The Lone Star Express (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 13)

by George Wier

  It took all seven of us to get the casket to shoulder height and shove it up into the refrigerated car, and all the while I could feel the rain collecting in my shoes and getting personal with my toes.

  Once the casket was loaded, JoJo hopped back onto the ladder, slammed the door and clanked it closed, fished an overly large padlock from her pocket and slapped it on, removed the key and handed it to me. She climbed the ladder and disappeared onto the roof of the train.

  Without further word, the hearse attendants and the state troopers disappeared into the night.

  “Come on, Mr. Travis,” Charlie said. “Let’s get this three-ring circus on the road.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first thing I noticed as we got up to speed was the eternal rocking. The second thing was the disorientation.

  I’m native to Texas. The state has been my playground for my entire lifetime, and I knew no one who could ask for a bigger one. I had been down every major highway and half of the minor ones in the course of my existence, but not a single mile of it, as far back as I could recall, had been by rail.

  As we passed through a city, I looked out from the passenger car and couldn’t for the life of me recognize the place. Charlie came back from the engine and I had to ask him what city it was.

  “Has to be either Granger or Bartlett,” he said.

  “It could be Omaha, Nebraska, as far as I can tell.”

  “Oh. That. You’ll get used to it. Things look different from up here. And especially at night.”

  “Up here,” I repeated quietly to myself.

  He took a seat beside me. The lights in the car were muted, and the seats were very old. There was no air-conditioning and most of the windows were closed up, but for one up front that must have been stuck open from years gone by. That was the only breeze, but it was a muggy, wet one. It was warm and musty in the car and I didn’t believe I was ever going to dry out due to the fact that I was sweating.

  “How fast are we going?” I asked him.

  “About forty-four miles per hour.”

  “Can we go any faster? We have two and a half days to get to Midland, and I don’t think we’re going to make it in that time.”

  “What’s the hurry?” I asked.

  “The Governor has set a schedule. He’s flying in, and the service is going to be at a certain time.”

  “Let’s see,” Charlie said, and held out his hands. “Temple, that’s forty miles, so that’s about an hour. Switch over there, ” he held up one finger, so I took it that each finger meant a switch, “then on to Sweetwater, which is west of Abilene—I seem to recall that that’s about a hundred and eighty, so add another four hours, which makes five. Then switch over to the Pacific,” another finger popped up, “then on toward Midland. That’s...” he doffed his railroad hat and scratched his head with the two fingers, “...can’t be more than about another hundred and fifty, so that’s another five hours, so say ten hours in miles alone.”

  I asked the damning question. “What about the time it takes to switch tracks?”

  “Ask me first about being in the color.”

  “Uh. What about being in the color?” I asked.

  “That’s the amount of time spent in an alley, waiting for—”

  “Alley?”

  “That’s a bit of track off to the side. Could be a spur line or anything.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “When you’re in the color, you’re waiting for the signal board to clear...” he paused. “Signal board—that’s the board of lights, red and green, telling you to go or not to go. Sometimes there might be a stretch of track twenty or fifty miles long—no telling—where you have to sit and wait for another train to pass because he’s got the right-of-way. We’ll normally have a coffee—that’s a lay-over—when we approach the switch because there will be somebody already on the next track. No telling how long. And you never know if they’re loading or unloading or lacing-up...or what. You see, right now there’s a freight sitting on the tracks south of Brownwood, waiting for us to get the hell out of the way. She’ll be three hours laid over waiting for us. By the time this is done, half the railroad people in the state are going to be cussing Richard Sawyer—even though he’s dead—or at least all of them which weren’t cussing him before.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I mentally doubled the ten hours to make it twenty. That left us a day and a half, plus four hours. That’s if nothing went wrong.

  “You’d better add a couple of hours to your calculations, there.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because, the route we’re taking—and it’s the only route there is—twists and winds across Texas about like the Trinity River. And then there’s the problem of switching tracks.”

  “What about switching tracks?” I asked.

  “Ha,” he chuckled. “That’s nothing but slowing down and stopping, switching the track, passing it, then switching it back the way it was before we got there. Have to do it manually in most places because not all tracks are automatic where all you have to do is call up the dispatcher, see that the board is clear, then have them press a button to switch it over for you. Besides that, we have to get permission from a dispatcher to be on their track anyway, or else we run the risk of somebody else isn’t sent down our track. Takes a bit, in any case.”

  “Okay. About forty hours, then,” I said. “It’s a nice, round figure. You do know, Charlie, that I can drive to Midland in about seven or eight.”

  “But why the hell would you want to?” He pushed himself up. “I’m going up ahead, and see how Corky is doing.”

  “Corky?”

  “He’s our Engineer. He’s driving. I think I’ll make a pot of coffee. Care for some?”

  “I most certainly would,” I said.

  Charlie disappeared through the distant door and on forward.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why indeed.”

  *****

  Five minutes later, the train passed over the highway and came back parallel to the Interstate. I looked over to see a car traveling the same speed. For a moment, the illusion was complete. It was as if both of us—less than a tenth of a mile apart—were standing still and the world was rushing toward and past us.

