Parallel Lies Page 4

  “A defensive blow,” Tyler repeated, echoing the man.

  Greistein allowed a wry smile. “Someone’s listening,” he said.

  Tyler continued, “Mooch is the bleeder, but Low Man took the first blows.”

  “Exactly. I have no doubt—no doubt whatsoever—that Mooch struck first.”

  “It’s speculative,” Banner complained. “These are two homeless sons-of-bitches who could have been arguing about who got the chili and who got the green beans, for Christ’s sake. Low Man cuts his pal out of the chili, and they duke it out.”

  “Maybe,” Greistein said confidently, “but then why was the door open this whole time?”

  “What?” Banner muttered.

  “The car door,” Greistein said. “I have solid evidence that the freight car’s door was open exactly thirty-three inches throughout this whole ordeal. And you didn’t let me go on to explain the fight that ensued. In my opinion, a hand-to-hand fight, that suggests the two men wrestled, both bleeding.” His penlight traveled back and forth across the car. “We have tracks. I can practically show you the dance steps. First, there. Then, there. And the whole time, Mooch is bleeding out.”

  “And Low Man is waiting for him to pass out,” Tyler said. More may have been said. Tyler wasn’t sure. He traveled back to his own battle in that grungy apartment months earlier. He had relived those few minutes of horror repeatedly, to where he wasn’t sure if they were real any longer or if he had embellished or augmented them or even diminished them in some desperate attempt to understand them more clearly. But as always they consumed him, and he missed whatever Greistein added as his conclusion.

  “I’m going to leave our guards here,” Priest informed Banner. “They’ll protect the property after you and your people have wrapped. Is that okay with you, Detective?”

  “Dandy,” Banner replied.

  To Tyler, she said, “You want a cup of awful coffee?”

  Tyler hesitated. “I want the bodies that belong to this blood. I want to hear that this is a confined incident. That’ll close it for us, and I can get down to abusing an expense account.”

  She grinned. Her teeth were perfect, which he guessed pretty much described the rest of her as well. She said, “Mr. Madders, can we find someplace warm and out of this weather?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Madders pointed toward a weather-beaten trailer some distance away.

  Following the footprints in front of him kept Tyler’s feet dryer on the way back across the yard, though Priest took long, determined strides—matching her long, determined legs—and she walked fast, a woman with purpose. Tyler wondered about that, about her company’s attempt to outflank local police. Risky politics at the very least. The snow fell in wet flakes the size of quarters, practically splashing as they hit the ground.

  Halfway to the distant double-wide trailer, Priest stopped and turned around. “We need to find these bodies ahead of the evening news,” she announced.

  It took Tyler a moment to realize that they had just joined forces. “Is that what this is about?” he shouted through the snowfall. But Priest was walking again, and she didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 5

  Tyler kept the convertible’s top up for the long drive east to Terre Haute. In the fading light, the remnants of the storm left sugarcoated hills that reminded Tyler of the jagged Maryland countryside and the life he had so abruptly lost. He saw the legal system now as something that expected the worst of people, as more comfortable jumping to conclusions than discovering the truth. He had beaten a man nearly to death, but the guy had been a drunken child-beater and Tyler had thought of it as being in the line of duty. What hung him was that the child-beater was black and he was white, and for that he had paid with his career. Five minutes of terror and rage had erased a dozen years of dedicated service.

  Repeatedly, he tugged the wheel sharply, fishtailing left or right, to prevent the icy highway from spilling the rental into the ditch. A convoy of sand trucks had failed to improve the road, and now, as temperatures dipped, the highway surface froze into a black ice peril.

  Nell Priest was up ahead somewhere, her rented four-wheel-drive Suburban more stable than his convertible. Northern Union Security provided well: she had flown private into St. Louis. Tough life, the corporate expense account.

  He didn’t want her to get ahead of him. If the Terre Haute yard held any information about the two riders who had caused that bloodbath, he wanted it, and without any filtering on her part. Whatever relationship had quickly formed between them, it felt more like competition than cooperation. She had been sent to determine if there was a fire, and if so, to quickly put it out. His role here was to discover the source of that fire, and their two goals seemed in direct opposition—too bad, since he liked her spark.

  He had always denigrated the world of rent-a-cops and tin badges, but now that he saw the perks of private security, he wondered if Priest might put a good word in for him with Northern Union. With his house on the auction block, private security work suddenly seemed okay.

  Tyler’s concern over the possible loss of his house grew daily. At first, suspended without pay, and then, months later, removed from the department, he had missed five mortgage payments and his home was now in foreclosure. Having already lost Katrina, his girlfriend of two years, to the calamity of the assault, having lost contact with his colleagues, and having been stained by the racist accusations of a headline-driven press, he now struggled to hold on to the one last vestige of his former life: his home. His touchstone. It wasn’t so much that he needed the house; he’d sold most of his possessions—a stereo, a dining room set—so that a bachelor apartment would do just fine. But he had fixed the place up from a weed-encrusted, paint-peeling dilapidated wreck in a borderline neighborhood to a gentrified Cape, thanks to an incentive program from the mayor’s office that encouraged police to settle in neighborhoods where their presence and guidance were most needed. Never mind that his was one of only five mowed lawns on the block; he hadn’t moved there to be a hero but to get a good deal on a piece of real estate. Never mind that his neighbors had turned their backs on him thanks to the racial accusations that accompanied the assault. After all the sweat and hard work, it was still his home, and it seemed inconceivable he might lose it. With little else left in his life, he had made holding on to his home more important than it should have been. He knew this yet could do little to lessen its importance. He thought perhaps that focusing on this job might free him up some.

