Plugged Nickel

by Eric

  "Who wants to give me a hand here?" I said.

  "A hand doing what?" Laws asked.

  "I've got to get to the back pockets of his trousers and somebody's got to tip him a little."

  "Oh," Laws said, but didn't make a move. Neither did Billy, but that could've been because he hadn't heard what was wanted.

  Bishop squatted down beside me.

  He's a big, pale, dependable man who's always very obliging and as a rule says even less than Billy.

  He put his hands under the corpse's thigh and rolled him over so I could get to the left-hand back pocket. There was only an extra-large comb in it. Then he reached across and tilted the body the other way, toward him. The right-hand pocket had a little book in it.

  It was almost dry, having been protected from the rain by the victim's own body, then the train car, then the tarp. It was a book of poems with the place marked with a train ticket from Denver to Chicago.

  He'd been riding a train going the wrong way.

  "So, we know he wasn't walking the tracks," I said, putting the book in my own pocket so it wouldn't get wet and ruined.

  "Now all we've got to do is find out how and why he got off the train while it was moving," Laws said.

  "Well, I'm going back inside," I said. "Come with me, will you, Billy?"

  "I'm going inside too," Laws said.

  "Somebody's got to stay out here with the body," I said.

  "Who the hell's going to steal it?" Laws said.

  "Rain could come down hard again and wash a piece of it down into the ravine. Wild animals could come along. . . ."

  "Rain washes it down, I ain't going to get washed down with it," Laws said, "and I doubt there's any animals out on a night like this. Creatures are too sensible to stand out in the open and drown."

  Bishop sort of gave a big sigh and hunkered down close to the side of the car, his poncho around his shoulders, looking like some old Indian waking the dead.

  FOUR

  The radiophone on a train is not your corner telephone box. You can't decide to call home en route and tell the wife to hold supper because the train's a half hour late.

  The frequency ties the train to a dispatcher who could be some distance away. In this case the dispatcher was in Denver. Halt would probably have to rouse him out of bed and ask him to call the county coroner in Akron on the regular telephone. Tell him he was wanted with an ambulance along the Burlington Northern right of way about midway between Akron and McCook. Report back to the train that help was coming. Then hope coroner and ambulance would arrive as promised.

  I had a lot of doubts about whether the coroner would be willing to come out to the middle of nowhere on a stormy night along whatever pitch-dark road might get him there. As far as I knew, there was no vehicular road that paralleled the railroad tracks along this section. There'd be country and mountain roads at crossings, but how far away the nearest one might be was something I'd have to let Halt worry about.

  My immediate concern, as I told Billy as soon as I got him alone for a minute inside the first coach, was to find out what could about what stopped the train. Somebody had pulled the emergency and it would go a long way to finding out what'd happened to the dead man if I could discover who that somebody might be.

  Except I doubted if anybody would come forward.

  "What are we pulling, Billy?" I said.

  "Four coaches, two sleepers, baggage, diner, lounge, and dorm. We've also got a deadhead."

  "Head or tail?"

  "Up ahead, behind the engines."

  I did a quick calculation in my head.

  The Burlington Northern crew would be composed of Halt Ennery, Charlie Tichenor, and Billy Turk, the two brakemen, Laws Ruskel and Harry Bishop, and depending on the amount of mail, one or two men in baggage. If the coach seats in the upper deck of the dormitory car were sold, Burlington Northern would have one of their employees attending that car. So, say six on the low end and eight on the high end.

  This crew would be changed for a Denver and Rio Grande Western crew in Denver. I'd have a reasonable chance to talk to them about their impressions, if any, once we got there. So, I could put that part of what I figured I had to do on hold.

  There was one attendant to each coach and sleeper car and five in the diner. These eleven people were Amtrak and stayed aboard for the whole trip from Chicago to San Francisco/Oakland. That was how come the dormitory car.

  What concerned me at the moment were the passengers.

