Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(75)
“Guess the trespassing paid off, then, Captain.”
“Not until you tell me what the hell all this has to do with ISIS and those deaths in Austin.”
“Maybe White Eagle can tell us,” she said, as Tepper finally thrust open the door to the conference room.
*
Caitlin looked the old man in his milky eyes the whole time introductions were exchanged. She figured the men flanking the old Comanche were tribal elders, chiefs, lawyers, or maybe some combination of all three.
“You mind taking a seat, Ranger?” Captain Tepper said, his words more than just a suggestion.
Caitlin sat down four chairs from White Eagle, unable to keep her eyes off him. His skin looked like the top layer peeling off of sun-ravaged shingles, his eyes encased in flesh so mottled it looked like meat left too long on a grill.
“All right, Chief,” Tepper said to White Eagle, “I’m doing you the courtesy of seeing if we can deal with all this like the men we are, before the horse gets too far out of the barn.”
“I’m not a chief,” White Eagle told him. “Never was. And there’s nothing to deal with. Your officer trespassed on Comanche land last night and I want her prosecuted for that to the fullest extent of the law.”
“She’s not an officer, sir, she’s a Texas Ranger.”
“My apologies, Captain.”
Tepper looked toward Caitlin. “You mind addressing the man’s charges?”
“They’re false and baseless.”
“Beyond that, I mean.”
“I was investigating the presence of a person on the reservation, wanted in connection to the potential terrorist attack in Austin two days ago, in my capacity working adjunct for Homeland Security. Specifically, Daniel Cross was spotted in the vicinity the day before that attack. I tracked him to a cave on the river that cuts through the length of the preserve and straddles the rez.”
“So you’re admitting the trespass,” one of the tribal leaders or lawyers said, leaning forward so fast he came half out of his chair.
“Not at all,” Caitlin told him. “I’ve been over the old maps. The start of the river has always been a natural demarcation point that divides reservation land from the nature preserve. As such, the cave where I recovered vital evidence last night is off the reservation. How is that a trespass?”
“So you deny being on White Eagle’s property,” the man advanced, “disturbing his peace, and entering a storage shed?”
“I do indeed,” Caitlin said, thinking of Dylan’s misadventure the previous night, which had left him tied to a tree with baling wire. “And I’ll tell you something else,” she continued, her words aimed at the old man now. “I believe your client, or fellow tribesman at least, is a liar, a con man, an original snake oil salesman for the books. He tells quite a story, about being a century and a half old, how he met my great-great-granddad and all, when his birth certificate, registered with the state of Texas, lists him born in the year 1937. Near as I can tell, he’s not even related to his namesake, and he was picked up by Austin police and the county sheriff more than a dozen times for running games on folks off the rez when he was a younger man. Tell me, ‘White Eagle,’ have I got all that right?”
“You have nothing right,” the old man said, the smugness of both his voice and his expression surprising her, “and neither did your great-great-grandfather. He was a fool, just like you are. Sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, believing it was to see justice done.”
“As I recall, he stood up against John D. Rockefeller on your behalf.”
The old man suddenly looked twenty years younger; even the white film seemed to slide off his eyes. “We didn’t need his help then and we don’t need your help now. And you have things all wrong, then and now, as well.”
“How’s that, sir? If you’ve got a story to tell, let’s hear it.”
73
AUSTIN, TEXAS; 1874
According to Sheriff Abner Denbow, the bodies of the three young braves had been found dragged to death across the rocky ground. The rope burns were still evident on the insides of their wrists, indicating they’d been dragged facedown, which accounted for the unrecognizable condition of their features. Their faces looked like somebody had peeled the flesh off in random patches. One boy was missing a big chunk of his nose, two might have died from blood loss after somebody took a bowie knife to their testicles, and all three had been scalped. No one had known the young braves were missing until their bodies were discovered propped against a tree just outside the reservation, not far from where the body of the gunman had been found. Each was clutching a piece of John D. Rockefeller’s letterhead stationery.
Denbow had gotten word about the bodies from a farmer driving his crop-filled wagon down the road. By the time he’d ridden out there the Comanche had started removing the bodies and, having no particular desire to venture onto the reservation himself, Denbow summoned Jack Strong to the scene. Steeldust Jack had been certain he’d be returning to the rez before long, though he hadn’t expected it would be this soon, or under these circumstances.
“I’d like to see the bodies,” he told Isa-tai, outside his shack on the edge of the Comanche land, which was set against a brook fed by the backflow from a nearby river.