by H. P. Bayne
“Anyway, I tried to help him wash it off the next day, but the paint proved very hard to remove. In the end, I had to track down some paint so we could at least cover it up a little. He said he was okay, but I’m certain it bothered him. How could it not? He said he would take it in to the shop to get it professionally repainted, and I said we would cover the expense since it happened on our property.”
As Carson had been talking, Dez’s thoughts had turned to surveillance cameras. If they’d been up and recording, they might have caught the vandalism happening. And if they’d caught the vandalism, maybe they’d also caught the image of the person who’d snuck into Tim’s backseat and ambushed him the night he died.
“Did you have any surveillance cameras set up?” Dez asked. “Anything that would have caught what happened?”
“We did,” Carson said. “But nothing turned toward the parking lot, I’m afraid. We only had cameras monitoring the building entrances. After the vandalism, I ordered another camera to monitor the parking lot.”
Dez resisted the urge to sit up straighter. “When was it set up?”
“It took about a month to arrive,” Carson said.
Dez’s heart sank. There went that possibility.
Carson checked his watch. “I’m sorry, but I really need to cut this short. I’ve got a teleconference with head office in five minutes and I need to review some documents first.”
“Of course,” Lachlan said. “Thank you for your time.”
The group stood and made for the door, but Lachlan brought them to a halt with a final request for Carson.
“One more thing: The railway crew who was working the night of Tim’s death. Do you have contact info for them?”
“Not anymore. Neither works for the company now. Why do you need it?”
“Covering my bases,” Lachlan said. “Thanks again for your time.”
Back in the SUV, Lachlan called up an old friend, a retired police officer who had worked the Whitebear case. He kept the call short, just long enough to exchange a few pleasantries and to arrange a meeting with him at a coffee shop near the man’s suburban home.
“I need to suss out a few things, and my buddy’s not likely to open up with a pair of onlookers hanging on his every word,” Lachlan said. “Normally, I’d like to be involved in every step of this investigation, but with a missing kid to contend with, we can’t afford the time. Let’s nail down the addresses of the railway crew involved in the incident. We should reinterview them to double-check details. The two of you can look after that while I talk to my friend and maybe try to build some bridges with the widow. We could use her onside.”
“I thought we were entertaining the possibility she might be involved in the death,” Sully said.
“Of course we are,” Lachlan said. “But it’s a lot easier to get someone to admit to something when you’ve established a connection with them.”
Lachlan busied himself in the front passenger seat with his phone, and he at last managed to come up with addresses for the two men.
“Best thing about interviewing people over fifty, boys,” Lachlan said. “Chances of them being fully listed in the four-one-one are a hell of a lot better. One of you have a pen and paper so I can jot down the addresses and numbers for you?”
Dez smirked at his boss. “Speaking of being over fifty. Just screen cap the info and text it to me. Less chance I’ll lose it that way.”
Lachlan fired a glare at Dez, who chuckled. “You don’t have a clue how, do you?” He met Sully’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Give him a hand, Sull, huh?”
Lachlan passed his phone back. “Pair of jackasses, the two of you.”
Sully leaned forward and talked Lachlan through the process of screen caps. A minute later, Dez’s phone pinged inside his pocket with a pair of incoming texts.
Dez turned a beaming grin on Lachlan. “Learn something new every day.”
“Shut up,” Lachlan said.
Instead of delivering Lachlan directly to his friend’s place, Dez dropped him off back at his home, enabling his boss to get his vehicle. In Dez’s opinion, Lachlan being able to drive himself was infinitely better than having to chauffeur him around.
Once Lachlan was out of the car, his usual range of instructions meted out, Sully climbed into the front passenger seat. Dez was consciously aware of the drop in his blood pressure the moment it was just him and Sully again.
“I love the guy, but he’s overbearing as hell,” Dez complained.
Sully chuckled. “He means well.”
“No, he doesn’t.” He pulled away, seeking to put even more distance between them. “So which one of these guys do you want to try first?”
“Maybe we should leave the conductor for last,” Sully said. “The engineer wasn’t manning the train at the moment of impact, right? He won’t have the same cause to conceal things from us.”
Dez looked over at the file Lachlan had left with them, now lying in Sully’s lap. “We should go through the statements before we talk to anyone. Easier to catch it if someone’s trying to change their story. And a quick read might tell us if one of the two of them is more cooperative.”
He pulled over as Sully dug through the file for the statements in question. Once they were certain which place to hit first, Dez could program the address into his phone to check directions. As it stood, one of the locations—the conductor’s home—was in a bedroom community about twenty minutes outside the city. The other place, Dez was pretty sure, was in KR’s southwest pocket, far enough from the other location to make for a bit of a drive between them.
Dez took the conductor’s statement while Sully read over the engineer’s.
“Conductor’s name is Norm Phelan,” Dez said once the two of them had finished reading. “Quick version is he had an alcohol problem back then and admits to drinking on the job. He said he expected the engineer to be running the train, but the engineer had to use the bathroom and didn’t come back for a while. The incident with Tim on the tracks happened at that point. Phelan claims he didn’t see Tim until it was far too late.”