  I could take names and addresses, but there was no way I could make them stay aboard when we finally got moving again and pulled into the Akron station and stations west.

  "I can't question every one of them, either," I told Billy, "even if we stayed here a day or two, and hope to God that doesn't happen. There's seventy-two people in each coach and I don't know how many in each sleeper. I could never cover the ground.

  "So, what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to make an announcement in each of the coaches. In the lounge car and the diner too, if Halt opens them up. I want you to stand next to me and keep your eyes open."

  "What am I looking for, Jake?"

  "I haven't got the vaguest. I'm going to state the case in each car. I'm going to ask if anybody's missing or if anybody pulled the emergency. I'm going to ask them if they saw anybody else do it."

  "So, I'm looking for a twitch?"

  "A twitch. A shifty eye. A guilty flush."

  "You're asking a lot."

  "What else have I got?"

  I called for attention in the first coach.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, we're very sorry to inconvenience you this way," I said loud enough for everybody to hear. "There's been an accident. Somebody's been hit along the right of way. It appears he was a passenger who somehow jumped or fell off this train."

  I let them digest that while they rubbed a little more sleep out of their eyes.

  "I'm a police officer for the Burlington Northern Railroad. Until I'm told differently, I'm going to conduct an investigation. You can understand, the sooner you can get impressions about a thing like this, the better off you are. That doesn't mean that other law enforcement representatives won't be after you to answer questions later on."

  They had a little discussion among themselves about the inconvenience this might cost them down the line.

  "First, I'd like to know if one of you is traveling with someone that's gone somewhere and not come back before or since the train stopped?" When nobody spoke up, I went on, "In that case I'd like to know if anybody saw anything that made you pull the emergency cord?"

  Just like I figured, no one admitted to committing such an act. There were a lot of murmurs about being asleep and being practically knocked down on the floor when the brakes were applied, some people already working up their stories in case they decided to sue, but nothing about pulling the cord or seeing anybody else pull it.

  "The next question naturally follows," I went on. "Did anyone see anybody else pull the emergency?"

  They didn't disappoint me. Nobody'd seen a thing. Everybody'd been asleep.

  "Did you notice anything or anybody that struck you as odd or out of the ordinary earlier in the night or evening? Anything at all. It might be something very small. Something you might have thought about and then decided right away was silly. If there's anything like that, I'm going to be back in the dining car in an hour or so and I hope you'll come see me there. Anything you have to tell me'll be held in strictest confidence, I guarantee you. By the way, my name's Jake Hatch and I work out of Omaha. That's not too hard to remember, is it? Okay, then, sorry you're all having to put up with this inconvenience." Between cars, I asked Billy if he'd seen a twitch. He said he'd seen twitches, frowns, shifty eyes, pale faces, and he couldn't remember what all. So had I.

  So what the hell did that mean?

  It took me an hour to do the coaches, ten minutes apiece.

  I didn't talk to anybody in the sleepers. If the emergency had been pulled in one of
them, nobody was saying.

  There was a party starting up in the lounge car. I don't know why Halt allowed the bar to open, but he did, and there are always people ready to party no matter what the hour. Nobody there'd seen a thing.

  I picked the Amtrak people off one by one as they served coffee in the diner and the cars, but none of them had seen or heard anything strange. All had been asleep in the dormitory car except Sam Franklin, an old-timer who suffered sleeplessness and was in the diner adding to his insomnia with cups of coffee.

  I sat down with him and Billy and had a cup of fresh brew.

  "Nobody did nothing and nobody saw nothing," I said. "So how, when, where, and why did the man fall off this train?" I took a menu and drew out the way the train was made up with Billy's help, starting from the back.

  "Dormitory car, baggage car, two coaches, lounge, diner . . ."

  "No, two coaches, lounge, sleeper, then the diner. Sleeper's got to be next to the diner, you know that," Billy said.

