Parallel Lies (45 page)

Tyler recalled the sight of the derailed train outside of Terre Haute. To his knowledge Alvarez had never killed anyone in a derailment, but perhaps that was all about to change.

He collected the two men and explained their assignments, at which point one of them—Raoul, as per the name stitched into the coveralls—told him that security was a step ahead. “The guy just now got through inspecting the coupling.”

“What guy?” Tyler’s head was reeling.

“The
security
guy!” Raoul said, restating the obvious.

“Before or after the video started?” Tyler asked. O’Malley might have rallied his troops within seconds of the video starting.

“Before,” Raoul answered. Again stating it as if Tyler should have known. He said, “The video, it just started now.”

“Show me!” Tyler thundered. Had he guessed wrong about the crash test dummy? Could Alvarez have been disguised as a security guard? Wouldn’t O’Malley’s guys have caught that?

If the sabotage was now in place as the video claimed, and with the train already up to speed, there was nothing he could think of that could still be done. So then Goheen had to capitulate to whatever demands were made. But from what he knew of the man, Tyler did not see that happening.

Could he and Coopersmith somehow still prevent this from happening?

The silhouette on the video announced, “Mr. Goheen, I offered you many opportunities to reveal the truth of what happened at Genoa. You declined, putting everyone here at risk. And yes, at last, I even solicited your daughter—as repugnant as that may have been—and again you refused. You are undeserving to be called a father. It was a title I cherished. As you and your guests will now see, you failed in even this regard. You could have prevented all of this. I’m sure the press is eager to ask you some questions.”

Raoul indicated the small LED screen mounted to the bulkhead where a partially clothed woman transformed herself in a mirror. Gretchen Goheen turned and looked toward the camera and said, “I’ve never been asked this. Usually, it’s to add something more—a certain look, you know?”

A man, his back to the camera, slowly disrobed her, first removing her bra, then dropping to his knees and pulling down her underwear. The camera caught it all, missed nothing.

There was a discussion of payment.

“Your credit card was charged when I confirmed you were in the room,” a naked Gretchen Goheen said. The tape had been poorly edited. “Let’s not talk business.” Another edit, and the scene repeated, “Let’s not talk business.” Over and over, this naked woman said the same few words into the camera, a man kneeling in front of her, eye level with her crotch.

Alvarez’s silhouette reappeared.

Tyler could only imagine the devastation heaped upon Goheen. How would any father react? A human body could not survive a jump at such speeds, but Tyler wondered if the man wasn’t contemplating that fate.

Alvarez’s synthesized voice warned all passengers to move immediately to any of the four cars trailing the second dining car. “Anyone in, or forward of, the two dining cars takes responsibility for his or her own safety.”

“He’s going to split the train in two,” Tyler spoke aloud, now understanding how Alvarez planned to spare lives.

Raoul depressed the button, unlocking the car’s forward door.

As he did, a stampede of boozed, hysterical people knocked the man over and trampled him. Tyler jumped to the side, shielding himself behind the bulkhead. He reached down, caught Raoul’s limp hand, and dragged him out from under the crazed herd of escapees.

The stream of people seemed endless. Thankfully, they fled right through car six en route to the very back of the train. Tyler held himself pressed to the wall and inched his way forward toward the lavatory and the door beyond, the terrified guests still hurrying through.

He had to reach that forward vestibule. He had five or six minutes at the most.

As Alvarez and Jillian stepped out of the lavatory, the video began. Alvarez’s timing was off.

Everyone in the dining car faced away from them, focused on one of two TVs suspended from the ceiling. As the screen began to show a naked woman, Alvarez tugged on Jillian’s arm, hoping to lead her to the safety of the rear and to keep her from seeing him on video. But once she saw the back of his head, she flushed and stood her ground.

“No,” she gasped. “I think I’ll stay for the show.”

Alvarez couldn’t move, but he knew he would have to be
ahead
of the forthcoming mad rush for the back cars to have any chance at the parasail.

Jillian shook her head, her face contorted with anger. “You’ve been busy,” she said.

“We’ve got to get to the back of the train.”

“Not me.”

“Yes!” he said, pulling on her. He now heard his own distorted voice issuing its warning and, as every guest turned toward him at the same moment, knew it was too late.

The crowd stampeded.

Alvarez pulled her to him. She resisted with all her strength, wrestling to be free of him. But then she caught a fleeing passenger’s elbow in the neck and reeled in pain. Alvarez buried her in his arms, shielding her, as the screaming mob streamed past. Alvarez hated this; he had imagined an organized exodus.

Twisting to avoid getting clipped, he caught sight of the accordion wall that joined the vestibules between cars.

It was unlocked. Open.

Was someone out there?

Tyler unlocked the accordion wall and split the barrier open a crack, wishing Raoul was here now to guide him. Cold air stung his face and caught in his lungs.

The gap between the two cars was less than a foot wide, but either Alvarez or a security guard had been out here, and Tyler had to know why. He moved tentatively, squeezing through and inching outside, reaching for a handhold on the front of car six. He crouched and tipped himself over to get a look.

Directly beneath the accordion was the coupler itself, still out of sight. What he saw were black cables stretching one car to the next—communications, data, and electricity, he assumed. He looked back and forth at these, and to his layman’s eye, none had been tampered with.

