Valknut: The Binding (16 page)

FBI reports from earlier cases had called the
Hobo Spider murders “vaguely ritualistic.” To Briggs, alone in the
boxcar, staring at the thickened, red trails flowing from the
victim’s mouth like a macabre stream of consciousness, it looked
like a blatant attempt to communicate with some grotesque god.

Blood coated the victim’s chin and neck, but
the cord that wrapped the body remained pristinely white. Flies
covered the pool of blood drying on the floor and buzzed around the
head, but not one landed on the cord.

Sweat stung Briggs’s eyes. He wiped it away
with his sleeve. The inside of the boxcar was even hotter than the
outside and the body was degrading rapidly. Even so, it didn’t seem
possible that a fresh corpse could stink so much. His stomach
churned. The smell reminded him of the time his dog had gotten
loose and rolled in the carcass of a dead raccoon.

When the singing started outside, he gladly
jumped out to see who it was. The hot breeze felt cool on his face.
He pulled the handkerchief away and gulped air, clearing the smell
from his nose.

A man wandered toward him down a siding, his
cheeks rosy from the sun. He wore a battered fedora and an
ill-fitting suit. His worn leather shoes looked much too large. He
belted out his song in an absurdly beautiful tenor, adding a skip
to his walk in time with the music. All he needed was a bindle on a
stick and he might have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell
painting.

The innocence of the man and the pure joy in
his song contrasted jarringly with the horror inside the boxcar.
There was a sense of evil and light in such close proximity that
Briggs felt an irrational fear that darkness might ooze from the
boxcar and overwhelm the guy. He knew with sudden certainty that he
had to keep this one safe, at least.

The hobo strolled past Briggs, whistling now,
with his hands stuffed in his pants pockets. His shoes had bicycle
reflectors duct-taped to their heels.

“Hey, wait a minute.” Briggs hurried after
him. The hobo turned, unsurprised, though Briggs could have sworn
the hobo hadn’t seen him.

“Oh, it’s you.” The hobo smiled as though he
had known Briggs all of his life. Normally, Briggs would have
written the guy up for trespassing. Hobos were a danger to
themselves and to others. But this time the idea never occurred to
him. Instead, Briggs brought him back to the office to cool off,
and fed him a Coke and a day-old donut. The man said his name was
Jungle Jim and started babbling about his “kids.”

“Oh, they just love my tricks,” he said.
“They come from miles all around, they do, when they hear ol’
Jungle Jim’s in town.”

He went on, listing the children he had met
and the cities they lived in. Briggs listened, puzzled, until
Jungle Jim hauled his duffle bag onto his lap and began
demonstrating an amazing array of props. There was a garish,
over-sized bow tie that twirled at the tug of a string. There were
silk flowers that disappeared into a narrow tube. There was a fake
hand, presumably for handshaking, a rattlesnake that looked
distressingly real, and a jar of Mexican jumping beans. Jungle Jim
was either insane, or he was a performer of some kind. Possibly
both. Either way, Briggs found that he liked the hobo a great deal.
He couldn’t let him ride the trains.

“So, where are you heading, Jim?” If it
wasn’t too far, Briggs could spring for a bus ticket.

“On up to Minni,” Jungle Jim said around a
bite of donut. Powdered sugar ringed his mouth. “My friend,
Bill—he’s a bull up there in that University yard. It’s Ashley’s
birthday. She’s his daughter. I got her an itty bitty doll house
with ittier bittier people inside.”

Suddenly it all made sense. Briggs had heard
about the Minneapolis yard worker who got his brains scrambled
saving a bull’s life. He had become sort of an unofficial mascot to
the FRC Railroad Company. This had to be the guy—there couldn’t be
two like him. Might as well let him ride the train and save the bus
fare. The engineer would probably let him sit up front. He’d be
safe enough up there.

Briggs escorted Jungle Jim to a train bound
for Minneapolis, made up and ready to leave. The engineer grinned
when he saw Jungle Jim and offered him a seat. The roar of the
idling engine made conversation difficult, so Briggs just waved and
turned to go. A tap on his shoulder stopped him. He looked back
into Jungle Jim’s face. Something about the hobo’s eyes had
changed, grown clearer, and his expression had grown serious.