  I made the correction. "That's right. So lounge, sleeper, diner, sleeper, the last two coaches, and the two engines."

  "You forgot the deadhead right behind the second engine," Billy said.

  We looked at one another.

  When a car is deadheaded one place or another, riding empty on the front or back of a train so it can easily be separated without pulling the train apart, the doors aren't locked. There's usually just a little chain across the end doors saying that the car is not in use and is not to be entered except by railroad personnel. When Billy and I made our way forward to the deadhead, we found it empty all right, but it hadn't always been empty that night. One of the side doors was open four or five inches, probably moving back and forth while the train was traveling and never slamming shut. The door on the other side looked shut but was off the latch as well.

  The car had been cleaned in Chicago and there was no litter anywhere. Not a cigarette butt and not even a corn chip. But there was a briefcase lying on a seat. Not one of those fancy attache cases, but an old-fashioned leather satchel with a flap and brass buckled straps, something like a kid's book-bag.

  There was nothing in it except a Denver newspaper.

  "Had a ticket from Denver to Chicago and a Denver newspaper in the satchel," I mumbled to myself, "but goes falling off the train traveling the other way, from Chicago to Denver."

  "That fella fall out of this car, you think?" Billy said.

  "Or was pushed."

  FIVE

  Morning had grayed the sky by the time Halt came looking for me an hour later. "I just heard back from the dispatcher in Denver. He had a hell of time reaching the coroner. The man's a farmer. Lives alone. Was out in the barn with a sick cow. Couldn't hear the telephone."

  "Why didn't the dispatcher call the police?"

  "I don't know, so don't ask me. Maybe because I told him to call the coroner. Henry Frye's a very literal sort of man. When Frye finally got him, the coroner said he was heading right out. Twenty minutes later he called back and said the bridge down the road didn't look safe enough to risk his truck on it."

  "So he can't get here then?"

  "Not until they can get a speeder over from the equipment shack down the road from Akron."

  "I don't see how we can expect these passengers—"

  "Hold your horses, Jake. I told dispatch to explain to the coroner what we found and the coroner told dispatch to tell me that if I could get another responsible party to sign a deposition that the fella's in two pieces he'd certify our victim dead."

  "He's got that much confidence in us, has he?"

  "Never mind the sarcastic remarks, Jake. Will you sign?"

  "Well, of course I will. Let's pick up that poor bastard and get him into the baggage car."

  We went out into the rain again. Bishop was still squatting beside the body as though he hadn't moved a muscle all this time. Billy went to the baggage car and told Jim Tiptree to open the doors.

  I jumped up inside. Halt and Bishop lifted the body on the stretcher up to Billy and me. We put it down on some crates. Water dripped off the corpse and the tarps onto the planks.

  "We'll mark the section of track here with flags," Halt said.

  Billy gathered some up from a locker and handed them out.

  When that was done, Halt and Bishop clambered aboard. We all started to leave the baggage car when Tiptree said, "You're not leaving that here unattended? A body can't travel in a baggage car unattended."

  "All right," I said. "I'll sit with it into Akron."

  They all filed out, leaving me sitting with the corpse.

  After we got moving again, Tiptree said he was sorry but that was the rules. I said it was all right; I could handle it.

  The train rocked along. Rounding a curve, the car swayed one way and then the other, slamming hard against the keepers when it hit the straightaway. Something fell out of the corpse's pocket and onto the floor with a small, dull sound.

  I reached over and picked up a coin. I hadn't noticed it when I had the change in my hand. It looked like a plugged nickel. I tied it up in the corner of my handkerchief.

  SIX

  When we pulled into Akron, more than three hours late, the rain had settled down to a steady drizzle that turned the sun into a pewter bowl that gave no warmth.

  Halt, Billy, Laws, and me congregated on the platform while Fred Keely, the station agent, eyed us from the window of his office for a second, then came shambling out with this other fellow who was wearing a small-brimmed Stetson hat.

