Red Tide (20 page)

36

C
orso and Charly Hart came up the hall together. Other than the stark white bandage they’d used to reassemble his right ear, Corso appeared little the worse for wear. In truth, however, he’d seldom felt as bad as he did at that moment. Every joint in his body ached. He had a pair of half-inch divots in his shins where the twisted sheet metal had pinned him to the backseat. It was all he could do not to groan every time his left foot hit the hard tile floor.

Charly Hart had not been quite so fortunate. The process of being dragged by a locomotive had shattered one lens in his glasses, broken his right wrist, which now rested in a bright blue sling, ripped a four-inch gash above his right eye which had required thirty-seven stitches to close, and tweaked his back to such a degree that he now shuffled across the floor like a man who had quite recently been administered a spinal tap. Maybe two.

More troubling to Charly Hart than his own injuries was the plastic tray he carried in his good hand. A tray containing his partner’s notebook, wallet and badge, his watch, his gun, his cell phone, his car keys and eighty-seven cents in change. Unless the docs were way off base, Reuben wasn’t going to be needing this stuff anytime in the foreseeable future. Some of it…maybe never again. Charly was also worried about Reuben’s wife Inez. She was a big-time drama queen. High-strung. Made a big deal out of everything. No doubt about it…she’d take the news real hard.

The shuffling counterpoint of Charly’s feet was the only noise in the hall as they shouldered the swinging doors and entered the last fifty feet of corridor. Beyond the next set of doors lay the chaos of the Emergency Room. Chief Dobson and a guy in a tweed sport coat stood just inside the final set of doors, engaged in animated conversation.

Some primal call pulled Corso’s eyes to the right, toward the storage area behind the admitting desk. The woman from the bus tunnel. She’d found herself a green lab coat and a stethoscope. Looking very nonchalant and official. Standing there like she owned the joint. Corso motioned to Charly Hart, but Charly was so beat up and fixated on getting to the end of the corridor he didn’t notice Corso turn right and belly his way through the swinging doors.

She stood her ground. Didn’t move a muscle as Corso walked over and stood directly in front of her. She was better-looking than he’d imagined and a bit more exotic. Her eyes sloped down at the corners tending her a slightly Asian quality.

“You seem to pop up in the strangest places,” he said, taking her in.

She smiled. “So I’ve been told.” She reached up and touched the bandage on his ear. “For a man in a train wreck, you don’t seem very much the worse for wear.”

“I come from hardy stock.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Good breeding material, eh?”

“Train-resistant anyway.”

Her laugh was girlish, but something in her eyes belied any notion of flirtatiousness.

“Speaking of trains…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re on the right track.”

“Oh really?”

“This is not about Arabs.”

“Maybe you ought to inform the feds of that.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

She stepped behind the deserted nurses’ station and leaned back into the shadows. A movement in Corso’s peripheral vision pulled his eyes toward the light in the hall, where Charly Hart’s facial expression and hand gesture signaled his confusion as to how he’d managed to lose track of Corso; he beckoned “come on” with his good hand. Corso smiled and indicated he’d be along in a minute.

When he turned to say something to the woman, he found himself alone. He hurried around the counter and tried the knob on the door next to the desk. Locked. He smiled for the first time in days.

Charly Hart stuck his head through the swinging doors. “Where the hell did you get to?”

“Did you see—” Corso began.

“See what?” Detective Hart wanted to know.

Corso hesitated. “Never mind. I was just checking things out,” Corso said, walking toward Hart and the door.

Together, they approached the chief and the guy in the sport coat, whose conversation had become, if anything, more animated.

“Get them the hell out of here,” the chief was saying.

“I can’t do that,” the other guy said.

“It’s your hospital, isn’t it?”

“We’ve been to court with them before about this…more than once…and lost. You know that, Chief. They have a right to be here. As long as they’re not interfering with hospital operations, they have every right to be on the premises.”

“Make ’em wait outside.”

“No can do.”

