Dark Signal Page 11

  “Did that irritate people?” I asked.

  Bobby considered that. “Not really. I mean, we gave him a hard time because that’s what we do, but really, people liked Chad. He was helpful.”

  “How do you mean?” Trey asked.

  Bobby shrugged with forty times more energy than when he sat down. “Like that night, we had to set out a car. He helped me.”

  Trey leaned forward. “What’s that mean? Set out a car?”

  Bobby responded with kind patience, as if talking to an ignorant child. “Things can go wrong with a car. Like that night, the tires were hot, which means a brake might not be working right or something. Anyway, you got to pull into a siding and uncouple the car and leave it. You know, set it out.” A siding is an extra set of tracks where trains could pull over to wait for another to pass or where troubled cars could be left.

  “So how did Chad help you?” Trey asked.

  Bobby’s face showed appreciation for someone giving him a hand. “He got out and checked it all to make sure I hit the clearance marks.”

  “You said that you were both looking for the yard light at Chad’s house,” I prompted him.

  The scant bit of color faded from his face again. He nodded, and his lips moved before sound escaped. “Yeah. No light. Then that’s it. The whole world exploded.” Tears dripped from his eyes. He swiped at them and sniffed, his mouth contorted and watery. “His head was gone. Gone.”

  We sat in silence with only the sounds of men joking in the next room and Bobby’s heavy breathing as he struggled to get himself under control.

  His eyes pleaded with me. “Honest. That’s all I remember. Can I…?” He drew his arm across his face to dry off the moisture. “Can I go?”

  I stood and put my hand on his shoulder. “Sure. Thanks, Bobby.”

  Trey walked him to the door, giving him a firm handshake. “Say, can you remember what kind of train you were running that night?”

  Bobby sniffed. “Yeah. It was a stack train.”

  “Thanks.” Trey handed Bobby a card. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  Bobby dropped his head, pocketed the card and shuffled down the hall.

  Trey turned to me. “Stack train?”

  At least he acknowledged I might know something about the railroad. “Freight. Container cars of freight that are loaded off ocean liners and shipped across land. They can be like semitrailers stacked two high.”

  “Not coal.”

  Laughter erupted from the crew room. I held out my arm to send Trey in that direction. “Let’s see what the guys have to say.”

  Trey fell into step beside me. “They wouldn’t talk to me yesterday. What makes you think they’ll talk to us today?”

  The crew room sported the same faded tile floor and cigarette-smoke yellow walls. Windows lined the north wall toward the ceiling, casting a beam on three vending machines as if spotlighting poor eating habits. The soda, candy, and salty snack machines hummed their siren song to men—mostly men, though a few women engineers and conductors were among them. The Bunn coffee maker, producing fifty-gallon barrels of coffee per brew, spewed its toxic sludge, adding the acrid aroma more like dead highway skunk than fresh-brewed coffee. Four men lounged at the ten-foot blond pressed-wood table in their puke-colored plastic chairs, tall paper coffee cups in front of them.

  I slid a chair next to a man who appeared to be two hundred years old. “Terminator. When are they going to let you out of the zoo?”

  With a bony face that kept from being a skeleton only because it was covered with skin colored with a zillion tiny red lines, and with thinning gray hair longer than mine, the man tossed an arm around my neck, caught me in the crook of his elbow, and hugged me to his bony ribcage. “K-K-Katie! What’s got you skulking in the underbelly of the world?”

  Trey hid his shock well, but I detected a smidgeon of alarm in his eyes. He stood at the head of the table.

  I pushed back from Terminator’s grasp and turned to Trey. “Dave, this is Trooper Trey Ridnoir. Trey, my father’s oldest friend, Dave Turmin.”

  “Who you calling old?” Terminator grinned, and his cheekbones nearly sliced his face open.

  I knew one of the other men at the table. Lawn Dart. That probably wouldn’t work for a police report so I struggled for his real name and fell short.

  Lawn Dart sniffed and spit into a Mountain Dew can. He sipped his coffee. “I heard they made you sheriff down in Grand County. I never cared for that bonehead, Ted Conner.”

