Blood on the Tracks (6 page)

“Parnell?”

“What?”

Something must have showed in my face because a gleam of amusement shone through Cohen’s exhaustion.

“You think I’m a pussy.”

“What do you care what I think?”

“What if I do?”

That stopped me. I noticed again the sharpness of his winter eyes, the rime-edge of intelligence gleaming there. And something else in his gaze, something as far from the ice as night from day. Something I might have labeled compassion if I’d been in a more generous mood.

I frowned. “To be honest, Detective, I don’t have any opinions about you. Good or bad.”

Cohen leaned back. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“Sorry. I’m more honest than I should be.”

He winced.

“That came out wrong,” I said. “I—”

“No. It’s okay. I probably deserved it.” He laughed. “I’m out of practice, but you’re pretty good at the shutdown.”

“A gift from the Corps.”

“I’ll bet,” he said, but it wasn’t unkind. He scrubbed his face with both hands and shook off his fatigue. “Railroad property. I assume you want to be part of the takedown. You and the sheriff can duke it out as to who makes the arrest.”

“No, thanks. If it works for you, Clyde and I will get on the lead engine. Stay with the crew and make sure they’re okay.” And make sure Albers didn’t shoot his own brakeman.

Nik came back from whatever mental ride he’d gone on. “I’ll go with SWAT on the rear DPU.”

“Not this time,” Cohen said. “I need you to stay on the roof with the SWAT commander and the sheriff.”

Nik’s eyes went flinty. “No point in bringing me if you aren’t going to use me.”

“It was a courtesy,” Cohen said. “Situation’s a little too hot to have you on the ground, Lasko. Things don’t go well, we don’t want the jury asking the wrong kind of questions. Like, what the hell you were doing so close to the suspect when you have every reason to want to rip off his fucking head.”

Nik balled his fists on his thighs as his shoulders came up. I’d never seen Nik this angry. Not even with Calamity Jane. He looked wound so tight that I thought maybe the only way for him to uncoil was to let it all fly free.

“Nik,” I said.

Nothing.

“Nik.”

I put everything into his name, using my voice on him the way I’d used it on Clyde when he and I were first alone together after Dougie died. Back when Clyde was so lashed with grief I thought he’d rip out my throat for the singular sin of not being Dougie.

Nik didn’t look at me. But he didn’t fly apart, either. He drew in a deep, ragged breath and flattened his hands on his thighs. The anger fell away, replaced by a grief that pulled his face to wreckage.

After a minute, he nodded in Cohen’s general direction.

“Got it,” he said and turned back to the window.

Cohen watched him a moment longer, then opened a file folder and pulled out a sheaf of papers stapled together and handed it to me.

It was a summary of Tucker Rhodes—his service in the Corps, a list of his injuries from the IED, a brief investigation after his disappearance from Brooke. Parents were Ken and Melissa Rhodes, divorced, mom now residing in Florida, dad still in Shelby, a rancher. No siblings. I flipped through the pages, found a standard-issue Marine Corps induction photo. At the time of his enlistment, Rhodes had been a startlingly handsome man with dark hair and a look of cocky self-confidence. The expression in his green eyes didn’t reveal a single chink in the armor of his good looks.

I stared at those eyes, remembered the taste of rust like nails in my mouth.

I knew this guy. Somehow, somewhere. Maybe nothing more than a passing glance in the chow line at one of the forward bases. He was good-looking enough that he would have caught my eye, even when I was with Dougie.

But the twist in my gut said our encounter had been something more, even if I couldn’t place when or why our paths had crossed.

I shivered. Where . . . ?

Cohen’s voice brought me back. “Guys hopping trains usually carry a gun?”

“A few do,” I said, shaking off the déjà vu. “Handguns. Something they can conceal in a backpack. But you’re more likely to find knives or a length of pipe. Most of these guys can’t afford firearms.”

“A vet, we should figure he’s got a gun,” Nik said.

Cohen nodded.

