I walk like I own the town, don’t I?”

  Meeks remained silent.

  “That’s because I do pretty much, the real estate anyway. This is home, Meeks, where it all began, where I come when things need sorting out and I need to be left alone.” Tyree gazed about almost whimsically. “Only place people just let me be, besides a friendly hello. You see, my grandfather was constable of this town when the oil boom hit. To hear him tell it, it was the most lawless time imaginable. But he stuck it out and a good thing too, since the biggest strike of all was found smack dab on his two-hundred-acre spread. Birth of the Tyree family fortune. Now it’s the only place in the world I can walk around like normal without a parade of bodyguards and business suits following me.”

  “You do have me, sir,” the man walking at Hollis Tyree’s side said. At six-foot-two they were the same height, but Meeks was by far the broader. He kept his hair somewhere between short and long, a man neither comfortable with his military background nor able to embrace the civilian lifestyle that had replaced it. His face had an unfinished quality about it, ridged and angular as if a sculptor had fashioned the broad strokes but never got around to adding the detail work. The result was pocks and gaps like a natural rock formation where flesh should have been. Some of it was scarring, some of it wasn’t, and even Meeks himself couldn’t tell which was which.

  Hollis Tyree, on the other hand, had the rawboned, sunburned features of the derrick workers and riggers who’d flooded Sweetwater over eighty years before. He looked like a man who was comfortable in the field because he’d been there from land to sea and had the scars and pain to prove it. Like his grandfather and father, Tyree had learned the oil business from the bottom up, standing side by side with laborers whose yearly salary he now made in a nanosecond.

  “You like working for me, Meeks?”

  “I do, sir. You speak your mind, make it clear what it is you want accomplished on your behalf.”

  Tyree nodded and stopped suddenly, Meeks gliding to a halt by his side. “Over there, across the street,” he said, gesturing toward a chain drug outlet, video franchise, and local bookstore. “There used to be a dozen derricks. They knocked out the backs of buildings to drill them. They’re all gone now, not a single one left. I figure we should have left at least one rig standing to remind this town of its heritage.”

  Meeks gave Tyree his space, let him continue without interrupting.

  “My favorite place in the world is still my grandfather’s spread. Been in the family since his grandfather came to Texas after the revolution. He had to defend it from Indians more than once, Comanche streaming across the plains like a storm the way he told it. You’ve got history in these parts too, don’t you, Meeks?”

  “My ancestors were Pinkerton men come west for entirely different reasons, sir.”

  “They worked for Hearst I seem to recall.”

  “They did.”

  “Killed some men in his employ, I imagine.”

  “First for gold. The oil came later. Military men like me before they signed on as Pinkertons.”

  Hollis Tyree swung away from the spot where oil derricks had once spiraled upward while ravaging the earth. “Tell me about Albion, Meeks.”

  “A half dozen incidents now, the latest being this teacher who nearly lost a hand to a nine-year-old wielding scissors.”

  Tyree’s face wrinkled in revulsion. “No connection found yet.”

  “None that my people have been able to detect. Just an elected sheriff and his deputies handling things. Easily contained.” He paused, holding Tyree’s stare. “For now.”

  Tyree’s gaze swept over the main drag of Sweetwater, imagining it choked in mud and men in the time of his grandfather. “You have children, Meeks?”

  “They live with their mother.”

  Tyree’s hands clenched into fists. “I had two, a son and a daughter, both in college. They went to Mexico on spring break two years ago and disappeared. Just dropped off the face of the earth, along with a couple of their friends. I spent the first week waiting for the ransom call and the last two years still praying it’ll come. So here I am with all the money in the world to buy their lives back and nobody gives me the chance.” Tyree’s eyes misted up, his sagging shoulders shrinking their breadth and making him look suddenly frail. “I never told you this before?”

  “I read about it, Mr. Tyree.”

  “Here’s something you didn’t read. I sent an army of investigators down there and paid off enough government officials to start my own country.” Tyree shook his head, slowly with no emotion in his gaze. “Nothing. Not a single shred of evidence linking the disappearance of my kids to anyone. I haven’t stopped looking, I’ll never stop looking.”

  “I’ve got some contacts down there myself, sir. Glad to use them if you’d like me to.”

  “Of all the things you could do on my behalf, that’d be the most important. I’m looking at the end of the line for my family name. I spent the first two months my kids were gone moping. What brought me back was knowing I had to find something to put myself into. Something worthwhile that could make me something other than money. That’s what we’re doing in Tunga County is all about. And now you’re telling me it might be going to hell too.” He paused. “Albion’s about the same size as Sweetwater, isn’t it?”

  “Give or take a thousand, I guess so.”

