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

by George Wier

  “One of them still at large,” I nodded. “You got the identities of those guys?” I gestured to the two vehicles, where the bad guys were still awaiting transport to the local jail.

  “They didn’t have wallets, and I don’t think they’re going to be too eager to talk, just yet. We’ll find out who they are soon enough. Oddly enough, their vehicles—and that’s the pickup truck and the car Cooper just chased—shouldn’t be on the road.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They were run across the scales at a wrecking yard in Houston. They’re not registered to be on the road. Somebody went through some trouble to make them roadworthy.”

  I walked over to the pickup truck and made my way around it while Cap followed.

  “What do you see, Ranger Travis?”

  “Bill. Just call me Bill.” I clicked on my flashlight and panned it over the body of the truck. “The original paint job was black. The passenger door has been replaced with a dark brown door, same model and year. I think the rear window has been replaced as well. Looks too new not to be. She rides a little low on this side, meaning that she was t-boned at least once, which probably means the suspension is mostly shot. Didn’t bend the frame, though, or wouldn’t be driveable. Yeah, she’s a reclaimed salvage, for sure.”

  “That’s my assessment exactly.”

  I opened the passenger door and found a 1910 pistol on the seat and an open glove-box with several full clips spilling out. There were several wads of what appeared to be aluminum on the passenger floorboard. They had been burned. The interior of the truck was acrid with a burnt-metallic odor.

  I shifted back and said, “Smell.”

  Inkslater stepped forward and sniffed. “Methamphetamines.”

  “Yeah. Tell you what, I’d contact the DEA down in Houston. See if they’re investigating the salvage yard for drug trafficking. You might be able to coordinate this thing and figure out what they want.”

  “Meth heads usually end up with not much to work with in the thinking department,” he said.

  At that moment there was a shriek of metal and we looked to see the propane tank slide off of the rails and roll halfway over. JoJo dodged out of the way and scampered up the cattle guard on the steam engine in the nick of time.

  “What a way to run a railroad,” I said.

  “All right,” Cap said. “You want to talk to the two yo-yos we’ve got in custody?”

  “Sure.”

  I followed the Lieutenant over and he asked one of the troopers to roll down the rear window. After a moment, I had my hands on my knees, peering into the dimly lit cruiser.

  “Hiya,” I said.

  The fellow looked at me, a dour expression on his face.

  “I’m one of the people you fellahs tried to derail and shoot. Care to let me know what all this is about?”

  He leaned over toward the window—a young man of no more than twenty-five, fairly unwashed and greasy-looking—and instead of talking, he spat. I had to dance out of the way to keep from getting hit.

  “Hmm,” I said. “Lacking in social graces, aren’t we? Tell you what. One of you two is going to talk, the other one’s going to spend a long time in jail. Which one do you want to be?”

  “Got the right to remain silent, don’t I?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I guess you do, right up until the moment they clang that cell door shut, and maybe months and possibly years after that. These boys are going to go through that pickup over there and see which guns are stolen and which aren’t, and the lab boys in Waco, they’re going to be extremely interested in any chemicals found in there.”

  “Ain’t my truck. Ain’t my guns. What do I care?”

  I smiled at him.

  “Well, time’s up.”

  Cap motioned to the trooper up front and the window slid upward.

  I walked over to the other cruiser, and Cap reached in and rolled the rear window down. I talked—the same basic spiel—and was given nothing but silence. I didn’t even get spat at.

  I shook my head and the window came back up.

  “Well,” Cap said. “I suppose that’s that.”

  “Yeah. Reckon it is.”

  “Looks like they’ve got the train ready to go now. I’ll meet you at the switch track in Waco.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  Perry Reilly walked up as soon as Cap was done talking to me.

  “I thought you were headed home,” I said.

  “I need something from you, first.”

  “What could that possibly be?”

  “You know. It’s important, Bill.”

  “What?”

  “I need Nolan Ryan.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I left it on the train.”

  *****

  The Lone Star Express, festooned with twin Texas flags up front and what appeared to be streamers of Christmas tree tinsel wrap along the length of the engine—Leo’s handiwork and a nod to some arcane tradition—was back up to forty-five miles per hour; a full head of steam, as it were.

  I was in the caboose once more with Frank, who had me up in the elevated cupola, looking forward toward the engine while he sat down below peering behind us. We carried on a conversation.

  “Drugs, you say?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s that got to do with burying the Governor?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Cap’s vehicle had once again parted company with us, and we had gone no more than half a dozen miles down the track when we began to slow. As we did, I noticed the lights in the caboose brightening.

  “Does it always do that when we slow?”

  “It does. We don’t need the steam pressure, so the excess goes through the generator, and for awhile things brighten up. Hold on a second.”

  I looked down to see him raise his radio with his good hand. I was glad to be rid of it for the moment.

  “We coming to the switch track?” he asked.

  “We are,” JoJo responded.

  “Will there be a coffee?”

  “According to the Santa Fe, there won’t be until we’re past Killeen. Then we’ll have to pull over across from Fort Hood in an alley and let the U.P. go by. About an hour.”