Nik went on. “Warn your SWAT guys that if he’s armed, he might try to provoke a fire fight.”

“Suicide by cop?”

“It’s possible.”

Cohen pointed his chin toward a pair of Kevlar vests stowed in mesh pockets in the rear of the chopper. “When we land, why don’t you put those on?”

“Sure.”

Cohen packed away the papers and his notebook. He glanced at his wristwatch.

“So, Parnell,” he said, “what do you think he’ll do when we try to stop him?”

“He might see us as mere obstacles to his goal of reaching Montana and do everything in his power to eliminate us. Or could be he’ll—” I stopped. “You know, right, that my service in Iraq doesn’t give me any special insight into what Rhodes is thinking?”

The detective raised an eyebrow. “I think maybe it does.”

I looked down at the floor. Maybe. I thought about what kind of ugly might be in Tucker Rhodes’s head. Either he had killed Elise, or he’d found her torn up like that. Either way, he was a man in a world of hurt. He was likely to be scared—of himself and of us. Scared with the kind of fear that makes a man half wild and all crazy. Scared enough to shoot up half the state’s police if they got in his way.

A strand of sunlight made its way through the window and fell across Clyde where he lay on the floor. He thumped his tail and looked at me.

Then again, maybe Tucker Rhodes had had his fill of battle. Maybe too much death had turned him into a dove who wouldn’t fight even to defend his own life.

I’d seen both kinds of crazy in Iraq.

I raised my head. “He might decide to bait us, go for that suicide-by-cop scenario Nik mentioned. Seems entirely possible. My gut, though, is that he’ll try to run and hide, wait for another chance to make his way north. He’s lost everything except his home. I don’t think he cares what happens to him once he’s in Montana. But I think he wants to get there.”

“Okay,” Cohen said. He went back on the radio.

I looked at my watch. We had twenty-five minutes to land and get into position.

Nik pointed. “There’s the place.”

I reached for the binoculars. The storm hadn’t reached this far north, and from the air, the fertilizer plant was a hive of activity. Deputy’s cars, state police vehicles, an ambulance, and two SWAT vans sat in the lot. Men jogged down the track, moving into the approximate positions we had given them.

“They’d better move the cars,” I said. “If Rhodes is sitting where he has a visual, he’ll either run or be waiting for us.”

Cohen got on the radio again. Shortly, a handful of men emerged through a door and began moving the vehicles around to the north side of the building.

Nik slid next to me, placed his hand on mine in a rare gesture of affection. “You ready for this, Sydney Rose?”

I worked not to pull my hand away. “Whatever you need, Nik.”

I told myself I could do this. When we landed, I would not throw up or scream or crawl on my hands and knees to the nearest shelter to hide from an enemy on the other side of the world. I would not press into the ground close enough to eat dirt, or throw myself over Clyde. I would convince my body that we were safe, and my mind would follow suit.

Two minutes after that, we were on the ground.

C
HAPTER
6

After your buddy gets blown to bits, it’s your job to clean up whatever’s left. You busy yourself trying to find anything more than a hand and a boot so the family will have something to bury and because you don’t want to leave a fellow Marine behind.

You work all day to find what you can, and all the while your head hurts and your gut’s locked down tight, wondering if there’s another bomb out there with your name on it.

Then darkness falls, and you get back to the FOB with that boot and the hand and an ounce of flesh and you’re so nauseous you can’t eat and so tired you can hardly stand and the Sir tells you to shade it black.

And you say, Yes, sir, and you look down at the gurney—at that hand and that boot and that ounce of flesh.

And you wonder how the fuck you’re supposed to do that.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

The Larimer County sheriff was a tall, lean man in his mid-sixties with a sunburn, a nest of crow’s-feet, and an attitude for city folk radiating off him like stink from a stockyard. He met us at the door of the abandoned factory with his feet planted and his arms folded across his narrow chest.

