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

by Barbara Nickless

  “Is she right?” Grams looked me square in the face, assessing me in the brighter light. “You hurt bad enough you need the hospital?”

  For my grandmother, coming as she did from the self-sufficient hollers of Appalachia, going to the hospital was a sinful admission of weakness. You went there if you were bleeding out or in full cardiac arrest. For everything else you had fortitude. And, hopefully, someone like Grams to patch you up.

  I shook my head.

  “But the blood,” Ellen Ann said.

  “It’s not mine.”

  Both women took that in then let it go.

  “Get a pan and some clean rags,” Grams said to Ellen Ann. “Sydney Rose, go to the bathroom and strip.”

  While Clyde watched from the narrow space between sink and toilet that he’d wedged himself into, Grams tended me as if I were a child again. She drew a warm bath then had me swallow a couple of Vicodin before she helped me into the water. With the rags brought by Ellen Ann she wiped down my arms and legs and torso with hands as knotty and strong as tree roots. She removed the old bandages and threw them into the basin with the rags, then washed my face and neck and lathered and rinsed my hair.

  I leaned my head back against the side of the tub and closed my eyes, surrendering to the cocoon of being cared for. The pain pills and the liquor slithered through my veins, a night train in my blood, rocking me to sleep. I dozed while Grams finished with my hair, then listened vaguely as she catalogued each wound, her voice raw with cigarettes.

  When I was at last clean, she helped me stand up out of the tub and dry off. She wrapped an old chenille robe around me and pushed me gently onto the closed lid of the toilet.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  While she was gone, Clyde laid his head on my thigh and gave me his soulful eyes. I rested my palm against his head, scratched behind his ears. “We’re still good, Clyde.”

  My eyes sank closed. Images of Elise swirled through my mind. The medical examiner washing her body free of blood. Washing her bright-blond hair. I thought of Melody, whose cut I’d treated only two days ago. And Liz, balled into herself. Where were they?

  I jerked awake at the sound of the door opening and then closing.

  Grams laid out bandages and ointment and hydrogen peroxide on the counter by the sink. She gave me a glass of water and a bottle of antibiotics and told me to take one now and put the rest in my pocket. Then she studied me under the light, gently turning my head this way and that, her fingers like feathers on the bruises left by Sarge.

  “I’ll stitch this,” she said, lightly touching my cheek. “Give me your arm where he hit you.”

  I pushed up the sleeve on the arm Sarge had struck with the gun.

  “This man, he really hurt you,” Grams said. “Whoever he was. He knew what he was doing. Enough to hurt you bad without killing you.”

  Not right away, at least.

  “That his blood on your clothes?”

  I nodded. “Some of it.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Jesus, Grams.”

  “Did he have anything to do with Elise’s death?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She made me hold ice on the elbow, then knelt in front of me to apply ointment to the cactus wounds, some of which had begun to ooze.

  “I know Ellen Ann’s a wreck,” I said. “But how’s Nik holding up? When he’s not drunk, I mean.”

  The shake of her head was soft. “Oh, you know Nik. He’s hurting, but he takes it out by getting mad at the dog and the paperboy and the poor girl who got stuck waiting on him at Denny’s. He keeps saying he can’t breathe and opens the windows, and I keep closing them. He’s hard to live with right now. But that’s men and women for you. We take to grief different. Who’s to say his way isn’t better?”

  “What about Gentry?”

  Her head shook harder this time. “He won’t take my calls. Not his mom or dad’s, either. Didn’t answer the door when his parents dropped by. That poor boy does grief the worst of all. Always has.”

  Something sharp wriggled into my gut. “You think maybe he’s home, just not answering?”

  “Nik has a key. He and Ellen Ann went in.”

  “Nothing was gone? A suitcase or anything?”

  She looked at me sharply. “Nothing except him.”

  “So he went somewhere to hide his grief?”

  “Must have.” She took away the ice and wrapped an ACE bandage around my elbow. “All the time you were in Iraq, Gentry worried for you. His worry made him restless. Fevered, almost. It was all Ellen Ann could do to get him to come around for a home-cooked meal and to sit still through it. When you decided to re-up, I thought he’d fly apart.”