  I figured the coroner was about to declare our victim dead.

  Keely introduced us to Howard Freeman. He took off his glove and we shook hands all around like a bunch of Elks meeting at a convention.

  "How's your cow?" I said.

  "My what?"

  "Dispatcher said you had a sick cow."

  Color came and went in his face like he was a shy kid. "Oh, that. It's nothing much. Thanks for asking."

  He was about as big as Bishop, with the same pale, open, honest face under his hat common in the farmlands of the Midwest. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles that kept misting up. He'd take out a blue bandanna and carefully clean them every so often. He smiled a lot.

  "You've had your shock for the week, have you?" he said, putting his glove back on.

  "It'll do me for the year," I said.

  Halt handed over the deposition he'd written up and which we'd both signed.

  "I don't know what use this is," Freeman said, "but I've learned that it's smart to always have something to cover your ass. Maybe I should go down and have a look now."

  We broke up into pairs on the way to the baggage car. Me and Freeman, Halt and Keely, with Billy and Laws bringing up the rear.

  "You been coroner long?" I asked.

  "Not too long. I didn't go after it. Some people ran me for the office when I wasn't looking. I slaughter my own livestock, so I guess folks figured there was nothing I'd see in the job would bother me. We get our share of messy accidents around here on the farms." He looked at me like a one-eyed sparrow, peering down at me from above the misted lenses of his spectacles. "I know you?"

  "I've spent some time around here."

  "Have you?" he said, inviting further confidences, but not about to ask right out.

  "I've got friends live outside of town," I said.

  "Farmers?"

  "He was until he got killed. She lives in the house but rents the acres."

  "Threshing accident about four years ago?"

  "That sounds about right."

  "Carl Wister? You were a friend of Carl's?"

  "Carl and Maggie's."

  We reached the baggage car. Freeman put his hands on the floor, heaved himself up, and tucked his feet under him like an acrobat. I scrambled aboard as best I could, getting a splinter in my hand for trying to match him.

  We hunkered down by the corpse and I pulled the tarpaulin aside.

  "Yes, I'd say that fella's dead," Freeman said. "Cover the p
oor bastard back up."

  Five minutes later we were standing around on the platform again, right-footing left-footing it, trying to figure out what came next. A few of the town's early birds had gathered in the magical way they'll do wherever there's some sensation or tragedy. They weren't pushy; nobody had to tell them to stand back. They just stood there wide-eyed, chewing their cuds.

  "All I'm here for is to declare somebody dead, conduct the inquest, and call for an investigation if I think it's warranted," Freeman said.

  "When will you have the hearing?" I asked.

  "Any day soon. This looks like an easy one."

  "What'll you do with the body meanwhile?"

  "The medical examiner'll want to do an autopsy. They could send an ambulance from Denver, but as long as you've got the body already aboard the train, I don't see any reason why you can't just take it on into the city, do you?"

  "I do," Halt spoke right up. "All bodies to be shipped by common carrier are to be embalmed—"

  "If their condition permits," Freeman said.

  "Otherwise hermetical sealing is required," Halt said. "There's also the matter of who's to authorize the shipment and who's to get billed for the drayage charges."

  "I think maybe we should have taken the body to McCook," I said, half joking, half serious, but one hundred percent frustrated with Halt. "Nebraska law doesn't require embalming or sealing unless the deceased died of a communicable disease."

  "I'd like to talk this over with the sheriff," Freeman said, hoping to get out of the web Halt was spinning before we were all hopelessly entangled. "I wonder where George McGilvray is anyway?"

  "Maybe nobody thought to inform him," Laws said, with a sly glance at Halt Ennery.

  "I reported the incident to the dispatcher according to regulations," Halt said in a huff, touchy as a hound with a sore paw. "What the fool did after that can't be laid at my door. One way or another, I'm moving this train inside of twenty minutes."

  He peered at the sky as the sun broke through.