Dead Stop

by Barbara Nickless

  “Hey, Parnell? You okay?”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Stern’s number again. Straight to voice mail.

  I looked up at the engineer. He squinted down at me.

  “I’m going in,” I said. “Tell the cops when they get here.”

  “To hell with that. You go, I go.”

  I knew that unless I handcuffed him to my truck, Albers would follow me. I considered the fact that he was a civilian and weighed it against the sudden, urgent need to find Stern.

  Albers was one of the toughest men I knew. He once single-handedly took down three members of a railroad gang who tried to hop his train. Albers coldcocked two of them before they knew he was there, and had the third cowering in a boxcar by the time the police arrived.

  And that was just one of the stories I’d heard.

  “You still carry a gun, Albers?” I asked.

  “Do I still carry a gun?” He laughed and bent to pat his ankle. “Does a duck have wings?”

  CHAPTER 26

  “We’ve all been at least a little broken by the world. But the world only notices when we try to hurt it back.”

  —Conversation with Special Agent Mac McConnell.

  “You’re shitting me,” Albers said in a loud whisper as we headed into the yard. “The punk’s a killer?”

  “He’s murdered a lot of people, Albers,” I said. “This isn’t a lark. I have no idea if he’s still nearby or not. You sure you don’t want to wait for the cops?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Fuck that. You go without me, I’ll just follow you.”

  “You’re more Marine than a Marine.”

  “I’m one better. I’m a redneck.”

  The next round of storms was rolling in over the Rocky Mountains as Albers, Clyde, and I walked west. Distantly, thunder boomed. Outside of that, the yard was quiet. The three of us seemed to be the only living creatures anywhere within shouting distance.

  The vast, anonymous sprawl of boxes and railcars stretched silently around us. Intermodal traffic consists of goods transported in enclosed containers that are moved by ship, rail, or truck—usually a combination of all three. Electronics from Taiwan, machinery from China, furniture from Asia—they are all ferried around the world via intermodal containers. In the DPC intermodal yard, straddle lifts load and unload the containers, transferring them from one train to another.

  Expedient. Efficient. Practical. But here in Denver, the intermodal system created a thousand different places where someone could hide a victim or stash a body. I pulled my gun and kept an eye on Clyde—he knew we were on the hunt, but he hadn’t caught scent of anything yet.

  “It’s gonna start flooding any day now,” Albers said, still whispering. “I seen enough of this kind of crap. You weren’t even a gleam in your daddy’s eyes when the Big Thompson Canyon flood happened. It was July then, too, back in 1976. That summer was just like this one. Everything dry as a bone until suddenly it wasn’t. A hundred and forty-four people died.”

  I paused next to an idle train. “This one yours?”

  “Nah. Mine’s two lines over.”

  We crossed the tracks to Albers’s train. As soon as we rounded the locomotive, Clyde’s ears pricked and his nose came up. I was right there with him—a sudden chill lifted goose bumps on my skin. In addition to my fear for Stern, I now had that feeling of being watched that made every Marine and cop want to find a bunker and a .50 cal machine gun.

  “My basement flooded once,” Albers said.

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him down to a crouch. “Albers, I love you, but you need to shut up.”

  My mind shot back to the schedule I’d reviewed that morning on my laptop. The intermodal yard was quiet today. A train had gone out at dawn, but nothing other than Albers’s train was due to roll in or out until later that night. Distantly, traffic whizzed past on the interstate, while closer by, cars zipped along on local surface roads. But here, it was silent save for the wind rattling the chain-link fence and the continual rumble of distant thunder.

  But Stern was here, I was sure of it. Maybe hurt. Maybe dying. Maybe dead.

  She and her unborn child.

  “Where’s the graffiti?” I asked.

  “Fifty cars down, maybe.”

  “Okay. Let’s go. Stay right behind me. All eyes, all ears.”

  We rose and started walking again.

  My gaze moved from the train to Clyde, then to the nearest train sitting two tracks over. The sense of being watched now registered as a shard of ice that pushed against the base of my brain, a raw warning I couldn’t ignore. The reptilian part of me wanted to hide beneath the train—a potentially fatal urge.

