“Why was the parts list important?” Mac asked.
Jill began weeping, a silent, painful sobbing that shook her shoulders. Mac pulled napkins from the dispenser on the table and pressed them into her hands. Jill gave a short, harsh cry and covered her face.
“It’s all right,” Mac said. “We’ll get to the parts list. Why don’t you tell us about that night? The night Raya died. Tell us what happened.”
After a few minutes, Jill lowered her hands. Her eyes were wet and red, the lids puffy.
“It was supposed to be a girls’ night out. We’d been planning to meet up at a bar in Denver named the Saddle Up. Five of us, all friends from high school. It was a Monday, which was ladies’ night at the Saddle Up. We were looking to put aside our troubles for a few hours.
“My plan was to drive down with two of the women, Carol Mackey and Ellen Yager. I was the designated driver since I was pregnant and couldn’t drink. Raya and our other friend, Irene Nathan, were going to meet us there. We were planning a late night because Raya had to work and Irene had to wait for a babysitter. Since the band wouldn’t start playing until ten, that was fine with us.”
We’d ordered pie and more coffee as a way to help Jill settle in. Outside, the storm had caught up and it was black as pitch, the rain a sharp drumming on the sidewalks and street. The windows in the restaurant were filmed with mist, the dining room empty. In the kitchen, a Spanish-language radio station played mariachi music. The thunder had bowled past, and Clyde had put his head down again, dozing.
“Raya was working late to make up for a doctor’s appointment?” Mac asked. “We learned that much from Wolanski.”
Jill sniffed. “Well, Wolanski should have dug a little deeper. The appointment was fake. Raya just used it as an excuse to work late that night. At night, the whole office would be pretty much shut down. Not the operators, of course, but the admin people. The office would be almost empty. She figured that would be her chance to steal that parts list for Hiram.”
Jill had her hands wrapped around her coffee mug as if she needed the warmth. Steam rose from the cup, and she breathed it in.
“A few days earlier, I’d found a memo from a vendor warning SFCO that parts for the lights at Deadman’s Crossing and some of the other crossings were likely defective. They were causing what are known as short signals—lights that begin flashing too late to give a driver enough time to stop. The vendor said they needed to be replaced immediately.” Jill sipped her coffee. “The memo was five years old. So I went digging.”
My own coffee was cold. “You found evidence the parts hadn’t been changed?”
“Oh, the parts had been changed. At least at Deadman’s Crossing. But not until after a teenager named Melissa Webb died there. After Melissa’s death, her family hired a lawyer. The lawyer inspected the signal lights with an expert and made a list of the serial numbers of the parts in the light. We had a copy of that in our files. Everything looked kosher. But then I found a second list. It was also a list of serial numbers for the parts in that light. But the numbers didn’t match. These were the defective parts, the ones the vendor had warned us against. The list was attached to a repair report stating that a railroad employee named Robert Riley had gone out after the accident, yanked the defective parts, and replaced them with good ones.”
“That’s what Hiram wanted,” I said. “If he had the two lists and the memo, he’d have concrete proof of SFCO’s culpability.”
“Exactly. I’d managed to sneak out the first list of serial numbers. But I’d only seen the second copy and the repair report. They were kept in my manager’s office, and I never found a chance to take them. That’s what Raya was going to do that Monday night. Get those reports for Hiram.”
“She was caught?” Mac guessed.
“She called me from SFCO at eight thirty that night and said she had the intel. That’s what she said. The intel. Like she was a spy. She said she was going to change her clothes there at work and leave in ten minutes. Then all of a sudden she whispered that Tate was still there, and she had to get off the phone. She sounded alarmed, but right after that she said everything was cool. That was the last time I ever talked to her. The next thing I know, I’m getting a call from a friend of mine who worked in the sheriff’s office telling me Raya’s dead.”
In the kitchen, a dish shattered. Jill flinched.
Mac asked, “What do you think happened after Tate surprised her?”
Jill reached for more napkins. “I was so innocent. I didn’t really think about her being in danger. If worse came to worse, I figured she’d lose her job. So I thought what happened was a horrible accident. That Raya was in a hurry and tried to beat the train. We did it all the time, you know. Raced the train. I knew she was going to give the paperwork to Hiram that night and I figured she was focused on that. On what he would say. I didn’t suspect until later that she might have been murdered.”
Remembering what Wolanski had told us I said, “You went to the accident.”
She shuddered. “After all these years, I still dream about it. And to this day, I stop at every railroad crossing, whether it’s got a gate or not. I told my kids I’d beat them to within an inch of their lives if I ever caught them racing a train.”
“What did you see when you got there?” Mac said.
“Her car, knocked way out in the field. The train, of course. Tate was there. And Hiram Davenport had arrived.”
“Did it surprise you that Tate and Hiram were there?”
She shook her head. “I knew Tate had called it in. And that Hiram was close by since he was supposed to meet Raya. He would have come to the scene regardless because a hazmat train was involved. He and Tate were off by the side of the road, talking about something. Davenport looked cool as a cucumber, the bastard. Tate was hysterical. I figured they were already discussing the merger. This last accident was the nail in the coffin for Tate.”
The waitress returned with refills and an offer of a container for my sandwich. I shook my head. After she left, I turned back to Jill. “What happened after that?”
“That’s it. My husband came and got me. I was too upset to drive.”
“So.” Mac pushed away her half-eaten pie. “When did you get suspicious that Raya’s death wasn’t an accident? Or suicide.”