Blood on the Tracks (7 page)

I attached Clyde’s lead then showed him his favorite ball, a bright-red rubber chew toy called a Kong. Clyde’s ears lifted and a sparkle came into his brown eyes. Work was play for Clyde, and even after everything he’d been through, he still loved to work. I pulled out the bag with Rhodes’s military cap. All I could smell was smoke from when Rhodes tried to burn it. But Clyde would pick up the human scent underneath.

Clyde sniffed the cover, wagging his tail. When he had what he needed, his eyes went to my face. He was ready to rumble.

“Seek!”

Clyde lowered his head and began sniffing in the dirt near the tracks, his tail up and straight back like a flag. He moved steadily down the track toward the bridge, his step jaunty, his ears pricked. Now and then he lifted his head to sample the air. I kept the lead relaxed, letting him focus.

The deputies fell in behind us.

We crossed the bridge, left it behind. Our dull gray shadows stretched eastward, lumpy and distorted on the uneven ground. Clyde made all the noise of a ghost. But stray ballast and dead grass crunched beneath my boots and those of the deputies, and our breaths sounded like a bellows as we worked to keep up with Clyde. The temperature had dropped probably ten degrees since we’d arrived, and out here in the wind my face and ears quickly went numb, my nose running with the cold. My hands, cupped around the lead, turned stiff. I thought regretfully of my hat and gloves, left behind in the truck in Denver, along with our vests. Apparently I’d forgotten everything I’d been taught.

One of the deputies stumbled and muttered a quick “goddamn,” but I didn’t look around.

Twenty cars past the bridge, Clyde slowed. His breathing changed as he trotted back and forth next to the train, taking in more air. A few seconds later he sat down next to the tracks.

He had a hit, and the scent hadn’t gone any farther from the train than where we stood.

I tugged on Clyde’s lead, silently calling him back. Wordlessly, the four of us jogged fifteen yards back from the train and crouched behind a slight knoll. I downed Clyde while I studied the train.

“I thought you said—” Kohl started to protest.

I raised a hand, silencing him.

It didn’t look promising. The flatcar Clyde had alerted next to was the kind of ride Rhodes would never risk, not if he wanted to get to Montana. It was exposed and—with a load of rebar that would constantly shift—treacherous. I looked for any indication that the load had been moved around to create a hiding place, but from our vantage point, everything looked normal.

I ran my gaze over the coal cars; on the forward car was a series of scratches along the inside edge. The scratches were still shiny. Probably left when the latest load of coal was dumped in El Paso. But it wasn’t the sort of mark a hobo would or could make. And anyway, no hobo with any kind of experience would grab that ride. Even a guy looking to die probably didn’t want to do so trapped in an empty hopper.

I narrowed my eyes in frustration. The train sat silent and stubborn in the failing light, the cars shadowy and silent.

Dogs make mistakes. Maybe a farmer was burning corn husks somewhere, and Clyde had alerted on a few molecules of smoke brushing by on the wind. Or maybe a rabbit had denned nearby. Clyde’s earlier pursuit of the rabbit told me I hadn’t been working him enough. He’d become distractible.

The first fat flakes of snow skittered down as the sky folded in on itself. The wind shrilled in the bridge’s suspension cables. The promise of violence filled the world as the storm approached.

Kohl shifted around, scratched himself. “Did your dog find something or not?”

“Hold on.”

The last thing I wanted to do was call out the sheriff’s cavalry on a false alert.

“I once shot a tramp near here,” Kohl said in a voice barely loud enough to hear over the wind. “Fucker had a meat cleaver. His buddy’d made a batch of wood alcohol and mixed it with soda. Pink Lady, they call it. But he wouldn’t share with Mr. Cleaver. Mr. Cleaver got pretty pissed about that. He chopped off his pal’s arm and was getting ready to take a whack at the other arm when I dropped him.”

“Kohl, you talk too much,” O’Malley said. “You guys hear anything?”

“Nah,” Kohl said. “Not over this damn wind. You really think he’s here? Maybe Clyde caught an old scent or something.”

The snow was falling heavily now, turning the train into a ghost. My eyes kept going back to that bright line of raw metal at the top of the forward hopper like it was some kind of sign. Either Clyde had it wrong, or my assumptions about where Rhodes wanted to die were wrong.

I was betting Clyde had it right.

“Radio the sheriff,” I said to the deputies. “Tell him we have a possible.”

