Strong Cold Dead (15 page)

Caitlin rose to find the sheriff staring at Cort Wesley again.

“You want to tell me what business he's got here, Ranger?”

“Protecting his boy, I imagine.”

“Do I need to remind you that he's still our primary suspect?”

“Condition of the remains indicates the murder was committed last night, Sheriff,” Caitlin told him, peeling off her latex gloves. “After midnight, for sure.”

“So what?”

“So Mr. Masters and I were together from ten o'clock on,” she said, leaving it there.

Winkmeister smirked, then snickered. “Then I guess it's a good thing this isn't your case. Truth is, I'm not even sure we're looking for a man, based on the condition of the body. I'm thinking of putting out an APB on stray bears or wolves.”

Caitlin gazed back toward the remains, where a swarm of flies thick enough to cloud the air had gathered. “You should know this isn't the first time, Sheriff.”

“What isn't?”

“That a body's been found just off the rez, in almost the identical condition. It happened before, around a hundred and forty years ago. My great-great-grandfather's case.”

“And here you are, figuring yourself to be following in his footsteps.”

Caitlin pocketed her balled-up gloves, noticed Cort Wesley gazing toward the protest line, where trouble seemed to be brewing again. “Only if I'm after the same killer, Sheriff, and it's not Cort Wesley Masters.”

*   *   *

“What would you like to explain first, Ranger?” Tepper said, as soon as he answered Caitlin's call. “Why you're not at your desk or where the hell you're calling from?”

“Jones didn't talk to you?” Caitlin asked, as Cort Wesley listened to the conversation from nearby.

“Jones? What's he got to do with this?”

“He's why I'm back at the Comanche reservation. We got a murder on our hands.”

“You mean the Travis County sheriff has a murder on his hands.”

“I need you to get us assigned lead on the investigation.”

There was a pause, followed by a clicking sound Caitlin was certain was Captain Tepper's lighter firing. She pictured him lighting a cigarette, probably holding the receiver to make sure she'd heard him light it.

“Don't smoke on my account, D.W.”

“What other account is there? There, you hear me puffing now? How important is this, Ranger?”

“Important enough for you to get Doc Whatley up here,” Caitlin said, referring to Bexar County's longtime medical examiner.

“It's not even our case yet.”

“It's a Homeland Security matter now, Captain. That means Jones will back us up.”

“And how's that exactly?”

“I recognized someone watching the rez yesterday who's linked to ISIS.”

“Say that again.”

“You heard me.”

“I was hoping I heard wrong. ISIS? Frigging ISIS?” Tepper's sigh dissolved into a cough. Now Caitlin could picture him pressing out his Marlboro in a new ashtray, brought in to replace yet another she'd hidden from sight. “Next time I put you behind a desk, Ranger,” he resumed, “will you please just stay there?”

 

30

B
ALCONES
C
ANYONLANDS,
T
EXAS

Dylan and Ela stood in the blistering sunlight blazing down on the entrance to the Comanche reservation, their faces shiny with sweat and shirts dappled with spots where it had soaked through in patches. They seemed bent on not letting their discomfort either show or detract from their commitment to stop the construction workers from entering the rez.

But things had clearly changed since the body of the foreman had been found, just off Comanche land. More cops manned the line between the workers and protesters. But there also looked to be a lot more workers on the scene today, their frustration and declining patience evident in beet-red expressions and sweat-blanched shirts, both of which suggested more violence was in the offing.

“You look like hell, son,” Cort Wesley said to Dylan.

“I had a long night.”

“I spoke to someone in the registrar's office at Brown. She told me the window for reenrolling in school for next semester is five days away. You want to mark that on your calendar or should I?”

Dylan glanced toward the cordoned-off crime scene. “Everyone thinks you killed that guy.”

“That what you think?”

“Not for a minute. He looks too good.”

“Ripped to shreds?”

“I've seen what you can do to people who piss you off.”

“You're wasting your time,” Ela said suddenly, her words aimed at Caitlin.

“How exactly are we wasting our time, miss?”

