Strong Darkness (38 page)

“You think I could have anticipated all this?” Jones's voice, more strident and indignant, sounded hollow all of a sudden over the speaker.

“I don't think it ever occurred to you to bother,” Caitlin told him. “That's the problem with people like you who give no quarter when it comes to what they claim is defending the country: you see what's before you and nothing else. Li Zhen pulled the wool over your eyes and you didn't even bother to notice.”

“I took three bullets when I tried to shut the whole thing down, Ranger, in case you've forgotten.”

“I once shot a pit bull that had sunk its teeth into a boy's arm,” recalled Captain Tepper, swiping his tongue over his palm to wet his hair down anew. “Put six bullets into him and they still had to surgically remove the dog's jaws from the boy's arm at the hospital. Sounds like Li Zhen's got the same attitude, and I'd like to hear now how we go about dealing with that.”

“Same way you dealt with the pit bull,” Caitlin told him. “Pretty much.”

Jones chuckled through the speaker. “So you plan on just walking into Li Zhen's office with this warrant you managed to procure from the Chinese consul general attached to Houston and slapping the handcuffs on him?”

“As a matter of fact, Jones, I do.”

A cell phone rang, no one at the table sure whose it was.

“Don't answer that,” D. W. Tepper said from the doorway.

 

100

N
EW
B
RAUNFELS,
T
EXAS

“Your oldest daughter's name was Jiao,” Caitlin continued. “I believe that means delicate, tender. Beautiful too. Have I got that right, sir?”

Zhen made himself hold her stare, wondering if she'd seen his basement in Alamo Heights. All the pictures of his one true love, Jiao, plastered over the walls.

“I hear rapists in your prisons get even worse treatment than they get in ours,” Caitlin told him. Sweat, wrought by the room's fetid conditions, was beginning to bead up on Li Zhen's forehead.

“You can't prove any of this,” he said finally, his expression remaining flat and calm. But the way his fists kept clenching and unclenching told Caitlin he was fighting to retain control.

“What's wrong with your hands, sir?” she asked, noticing his swollen, split knuckles. “Looks like you've been in a scrape.”

Zhen clasped his hands behind his back again. “It's nothing. Just a scuffle. It's not your problem.”

“No, sir, it's not, and neither are you. You're China's problem once I turn you over to consulate officials and they get you back there. I do have a question, though: did General Chang ever learn the whole truth about Kai, who her mother really was? I wonder if it would've rendered her less appealing to the Triad's pervert division.”

Zhen shook his head, trying to muster his typically sententious smile but failing utterly. “An old Chinese proverb councils that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. You curse the darkness, Ranger. These allegations and insinuations will never have any light shed on them. I will be exonerated and you will be disgraced.”

“I prefer the proverb that goes something to the effect that if you've never done anything evil, you don't have to worry about the devil knocking at your door. But in your case he might as well be breaking it down.”

“You're just like your great-grandfather, Ranger.”

“I wish the same could be said for you, sir. Tsuyoshi Zhen, your great-grandfather, was gunned downed saving a child's life in the midst of that massacre at the hands of the Pinkertons. And this whole thing, this plot of yours, is about revenge for that, along with John Morehouse stealing his invention. I'm not saying you don't have call to hate this country because of that, but killing innocent people makes you a lot more like your great-granddad's killers and less like him.”

Li Zhen stood there rigidly, as if chiseled out of the floor. “Your great-grandfather couldn't stop them back in 1883 no more than you can stop me today.”

“That's a matter of opinion, sir. Maybe you haven't heard how the story ended.”

 

101

E
L
P
ASO,
T
EXAS; 1883

William Ray Strong was in an El Paso jail cell, not bothering to sleep as dawn approached, when Judge Roy Bean burst through the door accompanied by six men William Ray recognized as regulars in his saloon.

“Who's in charge here?” the judge demanded in a drunken slur.

