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

by Barbara Nickless

  Efficient. I remembered.

  I lowered myself onto the chair catty-corner to Sherri’s, next to a recently closed window where a chill still hung. Clyde stood next to me, tail straight. Probably he’d inhaled a snoutful of Ogre’s scent. I wondered if he felt about Sherri’s dog the way I felt about Sherri.

  “Would you like me to take the beads to him?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice was crisp. She rummaged through the purse in her lap. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Did you know he’s in the hospital? He collapsed in his cell.”

  Her hand paused. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Too soon to tell. But I’ll make sure he knows about the beads, once he’s awake. I’m sure he’ll be grateful to know you care.”

  She pulled out a drawstring bag. Wooden beads clicked inside. “You must think I just want to put all of this behind me.”

  “Never crossed my mind.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she handed over the bag. “Please tell him we’re thinking about him.”

  “I will.”

  She snapped her purse closed. “I should get going. I need to pick up Haley.”

  For a moment, I considered Sherri as a killer. She hated Elise, who had replaced her as the golden girl. A woman’s choice of weapons is often poison, and Elise had been drugged before she died. Maybe the knife work was to mislead.

  But I just as quickly dismissed the idea. The knife was too hands-on and messy for someone like Sherri, no matter how clever a cover-up it might have seemed. In Sherri’s world, anger amounted to a door slam or maybe a burnt chicken. Not murder.

  “Just one more thing, Mrs. Kane,” I said. “When I was at your house, you mentioned that Elise was digging up dirt. You said you didn’t know what kind of things she was looking for. But you’re obviously a smart woman. And I’m guessing you’re an astute observer of people.”

  Unimpressed by my flattery, Sherri sighed and glanced at her watch.

  “So I’m a little surprised,” I went on, “that you have no inkling what Elise might have been looking into. Surely she said something. Maybe you even asked her about it.”

  “Life can be bleak, Special Agent Parnell. I try not to bring in any more unpleasantness than I have to. But Elise did talk to me a little. If you think it will help, she said something to me at dinner one night. That she was dealing with a gang of skinheads.”

  If I was hoping for a new angle to pursue, I was disappointed. “What about them?”

  “Elise was upset because they were coming around again. Hurting ‘her’ people, she said. There was one in particular she talked about. Blade, I think. Or Whip. Pistol, maybe. I don’t remember.”

  I rose. “Can you wait just a moment? I have something to show you.”

  “I—”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  To encourage Sherri to wait, I gave Clyde the stay command. I found my bag near the front door and pulled out the sketch of Alfred Merkel.

  I handed the paper over as I resumed my seat. “You ever see this man around?”

  She took the sketch. Gave a startled little “Oh!”

  I waited.

  “Oh, my heavens, is he a criminal?”

  “He’s a neo-Nazi. You can decide if that makes him a criminal. You recognize him?”

  “I made hobo beads for him. Last summer. I had a booth at a craft fair at Globeville Landing Park. He came up and admired the beads I had on display, but he didn’t want any of those.”

  “What did he want?”

  The expression on her face was a mixture of bemusement and disgust. “He wanted love beads. Hearts. Doves. The word ‘Always.’ As a gift, he said. I remember because it was so odd. This terrifying man wanting love beads.”

  “Did he say who they were for?”

  She shook her head. “I took down his order, and he told me where to send them. Then he threw the money on the table and ran off. I saw him later with a woman and a group of men with tattoos like his. He was carrying a little girl.”

  “What did the woman look like?”

  “Heavyset, but pretty. Dirty blond hair.”

  “Tattoos?”

  “No.” She shook her head, remembering. “I figured he took off so quickly because he didn’t want his buddies to know about the beads.”

  Was this why Melody stayed with him? Because after he beat her, he tried to make up for it by giving her gifts?

  “Where did he want you to send them?” I asked.

  “It was a house. Or I guess it was. I can’t remember the street.”

  I told her Melody’s address, but Sherri shook her head. “I don’t think so. It wasn’t—I don’t think it was in Denver.”

