Strong Justice

by Jon Land

  “You mind if I sit down, ma’am?”

  “Please.”

  “I guess you could call this a character reference,” Caitlin said, accepting a freshly poured coffee from a waitress.

  “For Cort Wesley Masters, no doubt.”

  Caitlin didn’t bother hiding her surprise. “Well now, how’d you come to know a thing like that?”

  “We do our homework too, Ranger. We’re well aware of your relationship with Mr. Masters.”

  “Along with his children, ma’am. Might even go so far as to call me the female influence in their lives.”

  Silvaro’s gaze dipped to the SIG Sauer holstered on her waist, whether approving or disapproving Caitlin couldn’t tell. “I’ll note that in my report.”

  “I was hoping we could talk a bit about Mr. Masters.”

  Silvaro sipped her coffee, leaving her plate-sized Danish in place. “We could certainly schedule an appointment.”

  Caitlin forced a smile. “Thing is, ma’am, I’m never quite sure where I’m gonna be from day to day, so if you don’t mind how about we schedule it for right now?”

  Silvaro broke off a piece of her Danish and didn’t say no.

  “I want you to know I’m looking out after Mr. Masters’s boys,” Caitlin continued.

  “I thought you wanted to talk about Mr. Masters.”

  “I am. We are, ma’am.”

  “And what would you say about his parenting skills?”

  “Well, his kids are doing just fine, both top of their class at school.”

  “I’m aware of that. You a parent yourself, Ranger?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

  “Then what exactly qualifies you to comment on Mr. Masters’s capacity as one?”

  “I was there when his boys’ mother got killed.”

  Silvaro turned her stool to better face Caitlin, ignoring her Danish for now. “That have something to do with Mr. Masters’s inadequacies as a parent?”

  “Sounds like you’re making a judgment there.”

  “Just like you are, in spite of the fact you’ve got no standing on the subject.”

  “Maybe not, Ms. Silvaro,” Caitlin said, feeling sweat start to push its way through her shirt in spite of the diner’s air-conditioning. “But I do have standing on what violence does to people, especially children. The way these boys lost their mother is going to stay with them forever, and the only reason they’re doing as well as they are is that their father makes them feel safe.”

  “I understand,” said Marianna Silvaro, dabbing the corners of her mouth with a napkin.

  “I don’t think you do, ma’am.”

  Silvaro started to reach for her Danish again, then stopped. “We deal with many children who’ve witnessed or been victims of violent crime, Ranger. More than you could possibly realize. Had a girl last year whose father took a steam iron to her mother’s face. Poor thing just stopped herself from sleeping because of the nightmares. So don’t tell me what I know and don’t know.”

  Caitlin felt her fingers throbbing, clenched the left ones into a fist, held low so Marianna Silvaro wouldn’t notice. “You know the names of Mr. Masters’s boys?”

  Silvaro’s lips puckered. She let out some breath. “I have a lot of cases.”

  “It’s Dylan and Luke, and they sleep just fine, ma’am. That’s because they got a father who’s there for them in ways neither of us can possibly imagine. Now I understand all about the need for income verification, proof of employment and the like, but there’s no box to check for what Cort Wesley Masters has done for his sons. He kept them living their lives because they know he can stop the monsters from coming back. If I thought some foster home or juvenile facility could do that, I wouldn’t be here now.” Caitlin removed an envelope embossed with the Texas Ranger logo from her pocket and tucked it under the plate holding Silvaro’s Danish. “This here’s an official personal reference for Mr. Masters. I know you want to do right for him, ma’am, and I’m hoping this puts another bullet in your chamber.”

  “We’re on the same side here, Ranger,” Silvaro said, easing the envelope into her pocketbook.

  Caitlin left a pair of singles to pay for her coffee and slid off the stool. “Let’s hope so, ma’am. That letter’s for anyone who’s not.” She held Silvaro’s stare. “You tell them my phone number’s on the bottom, they want more details.”