“Which is pretty much what Lachlan told us happened, except for the bathroom part,” Sully said. He then picked up his own written statement. “Engineer’s named Pete Davenport. He said he left Norm in charge because he had to take a leak. He said Norm was insistent before they left KR that they have a couple of rounds. Norm had beer but Pete restricted himself to soda. By the time they finished loading up at the rail yards and were a short distance out of town, he had to use the bathroom. Problem was, he couldn’t get out afterward. Either the door or the lock was jammed, and Phelan didn’t hear him yelling or banging. Left a half-cut Phelan in control when the collision occurred.”
“Got an address?” Dez asked.
Sully provided one, and Dez tapped it into his phone’s map app, watching as GPS took over. A moment later, they were back on the road and headed for the engineer’s home.
While, to Dez, Davenport was one of those wealthy-sounding names, nothing was extravagant about the man’s home.
The small bungalow boasted a well-maintained front yard, but the detached two-car garage appeared from this angle to be nearly as big as the house itself. As they got out to approach the house, Dez noticed it was a shotgun-style home—longer than it was wide, though not by a whole lot.
“I thought railway work paid well,” he said.
Sully shrugged.
A rap on the front door brought a woman, likely in her seventies, to answer. She greeted them with a smile, but she appeared tired with large, dark bags under her eyes. She had a slight tremor which appeared to Dez like the start of Parkinson’s.
“Yes?”
Dez met her upward gaze with a smile. “I’m Desmond Braddock and this is my brother Sullivan Gray.” He produced a card and presented it to her. “We’re private investigators looking into the recent disappearance of a young man. Are you related to Pete Davenport, by chance?”
“I was,” she said. “Pete was my hus
band.”
Dez’s heart sank on the “was.” His expression must have given him away because she provided the explanation without need for additional questions.
“He passed away a number of years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” Dez said.
She didn’t close the door, her expression suggesting her curiosity was piqued. “Why did you want to speak with him?”
“The guy we’re trying to find went out to see the Edge Creek Light two nights ago and disappeared soon after. We found some info about a fatality in the area of the Edge Creek crossing, one from seventeen years ago involving the missing boy’s father.”
“Oh no,” the woman said. She peered down at her house slippers, a pair of fuzzy pink things that reminded Dez of the Muppets. She paused for a moment, as if playing through something in her head. At last she looked up. “I suppose you’d better come in.”
Dez and Sully waived the offer of tea or coffee as the woman led them into the living room. Taking a plush chair for herself, she left the sofa for them.
The room boasted a fireplace with a row of photos lining the mantle, including a framed wedding picture that had to be of Pete and his wife. From here, Pete looked like the happiest man on the planet. Dez wondered how Tim’s death might have shaken that.
“We didn’t catch your name,” Sully said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s Lois.”
Sully smiled. “What would you prefer we call you?”
“Lois is fine.”
Sully eyed Dez, and Dez took over the questioning. “We’d hoped to ask your husband about his recollection of what happened on the night Tim Whitebear was killed. We’ve read his police statement from the time, but we’d hoped to find out if he recalled anything else. Did he ever talk about it?”
“Not much, not to me and the kids, anyway,” she said. “But he did talk sometimes to me, when he was feeling particularly down. The whole thing ruined him. He was a wonderful man. When we married, he had a big, booming laugh and always had a joke to tell. After Tim was killed, I rarely saw Pete smile unless we were around the kids or with company. He was good at pretending around others. Not so much with me. I saw him how he truly was.”
“Which was?” Dez asked.
“Sad. Very, very sad. He never recovered from it. He had terrible nightmares for the rest of his life. He had to quit his job afterward, and he took a position as a school maintenance worker instead. It didn’t pay well, but he didn’t have to risk having a flashback either. To the day he died, he went out of his way to avoid anything to do with the railway. He even hated crossing tracks when we were out for a drive.”
“Was he ever treated for PTSD?”
“He never admitted he had it. He was an old-fashioned sort of fellow, believed in dealing with things on his own. Management was no help either. I’ve thought many times if this had happened now instead of then, he would have had help. It hasn’t been that long, I suppose, but attitudes have changed for the better about such things.”
“What about the fact he and Tim worked for the same company?” Dez asked. “Do you think that added to his problems afterward?”
“I have no doubt,” Lois said. “They didn’t know each other very well, mind you; Tim worked at head office and Pete worked on the trains. Their paths didn’t cross much save for Christmas parties and the like. But I do know Pete never had anything bad to say about Tim. Even though they weren’t friends per se, it affected Pete, knowing he was partially responsible for a train that killed a colleague.”
“When did Pete pass away?” Sully asked.
She gave them a small, sad smile. “Almost two years after it happened. He suffered a massive heart attack in his sleep. The kids had long moved out on their own by then, and he’d taken to sleeping in one of the kids’ rooms so as not to wake me with his nightmares—his insistence, not mine. When I woke up that morning and checked on him, he had already been gone for a few hours.”
Dez felt himself blanch. His mind turned between memories of his father’s body lying dead on a hospital bed well over two years ago and thoughts of what it would be like to wake to find Eva had died in the night. Suddenly, he found himself battling his own poison thoughts.
