Valknut: The Binding, page 4
He ran the flashlight along her body, half-expecting her to sprout wings or disappear, but she just lay there, snoring lightly. The scrapes and bruises on her arms and face from boarding the train were gone as well. Blood stained the edges of a tear in the knee of her jeans. That injury had been particularly raw. He scooted closer and directed the light at it.
Smooth, fair skin. Not even a scar.
That just wasn’t right. He had seen a lot of strange things on the rails, but nothing came close to this. An eerie, vulnerable feeling came over him, as if the shadows of the nearly empty boxcar suddenly held an extra pair of eyes that watched him when the flashlight pointed the other way. Fighting panic, he swung the light around again, but there was nothing.
“Jeez,” he muttered. Next, he’d start spinning in circles trying to shine the light everywhere at once. He snorted at the thought.
Still, the blood on his hands had come from somewhere.
He directed the light on Lennie again, half-hoping, half-dreading it would wake her up. She stirred and muttered something about a squirrel, but continued sleeping. He examined her for some oddity, some hint to explain what had just happened. There was something different about her. He had sensed it from the moment she had boarded the train.
Slender, almost boyish, she wasn’t beautiful. At least, not by the usual standards. Her features, half-hidden under a tangle of gold-brown hair, were soft and rounded with a sharp little chin. She looked much younger than he had first guessed, but the two deep, vertical lines between her eyebrows made her look angry, even in her sleep.
That was it, he realized. The difference. He had never felt that kind of intensity from anyone before. Except maybe from himself. He had felt it even before she had started talking. That couldn’t explain why her wounds closed up as if they had never happened, but the anger did give her another kind of power. A pissed-off pit bull kind of power. Enough to get her into trouble, but not enough to get her out of it again.
He understood that sort of power. It had nearly gotten him killed, more than once. Somehow, he had to convince her to go home and stay there before some gangbanger found her. Or worse, the serial killer. But he knew she wouldn’t listen to him any more than Austin had. He clicked off the flashlight and left her blanketed in the dark, but he could still see her face, fair skin damp from nightmares, her delicate, pink lips parted in sleep.
If the serial killer took her, those lips would be cut and crusted over with blood, her face forever twisted by terror.
He could see it as clearly as if it had already happen. That was how his brother’s face had looked, between the zippered sides of a body bag. He shuddered at the memory. The sight had nearly unhinged him for good. But then he had met Detective Harcourt Briggeman and everything had changed.
He had still been in shock when a police officer had taken him from the morgue to the police station. No one had answered his questions beyond the obvious. They wouldn’t even tell him if there was a suspect.
He was taken to a room containing a table and two chairs. A box of tissues sat in the middle of the table, along with a pitcher of water and some Styrofoam cups. The room was otherwise devoid of furnishings or decoration.
A broad-shouldered man in his early thirties sat in one of the chairs. His denim shirt was grease-stained and coming untucked from his jeans. Mud flaked from scuffed work boots. He slouched, elbows on the table, his head propped up in his hands, one long leg stretching lazily to the side. He might have been asleep but for the nervous jiggle in the other leg.
The officer escorting Doug strode into the room, leaving Doug in the doorway. “Hey, Briggs.” He dropped a folder on the table. “The report’s in there, along with duplicates of the pictures, like you asked.”
Briggs opened one red-rimmed eye, then the other, and dragged himself upright. “Thanks, Sam. I’ve been up all night with this case. Again. What a goddamn mess, eh?” He rubbed his face, making waves in the worry lines that creased his forehead.
“Nasty business, and the hell of it is, it’ll take a miracle to—”
Briggs spotted Doug in the doorway. “Captain Harding! I didn’t see you there.” He shot Sam an annoyed glance and stood up from the table. “You are Captain Harding, right?”
When Doug nodded, Briggs thrust out a hand and said, “I’m Detective Briggeman with FRC Railroad.”
Briggs’s hand was as dirty as the rest of him, with broken, black-rimmed nails. Doug accepted it, saying, “This isn’t Fort Bragg. Just call me Doug.” The handshake was brief but firm. “FRC Railroad—you’re the one who called my C.O. Can you tell me what happened?”
