by Land, Jon
Let On-Star, or whatever it was called, try raising two teenage boys now targeted by contract killers.
Somehow that thought made Cort Wesley smile, as almost everything did when he was alone with his boys. Circumstances aside, he’d learned to appreciate the company he knew was fleeting, even with their typical teenage back-and-forth banter. Luke had gotten to the age where he wasn’t afraid to snap back at his brother and, for his part, Dylan had begun to appreciate Luke was no longer a pushover. Maybe even grudgingly accept that his younger brother now was pretty much a spitting image of him from four years ago.
When they’d witnessed their mother murdered as she stood in the front doorway.
That thought shocked Cort Wesley back to reality and he busied himself with the directions to Araceli Ramirez’s home that he’d committed to memory. She lived in Pinnacle Peak Heights, one of Scottsdale’s finest neighborhoods—perfectly befitting the wife of a car wash and Chamber of Commerce baron. The name suggested a gated community with fake cops patrolling in tiny fuel-efficient cars with police lights affixed to the roofs.
As it turned out, the community wasn’t gated, just lush and spacious with plenty of space between homes on lots that looked to average well more than an acre. The whole community just didn’t look real, more painted onto the desert, and Cort Wesley actually wanted to touch a home or some landscaping just to make sure it didn’t rub off on his fingers. The palm trees and garden shrubbery looked to be of a uniform height amid lawns so well manicured he figured they might have actually been artificial turf. He’d heard fake grass was quite the rage in the desert these days and wondered what it felt like underfoot.
The street on which Araceli Ramirez lived featured a beautiful view of the mountains overlooking the scene to the east, and he imagined the lit-up city would look just as spectacular to the west after dark. Cort Wesley wasn’t at all jealous, but he was surprised by the means with which his boys’ aunt found herself living.
“My older sister’s a bitch,” Maura used to say, whenever Araceli came up in conversation. “A real bitch.”
Man, he could almost hear Maura’s voice in his head right now.
“Why you smiling, Dad?” Luke asked him, while Dylan remained lost between his headphones.
“I was just thinking of your mom,” Cort Wesley said, instead of making something up.
“Man, check this place out,” came Dylan’s voice from next to him in the front seat.
He’d spotted Araceli Ramirez’s address ahead of his father. A beige-colored stucco exterior enclosing four thousand square feet of living space off a large circular drive on a cul de sac. Cort Wesley pulled in slowly, figuring the car wash business must be very good indeed based on the majestically maintained landscaping amid a fenced two-acre spread within which the palatial two-story home was centered. The sun beat down on it from a cloudless sky and, as Cort Wesley wound his way toward the clay-colored cantera stone walk fronting the house, the automatic sprinklers snapped on.
Real grass, he realized, having figured Araceli more for the fake kind based on what he knew of her.
Dylan and Luke trailed him out of the rental car and up the walk, passing a tiered fountain dribbling water en route to the front door. And that’s when Cort Wesley stiffened, something making his defenses snap on. He knew that sensation all too well, mostly from war, some inexplicable part of his brain and being picking up some cosmic vibrations his conscious mind had missed. He’d given up trying to figure it all out and just accepted it since it had saved him so many times.
But why now, why here?
Almost to the door, Cort Wesley froze, making sure his boys were shielded behind him.
“Dad?” he heard Dylan say, holding off on a response.
Because the front door was cracked open six inches maybe, enough for Cort Wesley to feel the cool air fleeing from inside and hear the steady hum of the central air conditioner.
“Stay here,” he told his sons, and eased his way though the door.
36
AUSTIN, TEXAS
The Four Seasons had been built amid a lavish garden setting on San Jacinto Boulevard in the center of Austin. It faced Lady Bird Lake, just a five-minute walk from the bustle of Congress Avenue and ten from a bridge a massive colony of vampire bats called home, having roosted on its underside for literally decades.