  “He emailed me every day while I was over there.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “Any idea where he might have gone?”

  She stepped back and looked at me, studying her work, checking for places she’d missed. She clucked her tongue.

  “The bump to the back of your head is swelling nicely, so that’s all good,” she said. “Swelling out means it’s not swelling in. That chest injury is the worst of it. How bad is the pain?”

  “Fine as long as I don’t move or breathe.”

  “You feel like you have to work for air?”

  “No.”

  She put her hands on my chest. “Pain here?” she asked.

  I gritted my teeth.

  Her hands moved lightly along my ribs. “Anywhere here?”

  “No.”

  Her hands moved around to my back. “What about here?”

  “Just feels bruised.”

  She dropped her hands. “A blow to the chest can damage organs, Sydney Rose. It can kill you. So pay attention to what your body is telling you. You have trouble breathing or if the pain gets a lot worse all the sudden, don’t wait. Call an ambulance. Don’t mess around with this.”

  “Gentry?” I reminded her.

  She laid out needle and thread. Numbing gel. “Ellen Ann says he always had secret places to go to. When he was a kid, she knew where those places were. But she hasn’t known for years. He’ll come home when he’s ready.”

  “Friends? A girlfriend?”

  “Ellen Ann tried. He was supposed to go into the office yesterday, some big trial they got coming. But his friends at work say he didn’t show. I am—” She took a sudden suck of air. “I am a bit worried. He’s a grown man and all, and he goes off sometimes. But this feels different. Not like him to walk out on his work, even with what happened to Elise. You find him, you tell him to call, okay?”

  “I’ll look for him,” I promised.

  We were silent for a short time while I thought about what Gentry’s absence could mean.

  “Grams, that man Ma killed, Wallace Cooper?”

  She threaded the needle. Had me sit on the counter so we were eye to eye.

  “What about him?” she asked. “Tilt your head up.”

  “You believed her when she said she did it in self-defense? That he was trying to hurt her?”

  The needle bit. “She was my daughter-in-law. I believed whatever she believed. Sometimes self-defense isn’t as obvious as someone having a knife to your throat or a gun to your head. Sometimes people got to take a wider view.”

  “What if Wallace Cooper had been family? What then?”

  A distant tugging as the thread went through. “What is it you’re saying, Sydney Rose?”

  “What I learned in Iraq is that sometimes there’s a higher truth than what we know. Or what we think we know. And sometimes—maybe all of the time—you’ve got to go with that higher truth.” I rolled my eyes from the needle, let my gaze follow the trail of posies on the wallpaper up to the ceiling. “No matter what it costs.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “I’m talking blood and water. Blood may be thicker, but that doesn’t mean you have to choke on it.”

  The needle found a raw place. “You choke on it if you h
ave to. Family is family. That is the higher law. Short of God’s law, it’s the only one that matters.”

  “How does that explain my dad?”

  “Nothing explains your daddy.” The prick of the needle vanished as Grams worked her way back to where my skin was numb.

  “What if it’s family against family?”

  “Then you go after the furthest kin. It’s how we’ve always done it. Now shut up and let me work. You’re going to give yourself a scar, you keep yapping.”

  Afterward, Grams led me to Gentry’s room, gave me some sweats to sleep in and more Vicodin, pulled the blinds against the growing morning, and left, closing the door behind her. When I climbed into bed, Clyde curled up next to me as if he sensed my pain and my need. I knew a lot of dogs slept in their owners’ beds, but Clyde had always refused. The fact that he’d slept close to my bed the night we’d brought Tucker back had been a huge milestone.

  And now this. Maybe not something we wanted to make a habit of. Or maybe we did. Today wasn’t the day to figure it out.

  Deeply grateful, I rubbed his face and his ears and gave him long strokes, head to tail, the way he loved. He licked my face.

  “Easy boy. Grams just fixed that.”

  At last I lay back, my hand on his ruff.

