Strong Vengeance
Page 17
“What exactly would you have done without the Ranger gal?”
“A question I’m glad I never had to answer.”
“I saw the two of you outside on the porch. Looked like a couple teenagers, you no different than your boy over there.”
Cort Wesley gazed closer at Dylan, his eyes adjusted to the darkness now giving up the way the boy’s long black hair splayed across the pillow like some kind of impressionist painting. “Forgot to ask Caitlin if he had a girlfriend.”
“She’s got her own problems right now.”
“On account of that school shooting you mean.”
“Remember what I told you was the key to living inside The Walls?”
“Laying low.”
“I’m starting to believe the same thing goes for life, least it does when a person’s no stranger to guns and violence. Problem with the Ranger is that’s all anybody sees anymore when they look at her.”
“I see plenty more than that, champ.”
“You don’t get a vote on this one, bubba.”
Cort Wesley glanced back at Dylan. “I don’t want to see my boys hurt.”
“Pain’s a part of life, bubba. Thing is to hope the source of it heals before it eats you alive.”
“Once this is over, things are gonna be different.”
Leroy Epps started to laugh and then silenced himself, as if afraid of waking Dylan. “I checked the fridge downstairs. Remind the Ranger gal to have some root beer on hand, will ya?”
“Why you changing the subject?”
“’Cause your comment don’t deserve a response and you know full well what I mean.”
* * *
“Who were you talking to up there?” Caitlin asked when Cort Wesley stepped back out on the porch.
He closed the door behind him. “Nobody. Myself.”
“Thought I heard somebody talking back this time.”
Cort Wesley grasped the porch rail, gazing out into the night as he squeezed it hard. “It follows us around, doesn’t it, Ranger? We seem to attract this shit. No matter how much we try to avoid it, it trails us into our lives. You down in Baffin Bay, me in Cereso prison.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. In this case anyway.”
He turned toward her, his eyes wide and strangely vulnerable. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you’ve done.”
“You don’t need to say that.”
“Yes, I do. If that wasn’t Dylan’s school, maybe you don’t go in guns blazing. Same thing goes for what you did in that bar tonight. I know it came from what that piece of human excrement said to Dylan and what he dragged into both my boys’ lives.”
“I understand now,” Caitlin said, almost too softly for him to hear.
“Huh?”
“I said I—”
“I heard what you said; I just don’t read you.”
“What you did when you killed that drug dealer in Juárez who killed Dylan’s girlfriend running from the cops down in the hellhole they call Mexico. You did it because you knew how much it hurt Dylan and you had to do something, anything. And I imagine it was still worth it, in spite of the year you ended up losing.”
“In many ways, I suppose it was. You comparing that to letting your career go down the shitter?”
“We’re not gonna let anyone hurt those boys, Cort Wesley,” Caitlin said, instead of answering, “not Jalbert Thoms and certainly not the terrorists who’ve got all of Texas in their sights.”
“And how we gonna stop them, Ranger?”
“Just give me a chance.”
52
SAN ANTONIO, THE PRESENT
“How the hell you figure this out?” medical examiner Frank Dean Whatley asked Caitlin the next morning, as they stood over the corpse of the man who’d taken the identity of Alejandro Pena.
“Just lucky I guess. Now tell me what you got, Doc.”
She had called Whatley the night before, after learning of the dead homegrown terrorists Jones’s team had uncovered in a mosque basement.
“Sorry to wake you, Doc.”
“No, you’re not,” Whatley groused, voice dry and cracking with fatigue. “What is it you want?”
“To let you know you were right about that man identified as Alejandro Pena,” she told him.
And now Alejandro Pena’s body was laid out, covered by a sheet up to the neck, on a steel table in Whatley’s lab. In Caitlin’s experience, few actual settings lived up to the way they were portrayed on television and in movies, but the typical coroner’s lab was the exception. They were all the same: cold, overly bright, and reeking of harsh chemicals that masked the scent of decaying skin and recently excised organs that would have otherwise clung to the air like glue.
“Oh, I got plenty,” Whatley said, his cheeks bulging like balloons filling with air. He held a Styrofoam cup of coffee that was shedding driblets down onto the white sheet covering Alejandro Pena’s corpse. “And it all suggests your theory hit the bull’s-eye dead center. Alejandro Pena’s about as Hispanic as me.”
“But is he…”
“Of Arab descent?” Whatley returned his attention to the body. “Let me show you what my examination earlier this morning—well, late last night—uncovered and you can draw your own conclusions.”
He eased the sheet back, gently laying it down so the corpse was covered from the waist up. Whatley was nothing if not thorough, and his meticulous attention to those who ended up on one of his slabs knew no bounds, as if having lost so much of his own life made him respect those who had lost theirs entirely all the more. He switched off the bright exam lamp immediately overhead and picked up a rectangular UV light in its place.
“As I shine this over our friend here, I want you to tell me what you see.”
Caitlin followed the light, studying the corpse’s flesh. “Nothing but skin.”
