Parallel Lies Page 6

  “Can’t get up. Bad foot,” the man complained, still face down, straining to see Tyler.

  “Bad?” Tyler asked.

  “Cut it.”

  Cut? Tyler wondered. As in knife blade? As in bleeding? “Cut it how?” was all that came out of him. He tried to get a decent look, but the lump wasn’t cooperating. Tyler’s heart was somewhere in the middle of his throat and straining to get out. He had a feeling he was looking down at one of their two suspects.

  Tyler called out loudly to the others. “How’d this guy hurt his foot? Or did he show up here with it that way?”

  “Chopping wood,” one of the drunken three called out from the fire.

  “Was not!” the shorter man objected. “Someone done it to him!” he shouted.

  Any kind of bad cut could explain the excessive blood in the boxcar. Maybe Priest was to get her wish; maybe this was going to be a brief one after all.

  Tyler nudged the lump again. “Who did this to you?” He toed the layers of covering and flipped them off the man’s leg. The odor was nauseating. His stomach retched, and he nearly vomited. This, from a homicide cop with a decade of dead bodies under his belt. Dead was sometimes easier than living.

  Priest and the others stood in a tight group. She appeared to be shining a penlight on something in her hand. She glanced over her shoulder—had she sensed him?—and turned her back just slightly toward him. Was she blocking his view? he wondered. Or trying to stay warm? When she turned again, the penlight and whatever had been in her hand were put away.

  The lower extremity of the man’s left leg looked half frozen, swollen and busting out of itself, like an overcooked sausage. The pant leg was torn to accommodate the swelling, but the boot remained on, split down the middle of the toes in a horrid, blackened wedge. If anything matched the carnage they’d found in the boxcar, this foot was it.

  Tyler stepped away and took in some fresh air. He approached Priest and signaled her away from the fire drum. She stepped off a few feet so they could speak, but she never took her eyes off the four, even as Tyler spoke.

  “Could be our boy,” he announced.

  “Not according to our witnesses. They’re claiming his injury happened here.”

  “Covering is all.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “What was that,” he asked, “you and the light?”

  The fire flickered across her face, and for a moment she seemed frozen—and not by the cold air. She answered, “My ID? Just now? I was trying to convince them that I wasn’t any kind of cop, just a security guard accompanying you out here. That they could tell me stuff without worrying about getting arrested.” She added, “I showed them my corporate creds, but I’m not so convinced they can read anything beyond ‘No Deposit, No Return.’ ”

  He liked that.

  “Guy’s foot is cleaved in half. Could easily explain the boxcar.”

  “They say it happened here,” she repeated. “In camp.”

  “Chopping wood, I suppose,” he proposed to her.

  “That’s right.”

  Raising his voice, Tyler addressed the four. “So where’s the axe?”

  The bewildered men looked between themselves. Their spokesman said unconvincingly, “Snow musta covered it.”

  “Sure it did,” Tyler said to Priest. Indicating the shelter, Tyler said, “We can’t leave him.” He added, “He’s dying, going on dead. Besides, he’d like a beer.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You want to baby-sit this guy?”

  “I want answers from him. How his foot got that way, and who did it to him. Having him alive to give us those answers would help.”

  She said, “So call him an ambulance.”

  “You think they’ll prescribe a six-pack of beer?” He added, “That beer is the quickest way to our answers, and you know it. Or would you rather wait around in an emergency room all night while they clean up that wound and knock him out with sedatives?”

  “We are not taking this guy out in the Suburban,” she protested.

  “I’ll drive. I’ll even clean it up, if need be,” he suggested.

  “And if he dies on us?”

  “He’s not going to die on us. He’s made it this far.”

  “I don’t know, Tyler. An ambulance is the right way to go.”

  He shrugged and said, “Then you get what you can get out of the Four Stooges. Visitors to the camp? How many? When did clubfoot arrive? Let’s find where he did the foot with the axe, and let’s find some blood, or the axe, or anything to support it.”

