I closed the file and opened the first envelope.
Inside was a copy of an article dated August 1982. It was a feature piece describing the on-going war between the two big western railroads and highlighting the recent decision by the Interstate Commerce Commission to approve DPC’s attempt to take over one of the lines belonging to Alfred Tate’s SFCO railroad, including the land occupied by the Edison Cement factory. The article questioned whether this decision would be the beginning of the end for SFCO.
“These two have been fighting since 1982,” I said to Clyde.
His ears pricked, but he stayed where I’d downed him.
The ICC had reviewed the merger for four years, with Tate protesting that the proposed deal violated antitrust laws. The commission had seemed poised to reject the proposal. Then Alfred Tate had abruptly reversed his stand and spoken out in favor of the takeover. He’d convinced his stockholders that it was more financially sound to let the short line go. The reporter went on to say that the new owner, Hiram Davenport, planned to immediately upgrade the track and all grade crossings. “Safety,” according to Hiram, “was paramount.” The reporter lavished praise on Hiram’s determination to put safety above profits, implying that Tate’s railroad, the SFCO, had done the inverse by refusing to upgrade the crossings or by not maintaining them properly. A sidebar mentioned that the first crossing Hiram would upgrade was in the middle of a lonely sprawl of wheat fields, on Potters Road. Locals had nicknamed it Deadman’s Crossing. There had been multiple fatalities there, including a couple of teenagers who had died while racing a train to the crossing. The upgrade would happen within months, Hiram promised.
The reporter’s source was DPC employee and railroad cop Fred “Bull” Zolner.
I lifted my head. Clyde’s eyes were on me, sensing my sudden excitement.
Potters Road. Deadman’s Crossing. The missing Zolner.
“We got something, Clyde,” I said.
The location listed for the upgrade wasn’t far from where Samantha had died. While there was no longer a crossing at Potters Road, the tracks went above the street on an overpass a quarter mile away from where she’d been struck. It was inside the area the Feds, the cops, and a crowd of volunteers had searched and were still searching. Maybe that overpass had once been a grade-level crossing. Maybe it had been 025615P.
I looked again at the date. Almost thirty years ago. Could there really be a connection? Had the current feud between the Tates and the Davenports over the bullet train raised the specter of the past? And was that reason enough for murder?
One thing I knew—what Hiram Davenport had told the journalist about the crossings was a lie. Money to upgrade a crossing came from the Feds, and it was the states, not the railroads, who decided which crossings got active warning systems or if any got converted to nongrade crossings. Hiram might have applied some pressure to get that crossing changed. And no doubt he had political pull. But neither he nor Tate could have signed on the line to make it happen.
Still, his public push for an overpass at Deadman’s Crossing was a stroke of genius. By eliminating the crossing altogether, he’d managed to persuade the public to his side in the battle between DPC and SFCO.
I refolded the article and placed it back in the envelope. I added it to the stack of books and magazines I planned to take with me. Then I opened the second envelope. Inside was a sun-faded photograph of a young woman; I removed it and set it on the desk.
The picture had been taken outdoors during either early morning or late afternoon—sunlight slanted past the woman and into a thick grove of pines. The woman looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, tall and slender, with long, dark hair caught in a single loose braid, and eyes the deep blue of sapphires. She wore a pink-flowered dress that looked like it had gone out of style a couple of decades earlier and her feet were bare. In her arms she held a black-and-white kitten. Spread out on the blanket at her feet were the remains of a picnic—sandwiches and fruit and a bottle of wine.
The picture looked years old, but there was something unsettling about it that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe just that the kitten looked unhappy, in the way kittens do when held against their will.
I slid the photo back into the envelope and looked at the whiskey and the medals. Their proximity suggested an anger that I could all too well understand: Good job, sorry your life is fucked, have a medal.
I made a small sound in my throat, and Clyde stood, his tail wagging tentatively at my sudden anger.
“You’re right,” I told him. “Gotta keep going.”
I picked up the gun with my gloved hands. A Ruger P-Series pistol. It was clean and unloaded. I wasn’t surprised to see it. Most former military guys like to keep a weapon close by. But again, its proximity to the whiskey and the medals suggested a relationship that made me uneasy. I’d thought at first that Samantha was a suicide. Had her husband ever stared into that abyss?
I slid the Ruger and everything else from the drawer into evidence bags and placed them in my bag along with the books and magazines. So far, nothing I’d found suggested a reason for Hiram to forbid the police to search.
I glanced at my watch. I’d been in the office for almost thirty minutes. Lawyers from DPC could arrive at any time. I went hastily through the rest of the room and was finishing up my search of the bookshelves when Mags Ackerman called.
“I drink Dom Pérignon,” she said when I answered. “I want you to know that.”
“You found the crossing.”
“I sort of found the crossing. Mostly I found nothing.”
“Mags,” I growled.
“Okay, okay. You were right about 025615P being a crossing number. No question. I went down into the dungeon and located the original inventory forms. They’re filed numerically. Or at least they’re mostly filed that way. Some people’s idea of how to count from one to ten is a little scary.”
“Mags!”
“Don’t bite my head off. Your form was missing. I went through a lot of forms—almost a hundred numbers forward and back from yours. All of them were there. Except yours. But—before you have a fit, I did find something.”
I realized I was holding my breath.
“There was a piece of notebook paper stuck in the box with your crossing number written on it. And under that, someone wrote ‘Potters Road, Adams County, Colorado.’ So there you go. Your crossing. Voila! You ready to take down my shipping address? A case of the bubbly should be sufficient.”
025615P. Deadman’s Crossing.
I abandoned the bookshelf and crossed to the window. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, scattering diamonds in soft wedges on the wooden floor. I could just make out clouds massing over the distant peaks—another storm headed our way.