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

by Barbara Nickless

  “I hate doing this, Kane,” I said, “but I need you to turn your pockets out.”

  “What?”

  “You searched Sarge’s files before I did. I need to make sure you didn’t take anything.”

  He glared at me. But he offered no resistance as I did a quick search. Nothing.

  Salutatorian, I reminded myself. He could come back any time to take whatever he wanted, so long as Sarge was still AWOL.

  “Okay,” I said, stepping back.

  Kane offered his hand to Clyde, who ignored it.

  “He’s on duty,” I said by way of explanation.

  Kane folded his arms at me. “Tucker didn’t do it.”

  “You said that.”

  “It’s true. No way in hell he would ever hurt her.”

  “He hit her, Kane. More than once.”

  “He tell you that?”

  “No.” Nik’s face rose in my mind. “Heard it from someone close to Elise.”

  But Kane shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “That’s why he left. He was afraid he’d hurt her again.”

  “No.” Kane stared out the front window, his jaw tight. “He left because he thought he was damaged goods, and she was . . . pure.” He turned from the window, his blue eyes searching mine as if wanting to make sure I understood what he was trying to say. “Tucker told me that Elise was the best person he’d ever known. ‘True of heart,’ is how he put it. The opposite of all the shit we saw in Iraq. She was like those crazy movies where an angel comes down to earth and pretends to be human so she can help people.”

  “Your wife tells a different story.”

  “Yeah.” He stuffed his hands in his coat pockets, jangled the keys. “Sherri’s a good woman. But life has made it kind of easy for her to be good, if you know what I mean. Up until now, her life’s been a cakewalk. She’s smart and beautiful and she has rich parents who think she can do no wrong. She’s succeeded at everything that mattered to her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then all the sudden she had to deal with me being gone and then coming back not quite right and she’s not going to be a doctor’s wife anymore. Still, she was good. Right up until we started hanging with Tucks and Elise.”

  I waited.

  “Now suddenly there’s this woman,” Kane went on, “who didn’t have it easy growing up. Who never had a silver spoon anywhere near her mouth. And suddenly she’s everyone’s sweetheart. Hell, even Sherri’s parents fell in love with Elise.”

  “So you think what your wife’s telling me is more jealousy than truth.”

  “She probably told you Elise was a troublemaker. She’s said that often enough to me. And I know women sometimes see things in other women that men don’t see. Men can be blind when it comes to a pretty woman. But as much as I love my wife, I wouldn’t put too much stock in what she says about Elise.”

  “What does Sherri know about Habbaniyah?”

  Kane rubbed his jaw. “Nothing. Like I said before. For Sherri, life is still pretty much shopping malls and lattes and playgroups for Haley. The war doesn’t really figure into that.”

  “Did she know that Elise was trying to get you guys to come clean?”

  “Nah.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you driving at?”

  “Nothing.” I held up my hands at the sharpness in his voice. “Back to the hobos. You’ve never known Elise to have run-ins with that crowd?”

  “Only the crazies. And everyone has trouble with them, according to Tucks. But even that isn’t quite right. Elise could usually calm the crazies, find whatever in them was still working and focus on that.”

  “Usually?”

  “Usually. Maybe always. I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about the hobo beads, Kane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rhodes called Elise, told her his beads had been stolen?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “She say how it happened?”

  “Just some asshole jumped Tucks in Wyoming. He loved those beads. Wanted ’em back. Or ones just like them, anyway.”

  “Has Sherri made them yet?”

  “She’s almost done with them, I think. Why does this matter?”

  “Probably it doesn’t.”

  My headset buzzed and I glanced at my phone; it was a number I recognized. I apologized to Kane and went into the kitchen.

  “Hey, Cohen,” I said.

  “Parnell,” he said. “I’m sending a photo of the sketch of Rhodes’s assailant to your cell phone. I’ve got uniforms showing the sketch to Elise’s neighbors and Bandoni’s talking to coworkers. The drawing has been released to Crime Stoppers, so it’ll hit the ten p.m. news.”

