Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) (33 page)

“You can if you tell me what happened on Regent Tawls’s farm in the fall of nineteen-eighty, Mr. Sandoval.”

“I was little more than a boy myself back then,” Sandoval reflected, his mind working to remember. “Just starting off with the Mexican
federal
police.”

“But you remember the case, don’t you, sir?”

“Of course I do. It was my first major arrest and prosecution. Enrique Cantú and Mateo Torres had apparently tired of serving only as growers moving from one farm to another, choosing to become distributors themselves. Their mistake was to sell their stolen product through the same man with whom the Tawls family did business. Through him, I tracked them back to Mexico and arrested both, promising I’d release the one who gave up the other first.”

“It was Torres who gave up Cantú.”

Sandoval looked a bit surprised. “How did you know?”

“Cantú wasn’t the man’s real name, though, was it?”

“I knew he was related to Esteban Cantú, the first to bring opium into the United States through Mexicali, but that’s all. He stood trial in the United States and was sentenced to ten years at the prison now known as the Walls in Huntsville.”

Caitlin could see the man’s eyes widening, dark saucers wedged into his face.

“This has something to do with the murder of my son, doesn’t it, Ranger?”

“Enrique Cantú’s real name was Guajardo,” Caitlin said instead of answering. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Caitlin watched Sandoval pitch back in his chair, spine stiffening and throat bulging as he swallowed hard. “Yes, it does. It means plenty.”

85

R
IO
G
RANDE
V
ALLEY,
T
EXAS

“I see you brought your boy with you again, Mr. Masters,” greeted Jan McClellan-Townsend, approaching as Cort Wesley and Dylan climbed out of the truck.

She smiled, about to say more when she caught Cort Wesley’s dour, purposeful expression.

“No time for pleasantries today, ma’am. My younger son was kidnapped last night.”

The older woman’s spine arched in realization. “Oh my Lord, the terrorists at that lacrosse game…”

“They weren’t terrorists. They were Mexican killers led by a man who’s living proof we evolved from apes. This whole thing is about revenge and I think you know more about the why than you’ve said already.”

“Just tell me what you need to know, Mr. Masters,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“That’s Cort Wesley, ma’am. And we need to talk about Enrique Guajardo, Jan.”

The woman pretended to be surprised. “Excuse me?”

“You knew him as Enrique Cantú.”

He watched Jan McClellan-Townsend stiffen. “I thought we’d been over that part.”

“We had. But you left something out.”

“What’s that?”

“Enrique Cantú served three years of a ten-year stretch in the Walls prison,” Cort Wesley told her, stiffening at the mere mention of the place he’d spent four miserable years himself. “During that stretch, prison phone logs say he called phone numbers registered to you on this farm over five hundred times, some of the calls pretty long in duration.”

The woman stood board straight directly before him, saying nothing.

“Take all the time you need, Jan.”

“I believe you’ve pretty much figured it out, Cort Wesley.”

“You had an affair. I think it was ongoing over several years. I think you were the one who paid for a lawyer he couldn’t possibly have afforded and paid off the right people to secure his early parole. I think you took care of his family here in the years he was in the Walls.”

“Couldn’t have laid it out better myself,” McClellan-Townsend said with a frown, looking as grim as Cort Wesley now.

“Still a few things missing, though, aren’t there?”

The woman stiffened, suddenly looking all of her years and more, her gaze seeming to be directed between Cort Wesley and Dylan. “I believe I’ve said everything I’m going to say on the matter. Anything else you want to know about Enrique Cantú you’ll have to find up in the Walls penitentiary.”

Cort Wesley took a step closer to her, sliding sideways back into her line of vision. “There’s something else you need to tell me first, ma’am—”

“Jan.”

“
Ma’am
, and it’s for your own good.”

“
My
own good, Mr. Masters?”

“I believe there’s a body buried somewhere on your land belonging to a work foreman killed by Cantú’s son as a young boy not long after Cantú was arrested. I heard told the case has drawn the interest of the Texas Rangers, including one I believe you’re aware I’m quite close to. Now, unless you want your property torn up while you face an accessory to murder charge, you need to tell me everything you know about that.”

“You’re talking about Locaro Cantú,” Jan McClellan-Townsend said softly, almost fearfully, her gaze suddenly empty and distant.

