Strong Darkness

by Jon Land

  The priest before him today shook his head, trying to stand up straighter as they continued to walk, the crowd seeming to part in Paz’s path.

  “I want my actions to have meaning,” Paz told him. “I want to feel like I did when I killed the gang leader with his own knife. I have it with me now. Would you like to see?”

  The priest shot a hand forward the way a cop stopping traffic might. “That isn’t necessary, my son. And you only come to me when, how do you say it, the storm clouds are gathering.”

  “Can’t even see them this time—that’s how thick the darkness is that’s coming.”

  “Your Texas Ranger again?”

  “That’s why I needed to see you, padre. The darkness threatening her is different and I feel I’m a part of it somehow.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Not long after I witnessed the priest’s murder, I found myself running with other boys as lost as I was. I didn’t realize for a time they were part of the same gang that had killed a man who wanted no more than to do good by a poor village’s children. But I didn’t quit. I stayed in the gang and that’s how I eventually found my priest’s killer.”

  The priest stopped before a display of baskets of bloodred tomatoes piled high and angled outward. “I come here every Saturday,” he told Paz. “And every Saturday I find myself marveling at how those stacks of tomatoes don’t collapse and roll underfoot everywhere. You know why?”

  “Because buyers choose only from the very top of the piles.”

  “And what would happen if they reached down and took one from lower?”

  “Trouble.”

  “Exactly,” the priest said, letting himself smile. “This darkness that’s coming springs from someplace just as deep. That’s why you can’t see or define it. It’s hidden, ready to topple everything perched above it. I’m actually gratified to see you with no confessional screen obscuring my vision.”

  “Why’s that, padre?”

  “Because I can see for myself that you do what you do without hatred or malice in your heart. You are a soldier serving God’s army, even if He does not always announce himself as the general. This darkness that’s coming?”

  “Yes, padre?”

  “It may be all-powerful, but it is spawned by evil men who seek nothing but destruction.”

  At that, Paz reached down and plucked one of the tomatoes from low in the stack. He lifted it toward him, unleashing a blood-red avalanche that reminded Paz of molten lava running downhill. The tomatoes bounced and rolled and splattered underfoot, people left comically dancing and darting to dodge from their path.

  “Just like that,” the priest said.

  “Just like that, padre,” Paz echoed, feeling a smile spreading across his face.

  “You must stop them, my son,” the priest continued. “Go with God.”

  PART SIX

  “Arrested John Wesley Hardin, Pensacola, Florida, this P.M. He had four men with him. Had some lively shooting. One of their number killed, all the rest captured.”

  —J. B. Armstrong, July 1877

  57

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “Something about these dead girls just isn’t right,” Frank Dean Whatley told Caitlin Strong inside his lab at the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, where he’d brought her as soon as she arrived.

  That lab never changed, at least not in Caitlin’s memory. It was sparkling clean everywhere, not a speck of dust or grime anywhere to be found, the cheap tile floors so shiny she could see the outline of her shadow. It smelled of the powerful antiseptic cleaner Whatley insisted his staff use after every examination and procedure in a concerted desire to pay homage and respect to those who crossed his slabs. It was almost as if he was trying to make some kind of moral amends, especially to the victims of crime who had already been treated with the ultimate indifference and cruelty.

  The body of the victim found the other night at the Menger Hotel on the River Walk was lying on the steel, mirror-like slab right now. She’d been covered just past the breast line by a white sheet, neatly folded over at the edge to reveal fine, perfectly aligned stitching where Whatley had reattached her head so she was facing in the right direction.

  “No luck identifying any of the victims?” Caitlin asked him.

  “None at all. Normally you find some clue in their personal items—a parking ticket, a doctor’s prescription, a sales receipt—but not in this case. At first, I figured that was the work of the killer. Now I’m not so sure, like maybe these young women didn’t want to be ID’ed.”

  “Or somebody else didn’t want them to, Doc. What about that expensive perfume the latest victim had in her purse?”

  Whatley frowned. “Available in that size in maybe a thousand stores across the state, not to mention mail order. Too many websites and inventories to bother checking.”

  “But you’ve got pictures of all five victims, right?” Caitlin asked, thinking of something.

  “Sure.”

  “Send them over to Young Roger,” she said, referring to the young tech whiz who was already checking on the porn website she couldn’t find on the Internet. “Tell him I’ll explain what I want him to look for later.”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing now, Ranger—at least, I think I can: all five of these young Chinese women were foreign nationals.”

  “How can you be sure of something like that?”

  “It’s not hard if you know what to look for. Skin pigmentation, different concentrations of triglycerides and phosphates in the blood, even bone structure. It’s all there to find for someone willing to spend the time to look.” Whatley looked down at the latest victim, seeming to study her utterly blank face that looked peaceful in stark contrast to the terrible death she had endured. “So the victims were foreign nationals, but there’s no record of their photos ever being logged into the ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, system off passports. You want to explain to me how that can be?”

