“I suggest,” Stern interjected in a voice like an ice cube down the back, “the two of you finish your playground fight later. We have work to do.”
Gresino muttered something and looked away.
“You find anything else?” I asked him.
His jaw worked. “The keys to the Lexus, dropped or tossed a hundred yards from the vehicle. I’m thinking she and Lucy bolted, then she threw the keys away so their abductor couldn’t take them anywhere else.”
“Why didn’t she try circling back and driving away?”
“Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe he had Lucy.” His eyes met mine again. “Maybe she had bad knees.”
“Gresino—”
“I gotta talk to my lieutenant.” He strode off toward the cars at the top of the hill.
Stern let her camera dangle on its strap and turned her glacier-blue gaze on me. The gale had tugged her bright hair loose from the coil at her neck; the golden tumble softened features that carried all the beauty and warmth of alabaster.
“Murder or suicide?” she asked.
“I don’t have all the facts yet,” I said.
“Just your opinion, Special Agent Parnell. A consensus helps at the outset of a case. Murder or suicide?”
“Murder.”
She nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Good.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Good for a consensus, you mean?”
Her look suggested I was a little slow. “Good because if this is murder, it won’t score with the Federal Railroad Administration as a trespasser. Not the way a suicide would. Which means it won’t impact our safety numbers.”
I recoiled. “That’s what matters to you?”
“That’s my job. Where’s the TIR?”
I bit down on what I wanted to say. “The hard drive is in my truck. I’ll get you a copy.”
“You’ve looked at it?”
“Not yet. For your record, the engineer says he was traveling at a safe speed and sounded the horn appropriately. It will be on the recorders.”
“I’ll take a look as soon as you send it. Don’t give it to any plaintiff lawyers that might show up. Where’s the crew? Deke Willsby and”—she flipped through her paperwork—“John Sethmeyer.”
“They’re with the Care Team. You can interview them upstairs at headquarters.”
“I prefer to conduct interviews in my office. They’ll need to come by before the end of the day. Make sure they know that.” She pulled out a sheaf of papers and tucked them into a plastic slipcover. “And I’ll need you to fill these out. Digital or hard copy, your choice. Have them back to me no later than close of business tomorrow.”
The ME, Dr. Emma Bell, had been steadfastly ignoring everything but her work. Now she stood and walked over to join us under the tarp. I’d worked with her on a few jumpers. She was pleasant but distant. Maybe it came from keeping company with the dead.
“Special Agent Parnell.” She stripped off her gloves and pushed back the hood on her mud-spattered Tyvek suit; her broad face was flushed despite the chill. “It would be nice to stop meeting like this.”
I resisted the obvious pun about a dead relationship and merely nodded.
“I’m ready to get the body out,” she said. “Then you can move the train and we’ll finish up.”
I looked at Stern. “All right with you?”
“I’m done for the moment.” She tapped the papers she’d handed me. “Tomorrow by five.” She spun on her boots and headed for the incline.
“You piss in her Wheaties this morning?” Bell asked me.
I watched Stern navigate the slick hillside. “I think she pisses in her own.”
Fifteen minutes later, the rain had slacked off to a soft drizzle. Emma Bell and her crew finished removing what they could of the body while the train was still in place. They took pieces of Samantha Davenport and placed them in a black body bag and carried them up the hill. Watching was too much like being back in Mortuary Affairs, and I found myself blinking up into the sky. To the west, the dark clouds thinned and streaks of blue glimmered in the gaps.
“Special Agent Parnell?”
I brought my gaze back to earth.
“We ready to break the train?” asked one of the conductors I’d spotted earlier.
“Let’s do it.”
The two men stepped through the gore and began the uncoupling process while I made sure everyone was clear of the tracks. When the men were done, they stepped back and one of the crew got on the walkie-talkie. I listened in while he informed the engineers at each end of the train that we were good to go.
A hum started as the coal cars quivered to life. The air in the brake hoses hissed and a sonorous clanking echoed as, far down the line, the locomotives on each end began moving. The slack disappeared and, with a groan that seemed to rise from the depths of the earth, the train broke apart.
I closed my eyes and pictured Samantha Davenport as she had looked on her driver’s license photo. The luminous dark hair falling behind her shoulders. The high curve of her brows. The knowing look in her eyes that spoke more of inborn wisdom than vast experience.
I pressed my hand to my heart and, in my mind, I made her whole. I gathered what the train had scattered and washed away the blood. I smoothed her hair, brought the life back to her eyes, and restored a pulse beneath her skin.
This habit of mine—morbid or life-affirming, I wasn’t sure which—had started in Iraq. The body of a young PFC had come in—Private First Class Hart. Hart had been at the epicenter of an explosion loosed by a suicide bomber. Among his belongings I’d found a photo of him with his girlfriend and taped it to the wall of the bunker where we worked. And then I couldn’t let it go—what he’d been, what he was now.
I opened my eyes. The rain stopped. Thunder rumbled in the distance as the storm washed past. Moments later, the sun came out, and steam rose from the damp ground. Far out in the meadow, a bird let loose a warbling song. The wind turned from violent to brisk, and everything sparkled, new and fresh.
I slogged back up the hill, ignoring Gresino’s eyes on me. Ignoring everyone. At the truck, I let Clyde out but kept him close. We stood on the hill together while Emma Bell and her crew returned to the tracks to finish their work.
We had a saying in Iraq. Embrace the suck. My beloved, Dougie, had used it every time the going got rough. Parnell, you’ve got to embrace the suck, he’d tell me with a wink. You gotta learn to be uncomfortable, and then you can conquer anything.
The last of the clouds scattered to reveal a bright blue sky. Yellow flowers nodded in the damp and bees reemerged, droning contentedly. But Clyde had eyes only for the body bag and the gore. He looked as unhappy as I felt. I rested a hand on his head.
“Embrace the suck, buddy,” I said. “You know the drill.”