“Thanks for pitching in on this,” he said to Cohen and Nik after quick introductions. He didn’t look at me. “Our men are in place. I’ve got two K9 teams here, ready to go if we need ’em. You got something the dogs can scent on?”

“I have the suspect’s uniform,” Nik said. “And Clyde here is one of the best air scent dogs around.”

The sheriff gave a slow “hmmm” that said,
We’ll see about that
, and handed me a Kevlar dog vest.

“K9 guys thought you’d want this.”

He pushed the vest into my hands. I felt like an ass for leaving Clyde’s vest and mine behind in our truck in Denver.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

An angry flush rose in the sheriff’s neck when his eyes met mine. He was the sort of guy who’d never taken to the idea of women pushing into the brotherhood. Probably he was wondering who I’d slept with and whether my incompetence would get one of his men shot.

His eyes swept past me to Clyde.

“Dog looks a little sick. Not much for chopper rides?”

Heat rose in my own face. “He’s fine, sir.”

“You’re not looking so peachy yourself.”

“Happens when I encounter an asshole. I’ll feel better soon.”

“Why you little—”

Cohen’s mouth twitched.

Nik jumped in. “As soon as the train starts to slow down,” he said, “your men should be prepared for Rhodes to jump.”

The sheriff ripped his gaze from me, taking skin with it.

“Miles ahead of you, Lasko,” he said. “State troopers have set up as much of a perimeter as they can. Kinda like trying to lasso a bronco with a piece of string and a whistle.” He nodded his chin toward the distant horizon where clouds hung, fat with snow. “We got a big storm coming. We don’t catch your guy in the next couple of hours, we’ll have to shut down before our asses are hanging in the wind.”

He gave us radios, told us what frequency to use, then clapped his hands together, a single, harsh sound in the cold-chapped air. “Let’s get this show on the road. Agent Parnell, I assume you want a ride up to where the engine will stop.”

“We’ll jog up there, sir.”

Another narrow look. I grinned at him, baring my teeth. The sheriff spun on his heel and disappeared into the building.

“You be careful, Sydney Rose,” Nik said to me. “And watch that temper of yours. The sheriff is on our side.”

Some of the wildness had gone out of his eyes, replaced by bone-tired.

“And you stay on the roof,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

He followed the sheriff inside, and I was left facing Cohen.

The detective stared past me at the prairie, his eyes slitted against the wind. “That hold you up much at work, that temper of yours?”

“Stupid, eh? Zero to pissed off in, what, twenty seconds?”

“Seven.” His eyes came back to me, amused. “For that, maybe we’ll call the whole crime scene ownership thing a wash.”

I mustered a smile. “Good.”

“Yeah.” He ran a hand over his cropped hair, needlessly smoothing it, another gesture that reminded me of Dougie. Was this detective what Dougie would have looked like ten years down the road, if he’d made it home? The same lines around kind eyes, the same weariness in the set of his mouth? Would Dougie, always larger than life, have become this worn down and cynical?

“I wondered if . . .” he started.

“What?”

But he shook himself. “Be careful, Parnell.”

“You too, Detective.”

He followed the other men inside.

I unsnapped Clyde’s lead and coiled up its length. He looked at me expectantly.

“Let’s go, boy.”

Away from the shelter of the building, the wind was biting; it felt good on my face as we took off. Clyde and I jogged lightly north next to the tracks, heading upwind toward the bridge, our breaths puffing in front of us. The winter sun threw faint, flat shadows over the ground. Two miles away, pale sunlight glinted off cars and trucks on the interstate.

A jackrabbit with comically large ears darted across our path. Clyde cut sharply after it, his head down and intent. I called him back.

“Clyde, you know better,” I scolded. “We’re on a job.”

Clyde looked longingly after the rabbit bounding away across the prairie.

“C’mon, boy.”

