Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 1)

by Barbara Nickless

  But Clyde trotted away from me, moving west as far as his lead would allow. He looked back at me over his shoulder, ears cocked and tail jaunty. His tongue lolled.

  Game ON, he seemed to be saying. Are we going to get this guy or what?

  I whistled him back. Reluctantly, he obeyed.

  “They got the guy, Clyde. In Fort Collins. Or almost got him. He isn’t here.”

  Clyde looked up at me, then at my coat pocket where his Kong was stashed.

  The first worm of doubt raised its head. I pushed it down. “There’s nothing here, Clyde. Look, this is all my fault. You’re the best damn dog around, and you and I both know it. We’ll get your shine back.”

  Clyde waited.

  “Ah, hell, boy. What are you trying to tell me? That you got it right and the Fort Collins PD are full of shit? I am not going to walk into a blizzard to track down a phantom. How do I know it’s not a rabbit or groundhog or some farmer burning corn? How do I know it’s Rhodes?”

  Clyde nosed my jacket. I ignored him. The scrapes on my face and hands throbbed in the cold. My back and shoulders ached. My left calf burned, and when I looked down, I saw that dozens of cactus spines had pierced my pant leg and punctured my skin.

  I hugged myself and stared out over the brown prairie with its thickening shroud of white. The wind had backed off, and the sky shook loose a light and steady fall of snow. The snow tossed the dying sunlight back into the air, a secondhand radiance filled with the ancient scents of musk and sage and fallow soil. Far away, a herd of pronghorn stood with their heads up, alert, like a series of exclamation points against the swollen clouds, alarmed probably by the approaching storm.

  Or maybe by a man, walking nearby.

  After its first harsh breath, the storm had retreated. But the promise of violence twined like razor wire into the silence. When the storm let go again—probably when the sun dropped behind the distant mountains—it would be a full-on Colorado fury.

  “And so what if it is Rhodes? He wants to die, Clyde. It’s why he was trying to get home.” I was sure of that now. It wasn’t asylum in Canada that Rhodes sought. It was the kind of sanctuary found only in death. Probably he’d wanted a final meeting with his dad, maybe to say farewell to a beloved pet or an old girlfriend. Then . . . peace.

  “And if he killed Elise, and now he wants to die, too, well, maybe it’s what he deserves. Did you think about that?”

  Clyde, of course, said nothing. He kept his ears and tail high, the perfect picture of confidence as he nosed for his Kong.

  The wind ticked up, sharp with threat. The pronghorn quivered and bolted. The sky lowered, and a thick, clotting snow began to fall in earnest. I was shivering hard now and couldn’t seem to stop.

  “I don’t want to die, Clyde. You’ve got a fur coat, in case you hadn’t noticed. If he’s out there, we’ll find him in the morning.”

  Clyde abandoned his search for his Kong and sat quietly, looking west, waiting for me to get my act together and do what I needed to do.

  Military working dogs, especially ones like Clyde, train differently from K9 units. In wilderness police pursuits, you back off if your target becomes all but impossible to find and your men might get killed due to poor conditions—usually bad weather or darkness. You wait for conditions to improve, knowing that your bad guy is going to have to wait it out, too. The sheriff had been following protocol when he called us in before we’d finished searching the train. Especially after hearing from Fort Collins.

  But in war, a dog is tracking enemy soldiers or terrorists. Men who, if they aren’t caught, disappear into their rat holes and spend their free hours planting IEDs or taking sniper shots at your men. Military dogs and their handlers don’t call it a day when the going gets tough.

  For Clyde, the game wasn’t over until he found his man.

  I puffed out a long breath of air. Could it really be Rhodes? He would have heard us searching the train, then the announcement over the radio that we’d found our guy in Fort Collins, and finally the sound of everyone leaving. He must have known he was safe in the coal car, at least for the moment. But maybe he figured that as soon as we realized Fort Collins had the wrong guy, we’d be waiting for him in Cheyenne. So he’d used whatever method he’d devised to get out of that car, a rope or a grappling hook, and—as Grams would say—gone while the getting was good. Maybe he was heading toward the ruined homesteader cabin that sat on railroad property a few miles west. Tramps sometimes squatted there. Maybe he figured he could wait out the night and the storm in that dubious shelter.

