Blood on the Tracks (29 page)

C
HAPTER
24

Hemingway said that in modern war, you will die like a dog for no good reason.

But sometimes you don’t die. And there’s no good reason for that, either.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

I sat in the car with the engine off while snow feathered the hood. Clyde gnawed on his rawhide as I went through the photos again, looking for things I hadn’t known to look for earlier.

Elise’s bedroom and the wooden bowl of hobo beads. When I zoomed in, I could just make out a painted red heart on one of them.

Whip hadn’t killed Elise. He’d had a crush on her. And Melody had known about it.

I flipped through to the front room. Two glasses of milk sat on the dining table, one untouched. Did it belong to Liz, who was unable to drink because she’d known what was coming? Or was it Melody’s, who’d had other things on her mind? The crime lab hadn’t gotten a hit on the prints because Melody and Liz weren’t in the system.

The third glass was on the kitchen counter, tipped over and dribbling milk into the sink. Elise’s. I’d missed its importance before, figured it for part of the general messiness in Elise’s apartment. But now I had no doubt the crime lab would find traces of oxycodone there to match what they’d found in Elise’s blood.

Finally, I zoomed in on the coats hanging by the door. I flashed back to my conversation at Hogan’s Alley two mornings ago with Melody Weber. I’d asked her about the coat I’d given her, and she’d told me it was in the tent. But it had been damn cold at Hogan’s Alley that day.

Melody’s coat hadn’t been in the tent.

She’d left it at Elise’s.

Melody Weber and Liz had paid Elise a visit. Elise had offered her guests milk. Melody had slipped the oxycodone into Elise’s milk, then dragged the unconscious woman into her bedroom, where—in her rage over Whip—she’d stabbed Elise to death.

All while her little girl sat in the next room, fingers curled around her phone. Cohen had told me it was someone young who’d called in Elise’s death. Had Liz thought about calling the police while her mother was busy with Elise? Considered it again while Melody was in the bathroom washing up and staring at the cut on her face that I, a few hours later, would bandage for her? Had Liz finally summoned her courage once they were safely away at the hobo camp and her mother was sleeping it off?

It’s the ones who love us, hurt us the most.

Almost certainly Whip had learned what his girlfriend had done and delivered the beating that Melody said she deserved. But he hadn’t reported her. Instead, he’d scattered Tucker’s hobo beads in the room, knowing—as he did—that Tucker was on his way home. He’d protected her.

I pulled on my headset, picked up my phone and dialed Cohen. It went straight to voicemail.

“Call me,” I said. “Tucker Rhodes is innocent. I can prove it. And—” I hesitated for the briefest of moments. “I stole some pages out of Jazmine’s file. To protect a friend. I was wrong.”

I disconnected, my heart beating as fast as if I’d said the words to Cohen’s face.
I am a thief. I am without honor
.

Seemed like I was getting pretty good at hammering nails into the coffin of everything that mattered to me.

I turned the ignition, and the engine roared to life. A sudden gust bitch-slapped the truck, and down the street a metal hubcap clattered along the curb. Clyde dropped his chew toy and rose fast in the passenger seat, ears and tail up, bumping into the ceiling.

Gently I pressed his rump down.

“We’re still good, boy,” I told him. “You should be happy. Today we’re hunting bad guys.”

Clyde eyeballed me for a minute then settled back into the seat and watched out the window. After a moment he retrieved his rawhide.

One more phone call, this time to the shelter where Melody and Liz had gone two days earlier.

“Trish, it’s Sydney,” I said when she answered. “I need to ask about that backpack left by Liz Weber.”

“What do you need to know?” Trish asked warily.

“What’s in there. I know, I know,” I said when she started to protest. “Just accidentally spill it while you’re moving it. Liz could be in danger.”

“What? Sydney, what’s going on?”

“I can’t tell you anything right now. Just do it.”

“Okay. I’ve got the backpack. Woops! Oh, darn, I dropped everything on the bed.”

I waited while Trish listed the contents.

“A T-shirt and jeans. A Barbie doll in a tutu. A little ceramic cat with a broken tail. Let’s see. A cell phone. Two pieces of candy. A feather and some pebbles. A key. That’s everything.”

I stared out at the fresh snow gathering on the grass, and I thought about the ceramic cats on Elise’s bedroom shelf. A tide of ugly rose inside me. “Tell me about the key.”

“Silver. Plain. Standard size. A single hole at the top for a key chain. A house key, I’d guess.”

“Okay. Take a look at the phone.”

“It’s a typical flip phone.”

“I need you to look at the list of calls.”

“You’re sure this might save Liz’s life?”

“Your name will never come into this, Trish. Take a look.”

“Hold on. Okay, there.” A pause. “Sydney, the last number dialed is nine-one-one.”

“When?”

“Two days ago at, let’s see, seven thirty-one a.m.”

How had that tiny stick of a girl screwed up the courage to call for help?

“Who does Liz have in her contact list?” I asked.

“Nothing. It’s empty. And everything under recent calls has been deleted except that nine-one-one call.”

Shit. “Thanks, Trish. You’ve been a huge help.”

“Find her, Sydney.”

“I will.” Promises left and right. I hoped I could keep them.

I tried Cohen again, and again it went to voicemail. I opened my bag. Sarge’s Colt gleamed within the dark confines. I removed it, chambered a round, and returned it, cocked and locked, to the bag.

“Looks like it’s you and me, Marine,” I said to Clyde.

Picking up on my excitement, Clyde barked.

“Game on,” I told him, and put the truck in gear.

