Dark Signal Read online

  Carly had lost so much. “Come home, then. We can’t give you back your parents or Eldon, but the rest of us will love you until you can’t stand us anymore.”

  Carly laughed through her tears. “I know. But I can’t.”

  “Why? Whatever it is, we can figure it out together.”

  “I can’t come home yet. This is bigger than I thought, and the more I find out, the more I need to learn.”

  I clenched my fist with the effort to pull her to me. “I’ll help you. Please.”

  Carly sounded as if she pulled her face away from the phone. “You can’t help me. That would only put you in danger.”

  What? “That means you’re in trouble, too. Let me protect you. I’m sheriff now.”

  “Ha! I’ll bet Roxy lost her shit at that.” A smile lit Carly’s voice.

  I pictured her face in the sunshine, the green grass of a spring meadow dotted with the first buttercups and bluebells, a scene I’d seen her in so many times. Her blond hair highlighted with summer, cheeks pinked, and her wide smile of delight in the freedom of the ranch. “Come home. I love you.”

  Another engine sounded but didn’t move past. Carly’s voice hardened. “I’ve got to go.”

  “No. Wait.”

  She spoke quickly, “Listen, I’m okay, so don’t worry. But you need to understand. You can’t trust anyone.”

  I was losing her all over again. It felt like my hands clutched a mountain ledge but they were slipping. “Why do you think your father was murdered? Let me help.”

  “Don’t tell anyone I called. No one.” Her mouth moved away from the phone again, and a man’s voice asked a question. I couldn’t understand what he said. Was it because the sound was muffled or did he speak in another language? Spanish? Something else?

  “Carly. Wait. I—”

  The phone went dead. I hit redial. Nothing. Redial again.

  Damn it! I jumped to my feet, took two steps, whirled around, pounded my fist on my desk. Flopped back in the hard chair and lowered my forehead to my arms. All the useless frustration moving through my body couldn’t bring her back.

  She hadn’t acted surprised when I told her I was sheriff, and in fact, had gone right after Roxy. I hadn’t talked to her since she ran away and yet, she hadn’t asked about Ted, someone she loved. When she’d disappeared, he was still in a coma, with doubt he’d ever walk again. It’s as if she knew Roxy and Ted had married. She didn’t ask who’d killed her granddad. Somehow, Carly had kept up on Grand County. How?

  I picked up my phone and hit speed dial. Baxter answered on the first ring. He sounded worried and pleased at the same time. “What’s up?”

  I leaned back in my chair and let out pent-up air. Don’t trust anyone, Carly had said. Her father murdered. I hesitated.

  “Kate? Are you okay?”

  “Um.” What did I know about Baxter? He owned the largest twenty-four-hour cable news network. He had more money than God, was an outspoken advocate for the environment. He’d gone to military school with Brian, Carly’s father, from the time they’d been in fifth grade until they graduated.

  Baxter sounded almost frantic. “Kate, talk to me. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m fine,” I managed to say, but nothing more. My pulse quickened while I tossed my knowledge of Glenn Baxter onto the scales. He’d come to the Sandhills last spring to help Carly’s granddad, Eldon, figure out how Brian came into a pile of money. He’d stayed after Eldon’s murder to find Carly and protect her. He’d promised me he’d find Carly, and since then, I’d talked to him at least once every week.

  “You don’t sound fine.” His voice had a strength I hadn’t heard for a while.

  “The treatments must be working.” I needed more time to consider Baxter. Should I tell him about Carly? She said trust no one.

  “There’s marked improvement in my lungs, yes. But what’s going on with you? Are you upset?”

  That didn’t get me much. “It’s cold here.” My gut told me Baxter was good to the core. But then, I’d been married for eight years to Ted, who’d lied to me almost from the beginning.

  “Talk to me, Kate. What’s going on?” Worry ringed Baxter’s words.

  But I’d always had a smidge of unease about Ted. Even though I’d dug deep into denial, I’d had to shove aside doubts about Ted all along. I didn’t have that unease with Baxter.

  Carly needed help. I couldn’t give it to her if I couldn’t find her. “Baxter?” It sounded like a kitten’s mew and I flinched.

