“Special Agent Parnell. Bull worked with my father years ago.”
“That so? A lady cop. ’Bout time.” She screwed up her lips, thinking. “Parnell. You Jake Parnell’s girl?”
The walls of the bar seemed to draw a breath and close in. The memory of my father and the fact he had walked out when I was little wasn’t a door I’d expected anyone to open. I’d spent years working to push his memory into a crevice deep enough he couldn’t crawl out. And here he was, smack out of nowhere.
I touched Clyde and managed a nod.
“Don’t say a word, sugar,” Delia said. “I can see it on your face. Jake seemed like an all right sort to me. More a talker than a drinker. Usually in here just to see his friends get home safe. But I know he took off and left you and that beautiful wife of his. You must have been, what, six or seven?”
“Eight.” Eight and skinny and scrape-kneed and generally happy and then all of a sudden broken-hearted with a hurt that was like having the world crack open.
Exactly, I realized in that moment, the same age as Lucy.
Delia patted my arm. “What’s your mom’s name?”
I didn’t correct her tense. “Isabel.”
“That’s right. Isabel. She always made the rest of us jealous with her movie star glamour. You look a lot like her.” A wan smile. “But I expect you know that. How is she?”
“She passed away.”
“Oh, I’m—”
“No, it’s okay. It was years ago.” I pushed away from the bar. “I need to get going.”
“Wait. If you’re looking for Bull, maybe Ronny knows something.” She turned in the direction of the men hunched at the end of the bar. “Hey, Ronny. Ronny! Got another railroad cop here.”
One of the men who was staring down death blinked and stirred, like a robot coming to life after someone flipped a switch. His head creaked in my direction and soupy eyes took in my face and then my breasts. They stayed on my breasts.
“A girl cop?” he said.
Delia flicked the bar rag in his direction. “Stop it, you old lech. She’s a lady. Not that you’d know one if she bit you on the ass. You know where Bull is?”
The head creaked left, then right. “Ain’t he here?”
Delia rolled her eyes. “Forget it, Ronny. Go back to your drink.”
But Clyde and I moved down the bar to the old man.
“Where’d you work?” I asked him as I reached inside my pocket for the crossing number.
“Forty-seven years with the CWP,” he said. “Now here I sit, drinking up my pension like those tramps I used to chase. What do they call that?”
Irony, I wanted to say.
“If I had a man with a pension,” Delia said, “and I wish to God I did, I sure wouldn’t let him piss it away in here.”
I set the paper on the bar in front of Ronny. 025615P. “This number mean anything to you?”
He squinted. “I win the goddamn lottery?” He began patting his pockets.
“No, sir. It’s a crossing ID. I’m trying to find where it’s located.”
“I lost my ticket.” His hands were slapping at his pockets now. “Can’t find my damn ticket.”
Delia had followed me down. Now she grabbed one of his flailing hands and held it tight. “Ronny, Ronny, it’s all right. No winners this week. Maybe next week.”
He quieted like a lost child who’d just found his mom. “I didn’t lose it?”
“No, sugar. We’ll buy another one tomorrow. But look here.” She picked up the piece of paper with the number on it and held it up in front of Ronny’s face. “This is a—” A glance at me. “What’d you call it?”
“A crossing ID. For a grade-level train crossing.”
“What she said, Ronny. You recognize this number?”
“Nah, I don’t remember numbers,” he said to me. Or actually to my breasts. “Ask Bull.”
Ronny sank back to his beer. I retrieved my paper.
“Sorry, hon,” Delia said.
But Ronny had given me an idea. Anyone other than a railroad cop wasn’t likely to remember a crossing number, but at least it was another avenue to try if Mags Ackerman or Lapton didn’t come through. “Any other railroad folk here?”
“Not today. And not usually. Don’t get ’em like we used to.” She folded the bar rag. “All I done now is make you feel bad. How about I pour you something?”
The longing that hit with her words blindsided me. The bad case of nerves that had been with me since the flashbacks and then the bomb would be quieted with a drink or six. My eyes darted to the bottles behind her. Delia gave a sad, knowing smile. She’d seen my kind before. She reached for a glass, but I shook my head.
