Parallel Lies (23 page)

Another possibility remained—that the sabotage had been done days or weeks earlier, and that the suspect was nowhere in the area, but this seemed unlikely given that Rucker had turned up the matching flight manifests. What else explained the arrival of K. C. Jones at Indianapolis?

As he approached the rear door to the next train car, the suspect out of sight, Tyler kept the image of Harry Wells firmly in mind, that deep cut from earlobe to eye, the bleed-out that left the man “as pale as a polar bear” as one of the techs had put it. This guy was dangerous, and the tight confines of a train were no place to come to terms with that.
This thought was followed by a twinge of anxiety—a weightlessness in the center of his chest. The train car suddenly felt as if it were shrinking, and Tyler sensed the early warning signs of his particular brand of claustrophobia.
Not now!
he pleaded, but the car continued to shrink, an esophagus ready to swallow him. His head pounded and the train car continued to constrict. When a sudden
whoosh
rocked the entire train as an eastbound express passed, the jolt broke his anxiety. He pulled open the car door and stepped out into the noisy passageway that connected the two cars. He spun abruptly as he caught sight of a man to his right. The man’s back was turned, a thin spiral of cigarette smoke rising. Tyler caught himself reaching for the man as he identified that the black jacket was not leather but Gore-Tex or nylon, and that there was no duffel to be seen.

He glanced into the next car, but it was the dining car—nothing but a narrow aisle with a turn to the left, as seen from this end.

The smoker’s partner, a woman with short hair, freckles, and thin lips, stared at Tyler contemptuously.

Tyler stammered, “A man. Just now.” He added, “A black duffel.” The woman pointed to the dining car.

Tyler tripped a bright red bar and waited for the automatic door to slide out of his way. He paused by the car’s only lavatory.
OCCUPIED
, the indicator read. He knocked. A woman’s voice answered. Tyler moved on.

The automatic door wheezed behind him. It was the same woman with the ultrashort haircut. She slipped past Tyler, who hurried and followed her. The small counter area was stainless steel. The thin woman ordered a Diet Coke. Tyler now pushed past her, facing twenty or more people, all standing with drinks and packaged sandwiches, cookies, and candy bars.

No black leather jacket. No black duffel.

His suspect was no longer here.
He’s running from me,
Tyler thought, encouraged.

Tyler’s legs buckled. The train slowed noticeably. An express to Chicago, there were no scheduled stops after Crawfordsville. This was merely a slowing—a turn up ahead, or a slight grade, an approaching town, or a control light being observed.
Slowing.
He hurried through the small crowd thinking:

He’s going to jump!

Flight. Escape. The cop knew with absolute certainty that this was his suspect, and that he was about to lose him.

He recalled Harry Wells’s broken body after being knifed and thrown from the train.

He lost his balance again.

The train dragged considerably.

Tyler punched the door’s red bar, and the door
whooshed
open.

Noise. Wind. Through the passageway, an open side door on the left. The brown farm fields and slanting rain blurred past.

“Federal agent!” he announced, going for his gun. The duffel appeared as a huge black wall and knocked him back on his heels.

His head banged against the steel wall and he swooned. Dizzy. He squeezed his trigger finger, but nothing happened. He had dropped the gun. He struggled forward, suddenly off-balance again as the train slowed further. He lowered his vision, looking for his gun, and something connected with his chin. His head snapped back and he heard a crack. And then he heard it, like a bird taking flight—the rapid flutter of clothing. And then it was gone, absorbed in the wind and the rain.

The train lurched once more, this time regaining speed.

Tyler found his weapon and grabbed it. He leaned his head outside, the rain stinging his face, the wind whipping his hair.
“Sweet Jesus,” he mumbled, knowing he had to jump, had to follow. He looked down: a wet, auburn blur of winter’s monochromes streaming past. He took a tentative step forward, his face wet and cold, his vision partially blinded. He held on tightly, leaning further, knowing what had to be done—he had to jump, tuck, and roll.

The train’s rhythm increased in tempo, the song of steel wheels picking up speed.

Jump!
he commanded himself, first shutting his eyes, then opening them again. That blur like a long brown ribbon. Jumping down into things he couldn’t even see.

His toes hovering on the edge, Tyler finally stepped back and away from the open door. He couldn’t do it.

Alvarez came to standing, already brushing himself off. He tested the right ankle. Sore, but he could walk it off. He located the duffel—twenty yards behind him. He’d thrown it ahead of his jump. He watched the train, waiting only a second or two for the agent to jump, fearing the man would be armed.

Then he cleared his head, turned for the duffel, and ran. Ran, as fast and hard as his body would carry him.

The pristine carpet of unplowed snow confirmed to Alvarez that the farmhouse was empty. A dead giveaway. Either the owners of this farm had left on Christmas holiday prior to last week’s snowstorm, or they had abandoned the farm for winter to snowbirding in Florida or Phoenix or some other such spot. Alvarez approached the nearby barn without fear of being spotted. Typical of these Midwestern farms, he found the barn doors unlocked. A large tractor occupied the structure’s main area. He discovered a room filled with dozens of tools of every description but still nothing to assist his escape. But inside the attached shed, essentially a two-car garage, he found a robin’s-egg blue, vintage Buick with white walls and a spit-polish shine. With no activity at the farm since the storm, the car seemed unlikely to be reported stolen. In the end, the only tracks in the snow led from the garage to the two-lane road.

The incident on the train from Crawfordsville had left Alvarez’s head spinning. For over a year and a half he’d wondered how long he might maintain his advantage of surprise, might continue to stay one step ahead. Now he knew: not much longer.