  A younger man, in canvas Dickies and a ratty hoody, jumped up and leaned across the table with his hand extended. He had the look of a prison camp survivor, nearly bald head and scratched face. “You’re Kate Conner. I’m Tim Strong.”

  “Fox,” I corrected him when I shook his hand, wondering at his exceptional friendliness.

  Terminator tipped his gray bird’s nest of a head at Tim. “That’s ol’ Two Names.”

  The light bulb came on. “Oh. Two Names. I didn’t recognize you.”

  He ducked his head. “Yeah. I got drunk one night and my buddies shaved my head. Didn’t even leave my beard.”

  I filled Trey in. “Two Names dated my sister Susan when they were in high school.”

  Two Names’s smile looked extra big on his hairless head. He pointed at my uniform. “This is not a surprising look for you.” He glanced at the other three railroaders. “This big sister here wouldn’t buy us beer on prom night.”

  “Maybe she kept you from gettin’ your hair shorn sooner,” Terminator said.

  The other railroader’s phone bipped. He read the message and pushed his chair back. “No loss there.” He rubbed the top of Two Names’s head. “Come on, our train’s here.”

  They trudged out, steel-toe boots giving them the look of astronauts.

  Trey must not have been able to contain his curiosity. “Why Two Names?”

  Terminator and Lawn Dart acted as if Trey was invisible.

  Interesting. I gave my voice a little chill, hoping Trey would get the message. “Tim’s mom divorced his dad and remarried, and Tim took his stepfather’s name. When he graduated, he hired on with BNSF, and they always use last names on the lineup. About a year later, Tim took his father’s name and changed it on the lineup. So it confused people, and he got the nickname.”

  Trey eyed me, then let his attention shift to Terminator and on to Lawn Dart. Neither of them added anything, just drank their coffee and looked at each other. Trey backed up a step. “I’m going to see if Clete has that paperwork.”

  With my back to the railroaders, I winked at Trey. “Good idea.” Later, I’d fill him in on Lawn Dart’s nickname. Several years ago, he’d gone skydiving on a dare. His chute only partially opened, and he’d made a connection with the ground that broke an arm and a couple of ribs.

  When Trey was gone, Lawn Dart sniffed and spat again. He didn’t have more fat than two strips of lean bacon. I wouldn’t be surprised if, like a lot of railroaders, Lawn Dart spent most of his off-duty hours with a beer attached to his right hand. “What’s a nice girl like you doing hanging out with that bad element?”

  The laugh escaped before I knew it was on the run. “He’s not so bad.”

  Terminator rubbed his hand down his beard. “I s’pose this is about the General.”

  “General?”

  Lawn Dart supplied the information. “Mills. When we elected him union rep, it swelled up his head. So we started calling him General Mills.”

  Trey would love that. “Clete said everyone around here liked Chad.”

  Terminator laughed. “The way a gopher likes a rattle snake.”

  I pushed. “Bobby Jenkins said Chad was a good guy.”

  Lawn Dart leaned back with a sour look. “Baby Bobby thinks Clete Rasmussen farts pixie dust.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant and must have looked confused.

  Terminator helped me out. “He means Baby Bobby isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He’s a sweet kid, you und
erstand. But he’s no brain trust.”

  Lawn Dart rattled his chair and took a few steps before he limbered up enough to walk to the coffee pot for a refill. “He’s a damned idiot. They had no business hiring him. Blew through a slow order his first trip. Nearly got me fired.”

  Terminator winked at me. “That wasn’t Baby Bobby’s fault.”

  “Screw you.” Lawn Dart filled his cup and clomped back to the table.

  Terminator tipped his chair back. “As soon as the General got his new title, he started pulling shit like calling safety meetings and bull like that.”

  Lawn Dart blew on his coffee. “I’ll tell you who don’t like the General one iota.”

  Terminator winked at me.

  “That Olin Riek.” He nodded with finality. “And with good reason. When the General took away all his business.”

  Terminator agreed. “That was a dirty trick to play on Olin, for sure. And after Mills took over the union, he didn’t work many trips.”

  Lawn Dart peered over the top of his cup. “But that still didn’t satisfy that hoity-toity wife of his.”

