February Fever (17 page)

Thirty-Eight

When we reached Car
3, the employee car, I made an excuse about needing to run back to the dining car for some water. It was too late anyway to intercept the conductor and come up with an excuse for why I'd been in Doghn's room. Given that, I might as well jump fully into the investigation. The sooner the murder was solved and Aimee was found, the sooner I could be done with Doghn. And I very much wanted to be done with Doghn.

I also wanted to search Reed's bunk. Terry was a pot stealer at best, but more likely an undercover cop, specifically DEA. Doghn was a weird little hoarder and maybe a murderer. But what was Reed, besides in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with frequency? I wanted to like the guy. He was funny and helpful and smart. He had also been in the hallway the night Sofia Ramos was murdered and Aimee and her dad disappeared, and he had something weird going on with Sylvester. He definitely had the access to murder someone on a train. I wanted to find out if he also had a motive.

Doghn continued through the staff car and toward the conductor's office. I pretended to turn back toward the dining car but flipped back around as soon as I heard the door close behind me. If anyone was in employee Car 3, they were asleep or having some serious quiet time. It was impossible to tell which tubes were empty, however, as the door to every honeycomb bunk was closed. I stepped to Reed's bunk. It was chest level, second from the bottom, fourth from the left.
Reed Ryan
read the slip of paper, with a New York address scribbled under the name.

I didn't knock. If he wasn't in there, I might wake up someone who was sleeping. If he was in there, I was screwed either way. The door opened out, which surprised me. It was not any bigger than a cookie sheet, and for a chilling moment, I became aware how much these cubbies resembled body drawers in a morgue. It was an efficient use of space, whether the body was alive or dead, but it was still creepy as all get out.

I peeked in, a cool wash of relief accompanying the realization that it was empty. The second thing I noticed was how neat the bunk was. An ambient light bathed everything in a green glow. The bed was made to military standard. There was a shelf running the length of each side of it, but both were empty. The three cupboards lining the right side were closed. This meant I'd need to crawl in to see what they contained.

Looking around first, I hoisted my foot onto the handle of the bunk below, cleverly designed for exactly that purpose. I was about to lift myself off the ground when the door to my left slid open and Reed walked in. Of course. I had the luck of the Irish when it came into breaking into people's stuff.

Reed was a cool cucumber. Rather than speak, he stopped, watching me. His face was expressionless. Mine felt very hand-in-the-cookie jar. I tried to unscrew that expression and replace it with “relaxed,” but it snapped back to “guilty” every time.

“There you are,” I said. Remember: when in doubt, state the obvious. “I was looking for you.”

He continued his silence, his brown eyes steady. His calmness was unnerving.

“I was wondering when the train was going to move again.”

He crossed his arms. “Tomorrow. For sure.”

I was impressed by his self-control. He wasn't wasting any words asking me why I was invading his privacy. I closed the door to his bunk, grateful he hadn't caught me bumper-end out like Pooh in the hunny jar.

“Excellent.” I squared up to face him. I wanted him to stop looking at me like that, as if he'd just made an important and unpleasant discovery about me. “If that's true, I think you all should open up the stores rather than have them wait for scheduled times. Get people well-fed and happy. There's some mutiny brewing in those cars.”

I nodded toward the other end of the train, but he didn't follow my gaze. Rather, he inspected me from foot to head, as if seeing me for the first time. It was a clinical stare, the examination of a surgeon wondering what body part to slice into first. My stomach was splashed with sour, and it suddenly felt very, very urgent that I find Aimee. If she was on this train, and this train was about to move, she was in extreme danger. The air was thick with bad things afoot.

“Did you hear me?” I puffed myself up, feeling my blood begin to boil. All extreme emotions, even fear, lead to anger for me. It's a good reaction in the wild, less useful when dealing with humans. “People are getting upset out there. A passenger in the viewing car broke into the liquor. If the staff at least pretends you're on their side, you can hold off a riot until we move again.”

He nodded slowly. It didn't seem to be a reaction to my words. Rather, he had made up his mind about something. “We're on it. In fact, I was just coming to speak to the conductor for approval to set up a buffet in each car. Limited beverages, unlimited food.”