  Hollis Tyree’s eyes roamed the center of town again, seeming to cast his gaze well beyond it. “A lot of people.”

  “Everything’s relative, Mr. Tyree.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  4

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  Caitlin entered San Antonio’s Central Police Substation with her Stetson held by her side, the haircut she’d been promising herself put off yet again. The clerk behind the glass reception counter, a pudgy middle-aged Latino with black hair dye leaking onto his temples, regarded her and the Texas Ranger badge pinned to her denim shirt and rose almost reverently. The building’s air-conditioning was fighting a losing battle with the ninety-degree temperatures outside, accounting for the sweat that had begun to bleed the combed-in color from the clerk’s hair.

  “Caitlin Strong for Captain Alonzo. I’m here about Dylan Torres.”

  The clerk’s gaze remained fixed upon her, lingering on her breasts. Caitlin’s stomach was flat, her arms
and shoulders well muscled from all the riding she’d done as a little girl and gym time later. She’d taken up boxing more recently, found it to be the perfect workout for keeping her body toned and her mind off things she was trying to put aside.

  “Sure thing, Ranger,” the clerk said. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “Likewise,” Caitlin started, brushing some stray hair from her face as she read the clerk’s nametag, “Officer Ortega.”

  “The captain’s expecting you,” Ortega said, lifting a phone to his ear. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sorry to bother you with this, Ranger.”

  “No need to apologize, and I appreciate the call.”

  Ortega still had the phone pressed against his ear. Caitlin hadn’t seen him hit a number yet.

  “Is it true what they say about that town down in Mexico back last year?”

  “Don’t know. They say lots of things.”

  “That a hundred men died in the gunfight.”

  “I didn’t stop to count, Officer.”

  “Casa del Diablo—something like that.”

  “The House of the Devil,” Caitlin acknowledged, her gaze lowering to remind Ortega about the phone.

  Ortega pressed a key and spoke quickly before replacing the receiver. “Captain Alonzo is waiting for you. Fourth office down on the right. I’ll buzz you in.”

  Caitlin heard the buzz followed by the click of the security door snapping electronically open. She grabbed the latch and started to pull, turning back toward the clerk.

  “It wasn’t a hundred men at all,” she told Ortega, whose face drooped in disappointment. “It was ninety-five,” Caitlin followed with a wink.

  Captain Consuelo Alonzo greeted Caitlin with a cursory handshake, as cold and impersonal as it got. The substation commander’s office was plain and neatly furnished with the modern amenities the building’s relatively recent construction allowed. Alonzo didn’t smile and closed her office door after ushering Caitlin inside. She was a stocky, muscular woman who wore her hair up in a bun that would fit neatly under her cap. A Hispanic whose features looked more Indian than European.

  “I want you to know that this is all by the book,” she said, settling back into her desk chair. “The boy had a phone call coming to him and he chose to call you.”

  Caitlin took one of the two chairs set before the desk. She noticed the wall behind it was lined with professionally mounted citations and awards. “I understand, Captain.”

  “I want no suggestion of favored treatment here because you’re a Ranger.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “We’ll release the boy to you under his own recognizance, which is standard protocol.”

  Caitlin waited for Alonzo to continue, spoke only when she didn’t. “You mind telling me what charge he was arrested on?”

  “You mind telling me how you know him?”

  “Through his father.”

  “That’d be Cort Wesley Masters?”

  “With all due respect, Captain, I suspect you already know the answer to that question.”

  “I just find myself curious as to why a Texas Ranger would be bailing out the son of the most famous outlaw in modern Texas history.”

  “I’m not bailing him out at all, ma’am. The boy’s being released on his own recognizance, like you said.”

  Caitlin watched the veins riding Alonzo’s temples bulge a bit. “We got him in here on drug dealing charges.”

  “Was he holding when your officers picked him up?”

  “Are they ever?”

  Caitlin leaned forward, her holstered SIG Sauer seeming to keep pace with her right hand. “Excuse me, ma’am, but just who are ‘they’?”

  Alonzo’s spine stiffened in her chair. “A patrol car spotted him in East San Antonio during school hours. When the officer drove toward him, he ran.”

  “You ask him why?”

  “That officer did and then one of my detectives once the boy was brought in. He wouldn’t talk to either of them. Said he wanted his one phone call instead. Well-schooled, Ranger.”

  “By which you mean . . .”

  “Do the math.”

  “Like you arresting a boy on drug charges who’s not holding and then keeping him in custody on account of his father. That’s how it adds up to me.”

  Alonzo stuck her chest out, forcing the flabby stomach straining the folds of her uniform over her belt. “He was with a girl,” she said after a pause. “She ran too, managed to get away.”