An older, overweight deputy who'd been snoozing with his boots crossed atop a desk lurched awake in his chair, dropping the shotgun laid across his lap to the floor.

“That'd be me,” the man said, stumbling to his feet and laying his palms flat on the desktop for support.

Bean shot William Ray a look and flashed a wink. The Ranger could smell the whiskey rising through the pores of him and his men, mixing with the sour stench of perspiration after a long night of drink followed by the ride here from the Langtry saloon.

“I got something for you,” Bean resumed to the deputy, drawing some papers out of his jacket pocket. He staggered drunkenly toward the old deputy, his path straightening just before he reached the man and passing the mottled mass of pages to him. “This here's a writ signed by the county commissioner ordering you to place your prisoner in my custody. On account of the fact that crimes he committed in my jurisdiction done supersede yours.”

“What crimes are those?”

“Public drunkenness, disturbing the peace, and assaulting a federal deputy.”

“Who would that be?” the older man asked, looking up from the pages out of which he could make no sense.

“You,” the judge said and punched him hard enough in the face to push the man back into the wall where he smacked his skull and slumped downward, eyes growing glassy. Then Bean looked toward William Ray with a shrug. “I was running out of patience.”

“Remind me never to cross you, Judge,” William Ray said, as Bean jerked a key ring from the deputy's belt and flipped through the assortment for the right one to open the cell.

“When this is over, Ranger, you and me are gonna sit down and drink us some whiskey.”

“First things first,” William Ray told him.

*   *   *

By the time John Morehouse learned of William Ray Strong's escape and return to the camp, he was nowhere to be found. Then an out-of-breath boy rushed up to him with a report of something going on at the site of the earthen dam constructed to stem the flow of floodwaters built up through the unseasonably wet spring. Morehouse gathered what was left of his Pinkertons and rode out to the dam, accompanied by Marshal Stoudenmire and his deputies.

They found Texas Ranger William Ray Strong there standing alone atop the man-made berm holding back the torrents of water that would otherwise flood the entire length of the northern spur the Southern Pacific was building.

“You're trespassing, Ranger,” Morehouse charged, staring up into the sun. “Another charge to add to those filed already. I'd say you can consider your career finished.”

“I tried to do this the right way, sir.”

“How's that?”

“By arresting you for the killings of all those Chinese you'd cheated out of their wages, those Christian missionaries too. You know the term
bahk guai
?”

“Can't say I do, Ranger.”

“It means ‘white devil' and that's exactly what you are for believing the laws of the nation and state of Texas don't apply to you or your railroad.”

“Are you finished, Ranger?”

“Not quite, sir.”

With that William Ray eased a hand down to his belt, the Pinkertons tightening their grasps on their weapons, until the Ranger came away with a cigar instead of a pistol. He lit the fresh stogie with a match he shook out in the air and tossed aside before beginning to puff away. Then he crouched down and retrieved what looked at first glance to be a string of wire from the top of the earthen dam, but at second glance looked like something else entirely.

“Have you lost your mind, Ranger?” Morehouse yelled up to him, heart beginning to hammer against his chest. “Is that a—”

“Yes, sir, it's a fuse, connected up to a whole bunch of dynamite I borrowed from your supply depot. I hope you don't mind. I filed a requisition with the Rangers via telegraph to make sure you get compensated appropriately, so you don't need to worry none on that account.”

Morehouse froze, Stoudenmire froze, the Pinkertons froze.

“Shoot him!” Morehouse ordered. “Shoot him now!”

“Bad idea, sir,” William Ray warned before a single finger could find its trigger, cigar tip holding just short of touching the fuse.

Morehouse jerked a hand up to signal his men to hold up and followed the length of the unspooled fusing as far as he could. “You can't do this. You have no idea of the damage you'll do, how far you'll set us back.”