“Perfect. Good. Glad to hear it. And glad I found you.” It took all my willpower to turn, exposing my back to him, and march toward the conductor's office. As I strode forward, I heard a ticking sound, ever so gentle, completely relentless, counting down on Aimee's life.

Thirty-NIne

Terry was already in
the conductor's office when I arrived. I felt a flash of jealousy—what information had he gathered without me?—before remembering that we were all on the same team. Or, at least, most of us were. There was a possibility that the killer was an unknown on the train, a distinct possibility, but I was certain one of the four men currently in the conductor's office knew more than he was letting on.

Reed quickly received permission from the conductor to share all the wares with the passengers. James Christmas appeared even more tired than he had yesterday. His face was so gray it was almost green, and the lines around his mouth pointed downward. This certainly was the worst train trip of his life, if not the worst in the history of AmeriTrain. Two train-adjacent murders, one of them on board, and a full-on storm stop in the Rockies.

Valentine Train
would soon enter popular culture to mean the worst ever. As in, “Dude, I heard your dog died the same day your car broke down.”

“Yeah, I'm having a Valentine Train of a week.”

Actually, the term might come to describe my life. “Watch out for Mira James. She's got Valentine Train luck.” I found myself suddenly craving a Nut Goodie, my go-to soul soother. It's a Minnesota candy, and by appearances, was designed by a juvenile who thinks fart jokes are funny (they are). Basically, it's maple nougat sprinkled with peanuts and dipped in chocolate, shape be damned. I preferred them frozen, and I had a method for eating them. First, I'd nibble the chocolate and peanuts until I was at the nougaty part; then I'd chisel off chunks and suck on them, letting the chocolate turn warm and melt, revealing salty peanuts; and then finally, the nougat itself, which was as fresh and rich as homemade maple candy.

“Mira.”

I came to, awakening from my sugar fantasy to find all three men staring at me. I smoothed down my shirt, surreptitiously checking for any lady boners. Nope, I was good.

“Yes?”

Terry was watching me, looking more amused than annoyed. “We asked you if you wanted to sit in on today's interviews or have your, ahem, colleague sit in again.”

“You're still going to go through with them?” I asked, refocusing on the moment. “If the train is going to move soon, shouldn't we just wait until the next stop and let the police handle this?”

“I'm in touch with the Coeur d'Alene police,” Doghn said, twirling his mustache. “They will be waiting for us when we arrive. In the meanwhile, there is no harm in continuing the interview process. Who knows what we may find that could help them?”

Or what we could miss because we were trapped in the conductor's office while the murderer walked around free. Unless he was himself in this room right now. I suppressed a shudder. I still wanted to search more of the train, but I needed to get a better handle on Terry and Doghn first. Neither was who he appeared to be.

“Sure, I'll sit in,” I said. “But I have to check in with my assistants to let them know where I'm at.”

Terry pointed at my waist. “What about the walkie-talkie?”

Excellent question. I turned it on, filling the room with crackling. “Hello? Jed? Mrs. Berns?” No answer. I tried a couple more stations, and nothing. I couldn't blame either of them—I'd turned my own off—but still, it made me look pretty stupid.

“How about we meet back here in thirty,” Terry suggested. “I have an errand to run myself.”

That was either code for going to the bathroom, or he had some DEA business to attend to. Either way worked for me.

“I'm going to stay here,” Doghn said, staring pointedly at me. “I have a few questions for the conductor.”

Good luck with that.
Now that I knew this train would be moving soon, I didn't care if Doghn found out I'd been lying about the conductor and simply snooping in his room. Doll-stealing freak. Terry and I took off, parting ways in Car 5. If he was going to check on his luggage, he was in for a surprise, though I was confident he had no reason to suspect me of stealing back the pot.

I located Jed in Car 8, talking to his girl. They were both smelling a little ripe, but she smiled sweetly when she caught sight of me.

“Hey, Jed, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure.”