Briggs pulled the other chair out from the table and motioned Doug to sit down. “We’ll get to that. First, can you tell me what Austin was doing on that train?”
Doug stared down at his hands and rubbed absently at a dark smudge left by Briggs’s handshake. “I got promoted. Just last week. There was a party Friday.” He rubbed harder, but the stain only smeared. “Austin never misses a party. He cut two days of classes to get there on time. Hopped trains and hitchhiked all the way from Minneapolis to North Carolina in two days. He tapped the first keg himself.
“I told him not to come, but he did anyway. To surprise me, he said.” Doug smiled bitterly, remembering Austin’s triumphant grin when Doug answered the door. Guests were due to arrive any moment, and Austin was all greasy hair and diesel fumes. Doug had made him take a shower.
“He left the next morning, maybe ten o’clock. He was still drunk when he got on that train.” Austin never would have forgotten his jean jacket, otherwise. The idiot was probably half frozen by the time he...
“That stupid sonofabitch. I told him I’d buy him a bus ticket, even a plane ticket, but he wouldn’t let me. He said he hated that recycled air, that it contained more germs than oxygen.” He remembered Austin laughing at his arguments, calling him Dad. Doug’s voice broke. “Damn kid said he didn’t want to get sick.”
He could still see the train pulling out of the yard and Austin’s arm emerging from the grainer’s cubbyhole to wave goodbye. “I should have dragged him onto that bus.”
Lost in those final moments, Doug hardly noticed when Briggs pushed back from the table and walked Sam to the door. Their voices murmured for a moment and the door closed. Doug looked up and realized he and Briggs were alone in the room.
“I sent Sam to check train schedules. It should take him a few minutes,” Briggs said. “Before we continue, you want some coffee?”
“No. Thanks. Look, let’s just get on with this.” Restless, Doug was hardly able to stay in the chair. It was time to do something.
Briggs sighed and returned to his seat. “So, you’re stationed at Fort Bragg under Colonel Norton, right?”
“Can we just skip the formalities? I’ve been getting the run around all morning and I’ve about had it. Now, either you can start giving me some answers—or I’m gonna start getting noisy.”
Briggs picked up the file folder and tapped it on the table, straightening the pages within. He went on as if Doug hadn’t said anything. “My father served with Colonel Norton years ago. Norton is like an uncle to me. In fact, he just gave me a call this morning.” He looked at Doug across the top of the folder. “He spoke very highly of you and suggested you might be able to help us. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you much without risking compromising our investigation.”
A hollow ache filled Doug’s stomach. They weren’t going to tell him a thing. “Come on, that’s a load of crap. This is my brother we’re talking about. My only family. I was supposed to take care of him. What a great job I did of that.” His voice cracked and he swallowed hard before continuing. “And now his killer is running around loose out there. You can’t expect me to crawl back to Fort Bragg like a good boy and wait for answers.”
Briggs hesitated. He pursed his lips and looked as if he wanted to tell Doug something. Then he sighed and said, “I’m sorry. I wish I could give you the details. I could use any help you might be able to give. But all I can tell you is that a serial killer got him. He was tied up, knifed, and left to die sometime before he got to Topeka.” He shook his head grimly. “That’s a lot of territory to cover, even with the help of the local P.D. and the FBI.”
“Dammit, you gotta give me more than that. I got that much from the morning newspaper.”
Briggs gave Doug a speculative look and seemed to come to a decision. He placed the folder at the center of the table. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like that cup of coffee?”
“What? Damn it, no. I don’t drink the stuff.”
Briggs leaned closer, looking at him intently. “Now would be a good time to start.”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting. Doug let his gaze drop to the file folder between them. Coffee suddenly seemed like a good idea. He drew a deep breath. “Uh, yes, thanks. Cream and sugar, though.”
Briggs gave him a grim little smile. “I think the crud in the pot is a bit old. I’ll brew some fresh. Be back in say...fifteen minutes?”
As soon as the door closed, Doug reached for the file folder.