  “You ask him who she was?”

  “Only thing he told us was his name and address. I thought I told you that already.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  Alonzo’s stare grabbed hold of Caitlin and wouldn’t let go. “Cort Wesley Masters is a killer.”

  “We were talking about his son, Captain.”

  “Son of a man everyone knows you’ve been cavorting with.”

  “My personal life an issue here?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then I’d appreciate you not raising it. Keep things professional.”

  “Keeping time with a man like Masters can’t help but affect your profession, if you don’t mind me saying, Ranger.”

  “Actually, Captain, I do mind.”

  Alonzo’s expression wavered as she tried to form her next thoughts into words. “I’m not gonna ask you what really happened in Mexico, or how many people you and Masters killed down there. I’m not gonna ask you about him shooting up a bar and leaving a pair of dead bodies behind a day or so after he was released from prison on a case the Rangers botched. I’m just gonna tell you that the only thing stopping me from hauling Masters’s sorry ass in here to retrieve his devil spawn offspring was the mention of your name. That kind of courtesy to a fellow law enforcement officer trumps all else, regardless of my personal feelings.”

  “I appreciate the consideration, Captain,” Caitlin said, rising from her chair. The heat she’d felt building behind her cheeks began to recede, the slight twitching in her fingers stilled with the level of common ground between her and Alonzo holding for now.

  Alonzo rose too, straightening her gun belt. “Truth is, I truly admire you having the guts to go after whoever’s behind the kidnapping of these young Mexican girls who end up enslaved as prostitutes.”

  “So far I haven’t done all that much,” Caitlin said, thinking back to Sandoval’s lead about Nuevo Laredo, wondering again what he’d left out in their brief conversation, “except arrest a few of the drivers bringing the girls into Texas.”

  “You made sure the girls they were carrying got home safe too. I got nieces back over the border. Makes me sick thinking of them being victimized like that.”

  “Not if I can help it, ma’am.”

  Alonzo looked as if she were waiting for Caitlin to say more, seeming disappointed when she didn’t. “Well, anything this department can do to help you out, just let us know.”

  Caitlin started for the door, stopping to look back at Alonzo before she got there. “One thing, Captain. Releasing a minor on his own recognizance isn’t standard protocol at all.”

  “Must’ve slipped my mind,” Alonzo told her.

  5

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  Caitlin stood waiting back in the reception area while one of Captain Alonzo’s sergeants escorted Dylan through a door leading up from the holding cells. It had been six weeks since she’d last seen him and he already looked older, dressed in baggy jeans with white shirt hung outside the waistband over well-worn sneakers. Caitlin wondered if he ever wore the cowboy boots she’d gotten him for his fifteenth birthday at Allens Boots in Austin four months ago, but decided not to ask. Too busy feeling guilty over having not been around for so long. She knew there’d be hurt lurking in the boy’s dark, deep-set eyes if the kind of dread fear that comes with an arrest hadn’t swallowed up everything else.

  His escort retrieved Dylan’s belt,
wallet, and shoelaces from the duty officer and handed them back before leading the boy the rest of the way to the entry door that opened with its distinctive click. Dylan passed through and let the door close behind him, tossing the black wavy hair from his face with a shake of his head.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Caitlin said.

  The boy brushed the black hair back over his shoulders and followed her out the door. “You gonna tell my dad?” he asked her, threading the belt through the loops of his jeans.

  “Once he finds out, I don’t know which one of us he’s gonna kill first,” Caitlin said when they were inside her SUV.

  Dylan’s eyes remained fixed out the window as Caitlin pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Anything you got to say on that subject?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Just thank you?”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Caitlin studied the road just long enough to realize she couldn’t just sit quiet. “Captain told me you were picked up on drug charges.”

  “You believe him?”

  “It’s a her, and not for one damn minute.”

  Dylan finally looked toward her. “Thanks for that too.” He reached over to the console and turned the air-conditioning higher. “I’m still hot from that cell. Was like being stuck in a box with holes cut in the sides. Now I know how a trapped rabbit feels.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you.” Caitlin glanced at him across the seat.

  “Where you been anyway?”

  “You trying to change the subject?”

  “Just asking you a question.”

  “I think it’s my time to do the asking,” Caitlin said, as much to avoid answering Dylan’s question as anything. “What was it you wouldn’t tell the police about what brought you to the east side of town?”

  “That’s for me to deal with.”

  “ ’Til I got dragged into this, you mean. Sorry, son, but it’s not so easy to drag myself back out.”

  The boy stiffened, his dark eyes taking on the familiar harshness of his father’s. “Don’t call me son. You’re not my mother.”