Strong Vengeance

by Jon Land

  Cort Wesley held his ground, his feet heavier than he’d ever felt them, as if his boots had morphed into plate steel. He saw Dylan coming toward him slowly, face squeezed tight as if the boy didn’t believe the sight and needed to convince himself. Cort Wesley felt his legs go weak and spongy, tried to swallow down some air but found his throat too clogged with nerves to manage the effort.

  Man, he’d walked into a potential kill zone two nights before without feeling anything close to this.…

  Dylan jogged the last stretch to him, throwing himself into his father’s big arms, Cort Wesley feeling the boy’s tears against his own face.

  “Let’s go pick up your brother,” he said, tossing an arm around Dylan’s shoulder. “Hey, you wanna drive?”

  * * *

  The boy was a good driver, much better than Cort Wesley remembered. Slow and cautious, good with the mirrors and, most important, capable of ignoring his cell phone which rang and beeped nonstop.

  “You mind if I throw that thing out the window?” Cort Wesley asked him.

  “Be my guest,” Dylan said, without producing it from his pocket. “Give me an excuse to get that new iPhone.”

  “I what?”

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “Never mind.” His gaze moved to his father, then back to the road. “You were hoping he’d show up at school, that guy from the other day, weren’t you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d never have known. I think he’d be stuffed in your trunk before anybody was the wiser.”

  “Not before I removed certain parts from his person.”

  Dylan’s face wrinkled. “Dad, please.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. What I meant was I was hoping you’d save that for me. The man didn’t seem real, more like a special effect inserted into a movie.”

  “Don’t blame George Lucas or James Cameron for this freak show.”

  Dylan took a long moment before responding. “I missed you, Dad.”

  “I missed you too, more than you’ll ever know.”

  A horn honked behind them and Dylan started the rental on through the intersection, checking both his left and right first.

  “You never met your granddad,” Cort Wesley resumed. “Mean son of a bitch if ever there was one. You know the first time he rode with me behind the wheel? When I was fifteen, him perched in the back of his truck to keep some stolen televisions from spilling off the top of the pile.”

  “Why don’t we ever do fun stuff like that?”

  Cort Wesley stared across the seat at his seventeen-year-old son, the long black hair that reminded him so much of the boy’s mother framing his face.

  “What are you looking at?” Dylan asked him.

  “Don’t know,” Cort Wesley said, holding his stare with a smile. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  PART SEVEN

  Acts 1935, 44th Leg., p. 444, ch. 181, sec. 10.

  Art. 4413(il). THE TEXAS RANGERS

  (1) The Texas Ranger Force and its personnel, property, equipment, and records, now a part of the Adjutant General’s Department of the State of Texas, are hereby transferred to and placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Safety, and are hereby designated as the Texas Rangers, and as such, constitute the above mentioned division of the Department.

  (2) The Texas Rangers shall consist of six (6) captains, one headquarters sergeant, and such number of privates as may be authorized by the Legislature, except in cases of emergency when the Commission, with the consent of the Governor, shall have authority to increase the force to meet extraordinary conditions.

  (3) The Compensation of the officers shall be such as allowed by the Legislature.

  (4) The officers shall be clothed with all the powers of peace officers, and shall aid in the execution of the laws.

  66

  MARBLE FALLS, THE PRESENT

  “So when are Cort Wesley and his boys coming?” Captain Tepper asked, as a waitress set a thirty-two-ounce beer before him on the table at Opie’s Barbecue in the center of Main Street in Marble Falls.

  Caitlin checked her watch. “Any minute. Thought you might be upset I invited them.”

  Tepper shrugged her off. “The way you been pissing me off lately, company’s just what’s needed to keep me civil.”

  Caitlin watched him take a hefty sip from his beer, leaving a trail of foam on his lips that he swiped off with a sleeve. “You got any other habits sure to kill you I should know about, D.W.?”