  My mind went to those silver scratches on the coal car.

  So maybe Clyde was right. But if we waited until morning, we’d be hunting a dead man. Much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew from listening to Corpsmen in Iraq that with the kind of injuries Rhodes had sustained in the war, even if he made it to the cabin, he wouldn’t last the night. Severe burns make a person hypersensitive to extremes in temperature, particularly the cold. Rhodes might have underlying muscle or organ damage as well.

  And the cabin wasn’t much more than three walls and half a roof.

  I squatted and looked Clyde in the eyes. “I swear, if this is a rabbit, I will give you to a little old lady who lives in an apartment in Manhattan and never leaves home except to drive you to the pet groomer. They’ll shampoo you with lilac soap and clip your toenails and tie a bow around your neck.”

  He looked back at me patiently. The war and Dougie’s death might have broken Clyde’s heart, but not his spirit.

  I stood. “You’re a better man than I am.”

  I pulled up my hood and tied it, snugged up my zipper and checked my Sam Browne belt to make sure everything was secure. I showed Clyde his Kong, then gave him a whiff of Rhodes’s cover. Clyde’s nostrils flared, and he quivered with anticipation.

  “Seek!”

  Clyde took off west, angling away from the tracks. I held tight to his lead and jogged after him.

  Far to the north, the train gave a final blast of its whistle. Albers saying farewell. I caught a glimpse of the train’s running lights on the rear DPU as the last of the train swept behind us, and then the leviathan vanished, swallowed whole by a swell in the sea of grass.

  Clyde trotted on, and I jogged after him. I warmed up as we moved, and my shivering eased. Soon I broke a sweat. I focused on the rhythm of our movements, holding the lead lightly but with a sure touch, trailing confidently after Clyde and keeping my gaze just below the horizon to watch for obstacles.

  After we’d gone three quarters of a mile or so and climbed down and back up a couple of dry arroyos, I made Clyde stop so I could take a directional reading. I pulled out Dougie’s old military Wittnauer compass and popped it open. Motes of Iraqi sand sparkled in the scuffed metal housing. I noted our precise heading, then we were off again.

  A minute later, my headset buzzed. Nik. Angry.

  “What’s keeping you? The state patrol guys have been cut loose, and almost everyone’s gone. The sheriff’s almost done closing down. I’ve got one anxious deputy willing to give us a ride back to Denver if we hurry. But that storm’s getting worse. Much longer, we’ll have to bunk down near here.”

  “Where’s Cohen?”

  “He went to Fort Collins to pick up his suspect. I insisted on going with him, but he shut me down, the goddamn punk.”

  My heart dropped. “They got Rhodes?”

  “Still in pursuit is what I heard. But Cohen figured they’d have him by the time he arrived. Should have let me go with him. Those douche bags can’t find their own asses without a flashlight and a mirror.”

  “Nik, Clyde’s acting like he’s got a lead on our suspect.”

  A pause. “He scented off Rhodes’s cover?”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause, longer this time, and I could almost imagine the war going on inside him. The need to hunt down Rhodes and finish it and restore some balance to the world. Against that, the need to protect me as he’d always protected
me.

  When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like someone was using a pair of pliers to yank out each word. “It doesn’t matter. If he’s out there, we’ll find him in the morning. Or find his body. Your teeth are chattering. And the radio says the worst of the storm is heading our way fast. You need to get inside.”

  “Clyde is sure.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Sydney Rose. Get back here.”

  “Look, Clyde is confident. But I haven’t been working him enough, and he went after a rabbit earlier. Let me look around a little bit more, see if I can find footprints or some other indication that someone came this way. If I don’t find anything, I’ll turn around.”

  “Ten minutes. You find something, make a mark. Then turn around anyway. You know how bad I want this guy, but I won’t give you up. We can start again in the morning.”

  “Got it.”

