Parallel Lies (22 page)

He didn’t want the conductors figuring out that a seat stub had been stolen until he, Alvarez, had already jumped.

Alvarez walked up the center aisle, purposely unsteady, alternately placing his hands on the back of the seats to steady himself, his fingers only inches from those stubs. As he closed in on the kid, he took in his surroundings. His eye caught movement up ahead. He glanced up to see through the distant window of the car’s end door, and through it beyond and into the next car and a conductor just finishing up looking for new passengers. The man was heading toward him. A quick check over his shoulder revealed a second conductor. He was sandwiched!

Demanding of himself that he stay calm, Alvarez focused on the task at hand. He needed that stub—and he needed it before either of the conductors reached him.

He staggered again, slipped, and fell to one knee. As he did so, he captured the green stub. He owned it. He looked quickly in both directions attempting to judge his situation. The conductor ahead seemed likely to enter first. He slipped into the first empty row of seats, tucked his stub into the space for it on the seat ahead and slouched into a napping position, his eyes open but dazed with fatigue—a passenger ready for a quiet trip to Chicago.

The forward conductor entered and began inspecting stubs and looking for unstubbed passengers to ticket. Alvarez felt a bead of sweat trickle from his forehead. His ears whined. He doubted that on close inspection he would pass for a passenger intent on napping. The conductor stepped another row closer. And another. His heart began to swell painfully in his chest, its drumming ferocious.

Behind him, he heard the car’s rear door open:
cha-cha-hmmm,
said the train. This would be the other conductor, quite possibly accompanying the stranger who had boarded late.

“Ticket?” It was the conductor looking down at him.

Alvarez swallowed dryly. “You already—” He glanced up to see his green seat stub was not where he had just put it. Panic seized hold of him. He blinked rapidly, his eyes stinging.

The conductor leaned in toward him. Alvarez prepared to fight back. The man said, “Never mind. Sorry to disturb you.” He bent and retrieved the green stub from where it had fallen to the car floor.

Alvarez thought that in a way this had worked out even more in his favor, for now he and the conductor had a connection. He would be remembered as a ticketed passenger. “No problem,” Alvarez said.

The conductor moved on. The pain in Alvarez’s chest slowly subsided. He tried to steady himself.

Voices from behind, as the conductor rousted the sleeping
kid, asking for a ticket. The kid protested, claiming he’d already given the man his ticket. The conductor was heard asking for a receipt. Alvarez watched in the reflection on the inside of the window as the kid pulled a ticket receipt out of his wallet. A
receipt!
Sweat dripped down and blurred Alvarez’s vision.

The other conductor and the man who had boarded in Crawfordsville approached from the rear. The two conductors talked while one dropped to a knee, no doubt looking for the missing green seat stub. Alvarez couldn’t hear them, but he didn’t have to. No matter what they were saying, it was trouble.

“This here is Agent Tyler. He’s interested in anyone who boarded at Crawfordsville. I told him I counted two.”

“I saw three,” the other conductor corrected. His name tag read Charles Daniels. Tyler’s conductor was tagged Felix Ramone. “I punched two in car three. Haven’t hit the third yet.”

“I started in five and worked forward. Didn’t punch no one. Six through nine weren’t open.”

Tyler had noticed that at Crawfordsville only three cars had been open for boarding. He had a little trouble maintaining his sea legs with the train’s movements.

“I seen two ladies,” Ramone told his partner.

“Me? I seen them and a guy.”

“You get a look at him?” Tyler asked Daniels.

“If I did,” the man replied, “I didn’t pay him no mind.”

“So we have one unidentified male on board who has yet to be ticketed,” Tyler suggested. His skin itched. The hair on the nape of his neck felt prickly.

“Probably somewhere in six through nine. More seats back there anyway.”

Tyler spoke softly, “Here’s what I want to do. Mr. Ramone,
you’re going to go check six through nine. If you ticket the guy, you do nothing unusual. Complete your rounds and come back up the train and find me.” Ramone nodded. He looked a little excited, which bothered Tyler. “Mr. Daniels, you and I are going to have a talk with the two women who boarded at Crawfordsville. We’ll ask a few questions. Maybe get a description. Nice and quiet, nothing showy.”

“Got it.”

“What’s this guy done, anyway?” Ramone asked.

The other conductor paused as if remembering something, and then said, “You know, come to think of it, I shoulda checked that guy’s receipt.” He turned slowly toward the front of the car.

“What guy?” Tyler asked, his throat sour and dry.

