by Jeff Gulvin
Swann smiled. ‘That’s why he’s good, though, isn’t it.’
‘Oh yeah. And he’s real good.’
‘When’s he due back?’
‘I haven’t got a clue.’
After class finished that afternoon, Swann took Joe Kinsella to one side. ‘You wanna talk to me about the Carey kid,’ Kinsella said, before Swann had a chance to say anything.
‘You know all about it, then?’
Kinsella passed a hand over his moustache. ‘I know all there is to know. But that isn’t very much.’ He made a face. ‘Jack, the kid jumped on a freight train, which started out in Texas. I don’t know what point he got on, but he never made it off again. He was shot in the head. Close quarters. We had powder burns on what remained of the right temple.’ He paused for a moment and licked his lips. ‘The only prints we could identify were his own.’
‘On the gun, you mean?’
Kinsella shook his head. ‘There was no gun.’
‘So it wasn’t suicide, then.’
‘No. Somebody japped him up close. Somebody was on that train with him, probably more than one guy. The angle of trajectory makes the ME think that the shooter was sitting right alongside him when he did it, or Tom Carey was holding the gun himself.’
‘Which means at least one other person was holding a gun on him.’
Kinsella nodded. ‘There had to be two of them.’
Swann nodded. ‘So, we’re possibly talking some kind of Russian roulette. A game, maybe, that went wrong.’
‘That’s possible, I guess. But it’s pretty unlikely given what the boy’s mom tells me. He was a medical student with a real bright future. Not the type to go spinning the chamber on a freight train.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m treating it as a homicide. I don’t know about the motive, but the Carey kid was part Vietnamese and looked it, so it coulda been racial.’ He laid a hand on Swann’s arm. ‘Jack, there’re a lotta crazy people riding those railroad tracks. This isn’t the first stiff to show up. Whoever did it was long gone before that train rolled into Hahnville. The ME reckoned the boy had been dead at least ten hours before the security guard found him. You can get a long way on a train in ten hours. These guys jump one going east, then hop off and take one north, west or south. I got about a hundred and one different sets of fingerprints, a few scuffed boot marks and jack-shit else. I got no murder weapon. I got no motive. I got no record of anyone being on the train. There’ll be no witnesses, Jack. There never are.’
Swann sat on the edge of the desk. ‘Has Jean Carey been to see you?’
‘Only about five hundred times.’ Kinsella shook his head. ‘I understand, but shit, what can I do? I can’t just magic up the perp and hand him to her.’ He sighed then. ‘This is a cold case file, Jack, and every instinct I ever relied on tells me it’s gonna stay that way.’
Jean Carey sat at a table in Nu Nus Café, aware that the bartender was glancing over now and again as if to make sure she was all right. She had been in town for well over a week now and had been back and forth to Hahnville to see Kinsella. He was apologetic but unhelpful, and she knew the chances of him solving Tom’s murder were remote to nonexistent. Which placed her precisely nowhere and served only to accentuate the terrible feelings of isolation that visited her constantly. Everywhere she looked, she saw her son’s face; not how she remembered him when he was alive—vibrant and smiling out of photographs at her—but how she had last seen him, five months ago now. And yet the image was as vivid in her mind as if she had seen it yesterday. They had been as careful and as considerate as they could be in the mortuary, but nobody could disguise the fact that half his head was missing. He haunted her dreams at night, standing at the foot of her bed like some macabre, ghostly image, with half his face gone. For the first three weeks back in England, she had woken up screaming.
She sipped her drink, aware of the barman’s gaze, and felt like the refugee she had been in her youth, when every eye was a pitiful one, and her time and space and thoughts were barely her own. Kinsella had been kind enough and he listened, but she knew every ounce of control had been wrested from her and there was nothing she could do about anything. Every time she went out on to the street, just stood in Jackson Square, or on the banks of the river, she felt minuscule in comparison to everything, thoroughly insignificant in the world. And her son lay dead, with no justice, tossing and turning in a grave he was far too young to sleep in.