  I translated that as a Union Pacific train. I fished out my own cell phone—I was collecting them in different pockets—turned mine on and waiting for it to cycle up for use. It showed the time. Ten minutes after four in the morning. Then it started beeping at me, letting me know that I had missed a few phone calls, for which I had voice mail messages waiting in the queue.

  Looking over the list, I had one from Perry—who apparently didn’t have the phone number to the other phone, which was still on—one from my daughter, Jessica, one from Julie, one from Deputy Kinsey, and the last one from Penny.

  I hit the magic button and began listening.

  Jessica was a little ticked off at me that I hadn’t invited her along. She knew that I was in danger and it was just like me to take off without letting her know. Julie’s was much more frantic, telling me to call Jessica and tell her not to come after me. In the message from Kinsey, he told me to not worry about Jessica because he had forestalled her and had ordered her to come over to our house, where he was still camped out. The last call, from Penny, was somewhat cryptic and strange. She stated that the Governor had called her at home in the middle of the night and asked her out on a date. She sounded a tad unsure. I let that one sink in.

  I decided not to return any of the calls. It would all sort itself out.

  The moment I put the phone back in my pocket, the other one rang. The display read: Inkslater.

  “Travis,” I said, answering it.

  “Looks like Gulf Port Salvage is an ongoing investigation with the DEA.”

  “No joke.”

  “Yeah. They use refurbished salvage vehicles with stolen tags to transport drugs. A raid on the place was scheduled for early next week, but it looks like that’s been moved up a bit in light of the trouble you�
�re having.”

  I sat in silence for a minute. I looked down into the caboose to see Frank looking up at me, waiting.

  “You there?” Cap asked.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “Well, you might want to see if there are any ties between Gulf Port Salvage and the Abington & Smith Funeral Home.”

  “Huh. Is that where...?”

  “Yeah. They prepped the body, got it ready to move to Austin.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this. I mean, the direction this sounds like it’s going.”

  “Neither do I,” I said. “Look, is there anything else mixed in with this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anything. I don’t know, but it’s going to be something odd, like monkeys missing from the zoo or pinball machine parts being used to manufacture UFOs.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Is this Perry Reilly?”

  I laughed. “No, it’s Bill Travis, I assure you. Cap, I’ve been in enough rodeos to know to suspect the clown.”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll take your lead.”

  “Just follow this thing wherever it leads. We’ll have a layover on an alley—that’s a set of tracks to the side—at Fort Hood, the other side of Killeen. About an hour worth of wait. Also, we’ve got one yayhoo still out there riding herd for us and possibly plotting destruction. Whoever is behind this, all they have to do is pick up a phone to make people jump. For instance, that wrecker back there.”

  “About the wrecker.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was supposedly stolen from a wrecking yard here in Waco some time yesterday. About five minutes ago, it was called in as stolen.”

  “Huh. Covering their tracks.”

  “Sounds like,” Cap said, “but you never know.”

  “Right. Until you know.”

  “Uh huh. Until you know.”

  “By the way,” he said, “I made a call, checking up on you.”

  “Why whom?”

  “The Texas Rangers barracks in Austin.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “They said that you’re an active Special Ranger. That you’ve reluctantly allowed yourself to be renewed time and again.”

  “It’s a courtesy,” I said. “I almost never use it.”

  “That why you don’t wear a gun?”

  “My wife doesn’t like guns,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yeah. Mine doesn’t either.”

  “Okay. This train is slowing. Is that your lights up there off to the side of the tracks?”

  “Yeah. Is that your headlight coming down the tracks?”

  “Yep.”

  “Let me hear that steam whistle, would ya?”

  “Sure.” I called down to Frank, “Radio Corky, and ask him to blow the whistle. Our state trooper buddy wants to hear it.”

  “Okay.” I waited while Frank spoke to Corky over the radio. A few seconds later there was that shrill whistle and a gout of steam plumed high into the early morning night.

  “How’s that?” I asked over the phone.

  “Music to my ears.”

  “See you in a few minutes.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A few minutes turned into closer to fifteen.

  Once the train came to a complete stop, Frank asked me to come down. He handed me his radio with his good arm.

  “Okay,” he said, “here’s the deal. Take this radio and your flashlight with you. You get off the train and walk down the tracks until you find the switch box.”

  “Am I going to have to do this manually?”

  He chuckled. “If it wasn’t manual, it’d already be switched. This is where the Union Pacific ends and the Sante Fe begins, and there isn’t enough driving between the two different railroads to justify the expense of automatic switches. Actually, it’s my own theory that it’s done to keep other drivers off.”

  I stepped down to the bottom step at the rear of the caboose, turned and called back to him: “Seems like after NAFTA, these tracks would be used all the time.”

  “Go on!” he said. Then, as I shined my light at the ground and stepped down, I heard him say, “Huh! NAFTA!”