Inside, a dozen photographs of the crime scene told him a story that he could never have learned from a visit to the morgue. Image after image fired into his brain. Austin had been cocooned in white string. Yards of the stuff pinned his arms and legs to his body in a fetal position. His eyes, frozen wide with terror, stared from a mask of blood. Out of his gaping mouth protruded the black handle of a knife.
His stomach churned. How could that be his brother? He shoved the pictures away and launched to his feet, knocking his chair over with a crash. He stared at the chair wildly, wanting to pick it up and smash it against the wall, to smash everything in sight. But one thought stopped him.
Someone had done this to Austin.
The idea hit him like ice water. His jumbled up mind fixed on that one thought. Someone had done this to Austin.
With deliberate care, he righted the chair, sat down, and pulled the pictures close. One by one, he paged through them again, slowly this time, memorizing every injury, every clot of blood, every fear-twisted muscle locked in eternal paralysis. When he was finished, he stacked the pictures with precise, controlled movements. Then he began to read.
Ten minutes later, he shuffled the pages neatly into place, closed the folder, and returned it to the center of the table. There were no suspects. The police had found nothing but a collection of useless facts and no leads. The only thing Doug had learned with certainty was that, even with the help of every police department in his territory, Briggs couldn’t track a killer who could be hundreds of miles from a crime scene in a matter of hours. By the time Briggs returned to the interview room, steaming coffee in hand, Doug knew with cold certainty what he must do.
The next day, he hopped his first train. That night was the first of many spent in a hobo jungle. His forty days of leave flew by and he resigned his commission. His disguise became a way of life as he joined the hobo community. And after nearly a year, he was no closer to finding the killer.
Meanwhile, rumors of new murders reached him through railroad gossip. And they seemed to be growing more frequent.
He looked down at Lennie, now curled in sleep and shivering against the night’s chill. Her naiveté was likely to get her wrapped in a cocoon, a knife ventilating her palate. He couldn’t let that happen. He took off his brother’s jacket and laid it over her, then settled next to his pack for a long sleepless night.
A moment later, a raven burst from a hidden perch overhead and flew out the open door.
Chapter 3
September 1893
Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming
Walter “Red” Galloway poured a charge of mica powder into a round hole in a granite boulder, lit the fuse, and ran like hell for the shelter of a rock outcropping. He barely had time to throw himself down next to his partner, Angus Cook, before the charge blew. The blast shook the mountain. Fragments of granite ricocheted like bullets off the surrounding rubble and trees. Pebbles and sand showered down on the two men, and a rock the size of a boot dropped between Angus’s feet. Angus jerked his legs back and huddled tighter against the outcropping.
“Damn, Red,” he said, eyes popping. “Yer makin’ them fuses shorter’n my mornin’ shit! One of these days it’ll be yer head bouncin’ at my feet, and I’ll be scrapin’ the rest of ya off a rock.”
Stuck laying track in the wilderness, with no women and not enough whiskey, Red had been amusing himself by cutting fuses shorter and shorter just for the fun of seeing that look on Angus’s face. But that last one was a bit close even for him. Not that he would admit it. He took off his hat and casually shook the granite flakes from it. “And I s’pose you’d rather be back in Homestead, rioting at the steel mill again and havin’ your head broke open by the Pinkertons.”
Angus’s hairy, sunburned face knotted up in chagrin. “You lousy piker! I hadn’t thought of those dirty finks in months. If it weren’t fer them, I’d be workin’ reg’lar hours, makin’ love to Maggie every night — “
“And raisin’ a handful of brats, probably none of ’em your own. Any woman that would have you couldn’t be too particular.”
Angus scowled and cracked his knuckles. He could do it by tensing his fingers and curling them into a fist one at a time. It was a favorite trick of his, and it gave Red the willies. Angus grinned when Red winced. “As if any woman’d let you in her bed, ya scraggly, ol’ flea-bitten drifter.”
“I am what I am. And same for you.” Red plucked a blade of grass and nibbled at the white end. “You wouldn’t have stayed with Maggie more’n another week before a train’d choo choo into town, spoutin’ steam, and you’d follow its whistle like a dog.”
