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

by Barbara Nickless

  “Fucking furball’s gonna break my back,” Cohen said, taking up his perch on the windowsill.

  “You walking him every day?”

  “Sure. Even though he barfed up a stolen steak on my rug.”

  When Clyde took that shot for me, he suffered three broken ribs and a bruise that began where Whip’s bullet struck his shoulder and worked its way down almost to his tail. While Cohen and the police and deputies were swarming over the encampment, Clyde had hobbled through the mob to Cohen. Badly injured, in terrible pain, Clyde had nonetheless led Cohen up the trail and across the bridge to where Gentry and I lay unconscious. They had to medevac all three of us.

  The nurses told me that when I learned Clyde was alive, I shoved a doctor hard enough to make her fall and tried to get off the gurney, rubber tubes and IVs be damned. I don’t remember it. But it’s still one of the best days of my life.

  “How are things in the world of crime fighting?” I asked Cohen.

  “Oh you know.” His eyes were as dark and tired as I remembered them. “Days are never long enough.”

  “What are you wasting time here for, then?”

  “Food’s free.”

  “That’s graft.”

  “More like perks.”

  When Cohen first came to the hospital, I couldn’t look him in the eye. Not after what I’d done. Not with what I knew. But I came to realize that Cohen has monsters of his own. And if he suspected I knew more than I was sharing, he let it sit. He was plenty pissed about the papers I’d stolen. But he understood. He wasn’t going to stay away from me because of that.

  Especially since, he said in a moment of pique, I’d solved his crime for him. He might need me again.

  Now, as we did every day, we talked about idle things. Gossip about some of the dicks Cohen worked with. How good the coffee was at the shop a block from headquarters. Whether or not I’d flunk out of school this semester from missing so many classes.

  Denver PD closed the book on the murder of Elise Hensley with the identification of her killer as Alfred Merkel. Melody Weber’s testimony, along with the fact of Tucker’s stolen hobo beads at the crime scene, the presence of several of Merkel’s hairs on Elise’s body, and Merkel’s possession of illegal prescription meds, helped convince Denver PD that they had their man. I didn’t know why Melody lied, although I figured it was her one chance to give Whip the finger. Detective Bandoni kept giving me the evil eye about all of it, but in the end he said justice had been served, one way or another, and he let it drop.

  I don’t think Cohen bought it. I think the case remains open for him. But I also think he has no idea who her real killer was. And maybe not much inclination to pursue it.

  Elise hadn’t come by since the night we entered the encampment, so it could be she too felt that justice, however winding, had been served.

  I thought about her and Whip a lot during the long, still nights as I listened to the beeping of monitors, the swooshing steps of the nurses, the occasional cry down the hall. Merkel had gone down for the one thing he hadn’t done. And Nik had committed the worst sort of crime. He’d slaughtered a woman he loved, ripped her body apart to make it look like the crime of someone else’s passion. Or maybe, once he started with the knife, he didn’t know how to stop. Killing—in war or elsewhere—drives us mad. Death shoves its way into our nostrils and down our throats, filling us until there isn’t room for anything else.

  Nik had held his war inside for forty years.

  No wonder he couldn’t breathe.

  In those long, quiet nights, I wondered about the dark things in my own future. The men I’d killed—first in Iraq, now in Colorado—had left marks on my heart. However justified the courts might rule it, killing is killing.

  It does not leave us intact.

  And now my silence let Nik get away with his crime. More than get away with it. Ellen Ann was keeping her grief at bay by raising money for a memorial fund to make sure no one forgot Nik Lasko’s heroism.

  “You miss him,” Cohen said now, as if reading my mind.

  “More than you know,” I answered. But it was for the Nik I thought I’d known. Not for what he’d become.

  “He died saving his son.” Cohen looked at me as if waiting for some reaction.

  But he’d tried this gambit before. I gave him nothing except a nod.

  “Well.” He stood. “Guess I’d better get back to work before Bandoni sends a hit squad.”

  “Wheel me up to see Gentry?”

  Gentry had remained in ICU for two weeks before being upgraded to serious but stable and then to fair. He’d suffered a cranial compression fracture, a lacerated liver, a broken occipital bone, five broken ribs, and twenty-seven cigarette burns. His captors had done other things to him he wouldn’t talk about and that his doctor said were none of my business. The physical recovery would take weeks.

  I worried there might not be enough time in the world to heal the internal scars.

  Cohen parked my wheelchair at the nurses’ station on Gentry’s floor. He gave me a chaste peck on the cheek. Clyde slobbered on my lap until Cohen bodily hauled him away.

  “Your friend is taking in some sunlight at the end of the hall,” the day nurse said.

