Strong Light of Day (23 page)

The flames receded quickly and Beriya waited, his heart hammering with anticipation at the product of his labors, which would become clear any moment now. Before it had, he eased a cell phone from his pocket and dialed an American dummy exchange that would automatically route his call to Moscow. It rang once, followed by silence as the connection was made, affording Beriya more time to wait for the view of the destruction he'd wrought. His heart thudded with anticipation, the murderers of his father slain yet again. He could hear screaming now, along with, already, the distant screech of sirens.

Finally, the pole lamps revealed a pile of rubble intermixed with a few walls jaggedly clinging to life. The effects had exceeded his expectations; char, ash, and smoke continued to cloud the air in thick pockets. Then a voice in Moscow answered his call.

“Da.”

“It is done,” Beriya reported.

“Good, because you have fresh target, a new priority.”

“What?”

“Not what, who: a Texas Ranger.”

 

P
ART
S
IX

Wheaties presents Joel McCrea in
Tales of the Texas Rangers.
Starring Joel McCrea as Ranger Pearson. Texas, more than 260,000 square miles and fifty men who make up the most famous and oldest law enforcement body in North America. Now from the files of the Texas Rangers come these stories based on facts. Only names, dates, places are fictitious, for obvious reasons. The events themselves are a matter of record.

—Introduction to
Tales of the Texas Rangers,
aired on NBC Radio from August 27, 1955, to December 26, 1958

 

49

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

Dylan was sitting on the porch swing, holding his father's twelve-gauge shotgun across his lap, when Caitlin climbed out of her SUV and headed up the walk.

“Where's your dad?” she asked, climbing the stairs.

“Still meeting with ‘You Know Who,' he said. I don't, but I'm guessing you do.”

“I've got a few ideas,” she said, wondering what was keeping Cort Wesley with Jones so long. She checked her phone to make sure she hadn't missed a text or e-mail from him.

“And I don't need a babysitter.”

She sat down on the swing next to him, rocking it slightly, glad the shotgun barrel was facing away from her. “I'm not following.”

“Your friend the colonel.”

“I thought the two of you would get along just fine.”

“We did.”

“So what's the problem?”

Dylan pursed his lips, blew out some breath, which rattled the hair from his face, and shook his head. “Do I really need to tell you?” he asked, tilting his gaze up toward Luke's bedroom window.

Caitlin held the swing steady. “How long have you known?”

“I've kind of known for a while, but I guess I'm sure now. Just like I'm sure something has you spooked.”

“Huh?”

“Don't bother telling me you're not. Tell me what happened, instead.”

 

50

A
TASCOSA,
T
EXAS

Caitlin had driven for a time after leaving the medical examiner's office, watching twilight darken into night. Before she could think twice about it, she'd activated her SUV's Bluetooth with a call to the Bexar County Sheriff's Department.

“This is Caitlin Strong of the Texas Rangers,” she greeted the dispatcher who answered. “Please patch me through to Sheriff Pamerleau.”

“Just give me a moment to track her down, Ranger,” the dispatcher said, knowing better than to ask why or to argue the point.

A pause followed, in which the dead air sounded like the Gulf on a stormy day over her SUV's speakers. Caitlin had phoned the BCSD instead of San Antonio police simply because the sheriff's department was responsible for patrolling thirteen hundred square miles, almost all of it rural. The kind of land that was jam-packed with ranches like those belonging to Karl Dakota and Christoph Russell Ilg.

Susan Pamerleau, meanwhile, had been the first woman sheriff to be elected in the county, in large part because she was a terrific administrator as well as a no-nonsense officer of law enforcement. And Pamerleau was apolitical. Caitlin was surprised as much by the skill of her campaigning as by the fact she'd decided to run in the first place.

There was a click, and then Sheriff Pamerleau's voice filled the cab.

“What can I do for you, Ranger?”

“Thanks for taking my call, Sheriff. I was just wondering if you'd had any reports that stick out as strange, the past day or so.”

“As in…”

“Something that makes you think twice but leaves you short of dispatching the cavalry.”

“You mean besides this spate of domestic abuse and sexual assault cases lately?”

“I do.”

“Well, let's see. A ten-year-old boy stole his mother's car.”

“Not that.”

“Good thing, because he crashed the car. This morning we had a call about some bow hunters wandering off that Bexar County Bow Hunts place and going after bucks within range of an elementary school. Oh, and this afternoon a tourist filed a report about not actually seeing a ghost on the Silver Ghost tour last night. Then there's the farmer whose dogs went missing.”

“Stop there,” Caitlin told her.

*   *   *

Located in Atascosa, the four-hundred-acre Burlein farm had been in the family for generations. According to Sheriff Susan Pamerleau, Colt Burlein had called in a panic that morning, saying he'd heard horrible shrieking wails the night before and had woken up to the realization that his three German shepherds were missing. He'd called the sheriff's department, fearing foul play from one of the neighbors with whom he was constantly at odds, after he could find no trace of them anywhere on his property.

Caitlin squeezed through the fence rails onto Burlein's land in the moonless night, with no more than a flashlight to carve herself a path. The wind rustled through the trees and nearby corn crops, making her think of summer, for some reason.

Caitlin rotated her flashlight about the sprawl of the farm, her thoughts turning again to those kids who'd gone missing from Armand Bayou. If it had been a kidnapping, law enforcement or the kids' parents would've heard something by now. The fact that no one had heard a word suggested another factor here that she hadn't figured out yet. A hostile action, for sure, but one rooted in a motivation other than money.

Terrorism maybe? Some homegrown ISIS-like group, intending to make a show of executing the kids one at a time to frighten the country into submission? The possibility was chilling, although the actual logistics still suggested far-more-seasoned, even professional or paramilitary, involvement.