  He placed a late-night call to an attorney friend, Henry Happle, who was leading the charge against the bank. The idea was to establish a plan of repayment for the missed mortgages and use the carrot of Tyler having gotten a job to convince the lender that he could make current and future mortgage payments—all of which was a stretch. His current job came with no contract, no agreement beyond a few days of freelance work, even though his boss, Loren Rucker, had generously offered to speak to the bank on Tyler’s behalf.

  In the course of the phone call, Happle attempted to sound encouraging, but it was just that, a halfhearted ruse to buoy a friend’s sagging spirits, and one that left Tyler more depressed than ever.

  He eased the rental car a bit faster on the glare ice, worried that Priest might conduct the worthwhile interviews ahead of him. He didn’t appreciate racing her for the next lead, like a hungry journalist. It wasn’t the way law enforcement was supposed to work. Besides, it had been his question to Madders, not hers, that had led them to jump into their cars: Where would the bloody boxcar’s last stop have been? An obvious enough question—establish the point of origin. Priest certainly would have asked it if he hadn’t. And now, as a result of that, here he was fishtailing along the interstate. Despite Priest’s explanation for her presence, Tyler wasn’t buying it. He sensed something else going on. Flying an investigator out on a private plane over the discovery of a bloody boxcar? Railroad Killer or not, it seemed unnecessary. So why was Priest there? he wondered. And though he didn’t wan
t to face it, he also had to wonder why Rucker had offered him the chance to pick up three or four days’ work instead of sending a regular NTSB investigator. His explanation had been simple enough: Tyler’s expertise set him apart. But curiosity got the better of him now and encouraged him to drive faster.

  It was after 9 P.M. when he arrived at the Terre Haute yard, another massive area of rust, rails, and parked railcars. He spotted Priest’s Suburban already parked. He touched the hood of the vehicle and found it barely warm. She had beaten him here by at least a full half hour.

  Bothered by having to play catch-up, Tyler entered the office of Max Shast, night foreman. Nell Priest occupied one of the two free chairs, her full-length coat draped over the other. This was the first time Tyler had seen her with the coat off, and it had been hiding plenty. She wore a light gray wool suit with a dark blue silk blouse unbuttoned at the collar. The skirt was probably above the knee when she stood, because it was well above the knee when she sat. To look at her, his first reaction was cover girl or supermodel. In her early thirties, she was a little too perfect for him—fine to look at but nothing to mess with. Women that beautiful carried baggage, they had lived with too much of the wrong kind of attention. Her hair was pulled back severely from her face and held with a southwestern-style Indian-bead-and-silver clasp. She wore her watch on her left wrist, suggesting she was right-handed, and a plain silver ring on her right hand. Her wrist was so slight the watchband fit her loosely like a bangle. He figured her for a tattoo tucked in a provocative place on her body, a tiny rose maybe. He indicated her coat. She dragged it off the chair and folded it across her lap.

  Shast came around and hung the outer garment on a coat-rack outside. Tyler sat down. The room smelled of corn chips and coffee.

  “We were just wrapping up,” Priest said in what sounded to him like an imperious tone.

  “How did I guess that?” Tyler asked.

  She smiled her best smile.

  Shast said, “Ms. Priest tells me you’re looking for a pair of riders, maybe boarded here, maybe somewhere between here and St. Louis.”

  “One or both of whom may have subsequently been beaten pretty badly,” Tyler reminded him. “A description of one or both wouldn’t hurt us any.”

  Shast responded, “As I was explaining to the lady, boarding here is a possibility, of course, but more typically these guys jump the trains out in the countryside.”

  Priest said, “Mr. Shast says that it’s a busy line. Lots of traffic coming through at all hours.”

  Shast said, “We toss some guys, sure we do. I mean, if we find ‘em, we toss ‘em. But it’s not a top priority.”

  Priest added, “Dozens come through a week, even in the winter, he’s guessing.”

  “No names, no faces,” Tyler suggested, sensing a dead end. “A parade of the homeless.”

  “You got it.”

  “We need more than that,” Tyler encouraged the man. “One of these guys is either dead by now or close to it. That can’t be left to stand.” He, Tyler, had done something awful to another man, and it was to be left to stand for all time.

  Priest said, “Mr. Tyler and I are feeling the pressure of time, Mr. Shast. You can appreciate that, I’m sure. These two people in the boxcar bled badly. They need medical attention. St. Louis hospitals report no such admissions. We need some help here.”

  Tyler found her beauty distracting—maybe that was part of her technique. Shast, too, could barely keep his eyes off her.

