Had was off talking to the attendant from Michigan, with whom he seemed to have struck up an ongoing friendship. There was a shocker. If they ever came across someone that was immune to Had’s cheerful demeanor, that would be a major cause for concern.
They had been pursuing alternate leads since Had’s bombshell about the kidnapping victim that morning. Although there had been some promising starts, Sariah couldn’t help but compare all of them to the near-perfection that Curtis Howse had been. And still remained, as far as she was concerned.
She was just about to call out to Joshua to see what he was working on, when Had burst in, with Reggie and the weird attendant in tow. Bella scooted over to greet each one of them, making sure they all got plenty of licks in the process. Had was almost vibrating, he seemed so excited.
“Guys! Guess what?”
“You started eating Activia and your bowels have never been more regular?” Joshua deadpanned. Well, look who was clearly watching lots of television now? Sariah stifled a chuckle.
“How did you know that?” Had asked, surprised. He seemed to think about that for a moment, then waved it off. “That’s not what I wanted to tell you, though,” he gushed. “I was talking to Preston when Reggie showed up.” He gestured to the young local cop, who blushed and waved.
“Sorry. I’m not a stalker. I just don’t have anything to do over at the station, so…” She made and held eye contact with Sariah, almost as if she were asking permission to be here.
“Of course you’re not a stalker,” Had admonished. “No one thinks that. Anyways, she didn’t have a chance to say anything about it yesterday, but she saw something when you guys were in the box with Howse.”
“I might have seen something,” she amended. “I’m not positive.”
“Are you kidding?” Had almost shouted. “This stuff is gold. Even Preston thought so.”
“Yeah,” Preston mumbled. “It was pretty bitchin’.”
“Go on,” Had urged Reggie. “Tell them.”
“Well,” she started, appearing a tad embarrassed. “Did you know that the points on that map are identical to the stops of a bunch of historical railways?” She pulled out what looked like a copy of the map they had been using yesterday, replete with the requisite red x’s.
“What?” Joshua asked.
“Look,” she said, glancing at him for a moment before spinning back toward her copy. “This one here’s the Beefsteak and Onions, and there’s the Bums, Robbers & Pickpockets. Oh, and the Clickety-Bang over this way.”
Sariah’s mind was on overload. It was like she was listening to words that were supposed to make sense, but were something out of a Dr. Seuss story. Or Shel Silverstein.
“Are those real routes you’re talking about?”
She gave Sariah a confused look, then chuckled. “Oh, right. I forget that sometimes I use the nicknames.” She traced one of the routes along from point to point. “The Bums, Robbers & Pickpockets line was the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg route.”
“How did it get the nickname?” Had wanted to know.
Reggie gave him a smirk. “How do you think? Take the first name of each of the cities, and then the general perception of the people riding the rails on that route.”
“So, when Reggie started talking about it,” Had jumped in, “Preston here was chiming in left and right. Turns out he’s a railroad enthusiast, too.”
“My granddad was an engineer,” Preston said, his tone more clear than Sariah had heard it yet. Apparently his grandfather pulled some sort of pride out of the kid. “He taught me all about the old routes.”
“Reggie and Preston think that there’s a connection between the train lines and the body parts,” Had said.
“Well, I said that there might be,” Reggie corrected him. “They don’t all correspond to present day routes.”
Sariah thought about that. While she was reluctant to let go of Curtis Howse as a prime suspect, she had to admit that what they had brought was compelling.
“Hobos,” Joshua grunted. He was leaning over the map, tracing the routes with his fingers. Had or possibly Reggie had traced both the old lines and the new.
“What?” Sariah asked.
“That’s who we’re looking for,” he answered. “One of the hobos. Someone who rides the rails.”
“Yes, but—”
“Think about it,” he cut her off, ticking the points off on his fingers. “He knows all the old lines, so he’s probably somewhat of an old-timer himself. He’s antisocial, possibly crazy… about thirty percent of homeless people are. He gets around, could drop off body parts as he’s going. Possibly store the bodies on refrigerated cars.”