Caitlin hadn’t even asked D. W. Tepper about the availability of the chopper provided to Company F by Jones. Instead, unable to sleep soundly, she rose before dawn and found Cort Wesley in the very same spot on the front porch where she’d left him. Driving long distances, especially along briefly empty stretches of the flat Texas four-lanes, was great for clearing her head, though not this morning. This morning she was bringing news of a child’s death to a father.
Now she sat with Sandoval in matching adjacent, cushioned chairs shaded by twin umbrellas in the hotel’s open parklike area en route to the pool. To Caitlin it had the feel of a golf course minus the flags, holes, and bunkers, the light green grass moist with a recent watering and trimmed close to the ground. Trees rimmed the space and Caitlin thought she might have heard the bubbling of a fountain intermixed with traffic sounds that reminded her she was in a city.
She looked at Fernando Lorenzo Sandoval, trying to find the right words before she simply eased the school photo of his son Daniel from her pocket and extended it toward him. He took the picture in a trembling hand, barely regarding it before wiping his eyes and returning his gaze to her.
“Where?” he managed.
“He was found with four other children in a Texas ghost town called Willow Creek.”
Caitlin caught Sandoval’s eyes raising at the mention of the town, the spark of recognition clear. But then his expression flattened again, his lips started to quiver. He eased his upper teeth over the lower one to still them.
“How?” Sandoval asked, squeezing the arms of his chair so tight his hands flushed with red.
“Why don’t we leave that for another time?”
“How?” he repeated.
Caitlin leaned forward, canting her body to ease closer to him and stopping just short of reaching out to touch his arm. “Mr. Sandoval, sometimes you need to just trust your friends about certain things.”
“And you’re my friend?”
Caitlin nodded. “I believe I am, sir, yes.”
Sandoval held her gaze, his eyes going glassy again. “I wonder if you hadn’t saved my life in El Paso, if my son would still be alive.” He swallowed hard. “This was my fault, wasn’t it?”
“On the surface, that would be my first thought, but—”
Shaking his head now, as he interrupted her. “All the precautions I took … Everything thought out, every possible layer of protection … I didn’t just give my family a new identity, I built them a new life entirely separate from mine.” Sandoval started to swallow again, but his throat seemed to clog before he finished the effort. “I haven’t even seen Daniel for almost a year now. Except once, when I showed up at one of his soccer games. In disguise so no one would recognize me, even him. I promised myself I’d only watch a few minutes to avoid risk. Then I promised myself I’d leave at halftime, then after a little of the second half.” His eyes grasped hers desperately. “I was still standing there when the team left the field. Daniel walked right past me. His team won in overtime.” He stopped long enough to take a deep breath. “I moved my wife and daughter into hiding as soon as word reached me about my son. If this was the work of the cartels…”
“It wasn’t, sir. We’ve now identified the other four kids who were found in Willow Creek with your son,” Caitlin continued, easing her smartphone from her pocket and locating the pictures Captain Tepper had e-mailed her the previous night. “Could you check these out and tell me if you recognize any of the faces?”
“I thought you said they’d already been identified.”
“They have. But I want to see if they’re familiar to you.”
Sandoval sc
rolled through the pictures in cursory fashion before handing the phone back to Caitlin. “I don’t know any of them. Who are they, Ranger?”
Caitlin jogged through the pictures herself as she responded. “Three are children of two of the biggest drug cartel leaders in Mexico.”
37
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
Cort Wesley saw the bodies first, then the blood. Araceli Ramirez and her businessman husband lying facedown on the stone tile floor. He felt chilled, immediately conscious of the central air-conditioning filling the house with supercooled air and recalled Maura saying how much her sister detested the heat.
“You want me to check upstairs?”
Cort Wesley turned toward Dylan, now standing just inside the open doorway with Luke peeking out from behind him. “No,” he said, instead of reprimanding the boys for disregarding his instructions. “Not much doubt what’s gonna be up there and I don’t want you seeing it.”
Cort Wesley moved from the foyer into the sprawling living and dining room combination, careful not to disturb the crime scene. Funny how having a Texas Ranger in his life had changed his thinking in such things.