  “It’s not like I know these guys personally,” he complained. “I’m telling you: dozens, a hundred or more maybe, come through here every week.”

  Tyler pressed, “We believe it possible that one or both of them might have reversed direction. The storm has backlogged the St. Louis yard. Trains were moving east in three times the numbers of those moving west.”

  Priest added, “One or both may have traveled back through your yard.”

  “It’s possible, but unlikely,” Shast protested. “This time of year, riders spend as much time under bridges and in shelters as they do on trains. Your guys could be anywhere.”

  “No rail company,” she stressed, for the benefit of Shast, who did not work for Northern Union but might prove sympathetic, “wants or needs the rumor mill to get going. Am I right? We have all suffered enough bad publicity lately. A fight between a couple of hobos is a nonevent.”

  This drew a heated look from Shast. “Another killer out there?”

  “You see!” Nell Priest said. “People will jump to the same conclusion, and what’s important here—to both Mr. Tyler and me—is that we get to the truth of what happened in that boxcar just as quickly as possible.”

  Tyler understood that Northern Union would have a public relations nightmare if their property proved to be where a second killer had surfaced. Priest had apparently been assigned double duty: to quickly determine the extent of the crime and to keep a lid on it. In this way, their purposes were not in line. Tyler was barely worried about the public relations aspect. A crime had occurred. He wanted a suspect in custody.

  Addressing Shast, Tyler said, “The NTSB, quite frankly, has a slightly larger agenda. It involves the recent derailments of several Northern Union trains.” Priest stiffened. Tyler consulted her: “What’s it been? One every six to eight weeks? Six over the last eighteen months? They’re in the paper, on the news, all the time.”

  “One has nothing whatsoever to do with the other,” Priest argued.

  “We can’t rule out a possible connection,” Tyler replied. “The NTSB hasn’t, and I doubt very much your superiors have either, Ms. Priest.” He turned to Shast, using the man as his forum. “Why else fly an investigator out private?”

  Shast looked confused.

  “Listen, the experienced riders know to stay away from here. We catch ‘em, we gotta lock ‘em up. Company rules. No trespassing of any kind—it’s an insurance thing. The kids too. God damn spray cans. And, on top of that, we got the junkies trying to steal anything metal not tied down.”

  “So you don’t see that many experienced riders,” Tyler stressed. “They must get on and off these trains somewhere.” If whoever had fought that fight in the boxcar had reversed directions, Tyler doubted he, or they, would have been in any condition to make it too far. The survivor was probably somewhere between here and St. Louis. But it was a lot of track to cover.

  “They jump the trains west of here,” Shast announced. “They know enough to stay away from our yard. East of here, it’s flat for a long ways, and the riders need the long grades or the ungated town crossings to slow the trains to where they can make the jump.”

  “Can you provide us possible locations?” Tyler inquired.

  “We’ve been over that!” Priest protested.

  “Some of us,” Tyler reminded her.

  “Well, I, for one, am all done here,” Priest announced. She offered Shast a look that seemed to caution him against sharing much more with Tyler.

  Priest stood.

  “I’d like you to stay,” Tyler suggested. He didn’t want her gaining yet another head start on him. He felt they’d be more productive together; he needed to explain to her his own dislike of the feds, despite the fact that he was now one himself. And he didn’t want her thinking she could run this investigation. His boss at NTSB, Rucker, wouldn’t appreciate hearing a woman rent-a-cop had taken the case away from the federal agency running it. Besides, he wanted this case in his win column, not hers. She already had her corporate plane and Suburban. As a detective he had rarely played second fiddle. He was in no mood to start now. But she left anyway, and he watched her go. Her brash independence stirred his interest—he appreciated her nerve and resolve, though he didn’t like being on the receiving end.

  One eye still on the door, he said to Shast, “I need those locations. You’re not going to make me beg her, are you?” Shast hesitated. Tyler raised his voice. “Are you?”

  Shast also glanced toward the door.

  As a
cop, Tyler knew when to play his trumps. And, as a fed, those cards were larger, more powerful. “Do you want to face obstruction charges?” He didn’t win Shast’s full attention. “The worst she can do to you is make a phone call, get your hand slapped. Weigh your options carefully, Mr. Shast.”

  Shast nervously directed Tyler to a wall map. “There are three spots we tell all the drivers to watch. Right past the yard, as the trains are still gaining speed, and then,” he said, standing and pointing to a location on the map well outside the city, “here, where the grade slows down the longer rigs, and again here, about twenty miles on up the line before she crests and gains steam heading for St. Lou. Both those two areas have camps. Homeless camps. Transients. Riders. State cops move ‘em out every now and then—you should check with the staties—but those boys move right back in.”

  “Hobo camps.”

  “Riders,” he corrected. “Listen, you’re new to this. By the sound of it, and the look of her, she is, too. So, a heads up: Half those boys are crazy, and I mean clean out of their gourds. A fair percentage are on the run from people like you. They can get downright nasty. Knives mostly, but to a man, they’re good with their fists. They’re boozers and addicts. Losers. It’s not a happy place, one of them camps. I’d go in careful, and I’d go in armed. I’d shoot first and ask questions later.”