by Diane Capri
“She was single, then? No boyfriend?”
“She was divorced about seven years back from Billy Nightingale. They were high school sweethearts, and they got married because it seemed like the logical next step after college. But they were never happy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was like watching a soap opera. He cheated on her. She kicked him out. He’d stay drunk and disappear for days, then crawl back home. You know how it goes.” She stopped for a deep breath. “And one time he left after one of their big blowouts and she left, too. Went to Memphis. Got a job and a divorce. We thought she’d stay gone, but she didn’t.”
“Why’d she come back?”
“Billy was in the army. I mentioned that, right?” She shrugged again. “I guess when Billy died in Afghanistan, she still owned the house. So she came back.”
Kim cocked her head and frowned. “She lived on the reservation?”
Janine shook her head. “She could have. That’s where she grew up. Her folks lived there until they died. But she wanted to live closer to town. Her house was over on Pine Street.”
“What kind of work did she do?”
“That was the crazy thing. She ran a daycare on the rez. For the casino workers’ kids.” Janine paused and wiped a glassy tear from the corner of her eye. “Bonnie loved those kids, too. They really miss her. I don’t care what people are saying. She wouldn’t have killed herself.”
Kim softened her voice. “They found her body on the railroad tracks. You think it was an accident?”
She lifted her chin and scowled. “Bonnie Nightingale lived here all her life. She wouldn’t have accidentally wandered onto the tracks when the midnight train was coming, now would she?”
“I’ll admit, that doesn’t seem likely. Which is why they’re thinking suicide,” Kim paused. “Because she must have done it deliberately.”
“Well, they’re wrong. Chief Greyson should know better.”
“You think she was murdered?” Kim said quietly.
Janine’s eyes rounded. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Kim shook her head. “The full autopsy isn’t back yet. Preliminarily, it says she had so many injuries the actual cause of death requires more time and tests to figure out. Maybe the coroner will be more specific in a few days. We can take it from there.”
She didn’t exactly lie. But she didn’t tell the whole truth either.
True, the autopsy findings were only preliminary.
Coroners had been wrong before.
Bonnie might have died because the train hit her.
Not likely.
But possible.
And no, Bonnie Nightingale’s death, regardless of how it happened, wasn’t the reason Kim had been sent to Carter’s Crossing.
She was here for Reacher.
Like always.
The question was, why did the Boss think Bonnie Nightingale’s murder would be enough to draw Reacher back here?
And if the Boss was right, if Reacher did come, what would he do when he arrived?
Before Janine could say anything else, the diner’s front door opened and the windy rain whooshed inside. Chief Greyson followed and pulled the door closed behind him. His sweeping gaze took in everything there was to see. Which wasn’t much.
“Good evening, Agent Otto. Janine.” He removed his hat and his wet coat and hung them on a hook near the entrance. He looked wrung out. Like the rest of his evening had been even worse than the crash on US 72.
Janine inhaled sharply as if she’d been betrayed or something. “Agent Otto? So you are a fed. I knew it.”
Kim shrugged into the now uncomfortable silence. She watched Greyson.
He took long strides toward the kitchen, covering the ground in a hurry. He went through the double doors and stayed a minute before he came back to their table with a stoneware mug filled with coffee.
Greyson said, “Looks like you’re done eating already. Mind if I join you anyway? Libby’s bringing me a burger.”
“Sure. Pull up a chair, Chief. You two probably want to talk business. I’ve got to get going anyway.” Janine cleared her throat, pulled a fifty-dollar bill out of her pocket and dropped it on the table. A hefty tip for Libby was built into the gesture. A burger and fries, even with the beer and the pie, wouldn’t cost fifty bucks. “I’ll buy your dinner, Kim. You can buy next time. Your room key will open the front door of the hotel. Just wave it over the sensor to the right of the doorbell.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Kim replied, watching her leave.
Chief Greyson glanced at Kim and cocked his head. “Looks like you found the best hotel in town. You must have a generous boss. The feds who come through here usually stay at one of the budget places.”
Kim shrugged. Anything she could say would draw the conversation into places she didn’t want to go.
He scowled and leveled a flat stare toward Kim. “Did you tell Janine about the crash you witnessed?”
She shook her head. “Not my place.”
He relaxed a bit. “She’ll find out soon enough. Everybody in town will know before morning.”
Kim felt sorry for him. It must be hard to be the top cop in a small town where he knew and cared about every soul. “I take it, you notified the sedan driver’s family. How’d that go?”
“How it always goes. Worst part of the job.” He ran a flat palm over his hair and shook his head. “I’ve known Carolyn Blackhawk all the years I’ve lived here. She was a good woman.”
Kim asked, “What about the cyclist? How’s he doing?”
“Brian Jasper. He’s still critical. Probably won’t survive,” Greyson replied as he glanced at his watch. “Libby should have my burger done. I’ll be right back.”
He pushed his chair away from the table, picked up the empty dishes and the fifty-dollar bill, and carried them to the kitchen.
