She pushed against the paneled door, but found it to be solidly closed. Walking around back in the semi-darkness of the overcast sky, she saw two doors, a paneled wooden entry and a screen door on the outside to keep mosquitoes out of the residence when the main door was left open. The screen was open, hanging on its hinges, as though it had been forced, and the entry door stood ajar, allowing Maude to see a table overturned, and chairs scattered on the floor.
The cell phone in her pocket was coded to call the Madison Police dispatch with the push of a numbered button. She spoke to the dispatcher and asked for backup at 220-A Sycamore Street, possible disturbance in domicile. Without waiting for the unit to respond, Maude quietly pulled the Glock from its holster, and pushed the hard-paneled door with the other hand. Stepping carefully inside the small kitchen, looking right and left, she was alert for others that might be hiding in the house. The sink was in her purview, the first thing seen. From a short distance, it and the near cabinet appeared to be stained by standing puddles of tea or coffee. Her first thought was that someone had broken a coffeepot and left the liquid behind. The coffee spill was belied by a closer look and smell. The sharp, nauseating odor filled her nostrils as the floor tile showed her footprints outlined in dark red.
“Oh crap,” was all she could say, stepping carefully away from the congealing liquid on the floor tile. A couple years back during a mental makeover, Maude had vowed to clean up her language, but it was a difficult job on some missions. Turning from the kitchen, she spied the living room; beyond came two small bedrooms, and the bathroom. Realizing blood was being tracked with each step, she inwardly cursed, but continued forward, searching the rest of the house. The Glock 19 sat squarely in her palm, its barrel leveled and aimed carefully at whoever might violate its kill zone, but the house was silent and empty. All earlier activity had shut down, leaving the messy kitchen for someone else to analyze and clean.
A car with two patrolmen inside arrived in front of the house, each eager to assist in a breaking and entering incident. Finding the door closed, they went to the back door, but Maude yelled and halted their entry outside the kitchen, explaining there was blood everywhere. The young officers began to realize that there was more to the story than they had first thought. One noticed the footprints that Maude had made on the tile floor and commented to her.
“Yes, it was me walked through the blood,” she said disgustedly. “Had to clear the scene. Crime scene techs should be here soon, but in the meantime, you two go knock on some doors to see what the neighbors know about who lives here, and if there’s a kid involved. See if they know where he is. Woman who lives here is named Eve Devine. Also, what’s the time, officer?” Maude asked, making a note in her book. “My watch battery ran out of juice and I haven’t had a chance to get another one.”
“The time is 6:05, Detective Rogers—just heard the 6:10 blow the warning. Do you think someone was killed here?”
“Don’t know for sure. There’s no corpse, so I hate to speculate. But it sure looks that way.”
The technicians arrived shortly afterward, grumbling at being called out on a Friday evening. Maude knew how they felt, so she kept quiet, concerned at the scope of what lay before her. The call from the kid had her worried. Who was he and what had happened to him? Did his mother return, and who, or what, lost all the blood in the house where Eve Devine lived? Maude remembered that Howard Funk said his employee was out of town, riding the train. The 6:10 end-of-line passenger stop at Madison was due and appeared to be on schedule. Maude told the officers she was leaving, but would be at the train station if they needed to ask any questions. Without further delay, she jumped in her car, and drove with the grille lights flashing, making a fast trip from Sycamore Street to the station on Vine.
The parking circle was a cluster of trouble. Two drivers were in a shouting match in the center of the lot. A woman older than Maude stood toe to toe with a short, stout Asian cabdriver, whose head barely reached his debating opponent’s breasts. They were screaming racial slurs at one another, with each telling the other “Shut up” regularly. Maude’s money was on the woman, but she didn’t have time to stay and listen to who won the argument. An officer who worked for the station was on scene, trying to solve the parking conundrum by directing traffic away from the lot, away from the fracas, but his words were drowned out by the screamers. It was understandable. After waiting in the heat and humidity for the train to arrive, the other drivers were starved for entertainment and not about to lose sight of the ring. Maude shook her head, thinking, I get them, don’t I?
