February Fever (19 page)

Forty-Four

Doghn was sitting in
the fore-facing chair, his stolen booty moved to the top bunk. He was wearing a white suit, reminding me of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel. I consciously slowed my breath. “Figured what out?”

“That you'd need me if you wanted to know what's really going on. So, what do you want to know?”

He was right about me coming to him for answers, though I hadn't been aware of it until I stood facing him. “What do you know about Sofia Ramos?”

He twisted the tip of his left mustache. “What do you
want
to know about her?”

I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I was standing in front of him in two short strides. I clamped his throat in my right hand and leaned in close, smelling the not-unpleasant odor of mustache wax. “Everything.”

In a move I recognized from tae kwon do, he reached around the top of my hand, grabbed the soft spot between my thumb and
forefinger, and twisted until I was on my knees from the sharp
pain. I didn't make a noise, and I also didn't fight back, though one well-placed elbow drop would splash his nuts like windshield bugs across the chair. This was a pissing contest, though, and a certain kind of person will give you what you want if you let them feel like the winner. I suspected Doghn was that kind of guy.

“Like the fact that Sofia Ramos was a housekeeper from Brooklyn who told her employers she needed a week off to visit a sick aunt in Portland?” He twisted my hand a hair more, sending bolts of silver pain down my arm. I hoped I wasn't underestimating the turd.

“Ouch,” I said. “And her husband?”

“I don't know.”

He was smiling, and he was lying. I began to prime my elbow. “You don't know anything about her husband?”

“Nothing.” His smile grew wider, tipping his mustache up in a Cheshire Cat grin. “Except that she didn't have a husband. Or children.” He twisted again. I couldn't hide the yelp this time.

I blinked away the pain. So who was the man with her? And how did she know Aimee? Thoughts of white slavery and kidnapping raced through my head. “That's not a whole lot of information,” I said, hoping to goad him into revealing more. Unfortunately, my words had the opposite effect. Anger fell like a curtain across his face, and he began to twist my wrist with enough force to break it.

I was ready for it, though, and I turned with his force, sliding underneath my own hand, around, and up, putting me in the dominant position. My quick movement startled him, and he stood, bumping his head on the upper bunk. A knife clattered to the ground.

A vision of Terry standing in the snow, blood staining the white like a lurid raspberry sauce, clouded my eyes. I stepped backward. “Why do you have a knife?”

“It's for my room cheese.”

Room cheese?
If there was a grosser term, I had yet to hear it. I felt toward the door handle, unwilling to turn my back to him.

“You don't believe me?” He stooped to pick up the knife and slide it back into his suit coat. “How's about this? It's dangerous times, and a man has to protect himself.”

How's about that, indeed. Doghn was one creepy monkey. I
stepped into the hall, glancing around, ominous shadows everywhere. When I saw no movement, I slid Doghn's door shut, my last view of him looking half sad, half conniving.

I couldn't race back to my cabin fast enough. I massaged my wrist as I speed-walked, coming up with a street plan as I went. A street plan is one that seems like a good idea in the moment, but that might not seem so hot when seen from above, so it's best enacted in a hurry. My street plan: I would find Aimee. I would search this train from back to front, starting at the weird storage bins in the car in front of the caboose. I would not stop until I located her, and I would not let her out of my sight until we were in Coeur d'Alene and I handed her over to the police. If staff tried to slow my search down, I'd tell them the conductor had given me the command. If they found the conductor and he called me out as a liar, I'd … come up with a different plan.

When I reached our cabin to let Mrs. Berns know what was up, she wasn't there. I peeked out the window. She and Ms. Wrenshall were still outside, smoking any number of cigarette-shaped objects. I had my hand poised to tap on the glass when my walkie-talkie crackled.

“Yeah.”

“10-40, good Mira, this is Smoky the Jed Bear. Are you a 10-40 on your end?”

“I'm busy. What do you need?”

Some more crackling, then Jed's voice came out as a loud whisper. “It's me. Jed.”

“Got it. What's up?”

“You told me to keep my ear to the ground. I have, and word on the train is that a porter has disappeared. All the other porters are talking about it. They're pretty mad.”

“Which one?” I asked. But of course I already knew the answer.

Forty-Five

Jed confirmed that Reed
hadn't been seen since breakfast time. This presented a major problem to the rest of the staff, who were already seriously overworked trying to prepare and deliver food to every car. It was an issue for me because I had a strong suspicious that Reed was a murderer.