Sully’s elbow thudded lightly against his side, and he read the subtle movement for what it was—a gentle nudge out of the dark.
“I’m really sorry, Lois,” Sully said. “We both are.”
“Thank you. It was a long time ago, but I still think of him often.”
Dez decided to pick it back up. “You said he talked to you about it sometimes. What did he say?”
“He didn’t see it but was convinced he felt it. He was never positive if he imagined it, but he was sure he knew exactly when they hit the man. He remembered Norm letting him out of the bathroom and telling him he thought they’d run over a person lying on the tracks. Pete said they went out together to check, and they had to walk back a ways, since it took the train a while to stop after the brakes were applied. Tim was lying next to the tracks, very clearly dead. His injuries, I’m certain, were emblazoned on my husband’s memory.”
“Pete was locked in the bathroom?” Dez asked.
“He told me he had to pee because he’d had so much pop before they left the rail yards. He went into the bathroom but found the door jammed afterward. He said he banged on it, hoping maybe Norm could help out, but he didn’t come until after Tim was hit. He thought maybe Norm had fallen asleep or something—not entirely out of the question given the problem he had with drinking.”
Sully tilted his head. “How serious was this problem?”
“Serious. Pete and Norm worked together many years. At one time, Norm was able to keep his drinking under control, at least in his working life. But after a while, he brought it to work too. Often, just Pete and Norm were on their runs, and Norm felt comfortable enough around Pete he would even take a bottle with him into the engine. Pete covered for him a long time. He didn’t even put the drinking into his initial statement. He was asked to redo it after he was questioned about Norm’s drinking, and he realized Norm had been criminally charged with impaired operation. If you’ve read the police statement, it’s likely the second one. I wonder, did Norm acknowledge it in his statement?”
Dez nodded. “Yeah, he did. But it sounds like his drinking didn’t cause the death. The place where it happened was just beyond a curve. The investigation determined even if the person operating the train was sober, the curve in the track prior to Edge Creek would have made it impossible to see the danger in time. There wouldn’t have been enough time to stop the train before impact.”
“So sad,” Lois said. “And so pointless. What was Tim thinking, getting drunk and lying on the tracks? I hate to admit this—I know how it sounds—but I’m so angry with him. If he wanted to kill himself, he could have done it in a way that didn’t drag others down with him. The people who loved him, they would have been affected anyway. But my husband shouldn’t have been made to suffer because of someone else’s decision. It’s not fair.”
Dez debated how much to say. It was early days, and the only evidence they had of homicide—while far more than enough to convince him—wasn’t sufficient to change the outcome of the coroner’s conclusions. Not yet, anyway.
For now, Dez held onto his thoughts.
“Have you and Norm stayed in touch?” he asked instead.
Lois gave her head a slow shake. Like everything else about her, the motion appeared sad. “No. Pete just couldn’t. He cut out all reminders of that night, including his old friends, I’m afraid. Anyway, I think despite the outcome of the investigation, he sort of blamed Norm. He didn’t say it out loud, but that was the impression I had.”
Dez exchanged a look with Sully and received a nod in response. They had about all they needed from her for now.
Lois saw them to the front door and waited while they slipped back into their boots and coats.
“You know, I don’t say this o
ften,” she said. “But I’ve always had the feeling he’s still around. Pete, I mean. Like he never really left. And I’m so scared he’s not at peace because of all of this. Does that sound crazy, to think he’s still with me?”
Sully smiled at her. “It’s not crazy at all.”
They took their leave and returned to the SUV. Dez set a course for the town of Lindon Mills where Norm was supposed to live, before turning to Sully. “Is he still there? Pete, I mean.”
Sully nodded. “I can’t see him, but I felt him. And she’s right. He’s not at peace.” He met Dez’s eye until Dez needed to return his eyes to the road. “Maybe if we can figure this thing out, we can save more than just Gabe and Tim.”
11
While Dez wasn’t well-versed in history, he knew Lindon Mills was so named due to a handful of flour mills that had sprouted in the community a long time ago.
The mills were long gone, but the name had stuck. As had many of its residents. The pretty town boasted a main street movie companies might enjoy taking advantage of and plenty of homes worth a five-page spread in a house-and-garden magazine. It’s desirability and proximity to Kimotan Rapids put homeownership well out of reach of most young people these days. Meanwhile, many seniors were still in the same homes they’d raised their families in; some even maintained the homes they themselves had grown up in.
Without either a fat pay check or a hefty pension, Lindon Mills remained a town to visit but nothing more.
“I hate this place,” Dez muttered as he drove the main drag, watching for the turn to Norm Phelan’s home. “I always feel like people are silently judging me.”
Sully flipped down the visor to study his reflection. “Think how I feel.”
In Dez’s peripheral vision, he saw Sully remove the tie from his hair and pull it back into a cleaner knot at the base of his skull. He’d grown a beard over the past couple of years and said he planned on holding onto it for a while. Sully possessed youthful features, the kind some people called “cute.” Dez suspected the beard—while once a way to hide from the world—had found a second purpose by making him appear a little older.