“Okay, okay,” Sariah relented. She could see that there were some facts there that were hard to deny. Stupid facts. “There’s definitely enough there for us to start looking.”
As the rest of the group began to scurry around, new life and energy infused into the very air they seemed to be breathing, Sariah slumped into a chair, deflated. She was doing everything right, and Howse was practically screaming that he was the guy.
So what the hell were they doing chasing down hobos?
* * *
Joshua reached down and scratched Bella behind the ears, waking her up again and making her tongue loll out of her mouth in apparent ecstasy. It was a welcome distraction from what was plaguing him. But within seconds, the puppy was back asleep.
And just like that, the problem had returned. Joshua couldn’t help but notice Reggie as she worked beside him. Somehow everything she did caught his attention, even the smallest details of her movements.
The way she pulled her hair back behind her ear when she was bending her head over a stack of papers. The slight frown that would cause vertical creases in between her eyebrows when she was focusing on something specific for too long. The pull of her long-sleeved shirt as it tugged across her front, stretching the fabric tight. It was far too hot to be wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
He noticed, and he hated himself for noticing.
He tried to find other things to think about. Bella was one source, but she kept falling asleep at his feet. Not much help there.
So he’d decided to bury himself in the work. There was plenty to do. Had was communicating with law enforcement in both Iowa and Illinois, setting up a perimeter around the nearest train station in Rock Island, just over the border. Agent Cooper was coordinating with him. Which left Joshua on his own with the object of his distraction.
Problem was, Reggie was the one who had all the information when it came to hobos and their culture. From the moment Joshua had raised the idea that their suspect could be a part of that community, Reggie had proved to be a human encyclopedia of information. And Joshua was forced to go back to her again and again and again.
If only he didn’t like it quite so much.
“So, how far out do we need to make this perimeter?” he asked.
Reggie made the crinkled-brow frown again as she studied the map over Joshua’s shoulder. Her scent washed over him, a mixture of some fruit-scented shampoo and a darker, deeper scent. Incense, maybe? Whatever it was, it was making it difficult for him to concentrate on what she was saying.
“Well, most of these guys know what they’re doing. You can’t ride the rails for long before you figure it out. I’d say a quarter-mile outside of each station and junction in the area, at the very least. Close enough that the trains slow down, but far enough that they aren’t swarmed by security.” Reggie tugged on a lock of her long black hair, preoccupied with the problem, then pulled it behind her ear.
Joshua turned his attention back to the conversation. “Working with police on both sides of the line’s going to be awkward.”
“Had’s on it. He could charm a nun out of her habit. Plus, he seems to like it.”
Fighting an irrational surge of jealousy, Joshua nodded. “He’s a glutton for punishment, that one.”
“Have you found anything?” she asked, looking around
Joshua’s makeshift desk.
“Well, most of these guys seem to have a pretty long rap sheet. But a lot of it looks like just hoboing. Getting picked up for train hopping, petty theft, public vagrancy, stuff like that.”
“Yeah, they’ve never really gotten along with the rest of the law-abiding citizenry. They’re like our version of Gypsies.” Reggie’s tone was warm. It seemed evident that she had a soft spot for these itinerant workers.
He paused for a moment, distracted by her voice. This was ridiculous. He had to keep it together. Shaking his head, he pointed to some of the websites he’d pulled up on the laptop Coop had commandeered for him. It had taken him a while to get up to speed with the changes that had happened with the Internet and operating systems since he’d last gotten on a computer. The last one he remembered using was… Windows 2000?
“Part of the problem I’m having is that I can’t even figure out how many of them are out there.”
“Back during the Great Depression, there were more than 700,000. At least according to the people who were paying attention,” she said, pursing her lips. “But it’s dropped down since then. The estimate back in 1986 was somewhere north of 20,000.”