  Surprising him, she reported immediately, “They all four claim to have arrived just this morning; one from Cincinnati, one from Pittsburgh. The others wouldn’t say from where. Found that guy, just the way you did. They’re all headed south—to warmth. They heard the storm had closed the westbound lines. They’re holed up here until tomorrow, by which point they’re sure the tracks will be open again.”

  “How much of it do you believe?” he asked, impressed by her.

  “They want to distance themselves from that guy,” she said pointing back to the lean-to. “Maybe they did it to him. Maybe they don’t know anything about it.”

  “Some kind of life,” he said.

  “You got that right,” she agreed.

  “Try them again.”

  “Or you could,” she suggested.

  “Which leaves you helping our guest into your car.”

  “He’s not going in the Suburban,” she repeated, less convinced.

  Tyler indicated the shelter. “Your call.”

  “I’ll try them again,” she agreed.

  “Good choice,” he said. He walked back over toward the wounded man, wondering if a six-pack would do the trick.

  Tyler drove Priest’s Suburban so that she didn’t have to suffer the smell. She had made no mention of car insurance this time around, no protest to his driving. He had both the front and backseat heaters going full blast and all four of the Suburban’s windows down in an effort to dilute the stink. She followed in the Ford, a quarter of a mile or so back.

  The lump was now a person—or what remained of one.

  “You got a drink?” the man asked. He was lying across the backseat.

  “I’ll get you a couple beers,” Tyler replied, “but I need a little information first.” He put the driver’s window up a little, in order to hear the guy. “We’re heading to a hospital.”

  “I don’t want no hospital.”

  “You want the beer?”

  “You a cop?”

  “A fed. NTSB. Transportation agent.” If he misrepresented himself, then he might later lose whatever information this guy might be able to provide.

  “Just let me out here, would you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m buying you a drink. Remember? But we gotta talk a minute.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “How’d you do that to your leg?”

  “Chopping wood. Right there in camp.” The man sounded tentative.

  “When?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Two days ago?” Tyler questioned. “The doctors can confirm this, you know?”

  “Maybe three days ago. I been sleeping a lot.”

  That didn’t fit with the boxcar timing. If the wound proved that old, then this guy hadn’t been part of the bloodbath. “There’s a gas station in a couple miles,” Tyler said. “Passed it on the way here. Maybe I stop for that beer there, if you’re being cooperative.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d have to believe your story,” Tyler said. “And I don’t.”

  “You are a cop, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a fed. I told you.” He waited. “You want that beer or not?”

  He informed Tyler, “The guy needed to make an example. I was the example.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He was asking questions that none of us wanted to answer.”

  “Who was?”

  “Big prick. I thought
he was a cop, but shit, even a cop wouldn’t put a hatchet through your foot for wising off.”

  Tyler took a moment to digest that. “What questions? Who was he asking?”

  “Wouldn’t mind that beer about now.”

  “It’s another mile or so.” Tyler repeated, “What kind of questions?”

  “Wanted to know ‘bout some Latino. Didn’t even offer a bottle or nothing. What the hell is that about? Since when do we rat out a fellow rider …for nothing?”

  “What about this Latino?”

  “How the hell should I know? He put that hatchet to me because I was black. Wasn’t about to hit no white boy.”

  “Who else was in camp with you?”

  “They’re all long gone. Believe it. A rider gets hurt like I did, you split. Plain and simple.”

  “There were four others.”

  “New guys. The small one—he don’t like people of color. Kicked the shit outta me when I was just lying there. The others? They just watched him do it.”

  “The big guy. The guy who did this. White?”

  “Damn straight. Lumberjack, he was. Wide as this car. And he weren’t no rider, though he came off a westbound freight and wanted us to think he was.”

  “Why do you say that …about his not being a rider?”

  “Believe me, you know. He was one of you, not one of us.”

  Tyler pulled into the gas station and bought a six-pack of Bud. The guy hit the first can too hard, especially lying down as he was, and threw up before Tyler had the car moving.

  Tyler ran around the car and heaped snow onto the pile of vomit and got it out of the car as quickly as possible. The wounded man had pulled himself up on his elbow, enough elevation to work more of that beer down his throat. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he said, burping foully into the enclosed space.

