Parallel Lies (20 page)

The site was crowded with local law enforcement and firefighters. O’Malley and Priest scoured the rubble. Everyone wore some form of respiratory protection against the escaping gases, the car responsible for the leak was crusted in a fire-retarding white foam. The word from NUR was that those gases were benign and posed no health risk, but no one was taking any chances. Wearing the gear, Tyler felt a little like an astronaut. About the only real solid benefit of that escaping gas was that it kept the media at bay—behind barriers erected three-quarters of a mile off—and Tyler was thinking that they could have used some gas at some of his homicide crime scenes in D.C., where the initials of their city had evolved into a
D
isneyland
C
ircus—a perfect description of how the media treated crime scenes. The other benefit of the masks
was that no one talked much because it required shouting, and even then words were lost to the plastic hoods. That gas was so beneficial, in fact, that for a moment Tyler considered the possibility that O’Malley had arranged for it. He put little past the man.

Tyler didn’t know enough about derailment investigation to be effective here, but he had wanted to see it for himself, to record his own mental images, to
feel
the devastation firsthand, and also to run off a few Polaroids to advance to Rucker. It was an impressive, disturbing sight—some piece of human engineering so massive, incongruously at rest on its side.

Priest came at him through the mist of a fire hose used on car thirty-six, which was thought to contain flammables. Unlike the others, who had jobs to do, Tyler stood upwind of the wreck. As she approached, he pulled off the gas mask. Nell Priest followed his lead.

“You’ve never been to one of these, right?” she asked.

“Shoe’s on the other foot,” he said, shaking his head no. She had never been to a homicide.

“Most everybody here has a specific assignment. Fire suppression, communications, medical. The biggest job for everyone involved is keeping the chain of command straight. Ironically, you’re in charge, did you know that?”

“Because I’m NTSB?”

“Exactly.”

The National Transportation Safety Board had investigative authority in any such transportation-related disaster.

“Our guys—the
real
guys—are on their way,” he corrected. “It’s an Emergency Response Team.”

“You’re still in charge for now. Even the FiBIes are second to you until your cavalry arrives. It’s not just a technicality; it’s the way it works.”

“I’ve never even seen one of these,” he pointed out, “much less investigated one. I think I’ll pass.”

“The smartest move you can make is to hand it off to the locals,” she advised. “Your ERT guys will take it back when they arrive, but you’re a hero if you give it to the locals for a few hours.”

“Not your guys,” he tested.

“Listen, the biggest mistake you could make is to give it to O’Malley, though you never heard that from me. He’ll expect it of you. I’m sure it’s why he offered to fly you out here. Not only did he want you, an NTSB guy, to be on the scene, mandating the hierarchy, but he’ll think you owe him one. He wants control. You’re his ticket.”

“Got it.”

She dug into a pocket and offered Tyler a handwritten list of the towns where the various cars of the derailed train had been parked and for how long. “Maybe this gives you a head start,” she said.

“Maybe,” he agreed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “I thought you’d be grateful for that.”

“I am,” he replied, though unconvincingly.

She picked up on this. “Listen, Tyler, I objected to you being left out of the loop on Wells. For what it’s worth, I made a stink about it before I ever headed to St. Louis. But Keith O’Malley operates on eighty percent paranoia. He’s extremely distrustful where the feds are concerned. He compartmentalizes information so no one person ever has the full picture. And I don’t think I have the full picture even now. I don’t think you do.”

“This Latino?” Tyler asked.

“I would bet O’Malley knows more than he’s letting on, yes. And flying you out with us? Keith O’Malley doing the feds a favor? Since when? All I’m saying is watch your back. With your recent history, you make a pretty good target if someone’s looking for a scapegoat. Maybe O’Malley’s doing
you favors for the wrong reasons. And I don’t want
anything
to do with that.” She added, “I like you.”

He thanked her for the list.

“Thank me later,” she said. “And keep your phone on. If anything comes up here—which it won’t—I’ll let you know.”

Attempting to retrace the movements of the saboteur, to find evidence or establish an escape route to follow, Tyler visited the derailed train’s last stop.

The train tracks in Greencastle had once been used to ferry hundreds of millions of tons of coal from the mining pits of Appalachia to every city and town in both the central and northern states and parts of western Canada. Judging by the lack of rust on the rails, Tyler determined they were still in use, though today’s traffic no doubt paled in comparison with what had traveled here a hundred years earlier. This group of side-by-side tracks now couldn’t even be considered a yard, and yet NUR and several of its competitors used the Greencastle spur as a holding area and pickup point, bypassing Indianapolis’s Big Four yard and its higher fees. This was all explained to Tyler by a heavyset black man in his mid-fifties who must have felt exceptionally cold in his oil-stained overalls and well-worn lineman’s boots, but he behaved like a man standing on a beach, all smiles and sunshine.

“Kind of a bother, moving some of these cars,” he explained, “as we ain’t necessarily set up for it. A lot of push-and-pull, you ask me. The Big Four yard, northeast of here, would be a hell of a lot easier.”

“What about the N-nine-ninety?” Tyler asked, naming the derailed train.

“We added three cars earlier this morning. Yes, sir.”

“When would that have been?”

“Around sunrise, it was. Frost was on. Steel has got a mean bite in these temperatures.”

