Plugged Nickel

by Eric

  Contents

  Praise-1

  Title Page-1

  Copyright-1

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Praise for Jake Hatch

  “Plugged Nickel is a good one. . . .The main attraction is the wonderful cast of ordinary but unique people. Campbell’s characters have the true ring of authenticity that distinguishes fine crystal from window glass.

  —— Cincinnati Post

  Campbell is a heckuva a storyteller;Plugged Nickel clickety-clacks along the tracks like a Burlington-Northern freight train.

  —— Criminal Record

  Praise for Edgar Award-Winning Author Robert Campbell

  “Campbell writes with wit and vigor. The comparison not unflattering is to Elmore Leonard.”

  —— Los Angeles Times

  “Robert Campbell is an awfully good writer.”

  —— Elmore Leonard

  “Robert Campbell is one of the most stylish crime writers in the business.”

  —— New York Times

  Praise for Edgar Award Winner

  The Junkyard Dog

  “Dialogue so breezy it stings your eyeballs, spirited characterizations of Jimmy’s proud ethnic neighbors, and the ward healer’s cocky defense of the old ways, the old politics . . . You can’t help liking Jimmy Flannery.”

  —— New York Times Book Review

  “This truly innovative private-eye character moves credibly through a brawling, tough-guy atmosphere in a plot that’s both twisty and witty.”

  —— ALA Booklist

  “Written in an appealing argot, this mystery has full characters, a satisfying ending and a nice balance of hardboiled action and romantic tenderness.”

  —— Publishers Weekly

  PLUGGED NICKEL

  Robert Campbell

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1988 Robert Campbell

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design © 2015 Ayeshire Publishing

  ONE

  It was four-twenty in the A.M. The rain was beating down like it wanted to flood the world. The California Zephyr out of Chicago, on the way to San Francisco/Oakland, was crawling around a sharp curve along the tracks of the Burlington Northern through an almost uninhabited, lonely stretch of road about twenty-five minutes outside McCook, Nebraska, thirty-five minutes away from Akron, Colorado, on the way to Denver.

  The whole train was asleep, the high rollers in the roomettes and compartments all tucked in, the working folks making do with the reclining chairs in coach, the railroad personnel asleep in the dormitory car, the few on duty dozing off sitting up but ready to respond if called.

  I was awake, looking at my face in the mirror created by the night outside the rain-streaked window. The runnels on the glass scarred the image, making me look twice my age. Which was about how old I felt. My eyes were burning, my feet hurt, and my collar felt tight even though the top button was undone.

  For God's sake, I probably had high blood pressure, the beginnings of varicose veins, and for sure, I needed glasses.

  I'm a railroad plainclothes cop working for Burlington Northern out of the Omaha office. I was aboard because it was me who caught the call from the station agent at Ottumwa, Iowa, the night before, warning us about some surly types that, in his opinion, might be riding on stolen tickets. So, at 10:45 P.M. I'd swung aboard and found out within fifteen minutes that the "surly types" were Baptist ministers on their way to some convention in Salt Lake City.

  I could've gotten off at Lincoln, Nebraska, around midnight, kipped down in the station, and caught the eastbound Zephyr back to Omaha around 5:30 A.M., but I decided I might as well go on to Fort Morgan, Colorado. I'd arrive there just about the same time. I have a friend, Janel Butterfield, lives just off the main highway about fifteen miles outside of Fort Morgan. If I could catch or beg a ride that early in the morning, I could be sitting down to one of Janel's country breakfasts around 6:30.

  I should've gotten off and gone home to Omaha. Then I wouldn't've become involved and had the bottom of my left ear shot off.

  Anyway, I was looking at my reflection, convincing myself I wasn't such a bad-looking fella after all, when the brakes grabbed the tracks, squealing like two hundred scalded cats and almost pushing me upstanding out of my seat.

  People were awake, mumbling, coughing, and complaining all over the coach. Right away I started thinking about what a miracle it would be if some sleeping passenger hadn't been dumped out of his or her chair or bed so hard that the road would be getting sued from one end of the line to the other.

  I grabbed my shearling coat and hat out of the overhead and hurried down the aisle to the end of the car, walking through three of them before spotting Halt Ennery, the conductor. He had his black rubber rain cape slung around his shoulders, his cap on his head, and a lantern in his hand. He was just sliding the door in the middle of the coach aside, apologizing to the passengers for letting the storm blow in on their blanket-covered legs, when I hurried up and asked what was going on.

  Being a train conductor is like being the captain of a seagoing vessel. Whatever out of the ordinary needs doing he ends up doing. Halt laid the lantern down, sat on the floor, turned around, and slid his legs over the side, looking up at me with a woeful glance that said he was too old to be dropping God-knew-how-far into God-knew-what on a dark night full of driving rain. He dangled out there, thrashing his legs around until he found some footing, then let go. I handed him his lantern, felt in my pocket for my own six-cell flashlight, and followed him through the door. Going out in that storm was like walking face-first into a hail of carpet tacks.

