Parallel Lies (6 page)

Priest added, “One or both may have traveled back through your yard.”

“It’s possible, but unlikely,” Shast protested. “This time of year, riders spend as much time under bridges and in shelters as they do on trains. Your guys could be anywhere.”

“No rail company,” she stressed, for the benefit of Shast, who did not work for Northern Union but might prove sympathetic, “wants or needs the rumor mill to get going. Am I right? We have
all
suffered enough bad publicity lately. A fight between a couple of hobos is a nonevent.”

This drew a heated look from Shast. “Another killer out there?”

“You see!” Nell Priest said. “People will jump to the same conclusion, and what’s important here—to both Mr. Tyler and me—is that we get to the truth of what happened in that boxcar just as quickly as possible.”

Tyler understood that Northern Union would have a public relations nightmare if their property proved to be where a second killer had surfaced. Priest had apparently been assigned double duty: to quickly determine the extent of the crime and to keep a lid on it. In this way, their purposes were not in line. Tyler was barely worried about the public relations aspect. A crime had occurred. He wanted a suspect in custody.

Addressing Shast, Tyler said, “The NTSB, quite frankly, has a slightly larger agenda. It involves the recent derailments of several Northern Union trains.” Priest stiffened. Tyler consulted her: “What’s it been? One every six to eight weeks? Six over the last eighteen months? They’re in the paper, on the news, all the time.”

“One has
nothing whatsoever
to do with the other,” Priest argued.

“We can’t rule out a possible connection,” Tyler replied.
“The NTSB hasn’t, and I doubt very much your superiors have either, Ms. Priest.” He turned to Shast, using the man as his forum. “Why else fly an investigator out private?”

Shast looked confused.

“Listen, the experienced riders know to stay away from here. We catch ‘em, we gotta lock ‘em up. Company rules. No trespassing of any kind—it’s an insurance thing. The kids too. God damn spray cans. And, on top of that, we got the junkies trying to steal anything metal not tied down.”

“So you don’t see that many experienced riders,” Tyler stressed. “They must get on and off these trains somewhere.” If whoever had fought that fight in the boxcar had reversed directions, Tyler doubted he, or they, would have been in any condition to make it too far. The survivor was probably somewhere between here and St. Louis. But it was a lot of track to cover.

“They jump the trains west of here,” Shast announced. “They know enough to stay away from our yard. East of here, it’s flat for a long ways, and the riders need the long grades or the ungated town crossings to slow the trains to where they can make the jump.”

“Can you provide us possible locations?” Tyler inquired.

“We’ve been over that!” Priest protested.

“Some of us,” Tyler reminded her.

“Well, I, for one, am all done here,” Priest announced. She offered Shast a look that seemed to caution him against sharing much more with Tyler.

Priest stood.

“I’d like you to stay,” Tyler suggested. He didn’t want her gaining yet another head start on him. He felt they’d be more productive together; he needed to explain to her his own dislike of the feds, despite the fact that he was now one himself. And he didn’t want her thinking she could run this investigation. His boss at NTSB, Rucker, wouldn’t appreciate hearing a woman rent-a-cop had taken the case away from the
federal agency running it. Besides, he wanted this case in his win column, not hers. She already had her corporate plane and Suburban. As a detective he had rarely played second fiddle. He was in no mood to start now. But she left anyway, and he watched her go. Her brash independence stirred his interest—he appreciated her nerve and resolve, though he didn’t like being on the receiving end.

One eye still on the door, he said to Shast, “I need those locations. You’re not going to make me beg her, are you?” Shast hesitated. Tyler raised his voice. “Are you?”

Shast also glanced toward the door.

As a cop, Tyler knew when to play his trumps. And, as a fed, those cards were larger, more powerful. “Do you want to face obstruction charges?” He didn’t win Shast’s full attention. “The worst
she
can do to you is make a phone call, get your hand slapped. Weigh your options carefully, Mr. Shast.”

Shast nervously directed Tyler to a wall map. “There are three spots we tell all the drivers to watch. Right past the yard, as the trains are still gaining speed, and then,” he said, standing and pointing to a location on the map well outside the city, “here, where the grade slows down the longer rigs, and again here, about twenty miles on up the line before she crests and gains steam heading for St. Lou. Both those two areas have camps. Homeless camps. Transients. Riders. State cops move ‘em out every now and then—you should check with the staties—but those boys move right back in.”

“Hobo camps.”

“Riders,” he corrected. “Listen, you’re new to this. By the sound of it, and the
look of her,
she is, too. So, a heads up: Half those boys are crazy, and I mean clean out of their gourds. A fair percentage are on the run from people like you. They can get downright nasty. Knives mostly, but to a man, they’re good with their fists. They’re boozers and addicts. Losers. It’s not a happy place, one of them camps. I’d
go in careful, and I’d go in armed. I’d shoot first and ask questions later.”

Tyler thanked the man, asking him to draw him a map with mileage. “How much of what you just gave me—the warning—did you give her?” he asked.

Shast shook his head. “She’s a talker, not a listener. She wants it her way. You know the type.”

Tyler left at a run, trying to stop her, to warn her.

He saw Nell Priest’s taillights receding into the dark and a white plume of exhaust mixing with the cold night air. She was hoping to beat him to a suspect or a witness. He had a feeling she was going to get more than she bargained for. Considering how pretty she was, things might well get ugly.

Tyler’s Ford caught up with Priest’s Suburban six miles west on a state “highway,” a two-lane road that had a three-digit number for a name: 376. The moonlit countryside was cut into geometric blocks—snow-covered fields that in the growing season were devoted to feed corn. The dead stalks stuck out of the snow in regimented rows, like beard stubble.