O’Malley tapped his radio.

“Sheriff, looks like Parnell’s dog found something in one of the cars. Want us to see if we can spook anything out?”

“Dog alerted, did he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, tell Parnell not to get her panties in a twist. I just heard from Fort Collins PD. Our suspect was spotted there. They’re closing in on him now.” He switched to the general channel. “All units, report back to the factory. Suspect has been located in Fort Collins. Looks like today’s little exercise is over.”

I stared at Clyde in disbelief. He stared back with furrowed brow, reading the disappointment on my face and wondering what he’d gotten wrong.

Over the radio, groans and cheers sounded up and down the line.

“Jesus, about time. My dick is an icicle,” said one of the men.

“You always were a cold prick, Mathers,” said dispatch.

Laughter.

O’Malley touched my shoulder. “Hey, no worries. It goes like that, sometimes.”

“No,” I said. “They’ve got the wrong man. He’s here.”

O’Malley and I looked at the silent train, the cars which I’d said myself were the kind Tucker Rhodes would never ride. Clyde had definitely caught a whiff of something. But maybe not Rhodes. I’ve always been a big fan of Occam’s razor, so I had to ask myself—what were the chances that Fort Collins PD had stumbled across a second hobo with severe burn scars on his face?

O’Malley looked so sorry for me, I wanted to punch him.

“We all make mistakes,” he said. “Part of being human. Or canine. No big deal.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Thanks.”

Kohl stood with a grunt and unkinked his neck. “What a gaggle fuck.”

Angry and embarrassed, I looped up Clyde’s lead. O’Malley was right. Mistakes happen, even with the best-trained men and dogs. But if Clyde had given a false alert, the error wasn’t his. It was mine for not keeping up with his training. My fault that he’d gone after that rabbit earlier. And my mistake for not working him through his war-induced anxieties so that he didn’t slink away when faced with lawmen in body armor. I’d let him down in every way.

“I’m ready for a whiskey and a hot shower,” O’Malley said.

“Whiskey?” Kohl scoffed. “You drink that paint thinner? Ain’t you an American, O’Malley?”

“Irish, boy, and proud of it.”

The deputies turned in the direction of the fertilizer plant, now invisible behind the swirling snow.

“Coming?” O’Malley asked me.

I shook my head. I didn’t feel up for the good-hearted banter the others would be sharing at the fertilizer factory. And I didn’t want to face the sheriff.

“Be there in a minute,” I said. “I’m going to see this train off.”

O’Malley squatted down and gave Clyde a friendly look. “It happens, pal. No worries. You’ll get your man next time.”

The men walked away, disappearing into the storm. Clyde looked up at me, ears back in embarrassment. I stroked his head.

“Not your bad, boy. I own this one. We are back in training starting ASAP. Either that, or I’m going to get a job pouring shots at Joe’s Tavern, and you can be my bouncer.”

My headset buzzed. Nik.

“Well, that’s that,” he said.

“Looks like.”

“Clyde didn’t alert?”

So it wasn’t yet general knowledge. “He picked up a scent just before the sheriff gave us the news. But we couldn’t find anything.”

“You sure? It’s not like Clyde to give a false alert. Maybe Rhodes—”

I sucked in a breath and released it. “They found him, Nik. Clyde and I made a mistake. I’m going to release the train and come in. We’ll have to get a new crew on in Cheyenne. Albers and Walters have been cooling their heels for most of their shift. Can you tell the captain?”

“I’ll call him. And I’ll ask around, see if I can get us a ride back to Denver. That chopper won’t be coming back.”

“Okay. Good.” I was tired. And cold. All I wanted was to get home, have a drink or two, take a shower, and crash. “See you in a few minutes.”

I called Albers, told him he’d be clear to head out shortly. Ten minutes later, with all of the sheriff’s men accounted for, I gave Albers the go-ahead.

A
chunk-chunk-chunk
rattled down the line as the brakes came off the wheels. A few minutes later, cars clanged and rattled like cannons firing as the slack in the couplers was taken up or buffeted out. Taking the slack out of a string was a lengthy process; it would be several minutes before any motion reached the flatbed near where Clyde and I stood. Albers’s engine would travel seventy-five feet or more before the last car in the string even began to move.

An old yardmaster had once told me that a train is Newton’s first law etched in steel. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Ditto for an object at rest.

The couplers quieted, which meant that all the slack had played out. Wheels shrieked on iron. The train was under way.