  Tepper took an even bigger sip. “Since Hurricane Caitlin climbed back in the saddle, booze ain’t about drinking, it’s about surviving.” He watched her playing with her menu. “Try the chicken fried steak, Ranger. It’s the best you’ll ever eat. The brisket’s seasoned with real black bark and the baby back ribs got this sweet, chewy crust. Prime rib’s the safest choice if you’re worried about your stomach.”

  “Thought we were eating at the Blue Bonnet Cafe, though.”

  “We were. Blue Bonnet might have the best pie in the state of Texas, but Masters’s boys’ll enjoy this place more.”

  Tepper actually lived on a converted hog farm twenty miles south of Marble Falls with four houses on his property that were home to three of his five children. Although the hour commute to and from San Antonio had started to weigh on him, he still welcomed it for the time spent clearing his head after a day devoted to commanding Company D in San Antonio for the Texas Rangers. By the same token, he loved everything about Marble Falls. From its quaint period architecture that captured rural Texas in the shadow of the big cities nearby, to the traditional Main Street district laden with historic buildings, to old-fashioned traditions like a local art show in April to an annual soapbox competition down Main Street in just a few days’ time. The competitors would be forced to negotiate the road’s center island adorned with fresh plantings that added an even more rustic feel to the town’s down-home Americana.

  From the window aside Tepper’s favorite table, they had a view of the world that seemed detached from that where Texas Rangers were required to keep or restore order. The police force was small, the crime rate practically nonexistent, and it was hard not to walk down the street without recognizing someone you knew. None of the buildings exceeded three stories, adorned with peaked roofs and the typical brown tones and hues in keeping with a Texas tradition that began with a need to disguise the ever-present dirt. Marble Falls was as clean a town as they came, though, reminding Caitlin of something lifted out of Disney World and planted right here in Texas.

  Caitlin made a cursory check of the menu just to satisfy herself. “Chicken fried steak it is, D.W.”

  “Got an appetizer here for you.” Tepper reached into his pocket and extracted a sealed evidence pouch frosted by the years. “I believe this is what you were looking for, Ranger.”

  Inside the pouch was what looked like a small crucifix with the topmost portion broken off. It was the size of a pendant, something someone might wear dangling from their neck.

  “The boy you found this on,” Caitlin said, holding the cross pendant through the pouch, “you recall if he was wearing a chain or something else it could have hung from?”

  “This was thirty years ago, Ranger. I can barely remember my cell phone number and names of my grandkids.”

  “I know you, D.W. When it comes to cases, you might as well have the files imprinted on your brain.”

  “Well, I’m sure it’s cataloged somewhere among the boy’s effects but, no, by my recollection the victim we found holding the cross had no jewelry on him at all, not even a watch.” He drank more of his beer, squinting from the sun pouring through the window flush with their table. “Where you going with this?”

  “Humor me, Captain.”

  “You figure the cross belonged to someone else and it broke off in the struggle.”

  “Thought never crossed your mind, my dad’s mind, or granddad’s?”

  “Since we didn’t see any sign of a struggl
e, not really. And we dusted the cross for prints and came up only with the boy’s, no second party’s. And in a follow-up interview, I recall the boy’s parents saying they believed he did have a crucifix that matched the general description. Confirmation present from his grandparents or something.”

  “But you didn’t show them this,” Caitlin followed, holding the cross through the plastic of the pouch.

  “Never got the chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Another part of the story, the one that explains why you never heard anything about this particular tale before.”

  “And me thinking that was on account of the fact that you and the Strongs never solved it.”

  “Like I said, we never got the chance. It was out of our territory to begin with. But five college boys get themselves killed, who you figure the Rangers are going to send? Earl and Jim were the best they had and that’s what they needed here, although that didn’t help much with the final result. Wait,” Tepper added suddenly, stopping his beer glass halfway to his mouth, “I just thought of something.”

  “What?”

  “Goes back to the visit we made to Louisiana straight from the University of Texas in Austin. Struck me as strange at the time but I never really thought about it again until now.”