I put my business card on the bar, turned it over and wrote the crossing ID on the back, then handed it to Delia. “If Bull comes in, have him call me. Tell him it’s about the number and that it’s urgent. Tell him it’s literally a matter of life and death.”
“That serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
She tucked the card in her pants pocket. “Well, if I hear from him, I’ll let him know. But don’t hold your breath. If he lied about his daughter, then my guess is he’s gone off somewhere with a fishing pole and a case of Old Thompson. And no, I don’t know where.”
“Has anyone else been in, asking about him?”
“Like maybe the Queen of England?” She laughed. “You’re the first person to come in and ask about Bull since I’ve known him. Going on fifteen years.”
“Thanks for your help,” I told her. I backed away from the bar and Clyde and I headed toward the door.
Overhead, the baseball game switched over to a news announcement. Two of the drinkers jeered, but the bartender shushed them. She and I watched as a man appeared behind a podium.
“Who the hell is that?” the bartender asked me.
“Hiram Davenport.”
“Who? Wait, ain’t Davenport the name of that family that was killed?”
“Yeah. Turn it up.”
She pulled out a remote and cranked up the volume.
Hiram Davenport stood confidently at the podium, his large hands gripping the edge as he leaned forward, his face all smiles. I was horrified until a news ticker rolled across the bottom of the screen. The press conference was from the day before. Hours before most of his family would be slaughtered.
I’d seen plenty of photographs of Hiram in company bulletins, looking jovial and kind, a man you’d enjoy having over for dinner. But this was the first time I’d seen him in motion, despite the fact that he was my employer.
Judging by the men and women standing behind him, he wasn’t tall, although his erect posture and air of confidence gave that impression. He was fit and trim, with a solid build and a tanned, handsome face that made him look every inch the professional businessman. But his most striking feature was his eyes, a pale blue the shade of arctic ice, so light as to be almost translucent.
On the screen, he beamed at the gathering, waiting to speak until the applause died down.
“This is just the beginning, folks,” he said when only a spattering of claps remained. “A bullet train from Denver to Albuquerque and north to Cheyenne. And that’s just the start. From there, well, the sky’s the limit. Actually, two hundred miles an hour is the limit. You folks will be able to skip the security lines at the airport and leave the gas in the gas pump. My train will allow you and your family to zip from one city to another in comfort and even luxury, and for far less than the cost of a single airline ticket. Read, watch television, surf the Internet—hell, we’ll have private cabins for whatever you’re surfing.” He gave a big wink and got a few laughs from the crowd. “It’s the future, and the Denver Pacific Continental railroad and my corporation, Transco United, are going to bring it to you. Now, how about some questions?”
One of the journalists in the crowd raised a hand, and Hiram pointed.
“What about Lancing Tate?” the journalist asked. “He’s also in the running
for the federal funding. Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”
Hiram’s smile broadened. “Mr. Tate is a tough businessman, and he’s putting up a good fight. I relish that. It’s a clash of the titans, folks, a clash of the titans. But mark my words. Transco United and specifically Denver Pacific Continental are going to win this battle. We’ll be the ones laying the new track. We’ll be the ones building the cars and locomotives. We’ll be the ones creating an infrastructure that will provide thousands of jobs to the people of Colorado. We will be the ones to make the West great again.”
Hiram and the press conference disappeared, replaced by a news anchor who announced that they were about to get a live update from one of their reporters. The picture cut to an attractive woman standing outside police headquarters, and the background changed to a picture of Lucy in braids and a blue dress.
“While her father fights for his life in a local hospital, there are still no leads on little Lucy Davenport’s whereabouts,” the reporter said. “The police are holding a press conference here this afternoon. There is some speculation that by then we’ll have an update on Lucy’s father, Ben Davenport. He’s been in surgery all morning. We’re hoping for some good news.”
“Thank you, Lisa,” said the anchor. “We’re all praying for Ben and for Lucy’s safe return.”
