Cohen’s voice was a flat line, the result of an astonishing ability to focus combined with the compartmentalization common to homicide cops. I pictured him in his expensive suit and his cheap haircut, his face tight as he jotted down everything I’d said in his spiral-bound notebook.
Sensing we were in for a wait, Clyde stretched out on the dusty ground, tongue lolling as a warm wind lifted with the rising day. Wilson and Gresino conferred near the tracks, their voices tight.
Cops are trained to never assume a call-out is a suicide—treat every unattended death as if you have no idea what happened so you don’t get careless with the scene. But in a case like this one, you figure you’re going through the motions. The deliberateness of the locale, the presence of the victim’s car, and the fact that Samantha Davenport had been facing the train when it struck made suicide likely.
Now, though, my thoughts went down a dozen paths as I tried to understand what a hazardous materials train had to do with murdered children. “Cohen—” I began.
“Hold on.”
I closed my fists.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, while Cohen slept and I did my best not to, I studied the notebooks he used, a new one for each case. I’d take the latest book into the kitchen where I’d pour myself a finger of whiskey, then sit at the table and use the flashlight app on my phone to read his notes about whatever case he was working. It wasn’t the investigation I was scrutinizing, but what he chose to say about it. I read everything in the hope that I could understand the man who’d coaxed me into his life and who now claimed to love me.
Love, I’d told him, hadn’t been part of the deal. Which sounded suitably honest. Even pious. But what I’d really meant was that I didn’t know if I could ever love anyone or anything other than the man I’d fallen in love with in Iraq before he died there. And his dog, who’d come home with me.
I shook myself and bounced on my toes. Clyde’s sides rose and fell gently as he snored. A true Marine, grabbing any opportunity between missions to doze. Gresino had lowered himself to a squat and was peering under the train. Wilson called Ketz over. They talked, and Wilson pointed up the hill.
Cohen came back on the line. “I need the names of the crews for that train. The names of the people who arranged the transport, and the companies and regulatory agencies involved. I also need a detailed map of the run. The tracks and everything around them. And any stops the train makes for a crew change or for those security checks or refueling. Throw in anything else you can think of. The more detail, the better. Can you get that for me?”
“Of course. Now can you tell me why you’re asking about a hazmat run?”
“Also, we need to notify the Feds, and I need you to stop that train.”
“You think?” I snapped, my nerves getting the better of me.
Ketz reached the top of the rise and ignored me as he headed toward his black-and-white.
“This morning’s call-out,” Cohen said. “The killer left us a couple of messages. Wrote one in the master bedroom, the other in the living room. That train ID and—” He stopped. His voice turned dark, pooling with anger like blood filling a sudden wound, compartmentalization gone. “In the living room, he wrote the train ID and below it the words ‘If you must break the law, do it to seize power.’”
I opened my mouth to speak, then found myself speechless.
Hazmat trains were vulnerable to extremists. They were most exposed when schedules and track sharing left the cars unattended. If a terrorist managed to hack into a database of shipment types and schedules, he or she would know exactly where a hazmat train would be at any given time. He could place a bomb on a train while it sat in the windswept wilds of Wyoming, then detonate it as soon as the train reached a densely populated area.
“Then,” Cohen went on, “in the bedroom he wrote something about how he’d keep killing until he’s paid everyone back. The exact words were—hold on.” There came the sound of pages turning. “He wrote, ‘There will be killing till the score is paid.’”
“Homer,” I said.
“Simpson?”
I rolled my eyes. “The Odyssey. ‘Nor would I yet stay my hands from slaughter that way, until the suitors pay for every transgression.’ After returning from Greece, Odysseus promises to murder all of Penelope’s suitors. Which he then proceeds to do. I wrote a paper about it. Your killer used a translation by Robert Fitzgerald. Not quite as poetic.”
“The hell,” Cohen said. “I keep forgetting you’re an educated railroad cop. So what about the first line, the one about power?”
“If you’re asking who wrote it, my education hasn’t gone that far. But jealousy and power and explosive materials—that’s a dangerous cocktail.”
We fell silent, thinking on that.
“Suitors?” Cohen said after a moment. “So this might be about infidelity instead of terrorism?”
“If the killer actually knows the context of the quote.”
“Given that he wrote it in the master bedroom, maybe he does. The attack was personal. The father and sons shot, the mother and daughter taken. Could be the wife has a lover. Maybe she broke it off and this is his way of feeling powerful again.”
“But what would a love affair have to do with a train carrying hazardous materials? Unless—”
“Unless it wasn’t enough for him to kill the family,” Cohen said, knowing where I was going. “Maybe he wants everyone to suffer. That whole ‘killing till the score is paid.’”
Ketz opened the trunk of his unit and leaned in. Beyond him, the day lay heavy and still as the sun climbed. The river had turned from gray to green, the water an unfurled bolt of faded velvet.
“So our educated suspect killed two of the kids,” Cohen said. “Father’s heading to surgery. Doubtful he’ll pull through. And now I find out the mother and daughter are missing. So if—” He sucked in air. “If the mother isn’t the guilty party, what are the chances we’ll find them alive?”
My face went hot. “A child is missing?”
“An eight-year-old girl.”
Ketz emerged with a roll of crime-scene tape, a hammer, and a bag of wooden stakes.
Sweat popped on my skin. “Who are they, Cohen? The family. What is their name?”
“Davenport. Parents are Benjamin and Samantha. The missing girl is Lucy. Why?”
“I . . . fuck.”
A flare of wind swooped across the nearby road and flattened the field grass. Wilson’s comb-over lifted in a white salute and Gresino’s maroon tie fluttered sideways. A haze of dust filled the air, and Clyde startled awake, coming to his feet as if on a premonition. I looked down the hill again to where Samantha Davenport’s crushed body lay pinned beneath an incomprehensible weight.
“Parnell?” Cohen said. “What’s going on? You got something?”
I thought of the sock monkey shoved halfway under the back seat. Inevitability closed like a fist around my heart.
“I don’t know where the little girl is,” I said. “Somewhere close, maybe.”
“The hell—?”
“But he killed her mother.”