Strong from the Heart--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  Fass started to swallow, then stopped, not wanting to do anything to expose a kink in his resolve or his story. Caitlin could see him working up his courage, a weak smirk displaying the upper hand he wanted to believe he was holding. She wasn’t sure if the odor roiling her was lifting off him or the air in general. Maybe it was both, having soaked into his skin like odors stick to an old, worn carpet—until you roll it up and deposit it in a dumpster.

  “If this crazy story of yours is even remotely true, what you’re up against is bigger than you, bigger than the Rangers, bigger than this whole fucked-up state of yours,” said Fass. “Might be wise to back off a bit, so nobody paints a target on your back, too.”

  “How’d you know he was shot in the back?”

  “The dead kid you mean?

  “His name was Ben Brussard, and that detail wasn’t released in any of the press reports. Lucky guess, Mr. Fass?”

  Fass made no attempt at a response. Caitlin watched him struggle with what to say, until her phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  “Now how about that,” she said, after checking the message. “Maybe you should use your one phone call on Senator Eckles so you can tell him our medical examiner just figured out something big about the deaths of all those folks in Camino Pass.”

  87

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  “You look a lot better sitting there than Nola Delgado, Cort Wesley,” Caitlin said, resting her shoulders against the back of the porch swing.

  Cort Wesley rocked it slowly. “Just like you look better in your spot than Leroy Epps.”

  “The two of us have been cheating, in other words.”

  “Nice to have you home safe and sound, Ranger, especially since it looks like we’re fixing to go to war again,” Cort Wesley said, toasting Caitlin with his bottle of Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer.

  She lightly touched the bottle with the extra-large coffee she’d picked up at 7-Eleven, still with another half to go after she’d warmed it up in the microwave. The night had turned cool for fall, crystal clear, with the stars battling each other for attention in the sky. Caitlin looked up and wondered what she would wish for if one of them fell from the sky.

  “A new brand,” she noted, looking at the remains of the bottle Leroy Epps had gotten started.

  “What can I say?” Cort Wesley took another sip. “It brings back memories of my misspent youth.”

  “I thought you were trying to forget that.”

  Luke was upstairs in his room, asleep, thanks to a sedative a paramedic had provided at the crime scene up in Houston. Guillermo Paz was somewhere about, as well, although neither of them knew where exactly. He’d left to park his truck somewhere out of sight, after doing a thorough check of the house while Caitlin and Cort Wesley remained outside with Luke, and they hadn’t seen the colonel since. But he was close by, watching the house even now, for sure.

  “That would make more room in my mind to figure out what I’m going to do to Senator Eckles and company.”

  “The problem is, we don’t know how high this network reaches and who exactly it includes, other than Eckles,” Caitlin noted.

  “How about giving me a few minutes alone with him?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Paz.”

  Cort Wesley nodded, taking another sip from Leroy Epps’s root beer. “I could live with that.”

  “Or maybe Nola Delgado.”

  “Tough to get someone to talk when they’re dead, Ranger. And I don’t know if your half sister has another gear.”

  They were due to meet Doc Whatley at his office early tomorrow morning, along with Captain Tepper, about whatever Whatley had uncovered about how cyanide gas had managed to kill an entire town. The circle would be kept small, understandably, until they had a better idea of what they were dealing with. The fact that Washington was involved to the level it appeared to be meant keeping things buttoned up. Lee Eckles, as Texas’s senior senator, could make all kinds of trouble for them, and even grind things to a virtual halt, unless they came up with something they could use soon.

  “I invited Jones to join us tomorrow morning, Cort Wesley.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “You want a rough count of the people in our corner? We’re going to need him. He helps bring this whole thing down, he punches his ticket back to Homeland.”

  Cort Wesley’s eyes told her he wasn’t convinced. “Unless he gets a better offer along the way. This is Jones we’re talking about, remember? The man has the loyalty of a cat. Comes home to whoever feeds him.”

  “What’d you tell Dylan?”

  “Not to come home, under any circumstances.”

  “Because you don’t want another son painted with a bull’s-eye?”

  “More like because Nola Delgado’s here and she brings out the worst in him.”

  “She saved Luke’s life, Cort Wesley.”

  “And got another kid killed in his place.” He gulped down some more root beer and laid the bottle atop the swing between them, watching Caitlin ease the prescription bottle of Vicodin from the pocket of her jacket.

  She twisted off the top, held it briefly, then twisted it back on.

  “I thought you said your head still felt like there were fracture lines running through it, Ranger.”

  Caitlin stuck the bottle deeply into her jacket pocket, where she’d have to work to reach it. “It does.”

  Cort Wesley’s eyes drifted to the slight bulge in her pocket. “Lowest dose, you said.”

  “Take four to six every day and it’s not so low anymore. I think I can get by on aspirin.”

  “Taking what Jones said to heart?”

  “He thinks I’m an addict, Cort Wesley.”

  “He was making a point, Ranger. The famous gunfighter pointing the barrel at herself.”

  “You agree with him?”

  “Given my current thoughts on opiates in general, it’s not a good time to ask me that. But no, I don’t think you’re hooked.”

