Dark Signal Page 10

  “So what?”

  He kept looking down the road, his face blazing. “Never mind.”

  I was happy to never mind. I could never mind it forever.

  He waited a beat, maybe as disconcerted at the personal bend as I was. “So.” He cleared his throat. “You interviewed Clete yesterday?”

  12

  I settled back in strained silence and watched the dried prairie zoom past. Last winter, I would have been in my tractor with the farm and ranch report blaring, twisted to watch the arm of the hydro fork as I grabbed hay and deposited it in the pasture for the hungry cows. Now I was sheriff. I’d better act like it.

  Trey had brought along a too-thin folder containing all our investigation notes and photos. I pulled out the photos of the crime scene and flipped through them again. “Someone had to climb up to secure all that hardware without being seen. Even if they did it at night they’d have to dodge highway traffic, not to mention trains and anyone on the county road.”

  Trey said, “It had to be more than one person.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  He squinted an eye. “Have you ever tried to lift a railroad tie by yourself? Those puppies are heavy. No one could secure one up there alone.”

  I rifled through the photos and pulled one out, trying not to focus on the red and gray mush that looked like hamburger stuck to the end of the tie. It was one thing to talk about Chad’s death, another to see his brains splattered on the railroad tie. I swallowed a sick feeling and focused on the tie. “Pulleys. He didn’t have help.”

  Trey nodded. “Or she.”

  I gave him a questioning look.

  He opened his hands. “What did you find out from Meredith?”

  I mulled it over. “Weird family. But Meredith looks so frail I’d doubt she could manhandle a stick of firewood, let alone install hardware under a bridge in the middle of the night.”

  Trey considered. “What about that guy, Josh Stevens, who was with her that night?”

  We hit the flat that took us into Broken Butte. “I don’t think he’s involved.”

  “Why?”

  I wanted to have a good reason but had to settle for the truth. “He seems like a good guy.”

  Trey laughed. “Good vibes? That’s some solid investigative work.”

  So much for Trey’s impression I had it all together as a professional. Didn’t they always say to trust intuition? But then, I had a strict policy against they sayisms. Still, Dad respected Josh enough to have him in our home, and even if I couldn’t trust my judgment, Dad’s was infallible.

  “What we’ve got is that someone hooked up a railroad tie and dangled it in front of the engine on a dark night, when the crew couldn’t see it. It might have been a random killing. I mean, not necessarily meant for Chad,” I said.

  Trey pointed a thick finger at the photo of the underside of the bridge. “That’s a pretty complicated mechanism. It’d take a freaking engineer to figure that out.”

  “You think someone wanted Chad dead?”

  Trey shook his head. “It would have to be someone who knew trains and who knew when Chad’s train would travel under that bridge.”

  I gave a humorless chuckle. “That’s a big pool. All railroaders, which would include anyone who uses their computers, have access to lineups. Basically, they all can see the dispatcher’s screen so they know where every train is on the line. Might narrow it down if the killer knew Chad would be looking for a yard light.”

  Trey brightened. “Who would know Chad lived there?”

  I directed Trey through Broken Butte to the east side of town and south to the rail yard. “About anyone on this line, or anyone who knows anyone on this line, or any person at all who had enough interest in killing someone and the smarts to find out where he lived.”

  A twelve-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounded a parking lot Walmart would have called overkill. Trey pulled through the open fence. “This is bigger than I thought.”

  I collected the trash from the back seat. “Lots of coal trains running from Wyoming and then the usual freight.”

  I set a brisk pace to the brick depot. If I walked fast enough, I could survive without smashing a cap over my head. Not that I cared what I looked like.

  Okay, maybe I cared a little.

  Cigarette smoke cut through the cold air at the entrance of the depot. They weren’t allowed to smoke inside but wouldn’t want to get too far away from the door.

  A large empty room greeted us. Old linoleum and several vending machines gave the place a less than homey feel. Off to the left, an arched entryway led down a corridor. Another room, lit with fluorescent ceiling fixtures, contained a long table. The lights were on, and a few men milled around. The whole place smelled like burned coffee, oil, and fuel, and nothing clean.