  I hung up and gave Clyde his head for another couple of hundred yards. He slowed and then stopped, circling around as if he’d lost the trail.

  “Shit, Clyde. Can’t lose him now, boy.”

  An orange glow shimmered in the west: the last threads of tattered daylight. I’d been so focused on the ground and following Clyde that I hadn’t realized how dark it was getting. I pulled the flashlight from my duty belt and took another reading on the compass.

  Clyde found his scent, tugged on his lead.

  “Let’s just take a look, boy.”

  I downed him then looped his lead around my wrist. I played the beam of the Maglite along the ankle-high grasses. About three or four inches’ worth of snow had fallen, but the wind had whirled a lot of it away before it could settle. Still, bent grass and faint impressions showed what might be footprints heading west. Running perpendicular to them was a set of rabbit tracks, explaining Clyde’s momentary loss of the scent cone.

  The orange glow faded to lavender, and the snow now came at us so hard and fast that it was like looking down the hyperdrive tunnel in a science fiction movie. The temperature plummeted. The only sound was the wind, filled with teeth.

  “Sad place to die, Rhodes. If you’re out there.”

  I shone the beam along the ground again. Already the tracing of footprints had vanished.

  A phantom. Chasing ghosts in winter’s gloom.

  But ghosts were one thing I got.

  I keyed the radio.

  The sheriff sounded plenty pissed off. “Agent Parnell, why haven’t you returned to the factory as ordered?”

  “Sir, can you call me on my cell, please?” I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of dispatch and any of the deputies who might still be monitoring transmissions.

  But he ignored my request. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Sir, I’m approximately a mile and a half west of the tracks and a quarter mile south of the bridge. My dog appears to have a lead on Rhodes.”

  “Fort Collins PD spotted Rhodes more than an hour ago. Or did you somehow miss that, Agent Parnell?”

  “Can you ask them to check, sir?”

  “What?”

  “Can you verify with them that the man they’re tracking is Tucker Rhodes? Do they know he’s burned over thirty percent of his body and that he’s almost certainly dressed in civvies? Or did someone pass along his Marine induction photo and now they’re chasing some train bum in camo? A lot of the hobos wear old military uniforms. Sir.”

  “Jesus.”

  I waited.

  “Oh, Christ. Of all the—” Another pause. “How sure is your dog?”

  “Very, sir.”

  He dropped his voice as if that would keep dispatch from hearing. “If you make me look like an ass, Parnell, I swear you will never play with real police again. You got me?”

  I remained silent. I’d already told him once that looking like an ass came naturally to him.

  A muttered curse. Then, “Stop your pursuit and stay where you are. Sheriff out.”

  The radio went dead.

  I crouched next to Clyde, ducking my head against the wind and pressing my body to his reassuring heat. Several minutes ticked by before the sheriff’s voice again crackled over the radio.

  “They’re still in pursuit, Parnell. I passed on what you said. About his injuries and his being in civvies.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I need you to come back in. Even if it is Rhodes, I’m not sending men out in this.”

  “The snow and wind’ll take away his scent by morning, sir.”

  “Then we’ll find it again.”

  “Also, sir, because of his injuries, Rhodes has no way to regulate his internal temperature. We don’t bring him in, he’ll die.”

  Another pause. I could imagine the sheriff’s jaw working as he tried not to say what he no doubt wanted to say. “God’s truth, Parnell, you know the rules. My responsibility is to you, and to my men, who are mostly all home by now. I intend to leave them there. I will not risk their lives to search for some deranged nutcase wandering around with his dick in his hand. Not in this kind of visibility and with these temps. I can’t get a vehicle out there, anyway. Terrain’s too rough. Highway’s already closed at the Wyoming border. Find something to mark your place so we can restart our search in the morning. Then turn around and get back here.”

  “I can bring him in on my own, sir.”

  “Goddammit, girl, listen to me. Never mind the weather, do you know what this guy did to the last little lady who crossed his path? Get back to the factory. That’s an order.”

  The radio went dead.

  “Yes, sir,” I said to the silence.