  Gentry’s wheelchair was parked close to the window. The nurse rolled me up next to him. She adjusted the blanket on Gentry’s lap, told us not to tire ourselves, and beat feet.

  “They tell me you’re getting better,” I said.

  He gave a slow, sad smile. “Rumor has it.”

  “You’re looking good.”

  “You too.”

  Ah, the lies told to the hospitalized everywhere.

  He returned his gaze to the window. “When are you going back to work?”

  “Soon as they let me. ’Course, I’ll be at a desk for a while.” I fingered the brace on my knee. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve resigned from the law firm. I’m thinking I’ll start taking pro bono cases on my own. Or go to work for the public defender’s office.”

  Outside, a bird hurtled past, flung by the March wind. It turned on its wing and swooped under the eaves.

  Gentry shifted in his chair, sucked in his breath at the pain. “Your detective talked to me about Jazmine Brown.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “The truth. I didn’t hurt her, Sydney.”

  “I know.”

  “But I didn’t save her, either. I knew what those boys meant to do, and I stayed silent. It’s a hard thing to live with.”

  “I understand that, too.”

  After a while, his hand crept out from under the blanket and took mine. We sat that way as the sun faded and a winter chill took over the room. Spring was still a long way away.

  On my twentieth day in the hospital, the ghost of the CIA spy, Richard Dalton, appeared.

  I was furious with his intrusion. I’d half hoped that what I’d gone through had been payment enough to silence the dead. That after crowding me during my drug-hazed days, they would pack up and move out.

  So when Dalton showed up, I picked up a vase of flowers and threw it at him.

  A nurse came running, but Dalton just moved to stand by the window.

  After an orderly had cleaned up the mess and I’d had some time to calm down, Dalton’s presence forced me to think about things that, frankly, scared the shit out of me.

  I still had the Alpha and Sarge to deal with. Whatever they thought I had, they’d be back for it.

  More importantly, there was Malik. The boy was somewhere in the US with the Alpha and Sarge sniffing for his trail like a pair of jackals. I’d failed him in Iraq. I wouldn’t fail him again. I had to find him before they did.

  I pulled out Dougie’s ring, held it up to the sunlight where it swung and spun on its chain, a gyroscope of promise and loss.

  Whatever the Alpha wanted, whenever Sarge came back, I’d do my best to be ready. Given the level of alarm around what had happened in Habbaniyah, I figured ther
e was a house of cards somewhere just waiting for a good breath of air.

  Something that, maybe, Malik and I could do together.

  On my last day, as I was packing up the flowers and stuffed animals that Grams and Captain Mauer and the railroad folk had brought me, someone rapped on the partially closed door.

  Clyde lifted his head from his spot in the sun.

  “Come in,” I said, expecting Cohen even though he’d said he would wait for me out front. He had dropped Clyde off fifteen minutes ago and gone to bring the car around.

  But it was Tucker Rhodes standing in the doorway.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Hope I’m not bothering you.”

  He was dressed for the road in jeans and boots and an old army jacket. He had his ruck slung over his shoulder. As I came forward, he removed his cowboy hat. His eyes gleamed like emeralds in the wreckage of his face.

  “Come in,” I said again, glad to see him. “Sit down.”

  “I can’t stay,” he said. “Just stopped by for a second.”

  But he came on into the room, made his way over to the window. Clyde pulled himself to his feet, still moving a little slower than he had before being shot. He took a few sniffs then glanced at me to make sure we were good on this. No doubt he remembered the man he’d tracked through a snowstorm.

  I turned my palm flat toward the ground. Satisfied, he returned to his spot in the sun.

  Tucker said, “They told me you got busted up pretty bad. I felt bad when I heard.”

  I waved it away. “You doing okay?”

  Always a stupid question.

  He didn’t take offense. “You talking my heart or my head?”

  “Both.”

  He swung the ruck down on the bed, turned his hat in his hands. “Neither’s been right for a long time. But I guess didn’t any of us come back quite right.”

  The thought of Nik hit with fresh pain. Like it did a thousand times a day. No matter how much time I spent thinking about him, missing him, wanting to turn and ask him a question, the fact of what he’d done still surprised me with the suddenness of a knife going in.

  “You’re right,” I said.

  We looked at each other. The clock ticked on the wall. Outside the window, ragged clouds flew by.

  He shifted. “Jeezer said you guys went looking for Sarge. Didn’t find him.”

  “That’s true.” I didn’t mention that it had gone the other way around.

  “So none of this had anything to do with what we did in Habbaniyah?”

  I shook my head. “That’s behind us.”

  Down by the nurses’ station, an alarm sounded. Footsteps hurried by.