  I headed toward the corridor and Trey followed. “You’ve been here before?”

  I shook my head. “Dad’s been with BNSF longer than I’ve been alive, and I’ve never seen where he goes to work.”

  “Then how do you know where to go?”

  The corridor ended in a brick wall, giving us a left or right choice. I took the right and Trey stayed with me. “I don’t. But you have to start somewhere.”

  Clete’s baritone rumbled from down the hall. I gave Trey a see? look and hurried to the doorway.

  Clete looked up, frowned at me, and said into his phone, “I’ll call you back.” He put the phone down. “What’s wrong?”

  Trey followed me in. “We need to ask you a few questions about Chad Mills.”

  Clete’s expression went from sucking a lemon to kidney stone passage. “Did we have an appointment?”

  Trey pulled a chair from where it was pushed against a wall. “Do we need one?”

  Apparently, whatever attacked Clete wouldn’t kill him, and his expression improved to mild stomach cramp. “No. Seeing Kate made me nervous, that’s all.”

  I found another chair and pushed it in front of Clete’s desk.

  Trey settled himself in his chair. “Why’s that?”

  “I’m just waiting for the heat in that damned courthouse to go belly up, and I figured she was here to tell me that very thing.” Doom hung so close over Clete’s head I was surprised he didn’t duck.

  “Far as I know, it’s toasty on the home front,” Trey said.

  Clete didn’t look at me. “So, she’s helping you out with the investigation?”

  Trey pulled out the small notebook he kept in his breast pocket. “Is that a problem?”

  Clete let out a painful breath. “I can’t say as I like it. I mean, murder is pretty ugly. Don’t you think?”

  Too ugly for a girl, he meant.

  Trey earned points for not agreeing. “Did you know Chad well?”

  Clete concentrated on Trey. “About like the rest of the boys. I see ’em occasionally when they get on or off a train.”

  This was a different tune than he was humming yesterday.

  Trey jotted something, then looked up at Clete again. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about him.”

  Clete splayed his hands on his desk, elbows bent, and disapproval sank into the folds of his face. “I pulled up his employment sheet here. He was hired on in 2000. Got fired for running through a dark signal in 2008, not much else since. Got elected union rep two years ago.”

  Trey leaned forward. “You say he was fired?”

  Clete made a face like a gas bubble lodged in his gut.

  I could take this one. “Getting fired at the railroad isn’t like it sounds. It usually means a temporary punishment. Getting fired means getting put on unpaid leave because you’ve broken some rule or something. But going through a dark signal is serious, isn’t it?” I asked Clete.

  “Can be,” Clete agreed. He eyed Trey and sighed as if put upon. “You got signals like on the road—red, green, yellow. In various combinations they mean to go, stop, slow down. In the case of a dark signal, you better stop the damned train because no one’s telling you
jack and it can mean all kinds of trouble. In this case, some fool kid shot out the light, and it didn’t mean anything.” He rubbed his chin. “Chad’s got a pretty clean record.”

  Trey scribbled in his notebook. “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Chad?”

  Clete leaned back, dragging his hands but leaving them on the desk. “I been giving this some thought, and I come up with nobody. So I think maybe it’s some kids or somebody. Not really after Chad, just out to do some damage or a prank gone wrong.”

  Trey rested his hands in his lap. “That’s an awful lot of effort for a prank.”

  “What’s so hard about hanging a tie to a bridge?” Clete asked.

  “It wasn’t that basic. There were precise measurements and timing. Like a professional engineer set it up.”

  Clete sucked in a breath as if sucker punched.

  “What?” Trey’s eyes brightened. “Did you remember something?”

  Clete picked up his phone. “Nope. Nothing. But now I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Trey acted as if he hadn’t heard the dismissal. “I’d like to talk to Bobby Jenkins.”

  Clete rubbed a weathered hand along his grizzled chin. “Nope. Can’t allow you to do that without a BNSF representative.”