And so I did what anyone would do in my place: I took advantage of his absence to finally search his bunk. Accepting a note the comically serious-faced Jed slid into my hand as I passed his seat in Car 8, I made my way to the front of the train. Walking through the other train cars was like entering a honky-tonk war zone. People were arguing or laughing too loud throughout the train. There was a fistfight brewing in the viewing car between a guy who thought he had more rights than another guy to a candy bar discovered on the floor. And if they were in the viewing car, that meant I wasn't the only one violating curfew.

The conductor had lost control of his train.

I continued toward the staff sleeping car, my shoulders tight, my wrist aching from where Doghn had twisted it. If I acted like I had a purpose, I was less likely to be stopped, but I didn't like the lawless atmosphere around me. If we didn't get moving soon, more people were going to get hurt.

I was stopped at the dining car by a female porter with a whiskey-colored drink in her hand.

“Where you going?” she asked.

The smell of liquor was strong. I pointed over her shoulder. “The conductor asked for me. You okay?”

“Yeah, super. Great. Good.” She swayed. “You know we don't get paid overtime if the train's late, right?”

I didn't. And if that was true, that meant that the passengers were not the only potential mutineers. “So you're drinking the difference?”

She clinked her glass against an imaginary one. “Damn straight. And you can tell Mr. Christmas I said so.”

She lurched to the side as if the train was in motion. I slipped past her, realizing I still held Jed's note. I shoved it into my back pocket. Two porters were talking in Staff Car 3, but I ignored them, torpedoing straight toward Reed's bunk. I yanked open the door, half-expecting to find him inside. He wasn't. I hoisted myself up and crawled in headfirst, feeling exposed until I was fully inside the metal cage. The tiny cabin smelled neutral verging on clean, like it had been recently bleached. It was unsettling.

I slid open one of three cupboards nearest to me. It held clothes. I pulled them out and unfolded them. They concealed nothing. The second cupboard was empty, which sent a trill of alarm through me. Who has three tiny cupboards in which to store their belongings and doesn't use them all? When I discovered that the third cupboard was also empty, I felt genuinely sick. Something was way wrong here. It took every ounce of self-control not to shoot out of that metal tube like a cannonball, but as long as I had access, I had to look everywhere. Light-headed, I thrust my arm under the mattress as best I could while still lying on it.

My hand slid across the cool metal of the gun first.

Forty-Six

I yanked it out
and dropped it on the mattress like it was hot. It was an ugly snub-nosed thing, lying there like a sleeping viper. Leaning forward, I searched some more, blindly moving my arm underneath myself. I had nearly given up when I felt the slip of paper. I almost moved past it, thinking it was a mattress tag, but it snagged on my finger. I gently pulled it out. It was a newspaper clipping. The article was dated February 8, which was six days ago.

Woman Scheduled to Testify
Against Mob Boss Carlo Danza Disappears

Dana Alvarez, 27, former girlfriend to accused drug runner and arms dealer Carlo Danza, had initially agreed to testify against Mr. Danza, who is currently awaiting trial on 12 counts of racketeering and four counts of murder. According to the FBI, Ms. Alvarez did not appear for her February 7 deposition and her current location is unknown.

The son of Italian and Irish immigrants, Mr. Danza is known on the streets as the Gunner, having made a name for himself as a ruthless dealer in illegal weapons and heroin as well as money laundering. He is believed to be the leader of an organization called the West Side Donnys. He was untouchable until recently, when an FBI sting uncovered enough evidence to arrest him. Their initial case relied heavily on testimony from Ms. Alvarez. Ms. Alvarez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her occupation is unknown.

Mr. Danza is believed to be the father of Ms. Alvarez's daughter, though paternity has not been established.

Below the article was a black-and-white photograph nearly illegible from paper creases. It featured a woman, her face almost obscured by hair, a girl of around five years old in her arms, the girl's back to the camera. Standing next to her was a short, swarthy man in a suit coat, his expression grim. His face was the clearest of the three, his eyes dark and angry. They were identified in the photo as Dana Alvarez and daughter, and Carlo Danza.

I knew the woman as Sofia Ramos, murdered next-door passenger and mother to Aimee (if that was even the girl's name).

My head was spinning. Sofia-Dana was on the run from the mob, fleeing west with her daughter. That explained her nervousness. It did not explain the man, Emilio, who was traveling with them, who looked nothing like Carlo Danza. Was he her lover? Actually, I should use past tense, as Dana was no longer with us. Carlo sounded like a monster. All that mattered was that I find Aimee before the bad guys did. She clearly understood the danger she was in, even if I had not.

Trust no one.