  Caitlin settled back in her chair, crossing her arms before her. “I’m listening, D.W.”

  67

  LOUISIANA BAYOU, 1979

  “Think I’m gonna be seasick again,” Tepper said as the airboat skipped atop the bayou’s black surface.

  He and the Strongs had arrived at the St. Mary’s Parish sheriff’s station in the calm and relative cool of the late afternoon after the sun had sunk beneath the reach of the cypress trees that hung gracefully out over the water. The station was perched on the bank of a levee shaded by live oak trees, the leaves of which were still wet from a sudden and quick storm they must have just missed.

  The parish sheriff was expecting them and one of his deputies already had an airboat fired up and ready to go, the roar of its propeller blade spinning inside a steel cage drowning out all other sound.

  “Airboat?” Earl Strong asked him, shouting over the din.

  “Only way to get where you’re going. You want me to tag along?”

  “Not as long as your deputy knows the way.”

  The sheriff, who had a collection of moles all over his face amid sun-darkened skin with the texture of bark, grinned. “It’s Beaudoin Chansoir we’re talking about, right? ’Cause he tends to move around a lot. But if you hurry, you can catch him at the bait shop he tends at the mouth of the bayou.”

  “Shit,” D. W. Tepper said, leaning his head over the side of the airboat twenty minutes later. “What you call these hairy-looking things swimming on the surface?” he asked after puking on one of them.

  “Nutria,” said the deputy.

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “Like a beaver, D.W.,” Jim Strong answered.

  “Everybody’s a damn expert,” Tepper said, lowering his head again into a shaft of sunlight riding the black water’s surface like an upended column.

  “We got foliage and wildlife here you won’t find anywhere else in the world,” the deputy added.

  “And I believe I’ve now puked on most of it.”

  Earl and Jim Strong exchanged a grin, their faces wet with sweat from the humidity that seemed to bleed off the water. As they drew deeper into the bayou’s reaches, deep enough to spot alligators basking on shore and predatory barred owls awaiting nightfall to begin swooping down on their prey, the airboat began cutting through a thin mist rising off the water’s surface. What looked like lily pads floated atop it, drifting toward mangroves that stretched out from the shoreline to reach for whatever their grasp might bring them.

  “Mist like this always rises after a storm,” the deputy informed them. “Makes for great fishing, which gives you a better chance of finding Beaudoin Chansoir at his perch. If he’s not there, you may have to wait until morning.”

  “You telling me you really don’t know where he makes his home out here?” Jim Strong asked him.

  “Ranger, out here at night his spread might as well be the size of a postage stamp.”

  They came to a break in the protective canopy formed by the overhanging trees, the mist disappearing to be replaced by the murky reflections of the nearby shoreline as they cruised past. The deputy had cut the airboat’s speed, seeming to use the landscape to guide him to the spot where Beaudoin Chansoir set up his bait shop most days at the mouth of the bayou.

  A rickety dock appeared in the narrowing distance, the deputy gliding the airboat toward it as a skiff with two black fishermen inside slid away into the shadows. Chansoir’s bait shop was located just up from the shoreline on an even patch of land that sat on the bank of a twin waterway on its eastern side. Just a table really, with a flimsy and soaked tarpaulin strung over it and supported by wooden poles driven into the soft ground. Chansoir sat in a chair beneath the makeshift covering, smoking a corncob pipe near his bait and lures and seeming to pay their presence no heed at all.

  The deputy slid the airboat to a halt against the dock and tied it down to a mooring that was cracked along the center. The Rangers had already climbed off by the time he finished, their weight pushing the floating dock dangerously close to the water’s surface.

  “Let me introduce you,” the deputy said, moving past them up the small hill. “Mr. Chansoir?” he called as they drew closer.

  “You ain’t for sure customers, you,” Chansoir greeted, pipe held in hand now. “Never seen nobody looked like them in these parts, no.”

