Reluctantly, I reached in the Explorer and pulled out a clipboard with the Death and Dismemberment form.
“You ready to talk about it?” I asked.
“It’s my third.”
“I know.”
“But—” His haunted face turned animated; the shock was wearing off. “This one was different.”
“How so?”
“I been going over it in my mind. Figured maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. But I’m sure. This wasn’t right.”
I started shaking my head. As if I’d already guessed where he was headed and didn’t want to follow. “Tell me.”
“It was dark. I’d just hit the overpass and come out of that curve. But, I’d swear”—his eyes found mine—“I’d swear she was hurt before I hit her. You tell those cops. I saw her in my lights before I—before it happened. She was hurt.”
The nausea that had come with the flashback tried to crawl up my throat. “What did you see exactly?”
“I—” Now he was shaking, the protection of shock completely gone. “She was bloody. Eyes wide, looking right at me. Standing straight up and, I don’t know, squirming like she wanted to get away, but she”—he was crying now—“I don’t think she could move. Her mouth was open. Probably she was screaming, but I couldn’t hear her over the engine. And then—and then I—”
I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Okay. Let’s get the detectives up here.”
He sucked in air.
“Just give me a moment,” I told him.
As Clyde and I headed toward the edge of the rise so I could flag the detectives, my headset buzzed. I glanced at the number. Detective Michael Walker Cohen. A murder cop for Denver PD. Last night we’d been in his bed—our bed, he insisted, since I’d all but moved in with him five months ago—our bodies curled together, skin to skin, warm in the summer night. He’d told me he loved me. I’d told him that was crazy shit.
It had gone downhill from there.
We’d still been awake when, in the early hours of the morning, he’d gotten a call, thirty minutes before my own call came in. “It’s bad,” he’d told me after he hung up. He had rolled out of bed, splashed water on his face, stepped into his suit, grabbed a tie, and been out the door before I had time to pour coffee. He hadn’t said good-bye. I hadn’t expected him to. He was already with the dead.
Now I figured he was just checking in after our fight and I let it go to voice mail. I’d call him back when I was done here.
Then he sent a text.
Multiple homicide. Vics are two kids. Father also shot. Railroad link. Call me.
Kids. I lowered my phone. Closed my eyes. Planted my feet and started the slow breathing my VA counselor had taught me.
One . . . I’d been doing well. Exercising. Eating healthy. Two . . . maybe drinking too much. Okay, definitely drinking too much. But . . . three . . . nothing worse. Not even cigarettes. Going to every brutal therapy session and doing as I was told . . . four . . . with the faith that eventually it would make things better instead of worse.
Five. I opened my eyes.
“We’re still good,” I whispered.
Say it till it’s true.
Down by the tracks, Wilson was on his haunches. He had his head cocked sideways as he peered under the train. He scratched at his chin with his knuckles, as if puzzled by something.
I thought of the electrical wire I’d noticed when I first approached the body. I’d figured it had dropped off one of the maintenance-of-way trucks.
She was bloody. She wanted to get away.
I punched Cohen’s number.
CHAPTER 2
Mortality check.
In war, one of the first things you learn is that you don’t get over finding someone who died violently. You can’t spend the day in combat, then waltz through the evening swapping jokes and telling stories like any other day. Instead, the moments leading up to finding the body—and the body itself—replay in your mind like a movie. You are hung up by the suddenness of it, the senselessness. Your relief that it wasn’t you, then the survivor’s guilt that follows. And the horror of that what-if line that separates each corpse you recover from those you love.
Mortality? Check.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Cohen answered on the second ring. Without preamble he said, “I need you to check something for me.”
My mouth was so dry I had to gather spit to speak. “Go ahead.”
“I’ve got an alphanumeric code I have to identify. I’m thinking it’s a train classification number.”
Shack up with a railroad cop, you learn a few things. “Okay. Read it to me.”
“U-N-M-A-C-W-A-T,” he spelled out. “Then the numbers 2-1. Am I right? Is it a train ID?”
As distinctly as if someone stood behind me with a pistol, I felt a cold jab at the nape of my neck.
“Read it again,” I said. Stalling.
“UNMACWAT21,” Cohen said. “What is it?”
Down by the tracks, Wilson was waving Gresino over to look at whatever had caught his attention. I could read Gresino’s lips. You’re shitting me.
“It’s one of ours,” I said to Cohen. “But it’s not a normal run. It’s a regulated tanker train carrying hazardous materials. Chlorine gas.”
“Damn,” Cohen said. “When?”
“Give me a sec.”
I ran through a mental list of the train consists I’d viewed on my laptop the day before—recalling the type and number of cars on each train along with schedules and manifests. I had a photographic memory for some things. Numbers. Maps. Anything spatial. When I joined the Marines and volunteered for Mortuary Affairs, the skill had endeared me to my CO because I could effortlessly recall serial numbers, locations, and other details for the casualty reports. I kept a catalogue of the dead more efficiently than any computer.
Now I locked onto the listing for UNMACWAT21.
“That consist doesn’t actually exist yet,” I said. “But once the train is assembled, it will leave the CP Eider chemical company in Macdona, Texas, on Monday at 1640,” I said. “If there aren’t any delays or mechanical problems, she’s scheduled to come through Denver thirty hours later.”
“What happens then?”
“She’ll undergo a safety check then continue on her way. Fifty hours after that, she’ll arrive at a waste treatment facility in Watertown, South Dakota. Denver isn’t her only stop. There will be a fuel stop, seven crew changes, and nine safety and security checks along the route with a dozen regulatory agencies involved.”
“What happens in Watertown?”
“Once she drops her load, she’ll turn around and make the journey back, hauling the empty tankers back to Texas, along with anything else the linker needs to add along the way. She’ll be back in play within twelve hours. But she’ll be a junk train then. With a different designation.”
“Meaning it will be a different train.”
“Right.”
“Okay. Hold on.”