Parallel Lies

by Ridley Pearson

  Alvarez’s silhouette reappeared.

  Tyler could only imagine the devastation heaped upon Goheen. How would any father react? A human body could not survive a jump at such speeds, but Tyler wondered if the man wasn’t contemplating that fate.

  Alvarez’s synthesized voice warned all passengers to move immediately to any of the four cars trailing the second dining car. “Anyone in, or forward of, the two dining cars takes responsibility for his or her own safety.”

  “He’s going to split the train in two,” Tyler spoke aloud, now understanding how Alvarez planned to spare lives.

  Raoul depressed the button, unlocking the car’s forward door.

  As he did, a stampede of boozed, hysterical people knocked the man over and trampled him. Tyler jumped to the side, shielding himself behind the bulkhead. He reached down, caught Raoul’s limp hand, and dragged him out from under the crazed herd of escapees.

  The stream of people seemed endless. Thankfully, they fled right through car six en route to the very back of the train. Tyler held himself pressed to the wall and inched his way forward toward the lavatory and the door beyond, the terrified guests still hurrying through.

  He had to reach that forward vestibule. He had five or six minutes at the most.

  CHAPTER 38

  As Alvarez and Jillian stepped out of the lavatory, the video began. Alvarez’s timing was off.

  Everyone in the dining car faced away from them, focused on one of two TVs suspended from the ceiling. As the screen began to show a naked woman, Alvarez tugged on Jillian’s arm, hoping to lead her to the safety of the rear and to keep her from seeing him on video. But once she saw the back of his head, she flushed and stood her ground.

  “No,” she gasped. “I think I’ll stay for the show.”

  Alvarez couldn’t move, but he knew he would have to be ahead of the forthcoming mad rush for the back cars to have any chance at the parasail.

  Jillian shook her head, her face contorted with anger. “You’ve been busy,” she said.

  “We’ve got to get to the back of the train.”

  “Not me.”

  “Yes!” he said, pulling on her. He now heard his own distorted voice issuing its warning and, as every guest turned toward him at the same moment, knew it was too late.

  The crowd stampeded.

  Alvarez pulled her to him. She resisted with all her strength, wrestling to be free of him. But then she caught a fleeing passenger’s elbow in the neck and reeled in pain. Alvarez buried her in his arms, shielding her, as the screaming mob streamed past. Alvarez hated this; he had imagined an organized exodus.

  Twisting to avoid getting clipped, he caught sight of the accordion wall that joined the vestibules between cars.

  It was unlocked. Open.

  Was someone out there?

  Tyler unlocked the accordion wall and split the barrier open a crack, wishing Raoul was here now to guide him. Cold air stung his face and caught in his lungs.

  The gap between the two cars was less than a foot wide, but either Alvarez or a security guard had been out here, and Tyler had to know why. He moved tentatively, squeezing through and inching outside, reaching for a handhold on the front of car six. He crouched and tipped himself over to get a look.

  Directly beneath the accordion was the coupler itself, still out of sight. What he saw were black cables stretching one car to the next—communications, data, and electricity, he assumed. He looked back and forth at these, and to his layman’s eye, none had been tampered with.

  He moved cautiously, the wind stinging his face and almost freezing his fingers. When bent at the waist and extending himself off the front of the car, clutching to the handhold with only one hand, he could get a decent look at the coupling. But it was too fleeting. He moved down one ladder rung and finally got a heads-up view of the coupling itself. The railbed blurred past at dizzying speeds. Holding fast to the ladder, he leaned out and away, struggling to peer beneath the mated vestibules to the massive coupler joining the cars.

  Atop it he now saw a small gray box. It looked either glued or magnetically attached. He leaned out farther for a better look. He saw no blinking lights, no digital clock counting down the seconds, just a plain gray box about the size of a cigarette pack. But Tyler knew he was looking at a bomb, a device meant to explode and disconnect the coupler.