While Clyde trotted restlessly back and forth at the end of his lead, I followed the train with my eyes as it dug a slow path through the falling snow, watching that series of bright-silver scratches on the coal car until they winked out in the gloom.

Nik called again. “You coming in, Sydney Rose? I’ve got us a ride.”

“On my way.”

I hung up. Stared at the darkness. Clyde whined and pulled on his lead, no doubt as ready as I was to get out of the storm.

“C’mon, boy, let’s go home.”

He trotted toward me then spun around and darted toward the train, the suddenness of his leap jerking the leash out of my numb hands.

“Clyde! No!” I lunged after him. “Come!”

Clyde paid me no mind. Without a sound, he disappeared beneath the wheels as Engine 158346 rumbled north.

C
HAPTER
7

In a moment of crisis, your body takes over. It knows what it needs to do to keep you alive, and that’s exactly what it does.

This instinct for survival comes from your reptilian brain—the most basic, simplistic part of who you are. Your reptilian brain breathes for you. Digests and defecates for you. Watches out for you.

And—if it deems the threat high enough—it kills for you.

—Sydney Parnell, ENGL 0208, Psychology of Combat

I dropped to the ground and peered under the train.

Clyde had vanished into the snowfall on the other side of the tracks, chasing whatever scent he’d caught.

I sprang to my feet. Narrowing my eyes against the pelting snow, I first took note of my distance from the bridge and then zeroed in on a landmark as it flashed into and out of sight between the cars—a twisted piñon pine bent over a shattered pile of sandstone.

I turned and sprinted south, running against the direction of the cars. Clyde was my partner. As long as we were separated by a moving train, his life was at risk. No time to tell Albers to stop—if Clyde decided to come back, he could be crushed many times over before the train settled.

Learning to catch out isn’t part of a railway cop’s education. All we hear in training is to stay clear of a moving train. Want to survive until your retirement? Then do not get in an argument with fourteen thousand tons of steel. Handle whatever needs handling after the train stops.

The instructors never said what to do if your partner was trapped on the other side of that rolling steel.

The wheels rat-a-tatted on the rails. Four cars down, a hopper glowered in the dreary late-afternoon gloom, her platform sitting empty on the north end. I estimated the engine’s speed at twelve miles an hour. Another two minutes, the train would be going more than eighteen miles an hour. Jumping then would be nothing but suicide.

But I’d made a promise to Dougie. And to Clyde. I put on more speed, slid sideways in the first slick fall of snow, and caught myself. My duty belt banged and rattled, my bag bounced on my hip.

Five trainees in my class gave catching out a try—got drunk and tried to hop a southbound freight. Results were mixed—a broken wrist, two broken ankles, and a sheered-off thumb. Those still in one piece spent the next two weeks running calisthenics and watching endless safety videos.

The guy who lost his thumb took a job as a mall cop.

Next to me, the train filled the horizon, looming like a mountain against the sky. I kept my eyes on the platform and on the dark cubby above it.

In the far distance, Clyde barked, a single sharp sound.
Hurry up
, he was telling me.
I’ve got something.

I put on a final burst of speed. I was my father’s daughter, and unlike those cadets, I knew exactly what to do. Coming abreast of the hopper, I thrust my foot onto the metal stirrup, grabbed hold of the ladder like a penitent reaching for God, and swung onto the platform.

The motion of the train slammed me onto a steel floor slick with snow. I went skittering across. The skin split on my cheek and peeled off my palms. My brain bounced in my skull with a sickening jolt.

I scrabbled for a hold on the icy floor. My feet shot out over the other side, and I felt the suck of gravity and the grinding tug of the wheels. I reached for the ladder on the far side, was jerked away with the train’s motion, and grabbed again.

Then, like grace descending, my body reached the tempo of the train. My hands closed on the ladder, and the world quieted.

I hauled myself to a crouch and looked at the ground hurtling by. A landscape that had seemed harmless when walking was now a minefield of sharp ballast, thorny acacias, and vast fields of cactus.

I saw my landmark—the piñon pine and limestone scree—and leapt.

The earth slammed into me and I rolled along the ground with the momentum of the train, pitching to a stop against an acacia bush. I lay still, momentarily stunned, blinking up into the leaden sky. Snow burned my wounded face.

Then Clyde was on top of me, tail wagging fiercely, sweeping the snow from my skin with his tongue.