  “Neither was Luke. First thing I’ve been doing every morning for months now is to pop a pill. First time the pain starts to get bad again, I reach for this,” she said, pulling the prescription bottle back out from her pocket. “That needs to stop.”

  Cort Wesley nodded his approval.

  “As a matter of fact,” Caitlin started, handing the bottle to him. “For safekeeping, to eliminate temptation, so I don’t end up in the emergency room too.”

  He left the pills in her outstretched hand. “Can you enlighten me on what Nola Delgado’s taking to make her think the way she does?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because you share the same blood.”

  “And that’s all we share,” Caitlin snapped, sticking the pill bottle back in her pocket.

  “It’s like she’s another species,” Cort Wesley said, gnashing his teeth. “The kind of neighbor who fishes your newspaper from the bushes and drops it off alongside the paperboy’s severed head for missing the stoop.”

  Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Nice image.”

  Cort Wesley drained the rest of his root beer. His hand was trembling when he set it back down on the swing, his eyes moistening with the start of tears.

  “I got two images stuck in my head that’ll probably keep me awake for the next year or so. The first is what that thirty aught six shell did to Ben Brussard. It was a through and through, meaning it likely tore the heart from his chest when it came out.”

  Caitlin swallowed hard. “Why don’t you skip the second image, Cort Wesley?”

  “Wish I could, but I can’t chase away the vision of unzipping that body bag so I could identify Luke in the park.” He swiped his sleeve across his eyes. “The fact that it didn’t get that far hasn’t stopped me from freezing the picture in my mind.” He looked away. “Do you have any notion as to how a whole town killed by cyanide gas is connected to a drug enterprise being run by a cartel out of the Capitol Building?”

  Caitlin waited for hi
m to turn back toward her before she answered. “That’s what Doc Whatley will hopefully tell us tomorrow.”

  88

  PRESIDIO, TEXAS

  A big, well-dressed man Roland Fass had never seen in his life escorted him to a dark SUV with its windows blacked out, after securing his release from jail. Fass watched him open the rear door, not needing further instructions to climb inside, where Senator Lee Eckles was waiting.

  “What took you so long?” Fass smirked. “I was in jail for all of three hours.”

  “I wanted to wait until I could fly back to Texas, so I could tell you to your face you’re going to disappear for a while.”

  Fass turned his gaze out the window for a parting look at the tiny Presidio, Texas, jail where he’d been taken because it was the nearest town to where the fights earlier tonight were being staged. The basement jail boasted two rusted iron cells with old-fashioned key locks and smelled of must, mold, and mildew. The concrete walls were etched with thick water stains and the floor was discolored in patches, where more water had leached through.

  “You’ll lose the bail you just posted.”

  Eckles shook his head. “Know something, Roland? If you were any dumber, all I’d have to do is water you twice a week.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Bail? You really think I posted your bail?” The senator shook his head again. “Leave a trail back to me for all the world, including that goddamn, pain-in-the-ass Texas Ranger, to see? You think that’s the level I operate at?”

  Fass had no answer, so he stayed quiet.

  “The arrangements are being made now. You’ll be in the wind in no time.”

  “Where to?” Fass managed, his insides tightening up the same way they did when he had figured he was going to federal prison for a stretch.

  “Someplace where you can’t give us up. I don’t want to know, so I don’t have to resist the temptation to kill you myself.” The senator softened his tone. “There’s one thing you need to do for me before you pack your bags.”

  “Anything, Senator,” Fass said, realizing Eckles was the only thing standing between him and having to face Caitlin Strong again.

  “When can we have the new production line up and running with the revised specifications?”

  “‘Revised specifications,’” Fass repeated. “You make it sound like we’re changing how many milligrams we put in our aspirin tablets. Do I have to remind you we’ve got the Texas Rangers crawling up our asses?”

  “Your ass, Roland, and your ass has nothing to do with the manufacturing plant. Next order of business is to get those contaminated pills out of there safe and sound. After that, we can cash your ticket to new beginnings, some promised land not named Siberia.”

  A passing car pushed high beams into the SUV, illuminating Eckles enough for Roland Fass to think he had fat, all-black marbles for eyes, which seemed to glow in the dark after the vehicle had passed.

  “You need to rethink all that, Senator. You need to pull back on all this until Caitlin Strong backs off. I’m telling you, she’s like a human bear trap, and right now she’s got us snared.”

  Another passing set of high beams revealed Eckles grinning from ear to ear. “Then it’s a good thing I’m hitting the Delete key on her. It pays to have the right friends, Roland—something you should keep in mind.”

  89

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Look at this,” Jones said, leaning on his big sedan in the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office parking lot. “The band’s really back together.”

  “You were never more than a roadie, Jones,” Caitlin told him. “And count your blessings we invited you to the show.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need me for some reason, Ranger,” he smirked. “Taking advantage of each other is the basis of our entire relationship.” Jones turned his gaze on Cort Wesley. “Morning, cowboy. Sorry to hear about your boy.”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “He’s still alive, but that won’t be true of the shooter once I get my hands on him.”

  “Yarek Bone, I understand, which means you’re going to need some pretty big hands.”

