Strong Darkness

by Jon Land

  “Their bodies are gone.”

  “Come again?”

  “You heard me. I had them stored in freezers under John Doe IDs. This morning they were gone. So unless we got ourselves a zombie problem on our hands, I’m thinking of putting in my retirement papers.”

  “You don’t figure county officials were behind this?”

  “Not without me signing off on the forms. And there’s something else. Remember I told you about them being found with no clear indication of the cause of death?”

  “Sure.”

  “I may have a clearer indication now, thanks to the death of that Chinese diplomat in the airport terminal.”

  “He was a general in the Chinese army, I believe, Doc.”

  “Well, according to the Chinese government, he’s a diplomat—at least his body is supposed to be treated as such. And we’re not having this conversation, Ranger. If anybody asks, anybody, it never happened.”

  “It’s not like you to be so mysterious, Doc.”

  “We were allowed to store the body while the diplomatic issues were worked out. Weren’t allowed to touch it, at least with a scalpel, though—that was the condition.”

  “You follow it?”

  “Not exactly. I guess a little of you has rubbed off on me, Ranger. Anyway, what I found makes no sense at all. That’s what you need to hear about.”

  70

  NEW YORK CITY

  “You stay back, you hear me?” Cort Wesley said to Dylan while the crowd from inside the Flatiron Building spilled out onto the pedestrian plaza on the Broadway side of the building in response to the fire alarm he’d pulled.

  “Dad,” the boy started to protest but Cort Wesley cut him off.

  “Just do it, son.” Cort Wesley continued to study the emerging crowd, locking his gaze on the sharply dressed man he’d recognized from the nonexistent twenty-third floor, and readying the pistol he’d taken off one of the big guys upstairs. “I seen all I want to see of you in a hospital bed.”

  * * *

  Cort Wesley slithered through the crowd, making himself thin and light. It wasn’t anything he’d ever been taught and he couldn’t say exactly how he did it.

  That crowd proved even more of a gift when he realized the man with the orange-toned flawless skin had been separated from the two thugs with whom he’d emerged from inside the unseen section of the offices upstairs. Cort Wesley spotted them gazing deliberately about, then refocused his gaze on his target, his mind charting a course his body followed as if on autopilot.

  Before he knew it, he was close enough to the man to smell his fancy aftershave mixed uneasily with too much dry-cleaning solvent used to launder his suit. Pistol pressed hard into the man’s ribs.

  “Straight ahead, hoss, and don’t stop for anything unless I say so.”

  71

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Doc Whatley locked the door to his analysis lab too, after ushering Caitlin inside.

  “Ever seen a cell phone like this before?” he asked her, his breathing coming fast and his gaze never far from the locked door.

  Caitlin gazed at the cell phone through the plastic evidence pouch. “It’s General Chang’s. I recognize it from the airport but I’ve never seen one like it before.”

  “That’s because it’s from China. Not even available here. But it’s not the one belonging to the victim at the airport, no, and that’s what I can’t make any sense of at all.”

  He moved toward a locked drawer and fumbled for the right key on his ring that still contained a good dozen of them. It took him several tries to get the drawer open and remove a trio of evidence pouches that contained cell phones identical to the one he’d just shown Caitlin. Whatley laid all four out in a neat row on the counter and backed off wordlessly, as if what Caitlin was about to see spoke for itself.

  “Where’d these come from exactly?”

  “Those four homeless men whose bodies flat out disappeared into thin air.”

  “All died of unexplained causes, you said.”

  “Just like the victim at the airport, near as I can tell.”

  “General Chang grabbed for his chest just before he keeled over in the terminal. Based on that and other signs, paramedics were pretty sure it was a heart attack.”

  “Same for the four homeless men.”

  “Whose bodies are now missing.”

  “And what the hell were they doing with those cell phones, Ranger?”

  * * *

  The more Caitlin ran it through her mind, the less sense it seemed to make.

  How could the deaths of four homeless men possibly be connected to the death of a high-ranking Chinese general? More to the point, what were those homeless men doing with cell phones at all, much less of a Chinese variety not commercially available in the United States?

  Caitlin had just started down the stairs to exit the building when she saw Young Roger stepping around the stairwell straight for her.

  “We need to talk, Ranger,” he said, file folder tucked tight under his arm.

  72

  NEW YORK CITY

  “You have any idea of the world of hurt you’re going to be in?” the man asked, coming awake bound to a desk chair in a Chelsea Hotel room a few blocks away from the Flatiron Building.

  “That’s good, Mr. Mareno,” Cort Wesley said, tossing the man’s wallet aside.

  Cort Wesley had already drawn the blinds and left only a single lamp on, angled so it caught Mareno’s face, making the bronze tone look as if it could be peeled off like a Band-Aid. He’d checked into the room in the newly renovated, formerly fleabag hotel before heading over to the Flatiron Building, the semblance of his plan having already taken shape. They called such places “boutique” these days, but to Cort Wesley that was just another world for “old,” right down to the radiator fed by old-fashioned steam pipes and the network of fire escapes attached to the building’s exterior with rust already peeling through their fresh black paint.