  I picked my way through the weeds and the course rocks—any one of which could easily turn an ankle, if one misstepped—and to the front of the train. I looked up and saw Corky looking down at me, his elbow out the window and his hand resting on the sash.

  “I’ve got Frank’s radio,” I said.

  “So?”

  “Well, if I need some help, I’ll call you on it. You know, for instruction.”

  He was backlit by the dim light in the engine, and I watched him as he paused, then shook his head, as if saying mentally to himself, “Amateurs.”

  I walked on ahead.

  “Tough crowd,” I said to myself.

  I walked fifty feet until I came to a signpost that read “Waco” on it. Beneath it was a big lever. On the other side was a set of tracks coming from the east—two tracks merging into one.

  “Criminy,” I said, then raised the radio. “JoJo?”

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “Tell me what to do. I’m out front.”

  “Well, walk over to the tracks and see which way the rails are running.”

  “We going left or something?” I asked.

  “Bill,” she said. “There’s only one way to go. You have to make sure that the wheels of this thing—which by the way, run on the inside of the rails—will mate up with the rails that take us onto the new track. So walk to where the tracks meet up, shine your light down at them, then imagine these wheels trying to find their way onto the new tracks. If they don’t—if they’re off to the side—then you have to go over and throw the switch, then come back and make sure they’re all the way flush with the new rails so we can ride on them.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Gimme a minute.”

  “Sure.”

  Twenty feet away from the actual lever, the tracks met up. I walked over and shined my light down on the steel. The left rail from our track did indeed meet up with the left rail of the new track, but the right one was skewed by about ten inches. There was no way we could go forward like that, so I figured that we did indeed need to switch.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said, realizing that Charlie was playing me for a fool. It wasn’t his legs that were messed up, but his arm. He could’ve walked out here with me. He’d walked before. I chuckled to myself. I was being hazed.

  I went back to the switch, set the radio and the flashlight down, grabbed the lever and pulled.

  Nothing. I could have been pulling on a building.

  JoJo’s voice chimed in. “Sometimes you have grease those things. Frank keeps bottle of WD-40 for that purpose.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  I walked back to the train. I looked up at Corky, but he was looking straight ahead. I walked all the way back to the caboose. When I shined my light upon onto the first step, there was a big can of what looked to be axle grease with a brush in it. Beside it was a bottle of WD-40.

  “Huh,” I said.

  Halfway back, one of the phones in my pocket rang. I stopped, set down the bucket and the can of grease, stowed the flashlight under my arm and pulled out the phone. It was the phone one of the state troopers had given me. It continued to chirp in my hands. The lit up window read, “Inkslater.”

  “Yeah?” I answered.

  “What’s taking you so long?”

  “Everybody’s a critic. I’m trying to switch tracks.”

  “Need some help?”

  “No. I’m a professional. This is man’s work. See you in a bit.” I hung up.

  Back at the switch, I shined the light at the base. I squatted down and squired a stream of WD-40 into the mechanism. I put the can down, stood, and gave the lever a pull. Nothing. Just in case I was doing it wrong, I tried the opposite direction. Nothing. I gave it all my strength the direction I thought it should g
o. A whole lot more of nothing. I set down the bottle of WD-40 and slathered a good dose of axle grease into the narrow slot at the base.

  I tried again. More of the same.

  I kicked it, and nearly broke my toe.

  After dancing around for a half a minute, cursing, I hefted the radio. I almost hit the mic button, but then thought better of it. Instead, I put the radio in my pocket, picked up the flashlight and started back down the track, looking away as I passed the engine.

  When I got back to the caboose, there was a big pipe wrench there, the kind that you would use to tighten the bolts on the Alaskan Pipeline or the Golden Gate Bridge. When I picked it up, I realized that it weighed forty pounds.

  I walked all the way back to the switch, set the business end of it in the coarse grass around it, grasped the handle with both hands, lifted it, then swung it like Greg Norman might drive a wood. It slammed into the handle, sparks flew, and the switch clanked over, while the reverberation traveled up my arm and made my stomach shiver.

  I dropped the wrench, picked up the flashlight, walked over the tracks, shined the light down and saw that the right hand rail mated perfectly. I motioned the train to come on with my flashlight, then walked back to the switch, picked up my radio, the pail of grease, and the can of WD-40. And started down the tracks away from the switch in the direction we were headed, the idea now imprinted on the inside of my skull that, logistically speaking, the train would have to pull past the switch where I would eventually load all the crap back onto the caboose. Once the train passed, I would have to go back, move the switch back the way I had found it, and bring the wrench back with me.

  Thirty or so feet past the switch, I set everything down at the side of the tracks, looked over to see Cap sitting in his cruiser, waiting for me, waved, then walked back to the switch.

  The train moved slowly past and onto the new tracks where the caboose stopped even with my equipment. I took another swing at the lever and the damned thing snapped right back into place.

  When I got back, I noted that Frank had already loaded everything. He held out his good arm, and I gave him the wrench.

  He smiled at me.

  I lifted the radio and keyed the mic. “Gimme a minute, Corky. I gotta talk to Cap.”