“You aren’t the only crazy one. I feel a need to say my good-byes.”
She nodded as if she understood. But neither of us made a move to leave.
At the graveside, a winch was lowering Samantha’s casket. Ben and Lucy watched stoically, but even at this distance I could see their tears.
“We have a duty to others,” Mac said.
I nodded.
“But we also,” she went on, “have a responsibility to ourselves.”
“You going to lecture me about something?”
“No lecture. Just a piece of advice.”
I shot her a look. “Is this about honor making a crappy shield?”
“Forgive yourself, Sydney. I know you think you should have found Lucy sooner. That you should have saved Hiram.”
“I don’t. I know I couldn’t have—”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
I fell silent because she was right. I’d talked to the chaplain about it at my counseling sessions. As Hayes had said, self-forgiveness was the first step on my marathon. But it was a struggle. I’d been blaming myself for pretty much everything since my father left and my mother started drinking. It’s what kids do. And even once you grow up, it’s hard to sell yourself a different line.
“I’m working on it,” I said finally. Because I had a plan. A way to mitigate at least some of the guilt.
“That’s good then,” Mac said. “I’ll look for you at Joe’s Tavern.”
“Sure,” I said.
After Mac left, Clyde and I made our way to the truck. Clyde hopped in beside me and I drove slowly through the parking lot and away from the cemetery, my mind on the last two weeks and all the fallout from the Davenport case.
Fred “Bull” Zolner had been arrested and charged with the murder of Raya Quinn. He faced a second charge in the death of David Monroe, the engineer from Clinefeld. He’d also been accused of committing acts of sabotage against SFCO. In regard to the latter charge, the prosecuting attorneys had opened an investigation looking into other questionable activities related to Zolner, Hiram, and DPC.
From what I’d read in the paper, it looked to be a long list.
Lancing Tate never admitted to his role in igniting the fire in Roman Quinn that resulted in the deaths of eleven people, including Veronica Stern’s unborn child. Lancing publicly expressed his dismay over the terrible fate that had befallen his fellow railroad titan, then went silent on the entire affair. But three days after the story broke, he announced he was starting a charity to support orphanages and provide for foster care in rural communities.
His form of atonement, I guessed. Not for me to decide if it was enough.
As for the bullet train, after all the feuding between the Tates and Hiram Davenport, the funding fell to a congressional axe. White elephant or savior, there would be no Gold Mine Express to make the West great again. Not in the foreseeable future.
How the mighty had fallen.
Esta never fully recovered from the torture she’d endured at the hands of her grandson. Or maybe the drugs had already done so much damage that the torture was just the final straw. She was institutionalized at a home in Thornton for the mentally disturbed, not far from where her grandson murdered Samantha.
Roman’s body was never recovered. Hundreds of man-hours unearthed Hiram’s corpse. But Roman had disappeared under tons of mud and sludge. Or maybe his body had been swept into the South Platte and would emerge someday in the future, like a ghastly Jack-in-the-box.
My feelings about him were complicated. He’d murdered nine people that we knew about. And he’d done so in horrific ways. There could be no earthly forgiveness for him—at least, not on my part. But I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of man he might have been if he’d grown up in a stable home, surrounded by family and friends and classmates. All the energy he’d put into assuming a false identity, into worming his way into the Davenports’ lives just so he could destroy them, all of that could have gone into his photography, which showed real talent. Or into his relationship with the woman who’d been sitting in his Jeep. Maybe instead of Roman Quinn, he would have been the congenial, buoyant Jack Hurley he’d pretended to be.
We would, of course, never know. The chaplain, Hayes, told me that some forms of mental illness lie hidden like bombs—they can remain forever dormant or be detonated by a single wrong step.
The sun was lowering when I parked at the gate leading to the Edison Cement factory. Clyde and I got out and slid through the gap between the fence and the gate. We picked our way to the wall where we’d stood after the bomb went off that first morning. I glanced around, half expecting to see the Sir or to catch a glimpse of the Six. But the only sound was the wind through the ruins, and only the grasses moved, stirring in the breeze.
After the flooding in the tunnels, the earth had collapsed under many of the structures. An edifice that had lasted for decades and been fought over by titans had been brought to ruin by nature. The warehouses were falling, the surviving kilns crumbling, two of the three silos showed immense fissures. Every structure would have to be brought down, the bricks and cement and other debris carted away. Then, maybe, someone would fill in the tunnels and turn the area into an art museum.
Or—without Hiram and Veronica Stern and Samantha—maybe the land would remain empty.
Gravel crunched behind us as a car pulled up and parked. I turned to see Cohen emerge and place a hand above his eyes, scanning for me. I waved, and he started across the field toward us.
Clyde took off like a shot. I watched the two of them greet each other. When Cohen regained his feet and started walking again, Clyde raced back to me.
“Hey,” Cohen said when he reached the tumbled wall where I stood.
“Hey.”
“Nice place for a date.”
“It’s gothic,” I said.
“Fitting.” He looked around, then his eyes came back to me. “I don’t have a lot of time. Bandoni and I just caught a new case. No trains in this one. No children.”
I said, “Good.”
I turned so that I was facing Potters Road. I could just make out the overpass near where Samantha Davenport had died. In my mind, I followed the tracks north. Out of Colorado and through Wyoming. On up into Montana and the Powder River Basin with its millions of tons of coal, which had helped make DPC a success. Which had helped make Hiram Davenport a success. Then I kept moving north, through Montana and into Canada, where DPC had extended its reach.
While Cohen watched me, I spun southward, mentally following the train tracks down through New Mexico and across the border, into the often dangerous state of Chihuahua and on through the rest of the country, down to the federal district of Mexico City.
My fingers went to the photograph of Malik in my pocket.
Two days earlier, David Fuller with the Hope Project had sent me a photo. A boy who looked like Malik had been seen with a Caucasian man in Mexico City. It was our first lead.
I rested a hand on Cohen’s arm.