  "What happened?" I shouted, hoping for better results the second time I asked.

  "Somebody pulled the emergency."

  "Is that all you know?"

  "If I knew any more, Jake, you think I'd be going out in this goddamn stuff?" he shouted back. "Watch yourself, the road falls off steep along here."

  The roadbed had been built along a rocky ridge that ran through a stretch of wooded mountain that was beautiful when seen by day but was a hellish place at night in the driving rain. It fell off on both sides, one side a lot more than the other. I could hear rushing water, way down below off to my left, above the sound of the wind in the pines and the rain slashing cross wise across the land. The beam of my flashlight couldn't even reach the cut where the white water roared.

  If a person slipped down that embankment and didn't get caught lucky by some scraggly bush or twisted root, they'd end up in that rage of water and get tossed out somewhere on the other side of the Rockies.

  Starting to walk back toward the rear of the train, I saw Laws Ruskel, one of the two brakemen, hurrying along the ties, his red-faced lantern swaying like t
he tip of a wire-walker's balancing pole.

  I glanced back and could just about make out Halt trudging away from me, but I couldn't see anybody coming down the road from the engine end. Charlie Tichenor, the engineer, would stay in his cab, but Billy Turk, who tended the boilers, might have decided to come out and see what was up. If he had, he was out of my sight on the other side of the train like the other brakeman would be.

  Steam was pouring out of the discharge valves, spilling up off the roadbed like the heavy, lazy fog of dry ice around an ice cream freezer. I found myself wishing it was summer and Janel and me were off to the fair grounds for a picnic feed.

  "You better watch where you're walking," Laws yelled, just as I stumbled over something. I was about to turn around to give him hell for startling me and almost making me fall, when I looked down where the flashlight beam was cutting through the rain and saw the leg and foot. It looked almost foolish lying there, a leg in dark pants, black with rain, a foot wearing a white sock and a black shoe.

  I moved the flash and saw the other leg and foot.

  Laws came up to me.

  "Oh, my god," he said. "Should we try to get him out from under there?"

  "I don't really know," I said, my heart pounding in my neck like to choke me. "If he's still alive but bad hurt, moving him can do nothing but harm."

  While we went dithering on about it, Billy let out a yell from about a car length along the other side of the train. "I found something. Oh, dear Christ!"

  Billy wasn't given to such expressions of dismay, so this last remark was enough to make us run down to where the train was between him and us. We squatted down and I shone my flash under the carriage, hoping to get a look at whatever it was Billy was carrying on about.

  "There's half of somebody laying on the track over here," Billy shouted.

  There was a mangled mess on the rails and ties just about where the victim's belt should've been. There was nothing below it. Just a torso with the battered head turned aside and the arms flung out as though impaled on the tracks. It was a sight I'd rather not have seen.

  Laws saw it too and promptly turned away to leave his dinner on the side of the roadbed. I held on, watching him as he turned his face up to the rain and opened his mouth to wash it out. Then he wiped his face in the crook of his arm.

  I ran like hell back to the legs we'd found, Laws stumbling along behind me. I hunkered down with the flash and took a look at the condition of our discovery. I was looking at the other half. Up close, it surprised me that there wasn't more of a mess than you'd expect.

  Once I was there when a track worker had lost his leg under a train. The tremendous weight of the engine had sealed off the ends of the arteries and veins and it hadn't been near as bloody as I would've guessed.

  "Well, don't worry about it," I shouted back to Billy. "We got the other half on our side."

  "What do you think we ought to do?" Laws said.

  "Well, it wouldn't hurt to introduce them," I said.

  It was a hell of a thing to say, making light of a horrible tragedy like that, but anybody who's been around death much, or even at all, knows that people do things like that.

  I told Laws to go get some tarps from somewhere, and bent down to pull my half of the poor bastard out from under the train.

  TWO

  Halt Ennery is a very serious sort of fellow. If you asked him was the sun shining, he'd squint up at it until the tears came, get a five minute sunburn, and then tell you he'd have to take your question under advisement. There's not a better man to have around, whether it's trailing through new country on a fishing trip or building an outhouse the cheapest way possible, as long as there's a book to go by. Without a set of directions, though, Halt has a hard time tying his shoelaces.

  Laws Ruskel, on the other hand, is the sort of man will shoot the horse first and find out why it went lame after.

  Billy Turk is hard of hearing when he wants to be, and doesn't say much of anything, except when nothing else will move the train.

  So, all four of us, plus Harry Bishop, the other brakeman, were standing out there in the rain, gathered around the lower part of the corpse, now covered with a tarp, deciding what to do. Laws'd brought a stretcher along with the tarps. Seeing it laying on the ground next to the ruined body gave me a very funny feeling.

