The Killdeer Connection

by Tom Swyers

  He started the engine on the Spark and flipped on the headlights. Out of habit, he checked around the park for any signs of the black Chevy Suburban. That thought triggered a flashback. He recalled seeing the Suburban with its front doors flung open, parked there that morning. Then he remembered the incident with the man—how an FBI agent was behind him, and how he must have been pistol-whipped.

  It struck David then that Chautauqua Park was the last place on Earth he wanted to be. He needed to sort this all out, but not at this crime scene, not where the crazy killdeers hung out. He wanted out of Valley City, too. David didn’t want to get caught up in whatever was happening here and risk being arrested. He needed to ditch the guys in the Chevy Suburban before they found out he’d left the hospital, if they didn’t already know.

  Flying home out of Williston was not an option anymore. It was a five-hour car trip from Valley City. Traveling there would keep him in North Dakota under its police jurisdiction. He didn’t want to get tangled up in the Valley City investigation, didn’t want to get arrested in North Dakota. Though he wasn’t a fugitive, he sure felt like one.

  Minneapolis, Minnesota, was a four-hour drive, too, but he hadn’t done anything yet in that state to draw police attention. Plus, their flights to Albany were cheaper than from anywhere in North Dakota. If he was going to be a fugitive, he was going to be a frugal one.

  Things started to fall into place. Moorhead, Minnesota, was an hour’s drive away, just across the Red River of the North—the border that separated the two states. That was a good destination for the night. It was also the city where Erik Albertsen, another member of the Killdeer Society, had been killed. David figured he could do a little investigative work around that slaying before heading home.

  He drove straight to the entrance ramp for Interstate 94 and headed east for Moorhead in the right-hand lane. He could see the flames of the oil train in Valley City clearly as he approached the overpass to the tracks that ran underneath the highway to destinations south. Suddenly, a huge ball of fire erupted from one of the tank cars, casting an orange glow over the prairie skyscrapers—the tall grain elevators that dotted the landscape. David sped away and checked his rearview. There was no Chevy Suburban in sight.

  Rain spotted the windshield, so he hit his wipers. David wondered how much time he had left before the rain iced over or turned to snow. The last thing David wanted was to be stuck behind the wheel of a Spark in a winter storm. He felt compelled to rush to Moorhead, but at the same time, he knew he was in no condition to drive. Even seated in the car, he felt dizzy at times.

  David reached for the radio to find some classical music, hoping that would soothe his pounding head. It was tuned to a news station that had a reporter at the scene of the train explosion.

  “The tank cars continue to explode here in Valley City,” the reporter said, almost shouting. David had to turn down the volume. “We’re located a few miles away, and the sky is on fire. Just a few moments ago, another tanker went up. A few officials who wish to remain anonymous have told me that they’ve discovered some loose and broken lag bolts down the tracks from the fire. The lag bolts connect the rails to the wooden ties. They think this may have caused the derailment. People are being told to stay indoors because of the smoke, and one neighborhood has been evacuated. So far, there have been six confirmed deaths. A number of first responders are being treated at Barnes County Hospital. Reporting live, this is Nathaniel Caine.”

  Another reporter at the station then added that the price of crude had spiked during the day because of the train derailments around the country and the concerns about supply.

  David turned the radio off. Any sound made his head throb. He thought back over the day’s events, as best he could. He had been wrong about the killdeers. Instead of attacking him, they seemed to be warning him about the men in the Suburban, who were most likely Safferson’s killers and not from the FBI. David simply could not believe that the FBI went around assaulting people and leaving them for dead out in the freezing cold.

  That was another thing. He wasn’t dead. Salar, Carson, Safferson, and Albertsen all met violent deaths, but he was still alive. He was happy about that, but it didn’t add up. If the others were killed by the same men who went after him, then why was he spared? Obviously, he thought, he had more value to them alive than dead, but he couldn’t figure out why.