  Halfway down the train, Albers tapped my arm and pointed as we neared yet another stack of intermodal containers atop a flatbed car.

  But Clyde and I were looking at the ground. Clyde had gone rigid.

  Pressed into the mud was a line of animal tracks, just like we’d seen at Esta’s house. The wolf dog. The ice at the base of my skull now spread along the channels of my brain, and the hair rose on my arms as my flesh tried to retract to somewhere safe.

  Albers elbowed me. “You gonna look at the tagging?”

  I tore my eyes from the paw prints and followed his gaze up. Add climbing to Roman’s list of skills. The graffiti was on the top container, roughly fifteen feet up. The words were written in a dull reddish-brown, the color of dried blood. A perfect accompaniment to the message.

  HEAV’N HAS NO RAGE LIKE LOVE TO HATRED TURN’D

  Albers had a look of reluctant admiration on his face. “Fucker can climb.”

  “Albers,” I said. “I need you to focus. There’s a wolf dog somewhere nearby.”

  “Say what?” He looked at the tracks and grinned. “Target practice.”

  We made our way west along the train, while my sense of unease grew until it was as palpable as the storm making its steady way toward us. My gut—and Clyde—were telling me that everything was wrong. That the killer hadn’t left. That the wolf dog was nearby. Worst of all was the death fear—Clyde’s drooping tail and unhappy expression had me convinced that Veronica Stern was past saving.

  Clyde lowered his head and sniffed at some dark splotches in the dirt. His hackles rose.

  I squatted to peer underneath the cars. Nothing. I raised an arm and pushed Albers against the train and placed my mouth near his ear.

  “It’s blood. Call for an ambulance. Then hunker down by the train and wait. We’ll be right back.”

  He looked for a minute like he’d fight me, then reluctantly gave me a thumbs-up. Clyde and I moved forward.

  Two units down, a well car sat empty in the soft light of the western sun—there had been a change in the lading, or a shipment that hadn’t come through. The car looked like a gap in an otherwise full smile. As I drew closer, I saw another spatter of red along the car’s bright-yellow side.

  Clyde and I walked fast down the line, my eyes on Clyde for signs that we had company. His skin shuddered with the death fear. At the edge of the last intermodal container before the empty car, I signaled him to stop and peered around the immense box.

  Veronica Stern was tied to a pair of wooden crossbeams, her arms and legs spread-eagled on the giant X. Roman had leaned the crossbeams at a steep angle against the containers sitting on the next car so that Stern’s death looked like a crucifixion. Her head sagged against her chest, but I could see that her throat had been slashed—the amount of blood precluded any hope she was still alive. That, and the ruined flesh of her abdomen. Roman Quinn had made sure his half sibling would never enter the world.

  I closed my eyes for just a moment, my hand to my heart.

  Clyde stiffened. At the sound of footsteps behind me, I whirled, gun up.

  Albers, looking sheepish.

  “Can’t cover you from two cars down,” he said. He looked past me, caught a glimpse of Stern, and pulled back.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Son of a motherfu
cking bitch.”

  Knowing there was nothing we could do for Stern, I hurried us back in the direction of my truck.

  “Shouldn’t we, like, stay with her or something?” Albers whispered.

  In the far distance, sirens shrieked.

  “She won’t be alone for long,” I said.

  We were still far from the truck when I heard a thin, high crack, and a hole appeared in the side of the nearest container.

  “Get on the other side!” I shouted to Albers as a second shot rang out. “Go!”

  Albers gave a soft grunt, but he moved fast.

  The container cars sat too low on the tracks for us to crawl under them. Albers scrabbled over the drawbar as Clyde hopped up onto the narrow platform at the end of the car and I clamored after him. Vaguely, I registered the screeching of startled birds. We dropped down on the other side as a third shot echoed around the yard, and metal pinged nearby.

  Then the world fell silent again save for Albers’s harsh panting. I crouched and peered around the edge of the container. On the far side of the yard, just outside the fence, a flock of starlings was resettling on the limbs of a cottonwood tree.