Clyde had once been the canine equivalent of a Navy SEAL. His training had gone beyond even the rigorous preparation given a normal military multipurpose dog and made him worth a small fortune. I’d only been able to adopt him because Dougie’s death had so destabilized him that he’d been declared unworkable. Now as a railroad K9, he had decent training. But I had not kept his skills to the level he’d once known. It had never seemed necessary. Nor did he enjoy the work anymore.

Something was broken inside of Clyde. I doubted he’d ever be the dog he’d been with Dougie. Any more than I would again be the bright, fearless woman whom Dougie had loved.

Chasing rabbits, though. That was a new low for us both.

At the suspension bridge, we picked up our pace. The viaduct hung over a sand-choked gully that had been carved out by flash floods. Clyde and I fell into a rhythm as our feet hit the ties.

Half a mile on the other side, we cut right. Twenty feet from the tracks, I gestured Clyde down and then lay flat on the ground next to him. The earth was still damp from the last snow. The Kevlar vest ground into the soft flesh under my chin, and Dougie’s ring dug into my breastbone. I wriggled around, trying to get comfortable.

Clyde settled himself companionably next to me, tongue lolling, happier than I’d seen him in a long time. His Kevlar vest didn’t bother him at all. Business as usual for a military dog.

“This is like a vacation for you, isn’t it, Clyde?”

He yawned.

“That rabbit means we’re losing our edge. Getting soft. We need to start training again.”

He paid me no attention whatsoever.

We waited. The smells of damp earth and sage wafted up, mingling with the sharp tang of creosote from the railroad ties. A lone crow circled overhead, and I followed it with my eyes, feeling some part of me up there with it, remote and unattached, free of asshole sheriffs and nightmare memories and war-shattered vets. Free of Weight.

“Five minutes,” the dispatcher said in my ear.

From the south, Engine 158346 was now visible, her headlamp and ditch lights burning brightly in the clear day like a star hooked to a workhorse. She was a four-thousand-horsepower war-bonnet, twelve feet wide, fifteen tall, and weighing two hundred tons. Part of the Powder River run, she’d been built to build America.

But she was also a danger. Flat-out, she could go sixty miles an hour. Get too close, and her slipstream would drag you under her wheels. Cross her path, and her driver would not see you. And even if he did, it would take him a mile and a half to stop.

By then, there would be nothing human about you except your DNA.

I could hear her now. The steady thrum of her engine, and beneath that vibrant hum, the clack of her wheels like blood thumping in iron veins. The radio burst with static as everyone down the line confirmed their position. Next to me, Clyde tensed. I resnapped his lead and pulled him close, wrapping an arm around him.

Railroad dispatch buzzed in my ear. “One minute.”

The tunnel vision of combat closed in, shutting out everything but the train. No smells or sights, no sound or sense of touch other than what rolled in with Engine 158346.

Our Lady squealed over the bridge, tossing off velocity, shrieking to a halt in a way that said stopping was all wrong, that the rhythm of the tracks should never be disrupted. Her steel sides swept by like a leviathan breaching, her wheels screaming in fury. Sparks kicked up from the rails and it looked like she would sail right on past. Stopping wasn’t what she was built for.

But, finally, heavily, she conceded. She dragged to a halt, her brakes whooshing. The air stayed up, just as Albers had promised, and Clyde and I sprang to our feet. We sprinted across the grass then bounded up the stairs and into the cab, me shouting my name as I ran so the crew wouldn’t think I was a trespasser.

Albers was sitting in the console behind the controls, his shotgun leaning against the wall within easy reach. The brakeman, Greg Walters, sat to his left, wide-eyed and pale. Walters rose and grabbed my arm as soon as I entered the cab.

“Who is this guy, Sydney?” he asked. “I think I saw SWAT out there.”

“He’s just a trespasser,” I told him. “No worries. But we’re going to be cautious. I want both of you down, out of sight.”

“What? Why?” Walters asked even as he crouched on the internal stairs leading down to the head.