  I was also aware that several passengers, rumpled with sleep, were peering out of the car windows with the curiosity of raccoons pinching up their mouths and squinting up their eyes, not seeing much but getting testy about the long delay.

  "I say let's toss the two pieces into the baggage car and get the hell on our way," Laws said, cocky now that he was over being sick.

  "Can't do it," Halt said. "According to regulations, this train can't move until the coroner gets here and declares this fellow dead."

  "I don't want to get picky about it," Laws said, "but anybody can't take one look and tell this fella's dead, ain't never seen dead."

  "'Any bodies found along the right of way are to remain untouched until the proper authorities arrive to determine cause and circumstance.' I'm not sure we even did the right thing getting those pieces out from under the wheels," Halt insisted.

  "It also says that any obstruction or hazard along or beside the track or roadbed is to be cleared away expeditiously," Laws said.

  "I think they had tree or rocks in mind," Halt replied.

  "I don't think it's up to us to decide what was meant," Laws came back. "An obstruction is an obstruction; and a hazard is a hazard."

  Billy stood there in the wet sucking on his pipe. It amazed me how he even got the thing lit in the pouring rain, but Billy does things like that all the time, amazing people who've known him for twenty years. He was looking at me as though he expected I should say something.

  I apply a rule to myself not to open my mouth until everybody else has chewed the bone. I've also learned it's always best to let somebody else remind those assembled that I'm a law officer and that I'm on the scene.

  "Jake, here"—Billy finally spoke up, when I wouldn't—"for the lack of any other authorized person, is the legal representative of the commonwealth."

  "Oh, for the good Lord's sake, Billy, what's that supposed to mean?" Laws complained.

  Billy looked at me again, tossing me the baby so to speak. His look told me that so far as he was concerned it was now up to me to say what was what and if I wanted to drop the baby in the mud that was all right with him too.

  "Billy's just reminding us," I said, "that I'm a duly constituted officer of the law."

  "Put it away," Halt said smartly. "This train don't move until the coroner gets here."

  "We don't even know what county we're in," Laws said.

  "I know," Halt said. "We're in Washington County. Akron's the next stop."

  "Seventeen hundred people in that town. You think it's even got a coroner? Maybe we should take the body back to McCook."

  "We're not in Nebraska, we're in Colorado. Akron's the county seat and the county's got to have a coroner."

  "Probably the druggist," Laws said.

  "I don't care if it's the hairdresser. All I want is somebody official to point his finger at that body and declare it dead, so we can get on with it," Halt said, then turned his back and started walking toward the cab, obviously intending to get on the radiophone and call dispatch.

  "Halt," I called out.

  He turned around.

  "Since we already moved the parts off the tracks," I said, "I don't suppose it would do any harm to get the fella put back together and on the stretcher. It would be the decent thing to do."

  I think he nodded as he walked on. At least he didn't say no.

  "He's very stubborn," Laws said.

  "He's doing what he thinks is right," I said. "And maybe he is right. There could be a lot of fuss about jurisdiction on this one. I mean people getting hit along the railroad right of way always causes confusion about where and when it happened and who's to take responsibility for
the investigation. Could be up to Amtrak. Could be up to Burlington Northern. Could be up to the county sheriff's office or the state police. Being that it happened along the route of an interstate carrier, it could even be the FBI want to take over. So, there's no sense in putting a foot wrong if we can help it."

  The train moved ahead far enough for us to cross the tracks. The beam from my flashlight showed a wide, brush-filled gully not too far below the roadbed off to the right, not a tenth as steep or far as the fall down to the river.

  We gathered up the top half of the dead man. It was a hard, sad piece of work. The rain let up some.

  THREE

  When we got the two pieces together on a stretcher. I decided to do something instead of standing there with my finger in my ear. I could've left it all alone, but I was hoping to find something that'd tell me if he'd been on the train or walking the tracks. Some identification that would allow me to check among the passengers and maybe find someone who was wondering where their father, brother, husband, or boyfriend had up and gone to.

  I stooped down and pulled the tarp away from the head and torso. One side of the face had been badly damaged, the other had not. He looked to be a fair-skinned man with light hair darkened by the rain. About fifty years of age.

  I started going through his pockets, replacing what I found as I went along.

  There was a pair of unbroken spectacles in the outside breast pocket of the jacket, three soggy cork tipped cigarette butts in one side pocket, and a crumpled package of Fritos in the other. One of the inside pockets had a railroad timetable in it. The other was empty.

  I covered up the top half and uncovered the bottom. The left-hand slash pocket had a handkerchief with something that, under the beam of the flashlight, looked like a smudge of lipstick; the right-hand one some change and a money clip holding some bills. I didn't count either. There were no keys.