Dark Signal Read online

  Even as they idled, the chugging engines felt powerful, like thoroughbreds at the starting gate. They vibrated and the air compressors hissed.

  The steps were steep, and my footsteps clunked on the meshed metal. I reached to the grab irons and pulled myself to the next step and one more. The stairs led to a narrow platform centered in the nose of the hulking steel engine. The door to the cab where the engineer and conductor rode opened off the platform.

  I hoisted myself to the platform of the engine. The cab door hung open. Bobby would have exited there, probably hurtling himself from the cab out of the engine. He’d been desperate to leave. My gloved hands braced on either side of the opening to hold me back, as if in solidarity with my thudding heart. The only thing that convinced me to continue was the knowledge that this was my job.

  I left the platform at the nose of the train and entered a narrow passage. Three steps led up to the engineer’s seat on the right of the cab, and the conductor’s, Bobby’s, seat on the left. “Hey, are you there?” I called, breathless with the climb.

  I’d expected the cab to feel warmer than the outside, but there was no change in temperature. I had to purposefully place my foot on the first step. “Hello.”

  The smell hit me. So much like Stranahan’s Meat Processing kill floor. My raised foot missed the next step.

  With Dad’s long tenure and Grand County’s population of only five thousand, the odds of me knowing the engineer were pretty good. I braced for something terrible.

  The blue and red light pulsing through the windows and the constant rumble of the engines made me wonder whether the tremors I felt were from the train’s vibrations or my fear.

  I made it up the last step and swung the flashlight to the engineer’s side. The high-powered beam slashed across the night, adding a smaller version of the train’s headlight, and it seemed wrong, somehow. The realization hit me. The flashlight’s beam didn’t reflect back to me. There was no windshield.

  Shattered glass would account for the blood on Bobby. What force could explode the thick safety glass used for train windshields?

  I pointed Big Dick behind me. The back glass on the right side was also shattered.

  One more shuffling step brought me directly behind the engineer’s chair. My light swung from the empty windshield downward and I swept the beam over the cab. Tiny glass shrapnel covered every surface. A pile of something filled the engineer’s seat. It obviously wasn’t a person. A lump of dark fabric with points of reflective material catching the light like stars in the night sky.

  I stared at the jumble and tried to make sense of it.

  No. Oh God. No. Ice dropped to the bottom of my gut, and I gasped.

  I squeezed my eyes closed and fell backward a step. My vision showed me one thing but my brain wouldn’t acknowledge it. I opened my eyes and tried to focus Big Dick’s beam. The light vibrated on the steam rising in the subzero night as my hand shook. I understood why Bobby couldn’t talk. I couldn’t stop staring. The awful image burned into my brain.

  I lurched backward and scrambled down the steps, stumbling and catching myself as I hurtled through the door, probably like Bobby had.

  I’m not Bobby. I’m the sheriff.

  I gripped the grab irons, and suddenly I was blinded by a spotlight. The oncoming train’s whistle blasted, the sound snatching my soul from my chest. The train, likely the one Dad rode, roared around the curve directly in front of me. It couldn’t be moving more than twenty miles an hour as the headlight swung away from my face to point down the track.

  The hulking train caused a gust of diesel fumes and the squeal of steel on steel, the couplers clacking and chirping as each car thundered past me. I gasped for air, feeling the passing train suck my breath with it. It trumpeted like a herd of elephants and I gripped the grab bars. After an endless time, the train retreated, the tshk-tshk-tshk of the wheels on the last car disappearing with the blinking red lights at the rear of the train, leaving the heaving and rumbling engines of the train on which I stood. The train with what was left of the engineer in the cab.

  I leaned over the rail and puked.

  3

  I staggered to the cruiser and threw myself inside, slamming the door and ripping off a glove with my teeth. The rumble of the passing train faded. My shaking hand reached for the radio, and my mind blanked. I dropped the radio and pulled out the sheriff’s phone.

  Marybeth answered, “Dispatch.”

  My voice wavered, and I cleared my throat, willed myself to be steady, and said, “I’m going to need help.”

