The Insane Train

by Sheldon Russell

  Hook stood. “Do you expect to hear from Andrea?”

  Helms lifted her chin, bringing Hook into focus. “Frankly, Andrea left our employment without notice or explanation. I should think that recommendations could not be expected.

  “If you’ll excuse me. Surely you must have important crimes to solve somewhere on your railroad. Good day to you, Mr. Runyon.”

  37

  Oatney smiled and gave Hook a squeeze. “I’ll be working with the women?” she asked.

  “Yes, and you’ll be with Roy,” he said. “More locals are hiring on all along as well.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “And thanks for letting me sleep in your caboose.”

  “You can sleep in my caboose anytime,” he said.

  “So where’s Mixer?” she asked.

  “He hung back. I can’t get him away from the compound. I think he misses Andrea.”

  Oatney slipped her shoes on. “I figure he’s not the only one.”

  Hook lit a cigarette.

  “Helms says Andrea left in a hurry. She says they won’t be able to recommend her for another job since she left without giving notice.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Andrea,” Oatney said. “The only way out of here would be by car or bus. You could check with the lady who sells bus tickets. Maybe she would remember.”

  The woman behind the bus ticket counter glanced up from reading the comics and took a drag off her cigarette. Hook studied her face through the cloud of smoke. He hadn’t the faintest idea why he’d thought she looked like Bette Davis. One eyelid drooped slightly, and creases notched her lip line. Her teeth were nicotine stained, and there were splotches of coffee on her blouse.

  She looked at Hook’s prosthesis and then up at him. “You leaving again, Mister?”

  Hook leaned against the counter. “I’ve a question,” he said.

  She tapped the ashes off her cigarette. “I heard you was a yard dog,” she said.

  “Did a girl with glasses and freckles buy a bus ticket out of here, maybe to Barstow?”

  “Look, Mister, I’ve been selling tickets out this window for twenty-five years. You think I can remember a girl with freckles?”

  “You remembered me,” he said. “Some folks you just remember.”

  “It would have been recently, the last few days maybe.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “She might have come through with those ladies from the First Baptist. They were headed to church camp, giggling like eighth graders. She could have been here then. Who knows?”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She turned back to her comics. Peeking over the top of the paper, she said, “Sometimes folks go to Woodward to catch the bus. Lot more connections. Maybe she caught a ride over with someone. It’s not that far, you know.”

  When Hook passed the guardhouse on the way to the women’s barracks, Mixer, who had been asleep on the porch, came out to greet him. He wound his way through Hook’s legs, his tail swinging back and forth like a metronome.

  “You okay, boy?” Hook asked, rubbing the backs of Mixer’s ears. “There’s food at the caboose.”

  Mixer answered by shaking from head to tail and then going back to his spot in the shade.

  Hook found Roy leaning against the door of the women’s ward. Roy scratched at his head as he thought.

  “Someone might have taken her over,” he said. “There’s folks going back and forth all the time. In fact, I got a load of groceries to pick up today. I’d figured on waiting until my shift ended.”

  “How about going now?” Hook asked.

  “Well, Oatney’s here. I guess she could manage. She’s got all those women in the bathroom stuffing socks in their bras.”

  “What?” Hook said, shaking his head.

  “Oatney says it does more for lifting a woman’s spirits than a diesel-powered dildo.”

  “I’d appreciate a ride to Woodward soon as possible, Roy.”

  “You ain’t going to be packing heat, shooting up train robbers and such, are you?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it,” Hook said.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get my list.”

  The old truck rolled out in a cloud of blue smoke. At thirty miles an hour, the front wheels began to wobble. At forty-five, the side windows rattled in the doors, and dust rose up from the floorboards. By the time they came into the bus station, dust covered Hook’s pants, and his clothes smelled of gasoline.

  The ticket agent looked up through the window bars and sucked at a tooth.

  “None with freckles,” he said. “Saw one with a wart on her lip the size of a quarter.”