The baseball game came back on, and the men at the bar cheered. Delia gave me a shrug. I nodded my good-bye and pushed open the door, walking out into the sunshine. When my phone rang, I was standing with Clyde in the parking lot, inhaling the stink of heat-sticky tar and car exhaust and listening to someone’s dog bark with weary monotony.
“How much do you like your job?” Cohen asked when I answered.
“Not a lot, at the moment.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
I unlocked the truck and let Clyde into the passenger seat. “Go on.”
“Ben’s office. DPC’s lawyers are refusing us access. Not that going through them was my first choice. Bastards’d likely yell coercion later if we found something they didn’t like. But it’s worse than that. The judge is a pal of Hiram’s and he’s dragging his feet over the warrant.”
“Ben’s father doesn’t want his office searched? Why would that be?”
“Now that,” Cohen said, “is the question of the hour.”
“I see.”
I said nothing more as I got behind the wheel. Instead, I let Cohen read a message in my silence. Since I was an employee of DPC, in the eyes of the law it was as legal for me to search Ben’s office as it was for me to rifle through my own bedroom. I just couldn’t tell Cohen what I planned, or I’d be acting as his agent instead of as an employee of the railroad. And we’d be back to needing a warrant. He’d already skirted the limits of the law by bringing it up.
The only problem now, of course, was the fact that I’d be acting against the wishes of my own legal department. Against my own boss. I thought fleetingly of my pension then said, “We didn’t have this conversation.”
Cohen let loose a breath. “What conversation?”
CHAPTER 8
In war, going outside the wire means risking your life. But at home, the things that will kill us are often what we bring in ourselves. Alcohol. A violent spouse. Cigarettes and prescription meds. Anxiety and falls and carelessness and anger. There are plenty of dangers in this world. But the most dangerous thing of all is what we see in the mirror.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
“So tell me what else you’ve got going,” I said to Cohen as I pulled into traffic.
“Bandoni’s in with Hiram Davenport. He’s taking Hiram’s statement, but he’s also trying to keep him from calling in his sharks or getting in our way. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the dubious pleasure of interviewing Samantha’s assistant, Jack Hurley. Guy’s a real douchebag, only been in her employ for a few months. His alibi is so-so and he clearly had a crush on his boss.”
“You think they were sleeping together?”
“I don’t get that vibe. My guess is she hired him out of pity. Starving artist, and all that. But after I sweated him, he admitted to making copies of some of Samantha’s artsier stuff and selling it online to support his weed habit. Maybe she called him out on it. We’re getting ready to have another go at him. What about you—anything on that crossing number?”
“Not yet.” I gave him a summary of my visit to Fred Zolner’s house—the fact that the old man had hotfooted it to parts unknown the evening before and lied about where he was going. And that some guy with a passing resemblance to a mobster had dropped by to see him. “The neighbor mentioned gambling debts. Could you run a BOLO?”
“You think his disappearance might be related to our case?”
“I don’t see how,” I admitted. “All I wanted from him was to see if he could confirm that number from the kiln as a crossing number, assuming that’s what it is. But the timing says something, right?”
“Grasping at straws?”
“He’s the best straw I’ve got right now.”
“It works. I’ll make it happen.”
“Tell them Zolner was driving an old Dodge pickup. His Ford is still in the driveway.”
“You got the hazmat information I asked for?”
“I’ll bring it by in an hour or so.”
“When you get here, drop it off at the incident room—we’ve set up a command center in a meeting room on the fourth floor. A couple of the Feds will start going through it right away. Your boss find anything suspicious in the employee files?”
“Not a thing.”
A silence. I could picture him rubbing his forehead, probably looking at the clock. “Give me something, Parnell.”
As I drove across town, I rolled Clyde’s window down partway then fished Engel’s cigarettes from my breast pocket and lit up. Clyde gave me a look and stuck his nose out the window.
“Sorry, buddy. It’s just until Lucy’s back.”
