Back at my desk, I gave Clyde a chew toy and sat down. I took a legal pad out of a drawer and wrote down the alphanumeric code I’d seen in the kiln and burned into my memory right before the explosion.
02XX56XX15XP.
I frowned. Was this a unique kind of manifest number? Phone numbers with letters substituted for some of the numbers? A secret code to the location of the Holy Grail and the whereabouts of Lucy Davenport?
I was pretty sure I’d seen it before, or at least something like it. I drank my coffee and stared at the page until the characters started to swim.
All those Xs.
In my mind, I heard the Sir’s voice: Shade it black.
In the parlance of Mortuary Affairs, that meant to add what was missing. But if there was something missing here, I had no way to know what it was. Still, there was something familiar about the number, and the knot in my stomach said the feeling was more than wishful thinking. Sometimes you had to clear away the debris before you could see what mattered. I removed the Xs and rewrote the number, then stared at the result while a chill needled its way down my spine.
025615P.
I was ashamed that it had taken me so long to see it. Maybe I could blame the bomb for rattling my brain. But when I finally realized what I was looking at, the number all but glowed with meaning.
The statistics varied, depending on where you got them. But every ninety minutes or so, a vehicle and a train collided in the United States. In order to track this data and determine where changes needed to be made, the US Department of Transportation assigned a number to every grade-level railroad crossing in the United States. More than 200,000 of them. Always six digits followed by a letter of the alphabet. The number could be cross-checked against a national database that contained the location, a description of the nearby road, all railroad and highway traffic data, and any traffic control devices in use at the crossing.
My fingers were tingling when I got on the computer and pulled up the database that contained the DPC crossings in Colorado and entered 025615P. Nothing. I broadened the search to all DPC crossings, then—when that failed—pulled up the Federal Railroad Administration’s safety data website. The FRA’s databank contained all known crossings for every railroad, but there were no hits. I switched back to DPC and searched our database of FRA accident forms, then hunted through an auxiliary system listing our own accident documents and Death and Dismemberment forms. When that failed, I switched tactics and scanned the numbers for the physical crossings north and south of where Samantha had died. No matches.
My hope turned to ash. I scowled at the computer screen. If the string wasn’t a crossing number, then I had nowhere else to go with it. There were no other alphanumeric strings linked with trains, train consists, or their manifests that came even remotely close. Maybe the police or the Feds would have better luck.
But it wasn’t quite time to throw in the towel.
I picked up the phone and called my contact at FRA. Margaret Ackerman’s office was in DC, but news of the Davenport case had already hit there.
“Any word on that little girl?” she asked when I told her I was helping with the case.
“That’s why I’m calling,” I said. “And keep it under your hat. I’ve got a number associated with the crime that looks like a railroad crossing ID. But nothing is coming up when I run a search.”
“Could be it’s a defunct number, if the crossing is no longer grade level.”
“That’s what I’m hoping. Can you check your databases?”
“Of course. Hold on.” I heard the sound of her keyboard as she typed. “What’s the number?”
“025615P.”
“Hm. Nothing. Let me check the discontinued numbers.”
More tapping. I pulled a tennis ball out of my desk and started tossing it up and catching it one-handed. Clyde wandered over, his eyes following the ball.
“Nah,” Margaret said. “Nothing in that database, either. If it’s a crossing number, it’s not only defunct, it’s old. As in, phased out long ago.”
Which might be a clue about the killer. “How old?”
I waited while she had a coughing fit.
“You still smoking, Mags?”
“Yes, thank God. You?”
“No,” I said.
“You are such a liar.”
“You talking old as in five years?”
She snorted. “I know you’re barely out of diapers.”
“Ten?”
“Better let this old girl teach you a thing or two.”
She must have heard my eyes roll—she barked out a laugh that ended in another brutal cough. “Okay,” she said when she could speak. “FRA developed the national crossing-number inventory back in the early seventies. But nothing was automated until the mid to late eighties. Which means your number falls somewhere in that fifteen-year black hole. And while I’m pretty sure we have physical records going back that far, I might have to search multiple archives.”
“You’re saying the number could be almost forty years old?”
“You say that like it was a long time ago. I was in my prime then.”
“How long to search everything?”
“Honestly? It could take days.”
“What about cross-referencing them with any 6180 accident-reporting forms?”
“Unless you have a date and a location, trying to track any accidents is a no-go.”
“Mags, give me something.”
“Seriously, Sydney. I know you’re up against the clock. But even saying days might be optimistic. I may be able to find some of the forms on microfiche. But other inventory forms probably didn’t make it past typewritten copies with carbons. I’m talking cardboard boxes in the basement, probably filed by gnomes who can’t tell one number from another. Same with the 6180s.”
“Did I mention we’ve got a missing child?”
“I’m on it,” she said and signed off with another rattling cough.
The injury gouged into my forehead by the bomb burrowed through my skull. I took Clyde outside for a few throws of the tennis ball and thought of reasons why the killer would care about an old crossing. Accidents, I figured. The most significant thing about grade crossings was the people who were maimed or killed there.
I whistled to Clyde and we went back inside. The air conditioning raised bumps on my sweaty skin. Clyde plopped down in his usual corner. I called the Denver office of the National Transportation Safety Board and asked to speak with Mark Lapton, one of their investigators. Lapton and I had worked a handful of cases together.
“I’m investigating an old crossing,” I said, “and I need to determine the location and if NTSB has any accidents associated with it. The number is defunct, which is why I can’t find it on my end.”
“This about the Davenport case?”
“Yes. But that’s a close hold.”
“So I’ll only tell my close friends. How old is the number?”
“Twenty years,” I said. “Maybe as much as forty.”
“Then I can’t help you. Or at least not quickly. That information won’t be in any database.”
“Don’t tell me. Boxes in the basement.”