Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  Sol knew he didn’t look much like the guy on his railroad police ID tag, but nobody was really paying attention to him, least of all the cops. Ignoring their low talk—new regulations for overtime, wasn’t this turning out to be a bitch—he swirled the coffee in his Styrofoam cup, hoping to leech some warmth from it, because his leather gloves were too thin for Nebraska when the wind was up. He pulled his knit cap down low over his dark brows, knowing that he looked enough like a railroad cop for a cursory glance.

  Lifting his eyes to make a brief survey of the gray and rust-colored railcars in the bleak morning light, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, if you didn’t count the body at his feet. He wondered who this guy had been to get on the wrong side of a train. He half-hoped it was just a drifter or a suicide, but there had been too many deaths at this yard in too short a time for anything as simple as that.

  Last week, it had been a different body here at Bailey Yard: an older guy, blue eyes staring at nothing, dead inside a parked freight car, head smashed in. Biggest goddamn railyard in the world, bound to get some deaths, especially in winter. Drifters froze to death all the time, had cargo shift on them, mistimed a jump. Nothing to put in the papers, not unless the bodies started to pile up. Not unless the dead guy was a retired teacher who had no reason to be in the yard. Not unless it was the second strange death in December. The first body had been an accountant, newly moved to the North Platte area and he’d had no business in the yard, either.

  This one today, the third, had been an average-sized Caucasian man, thrift store wardrobe, middle-aged probably, hard to tell. Less than twenty bucks in his front pocket, no sign of ID or keys. Not much left of the head, smashed like a suburban pumpkin left out too long after Halloween. Sort of body you had to scoop off the tracks using a shovel and pan. The temperature would help with that, he had cause to know, would make things more solid, all the bits and pieces, all the stuff that usually slid around on a warm day, that made picking up a body more like chasing jelly across a table with a spoon. He watched the forensics team throw a sheet, poor dumbass had left a nasty corpse, the kind of thing no one wanted to look at for long. One of the yard switchers had lost his breakfast, much to the amusement of the cops.

  “Hey!” A short local cop, gray hair in disarray—should have a hat, idiot—shouted across the tracks over the sound of the trains. They hadn’t shut down the yard, of course, too much coming in and going out here, running east to west, to Chicago and the Great Lakes on the one hand, California and the Pacific on the other. “Hey, you, there! Wanna lend me a hand? What’s your name?”

  Sol sauntered over, took a quick glug of his tepid coffee. Hell, he was used to cold coffee. Maybe railroad cops got to finish coffee while it was still hot, but he sure as hell never had the chance. Always some emergency. “Osborne,” he said, though it was printed on his tag, easy to read unless you were blind. Or an asshole. Sol suspected this guy was both, which suited him just fine. “What do you need?”

  “Well, Osborne,” dripping with condescension, “I could use a light,” while he fished out a deck of smokes from his pocket.

  Sol tilted his head, a half-smile touching his chapped lips. Too early for this shit, really. He’d been up for more than twenty-four hours already, the last three on the road, getting here. North Platte was a long drive from Denver. It had taken him a few minutes to steal a tag, as well. He shrugged with one shoulder, dipping his head in a way he knew most people took to be deferential. “Sorry. Those things’ll kill you.”

  The cop swore, jammed the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, unlit. “You’re new? Haven’t seen you around before.”

  Sol didn’t answer, moved him off with flattery instead. “Thank God you’re here. You city cops must see this kind of stuff all the time. What do you think happened here?”

  The cop grimaced, gestured to the body as though Sol hadn’t noticed it. “No wallet this time. Maybe a mugging gone wrong? Missed the bills in the pocket, useless fucks. Gotta be connected to the others.” He peered at Sol, who looked away, hoped he looked cold and bored. “You’re a railroad cop. What does this look like to you?”

  Sol wondered what the cop would do if he told him what was on his mind. Over the years, he’d seen a lot of dead bodies. Most were pretty run-of-the-mill. But some were what he’d call the oddly dead. People dying out of place, dying in terror. A different look in their eyes, not the mild surprise of most corpses. The oddly dead were killed by ghosts, bitter spirits bent on revenge. But today’s body? No eyes to look surprised or terrified or anything, not much of a head to speak of, either.