This was bad, very bad. It wasn’t about Maura Torres at all, but her whole family. Someone exacting revenge, payback, comeuppance—whatever—for something that must have happened long before that Maura had never shared with him.
“Ain’t this a mess?” said Leroy Epps, suddenly standing between the two corpses, avoiding the blood pools. “How’d this go down, bubba?”
“Happened early this morning.”
“How you figure that?”
“Kids’ backpacks are still in the foyer, like they were packed for school.”
Old Leroy cast his bloodshot gaze back that way. The backpacks were out of sight from here, but Cort Wesley thought maybe ghosts had no trouble seeing around corners. “Two backpacks meaning two more bodies upstairs, boy and a girl judging by the colors. What else, bubba?”
Cort Wesley continued forward, close enough to Leroy Epps to smell the talcum powder slathered over his skin and fresh root beer soda on his breath. “Low-caliber shots to the head. One each. Very professional.”
“Dad?” Dylan prodded.
“Whoever did this,” Cort Wesley continued to Leroy Epps, “didn’t need to do any more than that to make their point, champ.”
“Who you talking to?” Dylan persisted.
“Just thinking out loud.”
“Then who’s ‘champ’?”
Cort Wesley swung toward his oldest son. “Maybe you should take your brother back outside.”
“We’re safer in here.”
“Killers are long gone.”
Dylan and Luke both looked past their father toward the bodies, stray clumps atop the polished tile. Both wearing light-colored clothes that beneath the dull recessed lighting looked like extensions of the floor.
“He’s right, son,” Leroy Epps said, and for an instant, just an instant, Cort Wesley thought he caught Dylan looking the ghost’s way. “You make your way into the kitchen, bubba, check and see if there’s any root beer in the fridge.” His big, dull eyes regarded the corpses again. “Don’t suppose they’ll be drinking it anytime soon.”
“Maybe he can help protect us,” Dylan was saying now.
“Who?”
“Whoever it is you’re talking to.”
“Myself. I told you that.”
“Sure, Dad,” the boy scoffed, “whatever you say.”
“Boy’s got himself an attitude, don’t he?”
“Guess he takes after his father, champ.”
Dylan rolled his eyes. “There you go again.”
Old Leroy looked from the bodies to Dylan and Luke. “Whoever did this likely ain’t finished. And if they happened to be figuring on you coming here…”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How ’bout help just arrived, bubba.”
And Cort Wesley turned to find Guillermo Paz looming in the doorway.
38
AUSTIN, TEXAS
“The second-oldest boy and youngest girl were brother and sister, the children of Alejandro Luis Rojas, second in command of the Juárez cartel. That leaves one boy and one girl, each ten years old. The boy was the son of Juan Ramon Castillo, ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel cadre. The girl was the daughter of a high school teacher from Mexico City who’s currently sick in the hospital.”
“A teacher,” Sandoval repeated.
“Which tells me this isn’t about drugs, sir. It’s about something else, and I want you to know I won’t rest until I determine exactly what that is.”
“It makes no sense,” Sandoval said, sounding like someone else entirely to Caitlin. “Risking the wrath of some of the most powerful men in Mexico…”
“No, sir, it doesn’t.”
“Ay Dios mío,” Sandoval managed, drifting backward until his shoulders sank into the rear cushion.
“What is it, Mr. Sandoval?”
His eyes found hers again. “Willow Creek, Ranger.”
“I imagine you don’t believe that’s a coincidence any more than I do,” Caitlin said, recalling the rise she’d gotten out of him when she mentioned the town’s name.
“Not at all, Ranger,” he told her, leaning forward. “Not at all.”
39
AUSTIN, TEXAS; 1919
“I don’t believe I heard you correctly,” Adjutant General James Harley said, after taking a hefty swig from his bottle of milk of magnesia.
“I believe you did,” said William Ray Strong, leaning as far back as the stiff, high-backed wooden chair set before Harley’s desk would let him.