  “You can attend,” Trey said.

  Clete burped. “Can’t. Got to head to Ravena. Broken rail.”

  He was putting off Trey. The trainmaster didn’t need to be on site for a broken rail.

  Trey held up his hand to halt Clete. He looked down at his little spiral notebook. “I’ll contact BNSF. What was on the train that night?”

  Clete set his phone down, crags deepening on his face. “Well, I’m not for sure. Usually, that time of night it’d be a coal train.”

  Trey took that in. “Where would that train originate?”

  “In the coal mines up by Gillette, more than likely.” Clete’s hands flattened again on his desk, and the knuckles tensed.

  I thought about walking the train that night. Pictured the frozen ground, the blue light of the moon. “It wasn’t a coal train.”

  Both men jerked their heads toward me, as if they’d forgotten I sat with them.

  Clete’s brow furrowed more. “Pretty sure it was coal.”

  I nodded at a hulking desktop computer on a table behind him. “You’ve got Chad’s last call record on the computer, right? Why not pull it up.”

  His hands clenched. “We’ve been having some trouble getting online today. This cold mucks up everything. Like that broken rail by Ravena. Maybe you could come back.”

  His cell phone rang. My cell phone rang. Trey’s brought in the trifecta. Even Clete made a facsimile of a smile. Trey shrugged and all three of us answered.

  “Sheriff’s…” My mind was still on the train. I stood and walked to the corner of the room.

  The voice, scorched from a millennium of cigarette abuse, rasped out, “This is May Keller, and I’ve got a house for you to buy.”

  Really? In the middle of a murder investigation, I have to deal with this? I eyed Clete. His typical kettle drum of a voice was hushed. Trey had pushed back and walked out to the hallway. “Thanks, May, but I’m not looking for a house right now.”

  I waited out her gurgle cough, impatient to get back to my job. “That’s what Diane said you’d say.”

  Oh for the love of Pete. “My sister Diane?”

  The unmistakable intake of smoke from her cigarette. “The same. She heard about the house. And don’t ask me how because I’d only told Aileen Carson.”

  One possible scenario is that after hearing about May’s house, Aileen walked into the bank, told someone there, and by some twisted trail, word landed in Diane’s orbit at her bank in Denver. But it could just as bizarrely have found another route.

  May blew out the inhale—much too long to hold the poison in her lungs, but then, it wasn’t going to make much difference in her life now. “It’s not good for you to be bunking with your parents. You’re the sheriff now, and it sends a bad message. You know, like you’re not man enough to have your own place.”

  I wanted her off the phone and my attention back on the case. “I don’t think—.”

  “Don’t interrupt me,” she coughed. “You and I both know I don’t have time to argue.”

  She had plenty of time to natter about her opinion.

  “It’s hard enough for folks to respect a woman.”

  She ought to know. May Keller had been ranching on her own since her cheating husband disappeared about the time the cool cats were jitterbugging to Glenn Miller and his home boys. She’d out-toughed and outsmarted, not to mention outlived, the old boys she’d ranched alongside. That took buckets of guts. But she wasn’t gaining me any respect from the state patrol by interrupting me now.

  “To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought about you until Diane called. I always liked that missy. She’s got balls. You take a page from that book, I tell you. Grow a pair. Move out of your mommy and daddy’s place.”

  Clete spun his chair around to put his back to us and bent forward, his voice practically a whisper. Trey stood in the doorway, his phone back in his pocket.

  I lowered my voice. “Can I call you back?”

  A coughing fit delayed her response. “It’s that little ol’ house on the north side of Stryker Lake. I gotta be in town tomorrow afternoon for the Episcopal women’s meeting, so I’ll meet you out there at three.” Guess she ran out of time for me, because the phone went dead.

  Clete continued to mumble into his cell. I caught a couple of ominous-sounding words, like “lawyer,” “plead,” “sentence.” Clete looked over his shoulder at me and Trey watching him. “I gotta go.” He nodded with impatience. “Fine. I’ll see about it.” He punched his phone and set it on the desk, looking like he’d rather fling it across the room. His face twitched.