I rose to my knees and threw my arms around him, burying my throbbing face in his fur, heedless of the pain, my pulse thundering in my ears from adrenaline and the fear of losing him.

Clyde tolerated my embrace for a moment or two before he wriggled free and danced around me, sniffing my jacket pockets for his Kong, still on the game.

I stood and grabbed his lead and held it as tightly as I could with my injured hands.

“Game over, boy. I don’t know what you think you’ve found, but it’s time to get the hell home.”

But Clyde trotted away from me, moving west as far as his lead would allow. He looked back at me over his shoulder, ears cocked and tail jaunty. His tongue lolled.

Game ON
, he seemed to be saying.
Are we going to get this guy or what?

I whistled him back. Reluctantly, he obeyed.

“They got the guy, Clyde. In Fort Collins. Or almost got him. He isn’t here.”

Clyde looked up at me, then at my coat pocket where his Kong was stashed.

The first worm of doubt raised its head. I pushed it down. “There’s nothing here, Clyde. Look, this is all my fault. You’re the best damn dog around, and you and I both know it. We’ll get your shine back.”

Clyde waited.

“Ah, hell, boy. What are you trying to tell me? That you got it right and the Fort Collins PD are full of shit? I am not going to walk into a blizzard to track down a phantom. How do I know it’s not a rabbit or groundhog or some farmer burning corn? How do I know it’s Rhodes?”

Clyde nosed my jacket. I ignored him. The scrapes on my face and hands throbbed in the cold. My back and shoulders ached. My left calf burned, and when I looked down, I saw that dozens of cactus spines had pierced my pant leg and punctured my skin.

I hugged myself and stared out over the brown prairie with its thickening shroud of white. The wind had backed off, and the sky shook loose a light and steady fall of snow. The snow tossed the dying sunlight back into the air, a secondhand radiance filled with the ancient scents of musk and sage and fallow soil. Far away, a herd of pronghorn stood with their heads up, alert, like a series of exclamation points against the swollen clouds, alarmed probably by the approaching storm.

Or maybe by a man, walking nearby.

After its first harsh breath, the storm had retreated. But the promise of violence twined like razor wire into the silence. When the storm let go again—probably when the sun dropped behind the distant mountains—it would be a full-on Colorado fury.

“And so what if it
is
Rhodes? He
wants
to die, Clyde. It’s why he was trying to get home.” I was sure of that now. It wasn’t asylum in Canada that Rhodes sought. It was the kind of sanctuary found only in death. Probably he’d wanted a final meeting with his dad, maybe to say farewell to a beloved pet or an old girlfriend. Then . . . peace.

“And if he killed Elise, and now he wants to die, too, well, maybe it’s what he deserves. Did you think about that?”

Clyde, of course, said nothing. He kept his ears and tail high, the perfect picture of confidence as he nosed for his Kong.

The wind ticked up, sharp with threat. The pronghorn quivered and bolted. The sky lowered, and a thick, clotting snow began to fall in earnest. I was shivering hard now and couldn’t seem to stop.

“
I
don’t want to die, Clyde. You’ve got a fur coat, in case you hadn’t noticed. If he’s out there, we’ll find him in the morning.”

Clyde abandoned his search for his Kong and sat quietly, looking west, waiting for me to get my act together and do what I needed to do.

Military working dogs, especially ones like Clyde, train differently from K9 units. In wilderness police pursuits, you back off if your target becomes all but impossible to find and your men might get killed due to poor conditions—usually bad weather or darkness. You wait for conditions to improve, knowing that your bad guy is going to have to wait it out, too. The sheriff had been following protocol when he called us in before we’d finished searching the train. Especially after hearing from Fort Collins.

But in war, a dog is tracking enemy soldiers or terrorists. Men who, if they aren’t caught, disappear into their rat holes and spend their free hours planting IEDs or taking sniper shots at your men. Military dogs and their handlers don’t call it a day when the going gets tough.

For Clyde, the game wasn’t over until he found his man.

I puffed out a long breath of air. Could it really be Rhodes? He would have heard us searching the train, then the announcement over the radio that we’d found our guy in Fort Collins, and finally the sound of everyone leaving. He must have known he was safe in the coal car, at least for the moment. But maybe he figured that as soon as we realized Fort Collins had the wrong guy, we’d be waiting for him in Cheyenne. So he’d used whatever method he’d devised to get out of that car, a rope or a grappling hook, and—as Grams would say—gone while the getting was good. Maybe he was heading toward the ruined homesteader cabin that sat on railroad property a few miles west. Tramps sometimes squatted there. Maybe he figured he could wait out the night and the storm in that dubious shelter.