My mind was on what the bartender, Delia, had said about my parents. Her questions and the murky atmosphere of the bar had pushed me back to childhood memories that made me long for the simple kind of pain you get forcing splinters under your fingernails. I was practiced at shoving aside thoughts of my father. But my mom, Isabel . . . she was always closer and harder to vanquish.
I cracked my window and released a stream of smoke.
Isabel had developed a drinking problem around the time I was old enough to be embarrassed by it. Her choice to be drunk at three in the afternoon became a war of wills, and my nine-year-old self didn’t have a chance. Although my mom did her best to keep it secret—pouring the vodka into glasses of juice, using breath mints, hiding the full bottles in the garage and the empties at the bottom of the trash—I gave up on having friends over. Later, I gave up on having a mom.
Try as she might, Isabel couldn’t hide the slurred words, the flushed skin, or the angry, bleary look in her eyes. The occasional missed school event when I was in third grade slid into complete absence by the time I hit fourth; she missed school plays, intramural games, the open houses when she was supposed to meet my teacher and admire my art. What I hated most were the holiday parties when the other mothers made cookies and caramel popcorn and helped us with a gift exchange, and everyone felt sorry for me because my mother sent me with a half-eaten box of vanilla wafers.
None of which compared to her coup de grâce when I turned ten—arrest for manslaughter.
Hard to top that one.
Ben’s office was on the second floor of the Colorado Historical Society in the Capitol Hill district. If the receptionist noticed the nervous sweat that started as soon as I walked in the building, she didn’t say anything. She unlocked and opened Ben’s door for me, gave me the key, and asked me to lock up when I was done. I waited until she’d gotten onto the elevator before Clyde and I went in and I locked the door behind us.
The office was large and bright. Three of the walls were covered with a combin
ation of bookshelves, maps, and framed photos. The fourth wall was a bank of windows, the southern light filtered by a row of maple trees just outside. An overstuffed armchair with an ottoman was angled so that its occupant could enjoy the view. At the center of the space, an immense desk anchored the room.
It was a clean, well-lit, and perfectly normal space. Something as ugly as a killer should never have slipped into this world.
I shook myself. “Move fast, Parnell.”
I downed Clyde near the door then set down my duffel, snapped on latex gloves, and removed a camera. I started with the desk. It was wide and plain, its surface almost entirely obscured by papers, books, file folders, a stack of notepads, and a scattering of pens. Family photos marched across the back of the desktop; I recognized Ben and Samantha and their children from the pictures I’d seen online. One frame held a photograph of Hiram and Ben beaming into the camera—Ben was maybe nine or ten, lifting up a string of fish. Another shot showed Lucy in a sports uniform, holding a soccer ball. With a lurch of my heart, I thought of Malik.
There was one shot of Ben in Iraq. Armored up and standing in front of a Humvee, he appeared confident and serene. A man who knew exactly what his mission was and how to accomplish it. Looking at this, I would have thought he’d come home unscathed. Except that sitting on the desk in front of the photo was a jagged piece of metal. I picked it up—shrapnel from an IED. A trophy of sorts, I supposed, of how close things had come. Or a reminder of how quickly things could go south.
I set it down in haste.
I started on the left side of the desk and worked my way to the right, sorting quickly through the books and papers. Cohen would follow up with a warrant if he could find a more amenable judge. Right now I was looking for business cards, phone numbers, hate mail, or a calendar with appointments listed. I hoped for anything about that crossing number.
Or anything that DPC might want to hide.
There were books about the railroad industry along with trade magazines and business journals, many of them dating back to the 1960s and 70s. A 1980 US railroad map showed a sprawl of railroad networks—small railroads in green, short lines in red, and the giants spanning the continent in bright orange. I skimmed a recent piece in Fortune magazine with the headline FASTEST MAN IN THE WEST? The article discussed Hiram’s effort to develop a bullet train, which he had already dubbed the Gold Line Express. With the potential influx of billions in federal funding, some people were calling the project the Gold Mine Express, at least for whoever got the go-ahead. Flipping through the stacks, I saw that other magazines had followed Fortune’s lead. There were a dozen articles covering the battle between Hiram’s empire and that of his biggest rival, Tate Enterprises.
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