Parallel Lies (46 page)

“None of what went down can be connected to you. Remember that. You’re clean, Bill. Even Andersen. If anyone goes down for that, it’s me.”

“Gretchen is connected to me,” he corrected. “I let her down, is the thing. And I’ve never done it right. Not ever. It just didn’t come naturally to me—being a father.”

“Bill, we’ve got to get out of this car.”

That snapped Goheen’s head up, and he seemed finally to take notice of O’Malley. “Keith?” He downed the rest of someone’s drink and looked for another.

“Smart money says to leave these forward cars.”

“I thought you were the one with the brass balls.”

“Now would be a good time, Bill.” He checked his watch.

“You want me to go back there with
them?
You’re kidding, right? Do interviews on my daughter, the hooker?” He added, “Let him do whatever he’s going to do. I’m through.”

“None of this will stick!” the security man repeated.

“Stick?” Goheen glanced up at the black TV. “Were you watching? Do I have your full and undivided attention?” He waited. “It’s over.”

O’Malley glanced at his watch nervously.

Pointing to the television, Goheen said, “That bastard! He knows everything. He named Genoa. Andersen. And the thing is—you know this better than anyone—the truth will out. Polygraph, whatever. There it is.” He pointed to the floor where there was nothing to point at. “I’ll keep you out of it.”

“Out of it? Bill, you’re not thinking straight. You’re the one who’s out of it.”

“The piper will be paid.” Goheen nodded and began
searching the discarded glasses for something more to drink, sniffing them.

“You can’t stay here.” O’Malley insisted, “You’re coming with me.”

“No, I’m not.” He sipped another drink, fished a cigarette butt out of the glass, dropped it to the floor, and then sipped some more.

“He can’t derail this train,” O’Malley said. “Not with the security we’ve thrown up. The technology. Don’t you see this, Bill? He’s making a scene is all. Threats. He got himself a soapbox and he got himself heard. A captive audience. It’s all he wanted.”

“He sure got Gretchen heard,” Goheen cried. “Oh, God,” he moaned, his head sinking into his chest.

“We’ve got…one minute, Bill.” O’Malley’s forehead shone with sweat. “I’m going to drag you out of here if I have to. You want to think of impressions? Think how that’ll look!”

Goheen had rheumy eyes. “She’s getting back at me. You see that? She became the kind of girl she thought I went for.” He mumbled, “She’s known about…
me
for a long time.”

“Bill, you’re losing it.”

“No. I’ve lost it,” Goheen returned. “I’ve lost her, Keith. She tried to get me to go public with Genoa. I didn’t tell you … couldn’t tell you about it. This is on my watch, Keith. It’s all on my watch.”

O’Malley began to speak but reconsidered. Then he said nervously, “I gotta check on my guys.”

“Sure you do.” The men exchanged glances.

A frightened O’Malley hurried for the rear door.

Alvarez had just locked the accordion wall, sealing out Tyler, when O’Malley stepped out of the dining car, shoulders hunched, head lowered. He barked out the order, “Clear the forward cars!” without so much as looking at his minion. He knew the uniform, and that was enough.

Alvarez stood alone in the vestibule connecting the cars, staring at O’Malley’s back as the man hurried into six and continued down the aisle. The perfect opportunity had just passed him by. He had stood there, as close as he’d ever get to the man, and he’d done nothing.

He watched as O’Malley stopped, midcar, met there by two of his plainclothes men. Outnumbered, Alvarez saw no point in heading that way. Instead, he hurried into the dining car, knowing the explosion would come any minute.

He spotted William Goheen slumped in a leather chair, chin to chest, shoulders shaking. Goheen looked up, dazed; his face showed his disbelief just before his legs willed him out of his chair and he charged. Alvarez stepped to the side and tripped him and pinned him under his foot. Goheen’s head hit the bar, his scalp cut and bleeding.

Alvarez grabbed a champagne bottle and held it high over the man’s head. At that moment, he could have killed him. One or two good blows, and by the time the wreckage was pried apart, no one would ever know this man had died a minute or two before the accident. But Alvarez lowered the bottle and said, “Even I won’t stoop to your level.”

“Bert?” A woman’s voice.
Jillian!

She came around the corner where the stainless steel bar met the wall. She had been sitting on its other side, tucked away from where the passengers could bang into her as they clamored for safety, she refusing to follow, refusing to go along with
him.
Tucked back, where no one could have seen her. She said, “He didn’t know I was in here.”

“Jilly!” Alvarez said, wanting desperately to get her to safety. “You were supposed to—”

“There was another man.” She pointed to Goheen. “With him. I heard it all.” She seemed frightened. “Bert, I heard it
all.”
She added, “The other one is who killed your attorney, Andersen. You don’t have to do any of this. I’m a witness!”

Goheen looked at her. Alvarez couldn’t tell if the man was laughing or crying.

Two gunshots rang out like handclaps, their reports distinct and unmistakable. Alvarez instinctively grabbed the champagne bottle and broke it over the edge of the bar, its jagged edge held out as a weapon.