“I believe we are,” Cort Wesley said, after exchanging a glance with Dylan.

“I should have known when you made that comment about being evolved from apes.… A more fitting description of a person, man or boy, has never been spoken, and I mean that entirely.”

“He got away last night,” Dylan said, before Cort Wesley had a chance to. “He’s got my brother. I know what it’s like to be kidnapped, Jan. I know how scared my brother must be and how helpless he feels right now.”

The woman managed a smile, one sad enough to match her tone, unable to disguise how much Dylan impressed her. “If only my youngest daughter was still a teenager … So why now?” she asked Dylan instead of Cort Wesley. “Why is all this happening after so many years?”

“It has to do with my mother, Maura Torres, the twin my grandfather Mateo kept. I never met the man, but if he hadn’t died before I was born, I’d have told him that was the wrong thing to do. A man doesn’t give up his kids. A man does whatever it takes.”

Jan McClellan-Townsend’s eyes narrowed, then widened again, as she sighed deeply. “Locaro was a monster for sure, but…” The rest of her words dissolved into another sigh.

“Go on, Jan,” prodded Cort Wesley.

“His sister, she was worse. Totally different from the other twin. There was something about that girl—Ana I think her name was—that just wasn’t right. Things would happen, bad things, and she’d always be in the area, the look on her face saying plenty but not enough. I remember it getting worse right around the time Locaro took a machete to that rapist in the summer of nineteen-eighty. You’re right about the man’s body being buried somewhere on the farm, Cort Wesley. What you don’t know is we’d had to scoop up what was left of him with a shovel. I believe Locaro was ten at the time. Ana would’ve been seven.” She shook her head, the memories obviously painful for her. “The family left not long after that and I never saw them again.”

“But you saw Enrique Cantú again, didn’t you, Jan?” Dylan asked when Cort Wesley remained silent.

Jan McClellan-Townsend’s eyes started misting up. She dabbed them with her sleeve and sniffled. “Some years ago, Enrique got in an argument with his son and Locaro pushed him off a fourth-story balcony. It happened in front of witnesses and he ended getting sentenced to life in Cereso Prison.” She looked befuddled. “But now you’re telling me he got out. How in the Lord’s name did he get out?”

“We were talking about your time with his father,” said Cort Wesley. “You started seeing Enrique again after you arranged for his release from prison, didn’t you?”

Jan McClellan-Townsend nodded slowly, looking almost embarrassed. “I don’t know the circumstances, but his wife died not long after he was paroled. I didn’t see him for a stretch after that and by the time he got back in touch with me, his name was known throughout Mexico. We used to meet in as beautiful a piece of land as you’ve ever seen, me and Enrique, in this little stretch of paradise called Los Mochis. I believe it’s been turned into a game preserve now. He’d gone back to using the name Guajardo by then.”

“A game preserve?” Dylan raised.

“Where hunters pay to kill just about anything for a price, son.” Her still moist eyes fixed themselves on Cort Wesley. “Guess we haven’t evolved as a species nearly as much as we thought we had.”

“But you seem to feel awfully bad for young Ana witnessing that work foreman raping her mother before Locaro killed him. That’s a credit to the kind of person you are, Jan.”

But Jan McClellan-Townsend seemed to have no interest in taking that credit, something else plainly on her mind as she took a step closer to Cort Wesley. “I believe you have your facts wrong.”

“Ma’am?”

“It’s Jan, and I’m talking about the truth of what really happened that day.”

86

C
IUDAD
M
IER,
M
EXICO

Sandoval rose from his chair and moved to the nearest tinted train window. “How could I not have realized?” he said, words aimed at the wasteland beyond that had been a town until just a few years before.

“Realized what, sir?”

Caitlin studied his reflection in the window, the anguish on his features slowly giving way to the arrogant resolve that had made him Mexico’s foremost soldier in its perpetual war on the drug trade. “Enrique Guajardo’s daughter, Ana, is the most powerful woman in my country, perhaps the most powerful person period. Her known dealings include energy and telecom holdings, stakes in major real estate developments, and full or partial ownership in a myriad of companies and conglomerates, both known and unknown. She’s also one of the largest landowners in all of Mexico.”

“What about the unknown ones?”