  “These are Texas Rangers,” the deputy told him. “They’d like to talk to you, Mr. Chansoir.”

  “Ain’t mister. Beaudoin, just Beaudoin.”

  “Nice to make your acquaintance, Beaudoin,” said Earl Strong, moving closer.

  “Mister Chansoir to you on account of you being a stranger in mine eyes.”

  “You able to talk to us, Mr. Chansoir?” Earl corrected.

  “You able to buy bait, I able to talk.”

  “Well,” said Jim Strong, “that fine bait would spoil by the time we got home, but what about a few of these lures here?”

  “Make ’em myself, each and every. Each dollar you spend gets you a minute of talk.”

  Jim laid a ten-dollar-bill down on the table, then changed his mind and replaced it with a twenty.

  “Where’s home?” Chansoir asked him, dropping the bill into a cigar box he held in his lap.

  “Texas,” Jim told him.

  “You cowboys?”

  “Texas Rangers.”

  Chansoir laughed heartily, showcasing a mouth nearly empty of teeth. His skin was taut but strangely smooth except for the areas around his eyes that were stitched with spiderweb-like patches of deep wrinkles. He squinted badly, even though what was left of the sun was at his back, his eyes watery and oozing something from both sides.

  “No such thing as Rangers no more,” Chansoir said when he finished laughing. “They all dead now, they. That’d make you dead too.”

  “Plenty would agree with you on my account anyway, sir,” Earl told him.

  “Beaudoin to you since you called me sir. How old you be, Dead Man?”

  “Seventy-nine last time I checked, Beaudoin.”

  “Believe you got twenty years on me there, though I ain’t be entirely sure.” Chansoir’s eyes moved to Jim Strong and then Tepper who still had a green tint to his skin. “You didn’t come here to buy no lures, no.”

  “Nope,” said Earl, “we come for information.”

  “Good things I sell that too, me.”

  “You get a visit from some fraternity boys from the University of Texas a few days back?” Jim asked him.

  “Don’t know what a fraternity be. Don’t know if they was boys or men. But they was here.”

  “They come looking for Jean Lafitte’s lost treasure?” Earl picked up.

 
; “No, Dead Man, they come looking for the map to take them to it.”

  “Which you gave them.”

  “Nope—sold ’em. Five hundred bucks, couple weeks worth of bait and lure business. I like it when they’s shows up, me. Every few months, tourists mostly, but those fraternity boys sometimes too. They’s money all look the same to me, yeah.”

  “Could we see this map, Beaudoin?” Earl asked him.

  “For five hundred you can, you. Then I draw it for you. I draw ’em out, one per time, from the memory of what my folks told me and their folks told them.”

  “Galveston?”

  “The island? Nah, dat’s all wrong. Treasure’s here in this very land. Hidden good, it is. I draw the map from my memory but the land’s different now than it be before. Dat why nobody ever find the treasure, ’cause where it really be ain’t exactly where any map shows it is.”

  Earl, Jim, and Tepper exchanged confused glances, trying to make sense of what the old man was telling them.

  “Mr. Chansoir,” started Jim Strong, “those fraternity boys were found dead on Galveston Island, not here in the bayou. Are you sure you’re not mistaken?”

  The slits that held the old man’s eyes opened wider, showing uncertainty and discomfort. All the wry playfulness was gone, though they continued to leak something that looked like gumbo down both cheeks. Earl Strong had recently caught his granddaughter Caitlin playing with bullets taken from the slots on his gun belt. The look on her face when he caught her was almost the same as Beaudoin Chansoir’s until his eyes narrowed again, reducing the scope of the world.

  “Know what I sold those boys, me. You wanna know what took ’em somewheres else, you have to ask ’em.”

  “They’re dead, Beaudoin,” Earl said. “Remember?”

  From his expression, Chansoir clearly did. “Then I guess you’s never gonna know, just like me. They come, they go. What happen after, I don’t need to see but for more bills I try. Use the magic, me, but the magic costs.”