  Nell Priest wouldn’t be happy about the hygiene. But Tyler was positively beaming. They had a witness and descriptions of two men, a lumberjack and a Latino.

  According to the forensic tech, two men had battled in that boxcar. Tyler finally had a pair of suspects. And this time it would be him telling Priest, not the other way around.

  CHAPTER 7

  Alvarez, sitting in the plane’s window seat, row twenty-seven, would never have been mistaken for a hobo. For the flight from Chicago’s O’Hare to New York’s JFK, he wore fresh jeans, a black T-shirt, and a thin, black leather jacket that didn’t quite help enough against the cold. Only his boots remained the same—and these he had cleaned of the blood while changing in a bus station’s men’s room. He wore a pair of Ray-Bans, his face trained away from the other passengers and out the small, cold window. He would not be remembered on this flight.

  The fresh clothes had been recovered from a duffel/backpack left checked a week earlier at Chicago’s Greyhound station. The bag now carried the blue jeans and the red-and-gray flannel shirt he’d stolen. He’d thought better of disposing of those in the bus terminal’s trash—no reason to leave the bastards easy evidence to follow. He had soaked his own bloody clothes in lawn mower gasoline from the garage and burned them in a hole dug in the snow, deep in the neighboring forest. He’d stayed with that small fire until every last thread had burned. He was taking as few chances as possible.

  A second snowstorm had tracked in from Canada and had buried Chicago, less than twenty-four hours after St. Louis had been hit. This most recent storm had delayed his flight three hours. Hours spent anxiously with one eye on Airport-CNN and the other on the busy concourse. He’d hardly slept. He had a massive headache, and he was hungry. If he took the Carey bus from JFK to Grand Central and then the Lexington subway down to Bleeker, if everything went right—no more delays—maybe he could still make his meeting with McClaren, a meeting he needed if he were to pull off his larger plan.

  No rest for the wicked, he thought, an ironic smile playing over his slightly bruised face as he gazed out at the endless clouds. There had been a time in his life when that vast sameness would have felt peaceful. But no more. He saw only lies heaped upon lies. Butchers in blue suits and boardrooms. Anything but peaceful. Now he, too, had contributed to that lack of peace—he had single-handedly derailed and destroyed a half dozen freight trains. The news reported them like clockwork, attributing them to maintenance problems or driver error.

  But the biggest prize of all was yet to come. And for this, he hungered.

  It seemed out of context to be meeting an Irishman in Chinatown, but then again, this was New York. Alvarez climbed out of the Bleeker street subway station carrying the duffel bag, which he knew would be a problem. He, and it, would be thoroughly searched. He’d been warned that Randy McClaren and his Irish hooligans took no chances. Precaution had kept them alive this long.

  McClaren built bombs. Alvarez’s deposit had been wired weeks earlier; the remainder of the fee had to be transmitted once Alvarez had the device in hand. The joys of the Internet.

  Taking precautions to ensure he wasn’t followed, Alvarez walked eight blocks into the heart of Chinatown and located the address he’d received by placing a phone call from Grand Central. He climbed four flights, pain and fatigue weighing him down. He was met in the hallway by one of McClaren’s soldiers—a kid of eighteen or nineteen with already lifeless eyes. The delivery of the explosive—postponed twice by McClaren’s people for “security reasons”—was critical to Alvarez’s plans. His heart beat wildly as he approached the top of the stairs. McClaren’s expertise was undetectable explosives—no dog could sniff them, no machine sense them—essential to Alvarez and well worth the exorbitant price. With this small bomb, he’d have the final piece to derail Northern Union’s prized F-A-S-T Track bullet train, a passenger train. He hoped that just the threat of that derailment would prove enough to finally win the truth, as well as a public apology from the company’s CEO, William Goheen. Eighteen months of hard work was about to pay off. McClaren’s explosives were crucial to his task.