  Terminator scolded Lawn Dart. “Now you don’t know that’s true.”

  Lawn Dart sneered. “It’s true enough.” He set his cup down and swiveled to face me. “She was here having it out with Clete and some of the guys heard it.”

  This sounded unlikely. “Meredith Mills was here? Why would she do that?”

  Lawn Dart seemed satisfied he’d engaged me. He settled in his chair. “Well, she was going on about how Chad was working too much.”

  “You heard this?”

  Terminator chuckled and folded his arms, waiting for Lawn Dart to answer.

  Lawn Dart stuck out his bottom lip and wagged his head, chin thrust in a defensive mode. “I didn’t directly hear it. No, I did not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe she did it.”

  Terminator nodded at me. “There you go. I, personally, don’t buy that Meredith Mills would drive all the way down here because her loving man wasn’t home more. She’s classier than that.”

  Knowing how gossip spread through the railroad crews like butter on warm toast, I leaned toward Dave’s opinion.

  I nodded at Lawn Dart to indicate I’d take his story under consideration, then addressed Terminator. “Is there anyone else you can think of who has a grudge against Chad?”

  He opened up his mouth and poured the remains of his coffee straight back his throat. He ran his hand down his beard again. “Aside from his all the sudden getting above his raising with the union rep thing, he made plenty of the guys unhappy when he pushed the addled idea of making this a run-through.”

  Trey appeared in the doorway and glided into the room, hardly making a sound. He pulled out the chair vacated by Two Names and sat. “What’s a run-through?”

  I knew something about this battle from hearing Dad’s one-sided phone conversations. “Right now, crews run west from Lincoln to Broken Butte. A new crew gets on and takes the train to Denver. It’s the same going east. But there is a proposal to eliminate the crews in the middle and have the trains run between Denver and Lincoln. So everyone in this western Nebraska pool would have to relocate.”

  Lawn Dart sniffed, spat, gripped his Mountain Dew can and his coffee cup, and jerked to his feet, sliding the plastic chair back with his knees. Without a word, he stomped out of the room.

  Terminator shrugged at Trey. “Don’t worry about Lawn Dart. He hates everyone.”

  Losing Lawn Dart wasn’t a tragedy. “Who was mad about Chad taking BNSF’s side in the run-through fight?”

  Terminator chuckled. “Who wasn’t? You got wives and kids to uproot. Not to mention the cost of living in either of those places. You can have a decent three-bedroom house with a yard here for the price of a one-bedroom apartment in Denver.”

  “One guy was particularly pissed about it.” The curdled voice belonged to Lawn Dart, who must have decided to put up with the odious state patrol to get in on the good gossip.

  “Who’s that?” I asked. Trey wisely kept quiet.

  Lawn Dart pulled his chair up to the table. He set his Mountain Dew can and empty coffee cup in front of him. “Josh Stevens.”

  I didn’t like that. “How so?”

  Lawn Dart rested his elbows on the table and grabbed his forearms, leaning in. “We had this meeting.” He stopped and wrinkled his skinny brow. “Must have been three, four weeks ago. Union meeting.”

  Terminator sat back and smoothed his beard.

  Lawn Dart pointed at him. “Don’t you say nothing. You weren’t there. It was for engineers. Bunch of us were not happy about the proposed change, as you can imagine. And there was a ruckus.”

  “A fight?”

  “Naw, not fisticuffs or anything like that. But folks were yelling.”

  I glanced at Trey. His face was the color of a hot burner, and it didn’t take Columbo to know he was holding back questions. I asked for him. “Was anyone particularly angry?”

  Lawn Dart scowled at me. “If you’ll hold your horses I’m getting to that.” He sent a growly aside to Terminator. “They get like this from always having smartphones and iPads and having everything instant all the time. They have no patience.”

  I’d like him to patience this, but I did my best conciliatory wince and hoped it would appease him enough he’d continue.

  “So, everyone is carrying on like that, and there’s a lull in the uproar, like it happens sometimes, you know?” Lawn Dart stopped talking. Apparently the question was not rhetorical.

  “Yes, I know. What happened?” Dang it, I sounded as annoyed as I felt.