  Alvarez must have set the thing while posing as a security guard. Upon its explosion, the four aft cars would disconnect and glide to a stop; the front cars and locomotive would no doubt derail. Alvarez meant to ride his parasail, driven by a hundred-mile-an-hour lift, landing well away from the tracks. Now he was maybe strapped beneath a car, awaiting his move.

  Tyler considered trying to remove that box and dropping it to the tracks, but he feared it might be rigged to detonate if tampered with. Worse, he knew it was intended to save lives, not destroy them. The best he could do was to get everyone into those rear cars and allow the damn thing to go off.

  No evidence of explosives had ever been uncovered at any of the derailments. So explosives seemed out of character for Alvarez. But none of the freights had carried passengers, either, and this, Tyler believed, explained the difference.

  Through a long turn, Tyler hugged the back of the car, only feet from the railbed. The train ride felt rocky, as if the stabilizers weren’t working. Overcome momentarily by a wave of nausea and dizziness as the cars pinched together, the space narrowing, Tyler discarded the idea of attempting to climb under the cars to search for Alvarez. He felt sick to his stomach.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement and looked up. Alvarez stood on the platform between the cars, at the narrow gap in the open accordion wall. The man stared down at Tyler, who felt paralyzed by this sudden confrontation. His face unflinching, Alvarez pushed the accordion shut, and Tyler saw it bite tightly to its mate.

  Alvarez had locked him out of the train.

  CHAPTER 39

  Passengers streamed from the four forward cars, through, and out the back of the second dining car, through and out the next and the next, until they jammed into the train’s last car, some overflowing into car eight as well. William Goheen remained behind at the second dining car bar where the bartender, sweating profusely, remained with him.

  “Go on,” Goheen said at last, sipping from a scotch.

  The bartender, a weathered black man in his fifties by the name of Fred Walker, got the nerve to face up to his boss. “We had better do as the man said, Mr. Goheen. Yourself included. I expect he means trouble for this train.”

  For several minutes of the evacuation, Gretchen Goheen had appeared naked on the monitors.

  “Go on, Fred,” Goheen told him. “I’ll be along.”

  The bartender nodded gravely. He’d seen hundreds of drunks in his time. He’d seen women pick up men, men pick up men, and college kids green sick and still drinking. To some he’d offered advice or refused service. With others he’d discussed world affairs. He’d been a shrink, a friend, an adviser to so many strangers that he could speak whatever came to mind with no reservation. But now he hesitated. He’d worked for this company for thirty years. Finally, just before leaving, he said, “Kids get themselves into all sorts of trouble, Mr. Goheen.” Fred knew that none of Goheen’s despondency had to do with the train. “But it’s the parents that got to get them out. Your girl needs you, sir. So don’t you stay on this train.”

  Goheen looked up. “What do you know?”

  “More than you’d think, sir.” And with that, Fred left, but at a walk, not a run.

  Goheen slumped into the leather seat along the wall and reached for the nearest abandoned drink. Scotch. Just right. He recalled vividly reviewing the design of these seats, the floor plan of the French-built dining cars. So many details. So many endless improvements. But these thoughts pulled him off only briefly from that horrific image of Gretchen.

  He checked his watch. The deadline for his confession was three minutes away. It would come an
d go, this deadline. The only confession he planned on making was to God.

  In minutes he had gone from an all-time high to the darkest place he’d ever been, and the severity of that descent made him want to lie down and die. He had wanted to give America something great and lasting, to put his own name, his family name, into the history books. And all such momentous undertakings required sacrifice. Alvarez had been asked to make his, but that, Goheen had realized early on, had been handled badly. And then it had only gotten worse. True, death and grief were awful, but over and done with, whereas the train was something immortal, important to the country, to all humanity.

  “Come on, Bill.” Someone had spilled wine down Keith O’Malley’s tailored suit. It looked like blood. He beckoned Goheen with sad eyes. “We’re still looking for him. If we can find him in the next couple minutes, we still might save this thing.”