My mind went to those silver scratches on the coal car.

So maybe Clyde was right. But if we waited until morning, we’d be hunting a dead man. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew from listening to Corpsmen in Iraq that with the kind of injuries Rhodes had sustained in the war, even if he made it to the cabin, he wouldn’t last the night. Severe burns make a person hypersensitive to extremes in temperature, particularly the cold. Rhodes might have underlying muscle or organ damage as well.

And the cabin wasn’t much more than three walls and half a roof.

I squatted and looked Clyde in the eyes. “I swear, if this is a rabbit, I will give you to a little old lady who lives in an apartment in Manhattan and never leaves home except to drive you to the pet groomer. They’ll shampoo you with lilac soap and clip your toenails and tie a bow around your neck.”

He looked back at me patiently. The war and Dougie’s death might have broken Clyde’s heart, but not his spirit.

I stood. “You’re a better man than I am.”

I pulled up my hood and tied it, snugged up my zipper and checked my Sam Browne belt to make sure everything was secure. I showed Clyde his Kong, then gave him a whiff of Rhodes’s cover. Clyde’s nostrils flared, and he quivered with anticipation.

“Seek!”

Clyde took off west, angling away from the tracks. I held tight to his lead and jogged after him.

Far to the north, the train gave a final blast of its whistle. Albers saying farewell. I caught a glimpse of the train’s running lights on the rear DPU as the last of the train swept behind us, and then the leviathan vanished, swallowed whole by a swell in the sea of grass.

Clyde trotted on, and I jogged after him. I warmed up as we moved, and my shivering eased. Soon I broke a sweat. I focused on the rhythm of our movements, holding the lead lightly but with a sure touch, trailing confidently after Clyde and keeping my gaze just below the horizon to watch for obstacles.

After we’d gone three quarters of a mile or so and climbed down and back up a couple of dry arroyos, I made Clyde stop so I could take a directional reading. I pulled out Dougie’s old military Wittnauer compass and popped it open. Motes of Iraqi sand sparkled in the scuffed metal housing. I noted our precise heading, then we were off again.

A minute later, my headset buzzed. Nik. Angry.

“What’s keeping you? The state patrol guys have been cut loose, and almost everyone’s gone. The sheriff’s almost done closing down. I’ve got one anxious deputy willing to give us a ride back to Denver if we hurry. But that storm’s getting worse. Much longer, we’ll have to bunk down near here.”

“Where’s Cohen?”

“He went to Fort Collins to pick up his suspect. I insisted on going with him, but he shut me down, the goddamn punk.”

My heart dropped. “They got Rhodes?”

“Still in pursuit is what I heard. But Cohen figured they’d have him by the time he arrived. Should have let me go with him. Those douche bags can’t find their own asses without a flashlight and a mirror.”

“Nik, Clyde’s acting like he’s got a lead on our suspect.”

A pause. “He scented off Rhodes’s cover?”

“Yes.”

Another pause, longer this time, and I could almost imagine the war going on inside him. The need to hunt down Rhodes and finish it and restore some balance to the world. Against that, the need to protect me as he’d always protected me.

When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like someone was using a pair of pliers to yank out each word. “It doesn’t matter. If he’s out there, we’ll find him in the morning. Or find his body. Your teeth are chattering. And the radio says the worst of the storm is heading our way fast. You need to get inside.”

“Clyde is sure.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sydney Rose. Get back here.”

“Look, Clyde is confident. But I haven’t been working him enough, and he went after a rabbit earlier. Let me look around a little bit more, see if I can find footprints or some other indication that someone came this way. If I don’t find anything, I’ll turn around.”

“Ten minutes. You find something, make a mark. Then turn around anyway. You know how bad I want this guy, but I won’t give you up. We can start again in the morning.”

“Got it.”

I hung up and gave Clyde his head for another couple of hundred yards. He slowed and then stopped, circling around as if he’d lost the trail.

“Shit, Clyde. Can’t lose him now, boy.”

An orange glow shimmered in the west: the last threads of tattered daylight. I’d been so focused on the ground and following Clyde that I hadn’t realized how dark it was getting. I pulled the flashlight from my duty belt and took another reading on the compass.

Clyde found his scent, tugged on his lead.

“Let’s just take a look, boy.”