  “I can be there in four hours. The jet will be ready by the time I get to the airport.” His words jumbled as if he jogged.

  “No.” I got that out with some force. “I’m okay.” He had no idea why I sounded like curdled milk, but the cause didn’t seem to matter. He knew something was wrong, and he was on his way. “Carly called.”

  Silence for a beat. “Carly?”

  I nodded and sank to my chair. “We didn’t talk long. Area code on the phone was 714.”

  Concern deepened his tone. “Did she sound okay? Did she say why she left? Is she coming home? I can fly to wherever she is. Meet me at the Broken Butte airport, and we’ll go together.”

  I waved my hand to stop him. “She’s not coming home. She said Brian had been murdered and she’s finding out things.”

  The air let out of Baxter’s balloon. “She’s been to see some of our classmates. What is she after?”

  “I wish I knew. But I know her. She’s not going to give up.”

  “Why did she call?”

  I told him about the anniversary of Glenda’s death and the sounds in the background, the man’s voice.

  He didn’t speak for a long time. “Okay. I’ll turn this over to the investigator. Text me the number she called from, though I’ll bet it was a disposable phone.”

  I huddled in my hard chair. “Thanks.”

  We were both silent for a second or two until Baxter’s words eased through the phone. “I’m here with you. We’ll find her.”

  Somehow he knew how alone I felt. I leaned into his assurance. “What if she’s right? If Brian was murdered and she’s poking around, the killer might go after her.”

  Baxter sighed. “If my investigator can’t locate that little escape artist, I’d say she’s pretty good at hiding. Try not to worry.”

  I laughed. “Or breathe or have a heartbeat.”

  His chuckle made me feel a raccoon’s hair better. “Okay. Tell me what else is going on, maybe I can distract you.”

  I sat back in my chair and propped my feet on the desk. I told him about May’s house on the lake, my nieces and nephews, and Mom’s latest meltdown. He told me about a glittery fund-raiser at the St. Regis in New York City and how he’d asked some Hollywood dilettante because she advocated for the protection of wildlife and he believed she’d bring a shiny glow to the event. But how she’d been more concerned that the paparazzi photographed her new designer gown in the right light and then she drank too much champagne and ended up falling off her four-inch heels on the way out, which, of course, is the picture that graced People the next week.

  We hit a lull, and I realized with a start that it was after nine o’clock. That made it after eleven where Baxter was, and yet he hadn’t made any move to end our call.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I felt his smile. “Anytime.”

  Talking to Baxter had eased the ropes around my innards and knotted in my head. But the moment I hung up, my fists clenched on my desk and my heart started thumping. Carly, Chad, the ranch job offer from Bill Hardy, what to do with my life? I’d never be able to sleep, and I sorely needed to.

  Diane wanted me to move out, Sarah wanted me to date. May had a house, Bill Hardy a job. And I teetered on the crumbling ledge, bits of rock tumbling into the bottomless canyon. I couldn’t stay like this forever. That much I knew.

  With no hope for sleep, the only thing to do was take Elvis for a moonlight spin.

  17

  Another storm warn
ed of its arrival with a roar of frigid wind battering Elvis. This afternoon’s chill had been only the ice breaker for tonight.

  Ever since I’d bought the Ranchero when I was fourteen, a couple of years before I could legally drive him, Elvis was my happy place. Even more so than Frog Creek, because I’d bought him with money earned over several summers in the hayfield, and no one could take him away from me. I pointed him east and cruised out of town, letting the heat warm me and the rumble of his engine sing me a lullaby.

  I hummed along to an old Beatles cassette of Glenda’s and tried to let my mind drift into the dark winter sky.

  The sheriff’s phone rang and I reached for it. The caller ID startled me with my own name. Then I realized who had programmed the phone. “Hi, Ted.”

  He laughed. “Already being a great detective.”

  I didn’t want to talk to my ex-husband. But I fell into familiar territory. “It doesn’t make me a member of Mensa to figure out ‘Kate’ would be Frog Creek. What do you need?”

