Strong from the Heart--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “Taking me under your what?”

  “I spent a good part of twenty years with her father and grandfather. Fact that a Strong has given you the stamp of approval is good enough for me.”

  “But that’s not why you bailed me out.”

  Doyle Lodge turned from the warehouse across the front seat of a truck that seemed as old as he was, the upholstery living on duct tape, with an old, worn smell no dangling deodorizer could remedy. He had a baldpate dotted with brown freckles and liver spots, his ears stretching out from his head like an old-fashioned TV antenna.

  “Caitlin never mentioned my name?” Lodge asked, turning back toward the warehouse.

  “Why would she?”

  “Because there’s a story associated with it, but I don’t suppose she shares all the bad ones with you, mine in particular. See, Mr. Masters, you and me got something in common most men never have to face.”

  “What’s that, Mr. Lodge?”

  “How you almost lost your son a few nights back. Word travels fast about such things, sir.”

  “You had a similar experience,” Cort Wesley concluded.

  Doyle Lodge neither nodded nor shook his head. “Except for that ‘almost.’”

  * * *

  As Doyle Lodge told it, his Ranger days ended in a bourbon bottle–size despair when his son’s life was claimed by an opiate overdose eerily similar to the one that had nearly taken Luke’s. The son was in his late twenties, out with his friends, celebrating a promotion to parking lot manager at Arlington Stadium, when one thing led to another.

  While the old lawman tried to give that part short shrift, it was clear that his son had been using for years, had been what was generally called a functional addict. Doyle Lodge’s plunge into the bottle had led to his unseemly parting with the Rangers; by his own admission, he had embarrassed himself and the department more times than he could count.

  “My son might have been a functional addict, Mr. Masters, but I was no functional alcoholic. Rangers had the courtesy to let me resign instead of get fired, which allowed me to get help and then get into the DEA.”

  “Call me Cort Wesley, Mr. Lodge, and you still haven’t explained why you bailed me out of jail.”

  The old man kept his gaze fixed out the windshield, though he no longer appeared to be studying the warehouse surrounded by heavy fencing topped with barbed wire.

  “While I was in the bottle, I found out where my boy was getting his drugs from, just like you did. And I went there, just like you did, only I didn’t have the guts to do what you ended up doing. I must’ve gone back there a hundred times fixing to, but I never did. Guess I didn’t have the balls. So when a Houston police officer was kind enough to inform me of your story, I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d found my guy. What is it they say, kinder spirits?”

  “Kindred, but I get the idea.” Cort Wesley joined the old man in gazing toward the warehouse down the street. “Now, tell me about that warehouse, Mr. Lodge.”

  “Call me, Doyle, and let’s get us some breakfast. This is a tale better told over coffee, since I don’t do nothing stronger anymore.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  The old man snapped his eyes toward him across the seat. “The coffee might be, but the story I got to tell you is as far from good as it gets. You’re about to hear things you can’t unhear, no matter how hard you try. I need to be sure you’re okay with that.”

  “I’m craving some bacon and eggs, Doyle.”

  Lodge seemed to be looking more through than at him now. “One thing I learned when I fell into the bottle, Cort Wesley, was that when you dance with the devil, the devil don’t change—he changes you.”

  “So why bother dancing at all?”

  “Because I know his tricks, partner, and it’s about time I showed them to somebody else.”

  45

  HOUSTON

  “I owe you an apology,” Caitlin told Luke. The two of them were seated alone at a cafeteria table that could accommodate four or even six chairs.

  Of course, this was like no school cafeteria she’d ever seen. The Village School seemed to pride itself on what looked, even to the casual observer, more like a restaurant. Both day students and residential students, like Luke, dined together, enjoying scrambled eggs, buttermilk pancakes, French toast, bacon, sausage, and breakfast potatoes as well as specialty offerings such as Asian eggs and rice, breakfast tacos, an omelet bar, and a make-your-own-waffle bar. There was also an assortment of bagels, cold cereals, and breakfast pastries, and a fresh fruit bar that included low-fat yogurt.

  “I might come here more often,” Caitlin resumed, as Luke kept picking at his eggs.

  Around them, the eyes of just about everybody else in the dining hall lingered to some degree on their table. Caitlin had spoken at the school’s graduation a few years back, and her Ranger badge would have attracted attention all on its own.

  “Maybe they think you’re interrogating me,” Luke said, finally breaking his silence. “After what happened the other night and all.”

  “Remember Rafiki in The Lion King?” Caitlin asked him, referring to a character in a stage production of the Disney film that she and Luke had attended years ago, just the two of them. “The baboon?”

  “Actually, he was a mandrill, but same general family of monkeys.”

  “Remember what he said every time he hit Simba with a stick?”

  “‘It’s in the past,’” Luke quoted.

  “Just like the other night.”

  “Does that mean you’re not interrogating me?”

  “Like I told you, I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “I think I was too tough on you the other night.”

  “You weren’t tough at all. My father was tough. He barely said a word through the whole drive home and then back to school. That’s tough.”

  “Another reason why I wanted to see you.”

  “Dad?”

