Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(11)
“I’m sure you had the whole thing thought out.”
“As much as I could, under the circumstances.”
Tepper held up a cigarette lighter that looked more like a soda can, jerry-rigged with a computer lock to the top of his desk. He watched Caitlin shaking her head as he lit up.
“What, you need me to explain why I gotta keep a lighter so heavy it gave me tendonitis chained to my desk? Do you really?”
Caitlin settled back in her chair. “You want to kill yourself, D.W., that’s your business.”
“Then why do you keep stealing my cigarette lighters? You know what’s worse for my health than Marlboros? You. You and this Lone Ranger role you’ve fallen into. Problem being that every time your trusty horse, Silver, leaves shit in the streets, it tracks right back here.”
“No pun intended.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
Tepper nodded, puffing away and making sure Caitlin could see the smoke. “That’s what I told the chief of police and the commissioner for public safety: Never mind. Never mind that Caitlin Strong had a crop duster buzz east San Antonio, contaminated a quarter of the city, and shot up a street. Never mind all that. She’s old school. One riot, one Ranger, just like she told Deputy Chief Alonzo. Right or wrong?”
“Wrong. Because there was no riot. That’s why I did what I did.”
“What you always do, Ranger,” Tepper said, with the cigarette holding to the side of his mouth. “Last night took Hurricane Caitlin to a whole new level. Forget hurricane, you’re a full-fledged tsunami now. They don’t name tsunamis, do they?”
“Guess there aren’t enough of them.”
“Lucky me, having one all to myself, then. You know that desk downstairs I refinished a couple weekends back?”
“The one where the varnish never quite dried?”
Tepper frowned. “It’s all yours, Ranger. Catch up on your paperwork until we get the mess you caused last night sorted out.”
“I don’t have any paperwork to catch up on.”
“Then catch up on mine—fitting, given that most of it is about you. Department of Public Safety wanted your head on a platter this time, but they ended up settling for your ass in a chair.”
“How nice of them.”
“Don’t worry. You can keep your gun. Just in case the office gets attacked by somebody likely gunning for you anyway.”
“Should I keep another weapon of mass destruction at the ready, too?”
“Long as it doesn’t stink up the place.”
*
Downstairs, Caitlin was still staring at the empty desk, which was chipped and sticky with undried varnish and set in a darkened corner of the first floor, when her cell phone rang. She leaned against the desk chair, listening to it squeak, as she answered the call.
“Hello.”
“Caitlin Strong?” a muffled male voice greeted her.
“Who is this?”
“Just thought you’d want to know a friend of yours is about to get himself in some trouble.”
“And who might that be?”
“Oldest son of Cort Wesley Masters. Named Dylan, I believe. I’d hurry if I were you.”
7
BOERNE, TEXAS
“New game,” Guillermo Paz said into the microphone, from the table set atop a small portable stage at the front of the dining room in Morningstar Ministries at Menger Springs Senior Living Community.
At seven feet tall, Paz hardly needed to be standing on even a meager platform. But the placement was easier on the fading eyesight of the elderly residents, who sat with varying numbers of bingo cards assembled before them, patiently waiting for him to call each number.
After all, Paz reasoned, they weren’t going anywhere except back to their rooms in the assisted living portion of the facility. The priest he’d been visiting at San Antonio’s historic San Fernando Cathedral for more than seven years was now living in the nursing center section, after suffering a stroke. Paz had been the one who found him, the man’s body canted outside the confessional, blood dribbling out one of his ears and staining his white hair red on that side. Paz had wanted to pray for him while he waited for the paramedics to arrive, but he wasn’t much for prayer. He figured God’s tolerance for his murderous actions hardly entitled him to heavenly favors. Although Paz had long ago lost track of the number of people he’d killed, the Almighty certainly hadn’t.
“First number,” Paz said into the microphone. “Under the B, seven. That’s B seven. B for Boylston. That’s the name of my priest. He lives in this place now but isn’t in shape to play bingo. Want to hear something? I didn’t even know his name until I came to visit him here for the first time. The receptionist asked who I came here to see and all I could tell her was, ‘My priest.’ She nodded and said, ‘You must mean Father Boylston.’ And that’s how I learned his name.”
The residents of Menger Springs’s Boerne campus continued to look up at him, seeming to hang on Paz’s every word, eagerly awaiting his call of the next number, bingo dabbers held like guns. Visiting his priest almost every day had left Paz with a fondness for the entire facility, for its peace and pleasantness, in spite of the stale fart smell in the hallways and the general hopelessness that characterized the nursing center section. He thought Father Boylston would be proud of him for volunteering, playing a role, making a difference. Each number he called was a small homage to the priest who’d helped him define his ongoing transformational period.