Jed followed me into the diaphragm separating Car 8 from 9. There was steady traffic in and out, much steadier than there had been when the train was moving. I wondered what the passengers were up to, and I asked Jed as much.

“It depends,” he said. “Car Five is where the drinkers go. They're more country music. If you want weed, you come to Car Eight,” he said proudly, “and we lean toward the blues. The sleeper cars are snooty—no offense—so most of us stay out of there. I heard there's a family car now, where people with kids are hanging out and coming up with games to pass the time, and they've turned the Love Car into the Art Projects car. I heard that they're going to start distributing food in all of them, too.”

It amazed me how quickly mini-societies set up in times of stress, focused around either protecting the family or partying. “Are you getting a sense that people are ticked off?”

“Little bit, but mostly, everyone's bored and wants to get moving.”

“Let me know if you hear anything different.” I pointed at his walkie-talkie. “It'd be great if you kept that on.”

“Sure thing.”

“And Jed?”

“Yeah?”

“You gotta hide your pot better. Terry got his hands on it. You might be right about him being a cop.”

Jed's eyes widened. “How'd you get it back from him?”

“Never you mind that.” I thought back to the train layout, when I'd first searched for Aimee. “Have you been to the second-to-last car on this train, the one right before the caboose?”

“Car Fifteen? Yeah,” he said, blushing. “That's where Eliza and I went for some privacy.”

“Perfect,” I said. “So you know where it is. There are also little cabinets lining the walls. That'd be a good place to stash your stash.”

Jed spontaneously gathered me up into a hug. He smelled like weed, patchouli, boy sweat, and friendship. I hugged him back.

“Hey, you know that secret I wanted to tell you about?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I've been meaning to ask you about it.”

He opened his mouth at the same time a scream ripped through the car. His movement and the sound were so perfectly timed as to be unsettling. The scream was incoherent at first, but as the fear raced down the aisle of the train like wildfire, it took on a clear message:

“Someone else has been killed!”

Forty

My pulse pounding through
my veins, I tried to push toward the original scream, but panic was clotting the aisles. People were rushing over themselves to escape. Was the murderer on a rampage? I tried to peek over the heads of the crowd pushing toward me, but I lost my footing and would have been trampled if not for Jed yanking me back up.

“Keep your walkie-talkie on!” It was all I had time to yell before I threw myself into the stream of terrified humans, flowing with them instead of against them. I let them carry me halfway through Car 9 away from the scream, until we reached the stairwell. I propelled myself down it. I fell five steps, bruising my hip, before I caught my footing. The people at the base of the stairs could sense the panic, but word of the new murder hadn't hit them yet.

And I certainly wasn't going to tell them.

I shoved toward the exit door and slid it open, falling into the icy outdoors. The chill of it sucked my breath away, and the snow came up to my thighs. It was still falling from the sky, big thick flakes that beat against my head like moths. My visibility was limited, maybe at ten feet, and the deep snow slowed me down, but stepping outside was the only way I could reach the car where the scream came from.

It wasn't that I wanted to come face to face with a murderer, mind you, but I couldn't in good conscience walk away. What if Aimee had resurfaced, and she was in danger? Or, what if the murderer was on a rage? My options were fight or flight, and on a train, there were only so many places to run to. Better to face this head on.

I plowed toward the head of the train, lifting my feet high to clear the snowbanks, which were shallower close to the train. The air felt above zero, but not by much. I wasn't wearing a coat, and while my boots were warm enough, they weren't tall. Snow leaked in around the cuff, running in icy rivers to my stockinged feet.

I tried to peek in the windows to see if the panic had travelled far enough toward the rear to allow me to re-enter the train, but the windows were too high. Despite this, I continued to try to see in as I trudged forward, heavy flakes melting into my collar, my fingers growing numb, the shouts from the inside of the train growing quieter the closer I drew to the viewing car, Car 7. My plan was to reenter the train there.

My breath ragged, I pushed forward, the snow so thick and me so intent on seeing inside the train that I was almost on top of the body before I saw it.

It was Terry.

He was clutching his throat, surrounded by a red exclamation point of blood against the pure white snow.