Blood on the Tracks Read Online Free Page B

man.” A tic started in his jaw and his eyes went hollow. Could be murder cops get PTSD, too.
    We put on masks and entered the room. Air coming in through the half-open window chilled my face.
    “Left open to hide the odor?” I asked.
    “Might buy the killer a day or two. But someone phoned it in.”
    “Who?”
    “Anonymous call. A kid, sounded like. Teenager, maybe.”
    I bent down and looked under the bed.
    “Your guys look under here?”
    “Yeah. A couple of beads, right? They’ll bag ’em when we’re done.”
    I pulled the Maglite from my duty belt and played the beam beneath the bed. A cluster of dust bunnies shivered in the far corner. Three carved wooden beads had rolled against the baseboard, their colors bright. “Hobo beads. In case we weren’t sure about Elise’s connections. Your crime scene guys reach under the bed?”
    “Only photos so far. Why?”
    “The dust has been disturbed. Maybe the necklace broke in a struggle, and the killer tried to collect the beads and got scared off.” I straightened, returned the flashlight to my belt. “You find any other beads?”
    “One. Against the wall there.”
    He waited while I snapped my own pictures. I didn’t ask permission, and he didn’t ask what I was doing.
    “Anything else you want me to look at?” I said. “I need to call Nik.”
    “That’s it. Thanks, Parnell. Appreciate it.”
    Following Cohen out of the room, I stopped and made myself turn back. Elise had been a beautiful woman, with bright-blond hair and porcelain skin. The sweetest smile this side of the Mississippi, Nik always said.
    Automatically, because cleaning up the dead had been my job for fourteen months, I made her beautiful once more. In my mind, I closed her wounds, washed away her blood. I shampooed her hair and combed it, arranged her slashed hands upon her breast. Then I did what no mortician could. I rebuilt her shattered face and restored the flush to her cheeks, the pulse to her throat. I made her smile.
    In my mind, I made her whole.
    “I’ll hold you here,” I whispered, touching my hand to my heart. It was what I said to all the dead.
    Maybe that was why they crowded me so.

C HAPTER 3
    The United States rail system has 140,000 miles of track. About half of these tracks are un-signaled, meaning conductors operate using written instructions and their watches. Operating a train in this so-called dark territory means driving blind with no way to detect other trains, misaligned switches, broken rails, or runaway rail cars. Any one of which might kill you.
    —Sydney Parnell, ANTH 2800, The Nature of Language
    Back in my vehicle, I let Clyde into the front seat and watched as the medical examiner backed her van into the driveway. A small crowd of neighbors had gathered. It was a mixed crowd—mostly elderly couples and very young families, with a handful of middle-aged yuppies whose money had been gentrifying some of the nearby neighborhoods. I wondered if this murder would drive them away, send them reeling back to the suburbs or the safety of their downtown high-rises.
    I called my captain and told him about Elise Hensley’s death, that it had been ugly, and that I had been requested at the scene because of the hobo code.
    “The victim was Nik’s niece,” I said, finishing.
    “Goddamn.” The meat of his fist connected with something. His desk, or maybe a wall. “I’ll go with you to break the news to Nik.”
    Deputy Chief John Mauer—we called him Captain—came to Denver from Chicago. A decent man and a good chief. But we hadn’t been stitched together at the hip like a lot of the railroad families, and Nik was private. The last thing he’d want was for Mauer to witness the first raw slap of his grief.
    “It’s probably better if I go by myself, sir.”
    “Don’t need a Chicago boy tagging along. Right. Give Lasko my sympathies. Tell him anything he needs, I’m here. I’ll cover your shift and let the rest of the agents know. Fuck, this is the