  Marybeth spoke with authority. “What’s the situation?”

  I cleared my throat again. “There’s a … The engineer is.…” I bit down to gain control. “Fatality. Subject in train cab, presumably the engineer, identity unknown.”

  “COD?”

  I blanked.

  Marybeth came back on. “Cause of death.”

  “De-de-decapitated.” I inhaled. “Bobby Jenkins, conductor, minor injuries, sitting in the cop car.”

  “Okay. State patrol is on the way. He’ll be at your location in thirty minutes. BNSF authorities are en route.”

  “10-4.”

  Marybeth shifted from professional to concern. “Maybe you should call Ted as backup. Just to help out until the statey gets there.”

  I pushed my numb feet against the floor and straightened my spine. I don’t need no stinkin’ Ted. The quiver vanished from my voice. “What’s the ETA of the rescue unit from Hodgekiss?”

  “They just left the fire hall.”

  I swiped at my nose, which had started to run in the heat of the car. “I’ll stay with Bobby until they get here.”

  I dropped the phone back into my pocket and twisted in the seat to face Bobby. The Plexiglas divider was open between the front and back, and I smelled the familiar odor of diesel and engine that clung to Dad’s clothes when he came home from work. “We’re going to get you out of here soon. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Thawing out and the few minutes away from the carnage had helped him considerably. He still trembled but his eyes looked clearer. He sounded like cold pea soup. “I don’t know.”

  I held his gaze and spoke slowly. “What do you remember?”

  His intake of breath bounced in his throat like a rock down a cliff. “We were r-r-riding along, and Chad looked over to his h-h-house.”

  Chad. Oh man. Chad Mills. The engineer. He was a few years older than me in high school, but he’d gone to Danbury High. Danbury was the town east of Hodgekiss on the edge of Grand County. I knew Chad only to say hi. I was on a barely nodding acquaintance with his wife, Meredith.

  I kept my voice gentle. “Chad lives around here, doesn’t he?”

  Bobby nodded and swiped an arm across his face, smearing the blood. “Yeah. Just up County Road 67. You can see his yard light from the tracks.”

  “So he was looking for his house.…” I left it dangling so Bobby would finish.

  Bobby’s voice grew stronger as he focused. “His wife always flashes the yard light when he goes past. We all tease him about being pussy-whipped, but most of us think it’s sort of cool they are, like, they seem to really l-l-l-…” Suddenly he broke into tears. I felt like crying myself.

  I pulled off the ski cap and my other glove and unzipped my coat. The heater in the cruiser was doing a fine job. I let Bobby recover, and when he seemed ready, I continued. “So you were both watching the yard light flash, and what happened?”

  He shook his head. “That’s why we were looking so long that way and not at the tracks. The light was off. Chad was all worried, and I was telling him it was probably burned out.”

  A faint glow of red behind us announced the rescue unit turning from the highway.

  Bobby’s voice lost the gained strength, and it flickered with panic. “Then it all … the whole thing. I mean, I don’t know what happened, but everything exploded. There was this crash and glass. I screamed at Chad, but he didn’t answer, and it wa
s dark and loud, and the wind rushing. I plugged it. I didn’t know what else to do. The brakes set up, and we finally stopped. The train stopped.”

  From listening to Dad, I knew that “plugged it” meant the airbrakes were fully applied and the engines switched to idle. They never kill the engines since engines have no antifreeze. They are always left to idle when the temperatures are below forty degrees, even in the yard when they don’t plan to use them for days. “You did exactly the right thing.”

  He started to cry again. “When it stopped I saw Chad. I mean. I saw the part of him.” He covered his face. “His head was gone and there was all this blood.”

  “And that’s when you called it in on the radio?”

  His dropped his hands. “I did?”

  I nodded. The rescue unit made its way down the access road toward us.

  “I don’t remember anything after that. I don’t even remember how I got into the car.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “You did fine. The ambulance is here, and they’ll probably take you to the hospital in Broken Butte.”