He moved cautiously, the wind stinging his face and almost freezing his fingers. When bent at the waist and extending himself off the front of the car, clutching to the handhold with only one hand, he could get a decent look at the coupling. But it was too fleeting. He moved down one ladder rung and finally got a heads-up view of the coupling itself. The railbed blurred past at dizzying speeds. Holding fast to the ladder, he leaned out and away, struggling to peer beneath the mated vestibules to the massive coupler joining the cars.

Atop it he now saw a small gray box. It looked either glued or magnetically attached. He leaned out farther for a better look. He saw no blinking lights, no digital clock counting down the seconds, just a plain gray box about the size of
a cigarette pack. But Tyler knew he was looking at a bomb, a device meant to explode and disconnect the coupler.

Alvarez must have set the thing while posing as a security guard. Upon its explosion, the four aft cars would disconnect and glide to a stop; the front cars and locomotive would no doubt derail. Alvarez meant to ride his parasail, driven by a hundred-mile-an-hour lift, landing well away from the tracks. Now he was maybe strapped beneath a car, awaiting his move.

Tyler considered trying to remove that box and dropping it to the tracks, but he feared it might be rigged to detonate if tampered with. Worse, he knew it was intended to
save
lives, not destroy them. The best he could do was to get everyone into those rear cars and allow the damn thing to go off.

No evidence of explosives had ever been uncovered at any of the derailments. So explosives seemed out of character for Alvarez. But none of the freights had carried passengers, either, and this, Tyler believed, explained the difference.

Through a long turn, Tyler hugged the back of the car, only feet from the railbed. The train ride felt rocky, as if the stabilizers weren’t working. Overcome momentarily by a wave of nausea and dizziness as the cars pinched together, the space narrowing, Tyler discarded the idea of attempting to climb under the cars to search for Alvarez. He felt sick to his stomach.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement and looked up. Alvarez stood on the platform between the cars, at the narrow gap in the open accordion wall. The man stared down at Tyler, who felt paralyzed by this sudden confrontation. His face unflinching, Alvarez pushed the accordion shut, and Tyler saw it bite tightly to its mate.

Alvarez had locked him out of the train.

Passengers streamed from the four forward cars, through, and out the back of the second dining car, through and out the next and the next, until they jammed into the train’s last car, some overflowing into car eight as well. William Goheen remained behind at the second dining car bar where the bartender, sweating profusely, remained with him.

“Go on,” Goheen said at last, sipping from a scotch.

The bartender, a weathered black man in his fifties by the name of Fred Walker, got the nerve to face up to his boss. “We had better do as the man said, Mr. Goheen. Yourself included. I expect he means trouble for this train.”

For several minutes of the evacuation, Gretchen Goheen had appeared naked on the monitors.

“Go on, Fred,” Goheen told him. “I’ll be along.”

The bartender nodded gravely. He’d seen hundreds of drunks in his time. He’d seen women pick up men, men pick up men, and college kids green sick and still drinking. To some he’d offered advice or refused service. With others he’d discussed world affairs. He’d been a shrink, a friend, an adviser to so many strangers that he could speak whatever came to mind with no reservation. But now he hesitated. He’d worked for this company for thirty years. Finally, just before leaving, he said, “Kids get themselves into all sorts of trouble, Mr. Goheen.” Fred knew that none of Goheen’s despondency had to do with the train. “But it’s the parents that got to get
them out. Your girl needs you, sir. So don’t you stay on this train.”

Goheen looked up. “What do you know?”

“More than you’d think, sir.” And with that, Fred left, but at a walk, not a run.

Goheen slumped into the leather seat along the wall and reached for the nearest abandoned drink. Scotch.
Just right.
He recalled vividly reviewing the design of these seats, the floor plan of the French-built dining cars. So many details. So many endless improvements. But these thoughts pulled him off only briefly from that horrific image of Gretchen.

He checked his watch. The deadline for his confession was three minutes away. It would come and go, this deadline. The only confession he planned on making was to God.

In minutes he had gone from an all-time high to the darkest place he’d ever been, and the severity of that descent made him want to lie down and die. He had wanted to give America something great and lasting, to put his own name, his family name, into the history books. And all such momentous undertakings required sacrifice. Alvarez had been asked to make his, but that, Goheen had realized early on, had been handled badly. And then it had only gotten worse. True, death and grief were awful, but over and done with, whereas the train was something immortal, important to the country, to all humanity.

“Come on, Bill.” Someone had spilled wine down Keith O’Malley’s tailored suit. It looked like blood. He beckoned Goheen with sad eyes. “We’re still looking for him. If we can find him in the next couple minutes, we still might save this thing.”

Goheen shook his head. He glanced up at the dark TV. “You think?” The dining car appeared empty, littered with cigarettes, trash, and empty plastic cups.

“We’ll catch this guy,” O’Malley said, “and it’s the last anyone will ever hear of it.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of trick. You know what they can do with pictures these days. Paste someone’s head onto someone else’s body.”

“Yeah, that’s what it is,” O’Malley agreed.

“It sounds like her, but there are ways they can do that, too. Right?” He looked up, a mass of grief.