I was thinking that was damn good advice. I glanced again at the newspaper clipping and committed the meager information to memory before folding it back up as I'd found it. I snuck the article and the gun approximately back where I'd discovered them, wondering at the ball of lies Doghn had fed me. He'd said Sofia Ramos didn't have a daughter. In fact she did, along with a nice chunky alias. The thing is, I'd been sure Doghn had told me the truth. Sure, he had me twisted like a pretzel when he'd said it, but the truth has a timbre, and I thought I'd heard it. Either I'd been wrong, or someone had given Doghn bad info.

It didn't matter. The mob was obviously still after Aimee, judging by the attack on Terry. That meant the little girl knew something, or Carlo Danza wanted her back. I thought of his fierce black eyes in the photograph and shuddered. I would find that girl first. I'd let Noel get stolen; I wouldn't make the same mistake with Aimee. I needed to get to her before Reed did. If he wasn't the chief executioner, he was helping somebody.

Why, I didn't yet know.

That thought was firmly in my head as I scooted out of the bunk, feet first. It, and every other thought I'd ever entertained, fled as I cold hard hand clamped down on my ankle like Death's paw.

Forty-Seven

“Chad!” I punched him
in the arm, feeling a cold-hot wash of fear and relief. “Why'd you grab me like that?”

He rubbed his shoulder, his expression pained. “I was trying to help you.”

I closed Reed's door. “Help me?”

“Yeah.” He pointed at the bunk. “Help you get down.”

I glanced up and down the aisle. “What're you even doing here?”

He broke into a smile. “I saw you go past. Didn't you see me? Back in my sleeper car?”

I most definitely hadn't, but I'd been mission-focused. “Sorry.”

“No worries. I've been trying to catch up with you, but I kept getting stopped. Do you know there's people fighting over a bag of peanuts in Car Seven like it's their spare kidney? Jeez, some people buckle under stress. You know?”

I did. “So what'd you want?”

He leaned against the wall, or at least meant to, but misjudged the space and missed it. He fell forward, catching himself at the last minute. The guy was suave like velvet pants were cool. I noticed that he'd styled his hair differently, slicking it back a lot like Doghn did with his own hair. And was that the spidery hint of a new mustache on his upper lip?

“You know,” he said, not acknowledging his goof, “just wanted to see how you're getting on.”

Oh brother. I did not have time for this. “I'm fine. I better get back to my room. Thanks for your concern.”

His face fell. “All right. Well, if you want to, you know, hang later, you know where to find me.”

“Sure.” Weirdo. What sort of guy mistakes an accidental crotch-diving expedition as an invitation? “Catch you later.”

I didn't wait for his answer. Using my best waitressing skills, I threaded the needle all the way through the train, dodging a fist fight here, an argument over who was looking at whom wrong there, piles of empty containers and wrappers everywhere. The train was taking on a distinct smell. Somewhere between homeless man and old Chinese food. It was not pleasant. The steady food and liquor—plus the pot if you were lucky enough to visit Jed's car—was mellowing the mood, at least for now. If the train moved in the next few hours, which was somewhat possible, we all might still make it out of here.

In Roomette Car 10, someone screamed, and I jumped. I turned to see that it was just a small boy getting a time-out. I thought I caught a glimpse of Chad behind me, on the other end of the raucous crowds, but what did it matter? He was just a kid looking for a connection that wasn't there. I made it to Car 11 unaccosted. Our cabin was empty. Ms. Wrenshall was not next door, and I didn't see either her or Mrs. Berns outside the window. It seemed no one was sticking to the lockdown. That would make my investigation both easier, because I could not be sent back to my cabin, and harder, because everyone would be in my way.

I left a note for Mrs. Berns and was about to travel to the rearmost car when I thought of one really good hiding place on this train: Aimee's room. It had police tape over the door. Presumably, no one was supposed to go in or out until we reached our destination. I ducked into my room for a pair of knit gloves and donned them, being careful of my tender wrist. I'd do my best not to sully the crime scene.

Fingers covered, I opened the door and slid under the police tape. The space was exactly as it had been when I'd peeked in right after the body was taken out, but then again, it had been this clean even when it had been occupied. The curtains were closed, so I stood still, allowing my eyes to adjust. When they did, I dropped on hands and knees, peeking under the bed and in cracks and crevices. Nothing. I worked up one level, examining under the mattress and on shelves. Still nothing. It was while straining to reach the back of the closet shelf that I felt it—something with some give, something soft.

I pulled it out.

It was Mr. Bunny, his fur patchy, his ear bent, one eye loose. He looked sad and well-loved. My heart tightened as I thought of Aimee hiding somewhere on this train without him. The hot tears began to slide down my cheek. I was wiping them away with the back of my hand when the door slid open.