  Caitlin had barely stepped outside the diner when her cell phone rang, D. W. Tepper’s name lighting up on her Caller ID.

  “Don’t worry, Captain, I’m still north of the border,” Caitlin greeted.

  “That’s a good thing, Ranger, ’cause I just got a call from a local sheriff requesting immediate help with a hostage situation.”

  “You say hostage situation, Captain?”

  “I did and you’re the closest Ranger I got to the scene. Town called Albion on the outskirts of Tunga County. Ever heard of it?”

  PART THREE

  The stars have gleamed with a pitying light

  On the scene of man a hopeless fight,

  On a prairie patch or a haunted wood

  Where a little bunch of Rangers stood.

  They fought grim odds and knew no fear,

  They kept their honor high and clear,

  And, facing arrows, guns, and knives,

  Gave Texas all they had—their lives.

  —W. A. Phelson

  30

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  “Why can’t I go?” Cort Wesley’s younger son Luke protested.

  “ ’Cause you got school.”

  “Dylan’s got school and he gets to go.”

  “Dylan’s older.”

  “What about that girl?”

  “What about her?”

  “You taking her shooting too?”

  “I’ll take you tomorrow.”

  “You always say that.”

  “And don’t I deliver?”

  Luke shrugged. “Mostly, I guess.”

  “There you have it.”

  “I wanna shoot the Glock, not just the twenty-two.”

  “Deal.”

  “And the twelve-gauge.”

  “Not allowed on the range. You know that.”

  “How am I supposed to learn to shoot a gun better if I can’t shoot it?”

  “With a twelve-gauge, if you can aim and find the trigger, you’ve learned all you need.”

  That was how Cort Wesley’s day had started, the conversation with his younger son held over eggs, toast, and oatmeal, but just cold cereal for Maria. He’d gone back upstairs when Caitlin Strong left just before dawn to find the girl sleeping in Dylan’s bed with the boy curled up with a blanket and pillow on the floor. Cort Wesley noted Dylan had positioned himself so opening the door would clip his feet, thereby rousing him.

  “What?” he muttered groggily.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  His first inclination had been to sell the house where his boys’ mother had been killed and start fresh without the awful memories conjured up each time Luke or Dylan walked through the very door where she’d fallen. But they’d objected to his suggestion and, truth be told, he was glad for it. Not only would facing the awful violence that had transpired here better help them accept the reality, but it might also help make them steer clear of the lifestyle that had caused their mother’s death. His lifestyle.

  Cort Wesley dropped Luke off at school on the way to the shooting range, the boy slamming the back door of the extended cab truck behind him to further voice his displeasure.

  “I never shot a gun before,” Maria said, as they pulled away from the drop-off zone.

  “You want to?”

  “No, they scare me.”

  “They shouldn’t,” Dylan told her from the front seat. “Hell, if you’d had a gun you could’ve plugged this Macerio good.”

  “I don’t think bullets can kill him,” said Maria.

  31

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  “I don’t like t
his city,” Macerio told the plainclothes cop who’d sat down next to him on a bench seat near the rear of the Riverwalk tour boat. “Too many people smiling.”

  Detective Joe Youngblood tried not to look at the man. But the wide breadth of his shoulders and the head that looked swollen with pus made sight of him hard to avoid. The smell wafting off the man was just as bad anyway, something bitter and somehow antiseptic. Youngblood had paid many a visit to the coroner’s office and, best as he could fix it, the human chunk of muscle seated next to him smelled like a corpse. Formaldehyde pumping through his veins instead of blood. Youngblood had caught a glimpse of what looked like an IV bag poking out of a pouch affixed to the man’s belt, connected to plastic tubing that ran below his shirt, so who knew, maybe he was a corpse, after all.

  “That’s right, take a good look, amigo,” Macerio said after the tour boat had set off from the dock, adjusting the hat currently holding the dead man’s toupee in one place. The new double-sided tape he’d tried hadn’t worked any better than the old, and the hat helped keep the sun off his chemo-ravaged skin anyway. “You’re an Indian, aren’t you?”

