“Sixty-five miles an hour? Trains are restricted to less than that when they pass through the city.”
Agent Bridges shrugs.
“This line passes outside of the city. In rural areas, the trains have no speed restrictions.”
Spencer’s eyes widen, as do mine.
He hurries over to his desk and flips through the pages of a notepad, telling the technician to zoom out on the map.
“Which way does the signal travel? Please tell me it’s West.”
The technician nods.
The tip of Spencer’s fingers follows over city names. Places all having reported missing children.
The line comes into Kansas City from the east, and to the east, is St. Louis, Missouri, and Little Rock, Arkansas. The city directly to the west is Denver, Colorado.
According to the map on the computer, the railroad’s path lead straight through each of these cities.
“That’s how he ships them out,” says Spencer, “with a goddamn train.”
“Good work,” he says, resting a hand on the technician’s shoulder.
The tech throws his hands.
“I’m not just a pretty face.”
Agent Bridges snickers.
Still, I wonder how this helps us. Someone still has to explain to me the big mystery behind the fast traveling phone signal. Questions still linger in my mind.
If El Toro is bunkering down with the missing kids for two weeks, why does this cell phone take off toward the West every night?
Agent Bridges scratches his cheek.
“We’re still trying to figure that out, but knowing his method of shipment is a step in the right direction.”
I can’t help but let everyone in the room hear me sigh.
“The signals don’t trace to a specific number,” says the technician, typing on his laptop and opening lists of graphs and bars. “More than likely, they come from disposable cellphones.”
Spencer agrees and shakes his finger.
“That’s it. We can setup shop by the tracks. We’ll tear apart every car of every train that tries to pass. This is good news!”
He’s right, but something still concerns me.
Standing and pacing the room, I mention a problem.
“El Toro is smart. He’s been doing this for years. You think he would let himself pop up on the radar like that? ”
I’m interrupted by the sound of the opening of the office door.
“I don’t think he cares,” says Reverend Jonas, standing in the doorway. His hands hanging from each sleeve of his clergy robe. “Just because a bull stands in the open doesn’t mean you can dominate it. This is exactly what makes him dangerous.”
Taking Jonas by both hands, I look into his hopeless eyes.
“You may be right,” I say, “and I may be just as skeptical, but remember what you told me? To get through this, you need to have faith.”
Agent Bridges’ phone rings.
He steps to the corner to answer.
Jonas lowers his head to me, nodding.
“I know you want to catch him as much as we do,” I add.
His eyes rise to mine.
“You’ve been looking for him for so long,” I say. “Behind every criminal’s face. In the streets. In the prisons. Your guilt has been a burden. The loss of your wife and children weighs heavy on your heart.”
Spencer steps closer.
“I don’t think El Toro was counting on a faulty tower to give him away.”
A tear streams from the Reverend’s eye as I touch the side of his face.
“It’s your turn to listen to me and take my advice,” I say. “Keep your faith. Whatever I have to do, I don’t care. If this information doesn’t help us, I’ll beat a confession from Mateo. Come hell or high water, we will get El Toro.”
Reverend Jonas’ head bounces in agreement.
“Mateo Cabal has escaped,” says Agent Bridges, ending his call.
The room falls so quiet, you can hear everyone breathing.
Over my shoulder, I see him with one hand stuffed in his pant pocket and the other rubbing his brow.
“His jail cell was found empty. No signs of escape, but he’s gone.”
Spencer shouts, “Fuck!” and kicks the side of his desk.
The loud bang makes the rest of us flinch.
“Then all his secrets escaped with him,” I reply. “This is our only chance.”
The Reverend’s face turns gray. Behind his eyes, I can see his despair. Upon hearing the news, the little reassurance I had given him is slipping away. I take his hand and turn to Spencer.
“I’m not on a beat, but I’m not going home. Finding Haylee is the only reason I’m here. I’ll go to the railroad and see if I can find anything.”
He shakes his head, staring at the carpet.
“I’m not going to sit here going crazy,” I add. “Let me check it out or I’ll go by myself.”
Spencer sighs.
“Call Dax. You ride with him and you sit tight. You are eyes only.”
He insists to me that if Dax and I see anything, we contact him before making a move.
23. TWO MORE
The tires of a van come to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Decals on each side display the logo and name of The A Corporation. It’s another utility van. The second of three reported missing.
An empty field with a gravel road leading to mining pits and a railroad track.
In a place this far from the city, you can see the Milky Way in the sky above.
In a place abandoned from all civilization, dead victims can disappear.
In a place where no one would ever think to search, closure for desperate families can be buried.
The headlights turn dark and The Bull’s black boots sink into mud as he steps from the driver’s seat. The van rocks side-to-side as screams from Cherish echo from the back.
Throwing open the rear doors, The Bull drags Haylee’s lifeless body to the ground and drops her to the ground like a sack of garbage. Cherish rages to fight him but when his thick fingers wrap tight around her neck and his rock hard fist slams her face, she surrenders, sobbing with trails of mascara across her cheeks. The Bull locks her head under his arm, and the two walk toward shadowed hills of coal and rock. With each step he takes, The Bull’s feet sink deeper into the wet dirt, sloshing dark puddles of water that fill the holes his boots leave behind.