Wind shook the truck.

The snow had changed over to sleet as we left Denver behind. Now, ahead of us, the light lay flat and gray. In the rearview, storm clouds massed on a dark horizon. I switched on the radio.

“. . . what may be the storm of the century. We’re already seeing snow in some areas, sleet further east. Could be a foot or more of new snow on top of what the last two storms laid down. It’ll be worse for you folks out east. Might be as much as three feet in Brush and Fort Morgan by the time this storm is done. Finish what you’re doing, people, and get home early. We’ve got snowplows out there. But they won’t be able to keep up with Mother Nature. Hold on to your hats.”

I flicked off the radio and listened to the sweep of the wipers as chunks of ice gathered on the blades.

“Who’d we piss off, Clyde?”

Clyde let his tongue loll. Happy.

We headed east on a nearly empty highway toward Wiggins, the sun a rumor through the clouds, the tires whispering on glistening pavement. As I drove, I thought about the timeline for Jazmine’s disappearance. If the Royer Boys had taken her from the yard at 5:30 and been home by 6:30, there weren’t many options if they’d gone by train. Heading either north or south wouldn’t have given them time to kill Jazmine, dispose of her body, and catch a train and get home; the Powder River train didn’t come through often enough. West went nowhere. Wiggins was the next stop east. But an hour wasn’t quite enough time to catch the 5:40 east-bound freight to Wiggins, jump out at the yard with Jazmine, then catch the west-bound back. An hour and a half would do it, though. If all the families had been willing to fudge a little about when their sons had returned home, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume they’d taken her to Wiggins or somewhere near there. They could have shoved her out in the prairie and let the coyotes take care of the evidence.

The police had searched a five-mile grid from Jazmine’s last known location, come up empty.

No one had looked at the trains.

I tried Gentry’s number. It went straight to voicemail.

“We’ll find him,” I said to Clyde. “Don’t worry.”

Clyde glanced at me then returned his gaze to the window. Definitely not worried.

As I drove, the pain in my body returned like a series of light dimmers slowly dialing to bright. My chest was the first thing, then the burn in my cheek and elbow. Nik’s whiskey and Grams’s pain pills were wearing off. I reached in my pocket for the pills from the EMTs, glad Grams had transferred them to Ellen Ann’s coat. I dry-swallowed four then popped open the glove box for something stronger. But I hesitated, my hand floating above the bottle of Xanax and the baggie filled with Dexedrine.

Thirty skinheads, Roald Hoffreider had said. Maybe more.

I closed the glove box and put my hand back on the wheel.

The truck slewed a few times on the slick roads before I reached the outskirts of Wiggins. By then the sleet was changing over to a wet, heavy snow as the temperature dropped and the wind kicked into a fury. Norway spruces, planted as windbreaks a decade or so earlier, shuddered in the gale. Plastic bags and other debris whipped past; bits of hay pelted the windshield. The snow flew sideways, as if someone had tipped the world.

Barns and ranch houses gave over to businesses as I drove into town. A single traffic light swayed forlornly above the empty street. I drove past a dry goods store, a saddle shop, and a single-marquee theater, all with
Closed Please Come Again
signs in the windows. Near the end of the block, red neon blinked through the snow. A grinning cowboy became visible, holding aloft a flashing beer stein.

The Pint and Pecker. The bar where Roald had seen skinheads and bikers comingling over drinks.

I slowed. The parking lot held four pickups and a rust-eaten van. As I rolled by, another car became visible, tucked halfway into the alley behind the lot. I touched the brakes, craned my neck. A cherry-red muscle car, all but lost to the alley and the snow.

Gentry’s car.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

On the other side of the intersection, I pulled to the curb. I called Morgan County Dispatch and learned that the lone officer on duty, Officer Markusson, was handling a domestic dispute. I identified myself and explained I was in Wiggins hunting a suspect. The dispatcher promised to put Markusson in touch with me as soon as he became available.

After we hung up, I considered calling the sheriff’s office. I had no idea what I might be walking into. But a vision of Thomas Brown’s tortured body put aside all thought of calling the cavalry. The kind of help the deputies would provide—the full-frontal assault kind—would be just as likely to get Gentry killed as rescued. It was how Merkel and his gang operated—kill the prisoners before you go down yourself.

I tried Cohen once more. When his phone went to voicemail again, I left him another message. I summarized my findings and said I believed Melody Weber was our killer. I told him where I was and what I planned to do in order to find Liz and Gentry and get them out of there. I told him I’d informed Morgan County Dispatch of my presence, but that the Wiggins on-duty officer was unavailable for the moment.

Then I hung up, turned the Explorer around, and headed back toward The Pint and Pecker.

Coming from this direction, I had a better view of the parking lot. All of the vehicles save Gentry’s and one other had Confederate flags in their rear windows. The other exception to the southern supremacy rule was a blue Dodge Ram pickup with a
God and Country Will Prevail
bumper sticker.

Nik’s truck.

He’d known right where to find the bastards.

I pulled into the parking lot, backed into a spot around the corner from the door, and took a quick minute to study the place. The Pint and Pecker looked to be an 1800s holdout from the days when Wiggins was established as a Denver Pacific railroad depot. One-story, built of peeling timber planks, with a pair of dusty windows set on either side of the front door. No other windows that I could see. A fence ran around the back of the property.

I slipped Clyde’s Kevlar on over his halter, put my own vest on under my coat, and racked a round into the chamber of the Glock before returning it to the holster on my belt. I slid Sarge’s Colt into my thigh holster.