  Then there was the 911 call. David would have bet dollars to doughnuts that the call was made by the man who had pistol-whipped him. There was nobody else in the park at that time, and their location had not been within view of anyone outside of it. The man making the call told Barber that David was a terrorist. This was obviously an attempt to implicate him in the train incident.

  The trains loaded with Bakken crude were a piece of the puzzle, too. David remembered wondering what they had to do with all this just before the killdeer attack. He recalled that Harold seemed to be trying to tell David about the train cars and their importance. The balls on the baseball field and the scorecard on his desk all pointed toward the DOT-111 tank cars with their distinctive 1267 placards and the unit trains carrying Bakken crude.

  Harold’s note had said, Always follow the killdeers. He had done just that. The City of Killdeer had led David to Harold’s parents, and the birds had led him to these bomb trains that were somehow linked to it all.

  Suddenly, his car rumbled and shook, like it was about to fall apart. At first, David thought he had a flat. Then he realized he had veered from the right lane, off the road, and had hit a rumble strip on the shoulder. He jerked the wheel and got himself back on the highway. He cursed the oncoming headlights from the vehicles traveling west and blamed them. It seemed like all the cars were using their high beams. David was going to flash them to tone it down, but then he realized that they couldn’t all have their high beams on. It had to be him—he was still oversensitive to light, just like at the hospital.

  Should I be driving in this condition? But he didn’t see any choice other than to forge ahead. Stop thinking, and just focus on the road.

  Thirty minutes later, he took the Main Avenue exit off Interstate 94 and rolled through the outskirts of Fargo, the largest city in North Dakota. The city didn’t look any bigger than Albany to David. He could see train tracks running parallel to him, one block over. There was nobody on the sidewalks, and the streets were barely lit. The pawn shop, advertised as the state’s largest, was fully illuminated, and the parking lot was busy. When David hit downtown, the neon lights on the Fargo Theatre, the Hotel Donaldson, and the bars reflected off the wet pavement, making it seem like a scene out of a film-noir movie.

  David crossed an overpass and wondered if it spanned the Red River of the North. He couldn’t tell for sure. The streetlamps lit up only the road, nothing down below on either side. No signs announced that he was leaving North Dakota for Minnesota. The name of the street—Main Avenue—was the same on either side of the overpass. He could still see the railroad tracks running one block over. But the cars parked on this side had more Minnesota plates than North Dakota plates. Plus, the streetlamps appeared to emit more of an orange color here than on the other side, like two different purchasing agents had bought them. So he figured he was in Moorhead now.

  The streetlamps cast an orange glow in the sky over the buildings on Main Avenue. When David found a clearing between buildings, he could see farther down the street. His jaw dropped. The streetlamps weren’t the source of the glow. The city was on fire.

  When David heard two fire trucks and an ambulance screaming up from behind, he pulled over to the curb and cupped his hands over his ears. The sirens felt like they were about to make his head blow up. His eyes bulged as he saw the flames tower above the buildings and lunge at the sky. The fire was five blocks down but close to Main Avenue, along the side of the railroad tracks. Just then, he cringed as an orange ball of fire rose high overhead and turned into a mushroom. It looked like South Heart and Valley City all over again. Another oil tra
in had exploded.

  After all the emergency vehicles had passed, David heard his cell phone go off, signaling a text message. It was Annie. Are you all right?

  David texted back: Yes.

  I saw the news about the fire in Valley City. Wanted to make sure you were okay.

  Yes, fine. Now headed to Minneapolis. He wasn’t going to tell her he was in Moorhead. She’d see that fire on the news soon enough.

  Can I talk to you?

  Another explosion lit up the interior of the car. He texted back: Yes. I’ll call you later tonight.

  Okay.

  I have to go now. Gotta get back on the road.

  Okay. Love you.

  Love you, too.

  David pulled away from the curb and drove closer for a better look. Down one street, he saw the railroad-crossing gate lights flashing and the silhouette of the DOT-111 tanker cars against the headlights of vehicles waiting on the other side of the tracks. The train wasn’t moving.