  Sol shrugged. “The other two, last week? They were murdered, hit on the head with a blunt object. This one, he was hit by a train. Probably a rail rider screwing up a jump.” Sol paused. “Not the same thing as the others.” Improbably, he was disappointed.

  “Well, aren’t you an informed sonofabitch? You think this is an accident? Why the fuck am I here, then?”

  This wasn’t the sort of question you answered, so Sol shrugged again. Let the cop do his thing, if he could. It wasn’t something he was going to interfere with. Let him run this any old way he liked. Sol crumpled his empty cup, shoved it in the deep pocket of his parka, hunched over his shoulders, drew himself in, became the kind of guy that could escape notice if that’s what he wanted.

  One last look, just to make sure. He was here for the same reason as the cops: too many deaths to be mere coincidence. It just happened that he was looking for ghosts, not living murderers. Returning to the body, now wrapped like the world’s shittiest present, Sol inserted himself between two suits from the Tower, bent down and flipped the sheet back, revealing a mangled hand. Bruised and swollen almost beyond recognition, two fingers missing, scattered, squashed or eaten by crows. A wonder no one had spotted the body before now; this guy had been dead for at least twenty-four hours. Sol had been keeping tabs on North Platte emergency calls for the last week; his regular work took him in and out of Denver hospitals, where access to such information was easy. The first report of a body had come at 4:30 that morning, just as he was finishing his shift. He’d driven fast.

  He didn’t touch anything. In and out, he reminded himself. An accident was the obvious explanation, the easy one. But nothing was easy, not with Sol, not for him, because he then noticed something he’d missed before: the mangled hand was curled upwards, almost in appeal, the blackened forefinger crooked, the thumb folded under, the remaining fingers like the bulbous roots of some tuberous plant pulled unresisting from the soil.

  There might be a ghost working this part of the tracks, but this isn’t a ghost’s work, not this one.

  The hand’s gesture was not random, not how rigor mortis usually set things. Fingers in a pattern, one he recognized. He could almost see the motion that went with it, had to stop his own cold hand from making it in response.

  Hit by a train, yes, but no accident.

  Sol straightened. He had seen enough and knew that he should back off now before the cops starting asking him questions. He took orders for five coffees and walked slowly over to the Tower in the distance. The gravel crunched and shifted under his boots, and Sol worried the lighter in his pocket, thinking about which of the many possible warding gestures the dead man’s hand had been making, given the missing fingers. He didn’t know enough about the prevention of evil, only half-remembered fairy tales and late-night swamp stories. The gesture hadn’t warded against whatever had killed this guy, of course, but that wasn’t the point.

  The point was that there’d been something to ward against.

  A day dead, at least. Making a ward. Knowing how to make a ward. How many people knew how to do that? Too late to round up this guy’s ghost, probably long gone, anyway. Bien shit, around this yard, ghosts were the problem in the first place, weren’t they?

  He walked right past the white railroad police Bronco parked outside the Tower, unclipping the police tag as he approached workers who might recognize the name or the blurry p
hoto. There was a shift change going on, plenty of people around, coming and going, so he slipped out the yard via the tourist store where they sold Guinness Book of World Records books open to the Bailey Yard entry. He smiled at the girl behind the counter.

  “Did you catch up to the morning tour?” she asked, absently straightening her name badge, drawing his eyes down.

  “Yeah, I caught up with them, me,” he returned. He put Osborne’s ID tag on the counter. “Found this on the tracks. One of your guys musta dropped it.” He smiled slowly. “This is some place you got here, Katie.”

  She was young enough to blush. “You come back anytime.”

  “I will, chère.” Sol paused for a moment, suddenly tired beyond belief. With a farewell grin, he slowly took the steps to the parking lot, let gravity help him out.

  His truck was an elderly Jeep Wagoneer, one black door still sporting the wood panel, rust and peeling paint held together with gray bondo. After he climbed up and in, he swiped off his cap and lit a cigarette from the deck on the dashboard. The engine turned over with a roar, and Sol waited for it to warm up, thinking about what excuse he’d offer Robbie this time.