  “He found the place that sold the drugs to the dealer in question. He found the dealer, too,” Caitlin said, leaving it there.

  Luke looked back down at his eggs. “He squeezed the info out of a friend of mine.”

  “The one who brought the drugs to the party, no doubt.”

  “Isn’t that the kind of thing you wanted to apologize for saying?”

  “Anyway,” Caitlin resumed, instead of responding, “you may hear mention of a medical clinic not too far from here that got torched last night.”

  “My father?”

  “I wanted you to hear it from me. He let propane gas fill the place and then tossed in a match.”

  “Boom,” said Luke, looking up from his eggs.

  “And then some.”

  “He get arrested?”

  “That’s what I’m doing up here. I was supposed to pick him up. But somebody else beat me to it.”

  “My dad doesn’t exactly have a long Christmas card list, Caitlin.”

  “He never met the guy who beat me to it in his life. Another Texas Ranger, believe it or not, only retired for around thirty years. He worked at the DEA for a bunch of those.”

  “DEA?”

  “This man lost his own son to an overdose, Luke,” Caitlin finished.

  “And they didn’t meet up until after my dad torched that clinic?”

  Caitlin nodded. “By all indications.”

  Luke took a deep breath and blew the hair from his face just like his brother. “That can’t be good.”

  Then his eyes strayed over Caitlin’s shoulder, out the window, toward the area where she’d parked her car.

  “You better have a look at this, Caitlin.”

  46

  HOUSTON

  “You’re kidding, right?” Caitlin asked Nola Delgado, who was leaning against Caitlin’s SUV in the parking lot. “What are you doing here?”

  “My job, sis: keeping you alive.”

  “I can do that all by myself.”

  “Is that how you’d describe what happe
ned at University Hospital yesterday?”

  “I’m standing here, aren’t I? So tell your mother I appreciate the consideration.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here. Like I told you last night, I’m doing this on my own.”

  “I spoke with Dylan,” Caitlin said.

  “He told me.”

  “I meant what I said to him, Nola. Don’t make me regret it or give me a reason to change my mind.”

  “Compared to his other girlfriends, I’m kind of a stabilizing influence on his life.”

  “He said you weren’t his girlfriend.”

  “Boy doesn’t like labels. It’s one of his strong points.”

  “That’s right, Nola, he’s a boy. Something you should keep in mind.”

  “Maybe you haven’t spent any time with Dylan lately, but he’s no kid. He’ll always be one to you, the same kid you saved from his mother’s killers. You like freezing time, sis, keep things stuck just where they are, where you like them. Dylan might as well still be fourteen and this might as well still be nineteenth-century Dodge City with the O.K. Corral.”

  “That was Tombstone.”

  “And you’re Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Bat Masterson all rolled into one. I keep thinking that if I check out enough pictures from those days, I’ll see you in a few of them.”

  “What do you want, Nola?”

  “Nothing. The big man asked me to watch out for you today because he was tied up. Working or something.”

  “Right,” Caitlin said, not bothering to mention that Guillermo Paz was now teaching gym to elementary school students.

  Nola crossed her arms, smiling smugly as she leaned in tighter against the SUV. “So here I am,” she said, extending her hands outward.

  “The matter’s under control, Nola.”

  “What matter would that be exactly? You don’t know what’s really going on here any more than Paz does. So how it could be under control?”

  “Figure of speech.”

  “I looked into the man you described at the hospital, the one you doused in oil. You sure can pick ’em, sis.”

  Caitlin edged a bit closer. “You mind stepping away from my car?”

  “I haven’t told you about that man yet.”

  “Text or email whatever you’ve got. I’m in kind of a hurry now.”

  “If he’s involved in this, we’re probably looking at an army, not just a man.”

  “And that would suit you just fine, wouldn’t it?”

  “Colonel Paz wants to spend some more time with me. Says I’m in need of some serious spiritual healing.”

  “Maybe he’s right, Nola.”

  “I think his exact words were something to the effect of ‘Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.’”

  “Yup, sounds like Paz. That’s a quote from Isaac Asimov. His book Foundation.”

  “You read it?”

  “Paz has. He quotes from it a lot.”

  “He also quoted something from the Bible, something like ‘When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results.’” Nola Delgado finally stepped away from the SUV. “You think I’m evil, sis?”

  “I think you’re a victim of your upbringing, Nola.”

  “How’s that exactly?”

  “Your mother turned you into el Barquero, and now you’ve taken almost as many to their deaths as the ferryman from Greek mythology.”

  Nola smiled smugly again. “You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “One version, sis. The other is that I’m just following my nature. I think you’re afraid that nature comes from the Strong side of me and not my mother’s.”

  Caitlin climbed into the driver’s seat but didn’t close the door right away. “We’re not the same, not even close.”

  “You’re going to need me, sis,” Nola said, after Caitlin had finally closed the door. “And it won’t be long now.”

  47

  HOUSTON

  “Who’s the root beer for?” Doyle Lodge asked, when the server at Denny’s set it down atop a third place mat, which Cort Wesley had stopped her from taking away.