He returned with a plate piled high with food and an insulated pot of coffee. He poured the coffee into his cup and hers.
The freshly cooked burger and fries smelled just as good as before, making Janine’s daily dinner habit completely understandable. Kim wondered how Janine worked off all those calories, eating like that every night. Kim would weigh two hundred pounds if she ate that much, even with all the running she did. Too bad.
Greyson gobbled half the burger before he spoke again. “I take it you’re here about Bonnie Nightingale?”
Kim shrugged again. Gaspar’s all-purpose gesture. Might as well go with that, since the rest of the town would assume the same, anyway. Fewer explanations required. “I read the preliminary autopsy report.”
“So you know her throat was cut before she ended up on the train tracks,” he replied. “One slice. Deep and wide. Visible bone. Which makes it my jurisdiction, not yours.”
What he meant was three things.
First, since the train didn’t kill Nightingale, the murder wasn’t a violation of federal law. The FBI had no authority in the case unless the locals invited them in.
Second, that kind of throat wound is the way Army Rangers are taught to kill. Which suggested an Army Ranger killed Bonnie Nightingale. And, again, not a violation of federal law and the FBI had no authority there, either.
And third, what the hell was the FBI doing here when they had no jurisdiction?
Kim ignored all three meanings and nodded. “So she was dead already. Which means he tossed her into the path of the train to cover his crime. Just his bad luck that her throat remained intact enough to reveal the actual cause of death.”
“Yeah. That’s how I read it, too. But I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t share that theory with anyone just yet,” he replied, taking another bite of the burger and stuffing fries into his mouth at the same time.
Kim didn’t promise, one way or the other. “I’m meeting with Mayor Deveraux in the morning. Does she know Bonnie Nightingale was murdered?”
He nodded, still chewing. He sipped the coffee and swallowed the whole mess at once. His
throat looked like a snake attempting to swallow an entire jackrabbit.
“Liz and I have discussed it. She was the sheriff here before me. We served in the Marines together. Provost Marshall’s office,” he said.
“How’d she take it? The murder, I mean.”
He shrugged and took another bite of the burger. “We were both cops. She understands the job. I treat her like a colleague.”
“You mean instead of treating her like your ex-wife?” Kim cocked her head as she revealed another piece of intel from the Boss’s file.
He swallowed and grinned, showing his full set of white teeth in the process. It was the first time she’d seen him let down his guard, even a little bit. He was pretty hot when he flashed the megawatt smile, and his blue eyes sparkled like that. Hot for a small-town sheriff living in the middle of nowheresville, USA, anyway.
Still grinning, he said, “That’s what I like about you Feebs. Always fully briefed. Never have to mess with bringing you up to speed.”
“Right. So pretend I’m as qualified as your ex-wife and treat me like a colleague, too. Tell me what I don’t know,” Kim replied. Then she threw him a bone. “Even though we both realize you’re not required to tell me anything.”
He finished the burger and swigged more coffee while he thought about it. “Okay. For starters, your cover story is total crap. You’re not here to do some deep background check on a guy who passed through fifteen years ago.”
“What makes you say that?” She arched her eyebrows as if she was genuinely surprised he’d think so. Which she wasn’t. The background check cover story was plausible enough. No shock that an experienced lawman like Scott Greyson would refuse to believe it, though. Cops question everything. Skepticism is like breathing to them.
“Because I run a cop shop now and I was a Marine cop before that. One government department is not much different from the next,” he said, stopping for a swig of coffee. “I figure the FBI is doing what we would have done in this situation.”
“What situation is that, exactly?”
“A touchy one,” he paused for another swig. “A dead Native American woman. Perhaps killed by a government-owned train. Near an army base. And not too far from a casino. All under questionable circumstances. These, my friend, are the ingredients for a public relations nightmare.”
She arched her eyebrows but didn’t argue. “And what would all of that mean to a Marine who runs a cop shop?”
He drained his coffee mug and refilled it from the thermos, settling in for a serious talk. “We’d want to know more. We’d want our own team on the ground. And we’d send someone in to observe and report. Which is precisely what you’re doing here.”
“Why would you want all of that?” She cocked her head as if she was puzzled. Which she wasn’t.
He folded his mug in both big palms and leaned forward. “Because the FBI thinks there’s something more serious going on here. And if you’re the observer, that means there’s someone else working this thing, too. Someone official. Already here or on the way.”
A loud crash of dishes and pots and pans sounded from the kitchen, interrupting the discussion.
“I’d better check on Libby. Make sure she’s okay.” Chief Greyson stood and headed toward the noise. “It’s late. We’ll talk more tomorrow in my office.”
Kim watched him go, considering what he’d said.
He was partially right. But not about her reasons for being in Carter’s Crossing. And not about the FBI’s presence here, either.
When the Boss sent her here, he already knew Bonnie Nightingale’s murder wasn’t officially federal jurisdiction. Which meant the FBI wouldn’t come in without an invitation from the locals.