  Lawn Dart tilted his chin to his chest and looked out the top of his eyes at Terminator. “See what I mean? Gotta have everything right now.”

  Terminator sighed and shook his head. “Just tell her.”

  Lawn Dart deflated, as if Terminator had taken all the fun out of it. He flicked his shoulders and snapped his head like a girl in a snit. “Somebody—maybe it was Flubber McGee—says, ‘Someone ought to take a two-by-four and knock some sense into you.’ All of a sudden it’s quiet, like people are taking a breath together, and Josh Stevens says—sort of under his breath like he didn’t intend for anyone to hear—he says, ‘A two-by-four wouldn’t do it. The only way you could knock sense into him is to hit him upside the head with a railroad tie.’”

  Lawn Dart thrust out his chest and raised his chin. He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair, a satisfied grin on his face.

  Terminator stared at Lawn Dart, then at me. “Huh.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Lawn Dart. “You heard this with your own two ears?”

  “Indeed I did, missy.” He nodded with satisfaction. “But it wasn’t only me. Word got back to Clete, and he fired Joshy-boy for threatening Chad.”

  14

  We hit the drive-through at Hardee’s and headed back to Hodgekiss. Twyla’s cinnamon rolls had worn off, but the thought of a greasy burger didn’t thrill me. I opted for a side salad. Trey ordered the third-pound Velveeta Patty Meltdown with a monstrosity serving of fries and a chocolate shake. The name of the burger alone curdled my stomach.

  I watched him mow down his food like a half-starved coyote.

  Trey squashed his wrappers into the Hardee’s bag and held it out to me. “I’m thinking Josh Stevens is our guy.”

  I pitched in my salad bowl and took the bag from him. “Not sure.” I didn’t have the conviction he did.

  He ran his tongue around his teeth. “It makes sense. He was out at Meredith Mills’s house when Chad was murdered. Why would he be there unless he and Meredith were having an affair? Add that to his obvious animosity toward Chad.”

  “Weren’t you the one warning me about jumping to conclusions?”

  “When did I say that? And there’s plenty to support my theory. What about what Lawn Dart said? Heck, Josh was fired for threatening Chad.”

  “Suspended from service temporarily.” I thought a moment. “But why hadn’t Clete
mentioned that?”

  Trey shrugged. “Just trying to protect his employees, don’t you think?”

  Clete never struck me as a Daddy Warbucks type. But hey, did Trey really ask for my opinion?

  There was a warm pulse pumping at the base of Trey’s neck, right where he’d loosened the top button of his shirt. I turned the heat down in the car. “The first time I met you and told you Chad had been murdered, you accused me of being hasty. Now, you’re ready to pin the tail on the first bull in the corral.”

  His hands tightened around the wheel. “He said, ‘It would take a railroad tie to the head to knock sense into him.’ And that’s exactly what he did.”

  “I’ve been known to say something in a temper I didn’t mean. Haven’t you?”

  “Sure I have. But a tie to the head is pretty specific.”

  Maybe too specific. “Could be someone set Josh up.”

  Trey guffawed. “And maybe my granny did it. Come on, you’re reaching, and that’s not very professional.”

  That smacked into my belly like a fist. “Before you convict Josh, don’t you think we ought to check out Olin Riek?”

  “You really think an insurance salesman would kill someone over a lost account?” He made it sound ridiculous.

  With confidence I didn’t feel, I said, “I think we ought to check it out.”

  The wheels bumped on highway cracks. I adjusted the heat back up.

  Trey broke the silence as if he’d been stewing for a while. “What gives you such faith in Mr. Stevens?”

  I tried not to sound defensive. “Not faith so much. But it’s too soon to tie the noose for him.”

  He smirked. “I suppose your gut instincts honed from years of law enforcement experience are telling you Josh is innocent.”

  He didn’t know how close his condescension brought him to a smack on the back of his head. Or how worried I was that he might have a point. “Okay, tell me why you think Josh didn’t kill Chad.” He sounded almost apologetic.

  My gut? Because Dad believed in him? Even to me it sounded lame. “Bits and pieces of this and that.”

  Trey cocked his head. “What’s that?”