  She had waited up for him, which didn’t help anything, because Sol had been gone for the better part of two days, and that meant she was tired as well as pissed off.

  Out the Wagoneer, one hand on the gate, and the dog started up, baying piteously, recognizing the sound of the slammed door, maybe. Sold out by the dog. Merci beaucoup, Renard. Sol wasn’t across the threshold, wasn’t even up the steps, before the front door opened and Robbie was there, worn housecoat over flannel pajama bottoms and one of his old t-shirts, arms crossed, hair uncombed and long down her back. Christ, he was tired, but he did love a woman in flannel.

  Maybe she’d forgotten how he felt about flannel, but he doubted it. The dog burst out the door, a blur of white and tan and black. Robbie paused, maybe a little unsure of his crooked grin.

  “Beausoleil,” his full name, which she stretched out into bo-so-laaaaaay, and he knew he was in deep shit. “What was it this time?”

  “You’re gonna catch your death of cold, Roberta Mack,” he returned, held his arms away from his body as though to tell her he was unarmed. He came up the snow-drifted walk, each step crunching. The snow had started as he’d crossed the border into Colorado, the foothills dusted with powder, not golden and glowing, not at this time of year.

  Robbie cocked her head, gun-hammer sharp. “Your shift ended at five. It’s now past friggin’ lunchtime, Sol. You don’t call. You don’t tell me your plans. Where the hell have you been?”

  She didn’t usually provide him with a laundry list. Sol bent one knee and Renard licked his face with the same enthusiasm he’d have shown a dropped pork chop. “North Platte,” he said wearily, knowing the reaction. He’d been a couple of times over the last while, once for each railyard death. He hadn’t told her that part of it; it occurred to him that she probably thought he had a woman in Nebraska.

  Robbie gestured with one hand: You’re insane, I give up, Go screw yourself. All of the above. She turned into the clapboard house and slammed the door. The beagle’s head jerked around, spotting a jay in the neighbor’s scrubby pine, and Renard abandoned Sol with a running ruff of sheer pleasure.

  A moment, the dog gone through the open gate, and Sol stood alone on the icy cement walk. He sighed, rubbed a hand across his head, dusting off snow, drawing black hair into little tufts. Another call from the pound, doubtlessly. With slow, deliberate steps, he mounted the stairs, and knew his luck wasn’t quite out, because Robbie had only closed the door, she hadn’t locked it.

  * * *

  The shift went by fast. Ten hours on four hours sleep ought to have been torture, but it was busy as hell, the usual Friday night gong show. An ALS call for chest pain, an OD/psych, one fall at a nursing home, another in a bar, an MVA, another psych, this one at dawn, after the snow had stopped falling. Along East Colfax every other person thought they were Elvis at four in the morning, at least it seemed that way to Sol.

  The hospital was jumping, and they had to wait around after the tavern fall, check in with the Denver cops. More paperwork, but it wasn’t Sol’s turn, so he didn’t much care about the wait. He preferred hanging with his patient to pushing a pen, even if it meant having the same conversation five times over with Elvis, something about being cheated out of overtime pay and some guy standing way too close at the bus stop.

  While his partner was taking a leak and they were waiting for dispatch to clear them for leaving, Sol used the phone at Admitting to call the police station in North Platte. Sol gave his partner’s name and ID number, knowing it would check out on their system, and the cop would already know from call display that he was phoning from Denver Health. Besides, he thought, juggling the phone while taking another sip of coffee, it was amazing what they’d tell you when you worked in EMS.

  No identification on the body, not yet, no leads. What’s your interest, son?

  He cleared his throat and lied, said they’d had a similar death in the Denver Yard not two months ago and he wondered if there was a connection. Better than telling the cop that a rogue ghost was killing people along the tracks, Sol supposed. He was then told, in so many words, to get the hell off the phone, they could handle their own cases, thank you very much. Except the cop didn’t say thank you.