So far as Kim was aware, no invitation had been issued. Chief Greyson would have known about an invitation like that, and he’d have said so. Her gut said he was that kind of guy. The straightforward kind.
Which meant Greyson was half wrong. There weren’t two FBI agents on site. She wasn’t likely to come across another agent while she was here.
Too bad. She could use a solid partner.
But with the army base nearby, and the manner of death suggesting a soldier had slashed the woman’s throat, the army would have done exactly what Greyson had laid out. So there probably were two army investigators here.
An official army investigator at Kelham already.
And an unofficial army investigator walking around town, too.
Both were bound to have more intel than she did. About the Nightingale murder, at least. Maybe about Reacher, too.
All she had to do was find one or both of them and persuade them to tell her what he knew.
Kim glanced at the big clock on the wall over the kitchen doors and noticed it was after eleven. She was tired, but she still had work to do.
She pushed the front door open, turned her collar up, and stuffed her hands into her pockets. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure Chief Greyson wasn’t watching. Whatever Libby had dropped in the kitchen seemed to have him occupied on the other side of the swinging doors. Kim could be out of sight before he realized where she was headed.
She turned and hurried outside, walking swiftly away from Toussaint’s, toward the railroad tracks.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wednesday, May 11
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
11:25 p.m.
Last century, train travel had been a lifeline, supporting businesses along its entire route. No more. This particular train now carried freight from one depot to another, where the cargo was unloaded and then moved by trucks to its final destination.
These days, no passengers disembarked. The heavy engine didn’t even stop at the little towns along the tracks anymore.
Kim had checked the schedule. The train sped through Carter’s Crossing once every twenty-four hours. Precisely at midnight. It never even slowed down. Just hurtled past. Came and went in about sixty seconds, depending on the number of cars the locomotive was pulling behind.
The train was impossible to ignore, but it was no longer a lifeline for the town.
One train every midnight, seven days a week, wasn’t that hard to remember. Everybody around the entire county must have known the schedule.
Including the guy who threw Bonnie Nightingale onto the tracks, assuming all evidence of the murder would be obliterated by the monstrous train’s impact with a fragile human body.
Bad assumption.
The file had been short on details about the crime scene. It was difficult to pinpoint the exact location the train ran over the body. The report had listed the impact point as south of the posted railroad crossing.
Kim made her way to the one-sided street that ran behind and parallel to Main Street. From the beginning of time, there were businesses on one side of that street facing a wide expanse of flat, open earth up to the railroad tracks.
On the other side of the tracks was another wide swath of weeds and dirt abutted by a dirt road and then a few decrepit homes where poorer people lived. A few had been gentrified, but most of the homes on the east side of the tracks were ramshackle structures with failing foundations. Even in the moonlight, they looked worn down or abandoned.
For decades, that one-sided street had powered the local economy in one way or another. But now, the town’s prosperity was fueled by tourism and casino gambling. The old businesses were closing, one by one.
She imagined the passenger trains stopping here a century ago to let travelers stretch their legs or enjoy a meal. The one-sided street had been bustling back then. Prosperous shops and restaurants had flourished.
By the time Reacher came to town on the last case of his army career, few businesses were left. They were mostly bars, kept alive by soldiers from the base with nowhere else to go and dollars burning holes in their pockets.
Even later, after the casino was established east of town and the remaining shops and eateries folded, one by one, the soldiers took their dollars out to the gaming tabl
es instead.
Only a couple of the old bars were still there. Soldiers still traveled the one-sided street, running their cars and trucks back and forth to Kelham. A rare few stopped in to visit the bars anymore.
The town’s citizens had moved on to new homes, better jobs, and different entertainment.
Which made Kim wonder why Bonnie Nightingale had been out here on this one-sided street that night at all.
As Kim walked past, one of the bars was already closed. She glanced into the second one, which was the more decrepit of the two. A small knot of patrons gathered watching sports on a television inside. The faded sign above the door read “Brannan’s.”
Illumination along the street was provided by random streetlights, a many of which were not working. Neon signs inside the bars cast eerie red and green reflections on the cracked and broken sidewalk.
Kim glanced around, looking for evidence she couldn’t yet recognize.
It would have been easy enough to kill Bonnie Nightingale here in the shadows between the buildings. Cutting a woman’s throat doesn’t take much time. A decent blade, enough force and weight, and the deed would be done in a matter of moments.
Moving Nightingale’s body would have been a bigger challenge.
According to the autopsy report, she had been a petite woman. A strong soldier could have lifted her, carried her across the open dirt, and tossed her onto the tracks.
He could have made his escape and waited for the inevitable. He expected the speeding train to pulverize the body and eliminate all evidence of murder.
He could have done it all without being seen because it was midnight and no one had any reason to be watching the train.
That’s what the report said.
Kim looked up and down the sidewalk, and across the road to the train tracks, confirming it could have happened that way.
Any competent Army Ranger could have committed the murder like that without breaking a sweat.
Kelham still had extremely competent Army Rangers.
Yes, killing the woman first and then disposing of the body onto the tracks would have been easy enough.