  “Damn,” Albers said.

  I dropped back down. “You okay?”

  “Jackass got me,” he said.

  I looked over. He had a hand pressed to his shoulder. Blood leaked through his fingers.

  “Let me see,” I said, relieved that we’d already called for an ambulance.

  “I’ll be fine.” At my look, he added, “He only clipped me. Find the shooter before he circles around.”

  “Stay down,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I signaled Clyde to stay. Then, hoping Roman still had his sights on the drawbar we’d crawled over, I ran past four cars, my gun tight in my hand. At the fifth car, I stopped and leaned around the edge of the container.

  No one tried to shoot my head off. I stretched on my stomach across the foot-wide platform next to the drawbar and surveyed the yard, trying to pinpoint where the shot had come from, looking first in the direction of the cottonwood tree.

  Nothing moved.

  We were near the south end of the yard. On my left, Albers’s train stretched into the distance. To my right, in the direction the shots had come from, the yard lay flat across empty tracks. Far to the west, past the end of the intermodal train, was a line of lift trucks with their attached cranes. And beyond that rose an eight-foot-high chain-link fence.

  On the other side of the fence, just visible in the distance, a wilderness of scrub oak and pine trees marked the end of DPC property.

  Roman Quinn would have had to enter the yard on foot. Which meant there were only two places he could have parked his car that were within half a mile of the yard. Figuring he would have wanted to get as close as possible to the train with a struggling or unconscious Stern, I placed my bet on the nearer street, Carmen Avenue, a quiet stretch of road on the other side of the small woodland. With the approaching sirens, my guess was that he was either headed in that direction now, or still waiting near the lift trucks, hoping to take one last shot if we popped into view.

  I returned to Clyde and Albers and crouched next to them. Albers was pale, his shirt soaked with blood. He was breathing like he’d run a marathon. But he was awake and alert, his gun on his lap. For a moment, I wanted to stop everything. Rewind the hour, the day. Squeeze my eyes shut, hunker down, and hide.

  I shook it off.

  “You doing okay?” I asked him.

  To the east, the police cars were now visible as flashes of red and blue.

  “I’m going to hurt the asshole who nailed me,” he said.

  I smiled. “Wait here,” I told him. “I’m guessing the killer parked on Carmen Avenue. I’m heading that way. Tell the cops when they get here.”

  “I’m coming with.”

  “The hell you are. Stay here and let the cops know where I’ve gone.”

  An angry look flitted across his face, but then he grimaced and his hand went to his shoulder. “Yes’m, boss lady.”

  Clyde and I went west at a fast, crouching run, keeping the train between us and Roman. For Roman to make his way from the lift trucks to the fence, he’d have to go a longer distance than I would. I hoped I could head him off. If I was ahead of him, I’d have to decide whether to wait for him near the street or to circle back around to the line of lift trucks.

  Briefly, I thought about the wolf dog, then pushed the image away. Clyde would let me know.

  At the end of the train, Clyde and I halted and I peered around the last car, my gun up in both hands.

  More silence.

  The chain-link fence was several hundred yards ahead of us. Beyond was the stretch of trees, and somewhere beyond that, Carmen Avenue. With shadows thickening toward night, much of the yard lay in shadow. I strained my eyes for a glimpse of motion, first among the trees, then around the lift trucks.

  There! A form slipped along the line of trucks, heading west, barely visible as night descended.

  From far behind me came the sound of car doors slamming and the shouts of men. Roman had heard them, too. He was moving fast. I watched for any other motion in the yard, but he appeared to be alone. Whatever his relationship with the wolf dog, the animal didn’t seem to be with him now.

  I signaled Clyde and he and I darted for the fence. Once there, we cut north, heading toward the cars. Clyde was as quiet as any cat; I did my best to match his soft tread.

  I lost Roman in the gloom, then heard the jangle of the chain-link fence. Clyde and I put on a final burst of speed. I flicked on my flashlight, and the beam captured a man straddling the top of the fence. I raised my gun, glad for the Glock’s seventeen-round capacity. I couldn’t kill Roman, because only he knew where he’d left Lucy. But I sure as hell could make him scream.