  It struck me as odd that someone would be pacing us, at exactly the same speed. That portion of Highway 95, a stretch of two-lane roadway I had been down half a dozen times or more, had a posted speed limit of around seventy. I knew the Old ‘19 was traveling forty-four or forty-five—and yet there he was.

  If it were day, I would be able to make out some detail about the vehicle, other than the fact that it had headlights and taillights. The image leapt into my mind of the nervous fellow across the road from my house putting his car in reverse and backing up, then whipping his wheel over and lurching away from me as quickly as he could.

  “Hello, Mr. Fast-talker,” I said, and shivered.

  *****

  About the time I was nodding off, I was paid a visit by someone I had never met.

  “You’re Travis,” the fellow said, and I jerked awake.

  He held out a cup of coffee for me. The fellow was an older chap, perhaps in his mid-to-late sixties. He was unshaven and grizzled with a white fringe, and had wisps of white hair sticking out of his old-time Engineer’s cap.

  “That’s right,” I said, taking the paper cup he held out to me. “Thanks.”

  “Ordinarily we would be stopped before coffee is made, but Charlie told me this was an emergency, because you were about to go to sleep.”

  “He was right.”

  “Everybody calls me Corky, but my name is Burgess Hancock.”

  “Glad to meet you,” I offered my hand and he shook it.

  “I’m the Engineer. Charlie has been dying for a shot at running the train, and I figured to give him a few minutes while I took a break and came and met you. Another five minutes we should be in Belton, and five minutes after that, in Temple, where we’ll switch.”

  “Thanks,”
I said.

  There was a distant honk of a car horn, not overly loud, but seemingly frantic.

  The train slowed.

  Corky and I stood together, and he walked over to the steps, down them, and opened the compartment door and leaned out. I was right behind him.

  “What is it?”

  “Some nut or something. Parked off to the side, he was honking his horn, and now he’s reaching into his car.”

  Corky moved and gave me the chance to look. There was something vaguely familiar about the vehicle. We were coming up on it at a pretty good clip, and he was well out of the way of the tracks, so I had no idea why he’d be honking at the train. Half a dozen possible scenarios flitted through my mind.

  As the single headlight from the engine picked him out, I thought I recognized the man, but then the engine passed him and plunged him into darkness. As he drew even with us, his dark figure, silhouetted against a distant light on the edge of town, twisted abruptly. I heard, “Bill, catch!” and then there was a whistle over my head. Something thumped into the wall across the aisle behind us and rolled on the floor. Corky and I turned to look and saw that it was a baseball. It had a number of green rubber bands around it and some paper, folded over half a dozen times.

  “Perry!” I said.

  “Who’s Perry?”

  “My office neighbor. He’s...a nut.”

  “He almost hit me in the head!”

  I tried to look back towards Perry, but we were past him.

  Corky retrieved the baseball and handed it to me. I extracted the folded-over wad of paper from the rubber bands. It took some doing to unfold it. I read it aloud for his benefit.

  BILL, MY PHONE IS TAPPED AND SO I FIGURED YOURS IS TOO. I THINK THEY’RE AFTER SAWYER’S BODY OR SOMETHING. OR MAYBE THEY’RE AFTER YOU. IT’S ONE OR THE OTHER AND THAT’S ALL I CAN FIGURE. LOOK FOR TROUBLE AHEAD. AND DON’T USE YOUR PHONE!

  —PERRY

  “Hmm,” I said. “That makes no sense whatsoever. Who the hell would want a dead body?”

  “Dr. Frankenstein, maybe.”

  I looked at Corky, and he smiled.

  “Got any enemies?”

  “Me? Naw. I’m a friend to man and all kinds of furry animals.”

  I had known Perry for a long time. He was prone to flights of fancy—if not downright fantasy—but mostly where the subject of women was concerned. Still, maybe he had hit his head or something.

  The image of the car tracking beside us on the highway came flooding back. That couldn’t have been Perry, unless he raced ahead at some point, pulled over and set up for the throw. But I was almost certain it hadn’t been Perry’s car. The shape simply hadn’t been right.

  I held the note in one hand and the baseball in the other. It took me a moment to register what was so important about the baseball. I turned it over and blue ink was there, plain as day.

  I felt a chill. Perry wasn’t playing around.

  “Something not so funny about this?” Corky asked.

  “Nope. It’s serious.” I showed it to him.

  “Is this...?”

  “Yep it is. That’s Perry’s Nolan Ryan baseball.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Our reverie was interrupted by a whistle blast from the engine.

  “Do you think...?” I began.

  “Probably just coming to a crossing and he’s giving it the whistle. Have to do that by law.”

  The whistle shrieked blasted again, was cut short, and then once more.

  “Crap!” Corky said, and was suddenly in motion. “Something’s wrong.”

  I dropped Perry’s baseball on the nearest seat, tucked the note in my shirt pocket and followed.