Angus scowled and picked at a callus on his thumb. He was a big man, younger than Red. Where Red was rangy, sun-baked, and topped with fading red hair, Angus was tall, broad-shouldered, and covered with dark, wiry hair. Red liked to tease him, saying that if it weren’t for his sun-burned nose, someone might take him for a bear and shoot him. Red liked to tease Angus about everything, but this time he feared he had gone too far. Angus loved trains, but he loved his woman more. Between the Pinkertons and the Depression, he couldn’t support her or the child in her belly. Not if he stayed in Homestead. So he found work where he could and sent his paycheck home.
Red opened his mouth to apologize, but heard the crunch of heavy boots on scree. He scrambled to his feet and saw the other workers already laboring to clear the debris from the blast. A burly, red-faced man was coming toward them.
“Heads up, now,” Red said. “Here comes the Bossman.”
The look on the straw boss’s face made Red wish he had stayed hidden behind the outcropping. The yelling started when the straw boss was still twenty yards away. He was wild-eyed and raving by the time he stood before Red.
“What kind of lunatic are you?” Spit flew and his thick arms flapped like the wings of a disturbed chicken. “If you get your lice-ridden carcass blown to smithereens, then I’ve got to use Anderson over there—” he jerked a thumb at a slow, wall-eyed man working nearby, “—to set the charges, and he’s likely to bring the whole mountain down. From now on, your fuses better be regulation length, or I’ll tan your hide and wear you as boots. You got that?”
Without stopping for air, he turned on Angus. “Why are you sitting on that fat ass of yours? Company says the road in this pass has got to be ready by 1894. That leaves us less than four months. If that track isn’t down before snow flies, I’ll send you out in your long johns with nothing but a garden spade to keep the pass clear.”
Red and Angus fidgeted, waiting for him to wind down.
“Now get your flatulent asses into that gap and drive some steel,” the Bossman finished. “If you set the charge right, you’ll take out that knuckle of rock and leave a nice, solid shelf wide enough to run track on.”
Red grabbed his kit and hurried to the protrusion of rock before the Bossman could remember something he’d forgotten to say. Angus followed, carrying a hammer and a steel rod.
“Damn, Red. I know layin’ track in this here butt-crack of the Big Horns ain’t so great, but it keeps the food comin’ and keeps us outta them workhouses.” Angus paused while Red figured where to set the charge. Red chalked an X on the stone and set one end of the steel rod on the mark. Angus raised his sledge hammer and added, “Just lay off the jokes fer a bit, okay?”
“Sure, Angus.” Red flinched when the heavy iron struck the rod. “I never argue with the man swingin’ the hammer.”
When the hole was deep enough, Angus pulled the rod and ran for shelter behind a ridge. Red joined him after setting the charge, this time using regulation fuse.
The echoes from the blast seemed to go on forever. They could hear the Bossman yelling before the last rumble died away. Red and Angus exchanged uneasy glances as a cloud of dust settled over them. Far more dust than warranted from such a small charge. Puzzled, Red pulled his bandana over his mouth and nose and peered around the ridge. At first, he couldn’t see anything. Slowly the air cleared. Instead of a smooth, wide shelf, he saw a deep pile of rubble.
“One little knuckle of rock!” the Bossman yelled, stomping toward them. Red wondered if the man would pass out from all the blood rushing to his face. “What in the hell were you thinking? All I asked was that you take out one stupid chunk of rock and you bury the ledge in five feet of scree. Get your asses over there. You’re going to clear out that rubble if it takes you the rest of today and all night besides.”
He turned and started shouting at the other workers. “The rest of you, get those ties out of the wagons. The FRC isn’t paying you to lie about!”
Angus groaned and hefted his hammer. “My pa always said trains’d get me into trouble some day. Son, he’d say, it ain’t right to get so darned worked up over a machine. But did I listen to Pa?” Hammer on his shoulder, he rubbed his lower back and grimaced. “No, sir! I got a job with the Company, didn’t I? Gandydancin’ and whatnot, just to be near ’em. And you know somethin’? Pa was wrong. Trains ain’t just gonna get me in trouble—more’n likely they’re gonna kill me.” Angus shook his head and trudged off toward the debris.