  A firefighter and a few police officers had set up a barricade a few blocks ahead. David thought about stopping to ask about the fire but decided against it. The last thing he needed was to be spotted near yet another train explosion. He realized he couldn’t stay in Moorhead that night for the same reason. Leaving any trace that he had been there would just add to the circumstantial evidence piling up against him. Thankfully, he had not left a paper trail in the form of a hotel reservation in Moorhead. He turned in to a side street well before the barricade and then stopped in a Dairy Queen parking lot to hook up the Spark’s Bluetooth to his cell phone. He wanted to call Annie while he was on the road to Minneapolis. His new plan was to continue the three-hour drive and spend the night there before flying home the following day.

  It was only fitting that he would think of Annie while at Dairy Queen. Annie loved chocolate. Her favorite dish was the hot-fudge-brownie sundae. David didn’t realize how hungry he was until that thought crossed his mind. He didn’t remember much about that day; he could not recall when he had eaten last. But he couldn’t go inside and risk being captured later on closed-circuit TV in the store. No trace left behind. He reached into the back seat for some PowerBars from Walmart and put them on the passenger seat as a reminder to eat when he was on the road.

  David wasn’t particularly tech savvy, but his cell phone synced easily with the Spark’s system. It was a small victory for a day when everything else had gone horribly wrong. He looked up. People were hustling down the sidewalks to get a glimpse of the fire. David panicked. Here he was, lit up by overhead parking lot lights in a lime-green Spark with California plates in a world of earth-tone-colored vehicles that had plates from North Dakota and Minnesota. It was time to get out of town, even though he was low on gas. He left the lot and headed south in search of Interstate 94 and signs for Minneapolis.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  David had a keen sense of direction. Years of playing outdoors in the woods miles away from home as a kid gave him a dead-accurate internal compass. Subconsciously, he always kept track of where he had been and where that was in relation to everything else. Throughout his childhood, when the six o’clock whistle blew at the town firehouse to signal dinnertime, he had no problem finding his way home. Locating Interstate 94 was a piece of cake, even if he did have a concussion. He knew that highway would take him all the way to Minneapolis.

  The Spark had less than a quarter tank of gas when David found the highway. He figured he’d get some gas at an exit farther into Minnesota, away from Moorhead. He prided himself on his ability to ride on empty, a trick he’d had to learn in college when money was tight. It was something that Annie would never allow. Anything less than a third of a tank made her anxious.

  Now, David shared her anxiety. Most every exit on a New York highway had a gas station. But not in Minnesota, at least not the part where David had found himself traveling. David passed a number of rural exits, and none of them had a gas station. He identified with the exit sign for Downer, Minnesota. Its name expressed exactly how he felt. The last thing he needed was to run out of gas and end up on the shoulder, explaining his situation to a Minnesota State Trooper. For all he knew, he was a wanted man.

  The highway was straight and seemed endless in its journey to the horizon. The terrain was flat, flanked by farms on either side. Outlines of grain elevators were silhouetted against the clear sky. It felt like he had never left North Dakota. Rain continued to fall, and his wipers ticked off like a metronome set at sixty beats per minute. David kept checking the rearview mirror for the Chevy Suburban or for any signs that someone might be on his tail. Through the raindrops on the rear window, he could see the distant glimmer of headlights but nothing else.

  Thirty-five miles later, riding with the fuel-warning light on, David took an off-ramp in Rothsay, Minnesota, to fill his tank at a truck stop. He chose to pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail, but that forced him to go inside and hand the clerk the money. He pulled his parka’s hood over his head as he entered, keeping his face down to shield himself from any security cameras. The store was empty, except for the clerk. David grabbed a turkey club sandwich, a bottle of Gatorade, and a box of Tylenol and paid his bill. Then he got in his Spark and pulled over to an unlit area of the parking lot. He found shelter alongside some tractor trailers that were dark hulks in the night, visible only because their LED running lights were on. Connect the orange dots, and he’d see the outline of the trucks. The drivers had clocked out and were sleeping in their locked cabs.

