Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 1)

by Barbara Nickless

  “Agent Parnell?” The sheriff again. “You awake up there?”

  “Sir.”

  “How about you take your dog and start searching from the north? Don’t worry about clearing the cars. Just see if your dog can pick up a scent. If he does, back off and hold tight until I can get more men up there. Team five, stay on her ass, give her some cover.”

  “Pleasure, sir,” came a male voice.

  My lucky day.

  I climbed down to the platform and whistled Clyde out. We hopped to the ground and watched the two deputies approach. As soon as the men got close enough for Clyde to make out the protective gear—their Kevlar-inflated bulk and face-concealing radios—Clyde lowered his neck, tucked his tail, and slunk behind my legs.

  I knelt and took his face in my hands, trying to instill the same calm we’d managed together on the chopper.

  “Clyde,” I whispered, aware that the deputies were now right behind me. “No bombs. No snipers. We’re still good.”

  Clyde studied me again; again he bought my line.

  “Sit.”

  He sat.

  “Good boy.”

  “He okay?” asked one of the deputies.

  I rose to my feet, forced a smile. “Sure.”

  The deputies introduced themselves as Ed Kohl and Scott O’Malley. We shook hands. But when I tried to introduce Clyde, he refused to participate. He stayed obediently by my side but ignored the men’s outstretched hands.

  “He won’t bite, will he?” Kohl asked.

  “Only if you stay on my ass.”

  The deputies laughed and the moment passed.

  Both Kohl and O’Malley had run searches with their K9 teams and knew the drill. Clyde and I would walk point. The deputies would follow a few paces behind on my right and left so they could, as the sheriff so delicately put it, cover my ass.

  I faced south. The wind pushed into my back, tugging strands of my hair free and whipping them into my face.

  “Lousy search conditions,” I warned the deputies. “Moving with the wind means we could walk right past Rhodes before Clyde catches his scent.”

  “Just don’t get more than a couple of paces ahead of us,” O’Malley said. “Keep it tight. Clyde alerts or you see or hear anything, drop so we have a clear line of sight. Don’t worry. If Rhodes moves, we’ll get him.”

  “Didn’t you say that all we got up here are coal cars and that he wouldn’t be in a coal car?” Kohl asked.

  “Coal cars and flatcars,” I said. “Not likely to be on either of those. But let’s make your boss happy.”

  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 g
otten 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.

  CHAPTER 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 thos
e 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.”