Blood on the Tracks (32 page)

C
HAPTER
26

Bottom line, morality is different in war. And war doesn’t always take place on a battlefield.

—Sydney Parnell, ENGL 0208, Psychology of Combat

We moved fast.

The first trailer Clyde and I hit was padlocked shut. A smell like paint thinner oozed from the cracks. A quick shine of my flashlight through the window revealed tables laden with beakers, CorningWare, rubber tubing, large plastic tubs, and bottles of ammonia.

The next two trailers, also padlocked shut, held weapons, forty-pound bags of fertilizer, and gasoline cans. Empty boxes cluttered the floor and two loaded dollies stood near the door. Preparations for moving out.

We slogged through the snow toward the southernmost trailers and almost tripped over the body of the sentry I’d spotted through the binoculars. Nik had taken his rifle and left him on his back, throat cut.

I slowed as I approached the fourth trailer where a muffled diesel generator hummed. Light shone through partially drawn blinds, and men’s voices rose and fell from within. Because of the dogs at the north end, I downed Clyde while I completed a circuit of the camp. The dogs went silent as I approached, then started up again. No one responded. Maybe none of them had read about the boy who cried wolf.

My reconnaissance yielded four more trailers, dark and empty, and two additional generators, both silent. Either the kid had been lying about Melody and Liz, or they were in the fourth trailer with the men. If Gentry was still here, he’d be in that trailer as well. The one closest to the tracks, Jimmy had said.

Back with Clyde, I stood in the snowfall and listened. With the howling of the wind, I couldn’t make out the men’s words. Couldn’t tell if there were two men inside or five or seven.

I cocked my head at a sudden silence behind me. The dogs had stopped barking. I pulled the Colt free of its holster and wrapped both hands around the grip as two shapes hurtled out of the darkness trailing leads of rope.

The dogs separated when they hit the light spilling from the trailer windows; one launched itself toward Clyde, who leapt silently to meet it.

The second came for me.

I shot it through the chest and spun for the other dog. It had pulled away from Clyde, its black lips slicked back from long teeth, its haunches coiled for a second attack.

“Steht noch!”
I yelled at Clyde.
Stand still!

My second shot hit the dog in its hip. It yelped and pitched onto its side.

A man’s voice cut through the ringing echo of gunfire. “What the hell you doing?”

I whirled to find the trailer door open and a man standing outside in the snow. He held an AR-15, the butt of the rifle tight against his shoulder as he stared down the barrel at me. A second man stood on the stairs, also holding an assault rifle.

“Hold off, Petes,” said the man on the stairs. “Look. It’s a woman.”

Petes. The escapee from the shootout at Melody’s house.

“A woman?” Petes lowered the rifle barrel. “What the hell you doing out here?”

“Them dogs must’ve broke their ropes,” said the man on the stairs. “That’s pretty good shooting, lady. Hell, I’ve been wanting to shoot those fuckers myself. They don’t never shut up.”

I tried to see into Petes’s eyes, looking for evil. Looking for anything that said it was okay to put him down in cold blood.

But he was a cutout against the trailer lights, his eyes a riddle.

Nik’s voice.
You have to kill them.

I raised my gun and shouted.

“Special Agent Parnell with Denver Pacific! We’ve got your camp surrounded. Drop your weapons.”

Petes’s barrel came swinging back up.

“Fuck that,” he said.

We fired at the same time. My shot punched a hole through his forehead. Petes folded at the waist and dropped hard, like a man trying to sit without a chair. The second skinhead had his gun partway up when Clyde flew out of the dark and knocked him back. Their combined weight carried them into the trailer’s side. A vicious crack sounded as the man’s skull hit metal. One glance at his face told me he wouldn’t be getting up again.

I dashed to the trailer wall and flattened myself against it as a third man appeared in the doorway. He fired wildly into the dark. The Colt blew the side of his head off. His body hit the door frame and tumbled down the stairs.

I whistled to Clyde, shoved past the third man’s body, and barged hard into the trailer, gun extended, shouting, “Hands up!”