  He had been right to worry about the duffel bag. McClaren’s child-goons forced Alvarez to leave it out in the hall under the watchful eye of the skinny kid who’d met him at the door. In the first room off the hall he saw the guys standing guard with their guns right out in the open—mean-looking weapons.

  One of the guards ran a wand over him like the ones at airports and then forced him to empty his pockets and remove his boots, which had steel shanks in them. Alvarez walked in stocking feet.

  This first room was a pigsty: chipped paint, a bare bulb, and steel-reinforced windows, this latter feature an obvious recent modification, and one that loaned the room the look of a jail. Scattered on the floor were pizza boxes with cigarette butts, beer bottles, and scores of empty Coke cans. The place smelled sour. He saw no TV and only upside-down plastic milk crates for chairs. Alvarez was hustled to a door, upon which was written in spray paint: TURN YOUR CELL PHONE OFF NOW! NO CELL PHONES OR PAGERS BEYOND THIS DOOR!

  When Alvarez entered, McClaren was typing at one of three computers, his head down, his shoulders arched.

  The room looked like an electronics lab, or a computer repair shop. Large sheets of brown Peg-Board occupied two of the walls, supporting wires of every description. The air smelled of solder and cigarettes, acrid and bitter. A trio of wooden doors placed on top of file cabinets held the computers and created a U-shaped office area for McClaren, directly in front of Alvarez. To his left, behind the computer where McClaren sat, a cluttered workbench filled the corner.

  The thugs pulled the door shut. Alvarez heard himself be locked in. He took notice of two pipe bombs rigged on the inside of this door. Alvarez felt out of his element. The only sound came from a very small TV that ran CNN.A black rubber mat, with a wire running to the wall, fronted the workbench.

  Randy McClaren had blown off the last three fingers of his left hand as a teenager in the IRA, and yet he was able to work his thumb and index finger so that he typed with dexterity. He did not look up. He spoke with a thick brogue. “Wanking Internet, I’m telling you. God’
s good and gracious gift to his Christian Soldiers. Pass information in an instant, trade stocks, check the bank, and no fucking FBI listening in.” He turned and faced his guest, his freckles and carrottop hair making him look younger than his thirty years. But the coldness in his vivid green eyes left little doubt that he’d seen many horrors.

  “The FBI will be listening in one of these days,” Alvarez warned.

  McClaren typed the last few characters and clicked the mouse. “You’re new, so I’ll tell you this, but only once. You checked out or you wouldn’t be here. Doesn’t matter, mate: don’t ever come here, don’t ever attempt to make contact with me without calling your friend. I’ll kill you if you do.”

  “I’m prepared to make payment,” Alvarez said, his throat dry. He was intimidated, even afraid. He had no idea what was in this room, but he had a feeling it was a powder keg.

  “Was just checking the accounts.” McClaren nodded toward the computer. “Have a seat.”

  “Are we all set then?” Alvarez inquired.

  McClaren indicated a small gray box. He handed it to Alvarez, who nearly dropped it.

  McClaren nodded. “Nervous?”

  “Uncomfortable,” Alvarez admitted. “Explosives are new to me.”

  “Mine are safe. Nothing to worry about.”

  Nonetheless, Alvarez felt no safer. This wasn’t his world. He’d been a science teacher, a father. Bomb makers? He wanted out of there.

  McClaren stood and indicated his seat. Alvarez sat down, spent a minute at the keyboard, and electronically transferred the remainder of the money due.

  “We wait for the e-mail,” McClaren said. Confirmation could take anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more. He glanced down at his socks. He wanted his boots back.

  Alvarez studied the small polished aluminum box. It was about the size of a cigarette pack. “It’s enough explosive to break that steel pin I described?” Alvarez questioned. This was the only time his plans included explosives.

  “The pin you described is most commonly used in high-speed train couplers, ehh, Laddie? Not bank-vault hinge pins, as you wanted me to believe.” His information stunned Alvarez: he had figured out the purpose of the explosive. McClaren warned, “If they catch you, they’ll ask you where you got it, and I could care less what you tell them as long as I’m not mentioned. If I am mentioned, Laddie, a box this same size will be shoved up your ass and detonated.”