  “I heard you were doing the traffic stops today. Earl and Newt, they’re always entertaining.”

  “Are you listening on the police scanner?”

  “Not really listening. It’s on and sometimes I catch something.”

  After so many years of being his wife, I really didn’t know how to talk to him now. “Well, stop it. I’m sure Roxy’s not thrilled with you keeping tabs on the new sheriff. How’s she doing, anyway?”

  Ted hesitated. “She’s tired all the time. In fact, she’s in bed already, so I’m out in the shop.”

  I jerked the phone from my ear and punched it off. I banged the heel of my hand on the wheel. “Damn it.” A film of guilt dusted onto me. When Ted was having his affair, he’d go to the shop at night and talk on the phone to Roxy. I’d had a certain pleasure talking to him just now. But I hadn’t known I was a secret call from the shop.

  I cranked up the tunes to keep from thinking. The headlight of a westbound train flashed into my eyes and continued down the tracks. I watched its hulk black against the dark night until it blinked a red light and faded from view. My gaze brushed across another train car parked at a siding. It sat isolated, no engine, no other cars attached. I’d probably seen a zillion of them in my lifetime, just like that. Sitting on the side of the tracks. I’d never given it a thought.

  Bobby said he and Chad had set out a car at a siding sometime before the overpass at Highway 67. This had to be the one. I thought of what Burke said about thefts. Could this have something to do with Chad’s murder?

  I took the first turn off the highway, a county-maintained gravel strip, and gripped the steering wheel as I pointed Elvis off the road and down to the railroad access toward the siding. A steep ridge rose on the north side of the tracks. After a half mile, the container car came into view on the tracks of the siding.

  This was a double-decker car. The trailer parts of the big eighteen-wheelers that roam the interstates were stacked two deep inside a sort of steel egg-crate base. The back doors of the bottom trailer wouldn’t open more than a foot or so before hitting the ledge of the railroad car. But if someone climbed the lower trailer, the doors of the trailer stacked on top would be fully accessible. I might be able to see whether the doors had been tampered with.

  I braked and cut the engine. Too bad I wasn’t driving the cruiser. I’d have Big Dick and probably my Smith and Wesson. I can’t say as I missed the gun all that much.

  Climbing out into subzero temps didn’t thrill me. I zipped up, mashed my cap down, and pulled on my gloves. I really ought to get a ski mask like Trey wore. Or maybe resurrect my old Elmer Fudd cap. I braced for the wind.

  Why couldn’t we put a moratorium on crimes committed outdoors for the months of January and February? I opened the door and climbed out, not wasting time as I hurried to the containers.

  I’d parked with my lights shining on one end of the car. I assumed it was the front because the two containers didn’t have doors on this side. The railroad car had hitches on both ends so the car could be attached to a train heading in either direction.

  Moonlight outlined the dirty white containers that rose fifty feet into the night sky. Colorful graffiti nearly covered the Maersk logo printed on the sides. I had no idea what the bubble letters spelled, but I didn’t mind the bright reds, yellows, and blues, even though it’s a crime to mark the cars.

  The flatbed of the railroad trailer reached about chest high on me, with three-foot metal walls running around it to create a sturdy well to place the loaded trailers. A person could clamber onto the flat car at the front or back using a step next to the hitch.

  Growing up in a house facing the tracks, I’d been warned about getting too close to trains. At crossings, flashing arms lowered, keeping drivers a safe distance with clanging and wild, blasting lights. Just being this close, even if the car wasn’t attached to an engine, brought up fear hammered home since infancy.

  By now my nose hairs were stuck together, and the night air nearly burned my cheeks with biting cold. The rocky right-of-way crunched and a ’yote howled in the distance. I walked along the tracks, making my way slowly alongside the car, studying the sides, scanning up and down, leaning over to look underneath. Nothing like giant freight carriers on top of a railroad car, steel on steel, every bolt or rivet the size of your fist, to make you feel like a fragile china figurine.

  Toward the back end of the car something on the ground caught my attention. I hurried over to find a bolt on the ground next to yellow bolt cutters with a black handle. I spun to look up the back of the stacked trailers.