A tall man wearing a pair of chinos and a short-sleeved polo shirt came into the bar. He was good-looking, Jean thought, with short black hair and the beginnings of a suntan. He took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and she was suddenly reminded of Harrison. She liked Harrison, though he looked a bit of a mess. His eyes had that same hunted look she recognised in her own, as if he no longer felt sure where he stood in the world. The dark-haired man bought a beer, spoke to Dewey and came over to her table.
Swann had noticed her as soon as he came in. Very petite, dark hair, and large oval eyes that took in the comings and goings on Decatur Street, and yet did not take them in. He introduced himself and sat down. ‘Harrison asked me to speak to you,’ he said.
Jean smiled then and her eyes crinkled at the corners: they were deep and dark, with an air of intelligence, which Swann also recognised in Logan.
‘Harrison asked you?’
‘Yes. I hope you don’t mind. He seemed concerned about you.’ Swann stuck out his hand. ‘I’m Jack Swann.’
‘It was sweet of him to do that.’
Swann sipped from the neck of his beer bottle. ‘He phoned me in London specifically. I’m a police officer, you see. Harrison knew I was coming over here and he asked me to look out for you.’
She sighed then. ‘Everyone seems to want to look out for me. Do I look that fragile?’
‘D’you want an honest answer?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes. You do. You look lost, Jean.’ He was not sure if he should say it, but it came out anyway.
She looked away from him then, through the window to the café across the road in front of Governor Nicholls Wharf, where the lone trumpeter was just getting started. ‘I feel fragile. I think I shouldn’t, but I do.’
‘You’ve every reason to.’ Swann said it quietly. He took a cigarette from the pack and Jean looked at him for a moment. ‘Can I have one of those?’ she asked.
‘Of course you can.’
‘I don’t smoke normally. Well, in my youth I did, but when I became a children’s doctor, it seemed a little incongruous. Only lately, I’ve needed it again.’
Swann handed her a cigarette and lit it for her. He inspected the burning end of his own. ‘My fiancée doesn’t smoke,’ he said. ‘She never complains, but I really ought to quit.’ He looked at the wedding ring on Jean’s finger then. ‘Is your husband not here with you?’
She stretched the finger and inspected the gold band. ‘I’m not married any more. I really should take this off. I suppose I’ve just never got round to it.’
Swann watched her for a few moments. She did look lost. Her whole world had collapsed and she was desperately trying to deal with it. ‘I spoke to Joe Kinsella today,’ he told her. ‘The chief of deputies in St Charles Parish.’
‘What did he say?’
‘The same as he said to you, I suppose.’
Her face fell then. ‘There’s not much they can do, is there?’
‘No.’ Swann made an open-handed gesture. ‘It’s a tough one, Jean. They’re pretty sure your son was killed by a vagrant, and tracking him down, without a witness of some kind, is nigh on impossible.’
Jean tugged her top lip down with her teeth. ‘I’ve been doing a little checking of my own. I hired a car and did some driving around. Tom’s is far from the first death on a freight train.’
Swann watched her face, and she sat forward then, with a conspiratorial air. ‘There’s been two others in Louisiana, Jack. Three in Arkansas and, as far as I know, at least seven people in Texas.’ She paus
ed then. ‘I’ve got the information upstairs, if you’d like to see it.’
Swann sat there for a moment, then nodded. ‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked her. She shook her head. ‘I tell you what then, you go and get the stuff, and I’ll get menus from Dewey.’
Over dinner, he looked at what she had gathered. She had been to the library and the archives of the regional newspapers: the Times Picayune in New Orleans, various others in Baton Rouge and Shreveport, and as far north as Little Rock in Arkansas. Swann was impressed. ‘You’ve done all this in a week?’
She laughed then. ‘Jack, have you any idea how many hours I worked in a day as a junior doctor?’