The passenger train was nearing the station when Maude heard big brakes lock in an emergency stop. Only a serious incident on or off the train would provoke such a screeching halt. Without wasting a moment, she began to run down the track, toward the screaming wheels and the passenger cars attached to the braking engine. A fine mist wet her face and hair, making the whole experience an even more unpleasant ordeal. Added to that, she knew it was happening, knew it was all connected, knew her worse fears as a cop were fleshing out, and she was helpless to prevent the drama on the Missouri-Pacific train tracks. Finally, after a long, exhausting sprint along the rough ground beside the tracks, the scene gave way to a grisly sight ahead.
At first glance, Maude saw green cloth caught up high in the cowcatcher of a huge engine. The foot and leg from a human body were stuck below in the grille, near the rails, carried along by the locomotive like a pile of rubble pushed by road machinery. A quick inspection showed other unrecognizable pieces of flesh stuck to the heavy wheels and scattered outside a long stretch of ties and track. More remnants of green cloth could be seen here and there, their presence harsh in contrast to the battered pieces of flesh. Behind the engine and first car, at the origin of the accident, lay more carnage. The severed top half of a female victim lay crumpled on the ground, several feet away from the tracks. Long, matted red hair spilled out upon gravel and potholed pavement, the sight more terrible than Maude would have imagined. A small purse lay open in a shallow ditch, its contents dumped on the ground. Maude pulled her handkerchief and concealed the cheap plastic from prying eyes.
The pavement around the head and torso was coated with tiny pieces of bloodied flesh torn from the body by the force of the wheel and spun to rest, as if a meat grinder had splashed its contents. The absence of blood pooling was glaring and inexplicable, unless the woman was dead long before Engine 99 came in contact with her. Maude observed the mystery and knew what had happened to the blood, knew that the woman had died sometime before the train severed her legs. Diabolical was the word that came to her mind.
The purse was a nice touch, although women who lay on railroad tracks to die don’t ordinarily carry handbags. It was probably in the ditch, posed by the woman’s killer, waiting for the pièce de résistance, the climax of the day, the moment when the atrocity would be viewed by police and civilians alike, evoking horror and loathing. Maude thought about calling Joe, and would when she decided how to approach him. Turning her head toward the people standing near the locomotive, she noticed a large man in a uniform standing apart, obviously distraught.
“She was just lying across the track. Looked for a while like she was crawling away, but I don’t think so. She could have lifted her legs, rolled, or done all sorts of things besides what she did. Wasted; young woman like her. Just wasted life the good God gave her.” The man had tears in his eyes, staring at the body.
“Maude Rogers, homicide detective. What is your name, sir?” she asked him.
“Blevins, Samuel Blevins, engineer of this run,” he answered, shaking his big, dark head back and forth in denial of what he had witnessed. The fellow seems dazed, Maude thought. Guess I would be too, if I ran over someone with a zillion-pound locomotive.
“Samuel, can you tell me what happened?” she asked him.
“Well, ma’am, one minute I was on time, with an accident-free record in my belt, feeling pretty good, getting ready to go home. The next minu
te, there she was, lying across the track, and wasn’t a blessed thing I could do to get her to move or to stop the train no matter how hard I blew the whistle. Detective, that’s what happened.”
“Have you ever seen her before?” Maude asked.
“Damn me if I have,” Samuel said, his face scrunched up in concentration. “She was on the train today.”
“Today? Are you sure? You saw this woman on your train today, before the incident?” She called it an incident to soothe the man a little. It sounded less accusing.
“Yeah, I swear I saw her on the train before I climbed aboard the engine. Don’t remember her name.”
“Did she get off anywhere?”