  “You make that up yourself or did someone write it for you?” Cort Wesley continued.

  “That boy you brought upstairs to my office, are you fucking him or something?”

  “You’re nothing more than a pimp, hoss, and no fancy office on a floor that doesn’t exist can change that.” Cort Wesley looked down at the man tied to the chair, his hands laced behind him. “Know how you can really tell when a man is scared shitless? When he tries to talk tough like you are.”

  “You think I’m scared?” Mareno smirked.

  “You’re not?”

  Mareno smirked again. His skin looked powdery dry, more like a mask stretched over his skin. “I’m too busy picturing what’s going to happen to you down the road. And not too far down it either.”

  “Really? Then maybe you should look down, not too far toward your crotch.”

  Mareno did and noticed the substantial bulge there that looked like a folded-up sweater had been stuffed down his pants. “What the fuck?”

  “Believe I detect a note of fear in your voice, hoss.” Cort Wesley sat down on the edge of the bed and faced the man. “I know you’ve heard about all those fancy tortures we got—water boarding, electrocution, and the like. But when you’re in the field you learn to be a bit more creative.”

  Cort Wesley watched Mareno swallow hard.

  “Know what’s down there?”

  The man just looked at him.

  “Dry ice mixed with salt to slow down the chilling process. I’m guessing your privates are starting to feel a bit cold at the moment, aren’t they?”

  The man’s eyes were blinking rapidly.

  “Here’s what happens from this point, hoss. You don’t talk to me, tell me what I want to know, we just sit here and watch your privates freeze up solid. Know how long you can last before your prick and balls are done for good, no different than a snowman’s nose?”

  Mareno didn’t respond.

  “Me neither,” Cort Wesley told him. “But based on what I’ve seen of frostbite, I’m
guessing maybe twenty minutes. So you and I, we’re gonna do some talking, or I’m gonna stick a sock in your mouth, walk out the door, and lock it behind me. By the time they find you, your prick’ll be a Popsicle that’ll break off as soon as they stand you up.” He stood up towering over Mareno, giving his last statement more time to sink in. “So, you wanna start or you want me to?”

  73

  SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  “You ever hear of the Deep Web, Ranger?” Young Roger asked, inside Doc Whatley’s office after they’d appropriated it for their meeting.

  Whatley had been in the midst of putting a PowerPoint presentation together and had forgotten to turn off the pull-down screen on which it was projected. The result was to light both Caitlin’s and Young Roger’s faces in the spill off the gleaming white background.

  “I believe it came up during one of my trips to Quantico, but not much stuck,” Caitlin told him. “Another version of the Internet, something like that, as I recall.”

  “Kind of,” Young Roger said, tilting his head from side to side. “And that explains why you couldn’t find that porn site when you plugged in the URL. You need a special browser called a Tor browser to access the Deep Web.”

  He was only twenty-nine but looked even younger. Though a Ranger himself, the title was mostly honorary, provided in recognition of the technological expertise he brought to the table that 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 six 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 first CD. Their alternative brand of music wasn’t the kind she preferred, but Dylan told her it was pretty good.

  “In a nutshell,” Young Roger continued, “the Deep Web was actually invented by our own government to create a clear and unobstructed path by which they could communicate secretly with their own people in the field without worrying about electronic eavesdropping. But it didn’t take long before it became a haven for drug traffickers, financial looters, a whole lot of new-age criminals wielding an Internet currency called Bitcoin and—”

  “Don’t tell me, pornographers.”

  “Kiddie porn included. The Deep Web provides a secure, untraceable means by which the freaks can conduct their business without fear of recrimination or reprisal. Ranger, we’re talking about a second wholly independent Internet beneath, or alongside, the real Internet with its content never showing up on Google and its URL addresses bounced around so much as to be utterly untraceable.”

  “So that link to the porn video I sent you…”

  “… took me into the Deep Web. Actually, it took me nowhere at first, which made me figure the site had simply been taken down. Then I played around a little more and realized it was a matter of the location being disguised by the data being run through an intricate system of relays. Each time it switches, another layer of encryption gets stripped away until, by the time the site finally lands, only someone intricately familiar with negotiating the Deep Web can find it.”

  “So you found the video, have I got that right?”

  “Along with plenty more that could provide the link to others and, eventually, the originating point of the posting. Then we’ll know exactly who was behind the software. I can tell you one thing for sure already: this wasn’t the only porn video that followed the same general route, not by a long shot. Whoever posted it on the Deep Web has done it before and that’s sure to help me nail them.”

  “Any connection to those murdered Chinese girls, Roger?”

  “I’ve only managed to track the relay route so far, but that’s next on my list to follow up. I did look into this Li Zhen like you asked, though. His file’s sealed on all relevant databases for national security reasons. Dead end.”

  “I figured,” Caitlin told him, hardly surprised given Zhen’s connection to Homeland Security. “Thanks for trying, anyway.”

  “Hold on, Ranger. Since when do I let dead ends stop me?” Young Roger asked her. “Any traditional files on Zhen may be sealed but, like you figured, Interpol’s were a whole different matter. Turns out they had plenty on your friend Li Zhen, thanks to his links to Chinese pornography. Apparently, he was a pioneer of expanding his horizons into the field of Internet porn years back.”