“Gold star, Ranger. If this man were Caucasian or Hispanic, the adipose tissue layer located directly beneath the surface epidermis would appear either pinkish or yellowed depending on the level of carotenes producing pigment. But in darker-skinned people, of Semitic or Arab descent, the epidermis is filled with melanosomes that obscure the underlying layers.”
“Where the hell you learn that?”
Whatley switched off the UV light. “I did go to medical school, you know.”
“Which class covered carotenes and melanosomes?”
“You finished?”
“I’m all ears, Doc.”
Whatley resumed as if he were reading from a textbook. “Skin color is a quantitative trait that varies continuously on a gradient from dark to light, as it is a polygenic trait, under the influence of several genes. KITLG and ASIP have been found responsible for skin color variation between sub-Saharan Africans and non-African populations. SLC45A2, TYR, and SLC24A5 have been positively shown to account for a substantial fraction of the difference in melanin units between Europeans and Africans, while DCT, MC1R, and ATRN have been statistically indicated as possible sources for skin tone differences in East Asian populations.”
“In English please.”
“This man’s genetic markers clearly indicate a North African DNA makeup consistent typically with men of Middle Eastern descent.”
“Arab.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
Caitlin looked Whatley in the eye, hoping to see something there she wasn’t catching otherwise. “Must’ve been some med school you attended, Doc.”
“You want to hear more, Ranger, or check out my diplomas?” When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Let me try to make this as simple as I can for you. Studies have shown that a lack of biochemical hypogonadism in elderly Arab men is directly associated with low bone density disease. In other words, they suffer from osteoporosis in far greater percentages than any other nationality, somewhere around thirty percent. A bone density scan of this gentlemen clearly showed early indications of the disease.”
“Now I’m impressed,” Caitlin said.
Whatley cupped the man’s head in his palms, as if to enunciate his point, then lifted them away.
“I also took a sampling of his lung tissue and found ample traces of shisha, which is basically tobacco soaked in fruit shavings. Ring any bells with you?”
“Sure. It’s the kind of tobacco smoked in a hookah.”
Whatley clapped his hands three times. “Why you must’ve gone to the same school I did, Ranger.”
“No, but I did learn plenty during a six-week stretch at the FBI Training Academy at Quantico, Doc. And I seem to recall a few hours spent on that facial anthro-whatever stuff. So I’ve got to figure either you stole my notes or came by the info from a similar source.”
Whatley wrinkled his nose, as if suddenly distressed by the room’s smell. “Hey, you’re the one who sent me down this path with that crazy phone call last night.”
“Guess it wasn’t so crazy, after all. What I don’t get is how you knew exactly what to look for?”
“You questioning my skills?”
“Nope. Just how you came by these particular ones.”
“I pay attention to the alerts that cross my desk, Ranger.”
“Alerts…”
“It’s called doing my job.”
“Similar alerts cross your desk for any other nationality besides Arab?”
“I’m not aware of any other nationality committed to this country’s ultimate destruction.”
Caitlin’s gaze drifted past Whatley to a picture on the lab wall directly over his right shoulder, dating back maybe twenty-five years, showing him as a much younger man standing amid a group of Rangers that included her father and grandfather.
“You’re just like the two of them, you know,” he charged, following her eyes. “Petulant, insistent, always so goddamn sure you’re right.”
“You worked with the Strongs in their investigation into the murder of those college boys on Galveston Island in ’79, didn’t you?”
Whatley pushed the air back into his cheeks, the balloons ready to pop again. “I did indeed, except we never solved it. I imagine that haunted Earl and Jim till the day they died.”
“I was hoping you could tell me why that was, Doc, given that the Strongs were never much for walking away from something until it was finished.”
“They didn’t have much choice this time,” Whatley told her. “The part I know about goes like this.…”
53
AUSTIN, 1979
Jim and Earl Strong, along with D. W. Tepper drove up to the University of Texas at Austin, but went their separate ways as soon as they reached the campus. Earl and D.W. headed off to interview the fraternity brothers of the five boys murdered on Galveston Island, while Jim had a meeting scheduled with a member of the school’s history department on another facet of the investigation.
Tepper and Earl Strong were making their way across campus when Earl stopped before what was known as The Tower that housed twenty-eight floors of offices in the university’s main administrative building. Earl took off his Stetson and swiped a sleeve across his brow, then used the hat to shield his eyes as he gazed up to the cupola at the Tower’s top.
“What’s wrong?” Tepper asked.
Earl held his gaze on the tower. His spine had stiffened, his expression drawn and deep-set eyes drooping. “Just thinking how I would’ve given anything to have been here August 1, 1966,” he said, referring to the day a former marine named Charles Whitman had killed sixteen people and wounded thirty-two more with a sniper rifle from three hundred feet off the ground.
“Nothing you or anybody else could’ve done, Earl.”
“But we’ll never know that, will we?”
* * *
On the Rangers’ instructions, all nineteen current members of the Pi Alpha Phi fraternity were gathered in a living room lounge lined with shelves of unread books and the smell of stale beer riding the air as if it were a permanent fixture.
