Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(35)
“It never got to the ‘trying’ stage, Jones. Cross left a page of some manifesto he was writing in a lavatory stall. Somebody found it and Rangers got the call.”
Jones took the picture back from her, wanting to crunch it into a ball so much his hand was shaking. “A kid does something like that today, it’s him who gets flushed down the toilet.”
“I notice you haven’t said anything about the bullies who pushed him to the edge.”
“Maybe because they’re not the ones who reached out to ISIS, Ranger. And I can’t wait to shove my fist down the throat of whoever left out of Daniel Cross’s file the fact that he was a bomber.”
“He was a juvenile at the time, and last time I checked, nobody’s a bomber until they actually blow something up.”
“A mere formality, in my line of work.”
“In mine, we actually try to help people from time to time, Jones.”
“Whether they deserve it or not.” Jones’s face had reddened, his cheeks seeming to puff with air as he shook his head. “So I guess your experiment in mentoring failed.”
“I lost touch with Daniel Cross after my sabbatical from the Rangers.”
“So we’ll have you to blame if whatever this kid is up to comes to pass. Did you know Cross’s real mother was a prostitute who tried to abort him with a coat hanger, after one of her johns raped her?”
“I knew she was a prostitute.”
“The kid was born a stain on the entire human race. Fits the classic loser profile, ends up courting favor with anybody who’ll give him the time of day on social media.”
“But a group like ISIS wouldn’t give him the time of day unless he had something to give them, Jones.”
“Hence the raid on his apartment yesterday, Ranger. I’ve got a team working on the contents of his computer as we speak, but so far they’ve found squat. Don’t ask me to explain the details, but the gist of it is he’s probably carrying around whatever got ISIS’s attention on a thumb drive in his pocket.”
“Meaning you’ve got no idea what.”
Jones let the shot picturing Daniel Cross and Caitlin together dangle between them. “I might, if we can figure out what the kid was doing at that Indian reservation.”
“So you’re drawing a link between ISIS and the Comanche?”
“I’m drawing a link from Daniel Cross and the Comanche. You’re a jump ahead of me, and I’ll leave it to you to fill in the gaps, now that you’re personally involved and officially off desk duty.”
“I haven’t seen the kid in over ten years, Jones.”
“And I’ve been avoiding tall buildings ever since nine eleven. So what’s your point?”
Caitlin’s phone rang, CORT WESLEY lighting up the caller ID, as if his psychic radar was switched on. “You’re not going to believe this, Cort Wesley,” she greeted him.
“That’s my line. I’m back at the reservation. You better get up here.”
“More trouble?”
“You might say that. That construction work foreman I beat up yesterday was found murdered, Ranger, and I think I’m about to be arrested.”
29
BALCONES CANYONLANDS, TEXAS
“We didn’t call for the Rangers,” Travis County sheriff Tom Winkmeister told Caitlin, after she slipped inside the cordoned-off crime scene.
“I’m here, all the same,” she said, not even breaking stride.
She’d glimpsed the protesters, milling about before the entrance to the reservation instead of arranged in a neat line, and spotted Dylan and Ela among them, but she didn’t stop to greet either.
“Tell you what,” Winkmeister said, holding his gaze on Cort Wesley, who was standing on the other side of the yellow crime scene tape, “if you can view the remains without losing your breakfast, I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say. But he stays right where he is, right where I can see him,” he continued, pointing toward Cort Wesley. “On account of the fact that I expect he’ll be in custody before the day is out.”
“Find anything here to support that theory yet?”
“You mean besides the fact that he busted the victim up yesterday?”
“And that would be thanks to the victim inciting his workers to break your police line and attack those Comanche protesting peacefully, right?”
“You implying something, Ranger?”
“No, Sheriff, just stating a fact. I might even go as far as to say that Cort Wesley Masters saved you a heap of trouble by preventing an all-out riot.”
The sheriff puckered his cheeks and let the air out of them through his mouth like a balloon deflating. “Maybe a little dustup would’ve made those protesters see the error of their ways.”
“I was referring to one of them being Cort Wesley’s oldest son. If anything had happened to him, the wrath of God would be nothing compared to what you’d be facing. Now, about that body…”
*
The remains were so mangled that they best resembled a human form after being dumped in a blender. Caitlin could tell from the size of the twisted limbs that the victim was big, and she thought she spotted a beard on the parts of his face left recognizable, trying to match that up to the foreman of the construction crew she’d glimpsed yesterday. He lay with his limbs askew, one arm detached and the other hanging by sinew, his mouth hung obscenely open as if his lower jaw had been broken away, the bone separated from the rest of his skull.