  Tears streaked through his gruesome mask. “What about Chad?”

  I tried to sound like an experienced sheriff, calm and comforting. “We’ll take care of him.”

  I pulled on the ski cap and yanked up my coat zipper, grabbed my gloves, and ventured out again. After the overheated car, the cold squeezed my lungs, and I had a coughing fit. Harold Graham and Eunice Fleenor, the best EMTs on the squad, ran toward me.

  Eunice, an all-business, middle-aged mom with close-cropped gray hair, popped off questions, and I answered them as quickly and with as little drama as possible. It took less than two minutes to relay all I knew. By that time, Harold was helping Bobby from the back of the car.

  Bobby leaned on Harold, and they lumbered toward the ambulance while Harold peppered him with questions. Harold’s curiosity and mild voyeuristic bent were well known.

  “You say it’s Chad Mills?” Eunice asked, tilting her head toward the train.

  “I haven’t made a positive ID.” Because I didn’t look for his wallet, and he doesn’t have a head. “But I’m fairly certain.”

  “I’ll just take a look to make sure there’s nothing we can do for him.”

  I stepped out of her way, not anxious to check out the ghastly sight again. I’d see plenty of it when the state patrol and the railroad investigators showed up. I knew enough from Ted’s time as sheriff and from sheriff’s training. They’d set up lights, and I’d need to take photos of the scene.

  It didn’t take Eunice but a quick glance to understand Chad was beyond her help. With a grim face, she marched past me toward the rescue unit. “Rough first night, huh?”

  So bad I’d rather be celebrating my birthday with my crazy family.

  I flapped my arms across myself to get the blood flowing and warm myself up. The rescue unit flipped the lights to frantic flashing and gained speed after turning onto the highway.

  I stood in the flickering of my car’s light bar, alone with the hissing and growling of the idling train. A coyote let out a long yip, answered several hills away, followed by a slew of barking from a nearby ranch. The nearest ranch would be Monen’s Horseshoe Lake place, about six miles north. On a still, cold night in the Sandhills, sound had a way of going walkabout for unexpected miles.

  Just me, the ’yotes, and poor headless Chad out here on the prairie. It wasn’t even six o’clock but it felt like midnight. The half moon had worked its way a few degrees across the sky, still high enough to shed a blue glow on the frozen land.

  I set a quick pace to the front of the train and examined the nose of the engine cab. Standing on the tracks, the train rose above me like a moveable steel building. A metal skirt, a modern version of the old cow-catcher, would clear the tracks of critters, debris, and snow and keep the train moving. My eyes were level with the platform that led to the cab. The steps to the gory scene drew my gaze. The shattered engineer’s window would be another ten feet above the platform. I shivered at the thought of Chad up there and continued to the far side of the train. The annoying grind of the idling train couldn’t be stopped until someone from BNSF showed up. Ignorant of exact safety procedures for trains, at least I knew hand brakes would need to be tied to secure the train from moving.

  I wandered back and forth like a hound, with my flashlight on the ground instead of my nose. I didn’t venture more than ten yards in any direction, knowing I had to stay with the body until someone else arrived. The temperature had to have dipped at least ten below zero, and after about twenty minutes, I retreated to my car to warm up.

  Not long after that, headlights turned off the highway, and I watched in my rearview mirror as they approached. I recognized the light bar and figured it for the state patrol Marybeth had sent my way. I shrugged back into my coat and pulled Ted’s cap low, grabbed my gloves, and met the trooper between our vehicles.

  He was bundled up in a heavy coat with a ski mask hiding his face. “Trey Ridnoir,” he said by way of introduction.

  “Kate Fox.”

  “Oh yeah. Kate Fox.” His breath puffed from the mask. “Sorry. I’d forgotten the election.”

  I’d no doubt there’d been some insider gossip within the western Nebraska law enforcement community about me and Ted running against each other. It wasn’t so much about me beating an incumbent as about the two-timed wife ousting her cheating husband. It must have given idle tongues lots of wagging opportunity.