“Wouldn’t know that. I spend all my time in 99, Homeland Security, you know. We make the Wilk run every day. Go down, come back. Takes all day and don’t see much after we get underway. You might speak to Kale Pittsford, the conductor. I expect he could answer that question. Just remember that girl because she was so pretty.” With that, Samuel blushed, his brown eyes downcast, as if looking at a pretty girl who was now dead might be shameful.
Maude walked back to the small red purse that still lay under her handkerchief. She picked it up with a gloved hand and saw an identification card naming the dead woman as Virginia Evelyn Devine, thirty-two years old. Eve Devine, red hair, blue eyes, five feet, five inches tall, and an organ donor. Maude thought about the kid again, wondering who was going to give him the bad news about his mama; someone needed to be there to help him understand. She wondered if the boy had such a person. She wondered why he’d lied to her.
No one could have predicted the boy’s mother was going to be cut in half on the train tracks, no one except the murderer. He knew because he set it up. Maude thought about telling the engineer the truth: that his machine didn’t kill the woman. She knew, though, the coroner should be the one to tell the news. The medical man would search for blood and, not finding it, would quickly come to the conclusion that there was much that needed an explanation. His autopsy would answer the questions on Maude’s mind.
The crime scene unit gave her the evil eye as they showed up—the same technicians who were at the house on Sycamore Street now had additional work to keep them busy through the night. Join the party, she thought. Most of the train riders had scattered when it came to rest and the doors opened. People not wanting to be involved in the woman’s situation quickly made their way down the weed-overgrown trail along the tracks to their cars at the station, eager to be away from the unlucky train. Some might remember Eve Devine. The police would need a list of riders who might have seen the woman get on or off the train. Major interviews were coming up.
Maude thought it seemed a little spooky, but she never put any stock in paranormal reasoning. After the facts were gathered, there were always explanations for strange happenings. This time, she thought, will be no different. Illusions are created by man and must be destroyed by man.
Seven o’clock had come and gone, dinnertime for some, but not for Maude. She heard the low growl in her belly and knew there had been too many hours since her last meal. Without her wristwatch, she had to ask others the time. Her pocket notebook was filled with line after line of information from the brutal scene, with none of it answering the question in her mind. How did Eve Devine make a trip to Bisbey and lie under the wheels of the same train she was supposed to be riding? Pittsford, the conductor, agreed with the ticket agent from the morning sales: Eve Devine had a round-trip ticket to Bisbey, Texas on the day she died. Not only that, but on several occasions during the day, he or at least one employee of the railroad had seen the woman in apparent good health.
People in the parking lot who couldn’t leave were frantic that their lives were about to become encumbered by the death of the woman, for most had been waiting there for some time. Although they hadn’t seen the accident down the tracks, there was always a possibility that an off-scene viewer might have observed peripheral activity important to the case. Some were happy to oblige the police, hoping that something good might come of the tragedy on the rails. Maybe the police would fix the parking problem in front of the station even if the security people wouldn’t. Marge Campbell was one of the people who looked at Maude and indicated she would like to give information.
“Maude Rogers, Homicide,” she said to the woman, displaying her shield where the streetlight’s dim glimmer caught the gold of the star. “What’s your name, please?”
“Marge Campbell, a taxpaying American who has to sit here in this mess of cars because some people who aren’t Americans have blocked the parking lot.” Marge was furious, her round face reddened in a state of high dudgeon. “And another thing, I don’t appreciate the way the police just ignore this sort of thing.”
Maude stared for a minute, remembering the earlier shouting match between the woman and a taxi driver, then asked how long she had been at the station.
“I arrived at 5:30, intentionally early, to pick up my husband Harold, who was supposed to be getting off the 6:10 train. I’ve been sitting here since, wondering when I am going to be able to leave.” Marge seemed almost ready to cry.
“Marge, did you see anything strange happening before the train arrived”
“Well,” the woman stammered, getting her emotions under control, “I saw a lot of people parking illegally, especially an un-American taxi driver who blocked me in.”
“Besides that, was there anything unusual that you noticed? No matter how unimportant it may seem to you, it could be helpful to me. I’m trying to figure out what elements might have contributed to the woman’s death.”