  “I won’t die on you, boy. I promise. Third time’s the charm. Maybe we both just need a little faith.”

  As if reassured, a minute later he was snoring, his weight warm and solid, pressed tight against my right side.

  But I lay awake, wired and exhausted, seeing Liz curled up on that picnic table. I reached out my arm for the Vicodin on the nightstand then pulled it back. Later, I told myself.

  Outside the room, the floor creaked. Clyde lifted his head. I closed my eyes as someone opened the door and the smell of cigarette smoke and winter trailed into the room. Nik. Needing the quiet of my own thoughts, I feigned sleep until he closed the door again.

  “She’s tough,” I heard him say.

  “Maybe not tough enough.” Ellen Ann. “Lot of weakness in that family. I love her. But that girl will always be nothing more than middling.”

  “She just needs time,” Nik murmured.

  They moved away from the door. Clyde lowered his head.

  But I opened my eyes, stared into the gray dimness.

  Nothing more than middling.

  Was Ellen Ann right? Were my parents and I the weak ones? My father abandoned his wife and daughter. Shortly after that, my mother threw me away when she murdered Wallace Cooper. At age thirteen, after a long period of furious, wounded rebellion, I’d buried my demons and set out to prove I was nothing like them. I became the good girl. In school. In sports. Good friend. Good granddaughter. Good worker. Trustworthy, reliable, obedient.

  But I always stopped short of testing myself in full. I never earned straight As. Never took first place in anything. I refused to push myself because pushing myself and failing would be unforgivable. If I failed as my parents had failed, I’d have nothing.

  I’d be nothing. I’d be like them.

  Meanwhile, buried inside, that wounded child lurked.

  I hadn’t joined the Marines and the railway police out of courage. I’d joined out of a desire for security and stability. I’d wanted someone else to order and organize my life. To think for me and plan for me and tell me when I needed to be brave and when I could relax. I was the obedient soldier who did whatever she was told and never crossed the line until the Sir asked for my help. The men and women around me, the patriotic, high-energy, sometimes fearless Marines and police I worked with every day, proved to me that I was no warrior. But I played the part well. They never knew that inside I was still a thirteen-year-old girl filled with sound and fury.

  Then Elise’s murder landed in my lap.

  Painfully, I rolled onto my side. Clyde groaned but didn’t waken.

  At the Black Egg, I’d been determined to find a way to prove that Gentry was innocent. Determined to find Elise’s killer. But Sarge’s arrival in my home had shattered me all over again.

  Now I was at a crossroads. I had to choose between breaking the rules or guarding them. Between playing it safe and maybe playing it wrong. The hours with Cohen had made me ask how long I could keep running from what lay in my heart, keep hiding from the dark things that played in my head. Keep holding myself back.

  I felt like Jekyll and Hyde. Simultaneously the person who always colored inside the lines and the monster who tore them apart.

  Which one was I now?

  I wrapped an arm around Clyde, buried my face in his warm fur.

  It was safer to run. Running was how you kept the monster chained and quiet. Freeing the monster might be braver and more honest. But it could also get you and the people around you killed.

  I should burn the pages with Gentry’s name on them, claim ignorance of their theft, leave Melody and Alfred Merkel and even Liz to the Denver PD. Forget about Habbaniyah and Malik and go back to being a railway cop. Correction—to being a lazy railway cop. Keep the bar low. Keep the monster drunk on whiskey, high on drugs, soothed by routine.

  It was safer that way.

  And safe was all that thirteen-year-old girl had ever wanted.

  Sometime later, I fell into the sleep of the dead. A sleep so deep and heavy that I might have been plucked from the world and banished into a dark abyss. I did not dream but once.

  In the single dream, the ghost who had been at Sarge’s apartment, the CIA spook named Dalton, came to me. With him was a young black girl, her clothes torn and bloodied, her body battered. Dalton took her hand and drew her forward until she stood in front of him. He gave her a gentle push in my direction, nodded at me, and vanished.

  There would be time for him later, he seemed to say. First, this.