  “Nothing so far?”

  “We’re just getting started. Why don’t you and I arrange to meet somewhere? I want to hand out flyers to your hobo crowd.”

  “You want me to show myself around the camps with a homicide dick?”

  “Worried your reputation can’t take the hit?”

  “I’m worried yours can’t. Look, I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back?”

  “Sure. Take your time. It’s not like I got a murder case going or anything.”

  “Smart-ass,” I said and disconnected.

  We let ourselves out of Sarge’s place, and Kane locked the door. We walked toward the stairs.

  “You’ll let me know when you hear from Sarge?” I asked. “Or Amy?”

  “Sure.”

  At the top of the stairs, I took Kane’s arm, bringing him to a stop. Everyone had disappeared as the weather worsened. The guy with the motorcycle had vanished, the playground sat empty. Tumbleweeds skittered through the parking lot. The entire apartment complex groaned under the frigid gale, which seemed to be building toward something momentous. In the sudden emptiness, it was as if Kane and I were the last two humans on Earth.

  “Kane, how do you feel about Habbaniyah? About what you guys did after they killed Resenko and Haifa?”

  He stared across the street toward the never-quite-a-park. Maybe seeing it. Maybe seeing nothing at all.

  “I don’t regret any of it,” he said, finally. “Not what we did to start, anyway. Those bastards deserved to die. Killing them felt . . . righteous. Then they set that bomb and Haifa’s brothers died, and that’s when I realized we’d brought down something bigger than all of us. We’d brought down God’s law.”

  “Biblical justice?”

  “Maybe more like the law of the universe. Newton’s law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” He turned his eyes back to me, and I held still against the bleakness of his gaze. “After that bomb went off, I finally understood what we’d set in motion. What Resenko and Haifa had started without meaning to, and which we’d followed blindly, like picking up Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs. Only those crumbs weren’t leading us home. They were leading us straight to the witch.”

  He started down the stairs, his tread heavy, his limp making every other step clang like the tolling of a bell. His words floated back to me on the wind.

  “I never forgave myself for that bomb.”

  CHAPTER 15

  7:00 a.m. Camp Taqaddum.

  The sun low in the sky, its light spreading like a fan across the FOB. The wind rustling tent flaps and furling flags. Usher’s “Burn” quiet on someone’s boom box. A yelp of laughter and the clatter of cutlery and the rasp of sand against my boots as the Sir and I walk toward the mess tent.

  Then a burst of light, and the air comes apart like cloth ripping.

  People drop. Debris tears past. Dust roils up in a great clotted cloud and swallows the light.

  In the ringing silence that follows, Marines clamber to their feet, yelling voicelessly as they look for their brothers, their comrades, their leaders.

  I roll onto my side, and there is the Sir, lying next to me. He looks fine. Just a little vague, staring over my shoulder. As if his attention has been caught by something I can’t see.<
br />
  As it turned out, it was something none of us could see.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  I drove across the street to the field where the teens had gone to smoke, pulled up over the curb, and parked in the weeds. I let Clyde out to do his business, gave him some water, then we jumped back into the truck and out of the rising wind. While Clyde curled up to nap, I watched the storm rolling in over the mountains. When the clouds hit the sun, I huddled in the gloom and picked through my thoughts like a cook sorting beans.

  Maybe Kane’s wife was a jealous liar. But she was right about Elise’s interest in the lives of others. Nik had told me that, in addition to her work with the homeless, his niece was the first to volunteer at the soup kitchen and the first to start a Christmas toy drive. That she organized and ran a weekend Bible study and that, at the diner where she waitressed, she’d started a fund drive for the sick child of one of the cooks. In her copious spare time, she volunteered at a shelter for victims of domestic violence.

  Like an angel come down to earth, per Jeremy Kane.

  The question of the moment was whether any of these humanitarian pursuits had been the cause of her death. If her savage end had nothing to do with Tucker or the war, but only with her kindness.