Melody Weber stood near a curtained bunk bed at the far end of the single-room trailer, her hands raised high. When she realized I was the one who’d just shot her pals, her expression changed to relief. She started to lower her hands.

“Keep them up,” I said, angling myself so I could see both her and the front door.

Her hands rose. “They’ve got Gentry,” she said. “Up on the bridge. They’re gonna kill him.”

“Like you killed Elise?”

Hurt rose in her eyes like floodwater. She shook her head wildly. “I didn’t. It wasn’t me.”

“Whoever is behind that curtain,” I said, “I’ve got a .45 aimed right at you. Open the curtain and show me your hands.”

“It’s Liz,” Melody said.

Hating it, I kept my voice hard. “Open the curtain.
Now
.”

“I’ll do it,” Melody said.

“Don’t move a fucking inch,” I told her.

“Go ahead, Lizzie,” Melody said. “Open the curtain. It’s the nice Agent Parnell.”

I’m sure we both enjoyed the irony of that.

A small hand grabbed the end of the curtain and dragged it open. Liz Weber looked out at me with terrified eyes. Her gaze took in first the gun and then the rest of me, no doubt seeing the blood on my face and coat from the men I’d just killed.

“I’m sorry, Liz,” I whispered. I swung the gun back to Melody. “They took Gentry?”

She nodded. “To the bridge.”

Liz’s eyes locked on Clyde. She rolled out of the bunk bed and skirted past me to throw her arms around him.

“Agent Parnell—” Melody started.

“Keep your hands up.” I became aware of a deep burn in my left arm. I glanced down and saw a hole in the sleeve.

“Mommy didn’t do it,” Liz said to Clyde.

I squatted next to her. “What, sweetie?”

“It wasn’t Mommy who hurt Elise. It was the bad man.”

The world went a little sideways. “Whip?”

The little girl shook her head. She was crying now, her face buried deep in Clyde’s fur, her arms in a stranglehold around his neck. I touched her shoulder, felt her bones like those of a bird’s beneath her pale skin. Her hair was a rat’s nest. The faint scent of urine rose from her cheap nightgown.

I wanted to cry, too.

Outside, from far away, a shot rang out. Liz and I both flinched. Nik, I hoped, catching up to the skinheads.

“Who told you that, Liz? About the bad man?”

“We saw him.”

I lifted my eyes to Melody, wondering if it could be true.

“Who, then?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” Melody said. “We’d just gotten there, was standing on the porch. It was dark with only the light from the house. All I could see was his outline when he come outside. He was big.”

“I know you were in Elise’s apartment, Melody. Your coat was there.”

Her chin came up. “It’s true I went in, but I didn’t kill her! After the man left, Liz and me went up to her place. I took off my coat before we knew Elise was dead in her bedroom. After I found her, I was scared. I sure wasn’t thinking about my coat.”

I stood and tightened my grip on the gun. “Don’t you lie to protect Whip.”

“I won’t never protect Whip again. Not after all the hurting he did to Gentry.” Fire entered her pale eyes. “Tonight he hit Liz. You was right about him. But he didn’t kill Elise.”

The clock was ticking. I would process Gentry’s and Liz’s pain later.

“Tell me about the man,” I said. “Quickly.”

“We saw a light moving in Elise’s room as we come up to the house, so we hid on the porch. After the man left, we let ourselves in. Elise’s bedroom door was closed, so I poured us some milk. The wind was rattling her door like her window was open, which was weird, it being so cold that night. We waited maybe fifteen minutes, then I knocked on her door. Elise was all—you know. I didn’t know what to do. I worried the police might think it was me. So I called Whip and he come over. He thought I’d done it. On account of how he felt about her. He was really mad. But he went into her room and put some hobo beads there, said it would protect me. Said it would make the police think someone else had been there. Then we left.”

Which didn’t exactly exonerate Whip. And Melody could be lying about all of it. But I would leave that for later, too. For the moment, she had nowhere to go. Not in a blizzard with the road blocked by Markusson’s cruiser.