  “Only one way I can: they were smuggled in, by a human trafficking ring in all probability.”

  “Well, judging by the contents of their stomachs, their hairstyles, and the vaccines in their systems, they’ve been here awhile, a few years at the very least.”

  Caitlin looked at Whatley, trying to discern the message in his droopy eyes. “What is it, Doc?”

  “My initial reasoning was that the victims were strangled while lying facedown on the bed with their killer on top of them. Follow me?”

  “Seems plain enough.”

  “That’s what I thought. I was hampered by the fact I never actually examined or autopsied the other victims, but I had the most recent one, from the Menger Hotel, to work with and that was enough for me to determine that she was strangled while upright, likely standing.”

  Whatley felt the need to draw in some breath, as if short of it, before continuing. Caitlin waited, still unsure where he was going with this.

  “This was suggested by the amount of fluid collected, and its placement, in the lungs,” the Bexar County medical examiner resumed. “And the angle of the ligature marks I found indicate that their killer was standing behind them when he did the deed. I’ve always found that to be more important than just about everybody else in the field believes.”

  “So we’ve got a profile emerging,” Caitlin concluded, trying to determine how this new piece fit into the puzzle she was assembling in her mind.

  “Speaking of which, you remember that thread I found at the Menger?”

  “Sure, you thought it was the material used to sew the victim’s head back on.”

  “Turns out I was wrong. It was a hair—well, an artificial hair. The kind you’d find in a wig or a toupee.”

  “So our killer’s bald. You could have told me that over the phone.”

  “There’s something else,” Whatley told her. “And that’s what I needed to tell you in person because it’s something the likes of which I’ve never seen before. This victim and the fou
r others, they’d all had hysterectomies performed. Two of the other medical examiners didn’t even make note of that in their reports until I pointed it out from my examination of this victim. But that’s understandable, I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  “The scarring was very minor, hardly noticeable.”

  “You lost me, Doc.”

  “Somebody went to a lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to make sure it was done right. But that’s not all.” Whatley looked at her with eyes so big and moist they were almost tear-filled. He started to suck in a deep breath and then abandoned the effort. “The operations were performed a whole bunch of years ago, Ranger, while they were still little girls.”

  58

  CONNECTICUT, ROUTE 95

  “I don’t get any of this,” Dylan told Cort Wesley, after waking up grouchy, groggy, and feeling cramped in the passenger seat of their rental car as it headed south, through Connecticut, along rain-swept Route 95.

  “Your head hurt again?”

  “My head’s fine.”

  “Doesn’t look that way to me.”

  Dylan squeezed his eyes closed. “Then stop giving me a headache.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk later.”

  “No, say whatever you want now. Tell me I was an idiot for letting this girl sucker me the way she did. But how was I supposed to know she was mixed up in something like that?” the boy asked. “You have any aspirin?”

  “You’ve taken enough.”

  “So you’re a doctor now too?”

  Cort Wesley focused on the road ahead. “You couldn’t have known what she was mixed up in, no way,” Cort Wesley said to Dylan, his hands tightening on the steering wheel, which felt hot under his grasp.

  It was a dreary day, cold rain filling the air and turning the roads slick. While Dylan was asleep, Cort Wesley left the radio off so as not to disturb him, the only sound that of the windshield wipers swiping the rain splatter off the glass.

  “What did Kai tell you about herself exactly?” he resumed.

  “Not much. She figured I knew everything I needed to about her already. But remember how you told me to watch people’s eyes?”

  Cort Wesley nodded.

  “Hers were always shifting about, like she thought somebody was watching her.”

  “What about the night you got beat up?”

  Dylan frowned. “Don’t say it that way.”

  “How would you like me to say it?”

  “That I got jumped. By two guys at least.”

  “Get back to that night.”

  “I got her text after my meetings. She wanted to meet up.”

  “At Spats. Your idea or hers?”

  “Mine. She met me there and told me there was something she needed to tell me. Just not in the bar.”

  “You think she was running some kind of game on you?”

  “Game?”

  “A con. You know, playing you.”

  “Why?” Dylan posed defensively.

  “You never pegged her for what she was?” Cort Wesley asked instead of answering his question.

  “And what was she?”

  “Porn actresses do it for money, son. Seems a simple enough conclusion.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “She never asked me for money, Dad.”

  “Whose idea was it to walk in that direction?”

  “Dad…”

  “I mean it, son.”

  “I insisted on walking her back to where she said she lived. We must’ve gotten jumped on the way.”

  Cort Wesley could feel himself getting angry again. “You mean, you got jumped,” he said to Dylan. “Kai must have run off.”

  “What was she supposed to do, Dad, stay and get the shit kicked out of her too?”

  “She never called the cops, Dylan. The nine-one-one was placed by a neighbor, dialed just before a passing student made the call too. What’s that tell you?”

  “I don’t know. What does it tell me?”