  The dream-Jazmine studied my face, her expression grievous, her brow tight. As if she’d hoped to find that I measured up but instead had been disappointed. I shivered under her scrutiny, forced myself to hold her gaze. Did she see the monster and my best self? Did she see how I kept them both at bay so that I was nothing but middling?

  At last she held out her arms, palms turned up in plea. Maybe I was all she had. Maybe middling would have to do.

  The abyss dropped deeper, and I went with it. Safe for a time in that cocoon of darkness.

  Just like I’d always wanted.

  I awoke hours later with a clear mind.

  I opened my eyes. The bedside clock ticked gently in the late-morning quiet of Gentry’s bedroom. A murmur of voices came from beyond the door. Down the street, a neighbor shoveled snow, the metal scraping on the concrete. Cold breathed at the window. A thin line of sunlight fell through the gap in the curtains and set about capturing dust motes.

  Jazmine Brown. Liz Weber. And somewhere, Malik. These children had not asked to be victims any more than I had when I was their age. It was just the luck of the draw that we’d pulled the short straws of poverty and violence instead of silver spoons and college trust funds.

  My job—first as a Marine and now as a cop—was to be their voice. To stand up for them when they couldn’t stand on their own. Whether that took my best self or my worst didn’t really matter. Just so long as I got the job done.

  Tentatively, I stretched one leg. Got one hell of a zinger back in return. Stretched the other. My body was a thrumming piano wire of pain. Made the job a little harder. But Marines love harder.

  I relaxed my legs and groaned. Clyde lifted his head and regarded me with solemn eyes. I forced myself onto my elbows.

  “Time to move out, Marine,” I told him.

  He hopped off the bed and went to stand by the door.

  I slid out of bed and found my jeans and sweater cleaned and folded on a chair. I dressed as quickly as I could, given there wasn’t an inch of flesh that hadn’t been punched, jabbed, or scraped. I strapped on my duty belt and thigh holster then braided my hair and snugged it under my railway cap. Just as I finished, a knock came and Ellen Ann opened the d
oor.

  “Nap do you good, Sydney Rose?”

  “It did,” I said. “I’m feeling stronger.”

  A little light came into her eyes. Maybe she’d meant for me to hear her earlier words, hoped that calling me middling would piss me off enough to light a fire. No one had ever called Ellen Ann a fool.

  “That’s good,” she said. “There’s a woman here. Says she has something for you.”

  CHAPTER 23

  - Do you believe in God, Corporal Parnell?

  - Sure. I just don’t like Him much. And I don’t trust Him at all.

  —Kuwait, conversation with the Marine chaplain.

  Sherri Kane, Jeremy Kane’s pretty, pregnant wife, was not who I’d expected or hoped for. But I had to give her credit for finding me.

  Dressed in a navy and white striped sweater, maternity jeans, and fur-topped snow boots, she sat in the wingback chair in Ellen Ann’s living room. Knees and ankles together, legs tucked gracefully to one side. Her face was fresh and clean. Her hair, loosed from its ponytail, fell in a shining wave over her shoulder.

  As Clyde and I entered the room, Sherri took in my wounded face and faltering gait. An unreadable expression flitted across her features. Satisfaction?

  Maybe I was too harsh.

  “Get you anything?” Ellen Ann asked me. She’d already brought tea for Sherri.

  “I’m good.”

  She patted my shoulder, probably figuring I needed bolstering in the face of my visitor’s wholesome beauty. After she left, I turned to Sherri. “What can I do for you?”

  She set down her tea. “I am sorry to just show up at your uncle’s house,” she said. “But I have Tucks’s beads. I tried calling the number on the card you gave me, but you didn’t answer.”

  I didn’t bother correcting her on my relationship with Nik. I pulled out my phone. Three calls from an unknown number. I really had been in the abyss.

  “I called the railroad,” Sherri went on, “told the man who picked up that I needed to see you. They gave me your uncle’s name and number, and I figured out the address. When no one answered, I decided to drive over. I’ve made the beads, like Tucks asked. Now I want them off my hands.”