“Bullets will be flying,” Albers answered gleefully. He clearly itched to be part of the action. But when I glared, he complied with my order, hunkering near Walters on the stairs and snugging the shotgun up to his chest like a lover.

“Don’t even think of using that,” I told him.

I removed Clyde’s lead and gave him the order to stay with the men. Then I clambered to the top of the locomotive so that I could watch for anyone approaching.

Atop the engine, I shaded my eyes. The wind rippled through the prairie, spreading flat and desolate to either horizon. North of me, two deputies stood in full protective gear, scanning the southern terrain where Engine 158346 cleaved the land like a zipper.

I listened to the running commentary on my radio as the sheriff and the SWAT leader talked to their teams. Men were clearing the DPUs and the gondolas; in the pristine silence of the flatlands, the clang of their boots on rusting platforms and metal ladders echoed like rifle shots.

The searchers found an abandoned bedroll, a paperback mystery novel, three porno mags, fifteen empty whiskey bottles, a deck of cards, and what sounded like a dumpster’s worth of trash.

But of Tucker Rhodes, there was nothing. The rear DPUs sat empty, the gondolas contained mostly snowmelt.

“He must have jumped,” said the sheriff. “Probably back in Fort Collins. But let’s take a look-see closer to home as long as we’ve still got daylight. Once that storm hits, it’s gonna be darker than a rattler den at midnight.”

The SWAT commander came on. “Let’s clear this train, gentlemen. Car by car. Use the mirrors where you need to, and sweep each car before taking the next. Teams three and four, move from south to north, and take the K9 teams with you. Teams one and two, stay on perimeter. Keep twenty yards back in case we rattle something loose. State troopers on perimeter have nothing so far, so could be our guy is still around. We’ve got less than an hour before that storm hits. Move fast, but be smart.”

“Agent Parnell?” The sheriff again. “You awake up there?”

“Sir.”

“How about you take your dog and start searching from the north? Don’t worry about clearing the cars. Just see if your dog can pick up a scent. If he does, back off and hold tight until I can get more men up there. Team five, stay on her ass, give her some cover.”

“Pleasure, sir,” came a male voice.

My lucky day.

I climbed down to the platform and whistled Clyde out. We hopped to the ground and watched the two deputies approach. As soon as the men got close enough for Clyde to make out the protective gear—their Kevlar-inflated bulk and face-concealing radios—Clyde lowered his neck, tucked his tail, and slunk behind my legs.

I knelt and took his face in my hands, trying to instill the same calm we’d managed together on the chopper.

“Clyde,” I whispered, aware that the deputies were now right behind me. “No bombs. No snipers. We’re still good.”

Clyde studied me again; again he bought my line.

“Sit.”

He sat.

“Good boy.”

“He okay?” asked one of the deputies.

I rose to my feet, forced a smile. “Sure.”

The deputies introduced themselves as Ed Kohl and Scott O’Malley. We shook hands. But when I tried to introduce Clyde, he refused to participate. He stayed obediently by my side but ignored the men’s outstretched hands.

“He won’t bite, will he?” Kohl asked.

“Only if you stay on my ass.”

The deputies laughed and the moment passed.

Both Kohl and O’Malley had run searches with their K9 teams and knew the drill. Clyde and I would walk point. The deputies would follow a few paces behind on my right and left so they could, as the sheriff so delicately put it, cover my ass.

I faced south. The wind pushed into my back, tugging strands of my hair free and whipping them into my face.

“Lousy search conditions,” I warned the deputies. “Moving with the wind means we could walk right past Rhodes before Clyde catches his scent.”

“Just don’t get more than a couple of paces ahead of us,” O’Malley said. “Keep it tight. Clyde alerts or you see or hear anything, drop so we have a clear line of sight. Don’t worry. If Rhodes moves, we’ll get him.”

“Didn’t you say that all we got up here are coal cars and that he wouldn’t be in a coal car?” Kohl asked.

“Coal cars and flatcars,” I said. “Not likely to be on either of those. But let’s make your boss happy.”