  “Thanks, anyway,” Hook said.

  From there they went to the store and bought four sacks of white flour, two twenty-five-pound sacks of sugar, and ten pounds of sweet butter.

  On the way out of town, Hook said, “Would you mind stopping by the hospital, Roy?”

  “You sick, Hook? You been looking a little pale.”

  “It’s from gasoline fumes and tall tales, Roy. No, I’m not sick. I want to talk to Baldwin’s physician.”

  Roy cut left and lumbered the two blocks to the hospital. “I’ve been hauling inmates over from time to time,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t be long, Roy. Have yourself a smoke.”

  The nurse told him that Doctor Anderson was just washing up after a tonsillectomy and that Hook could wait in the hall and probably catch him.

  Anderson came out combing his hair back with a comb. The blood splatters on the cuffs of his white coat still looked fresh, and he smelled of ether.

  “I don’t know what the medical profession would do without tonsils and ovaries,” he said.

  Hook explained who he was.

  “Yes,” Anderson said. “You’re the rail detective. Perhaps you’d care to step into my office.”

  The doctor slipped off his coat and adjusted his tie.

  “So how’s the young lady with the foot wound?” he asked.

  “Anna? They tell me she’s doing fine,” Hook said.

  “Ah, yes, Anna. I’d forgotten her name. She said you tried to kill her with your hook.”

  Hook smiled and held up his prosthesis. “Anna’s an elusive victim,” he said.

  Anderson nodded. “And an imaginative one.”

  Hook said, “I came over for supplies and thought it a good opportunity to check on Doctor Baldwin’s condition.”

  Doctor Anderson wet his finger and rubbed at one of the blood splatters on his cuff.

  “I guess you hadn’t heard. I released Baldwin a few days ago.”

  “No. I didn’t know.”

  “He was quite anxious to get back to his work, and there was little more that I could do for him here.”

  “I don’t believe he’s shown up at the asylum yet,” Hook said. Doctor Anderson twisted his mouth to the side. “I was ambivalent about releasing him, but in good conscience I simply couldn’t keep him here longer.”

  “It’s odd he hasn’t returned,” Hook said.

  “Doctor Baldwin didn’t share his plans with me, but perhaps he decided to take a short vacation before going back to work.”

  “Perhaps,” Hook said. “His illness came on rather suddenly the first time. I hope he’s not had a relapse. Are you still convinced that drugs were involved?”

  “I have to be careful here, Mr. Runyon, patient confidentiality and all. Frankly, I can’t be certain about the diagnosis. Our lab is quite primitive here, so determining the cause was difficult at best. Still, it was a reasonable diagnosis given his symptoms and his access to drugs.”

  “I see.”

  “There were other complicating issues as well. I have a responsibility to both treat and protect my patients. But sometimes the two principles are contradictory. One has to weigh one’s options and then decide. It’s difficult territory. Doctors much prefer facts to ethical contradictions.”

  “It’s the same with detective work,” Hook said. “There’s the book and then
there’s reality. Personally I’ve found common sense to be the best course in such situations.

  “I do admit that sometimes it doesn’t pan out so well. Leaving a truck on the tracks to apprehend a hobo seemed a reasonable course of action at the time.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just a little disagreement with the railroad on procedure.”

  Anderson smiled. “After Doctor Baldwin’s confinement, he improved markedly, but I was also compelled to treat his symptoms, which over the course of time subsided.”

  “From the medical treatment?”

  “That’s the dilemma, isn’t it? He was anemic and complained that he had trouble attending. I gave him medications. In the end, the treatment may have corrupted the purpose of the confinement, which was to isolate the cause. But as a doctor, I was duty-bound to relieve his situation.”

  “You diagnosed and treated Doctor Baldwin, and he improved as a consequence. How is that a problem?”

  Doctor Anderson picked up a pencil and tapped his desk with the eraser.