  Stiffly, I got back to my feet. I stomped in place and opened and closed my fists, trying to bring back the feeling.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see my living room. The worn, sagging couch, Grams’s yellow and orange crocheted afghan. Clyde’s bed in front of the fireplace. And the ancient coffee table with its burn marks from cigarettes years—decades—past. In my mental picture, a glass sat on that table, a tumbler filled with two fingers of whiskey, poured neat.

  After watching what booze had done to my mother, I had not allowed alcohol to pass my lips until I went to war. In Iraq, I started sharing the airplane-size bottles of booze smuggled in by my fellow Marines. When I realized how good it was to be numb, I couldn’t get enough.

  Now, in the snowstorm, I swallowed hard at how much I wanted that drink.

  But none of that mattered. I could not live with myself if I left Tucker Rhodes out here to die. Not even if he’d killed Elise. Not even if he’d run out here for the sole purpose of dying. He was a fellow Marine who’d given everything for his country and, whatever had happened since, I could not let him go.

  I moved the phone around in my hand until I managed to get a signal and called Nik.

  “Is the ambulance still there?”

  “Just left. Where are you? You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Ask them to come back, would you?”

  “I can do that. You sure you’re fine?”

  “We’re all good. Clyde and I will be there before you know it.”

  I hung up and tightened Clyde’s lead.

  “Let’s go, boy. Seek!”

  As Clyde and I staggered through the storm, heads lowered against the wind, I ran down a mental list of where my path might have crossed with Tucker Rhodes, who had served as a gunner. Kuwait, which had been our introduction to the Middle East; Al-Taqaddum, where we’d set up Mortuary Affairs; and all the sites in Anbar Province where the Mortuary Affairs platoon had gone to gather the bodies of the dead—Habbaniyah, Fallujah, Ramadi.

  But of Tucker Rhodes, and who he might have been to me, I could pull up nothing.

  My mind scrolled through the list again, the names rolling unspoken along my tongue with the rich, heady taste of olives and the acrid bite of sand.

  When I’d first heard of places like Baghdad and Samarra, I’d imagined fantastic scenes from Lawrence of Arabia—Bedouins riding camelback across oceans of sand and a blazing su
n pulled to earth by the muezzin’s haunting call to prayer. As a child, I’d loved Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and other stories from The Arabian Nights. I’d spent evenings on the couch with Grams watching silly musicals like The Desert Song and Kismet, pretending I would grow up to be one of those beautiful women, singing of love.

  But Iraq—with its dead Marines, butchered civilians, and murdered idealism—the real Iraq with its twenty-first-century war, ground those youthful fantasies to dust.

  As Clyde and I hunted through the storm, I pulled the distant warmth of the desert around me, repeating the romantic names like a talisman. If Iraq hadn’t killed me, I reasoned, neither would a snowstorm.

  With the descent of night, the storm worsened. I gave it the finger, then turned my radio off so it couldn’t squawk and warn Rhodes of our approach. And so the sheriff couldn’t again order me to return. I took another heading on the compass, wrapped Clyde’s lead around my waist and looped it again around my wrist.

  If I collapsed, Clyde would get me home. He would drag me there if he had to.

  I fell the first time when we were climbing out of a shallow ditch, and my numb toes caught a rock. Clyde waited while I hauled myself back up and stumbled forward, only vaguely aware that I had fallen and that my pants were now soaked through. I fell again maybe fifty yards on. This time it took me longer to get back up.

  Once, through the darkness, I glimpsed the Sir. My flashlight flitted across his grave face. But when I called out to him, he only shook his head and turned away. The dead private made an appearance, followed by Gonzo and a parade of some of the other Marines I’d processed in the bunker at Camp Taqaddum. I caught a glimpse of Elise, her hair like a light.

  When Rhodes finally appeared, I thought he, too, was a ghost.

  The wind had shifted to blow out of the east, carrying his scent away from us, and I think Clyde saw him at the same moment I did. Rhodes stood on a slight rise, his back to us, looking west. He wore jeans and sneakers, a watch cap, and a medium-weight parka.

  I played the flashlight briefly over him, but I couldn’t see his hands.