“They were pledges actually,” said the fraternity president, Jimmy Roy. He wore tan khakis, had thick sandy hair, and claimed to be both a legacy of Pi Alpha Phi and a descendant of a man who’d died at the Alamo.
“What the hell’s that mean?”
“Not quite brothers. There’s stuff they gotta do before they can be initiated.”
“Well,” Earl followed, “I believe it’s safe to say that’s no longer much of a concern.”
* * *
Jim Strong, meanwhile, was seated in history professor Al Dahlberg’s office surrounded by more books than he’d ever seen in his life.
“Word is you are a leading authority on pirates, Professor,” Jim said, “specifically Jean Lafitte.”
“Well, my real specialty is the Barbary pirates along with their forebears the Cilicians from ancient Rome. I teach courses on both. Lafitte is more a hobby of mine.”
“Does that hobby include any thoughts on his legendary lost treasure?”
“One, in particular, for starters, Ranger: it’s not legendary at all.”
“I almost just fell off my chair, Professor,” Jim told him.
“You’re not the first,” Dahlberg said, lighting his pipe. “Tell me, have you ever heard of a slave ship called the Mother Mary?”
* * *
The Pi Alpha Phi fraternity house was located on the outskirts of the campus in an enclave of off-campus apartment housing reserved for upperclass students. Pi Alpha Phi was one of eighteen fraternities at the school, all scattered in the same general area. But it boasted the finest house, thanks to several alumni brothers who’d gone on to make millions, if not billions, in the oil industry. Accordingly, “Pi-Phi” brothers lived in a sprawling custom-constructed building modeled after an antebellum mansion complete with pillars and a wraparound sunporch. Besides the beer stench, it was well kept and outfitted with leather furniture discolored in patches from the sun’s rays pouring through the ample lounge windows.
“What we’d like to know,” D. W. Tepper picked up, “is exactly what kind of stuff brought them to Galveston Island?”
“Are you offering us immunity?” Jimmy Roy asked.
Earl moved closer to him, hands hitched up on his hips, drawing all eyes to the Springfield Model 1911 .45 holstered on the right one. “You the only one who talks here?”
“As president of the fraternity, I’m representing the house.”
“And that’s what you’re doing in asking for immunity?”
“It is, sir.”
“You figure you need it?”
“From the university maybe. See, hazing of any kind is prohibited by the Campus Life department.”
“That what this is all about, hazing?”
“You haven’t answered my question about immunity, Ranger.”
“Okay, then let me now. Nope, I can’t give you immunity, but if you help us out by answering all our questions fully and truthfully, I won’t arrest the lot of you as accessories to murder.”
That got the brothers of Pi Alpha Phi exchanging nervous glances, and a few, Earl was certain, squeezing their legs tight to avoid peeing their pants.
“So what do you say, Mr. President?” he continued.
* * *
“You didn’t know Jim Bowie was a slave trader and Lafitte’s business partner, did you, Ranger?” Professor Dahlberg asked behind a mist of sweet-smelling pipe tobacco.
“I think I’ve heard some on the subject, but chose not to believe it. Thought it was another legend.”
“That’s the thing about legends. Most, if not all, have some basis in fact.”
“Some of the native folk on Galveston believe those frat boys were killed by something called a Rougarou.”
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br /> “Legendary Cajun shape-shifter.”
“That one of the true ones, Professor?”
“It’s a myth, Ranger, not a legend and thus not my specialty.”
Jim Strong leaned forward in the wood chair, feeling it creak beneath him. “So get back to your specialty and the Mother Mary.”
“To begin with, it wasn’t an ordinary slave ship.”
“How’s that?” Jim asked him, the cloud of pipe tobacco smoke enveloping him now as well.
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, the slaves on board spoke a language altogether different from the African dialects with which the traders were more familiar.”
Jim found himself a bit anxious, as if something very important were about to be revealed. “What else, Professor?”
“Somewhere along the way, the Mother Mary also picked up a passenger, an American traveling on some secret mission. I can’t tell you what the mission was but the man said his name Quentin Cusp. Except there’s no record of such a man anywhere else either before the Mother Mary picked him up or after Lafitte sunk the ship. And, according to the legend, Cusp, or whoever he really was, brought something with him on board of incredible value.”
Jim Strong leaned forward in his chair. “We talking treasure here?”
“We are indeed, Ranger. When Lafitte and Bowie seized that ship to steal its slaves for sale, they found themselves with an unexpected bonus. While there’s no historical proof, there’s plenty to suggest the partners made off with whatever riches Mr. Cusp had brought with him.”
Dahlberg stopped there and resumed puffing his pipe, as if waiting for Jim to spur him along.
“I imagine we are getting to the climax here.”
“We are indeed, Ranger.”
* * *
Jimmy Roy nodded rapidly. “They went to the Louisiana bayou on a scavenger hunt. It’s tradition.”
“What, this scavenger hunt or the bayou?” Tepper asked him.
“Both, Rangers. Come back with the lost treasure of Jean Lafitte and they become brothers instantly.”
“How old are you, son?” Earl wondered.
“Twenty-one, sir.”