  We went hurriedly through the next car—an even more dilapidated passenger car—through a door, around a big cylindrical tanker car, up and over the coal car extension at the back and across to the engine. There Corky hurriedly introduced me to Leo, with a, “That’s Leo, our Fireman,” and I noted that the only thing human about him was his eyes. The remainder of him was covered from head to toe in coal soot. I followed Corky hurriedly up a small flight of steps and into the cabin. At that moment the brakes began to engage.

  Out the front window, about two hundred yards away, was a truck sitting across the track. The single headlamp from the train speared it and light reflected back off the driver’s window, the hubcaps and the front bumper.

  “I’m not sure I can stop in time without...really stopping.” Charlie said, and there was fright in his voice.

  However sharp Charlie’s eyes were—and they had to have been terribly sharp to pick up the truck from more than half a mile back—my vision has always been excellent, particularly my night vision, but I wasn’t sure I could’ve picked the thing out from so far back.

  Several other vehicles were stopped off to the side of the tracks, a little closer to us than the truck that was blocking our path. I noted two figures closing in toward the tracks ahead of us, and then a third running up. They had rifles or shotguns in their hands.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t?” Charlie asked. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t stop. The truck won’t hurt this train, will it?”

  “It might scratch the paint, but that’s about it.”

  “Then don’t stop. We won’t even feel it, will we?” I asked.

  “No, we won’t,” Charlie said. “Why not stop?”

  “Because, it’s a trap. They put the truck there to scare us into stopping. And those guys are gonna start shooting the minute they realize we’re not. Stopping, that is. But if we stop, then they’ve got us for sure.”

  “Damn.” Corky said. “Up, Charlie. Let me do this. Y’all get down.”

  The side window was open, and the second Corky hit the driver’s seat, he move the throttle forward a little, stuck his head out the window and squinted.

  “Yeah, they’re gonna shoot,” he said.

  Then he poured on the juice. I had to reach a hand out to check myself from tumbling back into Charlie.

  The first shot was a pang off of steel somewhere on the exterior. Charlie and I ducked and Corky hunkered down in the driver’s seat. The front glass picked up a spray of buckshot, but it merely chipped the glass. Then there were many such sounds, like someone setting off a string of firecrackers.

  “We’re gonna hit it!” Corky shouted, the excitement in his voice both fearful and amused in the same instant. Then he stuck his arm out the window and shouted: “Go to hell you sonsabitches!”

  His arm came back inside and there was the sound of something crumpling, not unlike someone clapping a paper bag full of air between their hands, followed by the spectacle of a large object coming up over the windows and onto the roof above us. The truck tumbled across the steel roof like a giant eating its way through a stack of steel fifty-five gallon drums. An instant later there was a loud, shrill scrape as what was left of it fell off to the side. Which side, I wasn’t sure. I realized then that Corky must have given them his middle finger in conjunction with his words.

  I stood up, went back down the steps to the deck and went through the doors and toward the passenger compartment. I was met by JoJo.

  “What the hell was that all about?” she asked as we met in the first passenger car, the dilapidated one.

  “You okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “Someone tried to stop us. They put a truck in our path, we ran over it, and they started shooting at us.”

  JoJo laughed. “They tried to attack a train? With a pickup truck and some guns?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Idiots,” she said.

  “Yeah. Only, I’m wondering who the hell those guys are, and what they want?”

  “Hmph.”

  We exchanged nods and passed each other.

  *****

  I called Perry, uncaring whether anyone was listening in or not.

  It rang twice before he answered.

  “You’re not supposed to call me!”

&
nbsp; “Yeah. About that. That’s just plain silly. Listen, somebody just attacked the train.”

  “No crap?”

  “None. There were at least three of them, although it sounded like a whole lot more than that.”

  “How’d they do it?”

  “They parked a truck on the tracks and expected us to stop for it. They had enough guns out there to start a war.”

  “What happened?”

  “We turned the truck into scrap. Also, they chipped up our paint and our front windows a little with all the gunfire. But we’re on this train’s last run, so I’m not worried.”

  “Wow! What do you want me to do?”

  “Why don’t you go home, Perry. I don’t want to hear about you getting your ass shot off.”

  “No way, man. I can’t leave a fellow soldier pinned down behind enemy lines.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “It’s a point of honor. Look, you’re on the train and I’m out here. That means you’ve got at least one guy who can run interference for you.”

  I considered. “Hmm. Interference.”

  “Exactly! I’ve got nothing else to do. Come on, Bill. I’m gonna do this.”

  “What about you being out of this? Your conscience being clear, and all that?”

  “I was just testing you.”

  “Testing me.”

  “Yeah. And you passed. You tried to dissuade me from helping out, which means you wanted me to be safe. And that’s mighty nice of you. But listen, I’m your guy out here, watching the trail ahead of you, making sure everything is fine.”

  “Well, thanks for the warning,” I said. “What makes you think your phone is tapped?”

  “When I punch in a number or answer it, it gives a weird tone I’ve never heard before. That means that there’s some computer software or something, listening in. It just did it when I answered your call.”

  “Maybe it means you haven’t paid your bill lately.”

  “Har-de-har har. Listen. Keep your phone charged and I’ll check in as I gather intel.”