  “I felt intuitively that Doctor Baldwin was under the influence of drugs. This is something patients rarely own up to, particularly doctors. I thought by isolating him, I could, through the process of elimination, determine the source of the symptoms. As it turned out, I could not make those distinctions.”

  Hook rubbed at his shoulder where the harness cut. Its constant weight sometimes gave him a violent headache.

  “Could you be more specific, Doctor?”

  “I was unable to determine if Doctor Baldwin’s improvement was the result of our medical intervention or his inability to obtain drugs. Nor could I eliminate the nagging possibility that his improvement might be due to the absence of outside interference.”

  Hook looked up. “You mean someone else could have been supplying him the drugs?”

  “That’s one of two possibilities,” he said.

  Hook stood and studied Doctor Anderson’s face. “Or could have been giving him the drugs without his knowledge?”

  “Yes, Mr. Runyon,” he said. “That’s the other possibility.”

  38

  “They released Doctor Baldwin several days ago,” Hook said to Roy.

  Roy looked at him over his shoulder. “Where did he go?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Baldwin didn’t leave a forwarding address. Maybe he had a little thinking to do.”

  Roy pulled out on the highway and brought the truck up to a mild lope. As they rattled along, Hook lit a cigarette and thought about what Doctor Anderson had said. Was it possible that someone else had been giving Baldwin drugs without his being aware of it?

  There were certainly any number of people who had access to drugs, almost anyone under the employ of the asylum. Security was lax at best. Many times he’d seen the medical-supply cabinet unlocked.

  For that matter, drugs were available in other places as well. If access defined the crime, if there was a crime, even Andrea could not be eliminated.

  The real question, the one that had eluded him from the beginning, was, Why? It made more sense if Doctor Baldwin was procuring the drugs himself. He had access and an addiction that needed feeding. But that failed to explain the other calamities that had befallen the asylum.

  “You’re sure quiet for a yard dog,” Roy said. “You have gas?”

  “Jesus, Roy, you ever censor yourself before you say something?”

  “You got to hear words before you know if they’re proper,” he said. “Anyway, that was sure enough a pained look you had on your face.”

  “I’m worried about Andrea,” he said.

  “Why don’t you just call her, Hook?”

  “It would be impossible for her phone to be connected this soon.”

  Roy rolled down the window and hiked his foot up on the clutch pedal.

  “Couldn’t you call the Barstow police?” he asked. Hook looked over at him.

  “No,” Roy said. “I suppose not.”

  By the time they pulled into the fort, the sun had dropped. Roy turned on the dock lights and backed in the truck. Hook helped carry in the supplies. When he went out to get the last twenty-five-pound bag of sugar, it was gone.

  “Where’d the sugar go?” he asked Roy.

  “I carried it in already.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. I was working while you were smoking. It ain’t no wonder you’re a yard dog. You wouldn’t last ten minutes in a real job.

  “About that girl, Hook,” he said, leaning against the fender of the truck. “I figure she’s on her way home. Things were pretty sour around here with Helms. Andrea wasn’t one to put up with it.”

  “Thanks for the lift,” Hook said.

  Hook stopped by the guardhouse to report to Helms what he’d learned about Baldwin’s release. Mixer met him at the steps.

  “You still here?” Hook asked.

  Mixer went to the corner of the porch, circled a couple of times, and lay down.

  The lights were out downstairs, and Helms’s office door was open. Hook made his way up the stairs and knocked on the door. Animal sounds came from the cells, sounds made by creatures whose lives consisted of little more than a cell and a bunk and the misery within.

  Shorty opened the door. His shirt was unbuttoned to expose a hairless chest. A gold chain with an agate pendant hung about his neck.

  “Doctor Helms left several hours ago,” he said. “She had some kind of meeting.”

  “You’re here alone?” Hook asked.

  “Just me,” he said. “But these bastards are locked up and I ain’t.”

  “Just remember these folks are insane, Shorty. They aren’t stupid.”

  “Stupid enough to be here,” he said. “Anyway, I have my axe handle back there to do the talking if it comes to it.”