Tyler switched on the car’s interior light, so he could be seen, and pulled out into the empty oncoming lane as if passing. He drew alongside Nell Priest’s huge Suburban, signaling her to pull over. She finally obliged.

Tyler climbed out and came up to her window, his breath white fog, his temper hot. “What the hell are you doing?” he blurted out, releasing some of the anxiety he’d felt in trying to catch up to her.

“Pursuing leads, same as you,” she said a little too casually.

“You’re going to drive into these homeless camps and just say hello, are you?” He shook his head, frustrated. “Do you think
anyone
will stick around if they see a pair of headlights approaching?” He met eyes with her. Hers were luminous. “And if you go sneaking in there, a woman, alone …this time of night—”

“Oh, please! Don’t give me that crap!”

“—the keys to a thirty-thousand-dollar car in your purse.” That seemed to register. “What the hell are you thinking?”

“I need you, do I?”

“You need backup, yes. You need a plan, certainly.”

“And you think I don’t have one?”

The temperature was somewhere in the thirties, but it felt below zero to Tyler. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “You’re aware that state troopers clear these camps on a regular basis?” She nodded. “That animosities may exist over that?” She shrugged, seeming not to care. “We—yes, we—both need either a witness or someone in custody. That’s what we’re here for.” He glanced around, feeling as if he were on the dark side of the moon. “We blow this, maybe we don’t get a second chance. Maybe whatever happened in that boxcar goes unexplained. That hurts both of us, especially once the press gets it. And they may have it already, courtesy of our friend Banner, or Madders, or someone looking for a free meal or a future favor. The men in these camps are not the most stable.” He banged his feet onto the icy pavement. “I suggest we team up. I suggest we get a good solid plan and do this once and do it right.”

“Are you done cheerleading?” she asked.

“You know, I don’t care if you botch this up for yourself,” he said. “You have a nice, steady job. Cushy even. But my situation is a little more precarious. I
need
this one in the win column, okay?”

“Chester Washington,” she said, revealing that she knew all about Peter Tyler and his unfortunate past. Mention of that name hit Tyler hard. He hated that she’d run a background on him.
When? During the drive from St. Louis?
And why hadn’t he thought to do the same for her?

She added, “Don’t you find it amazing that a black woman such as myself would even exchange words with you, much less contemplate working a raid, at night, with possible weapons involved?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he blurted out. The media had painted it all one way, had painted
him
as a racist, a bad cop, and a
man with a violent temper. None of it true, but he would live with it forever. Her comments were proof.

He stepped back from the Suburban, wounded. He motioned for her to drive on, but he never took his eyes off her. He was struggling for his dignity.

“It’s warmer in here,” she said, indicating her passenger seat.

“You do whatever it is you planned on doing,” he said. “Just tell me which of the two camps you’re hitting. I’ll stay well away, believe me. And I’ll take the other one.”

“Hurt your feelings, did I?” she asked in a teasing tone that infuriated him. She maintained eye contact. “Chester Washington was a pig,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “What happened to you was reverse discrimination. It was unfair and inappropriate. I bet you’ve heard this before, but if you’d killed the son-of-a-bitch, none of this would have happened.”

“I’ve heard it before,” he confirmed.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she said.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

She turned up the car’s heater, the cold air from the window beginning to bother her. “Get in the car,” she said again. Tyler circled, lit silver by the headlights, and climbed in.

“Talk,” she said.

“No, thanks.”

“I’m a good listener.” She added, “How many chances have you had to explain this to an African American?” “Another time, maybe.”

“These camps,” she said, seeming disappointed. “How would
you
do them, exactly?”

“Get either the local law or the staties to help us with a roundup. They’ve done it before; they know what to expect.”

“At eleven o’clock at night?”

“We at least tell them we’re going in there. If they want to provide backup, fine. If not, at least they’ll come looking for our bodies tomorrow morning.”

“Very funny.”

To his embarrassment, Tyler’s authority as a federal agent failed to rally the Illinois State Police. The desk sergeant, answering his call, proved unwilling to wake up anyone in a position to do any good, and the one lieutenant Tyler reached informed him that the homeless camps were “pretty much deserted” in the winter and that, in any case, the staties seldom raided a camp with fewer than four uniforms and a supervising officer, which he didn’t have to spare.

“Probably all parked under bridges with their heaters running, waiting to give out speeding tickets,” Tyler complained. He was inside the Suburban now, welcoming the warmth.

“No doubt.”

“And if we wait ‘til morning,” he added.

She interrupted him, “Another half dozen trains will have passed through. Another half dozen chances that anyone who knows anything about that boxcar will be long gone.”

“Yes.” Feeling frustrated, he decided to challenge her. “I take it that we’re both in agreement that what happened in that boxcar was more than a fistfight.”

“Two of the Railroad Killer’s nine victims died at the knife. Are you aware of that?” she asked.

“Painfully.”

“We never gave that to the press.”

“No. But the NTSB has it.”

“So we can cut the crap,” she said. “We both know why we’re here.”

“They’ve got the right guy in lockup,” Tyler said, attempting to sound certain.

“But a copycat couldn’t possibly know about those two who were knifed. So there could have been two guys out there all along, and the Bureau has only arrested one of them.”

“The point is, the focus of what we’re doing—that was
way too much blood in that boxcar. Given that no hospitals are reporting similar wounds, someone either died there or has bled out since.” He added, “So what we’re really looking for in these camps is a body.”

“And someone who can tell us who did it.”

“That would be nice,” he agreed.

“Bleeders draw attention,” she said.

“Or they wander into a cornfield with a pint and they freeze to death,” he said.