  From my Web surfing earlier, I’d been shocked to discover the seals the transporters used were flimsy locks. Some styles looked like the zip ties I used to secure pole beans to the scaffold in the garden. Some were like the worthless locks on suitcases.

  This trailer used the more substantial bolt seal. In this case, it wasn’t any more effective than a zip tie at keeping someone out. One end of the lock dangled from a chain looped loosely though one of the double doors at the back of the top trailer.

  Whoever had a mind to steal the contents had made short work of the bolt by simply cutting it off and dropping the cutters. And that person could still be inside the trailer now.

  I held my breath and listened.

  Did I imagine it, or did I hear a faint thud from inside the top trailer? If there really was sound, it could have been an icicle dropping from the lip. Or it might have been my adrenaline manufacturing noises. I stayed still until I risked freezing in place, and still, the night held only eerie silence.

  I snuck to the back, where metal grab irons were welded into the car next to the hitch. I scrambled to the base of the railroad flatbed and stood on the metal platform. Both of the container cars had double doors that opened toward the base of the trailer. If the container was on the back of a semitruck, a man standing on the ground would be able to loosen the latch and open the door. I stood next to the container and tilted my head up to the one stacked on top.

  The moon didn’t give me nearly enough light. The cold metal sent a scatter of goose bumps over my skin like baby spiders released from their nest. A few metal rungs were welded on to the side of the trailer so a truck driver could climb to the top. If I’d actually heard a sound, it would have come from the top car.

  Careful to keep the leather soles of my ropers from slipping on the rungs, I climbed. My breath billowed with each exhale. My gloves made holding the rungs difficult, but without them, my fingers would be numb in seconds. Six times my slick soles slipped on the metal bars. I pulled myself up until I perched on the top rung, within arm’s distance of the door latch on the second stacked trailer. My breath sounded like a steam engine to my ears as I balanced on the rung and clung to the side of the top container.

  I gripped the side of the top container through bulky gloves and wondered what to do. If I’d brought the Smith and Wesson, I’d pull it out and yell, “Freeze! Sheriff.”

  My best option
right now appeared to be climbing down and sneaking back to my car for my phone. I could call Trey, then wait for the thief to emerge. With no gun, no handcuffs, and only my authority as sheriff, I didn’t know what I’d do when he came out.

  I pulled back and dipped my head to see the rungs, but before I took one step down, a terrible crash sounded from inside the trailer by my head. The left side of the double doors on the back of the top trailer, the one I clung to, swung open.

  I tipped back; the slippery leather of my boots on the icy metal rungs caused me to tilt. My left arm jerked from the socket, and I succeeded in pulling my fingers out of my glove. I lunged toward the trailer, my left hand frantic to find some purchase. But the door flung wider, as if someone inside pushed it. It knocked me in the forehead with a white-hot pain like my noggin splitting wide. I clutched at the swinging steel door, desperate to keep from plunging backward. My numb fingers scrabbled on the edge of the door and grabbed it only long enough to wing it back.

  The man inside had been halfway out of the container, and the door smashed his fingers. He cried out in pain. Or maybe surprise that I was hanging on the side of the trailer. The door flew at me again. I’d quit trying to do any damage to the thief and concentrated on saving myself. One glove on, one glove off, I was able to hang onto the door only long enough for it to put the finishing touch on my slipping feet and throw me out like a kid on a rope swing over a pond.

  It might take only a blink to sail off a narrow rung. But living through it felt more like a month. My heart nearly burst through my skin, reaching, balancing, knowing I was losing the fight, tipping backward beyond the point of rescue. My hands opened and closed on air, trying to thrust my body forward when it already gained momentum backward.

  A moment of total panic when I was free-falling, and then I was squeezing my eyes shut, waiting for impact with the frozen ground.

  The slow motion stopped about the time my back whammed into what felt like concrete. Air escaped in a whoosh from my lungs, and my mouth opened while my chest hitched. I struggled in paralysis, willing my legs and arms to move, my lungs to take in air. But the hulk of flesh I called my body was less reactive than a bag of cattle feed.