  “Comanche,” Youngblood nodded. With two wives, four kids, and two mortgages, no one could really blame him for taking some side work occasionally, even if that side work usually meant providing information to the elements of society he was paid to incarcerate. They were beyond the reach of the law anyway, so Youngblood found it easy to rationalize his actions. It was amazing what a man could convince himself of, life being relative and all.

  “That gives us something in common,” the big man was saying, ignoring the voice of the boat pilot narrating the tour, “the fact that this state was stolen out from each of our peoples.”

  “The boy you’re looking for is named Dylan Torres. Arrested yesterday afternoon in East San Antonio and released three hours later. Arrest report didn’t stick.”

  “Why?”

  “He was signed out by a Texas Ranger. But you got bigger problems than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the kid’s father is Cort Wesley Masters.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Masters used to work for the Branca crime family when they had the exclusive franchise for Texas,” Youngblood told the man who smelled like a corpse. He could see tiny rivulets of sweat beading up on the man’s brow and cheeks, seeming to carry more of the odor with them. “Did a five-year stretch in Huntsville on a bad beef. People say he’s killed over a hundred men.”

  “A lot of killing.”

  “He was a Green Beret or something in the Gulf War.”

  Macerio looked the cop square in the eye, the guide droning on about how New Deal money had paid for the Riverwalk’s original construction. “How many you think I’ve killed? Come on, take a guess.”

  Youngblood looked to see how far up the river they were, saw the Bexar County Courthouse looming before them, which meant not far enough. “A lot.”

  “That’s not a guess.”

  “I came here to do a job,” Youngblood said, as a family of ducks swam past them. “It’s done.”

  “Not quite. I need the address where I can find this Dylan Torres.”

  32

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  The outdoor range was empty when they arrived, and Cort Wesley hung two targets from side-by-side brackets set before the hay bales that served as bullet stops. He made sure Dylan and Maria had their earplugs in before he emptied the first magazine, all but one of the fifteen bullets finding the kill zone.

  Cort Wesley ejected the spent mag and handed the Glock and a fresh one to Dylan. The boy methodically went through the well-practiced routine of making sure the gun was cleared, popping the magazine home, pressing the slide release lever, and readying his stance after making sure the range was clear. Maria held her hands over her ears in spite of the plugs, as Dylan fired off shot after shot with his left hand curled naturally under his right for support.

  Having been taught to shoot by Cort Wesley left his form pretty much mirroring his father’s. But the boy was starting to develop his own quirks and style based on his sighting ability and size. He’d gotten his exceptionally good looks from his mother, but these had come with her smaller stature, at least when compared to Cort Wesley’s. He doubted Dylan would ever see six feet, figured five-ten might even be a stretch. He was wearing the boots Caitlin had given him for his birthday, which added more than an inch to his height, brought him closer to eye-to-eye with his father. Cort Wesley liked that.

  The Glock’s slide locked open and Dylan effortlessly ejected the magazine as he checked his target.

  “Not bad,” Cort Wesley complimented. “Nice, neat spread. Just three shots outside the black.”

  “Missed the target whole with another.”

  “It happens.”

  “Could cost in a real shooting fight.”

  “Not something you ever want to find out, son,” Cort Wesley said.

  “Can we go now?”

  “We just started.”

  Cort Wesley could see the impatience in the boy’s eyes, his mind on Maria instead of the Glock, explaining how he’d missed the target. There he was, changing right before his father’s eyes. Cort Wesley figured Dylan had worn the boots for the girl, wanted to be taller for her.

  “What you wanna do instead?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy shrugged. “The arcade maybe.”

  “To shoot make-believe monsters and bad guys.”

  “Just today, Dad, okay?”