He felt a sense of urgency unlike anything he’d yet experienced. He couldn’t change the schedule of the bullet train, so he would have to adjust.

His right elbow and ankle ached. He’d been lucky the other guy hadn’t followed, because he’d landed in an open
expanse of farmland. He’d have been caught or shot in minutes. But God had been looking down on him: the agent hadn’t jumped. Alvarez took it as a sign—he was meant to continue. David had withstood another test from Goliath.

He made the trip to Rockford, Illinois, on farm roads, never exceeding the speed limit and always using his turn signals. He couldn’t afford to be arrested now, although many a fugitive had hidden from the system by going
inside—
being arrested under an alias on a lesser crime and doing a year or two while the search for them, the manhunt, ran out of steam. Alvarez kept this ace in his back pocket—a contingency plan, there if needed. If they drew too close, a breaking and entering or assaulting an officer would earn him a year or two in prison and would ironically shelter him.

Rockford, Illinois, was a necessary detour, and though a long way from New York, it was a trip he had to make, wanted to make, and one he had made often over the past eighteen months.

The Bennett House, on Arcadia, only blocks from Rockford Memorial Hospital, was an imposing brick colonial with wooden black shutters and a gleaming black door with a brass knocker. There was a trace of old snow shoveled and plowed into sand brown lumps of decomposing ice, and the thick air held a bite that burned his skin as he climbed the short wheelchair ramp to the door. He rang and let himself inside.

He was met by Mrs. Dundell, a woman of great energies and deep compassion, a registered nurse for twenty years before turning her talents to the management of Bennett House, with its staff of eleven and its client base of ten live-ins and dozens of outpatients.

“Ahh…Mr. Alvarez. So nice to see you! Is that knee bothering you?” Always the nurse.

“Slipped on some ice.”

“Yes, it’s that time of year.”

“Miguel?” He pronounced it in the Spanish.

“I wish you’d called,” Mrs. Dundell said, leading him by the elbow to a small sitting room peopled with antiques, dried flowers, and out-of-date magazines. “He’s having a bit of a challenge today. A cold, I hope. Flu’s possible. He’s in his room.” She changed tone. “But I’m glad you’re here. Your visits always cheer him up.”

“His lungs?”

“Better, I think. His spirits have been good. We want this cold over as quickly as possible.”

“The job?”

“Everyone at the library loves him. He’s been very earnest and dedicated. I’ve heard nothing but glowing reports.”

“Attendance?”

“Yes, he’s been fine on that, ever since your last visit. Well done, whatever you said to him. Not one unexcused absence.”

“I told him I’d kick his butt,” Alvarez teased.

“Yes…I’m sure you did.” When Mrs. Dundell grinned, a room felt warmer, a window brighter. “It’s good you’ve come. Are you sure that knee’s okay? I could have a look at it.”

“Just banged up a little. I’ll live through the morning.” He grinned at the irony.

The bedroom was small and sparingly decorated in a slightly frilly, Victorian motif. The wall-mounted television played the Cartoon Network.

At nineteen, Miguel still had not graduated past Elmer Fudd or the Road Runner. He could keep up with most of
Sesame Street
though tired of it quickly. It had been explained to Alvarez that the alcohol in their mother’s blood had poisoned his brother’s brain to the point of scarring, to where transmitted signals became lost and wandered inside
their chemical confines until dissipating. The blessing was that he seemed so happy in his limited world. He laughed, and smiled, and, on a good day, was able to carry on a conversation at the level of a ten-year-old. Despite the continuing efforts of Mrs. Dundell and her staff, Miguel had never crossed this ceiling. But his unusual ability in mathematics allowed him to conceptualize the Dewey decimal system of card-catalog filing and made him the perfect reshelfer. His lungs were a constant worry. He’d suffered five bouts of pneumonia while under the state’s care. Once he’d been moved, through Juanita’s arrangements, he’d vastly improved. At the age of eighteen, the insurance funding had been cut in half, with Alvarez paying the balance. In his mind, the private care at Bennett House had saved his brother’s life, and it was worth every cent.

Ironically, he had Northern Union to thank indirectly for the money. Having cashed in a modest amount of retirement funds, he now played the market. If he ended up in jail or dead, he wanted the boy taken care of for life. He’d built up a sizable trust to that aim, though he was counting on the derailment of the bullet train to put him over the top. He desperately needed to stay out of trouble until the bullet train was yesterday’s news—Miguel’s future counted on it.

Miguel continued watching the cartoon as his older brother entered the room, though he had clearly sneaked a look at the door. “Bert!” he said, a grin widening across chapped lips. His nose was runny, his eyes watery.

“Who’s winning?” Alvarez asked, his throat tightening with the sight. It always took him a few minutes to adjust to his blood relation in this condition.

“The wabbit,” Miguel said, inflecting an Elmer Fudd accent. “Twicky wabbit.”

“You’ve got a cold.”

Miguel shrugged it off. “This is where the wabbit goes down the hole.”

Not a good day,
Alvarez realized immediately. There wasn’t going to be much of a conversation. But he had felt required to come here, to pay this visit; if anything went wrong with his plans for the bullet train, this might be his last visit.

Umberto Alvarez pulled up the room’s only chair, rested his elbow on the bed, and held his hand in the air, as was their custom. He sat back, facing the television and the mindless drivel that so entertained his little brother. A moment after holding this pose another, weaker hand came up to join it. Their fingers entwined, the two hands sank back to the cotton sheets. “Miguel,” Alvarez said softly, “your hand is so cold.” And he held on, all the more tightly.