  Sol flipped his partner for the last of the shift’s paperwork, lost, and sat in the medic’s room, smelling someone else’s microwaved meal while he turned a leaking ballpoint pen in his fingers. His stomach growled, causing laughter among the morning shift—you hungry, Sarrazin? Get that girl to feed you, you look like you need it. He showered, changed, his body not yet ready to rest, days off looming like Christmas.

  A raw bacon-streaked dawn spread across the plains and lit the Front Range all pink, a special show for the morning commute. He drove the Wagoneer slowly back to the suburb of Aurora, past the crumbling Chuck E. Cheese and the half-vacant strip malls, turned down Robbie’s street. It had been the address on his driver’s license for the past two years and he still thought of it as Robbie’s street, not his. He sat in the truck after he turned off the ignition, not sure he was tired enough to sleep.

  Renard had returned, or been returned, and slobbered Sol with indiscriminate love as soon as he was through the door. Sol pushed him back down, heading for the kitchen. Robbie would be at the salon by now, so he didn’t bother to take off his heavy parka or his boots. He wrenched open the fridge, got a beer, and continued to the dim workshop out back. Might as well keep busy until he got too tired to see; the motorbike Baz had left in pieces last visit to Denver wasn’t going to put itself back together. That had been four months ago. Sol had no idea when Baz would roll through town again, and he was fed up seeing the machine strewn across the work table like old roadkill. Might as well get it done.

  His heart thudded uncertainly—I should rest—but he snapped on the heater anyway, blew into his hands. The workshop had been the back porch once, and had been converted to a mudroom long before Robbie had taken up the lease. It wasn’t insulated, made for a cold work place. The light was bad, too, just one small window high up, so he turned on the clamp lamp above the table, drank the beer slowly as he planned his attack.

  The dog was relegated to the kitchen, whines and scratches be damned. Sol wasn’t wanting company. The world was too damn noisy most of the time. He finished the beer, set down the empty next to his tools, ran fingers over them, so cold to the touch they almost burned. He picked up a socket wrench, flipped its weight experimentally in his hand.

  “You always fixed things for him,” came from the corner, in the shadows behind the makeshift shelving unit scavenged from the hospital. Cans of used paint, boxes of obsolete electrical wires, the summer tires for the Wagoneer. Voice so known it was almost like talking to yourself.

  Sol dropped the wrench and it clattered to the workbench. “Christ,” he hissed. “Dammit, Dad, why don’t you call fi
rst?”

  The shadow moved behind the shelves and Sol turned half away, anger boiling up like a shaken bottle of Coke. He bit the inside of his mouth, hard. How long had it been? A year, more than a year. He couldn’t remember, had maybe blocked it out.

  “You don’t pick up, you,” Aurie said. “And machines…” He trailed off and Sol heard the shrug.

  Sol wanted another beer, but then he’d have to invite the man in, and that wasn’t in the cards. In the kitchen, he heard Renard growl, paw the door. He kicked the wood lightly, annoyed, exhaled sharply through his nose. “What do you want?”

  Doors and locks meant nothing to Aurèle Sarrazin, so Sol didn’t have to ask how he’d gotten in. Aurie moved on catfeet, always had, so Sol had to look to see where he was. Still in shadow. The room was so cold Sol could see his own breath, which was coming fast.

  “These suburbs, they all look the same, gars. I got turned around. I passed alotta time getting here. Some cold cold, this town. Never been such a great a place, here.” And it would have been so easy to stop him, then, with a word, with a gesture. With a comment thrown like a circus performer’s knife. Sol held his breath instead, willing calm.

  “I like it just fine,” he replied, crossing his arms.

  The shadow shrugged again—if you say so. “You like your girl just fine, you mean. Not this place.” Aurie laughed, dark and amused. “J’ai besoin de ton aide, mon gars. I gotta job—”

  Sol had heard enough. “I have a job. I don’t want your job. I don’t want your kind of job.”

  Aurie sighed, and Sol knew that sound too. “You already got my job, toi. What, you think I don’t see you this morning at the railyard? Non, reste calme. This isn’t a job comme ça.”

  He had been at the railyard? Full of damn surprises, him. But Aurie rarely ventured anything, and he wasn’t coming out from behind the shelving. Sol grew quiet, waiting. “Quoi? Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”