  Goheen shook his head. He glanced up at the dark TV. “You think?” The dining car appeared empty, littered with cigarettes, trash, and empty plastic cups.

  “We’ll catch this guy,” O’Malley said, “and it’s the last anyone will ever hear of it.”

  “Maybe it’s some kind of trick. You know what they can do with pictures these days. Paste someone’s head onto someone else’s body.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it is,” O’Malley agreed.

  “It sounds like her, but there are ways they can do that, too. Right?” He looked up, a mass of grief.

  “None of what went down can be connected to you. Remember that. You’re clean, Bill. Even Andersen. If anyone goes down for that, it’s me.”

  “Gretchen is connected to me,” he corrected. “I let her down, is the thing. And I’ve never done it right. Not ever. It just didn’t come naturally to me—being a father.”

  “Bill, we’ve got to get out of this car.”

  That snapped Goheen’s head up, and he seemed finally to take notice of O’Malley. “Keith?” He downed the rest of someone’s drink and looked for another.

  “Smart money says to leave these forward cars.”

  “I thought you were the one with the brass balls.”

  “Now would be a good time, Bill.” He checked his watch.

  “You want me to go back there with them? You’re kidding, right? Do interviews on my daughter, the hooker?” He added, “Let him do whatever he’s going to do. I’m through.”

  “None of this will stick!” the security man repeated.

  “Stick?” Goheen glanced up at the black TV. “Were you watching? Do I have your full and undivided attention?” He waited. “It’s over.”

  O’Malley glanced at his watch nervously.

  Pointing to the television, Goheen said, “That bastard! He knows everything. He named Genoa. Andersen. And the thing is—you know this better than anyone—the truth will out. Polygraph, whatever. There it is.” He pointed to the floor where there was nothing to point at. “I’ll keep you out of it.”

  “Out of it? Bill, you’re not thinking straight. You’re the one who’s out of it.”

  “The piper will be paid.” Goheen nodded and began searching the discarded glasses for something more to drink, sniffing them.

  “You can’t stay here.” O’Malley insisted, “You’re coming with me.”

  “No, I’m not.” He sipped another drink, fished a cigarette butt out of the glass, dropped it to the floor, and then sipped some more.

  “He can’t derail this train,” O’Malley said. “Not with the security we’ve thrown up. The technology. Don’t you see this, Bill? He’s making a scene is all. Threats. He got himself a soapbox and he got himself heard. A captive audience. It’s all he wanted.”

  “He sure got Gretchen heard,” Goheen cried. “Oh, God,” he moaned, his head sinking into his chest.

  “We’ve got…one minute, Bill.” O’Malley’s forehead shone with sweat. “I’m going to drag you out of here if I have to. You want to think of impressions? Think how that’ll look!”

  Goheen had rheumy eyes. “She’s getting back at me. You see that? She became the kind of girl she thought I went for.” He mumbled, “She’s known about… me for a long time.”

  “Bill, you’re losing it.”

  “No. I’ve lost it,” Goheen returned. “I’ve lost her, Keith. She tried to get me to go public with Genoa. I didn’t tell you … couldn’t tell you about it. This is on my watch, Keith. It’s all on my watch.”

  O’Malley began to speak but reconsidered. Then he said nervously, “I gotta check on my guys.”

  “Sure you do.” The men exchanged glances.

  A frightened O’Malley hurried for the rear door.

  CHAPTER 40

  Alvarez had just locked the accordion wall, sealing out Tyler, when O’Malley stepped out of the dining car, shoulders hunched, head lowered. He barked out the order, “Clear the forward cars!” without so much as looking at his minion. He knew the uniform, and that was enough.

  Alvarez stood alone in the vestibule connecting the cars, staring at O’Malley’s back as the man hurried into six and continued down the aisle. The perfect opportunity had just passed him by. He had stood there, as close as he’d ever get to the man, and he’d done nothing.

  He watched as O’Malley stopped, midcar, met there by two of his plainclothes men. Outnumbered, Alvarez saw no point in heading that way. Instead, he hurried into the dining car, knowing the explosion would come any minute.