“Don’t feel bad, Harcourt.” Briggs heard him
clearly over the noise, though Jungle Jim didn’t appear to be
shouting. “I know you’re gonna do your best. There’s just nuthin’
you or anyone can do.”

And then he was gone, back inside the unit.
Briggs considered following him up the stairs to find out what he
meant, but the engine shifted louder, shaking the ground beneath
his feet. Briggs stepped back and watched it pull away, but all he
could think about was the strange stillness in Jungle Jim’s
eyes.

He hadn’t seen Jungle Jim since. The presence
of his fingerprints on a murder weapon worried him. If he wasn’t
the killer, he could be a witness and therefore the next target.
Briggs had to find him, and quickly. Assuming he was still
alive.

That left one problem: How to find Jungle
Jim. People vanished on the iron road every day, intentionally or
otherwise. It could take weeks to track him down. He might never
find him at all.

Briggs reviewed everything he knew about the
hobo, starting with the fact that he wasn’t really a hobo at all.
He was a clown. If he remembered rightly, Jim’s “kids” came from
Midwestern cities in FRC railroad territory. A company man, even
after he quit working for the company.

He pulled his keyboard closer. After a quick
search, he found three festivals occurring this weekend in FRC
Railroad territory: The Britt Draft Horse Show in Iowa, the Greater
Midwest Railroad Days in Minneapolis, and Pioneer Days in Altoona,
Kansas. All three had web sites, none of which listed Jungle Jim as
an attraction. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t show up.

Briggs ignored a growing sense of futility
and studied the FRC Railroad map plastered on his office wall.
Thirteen red pushpins dotted the map. He added a fourteenth close
to Topeka. Not that the location of the victims meant anything.
Most of them were found on train cars and may have traveled for
days before discovery.

But it was clear that, like Jungle Jim, the
Hobo Spider showed a preference for FRC Railroad.

Britt, Minneapolis, Altoona. Which one?

Britt was popular with the hobos, but it
seemed unlikely that a clown would perform at a horse show.
So…Altoona or Minneapolis?

Six of the bodies had been found in
Minneapolis—two of them off-train in rail yards. Minneapolis was
the biggest hub for the FRC Railroad. Maybe it was the Hobo
Spider’s personal hub, too.

He reached for the phone, ready to call the
Minneapolis police. Then he sighed and let his hand drop to the
desk. He drummed his fingers. This was ridiculous. There could be a
dozen festivals within 90 miles of Minneapolis that weren’t
advertised on the Internet. Jungle Jim might not even be performing
this weekend. Maybe he was shacking up in a cardboard box in
Missouri, doing a little fishing on the Mississippi.

He ought to give Parker a call and make use
of FBI resources. He should contact the officials of all the likely
festivals. He should notify the police departments of cities in the
FRC territory…put out an APB on Jungle Jim throughout the region.
He should—

“You’d be wastin’ your time, boy.”

Briggs jerked upright. “What the hell?”

He hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t heard
footsteps on the hardwood floor, but a strange old man stood close
enough to his desk to brush it with his fingertips. He wore a
peaked, wide-brimmed hat over faded red hair. A dark blue overcoat
draped over his shoulders like a cloak.

Definitely eccentric. Briggs didn’t have time
for this.

“Look, I’m busy. Why don’t you step over to
Human Services.” Briggs waved vaguely to the south. “I’m sure
someone there can help you.”

The stranger didn’t move. Briggs sighed. So
much for the friendly approach. “Scram, Grandpa. I’ve got important
phone calls to make.”

The man answered as calmly as if Briggs had
politely asked him for clarification. “I said, you’d be wastin’
your time. You wanna find Jungle Jim, there’s only one place
t’look.”

Startled, Briggs pushed back from his
computer and glowered at the stranger. “How the hell do you know
about that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I haven’t known about
Tuttle for five minutes and you waltz in telling me you know where
he is? Look, buddy, I’m in no mood for games. Who are you? What do
you know?”

“Enough!” The air crackled around the
stranger. His overcoat billowed as if lifted by a stiff wind.

Briggs’s mouth snapped shut. The door must
have blown open—it 
had 
to be open. He shot a
glance at the door. It remained stubbornly closed. Yet the
stranger’s coat flapped and his hair fluttered around his face in
the perfectly still air.