Cherish begs for forgiveness.
She pleads with him, reminding him she’s not marked.
She’s not defective.
She wants to know the reason she’s being taken away.
Had The Bull wanted to kill her, he would have done it already. He would have used her to set another example for the other products in The Hallway. And soon enough, as a silent Bull pulls her farther into the night, Cherish realizes he doesn’t need to give her an answer. She’s there to be taught a lesson, or worse, to pay the price for someone else’s mistake.
The crescent moon only lights the pits so much, but not enough to cast a shadow of doubt that The Bull isn’t going to let her die quickly.
In the distance, a cloud of fog, lit from the van’s faded red taillights, reveals the silhouette of Haylee’s body still lying on the ground. Abandoned cranes tower above Bull and Cherish where they come to a stop. Broken tracks with conveyor belts stretching to mountainous hills of dirt and piles of coal give an extra chill to a girl already cold from the freezing air. Letting her arms hang helplessly to her sides, she closes her eyes and whimpers.
The terrified girl, too small to her captor to be a challenge, too weak to put up a fight, waits like a helpless animal about to be preyed upon. A silent Bull, still allowing his vision to adjust to the dark, paces, circling his victim like a buzzard about to feed on dead meat.
Cherish slows each breath pushing from her lips until nothing can be heard except the sloshing of boots making their way behind her.
Then, the sound stops.
She keeps her lids tight,
still seeing a darker shade of black as if they were open.
A cracking pain from the heel of Bull’s boot shoots across the center of her back and through her arms and legs. The force knocks air from her lungs and pushes her forward, falling facedown in the cold mud.
Bull leans over and rips away an already torn shirt from her body. Elbow deep in the wet sticky dirt, she sobs as he removes her soaked pants, sliding them from her legs.
“People argue whether this is about sex or power,” he says, stepping one leg on each side of her and unbuckling and unzipping his pants.
“For me, it’s about revenge.”
He drops the bottoms of his tactical pants to his ankles.
“It’s about misery.”
He straddles Cherish, gripping a fist of her hair.
“And before I put you out of yours,” he adds, “I’ll make sure you have all you can take.”
“But no one is supposed to touch the prod—”
The pound of Bull’s fist against the side of her face breaks her sentence.
Bull thrusts hard, pushing and pounding himself inside her. Her shrieks of pain and humiliation echo throughout forgotten mines, bouncing between tall piles of rock, and up toward the night sky.
Bull keeps on, huffing through his gritted teeth, and pressing his upper body weight on the back of her shoulders.
As he pushes down harder on the back of her head, she screams, “Why?” But mud fills her wide-open mouth before her face submerges below the surface. Strands of her blonde hair float along the top of dark brown puddles. Leaning forward, resting his forearm on the back of her neck, he holds her head under, and continues to violate the helpless young woman’s body. The motion sends ripples through the muddy water.
Groaning to his peak, with his fist pulled back, as the rush of ecstasy flushes throughout his body, Bull slams his fist against the sides of Cherish’s body, over and over. With bruised and broken ribs, breathing air is painful enough. But drowning in mud, sucking thick wet dirt into her lungs, is even more excruciating.
Once he’s finished, The Bull stands and dresses himself, leaving Cherish’s still body below him. Her arms are spread to each side, motionless. The reflection of a crescent moon bends across the back of her head.
In the middle of nowhere, Dax and I sit in his patrol car. The only landmark outside the mining pits is a leafless tree, and that’s where we park. With the headlights out, only a dim red glow lights the interior. The black shadows of mounds and cranes can barely be noticed with the night sky.
To Dax and I, assurance of being in the right spot isn’t something we feel, but this place is where the map had led us, in the center of the three cell towers.
Winter nights are the quietest, even in parts of the city. People stay inside, most of them asleep. No animals on the prowl, no insects chirping. Out here is nothing. The only sound is the hum from the car’s engine and the thumping of my heart.
To watch for anything takes concentration. Over time, staring into blackness becomes boring. I grow impatient, tapping my fingers to my knee. Every thought of Haylee creeping into my mind, I try to block out. If I let even one of them get by, I might go insane.
Dax has never been a fan of the heat and the longer we sit with it running, the more sweat collects on his forehead. He rolls down his window, mixing the chill of the night with the warmth of the inside. Not long after, he turns off the engine.
“I hate winter, but you can bake cookies in the back seat; it’s so hot in here.”
“We’re going to freeze,” I say.
Dax sits up, hushing me, and pushes the side of his head toward the open window.
We sit waiting, listening.
Neither of us move, afraid the shifting of our clothes would be too loud to hear the same nothing we’ve been listening to. We look to each other and I shake my head.
“You don’t hear that?” He whispers.
With a lack of sleep, most of your senses are heightened, like my hearing should be. But as my mouth opens to respond, something distracts me.
A rumbling in the distance. Barely audible, but a sound that wasn’t there a moment ago.