  “You haven’t seen Doctor Baldwin, have you?”

  “He’s in the hospital over to Woodward,” Shorty said.

  “Thanks,” Hook said.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Hook paused. Moonlight shined through Helms’s office window and across her desk. He could see her telephone and, next to it, her coffee cup. A stack of papers had been set to the side.

  Eddie would be fuming by now, wondering why he hadn’t called. Eddie could heat up fast when someone challenged his authority. If Hook got another Brownie, he could end up sleeping on a gunnysack under a bridge.

  He slipped into Helms’s office and sat down at her desk. The moonlight fell over his shoulder. Helms’s scent lingered in her office like funeral flowers. He looked out the window for any signs of her. She would not approve of his using her phone.

  He picked it up and called Eddie.

  “Hello,” Eddie said. “Hook here, Eddie. Just wanted you to know that I’m back.”

  “Do you ever call during work hours, Runyon?”

  “Some of us work longer hours than others.”

  “What the hell is going on with you, Runyon?”

  “What do you mean, what’s going on? I’m working security for the railroad and giving them back my goddang paycheck for a wrecked truck.”

  “I get a call from Wichita police,” Eddie said, “something about them picking up a yard dog for soliciting a hooker, and I’m thinking that might be Runyon they’re talking about. But then they say this yard dog was bumming a Santa Fe freighter, and I’m thinking, Christ, even Runyon ain’t dumb enough to hobo on the railroad where he works.”

  “It isn’t what it seems.”

  “It never is,” he said.

  “Look, I’ll be winding this thing up soon. You still need me down at El Paso?”

  “Hell, Runyon, Mexico is empty. They all rode the train to Chicago.”

  “I got a few loose ends, Eddie. The railroad doesn’t like loose ends.”

  Eddie paused on the other end. “Frenchy says he can get something out there in a matter of days.”

  “Thanks, Eddie.”

  “Course, if you got something against legal transportation,
you could always hop a freighter and ride the rails down to El Paso, maybe pick up a hooker or two along the way.”

  “You’re a hell of a supervisor, Eddie. I’ll be ready.”

  Hook sat in the darkness. The last time he’d talked to Andrea she’d been in this office on this very phone. He turned his chair around and looked at the filing cabinets that sat under the windows.

  On impulse, he opened the files and leafed through them. He pulled Helms’s and Yager’s personnel folders. The details Andrea had given him were spot on. Helms’s academic career could only be described as stellar, and her recommendations for Yager glowed, were without reservations, and left nothing to be read between the lines.

  He reached for a cigarette, hesitated, remembering what Roy had said about Helms’s objections, and put it back into the pack.

  He pulled over the file lying on the desk. It was marked “personal.” He thumbed through the sheaf of papers. In it he found Helms’s old research papers, monthly bank reports, letters, a photograph of a young Helms standing next to a man, his arm around her shoulders. She leaned away, her face absent of emotion. Hook realized that the man next to her could be no other than Frankie Yager.

  He started to close the folder when he spotted a yellowed newspaper clipping near the back. Several of the creases had given way from having been folded and refolded many times. He turned to let the moonlight fall on the article.

  RELEASED INMATE MURDERS LOCAL FAMILY

  Last night at eleven p.m. Moorhead police responded to a call reporting a fire at 1207 Fifth Street. Upon their arrival, they found the home of John and Martha Helms fully engulfed in fire. All attempts at rescue failed, the heat having driven the police back. Both John and Martha Helms, overcome by smoke, perished in the inferno.

  It was not until they searched the grounds that they discovered Bria Helms, sixteen-year-old daughter of John and Martha Helms, hiding in the storage shed behind the home.

  Bria Helms managed to report to the police that a sound had awakened her in the night. She got up to find that a man had entered the house through a window.

  Fearing for her life, she fled to hide in the shed. Helms reported that the man exited through the back door, removed his clothes, and watched as the house was destroyed.