  “Elise—” he started. Couldn’t finish.

  “You loved her,” I said. “She loved you back. That says everything about your heart and your head.”

  Grief swam into his eyes like a riptide. “She loved me even with all the war did to me. I never could understand why.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound trivial. Or patronizing. So I said nothing.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m tap dancing, you know?” he said. “Dancing right on the edge of some big pit that’ll swallow me up soon as I slow down.”

  “What we did over there,” I said carefully. “Could be it wasn’t the right thing. Maybe we took a bad situation and fucked it up more. But we meant well. That’s what you need to remember, Tucker. We meant well. That might have to be enough.”

  He nodded. “Guess it’s what I got.”

  He patted Clyde on the head, picked up his ruck, and made his way toward the door.

  “I’m catching out,” he said, tugging on his hat. “Guess it’s crazy to tell a railroad cop that. But I’m going to Montana to see my dad. He’s not got long, is what the docs say. After that, I figure I’ll just keep moving.”

  “You ever need help settling down,” I said, “come talk to me.”

  “I will.”

  A nurse appeared at the door with a chair to wheel me out. Hospital policy.

  I called to Clyde and took his lead in my lap as I sat. Tucker walked alongside us down the hallway. Someone would take the flowers and stuffed animals to the children’s ward.

  Downstairs in the lobby, through the glass of the front doors, I saw Cohen waiting by the curb. He leaned against his car, arms folded, his right ankle hooked over the left. The wind had caught his tie, blown it sideways. His hair still looked like he’d cut it with manicure scissors.

  Tucker turned to me. “Me and Elise, we owe you a lot.”

  “I’ll send you a bill.”

  “I still see her,” he said. “Elise. Does that mean I’m crazy?”

  “No, Tucker. I’m pretty sure it means you’re sane.”

  He touched my shoulder. Then he put on his hat and pushed the door open.

  “Semper Fi,” he said and walked out of the building.

  “Semper Fi,” I murmured.

  The door swung shut behind him.

  I returned my gaze to Cohen. He must have felt my eyes on him even through the glass because he turned to look straight at me. Smiled.

  I didn’t know how things would work for us. Or if they would work at all. But I intended to try. As Dougie would have said, you gotta live a little.

  The nurse opened the doors, and I pushed myself out of the chair. Clyde and I walked slowly out into the sunshine as Cohen came forward to meet us.

  The day had been warm. Glorious for early March. But already the sun was tipping toward nightfall, the shadows growing. A chill wind ruffled my hair and Clyde’s, and for just a moment, we hesitated.

  Then I jingled his lead and he looked up at me, his brown eyes certain.

  “Let’s go, Clyde,” I said. “We’re still good.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing this novel took a village.

  To the members of my critique group and to my beta readers for their insight, talent, encouragement, and phenomenal editing skills: Michael Bateman, Patricia Coleman, Deborah Coonts, Ronald Cree, Kirk Farber, Chris Mandeville, Michael Shepherd, and Robert Spiller.

  To my cheerleaders, Donnell Bell, Deborah Coonts, and Maria Faulconer, all wonderful writers in their own right as well as my go-to team on those tough days. Deb, I’m raising a glass of single malt to the brainstorming and laughter we’ve shared from New York to Jackson Hole to San Francisco. Good times, my friend.

  This book would not have been possible without the knowledge and insight of retired Denver K9 officer Dan Boyle, Senior Special Agent Scott Anthony, Foreman General Edward Pettinger, and Career Intelligence Officer Steve Pease. A very special thank-you to retired Denver detective Ron Gabel for sharing his vast experience, his stories, and his time. The help I received from these gentlemen was invaluable; any mistakes in this book are entirely my own.

  To my agent, Bob Diforio of the D4EO Literary Agency. Serendipity, indeed.

  To Grace Doyle and the team at Thomas & Mercer who believed in a book about a railroad cop. And to Charlotte Herscher, Rick Edmisten, and Dan Janeck, who made it a better book.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In writing this novel, I took certain liberties in how I portrayed some of the counties, cities, railroad tracks, military bases, and institutions described in this book. The world presented here, along with its characters and events, is entirely fictitious. Denver Pacific Continental (DPC) is a wholly fictional railway. Any resemblance to actual incidents and corporations, or to actual persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2015 Jonathan Betz

  Barbara Nickless is an award-winning author whose short stories and essays have appeared in anthologies in the United States and the United Kingdom. An active member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, she has given workshops and speeches at numerous writing conferences and book events. She lives with her family in Colorado. Blood on the Tracks, which won the Daphne du Maurier Award and was a runner-up for the Claymore Award, is
her first novel.