“Say what?”
“I like medieval and Renaissance weapons. Once a week I practice sword fighting with a group known as the Society for Creative Anachronism. The black eye came from a blow with a modern-day version of a two-handed broadsword.”
I signaled and pulled around a pickup hauling a load of wood. “How’s the other guy look?”
“You’ve seen liver paté?”
“Remind me not to piss you off.”
She laughed again, and this time it was genuine. “Don’t piss me off.”
Greeley was a town of ninety thousand people best known for two things: The University of Northern Colorado, famous for producing some of Colorado’s best teachers. And, less fortunately, the odor wafting from the feedlots of JBS USA, a meatpacking company and the city’s largest employer.
Former Deputy Rick Wolanski lived in an older neighborhood in the northwest section of town. I pulled to the curb in front of a small brick and stucco rancher with an environmentally conscious rock yard and a half-ton pickup parked in a gravel driveway. A man stepped out onto the small stoop as we walked up the driveway and introduced himself as Rick Wolanski. He was in his late sixties, a big-framed man dressed in Colorado’s rural uniform of pressed jeans, button-down shirt, and cowboy boots. His mustache was robust; what remained of his hair formed a gray horseshoe around his suntanned pate.
I introduced myself and Mac and we shook hands.
“A railroad cop, her K9 partner, and a federal agent,” Wolanski said. “You must be on the trail of something important. Come on in. I’ve got coffee on.”
He led us inside and asked us to make ourselves comfortable in the front room, then excused himself. Mac and I sat on the plaid love seat with our backs to the window, leaving Wolanski his choice of the two recliners. I downed Clyde next to the love seat. A grandfather clock tick-tocked softly on our right. On the opposite wall stood a bookshelf filled with hunting and fishing guides, Cabela’s catalogs, stacks of maps, and a sprinkling of framed photos, mostly shots of Wolanski holding trophy fish. An antelope head stared sightlessly down on us from above the recliners; two stuffed ducks flew over the gas fireplace.
Everything had a worn, patched look to it, but it was neat and clean. Precisely like its owner. Sunlight fell through the south-facing window, spilling over our backs and tossing stray strands of light onto a braided area rug.
We could hear Wolanski in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards and rattling cutlery.
A thick stack of file folders sat on the coffee table. My fingers itched to go through them.
The minutes ticked by.
“Mr. Wolanski?” I called. “We really need to go through these files.”
“Coming!”
Wolanski bustled back in with an urn of coffee in one hand and three mugs in the other, his fingers shoved through the handles. “Cream? Sugar?”
We declined, and he set the coffee and cups on the oak coffee table. He left and came back with a plate of warm Danish, napkins, and three plates and forks. He filled the mugs with coffee and handed us each one. Then he took a seat and gave us a friendly smile over his coffee. His mug said, I’D RATHER BE FISHING.
“The pastries come from Della’s, down the street,” he said. “You really should try them.”
“It’s very kind of you.” I recognized the loneliness in him, a quiet space like a held breath. He wore no wedding band and the room had no family pictures. An old bachelor, the woman had said on the phone. I wondered if he carried his own burden of ghosts. And if so, what stories they would tell.
I drank some of the coffee and smiled at him. My mug said, I’D RATHER BE HUNTING.
Mac said, “We’re here as part of an ongoing investigation.” We had agreed that she would take the lead, figuring that would impress on Wolanski the seriousness of our search, should he need impressing. “We want as many details as you can provide pertaining to the accidents that took place at that crossing.”
“Can I ask why?”
“It has to do with a current case,” Mac said. “That’s as much as we can say right now.”
Wolanski gave a rueful shake of his head. “You Feds are always so secretive. But okay, I’ll help however I can.”
“Thank you,” Mac said. “Why don’t we go through the reports one by one?”
Wolanski pushed his coffee mug aside and reached over for the stack of files. They were thick, with multiple manila folders inside a green hanging file folder. Four of them. “I can summarize them for you, if you wish. Then you can look at the details.”
“Please,” Mac said.
He cleared his throat. “The first two deaths occurred together. October 1973. Tim Dalgren, age seventeen, and his sister Christine, age fourteen. They died when Dalgren’s ’65 Chevy was struck by a northbound train.”
He picked up the top green file folder and handed it to Mac, who opened the folder up on the coffee table so she and I could both see.
“Autopsies are in there, too,” Wolanski said. “Along with my report, the coroner’s report, and any eyewitness statements.”
Mac and I skimmed through the paperwork and photos together. According to witnesses, the driver, Tim Dalgren, had made a habit of racing the train. It was what kids did for fun in a rural town on Friday night when it wasn’t football season. Crazy. Unless—like most teenagers—you thought you were invincible.
“I remember that family,” Wolanski said. “Good people. Tim was a little wild, just like most teenage boys. But his sister was quiet. Into 4-H. She raised rabbits.” He shook his head. “Seemed like I wasn’t much past being a kid myself when we got that call.”
As I flipped through the pages, I paused at the school portraits of the two victims. I tried to imagine what a priest or pastor must have said at their funerals. Called home early, going to a better place, happy now as they looked down at their families and waited for the day when they would be reunited. I didn’t know if any of that was true. All I could think when I looked at the photos was how their deaths must have destroyed their parents.
“Parents broke up after that,” Wolanski said, as if he could hear my thoughts. “I see it all the time. Nobody thinks when they say ‘for worse’ it’s going to get this bad.”
“Was there anything at all unusual about the accident that you recall?” Mac asked. “Or the aftermath?”
Wolanski rubbed his mustache again. “I suppose I was a little surprised when the railroad didn’t install a gate. The railroad cop I talked to promised he’d look into it. But he said gates probably wouldn’t have made a difference. People get impatient, don’t want to wait, especially the kids. The railroads have to replace broken gates all the time, I guess. He said that at least having lights on the pole made it more than just a basic crossbuck, like they have at a lot of rural crossings.”