  “I hate when you repeat what I say, son.”

  “Tough.”

  “I ever tell you a man only repeats a question when he doesn’t want to face the answer?”

  “Could you be any more evasive?”

  “Nice word—evasive.”

  “Comes with having a kid in the Ivy League, Dad. I think I remember these guys grabbing for her and me intervening, just like you would if somebody did that to Caitlin.”

  “She knew who Caitlin was.”

  “I tell you that already?”

  Cort Wesley nodded. “In the hospital, when you mentioned Kai’s interest in you had something to do with a serial killer. Don’t you remember?”

  “The hospital’s kind of a blur. She brought that up when she got to Spats that night. Said she needed to talk to Caitlin. Said there were women being murdered in Texas and she knew who was doing it.”

  “You ask her how?”

  “Never got the chance. She knew about Caitlin, she knew about you. Not easy stuff to find out by just entering my name in Google. I asked her about that.”

  “What she say?”

  “Not much. Can I have an aspirin or not?”

  “I already told you no.”

  “I guess I forgot that too.”

  Cort Wesley turned to shoot Dylan a look, making him climb up the bumper of a minivan and necessitating a last-minute stomp on the rental car’s brakes. He felt the antilocks engaging with a body-rattling quake, slowing just short of a collision.

  “Jesus, Dad, why don’t you let me drive?”

  “Because the docs said you may still have some lingering effects from the concussion. That it might impair your judgment.”

  “Really?” Dylan asked, making a sound stuck somewhere between a snicker and a chuckle. “So what’s your excuse? Now, how ’bout that aspirin?”

  And Cort Wesley fished in his pocket for the bottle.

  59

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Caitlin sat in her SUV for a time after leaving Doc Whatley’s office. She hadn’t let on in front of him how much such a violation of these young women, when they were barely in their teens, bothered her.

  Someone wanted them to have sex and lots of it.

  That same someone didn’t want to ever worry about them getting pregnant.

  And now five of them were dead, murdered in the same way as another string of Chinese females in 1883; those bodies likely buried not far from where the railroads blazed a trail across the country into present day.

  Caitlin finally gunned her engine and, as much to distract herself as anything else, flipped on her scanner and ended up tuning in just as something was happening at San Antonio airport. She was already tearing down the road for the nearest ramp to the freeway when her cell phone started chirping.

  “You on your way to the airport?” Captain Tepper asked through the Bluetooth.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because you’ve got a sixth sense for this shit, to the point where I’m starting to think you’re actually the cause of it all just to give you an excuse to drive me bonkers.”

  “Stay away from the Marlboros, D.W.”

  “Only if you promise not to shoot anyone today.”

  “Depends what I find at San Antonio International. Why don’t you give me a hint?”

  60

  NEW YORK CITY

  “You want me to come inside with you?” Dylan asked, not believing what his father had just said.

  “I got a plan,” Cort Wesley told him, “and you’re a part of what I’ve got in mind, assuming you’re up to it.”

  “I’m up to it. So what is this place exactly?”

  “Not sure, son. A safe bet would have it that Kai’s part of an operation that’s headquartered right here.”

  They stood on the pedestrian plaza lined with tables on the Broadway side of the wedge-shaped historical icon known as the Flatiron Building at 175 Fifth Avenue. Cort Wesley’s eyes continued to gaze up toward where he needed to go: the twenty-third floor, Nicol
as Dimitrios had said, just before handing Cort Wesley the black keycard he held in his pocket now.

  So just how was it he counted only twenty-two floors from the outside?

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” Cort Wesley continued, feeling the words corkscrew in his throat.

  “You don’t have to say it, Dad.”

  “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

  “Something about me shooting that guy you were fighting with. I don’t even remember doing it. I went for that gun and next thing I know it was jerking in my hand. Guess it was the concussion.”

  “You took him down with the first shot, son. Not an easy thing to do.”

  “That what you wanted to tell me?”

  “You … okay with what you did?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember doing it.”

  “You killed a man, Dylan.”

  “I’ve seen people die before, Dad,” the boy said pointedly. “Why do we have to talk about this?”

  He could tell Dylan wasn’t being evasive; the boy just didn’t see the point of belaboring the issue. Cort Wesley figured his apparent detachment from the deed stemmed from a combination of witnessing his own mother’s shooting and all the violence to which he’d been exposed since. Then again, maybe it was a genetic thing, handed down from generation to generation. Cort Wesley’s dad once told him he’d killed his first man in a prison yard where he’d been stuck as a sixteen-year-old boy, doing time with hardcore criminals after being tried as an adult for armed robbery. It was either that or give himself up to the man in ways he wasn’t about to. And, after splitting the guy’s skull open with a chunk of concrete that had broken off from the base of the steel fencing, nobody bothered Boone Masters again. Cort Wesley, on the other hand, had killed his first man in self-defense; well, defense of a girl who was attacked while they walked down the street, turning the attacker’s own knife against him.