  I frowned. I wasn’t a big fan of irony.

  The wind rocked the truck, and Clyde whimpered in his sleep. Any other dog, I’d figure he was dreaming about rabbits. But not Clyde. His paws twitched in pursuit of some Morphean monster.

  “It’s all good, boy.” I reached over and stroked his head until he quieted.

  I leaned against the door and pressed my face to the cold glass while I considered what we’d found at Sarge’s place—the photographs of dead Iraqis and young Malik and a mystery man who might or might not be CIA.

  I thought, too, about what we hadn’t found—any indication whatsoever that Sarge had been contacted or threatened by the Alpha. Any sign at all that Tucker Rhodes’s fear of an Alpha had any bearing. For all I knew, whoever the Alpha was, he might have died in the bomb blast too. That was an irony I could appreciate.

  I pulled out the two photos I’d taken from Sarge’s wall and set them on the dash. In the first photo, the one taken with Malik and Sarge, the unknown man had been all smiles. Malik, too, looked happy. Joyous, even. As if he’d just gotten some very good news.

  I touched my finger to Malik’s beaming face, blinked back the moisture in my eyes.

  After I’d returned to the States, I’d continued to work for months to bring Malik to Denver. As his application ground through the State Department, where it eventually died, I’d stayed in touch with Marines still in Iraq. Malik was fine, they’d assured me. He missed me and Clyde, asked for us every single day. But he was doing okay.

  Then, suddenly, he was gone. No one knew where. He’d simply disappeared. The most logical explanation was that he’d found his family, or they’d found him, and he’d gone back to where he belonged, taken in by an aunt or a grandparent. That he was not only safe but happy.

  I fervently hoped this was true. But my gut would have none of it. My gut said that the rage over Haifa’s affair with an American had extended to Malik, and that he’d been kidnapped and killed by the same insurgents who’d murdered his mother.

  I picked up the second photo. In this shot with Dougie, the unknown man was also smiling. But his smile looked strained. Even through the lens of a camera, worry weighted his eyes.

  Dougie wasn’t smiling at all.

  I looked away from the picture and out the window again, watched as the storm circled around, tracking north.

  Dougie had bought the Bedouin knife two weeks before he was killed. That narrowed the time frame of the photograph to the days between everything going to shit over Resenko and when Dougie’s body had been found in the desert. I’d never even considered that Dougie’s death might have something to do with our cover-up or its aftermath. I’d assumed his murder was part of the general surge against us, and particularly against people like Dougie who went out amongst the people without a show of guns, without any armor and only a bodyguard or two. Talking to the sheiks man to man. Hearts and minds.

  Could be I was wrong.

  I returned my gaze to the photo, wanting nothing so much as just one more hour with him and the white-hot knowledge that it would be our last.

  “Did you know you’d leave me without a chance to say good-bye?” I whispered. “Without a chance to say any of the things that needed saying? Tell me everything, you used to say. But I never had the chance.”

  In sudden, anguished fury, I dropped the photo and slammed my injured palms against the steering wheel. Clyde startled awake, coming up fast on his feet.

  “Why don’t you ever visit me, Dougie?” I shouted. “Everyone else does. All the fucking time. Every single dead person I processed in Iraq has come to see me. Every person I’ve tried to piece back together in my mind. They come to me when I’m reading in bed or sitting on the couch or taking a fucking shower. But not you, Dougie. Not you. Not ever. Not once.”

  The tears rolled down my face, splashed on my throbbing hands.

  “I never had the chance to make you whole.”

  When they’d brought in his mutilated body, the lion ring still on its leather braid around his neck, I’d collapsed on the floor, curled up fetal-tight and vomited. White as ash and crying without making a sound, Gonzo told me later. I stayed that way until the Sir came and pulled me up and away, out of Mortuary Affairs, out to the edge of the FOB where he’d left me in the company of two MPs. He kept me out of Mortuary Affairs until he and Gonzo and Tomitsch were through with Dougie and my beloved was just a shape in a body bag.

