“Fred Zolner. Everyone called him Bull. He was DPC’s railroad cop. The track belonged to T&W at the time, but DPC leased the track from them. It was a DPC hazmat train that hit her.”
My brain cells were colliding like bumper cars as the scattered pieces of this case seemed to be coming together. The date, the type of train, the crossing. I didn’t understand what any of it had to do with the Davenports and Lucy. But it was there. I felt like a hunter whose dog has just gone into point. Something was in the bushes.
I exchanged a glance with Mac and saw my rising excitement mirrored in her eyes.
“Raya Quinn was struck by a hazmat train?” I said.
“Yup. Agricultural chemicals. I expected the Feds to show up. It’s a big deal, right, the risk of a spill? But Bull and the engineer did a walk of the train. He told me that only the locomotive was damaged. A team from SFCO confirmed it the next day. No leaks or spills. Probably why it was kept local. If any Feds ever came, I didn’t hear about it.”
“You said Bull Zolner was upset?”
“Oh, he was torn up. First time I’d seen Bull bothered by anything other than trespassers and politics. Well, and religion. Bull was a mighty opinionated man.”
“Do you know why this accident in particular bothered him?”
Wolanski splayed his hands. “Don’t know that it was this one in particular. I figured it was every accident bothered him. It was just that night was the only time I worked an accident with him right after it happened. His reaction made me decide he wasn’t a total asshole.” He flushed. “Pardon my French.”
“So who else was there?” Mac asked. “Any passersby?”
“Raya’s friend, Jill Martin. She got notified by a friend in the sheriff’s office. Jill and Raya worked together at SFCO. And let’s see, Hiram Davenport was there, too.”
Astonished, I said, “Hiram was at the scene?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure exactly when he showed up. He told me he was there because it was his train and because it was a hazmat.”
Funny how Hiram hadn’t mentioned that.
“Tell us what you know about the victim,” I said. “Raya Quinn.”
Wolanski rifled the pages in the file but didn’t seem to be looking at them. His eyes were in some middle distance. “Raya Quinn. Young, twenty-one, I think. A real beauty.”
“Did you know her personally?”
“No. I just felt like I got to know her some after the accident. Just like the other victims. But something about Raya stuck in my craw. Maybe because she was essentially an orphan. She grew up outside Brighton, over in Weld County. Her mom was a nutcase. Smart, I heard. But a—what do you call people who are scared to leave their homes?”
“Agoraphobic,” Mac supplied.
“That’s it. And a drug addict. Opiates. Friends said the drug abuse started getting bad around the time Raya was old enough to help out. Or maybe the old woman just leaned on her more then. Raya used to do all the shopping for Esta, soon as she was old enough to drive. No one could blame her when she took off for bigger and better soon as she turned eighteen. Went to Hollywood to try her hand at acting. She did have some talent.”
Wolanski shuffled through the file and pulled out a sheet of paper. He passed it over to us.
“That’s her in the lead in the high school musical, Camelot.”
The paper was a photocopy of a newspaper article. The headline read LOCAL GIRL, BIG TALENT. The reporter gave the high school production a kind review—enthusiastic kids, great sets, an honest attempt at the musical score. But he saved his real applause for Raya Quinn as Guinevere: Quinn eloquently captures the heartbreak of Arthur’s queen, torn between the man she loves and the man she is wed to. With Quinn in the role, you believe Guinevere carries the weight of an entire kingdom on her shoulders. If we’re fortunate, someday we’ll see Quinn on the big screen.
The article included a photograph of Raya Quinn in a long, medieval-style dress, staring pensively out over the audience with eyes that held a world of sorrow. And no question. She was the woman whose photograph had been in Ben’s desk. I lifted the picture to the light spilling in from the window and stared into the eyes of a woman who, as a seventeen-year-old, had managed to convincingly portray someone both older and wiser.
I passed the picture to Mac, then took out the photo of the woman from Ben’s desk so she could compare them.
“I’ll be damned,” Mac murmured. “It’s her.”
Wolanski said, “Raya Quinn is part of this case you’re working on?”
I nodded. “It looks that way.”
He finished his coffee and returned the mug to the table. “Then I’m sorry I can’t offer very much. Just the little I pieced together after her death.”
“What else did you learn?”
“She lived in LA for three years. Never saw her in anything. Not TV or movies. When she came home she went to work for SFCO. She’d worked there part-time in high school. Six months after that, she was dead.” He gave a rueful shake of his head. “From what her friends said, she’d settled into her life. Liked her job, was thinking about college. She died a week before her twenty-second birthday.”
I tapped the file. “What about the autopsy? Was there anything unusual?”
“There was no autopsy. Given the circumstances and the condition of the body, the coroner felt an external exam was sufficient.” Wolanski tilted his head, smoothed his mustache. “But if you two are looking for a mystery, I don’t think you’ll find it. There’s not much in that report other than a sad story. She was slightly intoxicated. Her car was on the tracks when the train struck it. The engineer said the car wasn’t moving.”
“Suggesting it wasn’t an accident,” I said.
“The coroner told me that, in his opinion, it was suicide. But because she was intoxicated and because she didn’t leave a note, he ruled it accidental. For her sake, and her mother’s.”
Wolanski pulled out a sheaf of stapled papers. “You want me to give you the highlights?”
“Please,” Mac said.
“Quinn was alone in the car. She died instantly when her vehicle was struck. Cause of death was multiple blunt-force injuries. Vehicle was in good working order, from what the mechanic could tell. No skid marks. I already mentioned the .04 blood alcohol level. There was an empty bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon on the passenger floor. Last act of defiance against the world, I figured. Or maybe a way to make death easier to contemplate. I found a fresh patch of oil on the road near the tracks. I figure she sat there drinking and thinking about her life before she drove onto the tracks. That would account for the missing time.” He shrugged, a sad, helpless gesture. “Maybe she was more disappointed in Hollywood than she let on.”
“I’d like to look at the report now,” I said.
Wolanski handed the pages to me. I passed the photographs over to Mac and began skimming through the report.