Strong Darkness (22 page)

“Oh, I didn't come to confess anything, padre, at least not yet. I came to apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“For turning in other directions, for not appreciating the guidance you've given me. First, there were those college classes I audited; that didn't go well. More recently, I've been teaching English to immigrants mostly to think out loud to myself until some great cosmic realization strikes me in front of a classroom of people who can't understand a word I'm saying. But if I spoke to them in Spanish, I'd have to have something to say that was important to them instead of to me. Does that make sense?”

“Actually, it does,” the priest said, nodding as he shifted his still empty canvas handle bag from one hand to the other.

Around them, the farmers' market was comfortably cluttered, the air rich with the smell of flowering plants, fresh greenery, and vegetables thriving on the vine, tree, or bush mere minutes before.

“You know what I was thinking of when I saw you walking, padre?” Paz asked him, not giving the priest a chance to continue.

“What, my son?”

“That priest back home in the slum who I witnessed being murdered for just walking down a street like you were. He was carrying a bag just like that, full of bread. You remember me telling you about that?”

“I remember you telling me how you killed the man who murdered him. How you never forgot and waited until you were old and strong enough.”

“But that's the point, isn't it, padre? How do we know we're strong enough to suit the task before us?”

“My son?”

“I work for the Americans now, for the good guys, you might say. I'm not asked to burn or strafe villages or generally destroy the lives of anyone who opposes the government. They send me out after people who are a lot like I used to be, determined to do harm often for its own sake with no regard for the toll on humanity it takes.”

“That sounds like a noble transition.”

“It should be, but it's not. It feels the same, leaves me just as empty and rudderless. I think I realized why when I watched you walking. I was a boy again, back in the slum, standing outside the church while the priest walked toward me. I saw the gang coming before he did, saw them grab for the bread stuffed into his bag. I ran to help but I was too small and too slow, and by the time I got there they'd stabbed him to death because he resisted. The bread ended up in the street, covered in dirt and grime. I wanted to chase after the gang, but I stayed with the priest instead. I was with him when he died. I ever tell you that part?”

The priest before him today shook his head, trying to stand up straighter as they continued to walk, the crowd seeming to part in Paz's path.

“I want my actions to have meaning,” Paz told him. “I want to feel like I did when I killed the gang leader with his own knife. I have it with me now. Would you like to see?”

The priest shot a hand forward the way a cop stopping traffic might. “That isn't necessary, my son. And you only come to me when, how do you say it, the storm clouds are gathering.”

“Can't even see them this time—that's how thick the darkness is that's coming.”

“Your Texas Ranger again?”

“That's why I needed to see you, padre. The darkness threatening her is different and I feel I'm a part of it somehow.”

“How can that be?”

“I'm not sure yet. Not long after I witnessed the priest's murder, I found myself running with other boys as lost as I was. I didn't realize for a time they were part of the same gang that had killed a man who wanted no more than to do good by a poor village's children. But I didn't quit. I stayed in the gang and that's how I eventually found my priest's killer.”

The priest stopped before a display of baskets of bloodred tomatoes piled high and angled outward. “I come here every Saturday,” he told Paz. “And every Saturday I find myself marveling at how those stacks of tomatoes don't collapse and roll underfoot everywhere. You know why?”

“Because buyers choose only from the very top of the piles.”

“And what would happen if they reached down and took one from lower?”

“Trouble.”

“Exactly,” the priest said, letting himself smile. “This darkness that's coming springs from someplace just as deep. That's why you can't see or define it. It's hidden, ready to topple everything perched above it. I'm actually gratified to see you with no confessional screen obscuring my vision.”

“Why's that, padre?”

“Because I can see for myself that you do what you do without hatred or malice in your heart. You are a soldier serving God's army, even if He does not always announce himself as the general. This darkness that's coming?”

“Yes, padre?”

“It may be all-powerful, but it is spawned by evil men who seek nothing but destruction.”

At that, Paz reached down and plucked one of the tomatoes from low in the stack. He lifted it toward him, unleashing a blood-red avalanche that reminded Paz of molten lava running downhill. The tomatoes bounced and rolled and splattered underfoot, people left comically dancing and darting to dodge from their path.

“Just like that,” the priest said.

“Just like that, padre,” Paz echoed, feeling a smile spreading across his face.

“You must stop them, my son,” the priest continued. “Go with God.”

 

P
ART
S
IX

“Arrested John Wesley Hardin, Pensacola, Florida, this P.M. He had four men with him. Had some lively shooting. One of their number killed, all the rest captured.”

—J. B. Armstrong, July 1877

 

57

S
AN
A
NTONIO,
T
EXAS

“Something about these dead girls just isn't right,” Frank Dean Whatley told Caitlin Strong inside his lab at the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office, where he'd brought her as soon as she arrived.

That lab never changed, at least not in Caitlin's memory. It was sparkling clean everywhere, not a speck of dust or grime anywhere to be found, the cheap tile floors so shiny she could see the outline of her shadow. It smelled of the powerful antiseptic cleaner Whatley insisted his staff use after every examination and procedure in a concerted desire to pay homage and respect to those who crossed his slabs. It was almost as if he was trying to make some kind of moral amends, especially to the victims of crime who had already been treated with the ultimate indifference and cruelty.

The body of the victim found the other night at the Menger Hotel on the River Walk was lying on the steel, mirror-like slab right now. She'd been covered just past the breast line by a white sheet, neatly folded over at the edge to reveal fine, perfectly aligned stitching where Whatley had reattached her head so she was facing in the right direction.