  I sounded breathless, not really knowing how to begin. “Hodgekiss rescue took one crew member, Bobby Jenkins, to Broken Butte. Minor injuries if any. Looks like maybe some cuts on his face and neck from broken glass. I took an initial statement. He’s shaken up, of course, but I don’t think he knows what happened.”

  Trey nodded. “And the other crew member?”

  I swallowed hard and pointed at the idling engine. “In the cab. The windshield exploded at the overpass. I’d guess he was killed on impact.”

  Trey strode toward the engine, and I followed, stopping beside the tracks and watching as he pulled himself by the grab bars and hopped up the stairs. He disappeared into the door. The light from his flashlight swung around, through the open window and down, where it stopped for several moments.

  His descent was much slower, and he lowered himself to the ground next to me. “Sorry you had to be first on the scene. The train cab is pretty messy.” Sounded like he wanted to add, “little lady,” onto the end of that.

  “I searched the ground for clues to the accident but didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary. I hadn’t expected to, though. According to Bobby, everything had been normal until they reached County Road 67.”

  “Good work, Kate.” More than a smidge patronizing, but he was probably tying to be nice to a rookie.

  Since he looked more bandit than cop, I couldn’t tell whether I’d recognize his face from meetings or conferences I’d attended with Ted, but county and state didn’t mingle that often. “I haven’t had much experience with crime scene investigations.”

  He had nice lips. Probably something I wouldn’t notice if I had access to a whole face. But they weren’t flabby or too thin and looked like maybe they’d form into an easy grin. This line of thinking was an obvious ploy to sidetrack my brain from the grisly scene in the cab.

  “Well,” he exhaled and steam chugged into the sky. “The NTSB and BNSF investigators will be here soon.” He paused. “NTSB. That’s National Transportation and Safety Board.”

  Really? And here I thought it stood for Never Trust State-Patrol Boys. At least he didn’t see fit to explain BNSF, a subject I knew a bit about because Dad had been a conductor since before I’d been born. I could speak knowledgeably about the union negotiations for the merger of Burlington Northern with the Santa Fe in 1986 and the benefits to the conductors of staying in their district from conversations around our kitchen table.

  I’d had about enough of hanging around the chugging engine and craved some silenc
e before having to venture back into the cab. “If you’ll stay here with the body, I’m going to walk the train. See if I can spot anything unusual, especially at the overpass.”

  I hopscotched across the other tracks and trained Big Dick toward the west. The rumble of the train faded as I trekked away from the engines, sweeping the light back and forth, inspecting the gravel of the track bed and the knee-high yellow and brown weeds trembling in the slight breeze. Walking on my numb toes hurt while blood pushed down to warm them. By the time I’d made it the mile back to the overpass at County Road 67, everything but my face felt functional. My lips had lost all feeling, though, and frost clung to the tiny hairs under my nose.

  I approached the overpass, slowing my steps to allow time to swing the flashlight more slowly and thoroughly. What would cause the windshield to explode at this site?

  The farther I walked from the engines, the quieter the night grew around me. Another coyote’s cry brought an answering yip from the north. Headlights peeked between the railcars as a car eased off the paved road to the railroad access. The crush of gravel and the chug of the car’s engine passed me on its way to the front of the train. The vehicle crept toward my cruiser. A few more vehicles turned from the highway and drove to the engine. I guessed the rigs belonged to the road foreman and probably the trainmaster, maybe railroad officials.

  I strode west, the flashlight sweeping from the train, across the prairie and back to the train. About fifty yards west of the overpass I spotted it. I walked a few more railcars down before I’d seen enough and started back the way I’d come.

  Flashlights and headlamps slashed arrows of light through the darkness. I’d made it about halfway along the train before strained men’s voices cut the air. They must have seen Chad, and some strong soul had sent someone to tie the hand brakes. I wished they could kill the engines. Somehow the dull roar and vibrations increased the full horror.

  One figure broke away from the front engine and started my way. I assumed it was Trey. The light from his high-powered flashlight marked his path. Gravel from the track bed crunched under his footsteps.