I holstered the gun. “I’m going after Gentry. You and Liz stay inside the trailer. Lock the door and don’t let anyone in until the sheriff gets here.”

She looked like she’d throw up. “Whip’ll kill you. Then what’s gonna happen to me and Liz?”

“Maybe you should spend the time praying it goes the other way.”

I took a rifle from the rack over the sink, checked that it was loaded, and slung it over my shoulder. Then I tried again to raise the train crew on my portable. Still out of range. Or maybe it was the weather and the hills and the gorge. Maybe I’d never get through. Not until it was too late to matter.

I stopped with my eyes on Clyde. Liz clung to him as if she’d just fallen off the
Titanic
, and he was her lifeboat. Which wasn’t far off the mark, I figured.

For just a moment, I considered leaving him with her. I’d made a promise to Dougie to protect him, not walk him into a possible ambush. But I couldn’t honor a promise if it meant treating Clyde like a lapdog. Clyde’s work was his life.

Dougie would understand.

“I have to take Clyde,” I told Liz gently. “He’s my partner.”

She dropped her arms and backed away without any argument. If there was one thing Liz had learned in her young life, it was that fighting back bought you nothing but a split lip or a black eye.

“I’ll bring him to see you again,” I said. “I promise.”

She gave me a small smile. “’kay.”

As Clyde and I headed toward the door, her voice made me turn.

“The bad man said something. On the porch. Like he was talking to himself.”

“What, Liz? What did he say?”

“I think he was sick. Like I get sometimes.”

“Was he coughing?”

She shook her head. “He said he couldn’t breathe.”

Outside, the snow had begun to tire. Slow, fat flakes swirled on the wind. A full moon glowed behind a thin haze of clouds. I could just make out the shape of the Boedeker home in the distance, leaning like a drunk in the silver light.

Clyde and I stepped around the men and dogs I’d shot. I didn’t look at the dead. I don’t think Clyde did, either.

The lights were gone from the hillside leading up along the gorge to the trestle. With Nik’s first shot, I’m sure the skinheads had switched off their headlamps. No way to know what they’d done after that. If they’d kept going or hidden themselves or turned around. Together Clyde and I hurried past the southernmost trailers and made our way toward the incline. The wind turned and blew hard at our backs, carrying our scent forward and bringing nothing back. Bad news. If someone lay in wait, Clyde wouldn’t pick up their scent until we’d gone past them.

As we cleared the last of the encampment, the abyss curved in from the west. Dank, cold air rose from its depths. As if Devil’s Gulch really was a passage to the underworld.

Up ahead, another shot rang out. The echoes rattled through the gorge. Far away, a coyote gave a yipping bark and fell silent.

Jimmy had proven true so far. He’d said there were twelve skinheads in camp. The guard was dead, as were my three. That left the eight we’d seen heading up toward the bridge with Gentry. If the two shots I’d heard had been Nik firing, then six remained. Nik didn’t miss his shots.

I found Nik’s second killing another hundred yards up the path. The man lay on the trail, eyes open to the sky, his throat blown open.

Moonlight turned his eyes to silver coins, made him both more and less than human. I’d seen so many like this in Iraq. Held them. Laid them in bags.

My stomach clenched. Five corpses in, the death fear hit with a sick flutter in my bowels. The heat of Iraq rose around me and I was back in the seven-ton, driving into a bombed-out wasteland. A desert Charon collecting the dead.

The panic drove me to my knees.

Clyde nudged me.

The Sir knelt by my ear.

Our men are in danger, Marine. Get the fuck up.

I got the fuck up.

Night resumed around me with the jitter of the winter wind. Clyde and I kept walking. We were close enough now to the bridge for me to see the rails gleaming in the moonlight. On either side of us rose a jumble of sandstone rocks. Some no higher than my shoulders. Others the size of a house.

The potential for ambush waited at every bend. But the knowledge of the coming train rode my thoughts like a knife blade. We went fast.