  “Mrs. Kane, I need that address. It’s important. The woman and little girl you saw might be in danger.”

  “From whoever killed Elise?” Her eyes went wide. “You mean he’s Elise’s killer? That’s why you have a sketch of him? You’re saying that I made beads for a murderer?”

  I let my silence speak for itself.

  She went white beneath her delicate sprinkling of freckles. “The address definitely wasn’t in Denver. It was one of those little towns out east. Wiggins, maybe. Yes, I think it was Wiggins. I remember wondering why anyone would live in a place like that where there’s just nothing.” She stared at me with huge eyes. “Oh, my God.”

  Roald Hoffreider had seen Alfred Merkel in a biker bar in a little town east of Denver. Wiggins was sixty-six miles out of Denver, right on a line run by Denver Pacific.

  “Did I help?” Sherri asked.

  “You helped a lot, Mrs. Kane.”

  After Sherri left, I used Nik’s computer to search for an address belonging to any Merkels in Wiggins, Colorado. Nothing. I scanned the records of other small towns in case Sherri was wrong about the location. Brush. Fort Morgan. Points further east.

  Nothing.

  I looked at Clyde. “You’re a tracker dog. Where does that son of a bitch go to ground?”

  Clyde pricked his ears but had nothing to offer.

  Today was February 21. Ten years to the day that Jazmine had gone missing. I stared out the window for a few minutes, thinking about Gentry and where he might be. For the heck of it, I looked online for milestones relating to the rise of Nazism.

  Two things popped out. In February 1920, the German Workers Party became the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party. Otherwise known as the Nazi party.

  Then in February of 1933, civil rights in Germany were suspended, and the Nazi party was given emergency powers. The long, slow roll to genocide began.

  For the first time I wondered if Jazmine’s disappearance hadn’t been a simple act of opportunity. Maybe the timing had been more significant.

  I flashed to the swastika I’d seen on Nik’s porch when I brought the news about Elise. The vandalized welcome mat. Had Alfred Merkel and the Royer Boys been sending Gentry a warning to keep silent? Had Gentry, with the anniversary approaching, given Merkel a reason to think he was going to go to the police with what he knew? Had he, along with Thomas Brown, been working with Elise?

  Those two always had something to jabber about lately, seems like, Nik had told me.

  Had the Royer Boys taken Gentry to silence him? Just as they’d silenced Elise?

  I jumped to my feet and ran into the hallway. “Nik!”

  Grams looked out from the kitchen. “What are you hollering about, Sydney Rose?”

  “Where’s Nik?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean?” I followed her back into the kitchen. “Where?”

  “You think he’d be bothered to tell us?” She picked up a knife and continued to chop beets. “Walked out like he had the devil on his back. Left his phone, too. Said he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “Damn it. He’s gone after the Royer Boys. He’s going to get himself killed.”

  Grams lowered the knife and turned to me.

  “What are you talking
about, Sydney Rose?”

  “Elise was trying to get those boys to come clean about something they’d done. I think Gentry was helping her. That’s why someone spray-painted that swastika on Nik and Ellen Ann’s porch. As a warning to Gentry to stay quiet.”

  “Elise said she was working with skinheads,” she said. “And Gentry was helping her. I thought she was teaching them scripture, taking Gentry along as a bodyguard.”

  “Does Nik know how to find them?”

  “The Royer Boys? It’s been years, Sydney Rose. Those boys are long gone from these parts.” She narrowed her eyes in sudden understanding. “You’re saying they’re back? Is this about that little girl disappeared all those years ago?”

  I spun on my heel, headed toward the front door.

  “Nik calls or comes home,” I said over my shoulder, “you tell him I’ve gone to Wiggins.”

  Grams followed me to the front door. Outside, flurries spit from a leaden sky. Across the street, a neighbor worked a snowblower. I pushed my feet into my boots.

  “We couldn’t get your coat clean.” Grams opened the closet door and pulled out a black wool coat, a hat, and a pair of gloves. “Ellen Ann says for you to use these.”