  David kept the car running and the heat blasting while he ate with one hand. He tapped into the truck stop Wi-Fi with his free hand on his cell phone. The Grand Nordic Hotel in Minneapolis showed on its website that they had plenty of rooms available. It was the closest hotel to the airport. Then he called the airlines and booked a direct flight home to Albany for the next morning.

  After he set his phone down, David closed his eyes and tried to calm himself. But the train explosions continued to play back in his head. It was a desperate attempt to process the day’s events. Unfortunately, his pounding headache didn’t help.

  Over the past few years, there’d been an oil-train explosion once every few months. Sometimes the span was several months. Two explosions within two days could be explained away as a coincidence, especially since Sandpoint, Idaho, and South Heart, North Dakota, were about 800 miles apart. But today there’d been a third blast and a fourth—both located in or near North Dakota. The coincidence was now part of a trend, and a trend suggested to David that track-maintenance issues were less likely to be the cause of the derailments. He tried in vain to think of other explanations but had to admit that Julius Moore may have been right when he’d said terrorism was a possibility.

  David’s body trembled at the thought; he began to sweat. A memory flashed through his head, the memory of the man who had pistol-whipped him at the park. It all came rushing back: his face, his goatee, his straight-black hair, his dark, olive-toned skin, and his diamond stud earing. Now the man’s visage was etched in his mind. David couldn’t forget him even if he wanted to, because the conclusion was now clear. Helmsley Oil had nothing to do with the killing of Harold Salar, as David had first thought. He had to admit he had been wrong about that. No, the man who beat him had also killed Harold and the other Killdeer Society members. He was blowing up the trains, too. The man fit the profile of a terrorist—at least in David’s mind. He was a terrorist whose goal was to kill people and to have David take the fall. That’s why he’d called 911 and identified David as the terrorist; that’s why he hadn’t killed him. A dead lawyer would look more like a victim than part of a terrorist plot.

  David took small comfort in the fact that he wasn’t a target for murder. Maybe the man and his accomplice had just worked him over as a setup to take the fall. But David knew things could change in a heartbeat. He hadn’t been eliminated because having him alive fit their agenda. If he became more of a threat than a fall guy, they would come after him. But he wasn’t only conce
rned with himself now. The stakes had become much higher and much more personal.

  The explosion at South Heart was an outlier; it didn’t fit with the others. Nobody had been killed there prior to its train blast. But at Sandpoint, Valley City, and Moorhead, a member of the Killdeer Society had been killed weeks before the explosions at each of these locations.

  Harold was an outlier, too. He was the only dead Killdeer Society member who didn’t match up with a train explosion—yet. But tomorrow was another day. There were plenty of bomb trains arriving in Albany, and that location matched up with Harold. Albany was one of the largest ports for Bakken crude in the country. Harold had been a frequent visitor there even before the incident with Ben Prior. Harold had told David he liked to watch the trains come and go.

  David was well aware that the US Department of Transportation had established an impact zone and an evacuation zone in the case of an oil-train explosion and fire. He had researched this issue for the Ben Prior case. The impact zone was one mile on either side of the tracks. Anyone within a half mile of the tracks on either side had to evacuate when a bomb train went off. In Albany, that included a senior-citizen housing complex and a low-income neighborhood. It also included Corning Elementary School. David had to confront the reality that Annie worked right in the middle of a blast zone and Christy took ambulance calls there.

  David popped a pair of Tylenol and washed them down with a swig of Gatorade before making the call through his Bluetooth to his landline number at home.

  “There you are,” Annie said when she picked up the phone. “I was getting worried about you.”

  “No need to worry,” David said in his most confident voice. But underneath, he was worried about his family. He was scared for himself, too. But he would not let on. Not if he could help it.

  “What’s going on, David? I saw the news about the fire in Valley City. Were you there when it happened?”