“You see anyone? Strangers? Anyone like that?”

“No, sir.” He smiled like a jack-o’-lantern. “And I know ‘bout everyone in Greencastle…
including
the strangers.”

“Did you check the cars?”

“Inspect ‘em? Course we did.”

“No, I mean for hobos.”

“Riders,” he stated, shaking his head at Tyler’s ignorance. “Not me, no, sir. A man fool enough to ride a car in these temperatures, who am I to stop him? You gotta be some kind of desperate. ‘Round here we see riders more in the warm months, but it wouldn’t make no difference to me, no how. Not my job to police these cars. I just push ‘em and pull ‘em, and the pay ain’t great at that.”

“And if someone
was
on one of these cars—in them, whatever—at what point could he get off? When does the nine-ninety stop again?”

“For most of the Northern Union trains it’s Terre Haute.”

“Somewhere before there,” Tyler encouraged.

The man looked a little confused.

“Someplace a person could jump on or off?”

The big man looked at Tyler strangely. “What you got in mind, anyway?”

“I’m running an investigation into the derailment,” Tyler reminded him, impatient now.

“Plenty of places to jump from the N-nine-ninety, if you got a mind to do it. It ain’t no high-speed train, you know? The N-nine-ninety runs once a week, Tennessee to Michigan. She carries brake hubs, mostly…from the Street Brothers foundry in Chattanooga. Been making this run for fifty years.”

Tyler felt trapped under a weight of frustration. The suspect was a planner. He had known where to hit the 990 and
he would know how to flee the area. If the man’s encounter with Harry Wells had been a dry run, then he’d already jumped another train bound for St. Louis. O’Malley was certain to cover that possibility. Tyler’s hope was that the suspect either had delayed leaving the area to get a look at the wreck in daylight or changed his escape route due to the attention Harry Wells had brought him. If so, he would have had to improvise or rethink his getting away. If he’d stayed, he could still be close by, or just on his way out. Tyler felt discouraged but not beaten. “Plenty of places to jump, eh?” he said, echoing the big man.

“Yes, sir. I figure that’s about right.”

Tyler asked the next logical question. “If a person doesn’t have his own car, how does he get out of these towns? Bus? Train?”

“Sure thing. There’s both, but nothing from here that’ll help you. Closest Gray-dog is down to Cloverdale.” He glanced over at Tyler’s rental car. “Amwreck is up to Crawfordsville,” he said, self-amused. “Right here, you’re kinda in no-man’s land. This here is freight-hauling track. This is the real railroad.”

“Other tracks, other trains someone could jump—
riders,
I mean,” he said, using the proper terminology.

“Plenty.” He rolled out his thick fingers from his cold fist as he counted. “Amwreck, CSX, NUR, Indiana, Indiana Southern, Louisville-and-Nashville. Take your pick. They all work these same rails.”

“But the wreck of the nine-ninety has closed the tracks,” Tyler reminded him. “Right?”

“Not Amwreck, it hasn’t.” He addressed Tyler like a teacher to a student. “Amwreck runs on the northern tracks, not these. Fact is, every damn freight line out of Indianapolis is going to have to be rerouted to those northern tracks. Me? Unless they call me down to that wreck to lend a hand, I’m
out of a job for the better part of the next week. Mark my word.”

Tyler tried putting himself in the mind of the suspect and considered his options. The man had about a six-hour jump on them—much less if he’d stayed to admire his work, as Tyler believed he would. If the derailment had been set up four or five days earlier, just prior to the boxcar assault, then all was for naught, but Tyler doubted it. According to O’Malley, the derailments resulted from bad bearings. It seemed likely, if sabotage, it would have been carried out just prior to the derailment.

North or south? Train or bus? Tyler doubted the man would steal a car or charter a plane. Either option could be too quickly chased down. He could
feel
his time running out,
feel
the man escaping as he stood there in the cold talking to this yard hand. “Which runs more often, Greyhound or Amtrak?”

“The Graydog only runs twice a week anymore,” the big man replied, “Tuesdays and Thursdays, I believe it is. Time was when it ran every day.”

“And the Amtrak?” Tyler asked, more hopeful.

“On through to Chicago once a day. From Indianapolis, more often than that.”

“Once a day,” Tyler said, breathlessly.

“Afternoon,” the man said.

Tyler felt awash with relief. It was not yet noon. He saw a flicker of possibility: the Amtrak to Chicago could be their suspect’s backup escape route. Glimpse the wreck, get to Crawfordsville. He’d used O’Hare in Chicago once; would he use it again?

Tyler thanked the yard hand, already at a full run back toward his rental.

From the front seat, his cell phone pressed to his ear, Tyler attempted to navigate not only the streets of Greencastle but Amtrak’s automated phone system. By the time he reached state highway 231, he learned that Crawfordsville, an unmanned Amtrak station, offered two choices, not one, as he’d just been told: a “motor coach” to Bloomington, Illinois, and then an Amtrak to St. Louis, or an express Amtrak to Chicago. Both departed Crawfordsville within the hour.

Tyler’s choice was the express, because it departed first. A long shot, he made the drive anyway, believing it worth the try.

He brought the car up to eighty-five. He had a twenty-five-mile drive to make in seventeen minutes.