Dobson pointed a finger Charly Hart’s way. “I’ve got officers here. Injured in the line of duty. They’ve got a right to some respect…to some privacy, for god’s sake.”

The guy threw up his hands. “I agree with you, Chief. Unfortunately, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t. As far as they’re concerned, the press has as much right to be here as we do.”

The chief waved a disgusted hand and turned his back on the guy, who, seizing the opportunity to get out from under, ducked out the door.

The chief waited for Corso and Hart to negotiate the last ten yards. He looked down at the tray Charly Hart carried and blanched.

“How’s Gutierrez doing?”

“Not so good,” Charly Hart said. “He was trying to get out of the car when the engine hit us. They think he had one foot out the door when the car rolled over on it and damn near severed his foot.”

Harry Dobson looked away in pain. “What about Miss Dougherty?”

“She’s got a level two concussion and a knot on her head the size of a cantaloupe. They’re keeping her for a couple of days for observation,” Corso said.

The chief was scowling now. “How does an accident like this happen? What…nobody saw the…”

Corso and Charly Hart passed a quick look. For the first time since the wreck, they had a minute to think and realized they were the only ones who actually knew what had happened. Everybody else thought it had been an accident. Charly Hart motioned with his head for the chief to get back from the door. Dobson got the message, stepped in close.

“Wasn’t an accident, Chief,” Charly whispered. “The car behind us pushed us out onto the tracks.”

The chief looked from Hart to Corso and back. He was silent for a full minute. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said finally.

“Me neither,” said Corso. “We must have touched a nerve somewhere in our travels today.”

“But you’ve got no idea where?”

Both men said they didn’t.

“What kind of car?”

Corso shook his head. Charly Hart shrugged. “Something big, square and dark. By the time I looked back, it was already locked on our back bumper, so I couldn’t see the grille.”

“Gutierrez saw something,” Corso said. “He saw something that really got his attention…something in the rearview mirror.”

“What?”

“Had to be something in the car behind us. We were the only two cars waiting for the train.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He said, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“And then?”

“And then the car was on us.”

“Can Detective Gutierrez—”

Charly Hart jumped in. “He’s out of it, Chief. Everything goes well…the docs are saying he might be able to talk to us something like tomorrow night.”

“By tomorrow night it might not matter.”

Jim Sexton could feel the eyes of envy. In these days of press releases and tightly managed news, it wasn’t often anybody gained a serious advantage on the competition. Once was rare. Twice in the same day…unheard of. The footage of the train wreck had aired before the victims ever arrived at the hospital and had since been picked up by the national media. Beth had called to say her sister Judy had seen Jim’s report on CNN. It was all he could do to keep an idiotic grin from hijacking his face.

No point in asking Dobson anything. He was pretty sure he’d worn out his welcome with the chief. Pete had the camera rolling while the chief held forth on how he didn’t have anything to say. No…he wasn’t giving out the officers’ names…no…he wouldn’t identify what were rumored to be two civilians in the car, one of which had to be the tall guy in the back, standing there looking blandly out over everybody’s head. Jim was sure he’d seen the guy before, more than once, but just couldn’t put a name to the face. The chief was winding up. No…he had no further statements at this time. Good-bye.

And then Jim began to wonder what the chief was doing here anyway. Yeah…the accident had been spectacular and all, and Harry Dobson had never been particularly averse to a little free face time, but with all the other stuff going on…spending an hour with a couple of injured officers…what was that about? Nobody was dead.

Jim watched as the chief turned his back on the retreating media horde, reached into his inside pocket and set several folded pieces of paper on the tray the skinny cop was clutching to his chest. After exchanging a couple of words, the chief gave the cop a pat on the shoulder and disappeared down a hall to the right.

Holmes hung the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the handle and closed the door. Bobby Darling sat on the edge of the bed staring at the ceiling.

“Soon,” Holmes said. “Soon.”

Bobby nodded and threw himself back onto the bed, arms and legs spread like he was making snow angels. “You think we’ll all get home?” he asked.

Holmes considered his answer. “No…probably not,” he said.

“Me neither,” Bobby said.