The man pointed. But the seat where Alvarez had been sitting was now empty.

Car number three, two cars forward of where Alvarez had left his duffel, was packed. He carried his green stub with him and knew that there would be a receipt or two for the picking, tossed as litter, since few passengers, other than businesspeople, held on to their receipts once punched in by the conductor. The trick was to locate one of today’s, and quickly.

Alvarez bent and scooped one off the floor, but it carried a shoe print, and that bothered him. On closer inspection, it had been punched yesterday. This train evidently had come from the East Coast and had already run more than twelve hours without cleaning.

The door thumped closed behind him as he moved into the next car. He was getting too far away from his duffel, too disconnected from his plans.

He scooped down, again collecting receipts, this time a
pair. One was clean and punched as an Indianapolis boarding. He pocketed it. He took a minute to collect himself and dab off some sweat with his forearm.

He didn’t want to cross paths with the conductor—especially not with the man who had boarded late—but he was running out of room at this end of the train, and his duffel was now three cars behind him. If an NUS agent, this guy was likely to know his face. He tried to settle himself. Calm won the day.

The public address system announced that the dining car was open. Several people came out of their seats at once. Alvarez saw an opening: the dining car was midtrain. If he could group himself in with the others…

Tyler had three hours until the train reached Chicago, plenty of time to isolate the one man who had boarded in Crawfordsville.

The conductor, Daniels, came alive as they entered the next car. “There,” he said, indicating two women. One of the women stood and headed away from them. “Excuse me!” the conductor called out loudly. The woman didn’t turn. She stepped out of the way of a thick group of several people, apparently heading for the dining car.

Tyler rose to his toes, trying to keep his eye on the woman. As they reached the vacated seat, Tyler said to the conductor, “You take her. I’ll talk to this one.” He turned, stepping out of the way of the other passengers in the crowded aisle. His cell phone rang, and he was distracted as he answered it.

The man ducking his head in that group behind him was Umberto Alvarez.

“Nothing on this end,” Nell Priest told him over the phone. “It’ll be weeks before we know exactly what rolled this train, but it could have been an axle shear. It could have been a hot box from bad bearings.”

“The same M.O.”

“Yes.”

Tyler debated telling her what he knew. He gave in. “Rucker has a gate photo and prints. He’s closing in on an ID.”

“And you?” she asked.

“I’m on an Amtrak to Chicago.”

“Do we have a face?” she asked.

Tyler was about to mention the black leather jacket. For privacy, he turned while cupping the phone. As he did so, he saw the backs of two black leather jackets among the group of passengers that had just squeezed past him. Granted, there were probably other such jackets in this car, but these two walking away nagged at him. He kept his eye on that group.

“If you want to be part of this,” he said, “get yourself to Chicago by tonight. I gotta go.” He disconnected and followed that group—those two jackets—an unexplained sense of dread overcoming him. The interview with the woman could wait—she looked to be in her eighties; she wasn’t going anywhere fast.

The conductor pounded his fist onto the door of the car’s only lavatory and called out to the woman inside. “Madame! Excuse me! We’d like a word with you in a moment.”

The sense of dread in Tyler built to a higher level. He moved more quickly now. He stepped into the loud passageway between cars, watching the group through the glass in the end door. As he entered this car, the group was just leaving. He hurried, walking more quickly. He didn’t want to run—to attract that kind of attention—but he did turn it up a notch. He reached the far end in time to see through both door windows and into the next car.

One of the two men wearing the black leather jackets was tall, with wide shoulders.
Strong,
Tyler thought. Dark haired. All at once, this man reached up into the overhead rack and, without breaking his stride, snagged a piece of luggage.

A small black duffel bag.
The kind that doubled as a backpack.

The description fit.

It was hardly definitive—the ubiquitous black duffel—and yet the cop in Tyler sensed this was a person worth confronting.

He pushed through the rear door, adrenaline coursing through his system. The suspect simultaneously exited through the far end of the next car.

His instinct drove him. A veteran, he survived the street because of it, cleared investigations, and won cases. And Tyler knew he had it. He moved down the next car’s center aisle with confidence and determination. He prioritized. He wanted to talk to this guy. That was all. No violation of rights, no violence. Nothing whatsoever like the afternoon with Chester Washington that had ruined his life.
The bag and black leather jacket could easily be coincidence,
he reminded himself.
But enough for probable cause.
The investigator felt energized. This particular train made sense as an escape route. There weren’t a hell of a lot of other options.