  Clyde thrust his nose into my face and licked my chin. I pulled him close.

  I’d never asked Dougie what he did in Iraq. I knew it was all hush-hush, and to be honest, I didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter. I trusted him, and that was enough. The man I loved wasn’t about torture or blackmail or illegal manipulation. He believed in what he was doing, and he did it with integrity. I was sure of it, and that was enough for me.

  I pulled out his ring on its silver chain, held it dangling in the forlorn light.

  What would the VA counselor make of the fact that the one ghost I didn’t seem to be haunted by was that of the man I’d loved? The man I still loved.

  After he’d died and the Sir had given me Dougie’s ring, I tried wearing it on my thumb. But even my thumb was too small to keep the ring in place. So I’d hung it on the chain with my dog tags. When I got home, I moved it to my dad’s old silver chain, the one he’d worn every day then left on my dresser right before he walked out.

  Now I held the lion tight in my hands, squeezing it hard until it bit into my palm.

  It occurred to me that perhaps I should let sleeping lions lie. That if I nosed into the link between the mystery man and Malik and Dougie, I might find out things about Dougie that would destroy the fragile peace I’d built for myself, the acceptance I’d finally reached. And I might learn that Malik wasn’t living with family, safe and happy.

  Maybe wasn’t living at all.

  More immediately, trying to track down the identity of a spook, even a dead one, could bring down more wrath than letting the world know about Habbaniyah. Right now I worried about being court-martialed. Get tangled up with the CIA or DIA or DHS or whoever the hell this man worked for and I might end up dead. I had no illusions that the life of a single Marine would count for anything to people bent on protecting America at all costs.

  On the other hand, Tucker’s reputation, even his life, might lie in that black space between what I knew and what I thought I knew. If I didn’t close that gap, I’d have to live with myself while Tucker once again paid the price.

  “Not much of a choice is it, Clyde?”

  He looked at me with furrowed brow.

  “We gotta go for it.”

  I’d stayed in touch with a few of Dougie’s friends. One of them, Hal Becket
t, worked for the Company. Hal had been a lot of comfort in the days after Dougie died. He’d shown up within hours of Dougie’s death and sat with me outside Mortuary Affairs. He’d personally escorted Dougie’s body back to the States. He’d also helped me get Clyde’s status changed from unadoptable—which was a death sentence—to stateside adoption. On top of that, Hal had made sure Clyde had never gone into an official foster program but instead had come straight to me. Hal knew the right people, could pull the right strings.

  All I had to do was figure out how to ask him questions without arousing his suspicion.

  Or maybe go out on a limb and trust him. Dougie had. I dialed.

  “Well, son of a bitch,” came Hal’s Boston voice. “Sydney Rose Parnell!”

  Hearing him made the tears rise again, and for a moment I couldn’t say anything.

  “Rosie? You there, girl?”

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “How’s life, Hal?”

  “Pretty quiet these days. Can’t say I miss the war, but I miss the thrill. And you? You doing all right?”

  We chatted for a few minutes, swapping inconsequential things. Finally I got to it.

  “I’m trying to ID someone from a photo, Hal. I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “Someone from Iraq, I’m guessing.”

  “Yeah. Some guy who was with Dougie a week or so before—”

  “Where are you going with this, Rosie?”

  “I’m a railway cop now, investigating a murder. Could be it has something to do with things that happened in Iraq.”

  “You are shitting me, right?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. Maybe. The victim was the fiancée of a Marine who served in Habbaniyah. I’ve been told that before she was killed, she was asking around about what exactly her fiancé did over there. And this guy I’m asking you about, he’s in a few photos, laughing it up with the Marine’s sergeant.”

  “I don’t see how there could be any connection. But text me the photo. I’ll call you right back.”

  I hung up, snapped a picture of Dougie’s photo, and sent it. Hal called me back a minute later.

  “I can’t tell you his name because that’s classified. But I can tell you this guy’s got nothing to do with your girl’s death.”