Strong to the Bone--A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  “Don’t worry, Officer, I got the victim out safe and sound,” she yelled down to him, only half-sarcastically. “But I left a man with a bullet in his shoulder down there for you to take care of.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’d hurry, if I were you. He’s losing blood.”

  4

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Name me something that never changes in Texas besides you,” Captain D. W. Tepper said to Caitlin from across his desk the next morning, the office door closed for one of the few times she could remember.

  “Summer humidity, I suppose.”

  “Yup, you can feel it building in the air right now. You notice anything different about my desk?”

  “You mean, besides the fact your phone is off the hook?”

  “Any notion as to why? Let me spare you the trouble of answering. Because one of the Rangers in the company I’m supposed to be commanding stole a fire truck last night.”

  “Commandeered, D.W., and I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “’Course you didn’t; you never do. And I suppose you had no choice other than to turn a water cannon on some unruly teenagers.”

  “They were drunken college students,” Caitlin corrected, “and it was close to being a full-scale riot.”

  “This the part where you tell me they had it coming, like you said about the last, oh, hundred or so people you shot?”

  “There was a rape victim inside that building, Captain.”

  “And you took it upon yourself to shoot a man for stealing her cell phone.”

  “He did a whole lot more than that before I showed up.”

  “You sure about that, Ranger? Man’s name is Willie Arble. Pickpocket and petty thief with a pecker the size of a pinky toe. Okay, strike that last remark but his sheet’s clean as far as rape or sexual assault goes.”

  “First time for everything, Captain.”

  “Not in this case. There’s DNA all over the victim, but none of it matches Arble’s. So you put a bullet through a man’s shoulder for pocketing an iPhone.” Tepper tapped a Marlboro Red from an open pack and stuck it in his mouth, feeling about his desktop for a lighter, when he suddenly spit the cigarette out. “Goddamn candy butt from the dime store,” he said. “Now how you suppose it worked its way into a perfectly good pack?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You have any idea how much these things cost now? Hell, I got a goddamn retirement fund invested in this habit.”

  “And thanks to it, you may not make retirement.”

  “Where’s my lighter, by the way, the big one I daisy-chained to my desk so it wouldn’t go missing like the others?”

  “I guess it went missing like the others. If I come across it, I’ll let you know.”

  Tepper retrieved the candy cigarette off his blotter and bit off the part that held the fake filter. “Just like I remember as a boy…”

  “When did you start smoking the real ones?”

  “When you joined the Rangers. Wait, no—that was drinking.” Tepper’s features softened. “I shouldn’t be making light of your actions last night, given the chord that young lady being trapped inside must’ve struck. But even that didn’t give you call to unleash the winds of Hurricane Caitlin. And we’d be having a different conversation right now, if Willie Arble was in the morgue instead of a hospital bed.”

  “If I’d wanted him dead, D.W., he would be.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “That girl was the same age I was. All I did, after the fact, was take her to the hospital and stay with her until a couple detectives from the Austin police sex crimes squad showed up.”

  “And what you did before the fact is blowing a shit storm right into my face. When was the last time you shot an unarmed man?”

  “I don’t know if I ever have.”

  “That’s right. Puts the force of those winds in a whole different category, even for Hurricane Caitlin.” Tepper stopped long enough to wrinkle his nose, as if he’d swallowed something bitter. “Remember the pit bull dog I shot that had such a hold on a boy’s arm they had to surgically remove its head at the hospital? Who’s that remind you of exactly?”

  “I got the girl out of there, Captain. I got her help. That’s where this ends for me.”

  “Let’s hope so, given shooting unarmed men tends to play poorly, even in Texas. Should I be worried, Ranger?”

  “Only about the next time I confront a potential rapist.”

  Tepper tried another Marlboro only to find all the remaining cigarettes had been replaced with the candy variety. “How about you go fetch me another pack?”

  The phone rang, and he answered it, eyeing Caitlin the whole time he listened to the voice on the other end, before angling the receiver toward her across the desk.

  “Something you need to hear straight from the source, Ranger.”

  She came out of her chair to take the phone. “What’s going on, Captain?”

  Tepper’s expression had grown so taut and grave, the deep furrows dug out of his weather-beaten face suddenly looked shallow. “Looks like your part in this isn’t finished yet, after all, Ranger.”

  5

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Your son’s a good worker, amigo,” Miguel Asuna told Cort Wesley. “I got him stripping a car in less than thirty minutes.”

  Cort Wesley moved away from the wall of Asuna’s office papered with old calendars, his spine stiffening. He’d positioned himself there to make sure his oldest son, Dylan, couldn’t see him from his workstation out in the shop. He was halfway to Asuna’s desk when the big man flashed him a grin.

  “Nah, just kidding. Not about him being a good worker, though. Kid’s ever looking for something full-time, I got a place for him.”

  Miguel’s brother, Pablo Asuna, had been Cort Wesley’s best friend, the only one still waiting when he got out of the Walls prison in Huntsville after four years, thanks to an overturned conviction. Back when Cort Wesley was working for the Branca crime family, Miguel Asuna’s body shop had doubled as a chop shop where stolen cars were brought to be disassembled for parts. He’d once heard Asuna boast he could strip a Mercedes in thirty minutes flat.