  He spotted William Goheen slumped in a leather chair, chin to chest, shoulders shaking. Goheen looked up, dazed; his face showed his disbelief just before his legs willed him out of his chair and he charged. Alvarez stepped to the side and tripped him and pinned him under his foot. Goheen’s head hit the bar, his scalp cut and bleeding.

  Alvarez grabbed a champagne bottle and held it high over the man’s head. At that moment, he could have killed him. One or two good blows, and by the time the wreckage was pried apart, no one would ever know this man had died a minute or two before the accident. But Alvarez lowered the bottle and said, “Even I won’t stoop to your level.”

  “Bert?” A woman’s voice. Jillian!

  She came around the corner where the stainless steel bar met the wall. She had been sitting on its other side, tucked away from where the passengers could bang into her as they clamored for safety, she refusing to follow, refusing to go along with him. Tucked back, where no one could have seen her. She said, “He didn’t know I was in here.”

  “Jilly!” Alvarez said, wanting desperately to get her to safety. “You were supposed to—”

  “There was another man.” She pointed to Goheen. “With him. I heard it all.” She seemed frightened. “Bert, I heard it all.” She added, “The other one is who killed your attorney, Andersen. You don’t have to do any of this. I’m a witness!”

  Goheen looked at her. Alvarez couldn’t tell if the man was laughing or crying.

  Two gunshots rang out like handclaps, their reports distinct and unmistakable. Alvarez instinctively grabbed the champagne bottle and broke it over the edge of the bar, its jagged edge held out as a weapon.

  Tyler dared not try to climb beneath the train. Perhaps Alvarez had managed this after setting the explosive; perhaps that was how he had moved from one end of the train to the other, undetected. Tyler didn’t know. He just could not do it.

  He struggled up the ladder to the intersection of the vestibule’s accordioned walls, his hands still slippery, his head reeling.

  Below him, unseen, was that gray box, stuck to the coupler. The video had mentioned seven minutes. He checked his watch. Most were gone now: one minute remained.

  “Stand back!” he shouted loudly. He paused and called out again to clear the area.

  He slipped out his gun and fired a round into the wall lock. He felt a hot pain in his arm as he tugged on the wall and thought that on top of all else, he’d torn a muscle. The wall held firm. Tyler shouted a second time and fired another round into the lock. The louvered wall sagged open.

  Tyler re
ached to open it further, switching hands, but his left arm didn’t hold him. He’d shot himself—a flesh wound—catching a ricocheted bullet. With that arm failing, he lost his balance and swung in an arc just as his right hand found purchase. In the process, he dropped the gun. It clanked once on its way down, and was lost.

  Painfully now, he tugged the vestibule wall open enough to slip inside. He felt light-headed and still a little sick.

  He glanced to his right, through the door’s window and into the dining car where he saw Alvarez holding a jagged bottle to Goheen’s throat. There was a woman in the car, a few feet behind the men.

  Thirty seconds, he thought. Twenty-five …

  Alvarez made eye contact with Tyler and pointed with the broken bottle, directing him back.

  Tyler glanced toward the passenger car and saw O’Malley and two others. O’Malley looked up, saw Tyler, clearly recognizing him, and marched forward.

  Fifteen seconds …

  Holding his bloody hand up to stop O’Malley, Tyler simultaneously retreated toward the dining car. Now he raised both hands and motioned O’Malley to go back. Beneath him, he could feel the second hand sweeping toward the top of the hour.

  O’Malley, spurred by Tyler’s retreat, hurried forward and opened the automatic door. At the same time, Tyler backed up against the automatic door’s panic bar and the door slid open.

  He backed through, shouting to O’Malley, “Get back!” An angry O’Malley had stepped out onto the platform.

  “You?” O’Malley called out.

  Five… four…

  The dining car’s door hissed shut. As Tyler turned, he saw Alvarez drop to the floor, pulling the woman with him.