Dax points to the clock on his dash, 1:43 A.M. The same time marked on the railroad company’s schedule for the next train to pass through. As the thundering grows louder and closer, I scan across the blackness, looking for something, anything.
Then I stop.
From behind an abandoned building, a faint red light begins to glow.
“It’s the warning light,” says Dax. “There’s a train coming.”
He may be right, but I would expect this particular light to be blinking. Something inside, some gut feeling, tells me the red glow has been there all along and I didn’t see it because my eyes had yet to adjust.
As the approaching train becomes louder and the ground seems to rattler, I never let the steady red glow out of sight.
The crumbled buildings and piles of coal become lit by the white light of the train as it comes closer.
Details of the area become illuminated.
The clicking and banging of the tracks and cars race past the pits, but just as the pilot of the locomotive crosses my vision of the red light, I open the door and hurry out.
Running toward the passing cars, Dax follows behind, telling me to come back, to wait for him.
“Goddamn it, Avery,” he says, “We’re not supposed to move.”
Walking back toward the van, to where he left Haylee’s body, The Bull removes a plastic wrapped cellphone from a side pocket of his soaked pants. His open palm rubs his chest as his teeth still grind together.
The rumbling of the ground haunts the silence in the air.
Heavy clicks and bangs sound off in the distance.
The Bull dials a number, and presses the phone against his ear. While waiting for an answer, he watches as the horizon began to brighten with white. The thunderous noise grows louder and louder. And before the approaching sound becomes too loud, someone answers on the other end of the line.
“We’re right on schedule,” says The Bull, “but you will need two more.”
A pause comes before he replies to the voice on the other end.
“The twins are dead.”
Another pause.
“The first one went quick, but I took my time with the second. Nothing like what you did to mine, but their blood on my hands is satisfying enough.”
The third pause is shortened as The Bull interrupts the voice’s response. Staring off toward the distant night, in a daze, he says:
“The man I was before, died with the rest of my family. Your evil flows through me now. You wanted me to follow your orders, and so I do. Now that you have placed me in this position, I have an order for you…”
The rushing train grows louder just as The Bull gives his order.
“…Rot in Hell, you piece of shit.”
Flipping the disposable cellphone closed, the train rages by.
The chilling wind blows against his body as the wheels of each passing car shakes the Earth.
With still a long line of cars stretching as far as he could see, The Bull pulls back his arm and tosses the phone on top of the locomotive.
“Payback is a bitch!”
The disposable phone lands on top of the passing train, heading west at sixty-five miles an hour.
The Bull clenches his fist across a sharp pain filling his chest.
He leans forward until the aching passes.
Pointing to the vehicles headlights on the other side of the train, I stop. Dax and I watch from a far enough distance to see the line of cars stretching into the horizon, and between the space of each passing one is a white light that stays still.
Dax kneels down and pulls me to my knees beside him.
“Stay down!”
With my impatience, the train seems to take forever to pass, but as the end comes close, Dax pulls the gun from his holster, pressing my shoulder to keep me from standing.
A
s the last car jets past us, following the rest of the train off into the night, it kicks up dirt and dust, leaving behind a fog lit by the distant headlights of a dark van.
Closing the rear doors of the van is the tall shadow of a man. Squinting, I try to read the decal on the side of the vehicle. A crooked ‘A’ logo with a circle drawn around it.
Adrenaline floods my veins, and from where Dax and I watch, it almost seems the man moves in slow motion, his fist clenching his chest as he opens the driver’s side door.
Dax stands, his gun drawn, walking toward the van, he shouts: “Police! Let me see your hands!”
With our flashlights shining, the two of us move quick.
The closer we hurry forward, the more details present themselves.
The man slams the door, stepping toward Dax’s voice with his hands spread outward to his sides.
A shaved head. Ripped muscles. A dark grey shirt tucked into the tight belt of black tactical pants.
It’s him—El Toro.
I pull my weapon and take aim.
I lower my flashlight so The Bull can see two 9mm Glocks aimed at the center of his head.
He stops moving and says nothing, but it’s not the threat that makes him stop.
Something is wrong.
Something is off.
The Bull’s face turns pale and flushes with sweat.
He grabs his chest and falls to his knees.
His eyes spin backward and he collapses to the ground.
Unconscious.
“Are you going to cuff him?” I ask.
Bending over El Toro, patting his pockets for weapons, Dax says, “He looks like shit. He’s not going anywhere.”
With his gun aimed at a the still man, Dax radioes for an ambulance.
I kneel beside The Bull and press two fingers against his sweaty cold neck.
His pulse pounds as though he has run a marathon.
Dax stands by as I slide open The Bull’s lids with my thumb and shine the flashlight in his eyes.
His gaze is the same as a dead body. Dilated pupils staring off into the distant nothing.
From where we are, waiting, it takes some time for the ambulance crew to find us. As much as I want El Toro dead, I pace back and forth, worried the medics will arrive too late. I want to press the barrel of my gun against the bridge of his nose to wake him up so he can tell me where he’s hiding my daughter. But he lays there like a corpse, the only sign of life being his neck still pulsating with each beat of his heart.
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