  “You know him, Jones?” Caitlin posed.

  “His Fallen Timbers group represents a genuine threat to the homeland. What do you think?”

  “Sounds like a man you would’ve wanted in your employ,” Caitlin noted.

  “I’m not saying I wasn’t tempted, Ranger. Hey, if Bone was killing for us, he wouldn’t have been killing for anybody else.”

  “It’s not ‘us,’ anymore, Jones, is it?”

  Jones smirked again. “I’d say the rest of the government has finally caught up with me.”

  “Hiring psychopaths and running what might be one of the biggest drug operations ever seen,” Cort Wesley said. “Remind me again how the government’s using my tax dollars?”

  Until that morning, Caitlin didn’t even know the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office had a conference room. It was cramped, barely enough room to accommodate the oversize table squeezed inside, which looked as if it had been salvaged from another county office.

  Caitlin and Cort Wesley entered, with Jones right behind them, to find that Doc Whatley and Captain Tepper had been joined by the resident Ranger tech expert, Young Roger. Guillermo Paz, meanwhile, was guarding Luke back in Shavano Park. Caitlin had somehow half expected Nola Delgado to be present as well and was relieved to see that she was nowhere to be found.

  “Well,” Tepper said, rising from his chair, before which a pair of take-out coffees were set, “the gang’s all here.”

  “Is one of those for me, Captain?” Caitlin asked him, as Tepper sat back down.

  He laid his hands before the cups protectively. “Not unless you smoke a cigarette with it.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” Caitlin said, her head pounding at a tolerable level that nonetheless took four aspirin to reach. The pain was still preferable to the Vicodin, which was burning a hole in her pocket right now.

  “Let’s get started,” said Doc Whatley, from the head of the table. “To recap, we figured out real early on that the deaths in Camino Pass were due to hydrogen cyanide poisoning. What we didn’t know was how the gas could kill an entire town and where it came from, not to mention how two residents managed to survive.”

  “Their survival proved to be a vital clue in coming up with the answers we needed,” Young Roger said, after Whatley looked toward him to pick things up from there.

  Young Roger was in his midthirties but still didn’t look much older than Dylan. Though he was a Ranger, the title was mostly honorary, provided in recognition of the technological expertise he brought to the table, which had helped the Rangers solve a number of internet-based crimes, ranging from identity theft to credit card fraud to the busting of a major pedophile and kiddie porn ring. He worked out of all seven Ranger company offices on a rotating basis. Young Roger wore his hair too long and was never happier than when playing guitar for his band, the Rats, whose independent record label had just released their third CD. Their alternative brand of music wasn’t the kind Caitlin preferred, but it had grown on her, and hearing it live had given her a fresh perspective on the band’s talent.

  “I looked at the medical records for Lennox Scully and the kid, Andrew Ortega,” Young Roger continued, “trying to see if there was something about their chemical makeup, something in their blood levels, that could explain their survival. I compared the results to a bunch of the autopsy reports, only to reach the conclusion that their survival wasn’t due to internal factors but what could only be described as external ones.”

  He stopped and looked around the table.

  “I spent hours and hours looking at pictures and schematics at Camino Pass. Scully survived in a converted supply closet and the kid survived in a fallout shelter. Anybody want to hazard a guess as to what those two locations have in common?”

  “No windows,” Cort Wesley piped in right away.

  “Solid notion, Mr. Master
s,” Young Roger complimented, “and one I briefly considered myself. I knew I was close but still on the wrong track.” He looked about the room again. “Anybody else want to try?”

  “You mind stowing the classroom crap, son?” D. W. Tepper said to him.

  “Water faucets,” Young Roger said, after clearing his throat. “That’s what was missing from those two locations and what killed the rest of the residents of Camino Pass.”

  90

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “You know how they say the worst tragedies aren’t the result of one bad thing happening but a conflation of several?” Young Roger continued.

  “What did I just say, son?” snapped Tepper.

  “Sorry, sir, I was just being rhetorical.”

  “Yeah, well, stop that too.”

  Young Roger cleared his throat again. “The first thing I discovered was that a water main break fifty miles away had led the Department of Water and Sewer to shut off service to Camino Pass on the night of the tragedy. So if residents turned on the water, nothing but accumulated gas would be released. That’s important, because there’s plenty of data over the years of people being sickened, or even worse, when sewer gases invade a home through pipes with no water flowing through them. That’s the precedent for what happened here.”

  “Last time I checked,” interjected Jones, unable to help himself, “there was a big difference between what you’re describing and hydrogen cyanide.”

  “But they’re both gases, and the cyanide managed to leach into the aquifer supplying Camino Pass with its water at the very time there was no water in the pipes. Because gas rises, the cyanide made its way through the water system into the pipes—just like sewer gas, only on a mass level—and emerged with sufficient potency to kill everyone a reasonable distance from any water faucet.”

  “Explaining how Lennox Scully and Andrew Ortega managed to survive,” picked up Caitlin. “But where’d the cyanide gas come from exactly? As I understand cyanide, it’s not a naturally occurring element, say like methane, so it doesn’t collect over time.”