“It makes them what they are.”
“Ah, hell.” He mustered up a frown, which was sort of like having a teddy bear give you the evil eye. “You can do this. But on my terms. You’re to tell your therapist exactly what is going on. You’ve got an appointment later today, right?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You know that how?”
“I pay attention. So you tell him every little thing. And if I see any sign you’re coming apart, I’ll yank you so fast you’ll feel your stomach come out your eyeballs.”
I resisted an urge to salute. Or hug him. “I appreciate it, sir.”
“Damn it, Parnell. You could talk the hind leg off a horse.”
I picked up Clyde’s lead and the three of us walked down the stairs to our department, two floors below the rail yard’s control tower in a suite of rooms on the north end. Our area was empty. I was the only one on duty, other than the captain, which was the norm. DPC police work solo. I was itching to start trying to track down the alphanumeric from the kiln. But for the moment, the TIR video was more important.
I stopped by my cubicle long enough to pick up the TIR hard drive from my bag and to down Clyde near the windows where he could sprawl out and snooze. I hurried after Mauer toward his enclosed office at the end of the suite.
“You looked at the video?” he asked as he ushered me through the doorway.
“Not yet.”
He set down his coffee, plugged in the drive, and pulled up the video on his computer. I used the software to search for the power cutout switch—the moment when Deke applied the emergency brake. I backtracked three minutes before that and we watched as the nighttime tracks unspooled in front of us.
The picture was surprisingly clear, nothing like the graininess of CCTV footage, and the audio was sharp. Over the thrum of the engine, Deke whistled softly to himself, unaware of what waited ahead. No sound came from Sethmeyer, which meant my suspicion he’d been asleep was probably correct. The video itself was unremarkable in those final quiet moments. The train was passing through a mostly rural area, and there was little to see in the dark beyond the tracks—just the occasional telephone lines, a few trees, and sometimes a storage unit or piece of railroad equipment. Mile markers slipped serenely by.
“There!” Mauer said, just as Deke sounded his horn.
A figure appeared on the tracks as the train came out of the curve. At this distance, it was impossible to make out any details—identity and gender were lost in the combination of middle-of-the-night darkness and the over-wash of a two-hundred-thousand-candela headlamp and ditch lights. But it was clear that someone stood on the tracks. Deke began chanting, “Move! Move! Move!” like a prayer as he blew the horn and went into emergency stop, and a few seconds after that, Sethmeyer started shouting. As the train approached the figure and details emerged, I saw what Deke had meant—Samantha looked as if she was struggling. An instant later, the light hit her horrified face, then Samantha was under the wheels and gone.
“Son of a bitch,” Mauer said.
I paused the recording. My heart had jumped into triple time as we watched. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to view the recording of an accident. But it never got easier.
I thought of Stern’s cold question from earlier and murmured, “Murder.”
We went through the video ten more times, taking the critical moments frame by frame, trying to make out more of Samantha in the white flare of the headlights. Her clothes were splotched with something dark, so Deke might be right that she was injured. As for whether she was trapped, there was no question. She’d worked frantically to free herself from what looked like some kind of wooden frame, right up until it was too late.
In the seconds immediately after the engine struck her, I caught movement on the right-hand side of the video—something stirring in the bushes. At the last second, whatever it was made a quick, sinewy leap away from the tracks and disappeared from the footage.
“You see that?” I asked.
“Yeah, but hell if I know what it was. Maybe a wolf?”
“Not in Colorado. And that close to a moving train?” Whatever it was, I thought of Lucy fleeing through the dark and shuddered.
Mauer copied the tape and edited it down to the fifteen minutes before the incident, right up to when the train came to a stop and Deke was talking to dispatch. He then pulled a stack of blank CDs from his desk and began burning copies for all the players involved.
“Print some stills, too,” I said. “I want that animal, as well. If you’ll distribute the CDs and stills to the team here, including Veronica Stern, then I’ll get copies to the cops and the feebs.”
“Yes’m.”
“Where are we with the information Detective Cohen asked for?”
Mauer kept removing and inserting disks, building a stack on his desk.
“Diane has pulled up the employee files for everyone connected with the hazmat train,” he said. “The assigned crews, dispatch, the schedulers. The linkers who were going to assemble the train in Macdona, Texas. That’s the pile you see on the chair over there. Vic Macky yanked the maps for the route. I’ll have copies made of everything for the cops and the Feds, including what we have on the vendors. In the meantime, the Homeland Security guys are trying to find the virtual fingerprints of anyone who might have hacked our database and gotten the schedule for that hazmat train.”
I nodded. “The police are getting a subpoena for the personnel files. I’ll run everything over to Cohen when the copies are ready.”
“Speaking of Cohen, how are you two doing?”
I flushed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?”
“My daughter. All the time. Here’s the last CD. You need more, let me know.” He pointed toward a stack of folders on the right side of his desk. “I’ve started going through the employee files, pulling out data from their personnel files and looking for any connections to either Ben Davenport or his father. Or any indication we have a disgruntled employee.” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk. “Here are the names of every DPC employee involved with that train. So far, the only connection any of them have with Hiram Davenport is that they work for his railroad.”
“And on the disgruntled angle?”
“If they’re unhappy, it hasn’t come to the attention of the folks in personnel. I’ll talk to them one-on-one, see if there’s been anything HR didn’t put in the file.” Mauer steepled his fingers and bounced the tips against his teeth. “I’ll talk to the union heads, too.”
“Good. And while you’re looking at the employee records, keep something in mind.”
“What’s that?”
“One theory is that either Ben or Samantha was having an affair. Given the train tie-in, seems like it might have been with someone who worked here.”
“Joy,” Mauer said. “Now get out of here and find the girl before I change my mind.”