Caitlin stopped suddenly and moved the beam of her flashlight about. The wind had stopped; the trees and crops had gone motionless. But she heard a rustling sound, hollow and different than animals make, and the ground seemed to rumble beneath her feet.

Caitlin swept her flashlight one way, then back the other, then in a circle, trying to determine where the rustling was coming from. It seemed to be all around her and she froze, feeling for the SIG holstered on her hip.

The rustling dissolved into a pounding, a
thump-thump-thump
coming straight at her through the darkness, from the crops on her right flank. Caitlin twisted the flashlight beam about that way, revealing nothing.

Thump-thump-thump.

Still coming.

Caitlin turned. Ran. No longer feeling for the SIG. Her mind picturing whatever had descended on Karl Dakota's cattle out of nowhere and dropped them as they stood.

Her heart pounded her rib cage. Her lungs filled, emptied, and filled again. Then the gasps started, bred by panic and the unknown nature of whatever was chasing her down, the earth seeming to quake as if ready to open up and swallow her.

Something
was coming.…

She'd been in more than her share of gunfights, situations where ambushes were more likely than not. But Caitlin had never known fear like this, not after a couple days of following leads that made no sense at all and confronted her with something between impossible and monstrous.

Ahead, the jittery beam cast by her swaying flashlight caught the reflection of a still pond nestled in the center of the Burlein property. Could whatever was coming, whatever had eaten Dakoka's and Ilg's herds to the bone, swim?

Caitlin was almost to the water shimmering under the light of her flashlight beam, when a black wave swept over her and she went down.

 

51

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

“Stop laughing,” she said to Dylan, when he broke up near the end of her story.

“It was the missing dogs, wasn't it? Those German shepherds.”

“Damn things were blacker than the night.”

“So Caitlin Strong has finally met her match: dogs!”

And he laughed so hard he almost fell off the swing, sent it rocking into a fresh sway.

“Everybody's gotta be scared of something, son.”

“Okay, what am I scared of?”

“Waking up one morning ugly,” Caitlin said, finally smiling herself. But it slipped from her face just as fast. “We were talking about Luke.”

Dylan's gaze turned suddenly evasive. “About that,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“When'd you figure things out?”

“I didn't, not totally. He told me last night.”

“He
told
you?”

“Surprised?”

“He never told me a damn thing, even when I asked him. Just rolls his eyes and blows the hair from his face.”

“You do that too, son.”

“Roll my eyes?”

“Blow the hair from your face.”

“No, I don't,” Dylan said, doing just that.

“When you're nervous or on edge about something.”

“I'm not nervous or on edge about this.”

“No? How about how your dad is going to take the news?”

“Well…” Dylan's expression tightened, then grew questioning. “Luke really told you? On his own?”

“Guess I knew when I saw him and the other boy together in that office at the nature center. Something in their eyes.”

“The way they looked at each other, you mean?”

“The way they didn't,” Caitlin told him. “Like each was pretending the other wasn't even in the room.”

“Is there anything you don't notice?”

“Well,” Caitlin shrugged, “there were those dogs earlier in the night.”

They smiled together this time, just before the screen door rattled open and, in the same moment, a pair of halogen headlights from Cort Wesley's truck hit the porch like a spotlight.

“What are you guys talking about?” Luke asked, emerging from inside just as his father parked his truck in the driveway.

 

52

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

Caitlin and Cort Wesley sat on the porch swing, the night silent save for the wind whistling through the trees and the slight creak of the swing's hinges from the rocking motion caused by their weight upsetting the delicate balance.

“How long have you known about Luke?” he said finally.

“We don't have to do this, Cort Wesley.”

“We don't?”

“You should be talking to Luke, not me.”

“I need some time to process this first.”

“How do you think he feels?”

“I wouldn't know, because he didn't see fit to tell me.”

“Maybe he thought you'd be pissed.”

“And I am pissed, Ranger … that this is the way I had to find out.”

Caitlin held to her calm, knowing Cort Wesley's emotions were all twisted into knots. “You want to blame me for that, go ahead.”

“I want to blame you for not telling me as soon as he told you. Now answer my question.”

“I don't remember it.”

“How long have you known?”

Caitlin thought back to spotting Luke in the office at the Armand Bayou Nature Center, the incredible wave of relief she had felt starting to get washed away by the question of why exactly he and that other boy, Zach, had gone off into the woods alone the night before. She'd noticed something tense and uneasy in Luke's expression that was neither guilt nor fear so much as resignation. It happened the moment their eyes met and she saw in Luke's the same look a kid flashes when you find something you're not supposed to in a drawer or between the mattresses—not so much denial of the act as regret over not doing a better job at hiding the truth. But Caitlin knew she couldn't verbalize that for Cort Wesley and opted to tweak the tale a bit.

“Last night,” she told him. “You were right. He wasn't asleep. He told me when I went upstairs. He also told me again about the lights he spotted in the woods. Got me thinking.”

“Don't change the subject.”

“I'm not. I was only telling you about our conversation. It stuck with me, but I didn't know why until just now.”

“Why's that?”

“Because I think those boys got themselves turned all the way around, Cort Wesley. They thought the lights were coming from the west, but they were really coming from the east.”

“The Gulf,” Cort Wesley realized.

“That's right. Whoever snatched those kids did it by boat.”

 

53

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

The revelation didn't seem to register with Cort Wesley or, at least, didn't seem to matter to him.

“Luke told you he was gay before me,” he said, about something that did.

“Give him time, Cort Wesley.”

“He's had fifteen years.”