Harley held the bottle of antacid up for William Ray and his son, Earl, to see. “You know why I been living on this stuff? On account of the shit pulled by the likes of you.”
William Ray knew full well he was referring to the most infamous episode in the Rangers’ storied history, that being a massacre of fifteen Mexican civilians the year before in the tiny community of Porvenir, Texas, on the Mexican border in western Presidio County. His son, Earl, had shown him a widely circulated picture of Captain Monroe Fox and two other Rangers on horseback with their lariats around the bodies of dead Mexican bandits. That past January, numerous similar reports had led to an investigation by the Texas Legislature in the person of Representative José T. Canales of Brownsville. After hearing testimony, the legislature passed a bill that reduced the number of Rangers, pretty much bringing an end to the days of glory that had culminated with the exploits of the Frontier Battalion in which William Ray had served.
For his part, Adjutant General Harley, the de facto supervisor of all Ranger companies, had fought to preserve as much of their legacy and number as he could. Try as he may, though, he was unable to convince lawmakers that the breakdown of law and order on the border during the Mexican Revolution necessitated the appointment of hundreds of new special Rangers without sufficient training or seasoning in keeping with the organization’s storied tradition. The fact that these “wildings,” as Harley called them, were the true culprits fell on deaf ears and he announced his retirement effective in just a few months’ time once the hearings had concluded. As a result, his modest office in the State House was already littered with boxes in various stages of packing.
“You know how many Mexicans Rangers are accused of killing in the last decade?” Harley challenged William Ray, laying his bottle of milk of magnesia back on the desktop.
“No, sir.”
“As many as five thousand. That’s five with three zeroes. You people still think this is the last century, with Rangers having free rein to kill as you see fit.”
William Ray turned his gaze to the boxes strewn about the room. “We can talk like this ’til it’s time to haul that cardboard out of here, or we can get down to business.”
“Business being this plan of yours to pretty much declare war on Mexico.”
“Not really, since they already declared war on us by bring
ing their poison over the border and heading back south with cash in its stead. It’s spreading east from Baja and if we don’t do something about it, this will be the last century again for sure, with waves of Mexican bandits crossing the border to move opium through Texas and beyond with no Rangers there to stop them.”
Harley wrinkled his nose and stifled a belch. It was raining outside and the windows rattled under the force of the wind and hail pellets that sounded like marbles when they smacked up against the glass.
“You trust this Lava?” he asked William Ray.
“I trust he’s telling the truth about these esos Demonios. I trust that they murdered the entire town of Willow Creek. I trust that we’ll see more of the same if we don’t act fast.”
Harley reached for his bottle of milk of magnesia and unscrewed the cap. “What do you need exactly, Ranger?”
* * *
What William Ray needed arrived in Austin over the course of the following three days in the form of a select group of Rangers.
“No one can ever know about this,” Harley told him. “Governor finds out and he’ll find call to hang both of us.”
“He won’t find out and there’ll be no call.”
Harley gave William Ray a long look over his desk. “I’m trusting you with what’s left of my career, Ranger. Don’t let me down.”
“You can count on it, sir.”
The first to arrive in Austin was Captain Frank Hamer, still serving a suspension for allegedly stalking, and even threatening, Representative José T. Canales for daring to besmirch the Ranger name and reputation. Hamer had already made his name as a throwback to the old-school Rangers, who used whatever methods were necessary to get whatever was needed done.
Arriving just behind him was the same Monroe Fox who had been relieved of his Ranger command and duties following the investigation into the massacre that had followed bandit raids on a number of farms. Fox had fallen on his sword, making no excuses for his actions while knowing full well he was being made the scapegoat for a decade of brutal indiscretion on the part of the Rangers, who had decided to fight fire with fire in what had become an all-out border war. A former Austin policeman, Fox was big-boned and heavyset, but with a baby face that belied the violence that, rightly or wrongly, had come to define his Ranger career.