“She has supplemented her fortune by unifying the business interests of the cartels. Moving their money into vast hedge and investment funds to launder it while consolidating her hold on power. While the drug soldiers and mules kill each other in the streets, the product of their labor is invested both in holdings in North America and beyond. It all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ana Callas Guajardo grows more powerful while the drug lords become richer and more entrenched in what passes for Mexican society.”

“That’s why you can’t touch them, isn’t it, sir? That’s why all your efforts have produced little more than a stalemate?”

He turned from the window slowly, as if in pain. “I take my orders from those who take their orders from Guajardo. First the father, then the daughter.”

“She’s not his daughter, sir.”

“¿Qué quieres decir?”

“I mean that Mateo Torres’s wife, Carmen, gave birth to twins at that other farm they worked in the Rio Grande Valley in nineteen seventy-three. Since the Torres family couldn’t afford to raise three kids, they gave one of the newborn infant girls to the Guajardos, because they only had a single child: a boy named Locaro. He led the attack at the lacrosse game last night. He’s the one who’s got Luke Torres, sir.”

“Could you give me a moment, please?” Sandoval said, moving in behind his computer.

*   *   *

“Locaro was released from prison three days ago, pardoned by President Villarreal himself.”

“Don’t tell me, at the request of his sister, Ana.”

Sandoval didn’t bother nodding. “What can I do to help, Ranger? What can I do to help you stop the Torres boy from joining my son?”

The sun suddenly caught Caitlin in its spill through the tinted train windows, adding to the surge flushing through her as if her blood had been superheated. “Tell me what you can about Ana Callas Guajardo and her holdings, Mr. Sandoval. Tell me everything.”

P
ART
N
INE

In 1914, during the early days of World War I, the Rangers had the daunting task of identifying and rounding up numerous spies, conspirators, saboteurs, and draft dodgers. In 1916, Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico, intensified already harsh feelings between the United States and Mexico. As a result, the regular Rangers, along with hundreds of special Rangers appointed by Texas governors, killed approximately 5,000 Hispanics between 1914 and 1919, which soon became a source of scandal and embarrassment.

LEGENDS OF AMERICA:
“Texas Legends: The Texas Rangers—Order Out of Chaos”

87

L
OS
M
OCHIS,
M
EXICO

“The time is almost upon us,
Papá
,” Ana Guajardo said to her father as she pushed his wheelchair along the perimeter of the various enclosures that formed the game preserve honored with his name. “Do you know my happiest memories
?
The times you took Locaro and I hunting. The respect you taught us for the animals, our prey, has stayed with me ever since. The way you taught us to field dress them then and there, also with respect for what only minutes before had been a living creature. I understand now the lesson that held, I understand now you were teaching me both the value of life and its natural order. We may respect our prey but it exists to serve our ends and purpose.”

Ana Callas Guajardo had turned her father’s most expansive stretch of land, located on the outskirts of the Sinaloan coastal city of Los Mochis, into a wild-game preserve for hunters, both would-be and otherwise. Her thought was to provide an opportunity for her allies and those she wanted to make her allies to hunt big-game animals even Africa did not provide. Indeed, here in Los Mochis there were no government monitors, no pesky environmentalists or conservationists, to enforce rules and quotas or complain about endangered species. Those invited to Rancho Enrique had their choice among lions, tigers, wild boar, big buck dear, bison, antelope, and various types of game birds. In other words, the perfect selection to choose from for those who wanted to take a trophy of their own killing home with them. Not all the animals roamed the site at any one given time, but any could be procured with sufficient notice.

She had long thought those hunting trips with her father were about bonding, him trying to bring her closer to him after giving up attempting to do the same with her brother, Locaro. Only many years later did she understand why and how hunting had figured into it. Her brother had enjoyed killing too much, so much so that it blurred the real reason behind the trips. Her father wanted her to understand what it felt like to take a life, to feel the last of an animal’s heart beating away and then field dress it while it was still warm before maggots could have their way. It was a crucial lesson to learn, testing her own limits and making her appreciate exercises of the mind all the more. Though she reviled the process, it taught Ana what Locaro was never capable of learning: the meaning of true power. Her father never put it in those words, never put it in any words really. And it wasn’t the kill that mattered, it was the hunt. For the hunt made for a better life metaphor, summarized by the one point her father had made that Ana hadn’t understood until many years later.