“Big difference,” Joshua muttered. “That’s the kind of tight-knit group that can be almost impossible to crack.”
“Oh, it’s even smaller than that, now,” she added. “Since 9/11, security’s been beefed up on the rails, so there’re only a few around that are still willing to risk jail to hop the trains.” Again, her eyes gleamed. If Joshua had to take a guess, he’d say she wished she was one of them. And something about that kind of free spirit mentality made her even more attractive. It also clashed with her buttoned-down fashion sense.
“So, what are you two conspiring about over there?” It was Agent Cooper, back from working with Had. Joshua, startled, moved away from Reggie, then inwardly cursed himself for being so obvious. Bella popped her head up and gave a quick bark of welcome to Coop, who did her best to ignore it. Although it appeared for just a second that there might have been a slight smile on her lips for a moment.
“We’re working on hobos,” Reggie replied.
“Wow,” Coop said. “That sounds wrong on so many levels.”
“Oh, no,” the young cop rebutted, seeming to miss the innuendo part of what Coop had said. “They don’t mind the term hobo. In fact, they like it.”
“Since when do bums like to be called bums?”
“Totally different group, Agent Cooper,” she explained. “Hobos travel and work. Tramps travel and don’t work. Bums don’t travel or work.” Reggie said, her expression serious. “They don’t really get along, and they don’t like it when you call them something they aren’t.”
“Note taken,” Coop responded with a smile for the part-time police officer. “I won’t call any of the hobos we bring in bums.”
Something about this interaction was rubbing Joshua the wrong way. He looked for a way to step back in, wanting to be a more central part of the conversation. Just because of the case. He understood the case better than anyone else. That’s what it was about. That’s all that it was about.
He seemed to be spending a lot of effort to convince himself of that.
“I’ve had a couple of hits that I wanted you to take a look at,” Joshua said, directing his attention to Reggie.
Agent Cooper stepped up, finding a chair and dragging it over to Joshua’s workspace. “Let me see what you’ve got.”
Grinding his teeth, Joshua fought an irrational urge to tell her he wasn’t talking to her. It made more sense to be sharing this with Coop, even if Reggie was the hobo expert. He didn’t have a leg to stand on and he knew it.
“There’s a smaller subset of the larger population of hobos called the Freight Train Riders of America,” he answered, trying to keep the grudging quality out of his voice. “They account for maybe a tenth of the whole group and seem pretty extreme.”
“You’re not going to find a lot of hobos that want any association with that group,” Reggie muttered, rifling through some of the pages there on Joshua’s desk.
“What do you mean?” Agent Cooper asked. “Seems like a pretty accepting bunch, from what you’ve said.” Bella came up and sniffed at her leg, worrying at the ankle monitor again. Coop moved her aside absently.
“Yeah, until they get burned. The FTRA kind of acted like tramp and hobo royalty there for a while, but there were a whole string of murders that were laid at their feet, and they’ve kind of gone underground.”
“That’s what I was talking about,” Joshua inserted. “These guys are a lot meaner than your average hobo. And there’s one who’s sticking out like a sore thumb.” He pointed at the screen, where a photo and a digital file stared back.
“Olaf Fjerstad,” Agent Cooper read, her face wrinkled up in puzzlement. “A.K.A. King’s Man.”
“All of the hobos have a handle they go by,” Reggie clarified. “Their hobo name. Like here.” She pointed to another window that was open. “Spamhead Fishbottom. Gastroboy. Gil Bates, Inventor of the Hobonet.”
“So where did our guy get the name the King’s Man from?” Coop leaned in closer to the screen, reaching a hand around the front of Joshua to scroll down the man’s file.
Joshua nudged Agent Cooper’s arm aside so he could pull up a different page, doing what he could to keep from shoving her. The woman was making him claustrophobic. “He’s from Norway. Worked as a servant to King Harald V. He was watching some documentary on hobos about twenty years ago, fell in love and hoofed it to the States to join the life.”