  “Freeze!” I yelled. “Or I will shoot your ass right now.”

  The man went still. As I played the flashlight over him, he turned his head and peered down at us in a way that reminded me of a bird of prey. Our eyes locked, and a spark of terror arced down my spine at the casual cruelty in his eyes. The genial Jack Hurley I’d met yesterday—with his book of poetry and feigned grief—was gone. In his place was a man capable of unspeakable savagery. A broken man who broke everything around him.

  I thought of the appetite I’d glimpsed in Hiram. Like father, like son—Roman Quinn was the wolf behind Jack Hurley’s mask.

  For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The man’s heels were snugged into the links and he kept a casual hold on the top rail. He’d slung the rifle over his left shoulder. Lying on the ground on the other side of the fence was a backpack; he must have tossed it over before starting up the fence.

  My adrenaline had spiked during the run, and now I shivered with it. “Roman Quinn,” I said. “Or should I call you Jack?”

  Roman looked eerily calm, even satisfied; another gratifying day in the killing fields.

  “Clever cop.” He nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Roman will do.”

  I thought of the paw print Clyde had found near Cohen’s house. The knowledge that this man had been watching Clyde and me, maybe watching Cohen, made the anger rise in my blood like boiling sap. My finger twitched on the trigger. Beside me, Clyde growled.

  “Congratulations on figuring out my true name,” Roman said. “That was a tangled web to unweave. You’ve been busy.”

  “Not half as busy as you. Killing babies and torturing old women.”

  Atop the fence, he shifted ever so slightly. “I’d like to defend myself. But I have more pressing matters.”

  “You make one move to escape and I’ll start with your kneecaps.”

  “It would be terrible if you missed. One stray bullet and Lucy will die alone. But not forgotten. I’m sure the entire city will turn out to mourn her.”

  Keep him talking. “But who will mourn you? Not your father.”

  Pain first, then rage. His face flushed with fury. “You want to swoop i
n and rescue her. Bring little Lucy home so you can live with yourself at night. Isn’t that right, Corporal Parnell? Lucy is just another excuse for you to play the hero.” He shook his head. “Cops and soldiers. How badly you wish to save the unsavable. And how often you fail.”

  My finger twitched against the trigger. But I’d noticed his word choice. Lucy will die. Which meant she was still alive. I focused on keeping my voice level. “I know exactly where to hit your spine to make sure you never walk again. And it’s tempting. So get down before I change my mind.”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. In the gathering darkness, he looked both insubstantial and frighteningly real. Like a phantom only recently made corporeal.

  Then the automatic lights popped on, a brilliant glow against the descending night. The wind shifted, rustling through the trees on the far side of the fence.

  “Final warning, Quinn,” I said. “Game over.”

  “You’re right about one thing. It is a game. But it’s far from over.” Roman pursed his lips and gave a loud whistle, then grinned at me without humor. “And now the game is about to get interesting. Tell me, Agent Parnell, how fast can you run? And more importantly, which way will you run? I can’t wait to learn who you choose. Will it be Lucy? Or your dog? We grow needlessly attached to our animals, don’t we? Even when they’re little more than tools.”

  A low growl rumbled out of the dark. The hair rose on the nape of my neck and my flesh went cold.

  The wolf dog.

  I aimed for Roman’s left knee and fired just as Clyde darted around me, slamming against my legs and knocking me off balance. My shot went wild, and in that instant, Roman swung his other leg over and leapt from the fence. At the bottom he paused; there was a look on his face of rage mixed with grief before he grabbed his backpack and disappeared into the gloom.

  I took a single step after him. But then Clyde growled, and the sound made my knees buckle. I’d never heard that odd cry from him, a snarl full of threat but also terrified. My bowels clenched and sweat popped on my skin.

  As if in slow motion, I turned. Clyde was ten feet ahead of me, bouncing on his paws like a prizefighter, his lips slicked back from his teeth, his haunches tight. Seventy pounds of taut muscle and sinewy awareness.