  “So why didn’t Interpol arrest him?”

  “They could never make anything stick, especially the more serious Web-based material. But I did learn Zhen’s wife died twenty-eight years ago. Interpol’s file includes mention of two daughters too, one born in 1989 and the other in 1976; on July Fourth, if you can believe, the day of the Bicentennial. The older one committed suicide at the age of seventeen in 1993. But here’s the strange thing. The younger one seems to have disappeared, fell off the face of the damn planet, right around the time Yuyuan got started. I believe her name was—”

  “Kai,” Caitlin completed before he had a chance to.

  * * *

  Caitlin was so distracted by fitting the pieces of what Young Roger had told her into the puzzle she was assembling, that she almost got hit by a car walking across the parking lot on the University of Texas Health Science Center campus. She skirted another car screeching into reverse and climbed into her SUV, which she’d parked in a shady spot in the corner.

  She’d just gotten the key into the ignition when movement flashed in the rearview mirror, and a hand grasped her shoulder from the backseat.

  74

  NEW YORK CITY

  “You want to order up some room service?” Cort Wesley asked the man tied to the chair. “Maybe check out the offerings on Pay-Per-View? Gotta figure out some way to pass the time if you’re gonna keep giving me the silent treatment.”

  Mareno looked down at his groin again. He held his eyes closed for a long moment, then opened them slowly with all trace of bravado, of resistance, missing now.

  “You tell me what I want to know and our business is done, hoss. I pull that dry ice out of your undies and I’m gone from your life.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

  Cort Wesley couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, I get it. You think I’m gonna punch your ticket because I’m scared you’ll track me down otherwise.” He shook his head. “I’m not that easy to scare and if anyone comes after me as a result of this, it’s you who’ll pay the price.”

  “What kind of accent is that? You sound like a cowboy.”

  “Texas. And right now this cowboy is pissed off that your traveling whorehouse almost got my son killed.”

  “Son?” the man asked, eyes flashing as if the pieces were finally falling together for him.

  Cort Wesley dragged an armchair over from the corner and sat down angled close to his hostage. “So you wanna keep up the chitchat while your balls freeze, or you wanna get down to business?”

  “You have no idea who you’re messing with here, what we’ll do to you.”

  “Right now, it’s just you.” Cort Wesley hesitated to let his point sink. “You starting to feel a bit of chill down there where the sun don’t shine yet?”

  The man looked down, his gaze telling Cort Wesley he was.

  “Your balls are running out of time, hoss. So let’s make this quick. Where’d the Chinese girl come from?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Goes by the name of Kai. Pretty enough to turn my son’s head spinning. You remember my boy, don’t you? He’s the one someone involved with you beat to within an inch of his life. You wanna tell me what the girl had to do with that, where she fits into all this?”

  Mareno swallowed hard, looked down below his waist again.

  “Tick, tick, tick,” Cort Wesley said. “I figure you got maybe ten minutes before the pain kicks in, fifteen before you’re gonna be a soprano. You don’t impress me as a man cut out for this kind of shit. J
ust talk to me so you can go back to pushing your pencils, running your numbers, and fucking up a lot of innocent kids’ lives.”

  “Kai was sent to Providence,” the man said abruptly, his voice turning shrill. “But ten days ago she dropped off the map.”

  “Ten days,” Cort Wesley repeated, recalling mention by Caitlin, of something else that had happened around that time, but he couldn’t remember exactly what.

  “We lost contact with her,” the man tied to the chair was saying. “She must have figured out how to disable her tracker.”

  “Tracker?”

  “GPS chip we install to keep tabs on the merchandise.”

  “Where?”

  “Underneath the skin on her forearm. We’ve been looking for her ever since.”

  “She ended up back in Providence,” Cort Wesley told him. “But you know that already, since your men kicked the shit out of my kid.”

  “Uh-uh, cowboy, not us. Whoever found Kai, whoever hurt your kid, must’ve dug up their leads some other way. We didn’t even know there was a problem until we got a call that she hadn’t shown up on set.”

  “What set?”

  “Another porn video.”

  “Being shot where exactly?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Cort Wesley pulled his chair closer to Mareno again. “I walk out of here, hoss, you won’t need one of your girls to give you a blow job anymore—you’ll be able to do it all by yourself ’long as your freezer’s working. Now answer my question: where was this video supposed to be shot?”

  Mareno spoke through a smirk that had spread across his expression. “Your own backyard, cowboy: Texas.”

  75

  NEW YORK CITY

  Dylan waited in the lobby, on lookout like his father had told him. He’d bought a magazine at the newsstand, but wasn’t really paying any attention to it, his mind upstairs with his father and the man whose tan colored his face orange.

  He had found a chair with a view of most of the lobby and the street beyond the hotel entrance and watched the people come and go. Around him workmen toiled, continuing the updates on the lobby that included the fresh carpeting and new furniture in the section in which he was seated. He was digging the heels of his boots into the brushlike surface of the knap when a beautiful Chinese woman came through the door.