He muttered something that sounded like pussy, but I ignored it. My nerves were on fire, but Cohen was right. Even though I doubted that Roman had waited around once he’d left his message, I couldn’t risk getting Albers in his line of fire.
Albers held up something that flashed briefly in the light. “One good thing. I found this while I was looking for the tagger. I figure I’ll give it to my girlfriend. Maybe she’ll quit holding out on me.”
I leaned in for a better glimpse.
It was a necklace. A silver heart with a solitaire diamond at the center and a ruby offset to the right. It was similar to the one Raya had been wearing when she died. But it was exactly like the one I’d seen around Stern’s neck in the interview room.
Suddenly I was breathing hard. “Shit.”
“Hey, Parnell? You okay?”
I pulled out my phone and dialed Stern’s number again. Straight to voice mail.
I looked up at the engineer. He squinted down at me.
“I’m going in,” I said. “Tell the cops when they get here.”
“To hell with that. You go, I go.”
I knew that unless I handcuffed him to my truck, Albers would follow me. I considered the fact that he was a civilian and weighed it against the sudden, urgent need to find Stern.
Albers was one of the toughest men I knew. He once single-handedly took down three members of a railroad gang who tried to hop his train. Albers coldcocked two of them before they knew he was there, and had the third cowering in a boxcar by the time the police arrived.
And that was just one of the stories I’d heard.
“You still carry a gun, Albers?” I asked.
“Do I still carry a gun?” He laughed and bent to pat his ankle. “Does a duck have wings?”
CHAPTER 26
“We’ve all been at least a little broken by the world. But the world only notices when we try to hurt it back.”
—Conversation with Special Agent Mac McConnell.
“You’re shitting me,” Albers said in a loud whisper as we headed into the yard. “The punk’s a killer?”
“He’s murdered a lot of people, Albers,” I said. “This isn’t a lark. I have no idea if he’s still nearby or not. You sure you don’t want to wait for the cops?”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Fuck that. You go without me, I’ll just follow you.”
“You’re more Marine than a Marine.”
“I’m one better. I’m a redneck.”
The next round of storms was rolling in over the Rocky Mountains as Albers, Clyde, and I walked west. Distantly, thunder boomed. Outside of that, the yard was quiet. The three of us seemed to be the only living creatures anywhere within shouting distance.
The vast, anonymous sprawl of boxes and railcars stretched silently around us. Intermodal traffic consists of goods transported in enclosed containers that are moved by ship, rail, or truck—usually a combination of all three. Electronics from Taiwan, machinery from China, furniture from Asia—they are all ferried around the world via intermodal containers. In the DPC intermodal yard, straddle lifts load and unload the containers, transferring them from one train to another.
Expedient. Efficient. Practical. But here in Denver, the intermodal system created a thousand different places where someone could hide a victim or stash a body. I pulled my gun and kept an eye on Clyde—he knew we were on the hunt, but he hadn’t caught scent of anything yet.
“It’s gonna start flooding any day now,” Albers said, still whispering. “I seen enough of this kind of crap. You weren’t even a gleam in your daddy’s eyes when the Big Thompson Canyon flood happened. It was July then, too, back in 1976. That summer was just like this one. Everything dry as a bone until suddenly it wasn’t. A hundred and forty-four people died.”
I paused next to an idle train. “This one yours?”
“Nah. Mine’s two lines over.”
We crossed the tracks to Albers’s train. As soon as we rounded the locomotive, Clyde’s ears pricked and his nose came up. I was right there with him—a sudden chill lifted goose bumps on my skin. In addition to my fear for Stern, I now had that feeling of being watched that made every Marine and cop want to find a bunker and a .50 cal machine gun.
“My basement flooded once,” Albers said.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him down to a crouch. “Albers, I love you, but you need to shut up.”
My mind shot back to the schedule I’d reviewed that morning on my laptop. The intermodal yard was quiet today. A train had gone out at dawn, but nothing other than Albers’s train was due to roll in or out until later that night. Distantly, traffic whizzed past on the interstate, while closer by, cars zipped along on local surface roads. But here, it was silent save for the wind rattling the chain-link fence and the continual rumble of distant thunder.
But Stern was here, I was sure of it. Maybe hurt. Maybe dying. Maybe dead.
She and her unborn child.
“Where’s the graffiti?” I asked.
“Fifty cars down, maybe.”
“Okay. Let’s go. Stay right behind me. All eyes, all ears.”
We rose and started walking again.
My gaze moved from the train to Clyde, then to the nearest train sitting two tracks over. The sense of being watched now registered as a shard of ice that pushed against the base of my brain, a raw warning I couldn’t ignore. The reptilian part of me wanted to hide beneath the train—a potentially fatal urge.
Halfway down the train, Albers tapped my arm and pointed as we neared yet another stack of intermodal containers atop a flatbed car.
But Clyde and I were looking at the ground. Clyde had gone rigid.
Pressed into the mud was a line of animal tracks, just like we’d seen at Esta’s house. The wolf dog. The ice at the base of my skull now spread along the channels of my brain, and the hair rose on my arms as my flesh tried to retract to somewhere safe.
Albers elbowed me. “You gonna look at the tagging?”
I tore my eyes from the paw prints and followed his gaze up. Add climbing to Roman’s list of skills. The graffiti was on the top container, roughly fifteen feet up. The words were written in a dull reddish-brown, the color of dried blood. A perfect accompaniment to the message.
HEAV’N HAS NO RAGE LIKE LOVE TO HATRED TURN’D
Albers had a look of reluctant admiration on his face. “Fucker can climb.”
“Albers,” I said. “I need you to focus. There’s a wolf dog somewhere nearby.”
“Say what?” He looked at the tracks and grinned. “Target practice.”
We made our way west along the train, while my sense of unease grew until it was as palpable as the storm making its steady way toward us. My gut—and Clyde—were telling me that everything was wrong. That the killer hadn’t left. That the wolf dog was nearby. Worst of all was the death fear—Clyde’s drooping tail and unhappy expression had me convinced that Veronica Stern was past saving.
Clyde lowered his head and sniffed at some dark splotches in the dirt. His hackles rose.
I squatted to peer underneath the cars. Nothing. I raised an arm and pushed Albers against the train and placed my mouth near his ear.
“It’s blood. Call for an ambulance. Then hunker down by the train and wait. We’ll be right back.”