  I removed my railway hat, hung it on a hook near the door, and pulled on the stocking cap. Took the gloves and tucked them in the coat pocket. “Tell her thanks.”

  “Find her killer, Sydney Rose. Do what you have to do. And find Gentry and Nik. Bring those fools home.”

  “I will.” Thinking of what Ellen Ann had said outside the bedroom door earlier, I blurted, “I’m not weak, Grams.”

  She squinted up at me through still-bright eyes, her sinewy body as solid and reliable as the oak she resembled. Years ago, when I was a child, she would take me on long walks in the woods. Out there, among the pines and aspens of the higher mountains, her eyes held a leap of wildness in them, as if she carried some elemental magic. I was a little afraid of her.

  “You have both your father and mother inside you,” she said to me now. “And Lord knows they had their share of weakness. But you’re different. When the crap they pulled taught you to hold back, I just figured you’d step into yourself when you were ready.” She tucked a strand of hair under my cap. “Leastways, that’s what I thought until that damn war came along and took something bright and strong out of you. Maybe it’s time to get it back.”

  “What if I’m like my ma, Grams?” I thought of Sarge’s blood in my kitchen. Thought of Wallace Cooper and my mother, arguing by the train before the law said she pushed him. “What if something terrible happens when I stop holding back?”

  “Could be your worst self is also your best.” Gently, she pressed her palm to my heart, bringing both warmth and pain. “Maybe you shouldn’t fear so much what you got inside.”

  I laid my hand on hers. She twined her fingers through mine and placed her head on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent, the smell of mysterious things gone quiet with age. Like an old bear, hibernating under winter’s depths.

  Then she stepped away, and the moment passed.

  “Be tough out there,” she said.

  She held my coat open. Painfully I twisted to slide my right arm into the sleeve and then my left. My wrist caught on the cuff, and a spark of pain radiated out from my elbow.

  And at that very moment, thinking only of a coat, I had it.

  Melody Weber.

  CHAPTER 24

  Hemingway said that in modern war, you will die like a dog for no good reason.

  But sometimes you don’t die. And there’s no good reason for that, either.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  I sat in the car with the engine off while snow feathered the hood. Clyde gnawed on his rawhide as I went through the photos again, looking for things I hadn’t known to look for earlier.

  Elise’s bedroom and the wooden bowl of hobo beads. When I zoomed in, I could just make out a painted red heart on one of them.

  Whip hadn’t killed Elise. He’d had a crush on her. And Melody had known about it.

  I flipped through to the front room. Two glasses of milk sat on the dining table, one untouched. Did it belong to Liz, who was unable to drink because she’d known what was coming? Or was it Melody’s, who’d had other things on her mind? The crime lab hadn’t gotten a hit on the prints because Melody and Liz weren’t in the system.

  The third glass was on the kitchen counter, tipped over and dribbling milk into the sink. Elise’s. I’d missed its importance before, figured it for part of the general messiness in Elise’s apartment. But now I had no doubt the crime lab would find traces of oxycodone there to match what they’d found in Elise’s blood.

  Finally, I zoomed in on the coats hanging by the door. I flashed back to my conversation at Hogan’s Alley two mornings ago with Melody Weber. I’d asked her about the coat I’d given her, and she’d told me it was in the tent. But it had been damn cold at Hogan’s Alley that day.

  Melody’s coat hadn’t been in the tent.

  She’d left it at Elise’s.

  Melody Weber and Liz had paid Elise a visit. Elise had offered her guests milk. Melody had slipped the oxycodone into Elise’s milk, then dragged the unconscious woman into her bedroom, where—in her rage over Whip—she’d stabbed Elise to death.

  All while her little girl sat in the next room, fingers curled around her phone. Cohen had told me it was someone young who’d called in Elise’s death. Had Liz thought about calling the police while her mother was busy with Elise? Considered it again while Melody was in the bathroom washing up and staring at the cut on her face that I, a few hours later, would bandage for her? Had Liz finally summoned her courage once they were safely away at the hobo camp and her mother was sleeping it off?

  It’s the ones who love us, hurt us the most.