  He knew we’d heard, and I thought I ought to break the tension. I tried for sympathy. “That your son?”

  He rubbed a hand over his face, pulling the canyons into flat plains and letting them drop back. “My wife’s boy.”

  Since he didn’t dig any deeper, I let it go.

  Trey stepped forward and dropped his card on Clete’s desk. “Thanks for your time. E-mail me Chad’s call record when your computers are up again.”

  We stepped into the hall. Clete followed us to the door and shut it behind us.

  Trey set a strong pace. “That was Bobby Jenkins. I’d tried to get hold of him earlier. He said he’s here for a union meeting, so we can interview him.”

  I should have thought of calling Bobby to meet us here, but it didn’t matter whether Trey contacted him or I did. At least the investigation moved ahead. “Great.”

  “Who was that on the phone?” Naturally he’d assume I was also working on solving the murder.

  I kept my eyes straight ahead. “Personal call.”

  He didn’t respond, but I was sure that knocked my professional cred back to zero.

  13

  My ropers clicked on the linoleum. Trey’s lightweight hiking boots whispered. A door opened to my right with a table and chairs, and a whiteboard stuck to the wall. It looked like an empty meeting room. I tapped Trey’s arm and pointed to indicate he should bring Bobby in there.

  In a few minutes Trey’s whispering boots mingled with the soft drag of tennis shoes, and Bobby shuffled into the room. Trey closed the door, and Bobby sank into one of the padded black chairs.

  He looked considerably better than last time I’d seen him, but he seemed made of glass. He walked with a halting step, as if each hesitant movement might shatter him. His skin was transparent and pasty, and a watery sheen filled his eyes.

  I pulled my chair close and spoke in a soothing voice. “How are you, Bobby?”

  He humped his shoulders up and let them fall, and his mouth twisted.

  I spoke in the same crooning voice I used to get Lucy to sleep. “Can you tell us what happened that night?”

  A burst of laughte
r from the crew room next door made Bobby duck his head. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  I put a hand on his arm. “Bobby? Are you okay?”

  He opened his eyes and let his gaze travel over my head to Trey standing behind me. It took him a moment to lower his focus to me. He nodded, and his Adam’s apple bobbed down his smooth throat. “I haven’t slept much since … since then. I keep hearing that explosion and feeling the st-st-stuff on my face.”

  I sat back. “Of course you do. Have you seen a doctor or a counselor?”

  He nodded, again swallowing. “I have some pills. They kind of take the edge off, but I’m not supposed to drive when I take them, and I had to get out of the house. My mom…” He ran a hand along his head, brushing back his hair. A gleam of sweat covered his face. “She’s in my face all day asking if I’m okay.”

  Trey leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “Can you tell me what happened that night?”

  Bobby eyed me, then Trey and settled on his chair. “So, we got on the train late. The paperwork had to be updated.”

  Trey unfolded his arms. “Is that usual?”

  Bobby seemed to relax at the question; maybe it shifted his thoughts from the details of Chad’s death. “It happens a lot. We needed to switch some cars around. Not a big deal.”

  Trey led Bobby down the road. “Who gives the orders for that?”

  A little life came back to Bobby’s eyes. “Trainmaster.”

  Now that we’d pulled Bobby back to the living, we started him toward the horror. I shifted closer. “So the trip from here to the bridge at County Road 67. Did anything unusual happen?”

  Bobby shook his head. “No.”

  From all the years of Dad being an engineer, I knew these trips were mostly boring rides, cruising down the rails, not much to keep the crew from falling asleep. “Did you and Chad talk a lot?”

  Bobby’s voice shook. “Chad, you usually can’t get him to shut up. We all make fun of him.”

  Trey walked closer and leaned his backside on a table. “Why’s that?”

  Bobby almost smiled. “Because he’s so happy all the time. He’s a real Boy Scout.”