She had driven all over the place and had put together quite a dossier. The Arkansas killings had been over a three-month period the year before last and each of the victims had been found alongside a railroad track. They had arms or legs missing, and two out of the three had their shirts pulled over their heads and their trousers round their ankles. Their possessions had not been found and it was assumed they had been stolen. He found similar situations in Texas. Seven murders over a three-year period, gunshot wounds in two of them, and again the same thing—shirts over their heads and trousers yanked down. Jean had compiled newspaper cuttings and quotes from cops and the odd photograph.
‘And none of these have been solved?’ Swann said.
‘Not one.’ Jean sat forward. ‘Most of the victims are vagrants, Jack. Nobody cares overmuch.’ She sucked breath. ‘But Thomas was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I do care.’
Swann laid the dossier to one side. ‘Have you shown this to Kinsella?’
She nodded. ‘He’s not in a position to launch an interstate investigation, and he was candid enough to admit that given that ninety per cent of the victims were members of the homeless community, he was unlikely to get the budget anyway. He assured me that no stone would be left unturned in the pursuit of my son’s killer, but that was as far as he could throw out the line. Those were his exact words.’
Swann nodded. ‘Which leaves you precisely nowhere.’
‘Unless I hire somebody.’
‘You mean, like a private detective or something?’
‘Yes.’ She pointed to Dewey. ‘He put me on to somebody. I’m going to speak to him later. He’s a singer as well as a detective, apparently. He’s playing at Tipitinas tonight.’ She paused then and smiled. ‘When Harrison asked you to look out for me, do you suppose he meant in the form of a chaperone?’
Swann tipped back his head and laughed.
The singer she referred to was very good. Gary Hirstius, New Orleans born and raised, standing about five foot eight, a Bruce Springsteen lookalike, who played his own songs at the fashionable French Quarter nightspot. The club was busy and smoke was thick in the air, but he played a good set, and Jean and Swann sat at a table and watched him. When he was finished he came over, introduced himself and sat down.
‘You were very good,’ Jean told him.
‘Thank you.’
‘Have you been playing long?’
‘Yes, mam. I started on Bourbon Street when I was fifteen. I’m forty-three now.’ He glanced at Swann. ‘You a cop?’
‘Does it show that much?’
Hirstius sat back, resting one arm over the back of the chair. ‘Does to me. I’ve known cops all my life: good cops, bad cops, cops who’d help a guy out, others who’d kick him in the face when he’s down. I’ve been dug outta trouble by some and kicked to silly-silly land by others. Right now, I got a homicide dick on my ass from Jefferson Parish, who figures I owe him a favour. He left a message on my phone and I figure he’s looking for me to wear a wire or something for him.’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘I don’t even remember the guy.’
‘Are you going to call him back?’ Jean asked.
Hirstius laughed. ‘No, mam. I’m not. There’s no need to go looking for trouble, when it can find me all by itself.’
Swann offered him a cigarette and he shook his head. He rested both elbows on the table, and a waiter brought him a glass of Merlot and he sipped at it. ‘What can I do for you, mam?’
‘Find my son’s killer.’
He blew out his cheeks and looked across the table at Swann. ‘That’s a job for a cop,’ he said.
‘The cops can’t find him.’
He shook his head. ‘I heard about your son and I’m really sorry. It sucks when somebody puts their faith in this country and it gets abused by some low-life sonofabitch. But the dicks out at St Charles did all there was to do, mam. Your son was killed by a vagrant. Now that’s a whole different set of problems.’ He gestured with a flat palm. ‘Without a single witness to any part of the story, like when he got on the train even, where the hell do you begin?’
‘There’ve been other similar murders.’ Jean rested a hand on his arm and he nodded.
‘You’re right. There have. But the same thing applies. Besides, most of those guys were hobos and it’s a sad fact of life, but very few people actually give a damn.’ He sighed then. ‘Mrs Carey. Somebody shoulda told you I do insurance work mostly. It’s safer than most stuff, though not as safe as playing up there.’ He jabbed a thumb at the stage. He sipped wine and stood up again, nodding to the drummer who was heading back to the stage. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll make some noises and see what I can do. Then I’ll call you. Hotel Provincial, right?’
Jean nodded and he made his way back to the stage.
