Read Online Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Barbara Nickless
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disappeared behind the cottonwoods as we swung north.
For the next few minutes we flew in and out of pockets of a halfhearted storm; blue-gray sky whipped by, mottled with pale sunlight. The pilots chatted privately. In his corner, Nik sat like a man braced against a hard wind. Across from me, Cohen kept writing in his notebook.
“Detective?”
He didn’t look up. “What?”
Ground glass in his voice.
“You invited us along. How can we help?”
He tapped a finger on the metal spiral then put aside his anger like a man shrugging off a heavy coat. “Tell me about the train.”
“Engine 158346. It’s a mixed string of a hundred and thirty-eight cars. That translates into a lot of length.”
“How much length?”
“Almost a mile and a half.”
His eyebrows shot up. “There a way to narrow that down?”
“Our witness at the camp said he caught out somewhere on the back half of the train. Chances are good he’s in a rear DPU—”
“Which is?”
“Distributed power unit. Otherwise known as the rear locomotive. Hobos like it because it’s warm and it has a bathroom. This train has two rear units.”
“Okay. We’ll put men in place along the tracks so they’re close to those units when we stop the train. Where else could he be?”
“Can I borrow your notebook and pen?”
When he passed them over, I flipped to a blank page. Then I called up the train consist—the string of cars—from my 3:00 a.m. memory when I’d checked into work from the computer at home. My laptop was still in the shop. A replacement hadn’t materialized.
I started sketching.
“Mostly we’ve got empty coal hoppers,” I said. “They’re too deep to climb out of, and the bottoms are angled into a chute. Hobos don’t ride them because they’re death traps. We won’t find Rhodes there.”
“What else?”
I kept scribbling as I ran down my mental list. “Sixteen or seventeen closed hoppers strung together two-thirds of the way down the train. Rhodes could be riding a hopper platform or tucked into the cubby. If that’s where he is, it will be easy for him to make a fast getaway when the train stops. You’ll have to get men on those quickly.”
“And hoppers are what exactly?”
The edge in his voice made me lift my head. Cohen’s face held a hungry, open-ended curiosity. A need to know everything I knew, and yesterday was too late. I’d seen the look on Doug Ayers’s face a thousand times. Usually when he met with someone involved in whatever covert ops he was working.
The resemblance between the men was so startling that for a second I couldn’t breathe.
Tell me everything ,Dougie would say to his source.
The memory shot through me with the kick of a sniper’s bullet. Dougie, sitting at a metal folding table in a grove of gum arabic trees, his long legs stretched in front of him, his left hand waving away the droning flies as he chatted with an old tribesman while Clyde and I kept watch twenty yards away. Dust rose languidly into the air and hung there, white as talcum in the desert light. Dougie’s face carried its habitual expression of curiosity and impatience as he twirled the old lion’s head ring he wore on braided leather around his neck.
“Tell me everything,” he said in Arabic.
“Na’am,” said his source, the Iraqi elder, and poured more tea.
Dougie lifted his cup, saluted the old man.
“Salâmati!”
The old man raised his own cup. “Salâmati!”
Ten days later, Dougie’s broken body lay on my table in Mortuary Affairs, his eyes and face powdered with that same fine, white dust. The day after that, someone left the old man’s head outside our gates.
Tell me everything, Dougie , I’d whispered to his body . I need to know.
“Sydney Rose?” Nik’s voice came from the far end of a long tunnel. “You okay?”
I shook myself, my hand going to Dougie’s ring where it now hung around my neck. Through my coat, I touched the heavy gold. “I’m fine.”
Nik eyeballed me.
I
For the next few minutes we flew in and out of pockets of a halfhearted storm; blue-gray sky whipped by, mottled with pale sunlight. The pilots chatted privately. In his corner, Nik sat like a man braced against a hard wind. Across from me, Cohen kept writing in his notebook.
“Detective?”
He didn’t look up. “What?”
Ground glass in his voice.
“You invited us along. How can we help?”
He tapped a finger on the metal spiral then put aside his anger like a man shrugging off a heavy coat. “Tell me about the train.”
“Engine 158346. It’s a mixed string of a hundred and thirty-eight cars. That translates into a lot of length.”
“How much length?”
“Almost a mile and a half.”
His eyebrows shot up. “There a way to narrow that down?”
“Our witness at the camp said he caught out somewhere on the back half of the train. Chances are good he’s in a rear DPU—”
“Which is?”
“Distributed power unit. Otherwise known as the rear locomotive. Hobos like it because it’s warm and it has a bathroom. This train has two rear units.”
“Okay. We’ll put men in place along the tracks so they’re close to those units when we stop the train. Where else could he be?”
“Can I borrow your notebook and pen?”
When he passed them over, I flipped to a blank page. Then I called up the train consist—the string of cars—from my 3:00 a.m. memory when I’d checked into work from the computer at home. My laptop was still in the shop. A replacement hadn’t materialized.
I started sketching.
“Mostly we’ve got empty coal hoppers,” I said. “They’re too deep to climb out of, and the bottoms are angled into a chute. Hobos don’t ride them because they’re death traps. We won’t find Rhodes there.”
“What else?”
I kept scribbling as I ran down my mental list. “Sixteen or seventeen closed hoppers strung together two-thirds of the way down the train. Rhodes could be riding a hopper platform or tucked into the cubby. If that’s where he is, it will be easy for him to make a fast getaway when the train stops. You’ll have to get men on those quickly.”
“And hoppers are what exactly?”
The edge in his voice made me lift my head. Cohen’s face held a hungry, open-ended curiosity. A need to know everything I knew, and yesterday was too late. I’d seen the look on Doug Ayers’s face a thousand times. Usually when he met with someone involved in whatever covert ops he was working.
The resemblance between the men was so startling that for a second I couldn’t breathe.
Tell me everything ,Dougie would say to his source.
The memory shot through me with the kick of a sniper’s bullet. Dougie, sitting at a metal folding table in a grove of gum arabic trees, his long legs stretched in front of him, his left hand waving away the droning flies as he chatted with an old tribesman while Clyde and I kept watch twenty yards away. Dust rose languidly into the air and hung there, white as talcum in the desert light. Dougie’s face carried its habitual expression of curiosity and impatience as he twirled the old lion’s head ring he wore on braided leather around his neck.
“Tell me everything,” he said in Arabic.
“Na’am,” said his source, the Iraqi elder, and poured more tea.
Dougie lifted his cup, saluted the old man.
“Salâmati!”
The old man raised his own cup. “Salâmati!”
Ten days later, Dougie’s broken body lay on my table in Mortuary Affairs, his eyes and face powdered with that same fine, white dust. The day after that, someone left the old man’s head outside our gates.
Tell me everything, Dougie , I’d whispered to his body . I need to know.
“Sydney Rose?” Nik’s voice came from the far end of a long tunnel. “You okay?”
I shook myself, my hand going to Dougie’s ring where it now hung around my neck. Through my coat, I touched the heavy gold. “I’m fine.”
Nik eyeballed me.
I
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