“Why, I thought she was run over by the train!” Marge was in a tizzy. Had she missed something important because of those rude, dark-skinned people?
“Yes she was. But I’m referring to the events leading to her death, Marge.”
“Oh, I see.” Marge was, after all, one of the best players at her regular weekly Scrabble Meet, and therefore savvy enough to follow a person’s conversation with no trouble at all.
“Let me think—there were about four cars that came and went while I sat in this unholy mess. They all got here after I did, but didn’t want to wait, and there was the pickup truck that dropped off supplies to the stationmaster; also a man was jogging and ran across the rails toward a car parked over there on the road. He had his dog with him.”
“Is that all you can remember?”
“Yes, I believe so. Will you be writing tickets to the people who disobeyed parking rules?”
“Uh, no, Marge; I have to find out why a young woman killed herself. Sorry. Oh, and I need your home address and phone. We may need to ask you other questions.”
Marge harrumphed, gave her information, put the car into drive, and began weaving her way out of the parking lot, into a lane that had suddenly opened. She slowed to allow a few people to cross the road in front as they hurried to get away from the scene with the dead woman. She knew a few of them from her regular trips to the train station, but that didn’t matter; she was too pissed to even notice that some of them waved at her. Sometimes, when she was angry with Harold for keeping her waiting, she would get out of the car and say hello to Henry Fonda, but not that day. Oh no. Marge was on the way home, and damn anyone who got between her and the traffic lights. They’d get a honk for sure. She was fuming already after finally receiving a text message from Harold saying he had decided to stay in Wilk for the night after all. Let him find a way to get home tomorrow. Damned if she was going to make another trip.
Maude took a minute to get her wits back together after the conversation with Marge Campbell. She chuckled to herself over the woman’s indignation. Something Marge said had troubled her, but she couldn’t remember what it was that struck her wrong. Probably the woman herself, she thought. Most of the other drivers and the stationmaster had been interviewed by other officers. It would be morning before she would be able to see their notes.
Finally there was nothing more she could do, except take
care of her own needs. The Taco Shop on Elm Street was close by, and made the greasy kind of food that Maude loved. She decided to eat there, since she had a fifteen-minute drive to her home, with few places in between serving food. Sitting in the small café that was like a second home, she ate her food and chased it with a mug of root beer. Real beer would have been better, but being on call had its requirements, at least during regular working hours. The first one involved the necessity for sobriety in any person answering a police call; in other words, no beer. The second was that any violation of requirement number one made the on-call person susceptible to firing, or at least disciplining, if they were caught.
Maude sighed deeply, wondering what she should do next. The kid who called haunted her, wherever he was, he must be missing his mama. She stood and cringed at the soreness in her knees, for the rainy weather had set her arthritic joints aflame. Stepping outside into the night air, she relit the butt of her third cigarette; pulling the lighter from the vest pocket in her blazer, she rolled the mechanism to create a spark, then a flame. The butane lighter was old, slick from use. It was one of the reasons she hated to quit smoking. Paul, her husband, had given it to her before he went to Vietnam. He never returned, but the lighter continued working. Maybe it was the woman, dying on the tracks, or the kid missing his mama, but something had triggered a load of sadness.
Shaking off the depression, Maude went to her car and climbed in. When the arthritis was at its worst, she knew ways to get in and out of a vehicle without hurting herself more. Tonight she needed all the tricks. Maude Rogers was still as tough as they came, but the human body didn’t always bounce back in the same arc as mental acuity. Sometimes it just hurt like blazes to get up out of a chair. She knew that the next day was going to be one of those days when every joint would act up. Best to get as much done tonight as she could, for there would be no regular workday in the morning, and maybe she could sleep a little later than usual, but the most important thing to do before going home was to circle by a Target store, and get a new battery for her watch.
The 6:10 To Murder (The Maude Rogers Crime Novels Book 3) Page 2