  Miguel Asuna was twice the size of his dead little brother and, by all accounts, was still living and working on the fringe of the law. As a result, his body shop was filled to the brim, every stall and station taken, with not a single license plate in evidence from this angle. The shop smelled heavily of oil, tire rubber, and sandblasted steel. But the floor looked polished clean, shiny with a coat of finish over the concrete that showed not a single grease stain or even a tire mark. For obvious reasons, Asuna kept the bay doors closed and, with the air-conditioning not switched on, the whole shop had a sauna-like feel fed by heat lamps switched on to dry paint faster.

  Months before, Cort Wesley had let Dylan extend his sabbatical from Brown University for the entire school year that had just ended. But only on the condition that he get a job. When the boy’s own efforts failed to land him one, his father had called Miguel Asuna, who was more than happy to oblige.

  It was hard to even recognize Dylan, Cort Wesley figured, looking at him through the glass of Asuna’s office, wearing work coveralls splattered with grease and streaks of grime drawn down his cheeks. He’d clubbed his long black hair up in what they called a “man bun,” which made Cort Wesley want to cut it off with a pair of scissors.

  “Anyway,” Asuna was saying, “that’s not why I asked you to come in.”

  “So I figured.”

  “Your kid got some kind of hero complex or something?”

  “What makes you ask?” Cort Wesley said, already fearing the answer.

  “How much you know about the latest issues we got here on the east side of the city, amigo?”

  Cort Wesley again made sure he was out of view from Dylan’s workstation. “Nothing.”

  “Not the best of times for us Latinos, with half the country figur
ing we’re all ignorant wetbacks sucking on this country’s tits.”

  “Colorful metaphor.”

  Asuna’s expression hardened, his own coveralls looking like a canvas blanket wrapped around his bulbous frame. “Let’s talk about your boy. How he seems to take personal affront to the latest frequenters of East San Antonio.”

  “And who would that be exactly?”

  “American Nazi Party, Aryan Nation—they go by a whole shitload of different names. What stays the same is that they’re white assholes looking to let outsiders like us know who’s boss.” Asuna stopped and shimmied his chair forward. “So last week, I think it was, your boy’s outside on a break when he spots a truckload of these white assholes hassling some high school Latinas walking home. Way Dylan describes it, they might as well have been talking out of their assholes, given the shit that was coming out of their mouths.”

  “What did he do?” Cort Wesley asked.

  “He’d just bought a can of Dr Pepper, about to pop it open when he decided to lob it like a hand grenade instead. Shattered the truck’s rear window. Girls were able to run away like they were Olympic sprinters.”

  “But Dylan didn’t.”

  “No, amigo, he did not. Stood his ground right there on the sidewalk, while the truck screeched to a halt and the white assholes piled out.”

  “Oh boy…”

  “Couple of my other guys saw what was happening and got close up to Dylan. Enough to have these white boys covered in tattoos everywhere you could see skin rethink their intentions and leave the premises. Thing you need to be aware of is that they’ve been cruising by every day since. Sometimes they park across the street and blare heavy rock-and-roll music through their open windows to advertise their presence.” Asuna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They got their crosshairs trained on your boy, amigo. And, sooner or later, they’re gonna do more than park their truck across the street.”

  Cort Wesley realized he was shaking his head. “All because he stood up for some girls.”

  “And the illegals I got working for me, too. Let me tell you something else,” Asuna said, coming out of his chair, the wood creaking under the strain. “A couple of those punks had their hands on one of those girls. Looked like they intended to drag her into their truck to do God knows what. Your son doesn’t throw that pop bottle, maybe we’d know what that would’ve been exactly.”

  “Thanks, Miguel.”

  Asuna nodded, his head seeming to merge straight into his shoulders. “You want to get your boy a job with the Parks Department for the rest of the summer, I’ll understand. But something else you should know. Another of my guys gave him a pistol, just in case. Problem there is that too often ‘just in case’ turns into ‘rest in peace,’ you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “I got my guys watching your kid’s back, without him knowing,” Asuna said somberly. “But these Nazi types got psycho running through their blood. Real punks out to prove they’re genuine tough guys by scoring a kill. Some of those tattoos I mentioned? Word is the ones colored red act like a tally, some fucked-up competition. Point being my guys are car boosters and strippers, no match for whatever they’re packing.”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “I know somebody who is.”

  6

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “You probably want to be sitting down for this,” Bexar County Medical Examiner Frank Whatley told Caitlin when she didn’t take the chair he’d offered her.

  “I’m a little confused here, Doc.”

  “Look, Caitlin—”

  “You never call me that. You always call me ‘Ranger.’”

  “Sit down, Ranger. Please.”

  Caitlin finally did; stiffly, leaving her hat in her lap and feeling it bob up and down in rhythm with her jittery legs.

  “Austin medical examiner called me this morning.”

  “About the girl I brought to the hospital last night?”

  Whatley nodded. “The very same. She suffered a broken cheekbone from what appears to be a fist, when she must have resisted. Plenty of bruising consistent with sexual assault, and a dislocated shoulder.” Something changed in his expression. “I wish I wasn’t having this conversation with you.”