Tyler dared not try to climb beneath the train. Perhaps Alvarez had managed this after setting the explosive; perhaps that was how he had moved from one end of the train to the other, undetected. Tyler didn’t know. He just could not do it.

He struggled up the ladder to the intersection of the vestibule’s accordioned walls, his hands still slippery, his head reeling.

Below him, unseen, was that gray box, stuck to the coupler. The video had mentioned seven minutes. He checked his watch. Most were gone now: one minute remained.

“Stand back!” he shouted loudly. He paused and called out again to clear the area.

He slipped out his gun and fired a round into the wall
lock. He felt a hot pain in his arm as he tugged on the wall and thought that on top of all else, he’d torn a muscle. The wall held firm. Tyler shouted a second time and fired another round into the lock. The louvered wall sagged open.

Tyler reached to open it further, switching hands, but his left arm didn’t hold him. He’d shot himself—a flesh wound—catching a ricocheted bullet. With that arm failing, he lost his balance and swung in an arc just as his right hand found purchase. In the process, he dropped the gun. It clanked once on its way down, and was lost.

Painfully now, he tugged the vestibule wall open enough to slip inside. He felt light-headed and still a little sick.

He glanced to his right, through the door’s window and into the dining car where he saw Alvarez holding a jagged bottle to Goheen’s throat. There was a woman in the car, a few feet behind the men.

Thirty seconds,
he thought.
Twenty-five
…

Alvarez made eye contact with Tyler and pointed with the broken bottle, directing him back.

Tyler glanced toward the passenger car and saw O’Malley and two others. O’Malley looked up, saw Tyler, clearly recognizing him, and marched forward.

Fifteen seconds
…

Holding his bloody hand up to stop O’Malley, Tyler simultaneously retreated toward the dining car. Now he raised both hands and motioned O’Malley to go back. Beneath him, he could feel the second hand sweeping toward the top of the hour.

O’Malley, spurred by Tyler’s retreat, hurried forward and opened the automatic door. At the same time, Tyler backed up against the automatic door’s panic bar and the door slid open.

He backed through, shouting to O’Malley, “Get back!” An angry O’Malley had stepped out onto the platform.

“You?” O’Malley called out.

Five… four
…

The dining car’s door hissed shut. As Tyler turned, he saw Alvarez drop to the floor, pulling the woman with him.

Instinctively, Tyler shielded himself.

The bomb went off. And Keith O’Malley with it.

Chunks of tempered glass whipped through the air. Tyler fell to the floor as a massive rumbling swept through the car. In that moment, as he thought he might die, Tyler saw that in his life he was less a victim of a system gone bad and more one of just plain bad luck. Chester Washington had scared him, had frightened him to the point that once he began beating that monster he couldn’t stop. He vowed now not to repeat the same mistake.

The rumbling settled out of the chassis. Tyler stood slowly to feel the cold wind rushing through the empty window frame in the dining car’s bulging door and the warmth of blood on the back of his neck. He was cut, though not badly. Behind them, on the track, the last four cars had slipped away, and Tyler saw sparks rise from the tracks like fireworks as someone must have leaned on the emergency pull.

Alvarez, too, had come to his feet, his hand bloody from the bottle breaking in his grasp as he fell. Goheen remained down, as did the woman.

Both men fell again as the dining car swayed.

The cry of brakes sang through the steel.

Alvarez ran to the wall phone by the door, picked it up, and shouted into the receiver. “No brakes, you idiot! And no slowing the engine. If we lose speed, the stabilizers will roll the train!” He hung up, everyone looking at him.

He said to the gathering, “At the time, it seemed like a pretty good plan.”

The train shuddered again. Alvarez pulled the handheld
GPS out of his jacket, glanced at it. “That’s the first curve. Three more to go. On the third, she won’t make it.”

The car settled back down.

Tyler felt his legs beneath him again.

Alvarez grabbed the woman by the arm and led her at a run to the front of the car.

Tyler decided that if Alvarez was heading to the front of the train, then so was he. The car’s front window had blown out in the explosion as well, and Tyler saw the forward dining car tilt, Alvarez halfway through it. A fraction of a second later, the car beneath him shuddered so hard that every item on every horizontal surface rained to the floor.

The vestibule and the accordion walls between the two dining cars tore loose and blew apart, carried off by the ferocious wind. The locomotive’s brakes screamed, and Tyler fell to his feet before standing, but as the destabilized cars buckled, the driver must have released the brakes. Without a progressive slowing of the whole train, the brakes, he realized, were more dangerous than useful.

Goheen, sobered by fear, followed Tyler. With the vestibule’s accordioned platform connecting the cars now torn loose, Tyler stepped out of the second dining car and lowered himself to the exposed coupler. He placed his left foot down, realizing there were no handholds with which to reach the car in front. It required a leap of faith: placing that foot down and pushing off the rear car while reaching through space for a handrail on the back of the next car. Before making that move, he glanced back. Goheen stood above him in the doorway.