Cyrus Birch paused under the Washington Memorial, wearing a pair of shorts and sneakers. He was lean, fit and tanned and knew he did not look anywhere near his forty-two years of age. Everything was set. The International Activities Division had been contacted as soon as the President signed the finding and they were busy now with the ‘stagehands’, who had long ago started putting the background into place. Birch had known last fall that this was inevitable, and only too aware of how difficult it was to create a plausible background, he had started the ball rolling early. Just before the African bombs had gone off, they had come across an article written by an Australian journalist who lived in New York City. Birch knew that after the bombings, the reporter would be kicking down doors to get another interview.
Since then, the comings and goings between his office, the station chief in Egypt and Secret Branch 40 in Israel had been fast and furious. The NSA Umbra crypts had been thick on the ground, and people were watching and listening all over the globe. The background the IAD had set up was extremely good and, given the operative’s capabilities, might just work. It was the partnership thing that really worried Birch: the Australian could easily become a victim.
He was not worried about the operative, but he did not like dealing with him personally. Normally, national intelligence officers did not get involved much beyond the initial estimate and the finding. Of course, he had to placate irate congressmen now and again and keep egos in Washington massaged, but it was rare to get this involved with the sharp end.
This situation was different, however. There were only four people who knew, thus far, exactly what the finding had sanctioned. With the way the President was going to handle the intelligence committees, only a further four would find out. The IAD had no idea what the job was about. They were just told to get the back-up operation set up at ground level. As far as the actual operative went, Birch had only ever had one individual in mind, and he knew the man was watching him right now. He did not know where he was, could not see him, but he knew he was under observation. There was no way he would want a face to face under the memorial, and Birch knew he had been lucky to get him anywhere near D.C. at all. Nevertheless, the memorial was a good place to start, and once he had ‘rested’ his legs for a couple of minutes, he knew that anywhere he went, the operative would locate him. He decided on the Native American history section of the Smithsonian.
‘Very apt. Very applicable,’ the voice said in his ear, as Birch looked at one of the Navajo displays. ‘A pity they only record what they think is palatable
. It took Dee Brown to write about people like Chivington.’ The voice was soft, gentle almost, yet it never failed to chill him. It was like having Charles Manson around, only on your side, and it was at times like these that Birch found himself at a complete disadvantage. Put him out in the field and he would be eaten alive. Still, no matter, he only planned to go as far afield as the DDO’s office.
He turned sideways and looked into the face of The Cub. Copper-coloured skin, jet-black hair untied and hanging beyond his shoulders from under the dust-coloured baseball hat. Round his throat he wore a medicine bead choker, and his face hollowed at the cheekbones. And then there were those incongruous blue eyes.
They sat across from one another in the refectory. The Cub was half Nez Perce Indian. Birch had never been too sure of the other half, although it was said his father was the product of a coupling in the thirties between a white man and his Chinese whore, in one of the Idaho mining towns.
The Cub had been earmarked for special forces work during his brief stay in the Marine Corps: brief, because after giving a friend a room in his house, the man ran off with his wife. The Cub had finally run the pair of them over in his truck. The court martial gave him five years for attempted manslaughter, notwithstanding the fact that The Cub had backed the truck over them after he ran them down. He served twenty-six months in Leavenworth, then went to Europe and spent seven years with the 2nd REP in the French Foreign Legion. Birch knew he had seen more action than most American soldiers ever would. These days he was freelance and had been used by the IAD on more than one occasion.
The Cub drank his coffee black and watched Birch, aware of just how uncomfortable he made the man. ‘So what’s the deal, Cyrus? You contacted me nearly a year ago and I’ve been practising my Kiwi accent and photographing cricket matches ever since. You ever watch cricket, Cyrus? It’s like baseball, only with no home runs. But it’s been a blast, really. I can tell you the batting averages of any Pakistani player you wanna mention.’
Birch sat back in his chair. The place was heaving: theirs just one conversation amongst a gaggle of others. School kids in oversized T-shirts, sneakers and bum-bags, baseball hats stuck on backwards, and overworked, exasperated teachers.