“And even if we did…”—Holmes emitted a bitter laugh—“even if we all got back…we could very well fall victim to our own actions.”

“I don’t let myself think about that,” Bobby Darling said. He glanced over at Holmes, who now stood placidly looking out the window. “What do you not allow yourself to think about?” he asked.

“Me?” At first, Holmes seemed offended by the question. He stood by the sliding door to the balcony scowling out into space. “I don’t allow myself to think about the years in between…when my family and I…” He had to stop and collect himself. “I try not to think of the many times when I would be out…at night…walking among the fields and the smell would rise from the ground…the smell of nothing natural on this earth would rise from the wet soil…and how I would go to my prefect in the morning and tell him how I felt certain such a smell could not be good for people…how I was concerned for my wife and children…and how he would wave me away like a bug…just tell me it was a ‘residual’ effect. That was his favorite word,
residual.
Told me I worried like a woman.” Holmes shook his head in disgust. “Of course, he and his family lived many miles away in Nora Dehi. He came in by train every morning. I should have known. I should have followed my instincts.”

“He lied to you.”

“But I should have known.”

Bobby sat up. “But how could you have…”

Holmes threw back the drapes revealing a four-mile stretch of wind-whipped waves, wild and whitecapped, shattering against one another in a frenzy of movement. In the distance, Bainbridge Island seemed to float on the surface of the water.

“Look at this,” he said to Bobby. He checked his watch. “In four hours it begins.” He pointed north. “Right out there somewhere…our moment begins.”

Bobby bounced himself onto the floor and ambled over to the sliding glass door. He took the last few steps tentatively, as if he were approaching the rim of an open pit. Holmes took notice of his reticence. “Does the water scare you?” he asked.

“I don’t swim,” Bobby answered, his eyes as wide as saucers.

Holmes snapped the lock and slid the door open. Bobby took a step back as a rush of air fanned the curtains, waving them halfway to the ceiling. Holmes stepped out onto the balcony and peered down into the inky recesses of Puget Sound. After a minute, the color of the water found its way into his eyes. His face was grim when he looked up at Bobby.

“I should have known,” he said.

Charly Hart set the tray on the ledge running all the way around the room and picked the papers from the top with his working hand. He shook the pages open and peered at them through his shattered glasses, turning his head this way and that in a vain attempt to find a clear field of view.

Corso walked to his side. “Didn’t I hear your boss say you ought to go home and take it easy?” Corso said.

Even through the starburst lenses Corso could see the hardness in the detective’s eyes. “I’ve got a partner getting his foot sewn back on,” Hart said. “Way I see it, there’s no going home.” He gestured with the papers…toward the door. “You got somewhere to be…feel free. I gotta figure out what happened today that gave some asshole the urge to crush us all under a train.”

Corso held out his hand. “Lemme see,” he said.

The detective hesitated for a moment and then dropped the pages into Corso’s hand. Corso looked them over. Four pages.
CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CANADA
printed across the top. A list of maybe fifty names, sorted in a variety of ways. Some kind of legend or glossary on the last page.

“What name did you say Bohannon was using?” he asked Charly Hart.

“Magnusen, Martin Magnusen.”

Corso flipped over to the second page. There it was. Crossed the border at Blaine last Tuesday afternoon at one fifty-three. Carrying an Indian passport of such-and-such a number. Listed his occupation as student. Corso read the data out loud.

“That squares with what the tattoo guy told us,” Charly Hart said.

“There’s a number after his name. What’s that about?”

“Starts with a nine?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nine means he’s a male.”

“Nine-dash-one.”

“One’s Caucasian.”

“Dash-five-six.”

“Not a Canadian citizen.”

“Dash-seven-zero-dash-three.”

Charly shook his head and winced, wishing he hadn’t. “Look on the back page.”

Corso followed the list with his finger. “Means he’s a student.”

“Dash-three.”

“No idea.”

“Country of origin: India.”

“How many other nine-dash-one-dash-five-six-dash-seven-zero-dash-threes we got?”