Reluctantly, Briggs felt his gaze drawn to
the man’s heavily lined face, to a single, clear blue eye. He felt
its touch like ice on his brain and tried to look away, but
couldn’t make his eyes work right. He tried to stand, to reach the
phone, to do anything. He couldn’t move. He could only stare into
that terrible blue gaze.

“They call me the Wanderer.” The stranger’s
voice changed, growing deeper and more formal. “All I ask is that
you listen.”

As if Briggs had a choice. He focused all his
strength on his right hand, just inches from the upper right desk
drawer. He kept a gun there in case someone he was questioning did
something unexpected. He couldn’t think of anything more unexpected
than this. Except he couldn’t get his hand to move.

“Nice trick, Gandalf,” he growled, “but if
you don’t knock it off, I’ll—”

The stranger’s eye flared like blue
lightening, stunning Briggs into silence. A blue haze bathed the
caboose, softening the file cabinets, the stacks of paper, and the
hard edges of Briggs’s desk. It seemed to seep into his very
thoughts, softening those as well. Briggs stopped fighting. His
muscles relaxed and he forgot whatever empty threats he was about
to make.

“Your first instinct was correct,” a voice
said. “Jungle Jim is at the festival in Minneapolis. He will be at
the hobo moot. If you do not seek him there tonight, he will pass
out of your reach forever.”

Caught by that bright orb, Briggs no longer
saw the stranger. Memory of the visit evaporated in a blue mist.
When he spoke, he was talking to himself.

“Jungle Jim did say he had a friend in
Minneapolis.” His tongue felt thick and heavy. “That bull at the
University yards. Might be worth checking, anyway.”

The blue faded and disappeared. Briggs was
alone in the caboose. As far as he could remember, he’d been alone
all morning. He grabbed his train schedule and scanned it for a
ride to Minneapolis. There was only one train going out today,
slated to leave in twenty minutes. He vaulted from his chair, then
clutched his head, suddenly dizzy. He was more exhausted than he
had realized.

“Got no time for that.” He grabbed his
thermos and, grimacing, chugged the cold dregs of his morning
coffee. Poor substitute for a nap. A shower might be nice, but he
would have to settle for a clean shirt. He undid the top two
buttons of the sweaty, coffee-stained denim shirt that he’d been
wearing for forty hours straight, pulled it over his head and threw
it in a corner. The bottom drawer of his desk held more clothes
than his closet at home. Some of them were even clean. He yanked it
open and found a denim shirt, pre-buttoned except for the top two
buttons, and gave it a sniff. Not too bad. He pulled it on.

Unlocking another desk drawer, he drew out a
.40 caliber semi-automatic. Good, but good enough? He hesitated,
then selected a .38 revolver and strapped it to his ankle.

It took him a full minute to find his Kevlar
vest, which was hanging on the coat rack under his windbreaker.
Ransacking his office, he shoved everything else he might need into
a leather grip.

Seven minutes to make the train. That clock
had better not be slow.

Outside, wheels shrieked against air brakes.
He shoved the grip under his arm and burst through the caboose
door. As he turned to lock up, his keys tumbled from nervous
fingers and rang down the metal steps to the ground. He stared at
them, unmoving.

Wasn’t he going to call someone? Parker?

And hadn’t there been someone…a man in his
office?

He turned the handle and slowly opened the
door. The room was empty. The phone lines were quiet. But he felt
like he was being watched.

A harsh scream sounded behind him. He whipped
around and the world flashed blue. A wave of vertigo hit him. He
leaned against the doorframe and shook his head to clear it. I must
be more tired than I thought. Guess I can sleep on the train.

He scanned the tracks near his caboose. The
yard’s grounds were deserted. The cry came again, sounding less
human this time. Just a crow or something, he decided, rubbing his
temples. Must be nearby, or he would never have heard it over the
train noise.

He poked his head back into the caboose. As
he had thought, the lights were still on. Good thing he’d
checked–they might have stayed on for days. His gaze fell on the
wall clock as he reached for the switch. Less than five minutes
before departure. He would have to run. He took one last, bemused
glance around the room, flicked off the lights, and closed the
door.

As he sprinted toward the tracks, a raven
took off from the roof of the caboose and began its own journey
north.