“With that,” Ela answered, tilting her gaze toward the crime scene back off the road. “This isn't the kind of killer you can catch.”

The confidence with which the young woman said that sent a chill up Caitlin's spine. Again, her tone bordered on smugness, but the look on her face was somber and calm. She was not in the least rattled by what had transpired, and seemingly was not even surprised by it.

“Nature takes care of its own,” she continued.

“What was that, Ela?”

“Something my grandfather told us last night.”

“You think your grandfather can shed some light on that man's murder?” Caitlin asked her.

“I think he knows this land is watched over and protected by a force you can't possibly imagine. I think he knows man's presence is tolerated only so long as we live by the land's rules. And I don't think he has any interest in talking to you.”

“Tell you what, Ela,” Caitlin said, turning her tone more conciliatory. “Why don't you go tell your grandfather that the great-great-granddaughter of Steeldust Jack Strong wants to have a talk with him? I've got a feeling he'll welcome the opportunity.”

 

31

B
ALCONES
C
ANYONLANDS,
T
EXAS

Dylan and Ela led Caitlin and Cort Wesley through the center of the reservation toward the more rustic outskirts where Ela's grandfather made his home. As was the case on many contemporary Indian reservations, the contrast in the living accommodations was striking: from mansions claiming large parcels of land for themselves, to more modest ranch-style homes, to trailers and dilapidated shacks that looked lifted from old black-and-white pictures, right down to the barren ground from which they'd sprouted.

A handful of cases over the years had taken her to other reservations, all dealing with crimes committed off Native American land, when the Rangers had been called in to assist the efforts of the tribal police. She saw none of those officers in evidence now. Their entire number was gathered closer to the entrance, more to keep watch on the protesters, it seemed, than to protect them. Cort Wesley had said none of the tribal policemen had so much as moved a muscle when the work crew launched its attack yesterday. Hardly surprising, given that they were likely beholden to the elders whose deal with Sam Bob Jackson to sell off mineral rights to the land put them squarely at odds with those for whom that land was sacred.

To that point, Caitlin reasoned, the Comanche reservation sat on some of the most pristine, bucolic land the state of Texas had to offer. She wondered if Stephen Austin and the others behind the deal understood that, during the post–Civil War years when the land was deeded to those Comanche willing to lay down their arms and accept peace with the fledgling state of Texas. The Quahada Comanche under the great chief Quanah Parker, on the other hand, had refused to accept the terms of the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty. As a result, the U.S. Army, along with the Rangers, including Caitlin's great-grandfather William Ray Strong, had spent years practically exterminating them in battles that remained shrouded as much in folklore as in fact. Parker himself finally surrendered at Fort Sill, in 1875, a year after Jack Strong's encounter here, and she couldn't help but wonder whether that timing had been more than coincidental.

The fact that this tribe continued to live off the land was well documented and was exemplified by the lush, rolling fields of crops, corn most notably, with plenty of other crops grown in smaller patches. Judging by the tree growth and younger landscaping, she imagined many of the mansion-like homes dotting the reservation had usurped land on which acres of crops had once sprouted.

“You like the homes of the
to'sarre,
Ranger?” Ela asked Caitlin, following her gaze.

“That's what we call the Natives behind the land deal,” Dylan elaborated. “It means ‘black dog.'”

“We?” Cort Wesley repeated.

The developed portion of the reservation ended abruptly, extending a bit farther into the untouched land where the wildlife refuge took hold. It was on these grounds that Ela's grandfather White Eagle lived, on land unspoiled and unchanged since the time of his ancestors. Sure enough, their trek brought them up to a hump that settled onto a narrow strip of earth perched against a pond fed by a churning waterfall. A man with a hunched back and stooped frame stood in the spotlight of the sun, between matching elm trees, hands clasped behind his back and flowing hair tossed about at the whims of the wind.