“Looks like he’s been a busy boy since then. His sheet’s thick.” Once more Coop reached around Joshua to scroll down. Joshua had to physically restrain himself from biting her hand. What was wrong with him?
“Plus there’s the possible connection with Humpty Dumpty,” he said, to cover his mounting frustration.
“What connection’s that?” Reggie asked.
Agent Cooper spoke over her shoulder. “You know… All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”
“Couldn’t put Humpty together again,” the part-time cop finished for her, giving Coop a brilliant smile that showed all of her lovely teeth. Joshua found himself grinding his own until Reggie caught him staring.
She gave him a look, and he did what he could to smile back at her. It didn’t appear to have been successful. She looked closer at him, as if to see if there was something wrong. He shook his head.
Agent Cooper turned around, catching part of the exchange and raising an eyebrow. “Are we okay here?”
“Fine,” Joshua snapped.
She looked back and forth between Joshua and Reggie, and seemed about to speak, then abruptly changed directions. “Well, let’s get a BOLO out on him as soon as possible.” The agent glanced at her watch. “And then we’d better call it an evening. Better to start tomorrow a little more fresh.”
“Whatever,” Joshua said before he could stop himself.
Agent Cooper just sighed and walked out, leaving Joshua alone with Reggie. Which was not at all what he wanted. And yet there was a small part of his mind that asked in a whisper… why else would he have treated Coop that way?
“Do you guys not get along?” Reggie asked, as the door closed behind the exiting agent. “’Cause I think you’re both pretty awesome.”
“We just don’t have the same views on service animals,” Joshua muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Grabbing a few of the loose papers on the tabletop, Joshua gathered them together in a pile, hitting them on the surface to get them straight. “Well, she’s right. Probably ought to call it a night.”
Was it his imagination, or did Reggie seem disappointed as she waved and followed Agent Cooper’s path as she left? The lingering scent of the young cop tantalized and taunted him, causing his heart to beat faster and his gut to twist in knots.
It was time to get back to his hotel room. He nudged Bella, clipping her
leash onto her collar as she perked up. There was nothing she liked more than a walk.
The weather was cooler tonight, but the trip back to the hotel did nothing to calm his nerves or clear his mind. The lead weight of the guilt Joshua felt both impelled him forward and tripped up his feet as he moved.
Every fear he had regarding this case was coming to pass. People had died on his watch. More souls on his conscience. And now he seemed to be hot for a coworker. Joshua groped for the image of his wife in his mind’s eye and found that he couldn’t find it. The ache increased, a burning fire that begged to be quenched.
As he entered his hotel room, he released the clasp on Bella’s leash and moved out of habit toward the minibar, checking to see if the alcohol had been restocked. It couldn’t have been, right? The universe wouldn’t be that cruel to him.
It had.
The drink beckoned, it’s oblivion a salve that would wipe away shame and fear. His hands started to shake, and beads of sweat broke out on his brow. It would be so easy to take that step. He’d done it a thousand times before. Gone down that negative spiral pathway, and it wasn’t like he was all that effectual as it was. He reached toward the blackness in front of him.
And then he heard a scratching. It was Bella at the door. She needed to go out.
The dog had just walked a half-mile and somehow hadn’t done her business. And he hadn’t noticed?
Okay. Okay.
He grabbed a grocery sack from his last snack run and scooped out all the bottles, throwing them into the bag and tying off the top. He’d take it by the front desk, drop it off, and have a conversation with housekeeping.
For now, Bella needed some attention.
* * *
Sariah woke from half-formed dreams that seemed to involve Joshua and Reggie and a whole heaping helping of tension. Whatever had been going on last night had followed her into her sleep.
Talking with him about it yesterday had seemed like a bad idea, so she’d put it off until this morning. The problem with putting things off is that eventually the time comes to take the plunge.
Humpty Dumpty: The killer wants us to put him back together again (Book 1 of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Series) Page 20