  Cort Wesley wanted to stay and shoot some more, catch the smell of sulfur drowning out the scent of some body spray Dylan had doused himself in.

  “Okay,” he said anyway, catching Maria stiffen out of the corner of his eye. He swung in the direction she was staring to see Frank Branca Jr. standing at the edge of the tall grass of the range, a fresh pair of bodyguards just behind him.

  “Who’s that?” Dylan asked.

  “Nobody,” said Cort Wesley, racking a fresh magazine into the Glock as he started toward Branca.

  33

  ALBION, TEXAS; THE PRESENT

  Caitlin found the sheriff of Albion behind the makeshift barricade formed to cordon off the town’s lone supermarket, an H.E.B. The holes and spiderweb patterns in the glass above one sign advertising a special on flank steak and alongside another for snapper told her there’d been some shooting done already, from the inside out by the looks of things.

  “Thanks for coming, Ranger,” Sheriff Tate Huffard greeted, not seeming to care she was a woman. He looked too young for the job, his straw-colored hair trimmed thin at the temples and eyes looking overwhelmed by what they’d been seeing lately. Huffard must have set the barricade up before the angle of the sun changed enough to roast him and his deputies with its rays. Huffard’s uniform shirt was soaked dark with sweat in more places than it wasn’t.

  “Hostage situation is the report I got,” Caitlin said, taking up a position alongside the sheriff behind the cab of his department-issue SUV. She shielded her eyes, feeling the sun singe her skin.

  “My deputy who responded to a shots-fired call took a bullet,” Huffard told her grimly through a dry mouth that made his words crackle. “He’s still inside and we can’t raise him on his radio.”

  “Any idea how many hostages?”

  “Between eight and ten, as best we can figure. Another pair of my deputies got chased back by gunfire when they tried to enter.”

  “What kind? Automatic, pistol, shotgun?”

  “Pistol. Big magnum by the sound of things and holes in the windows,” Huffard continued, gesturing toward the glass lining the front of the building. “Been a few more shots fired since then, but nothing else we can make sense of. We got eyes on the place from all angles, including those rooftops behind us. Trying to do this thing by the numbers.”

  “Single shooter?”

  “Near as we can tell.” Huffard took off his hat and swiped a forearm across his damp brow. “Damn town�
�s flat gone crazy lately. We got things happening now never happened before and they’re all happening at once. Guess we gotta blame the economy for that.” Huffard’s expression, which had gone distant for a moment, quickly found its focus again. “There’s kids inside there, Ranger.”

  “No contact whatsoever from the suspect?”

  “Not a peep, and we been calling the store phone number every few minutes just to see if we can get somebody to pick up.”

  “Don’t suppose you got a SWAT team anywhere in the vicinity, Sheriff?”

  Huffard shook his head. “Nope. That’s why we called the Rangers.”

  “There’s six more of us en route now. My advice is we wait for them before—”

  A fresh series of loud pops! followed by a single scream cut off Caitlin’s words.

  “You were saying?” Sheriff Huffard asked her, after they finally receded.

  34

  SAN ANTONIO; THE PRESENT

  “You put that money I gave you to good use yet?” Frank Branca Jr. said smiling, when Cort Wesley reached him.

  “You mean the money you owed me?”

  “Whatever you say, Cort Wesley.”

  “My sons’ educations, house payments, that sort of thing.”

  Branca squeezed his lips together and shook his head. “Somehow that doesn’t sound like you at all.”

  “How’s your father?”

  “Still alive, thanks to you.”

  “My point exactly.”

  Branca swung his gaze about the range, holding it on Dylan as he took a target rifle in his grasp. “That your son?”

  “And he’s a damn good shot too.”

  Branca looked at the Glock wedged into Cort Wesley’s pants. “Takes after his father then. But you’ve got nothing to worry about from me. I came here with a business proposal.”

  “Already told you I wasn’t interested in what you were selling.”

  “How long do you think that money I gave you is going to last?” Branca asked, unperturbed.