He had the look of a man who'd once been tall, now shrunken by the ravages of time and age. He wore trousers stitched out of some kind of hide, moccasins, and a leather vest over a tattered woolen shirt, in spite of the heat. Drawing closer, Caitlin could see that the furrows and wrinkles crisscrossing his face were so thick that the sun turned it into a patchwork road map of dark avenues carved through the light. She let herself imagine that if a man from the nineteenth century really were still alive today, this was what he'd probably look like.

“Caitlin Strong,” the old man said, through lips that seemed not to move, his jawline utterly slack.

Caitlin felt Cort Wesley tense just to her right. Something about the old man knowing her name seeming to activate his defenses. She watched Ela advance, approaching White Eagle.

“Grandfather, this is the—”

“I know who she is and what she is,” White Eagle said, never taking his eyes off Caitlin. “I feel like it's 1874 again and I'm looking at a different Strong.”

“I'm sorry to intrude, sir.”

“I'm not a ‘sir.'
Sir
is a white man's term. Call me White Eagle, just like your ancestor once did. I'll call you
eckawipe
. Means ‘first woman,' since you are the first woman Texas Ranger—at least the first one to truly last and make your name. Come and sit with me.”

It seemed to Caitlin that the old man wasn't even acknowledging the presence of the others. Even when they all took short stools set in the cover of a grove of shade trees reflected in the shimmering surface of the still pond, it was as if the two of them were alone. Silence dominated at first, broken only by the regular dappling of the waterfall's currents slapping against the pond waters.

“Do you know why I'm here, White Eagle?” Caitlin finally asked.

“That man was killed off our lands. It's not our problem or our concern.”

“I was hoping you could shed some light on other matters.”

“They should know he will only be the first,” White Eagle continued, ignoring what Caitlin had just said, sounding like he was playing a recording through his mouth. “That if they don't heed this warning, others will die too, just as they did in the time of your great-great-grandfather. You hear my words, Eckawipe?”

“I do, and they sound like a threat.”

“Because they are, not from me but from the land itself. From nature.”

“Your granddaughter mentioned that.”

White Eagle's gaze shifted to Ela, as if noticing her for the first time. “My granddaughter does not speak for me or the land. She has yet to learn that language.”

“You're aware of Steeldust Jack Strong's experiences here, then.”

“I remember it like it was yesterday, Eckawipe.”

Caitlin let the old man's comment stand. “He came to the reservation because of a killing just outside it, too. The victim today was found in virtually the same condition.”

“Torn apart, as if by an animal?”

“I was thinking bear.”

“So did Jack Strong. But I'll tell you what I told him. No bears roam these parts. No wolves or mountain lions, either. Not then, not now.”

“
You
told him,” Caitlin repeated. “In 1874. A hundred and forty-two years ago.”

“I believe your math is correct,” White Eagle told her. “And the white man today who repeats the same mistakes will pay the same price, Ranger. Many more will fall now, just as they fell then.”

“Your own tribal leaders made this deal, White Eagle,” Caitlin reminded. “Your granddaughter's standing in a protest line facing across the road, when really she should be teaching those kids she came back here for, and watching her back.”

“Then the land will protect her as she protects it. That is the sacred bond our people made too many centuries ago to count. Persist in your trespass and you place your own life in jeopardy from forces you can't possibly imagine or understand.”

“Why don't you help me understand them?”

White Eagle shook his head. “You're no different from your great-great-grandfather. I'll tell you the same thing I told him: begone and let nature handle its own.”

“And what if I can't do that?”

“Then even I won't be able to protect you.” The old man's eyes fixed briefly on Cort Wesley before moving to Dylan and holding on him. “Or those you love.”

 

32

R
ALEIGH,
N
ORTH
C
AROLINA

“Will the defendant please rise?”

Cray Rawls rose from the table, smoothing the folds of his suit straight as he looked toward the jury, meeting each and every one of the members' gazes with an ominous glare that suggested he might still be able to affect the outcome of the case. He looked at them and smirked, his nostrils still teeming with Candy's cheap perfume from the night before, reminding him of what it felt like to hold all the power, a sensation he clung to while awaiting the verdict.