  “I already know the man I shot didn’t do it.”

  “That’s not why I wanted to see you, Caitlin,” Whatley said, not sounding like his normal self at all.

  “You don’t have to parse your words, Doc,” Caitlin told him. “It was eighteen years ago now.”

  “But some things stay with you longer than others.”

  Frank Dean Whatley had been Bexar County’s medical examiner since the time Caitlin was in diapers. He’d grown a belly in recent years that hung out over his thin belt, seeming to force his spine to angle inward at the torso. Whatley’s teenage son had been killed by Latino gangbangers when Caitlin was a mere kid herself. Ever since then, he’d harbored a virulent hatred for that particular race, from the bag boys at the local H-E-B supermarket to the politicians who professed to be peacemakers. With his wife first lost in life and then death to alcoholism, he’d probably stayed in the job too long. But he had nothing to go home to, no real life outside the office, and remained exceptionally good at his job.

  The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office and Morgue was located just off Loop 410 not far from the Babcock Road exit on Merton Mintor. It was a three-story beige building that also housed the county health department and city offices for Medicaid. Caitlin had been coming here since she was a teenager, and what struck her was how it always smelled exactly the same, of cleaning solvent with a faint scent of menthol clinging to the walls like paint to disguise the odor of decaying flesh. The lighting was dull in the hallways and overly bright in offices like Whatley’s. She’d had occasion to come here plenty often over the years, but normally to discuss cases that fell under Bexar County’s jurisdiction, as opposed to Austin’s.

  “I changed my major to criminal justice after I was assaulted,” Caitlin told him, not bothering to elaborate further. “I wasn’t sure about becoming a Texas Ranger, until it happened.”

  “And me always thinking you were born into it.”

  “After my grandfather died, my heart just wasn’t there anymore.”

  “There was your father.”

  “I think he wanted me to choose another line of work. I don’t think he was happy when I informed him of my decision to change course.”

  Whatley scratched at his scalp, although Caitlin suspected there was no itch there. “Lone Star College in Kingwood is as good as it gets when it comes to community college.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “I’m only trying to.”

  “Don’t bother on my account. What did Austin tell you exactly about the victim I pulled out of Stubb’s last night? Do they have a line on her real attacker? Is that what this is about?”

  “I suppose it is, Ranger.”

  “What did I tell you about parsing your words, Doc?”

  Whatley looked down at his lap, then toward the window, as if suddenly reluctant to meet Caitlin’s gaze. “I reviewed the preliminary report from the Austin ME. They do good work up there.”

  Caitlin waited for him to continue.

  “Man who assaulted Kelly Ann Beasley wore a condom, but that college girl scratched enough skin off him to allow for a DNA profile on her attacker.”

  “Anybody I know?” Caitlin asked, and watched Whatley’s expression turn dour.

  “Appears so, unfortunately. It’s the same man who raped you.”

  7

  HOUSTON, TEXAS; EIGHTEEN YEARS BEFORE

  Caitlin’s mind flashed back eighteen years to the emergency room she’d driven herself to and the doctor who’d examined her and wrote the initial report.

  “My father.”

  “What was that?”

  “Call my father.”

  “Glad to, ma’am. But let’s start with a name, your name.”

  That
doctor had performed all the necessary tests, including those required to assemble a so-called rape kit. So-called because Caitlin detested the name. Made such a perverse act of violence and debauchery sound like something that came out of a box.

  Jim Strong had made it to the hospital ahead of the police and took charge of the questioning along with them, the Houston sex crimes detectives more than happy to have the help of a Texas Ranger. Jim made it plain he was there as a father, not a Texas Ranger, and didn’t want to provoke any squabbles pertaining to jurisdiction.

  After the questioning had passed in a fog, he’d driven Caitlin home—to San Antonio instead of her apartment near the Lone Star College campus.

  “You know his name?” Jim Strong asked, his words sounding like they were strained through gravel held in his mouth like chewing tobacco.

  “No.”

  Caitlin watched her father stiffen behind the wheel. “How’s that, little girl?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “I always call you that.”

  “I just don’t feel like a little girl right now. I don’t feel much like anything at all.”

  “Get back to this kid. What was it, some kind of party?”

  “He drugged me,” Caitlin told her father. “It didn’t show up in the blood work at the hospital, but I’m sure of it all the same. The world kept fading in and out. I was in one place, then I was in another. Then I woke up.”

  “In your apartment. Good thing you managed to get yourself to the hospital like you did, little…”

  Jim Strong stopped himself just in time, not wanting to upset his daughter any further. He’d raised her on his own from the time Caitlin was four after witnessing her mother being murdered by Mexican drug dealers. There’d been rape involved there, too, but Caitlin had already hidden herself in a closet by that point.

  “So you don’t know his name,” Jim picked up. “How about what he looks like? Was he a student?”

  “His first name was Frank. I never got his last name. He was about your height. Blond hair, blue eyes, nice smile. He got me a drink from the bar in a red Solo cup. I should’ve known he’d dosed it. There was this look in his eyes…”