  “In case I get thirsty later.”

  The old man let his gaze linger on the empty chair, as if he could see Leroy Epps in it, even though the ghost was nowhere to be seen or heard at the time.

  “Sure, partner, whatever you say,” Lodge said, his shriveled lips coming as close to a snicker as they could manage.

  “Tell me about that warehouse, Doyle.”

  “What I’ve got to say is sure to be of prime interest to you.”

  “I figured that much out for myself. But what do petrochemicals have to do with drugs killing your boy and almost killing mine?”

  “Because those chemicals are just a front for what’s really being stored there. This all goes back about a year.”

  “Right … to when the warehouse reopened,” Cort Wesley nodded, figuring Doyle Lodge needed to be reminded about what he’d already shared. “After it closed during the recession.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Doyle Lodge told him.

  “What?”

  “Repeat things I’ve already said. I may be old and been in more than my share of scrapes, but my mind’s as sharp as a tick.”

  “You mean tack.”

  The old man winked, both his eyes encased in beds of wrinkles. “Gotcha, didn’t I?” he grinned.

  “You did at that.”

  “You keep looking toward that empty chair.”

  “Maybe I’m waiting for somebody to take it.”

  “Like who?”

  Then Cort Wesley surprised himself by letting the truth spill out. “Old friend of mine, a prison cellmate who died inside the Walls prison. His ghost has been known to show up from time to time.”

  “And this ghost likes root beer?”

  Cort Wesley shrugged. “Would it surprise you to hear I think he actually drinks it?”

  Much to his surprise, Doyle Lodge didn’t shake his head or cast him a disparaging glance. “Son, I’m damn near ninety years old. Fought in both Korea and Nam, then served as both a Texas Ranger and DEA agent. I’ve seen enough shit in my time to have lost the ability to be surprised a long time ago.” Lodge settled back in his chair, twirled his coffee cup around on the edge of the table. “Anyway, I’m glad to hear my sources were correct.”

  “Sources?”

  “I asked around about you and learned enough to figure there’s plenty nobody can see. The obvious stuff is all out there, and one of the three people I contacted mentioned he’d heard you talked to ghosts.”

  “Just one.”

  “We got eighty thousand of them in 2018 alone, thanks to overdose deaths.”

  “They don’t all come back the way Leroy does.”

  “Leroy?”

  “My ghost,” Cort Wesley said.

  “Only around a quarter of those were the direct result of opiates,” the old man told him. “Of course, a big chunk of the deaths were the result of heroin or fentanyl, and it’s a safe bet plenty of those gravitated there from illegally obtained prescription narcotics.”

  “Thanks to places like the medical clinic I torched last night, right?”

  The server came to take their breakfast order but Lodge asked her to give them a few more minutes and returned his attention to Cort Wesley.

  “Knowing your history,” he said, “my bet is you got that location from the drug dealer responsible for the oxy that almost killed your son. It’s an equally safe bet that a number of people who frequented that clinic sold the pills they left with to him at a profit, taking their slice of the pie. Dealer like that can probably move around a thousand pills a week. That’s around a hundred and seventy prescriptions at two pills per day.”

  “You’ve done your homework, Ranger.”

  That drew a smile from Doyle Lodge. “I haven’t been a Ranger in a long time.”

  “Retired doctors are sti
ll ‘Doctor’ to me, too.”

  “Okay, I ran some numbers for you. Now you run some for me. How many so-called patients you figure that so-called clinic you blew up sees every day, seven days a week?”

  Cort Wesley had already done some figuring on that in his head and did some more before responding. “I’m thinking maybe thirty patients an hour, fifteen hours per day.”

  “So, four hundred and fifty.”

  “Give or take, but that would be at minimum,” Cort Wesley acknowledged.

  “Plenty of them make use of the pills themselves, but plenty more are part of the underground process that pumped enough pills into Mingo County, West Virginia, for every single one of the twenty-five thousand residents to take four hundred and fifty pills per year.”

  “Wow.”

  “That only scratches the surface, soldier.”

  “Did I mention I served to you?”

  “You didn’t have to, on account of everybody else I talked to about you did. And you did mention you were overseas for a time. Given you don’t look much like the touristy type to me, what else would account for that?”

  “Why don’t you tell me why our government, your DEA included, lets clinics like the one I took a match to operate under their noses?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? The government is complicit in it,” the old man told him. “My DEA included.”

  48

  HOUSTON

  “I don’t necessarily mean that literally,” Doyle Lodge continued, “but close. You need to picture a three-legged stool.”

  Cort Wesley watched the man prepare his spoon, fork, and knife as visual aids atop his place mat, the spoon dripping coffee onto the paper. Lodge pushed the knife out first.

  “The first leg of the stool you already saw for yourself: doctors operating clinics that are effectively pill mills. The second leg is the pharmaceutical companies themselves, who have known about the dangers associated with opiates for almost as long as the tobacco companies knew that their cigarettes caused cancer. They purposely overproduce prescription narcotics in full awareness of how they’re going to be dispensed and where they’re going to end up. The profit margin is just too great to turn away from.”