  Almost certainly Whip had learned what his girlfriend had done and delivered the beating that Melody said she deserved. But he hadn’t reported her. Instead, he’d scattered Tucker’s hobo beads in the room, knowing—as he did—that Tucker was on his way home. He’d protected her.

  I pulled on my headset, picked up my phone and dialed Cohen. It went straight to voicemail.

  “Call me,” I said. “Tucker Rhodes is innocent. I can prove it. And—” I hesitated for the briefest of moments. “I stole some pages out of Jazmine’s file. To protect a friend. I was wrong.”

  I disconnected, my heart beating as fast as if I’d said the words to Cohen’s face. I am a thief. I am without honor.

  Seemed like I was getting pretty good at hammering nails into the coffin of everything that mattered to me.

  I turned the ignition, and the engine roared to life. A sudden gust bitch-slapped the truck, and down the street a metal hubcap clattered along the curb. Clyde dropped his chew toy and rose fast in the passenger seat, ears and tail up, bumping into the ceiling.

  Gently I pressed his rump down.

  “We’re still good, boy,” I told him. “You should be happy. Today we’re hunting bad guys.”

  Clyde eyeballed me for a minute then settled back into the seat and watched out the window. After a moment he retrieved his rawhide.

  One more phone call, this time to the shelter where Melody and Liz had gone two days earlier.

  “Trish, it’s Sydney,” I said when she answered. “I need to ask about that backpack left by Liz Weber.”

  “What do you need to know?” Trish asked warily.

  “What’s in there. I know, I know,” I said when she started to protest. “Just accidentally spill it while you’re moving it. Liz could be in danger.”

  “What? Sydney, what’s going on?”

  “I can’t tell you anything right now. Just do it.”

  “Okay. I’ve got the backpack. Woops! Oh, darn, I dropped everything on the bed.”

  I waited while Trish listed the contents.

  “A T-shirt and jeans. A Barbie doll in a tutu. A little ceramic cat with a broken tail. Let’s see. A cell
phone. Two pieces of candy. A feather and some pebbles. A key. That’s everything.”

  I stared out at the fresh snow gathering on the grass, and I thought about the ceramic cats on Elise’s bedroom shelf. A tide of ugly rose inside me. “Tell me about the key.”

  “Silver. Plain. Standard size. A single hole at the top for a key chain. A house key, I’d guess.”

  “Okay. Take a look at the phone.”

  “It’s a typical flip phone.”

  “I need you to look at the list of calls.”

  “You’re sure this might save Liz’s life?”

  “Your name will never come into this, Trish. Take a look.”

  “Hold on. Okay, there.” A pause. “Sydney, the last number dialed is nine-one-one.”

  “When?”

  “Two days ago at, let’s see, seven thirty-one a.m.”

  How had that tiny stick of a girl screwed up the courage to call for help?

  “Who does Liz have in her contact list?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s empty. And everything under recent calls has been deleted except that nine-one-one call.”

  Shit. “Thanks, Trish. You’ve been a huge help.”

  “Find her, Sydney.”

  “I will.” Promises left and right. I hoped I could keep them.

  I tried Cohen again, and again it went to voicemail. I opened my bag. Sarge’s Colt gleamed within the dark confines. I removed it, chambered a round, and returned it, cocked and locked, to the bag.

  “Looks like it’s you and me, Marine,” I said to Clyde.

  Picking up on my excitement, Clyde barked.

  “Game on,” I told him, and put the truck in gear.

  Wind shook the truck.

  The snow had changed over to sleet as we left Denver behind. Now, ahead of us, the light lay flat and gray. In the rearview, storm clouds massed on a dark horizon. I switched on the radio.

  “. . . what may be the storm of the century. We’re already seeing snow in some areas, sleet further east. Could be a foot or more of new snow on top of what the last two storms laid down. It’ll be worse for you folks out east. Might be as much as three feet in Brush and Fort Morgan by the time this storm is done. Finish what you’re doing, people, and get home early. We’ve got snowplows out there. But they won’t be able to keep up with Mother Nature. Hold on to your hats.”