“No luck identifying any of the victims?” Caitlin asked him.

“None at all. Normally you find some clue in their personal items—a parking ticket, a doctor's prescription, a sales receipt—but not in this case. At first, I figured that was the work of the killer. Now I'm not so sure, like maybe these young women didn't want to be ID'ed.”

“Or somebody else didn't want them to, Doc. What about that expensive perfume the latest victim had in her purse?”

Whatley frowned. “Available in that size in maybe a thousand stores across the state, not to mention mail order. Too many websites and inventories to bother checking.”

“But you've got pictures of all five victims, right?” Caitlin asked, thinking of something.

“Sure.”

“Send them over to Young Roger,” she said, referring to the young tech whiz who was already checking on the porn website she couldn't find on the Internet. “Tell him I'll explain what I want him to look for later.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing now, Ranger—at least, I think I can: all five of these young Chinese women were foreign nationals.”

“How can you be sure of something like that?”

“It's not hard if you know what to look for. Skin pigmentation, different concentrations of triglycerides and phosphates in the blood, even bone structure. It's all there to find for someone willing to spend the time to look.” Whatley looked down at the latest victim, seeming to study her utterly blank face that looked peaceful in stark contrast to the terrible death she had endured. “So the victims were foreign nationals, but there's no record of their photos ever being logged into the ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, system off passports. You want to explain to me how that can be?”

“Only one way I can: they were smuggled in, by a human trafficking ring in all probability.”

“Well, judging by the contents of their stomachs, their hairstyles, and the vaccines in their systems, they've been here awhile, a few years at the very least.”

Caitlin looked at Whatley, trying to discern the message in his droopy eyes. “What is it, Doc?”

“My initial reasoning was that the victims were strangled while lying facedown on the bed with their killer on top of them. Follow me?”

“Seems plain enough.”

“That's what I thought. I was hampered by the fact I never actually examined or autopsied the other victims, but I had the most recent one, from the Menger Hotel, to work with and that was enough for me to determine that she was strangled while upright, likely standing.”

Whatley felt the need to draw in some breath, as if short of it, before continuing. Caitlin waited, still unsure where he was going with this.

“This was suggested by the amount of fluid collected, and its placement, in the lungs,” the Bexar County medical examiner resumed. “And the angle of the ligature marks I found indicate that their killer was standing
behind
them when he did the deed. I've always found that to be more important than just about everybody else in the field believes.”

“So we've got a profile emerging,” Caitlin concluded, trying to determine how this new piece fit into the puzzle she was assembling in her mind.

“Speaking of which, you remember that thread I found at the Menger?”

“Sure, you thought it was the material used to sew the victim's head back on.”

“Turns out I was wrong. It was a hair—well, an artificial hair. The kind you'd find in a wig or a toupee.”

“So our killer's bald. You could have told me that over the phone.”

“There's something else,” Whatley told her. “And that's what I needed to tell you in person because it's something the likes of which I've never seen before. This victim and the four others, they'd all had hysterectomies performed. Two of the other medical examiners didn't even make note of that in their reports until I pointed it out from my examination of this victim. But that's understandable, I suppose.”

“Why?”

“The scarring was very minor, hardly noticeable.”

“You lost me, Doc.”

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to make sure it was done right. But that's not all.” Whatley looked at her with eyes so big and moist they were almost tear-filled. He started to suck in a deep breath and then abandoned the effort. “The operations were performed a whole bunch of years ago, Ranger, while they were still little girls.”

 

58

C
ONNECTICUT,
R
OUTE 95

“I don't get any of this,” Dylan told Cort Wesley, after waking up grouchy, groggy, and feeling cramped in the passenger seat of their rental car as it headed south, through Connecticut, along rain-swept Route 95.

“Your head hurt again?”

“My head's fine.”

“Doesn't look that way to me.”

Dylan squeezed his eyes closed. “Then stop giving me a headache.”

“Okay, we'll talk later.”

“No, say whatever you want now. Tell me I was an idiot for letting this girl sucker me the way she did. But how was I supposed to know she was mixed up in something like that?” the boy asked. “You have any aspirin?”

“You've taken enough.”

“So you're a doctor now too?”

Cort Wesley focused on the road ahead. “You couldn't have known what she was mixed up in, no way,” Cort Wesley said to Dylan, his hands tightening on the steering wheel, which felt hot under his grasp.

It was a dreary day, cold rain filling the air and turning the roads slick. While Dylan was asleep, Cort Wesley left the radio off so as not to disturb him, the only sound that of the windshield wipers swiping the rain splatter off the glass.

“What did Kai tell you about herself exactly?” he resumed.

“Not much. She figured I knew everything I needed to about her already. But remember how you told me to watch people's eyes?”

Cort Wesley nodded.

“Hers were always shifting about, like she thought somebody was watching her.”

“What about the night you got beat up?”

Dylan frowned. “Don't say it that way.”

“How would you like me to say it?”

“That I got jumped. By two guys at least.”

“Get back to that night.”

“I got her text after my meetings. She wanted to meet up.”

“At Spats. Your idea or hers?”

“Mine. She met me there and told me there was something she needed to tell me. Just not in the bar.”

“You think she was running some kind of game on you?”

“Game?”

“A con. You know, playing you.”

“Why?” Dylan posed defensively.

“You never pegged her for what she was?” Cort Wesley asked instead of answering his question.

“And what was she?”

“Porn actresses do it for money, son. Seems a simple enough conclusion.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “She never asked
me
for money, Dad.”