The Ranger stood over them, silhouetted by the sun, puffing away on his cigar again and impervious to the guns still held upon him. “I believe I've got a very good idea,” William Ray said down to him. “My father was one of the first Rangers ever sworn in after their duties became official. One of the lessons I learned from him before he went off to fight in the Civil War and never came back was if you can't get someplace one way, you find another.” With that, William Ray touched the tip of his cigar to the edge of the fuse that immediately caught, sizzled, and began to burn. “This is my other way. Only choice you got left, Mr. Morehouse, is whether you want to ride away or swim.”

*   *   *

William Ray Strong and Judge Roy Bean had galloped just out of range of the blast, watching it from a plateau just short of the hills overlooking the scene. The dynamite ignited in not one, but several rippling explosions that blended into each other. Brief bursts of explosive flame were drowned out by thick smoke that cleared in the morning air to reveal the tons of earth piled before the overflow's onslaught falling aside. Peeling away to let first streams and then torrents of water flood outward from the blown dam, following the line of rails and ties as far as the eye could see.

William Ray watched it rushing across the landscape as long as he could, figuring it would wipe out pretty much everything the Southern Pacific had built for the entire length of this northern spur, washing away miles and months of work.

“That ought to teach them,” William Ray noted, still working on the same cigar.

“What exactly?” Bean asked him.

“That you don't mess with Texas, 'specially the Rangers.” He tossed his cigar aside, looking as if he had a sour taste left in his mouth. “It ain't much, but it's better than nothing.”

 

102

N
EW
B
RAUNFELS,
T
EXAS

“So this whole thing, this plot of yours, is about revenge for that massacre that claimed the life of your great-grandfather,” Caitlin finished, after looking at Li Zhen for a long moment. “That and John Morehouse stealing Tsuyoshi Zhen's invention.”

Li Zhen moved closer to her, positioned in a way that made him seem part of a terrarium containing African tree frogs set immediately to his rear. “You feel too much,
Cat-lan
Strong,” he said, letting his face freeze again just short of a smile. “We have a saying that life is a tragedy for those who feel but a comedy for those who think.”

“And you're the one laughing, is that it?”

“You tell a good story,
Cat-lan
Strong. I will give you that much. But that's all it is—a story.”

“Hold on, I haven't finished yet. Haven't even gotten to the part about you murdering five Chinese call girls exactly the same way as somebody in that camp did. They were also porn actresses who worked out of a studio the Rangers raided this morning, if you haven't heard. A studio leased out to a shell company that leads straight back to Yuyuan.”

Zhen's porcelain expression seemed to crack, right down the middle in Caitlin's mind, from the way the light struck his suddenly narrowed eyes above which furrows had dug into his brow.

“You killed those girls along the rail line the Southern Pacific built through Texas. The daughter you pawned off to human traffickers dropped out of sight right around the time the murders started. She knew it was you, got involved with Dylan Torres because she thought his dad and me were the ones who could put a stop to it. The arrest warrant I'm serving for your government doesn't mention any of that, but I suspect rape and incest should put you away for plenty long enough on their own.”

Zhen seemed unmoved by her conclusions. “I think you're bluffing. I don't believe the warrant is valid because my government would never risk embarrassment by cooperating with you on such a foolish venture.”

“I understand you stuck a soldering iron in their privates after you strangled them, Mr. Zhen,” Caitlin countered, trying to taunt a rise out of him. “Was it because your own tool doesn't heat up much anymore and probably hadn't since you raped your oldest daughter? John Morehouse cut your great-grandfather's balls off by stealing his invention, just like the Triad sliced off yours by making you trade your daughter for Yuyuan. How's that deal feeling right about now?”

Caitlin waited for Li Zhen to respond, was surprised when he didn't.

“So William Ray Strong never got his killer,” she resumed, “but I got mine. And wherever my great-grandfather is now I'm sure he must be real pleased you didn't get away with killing women and sewing their heads on backward like somebody back in those railroad camps did.”

Zhen's expression had gone utterly flat again. “I imagine that would be a challenging task.”

“Not for a man with your degree of practice, sir.”