The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

The locomotive’s chugging slowed down. Bell felt the brake shoes grind. The cars banged into one another as they filled the slack caused by the train slowed to a stop. He watched the roofs of the boxcars.

“Soon as the train stops, I want you to run ahead and check each car. Do not engage. Just give a shout if you see anyone, then get out of the way. He’ll kill you soon as look at you.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“We have to send a flagman back when we stop. I’m it. In case a train’s following us, I have to wave it down. Wires are screwy today.”

“Not before you check each car,” said Bell, drawing the Browning from his coat.

The brakeman climbed down from the cupola. He jumped from the rear platform to the tracks and jogged alongside the train, pausing to look into each car. The engineer blew his whistle, demanding an explanation. Bell watched the rooftops and moved to either side of the cupola, to see alongside the train.

THE WRECKER LAY ON his back in a bench locker less than ten feet from the cupola ladder, gripping a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. All night, he had worried that by setting loose the runaway gondola he had put himself in danger by trapping himself so far up the line. Fe

aring that railway police, goaded by Van Dorn detectives, would mob the train before it reached Weed or Dunsmuir and search it thoroughly, he had taken decisive action. During the last water stop, he had run back to the caboose and slipped inside while the crew were busy tending the locomotive and checking the journal boxes under the railcars.

He had chosen a locker that held lanterns, reasoning that no one would open it in the daytime. If someone did, he would kill him with whichever weapon suited the moment, then spring out and kill anyone else he came across.

He smiled grimly in the cramped, dark space. He had guessed right. And who had boarded the train but none other than Van Dorn’s chief investigator himself, the famous Isaac Bell? At worst, the Wrecker would make a complete fool out of Bell. At best, he’d shoot him between the eyes.

THE BRAKEMAN CHECKED EVERY car, and when he reached the locomotive Bell saw him confer with the conductor, the engineer, and the fireman, who had gathered on the ground. Then the conductor and the brakeman hurried back, checking each of the fifty boxcars, cattle cars, and gondolas again. When they got to the caboose, the conductor, an older man with sharp brown eyes and a put-out expression on his lined face, said, “No saboteurs. No hobos. Nobody. The train is empty. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

He raised his flag to signal the engineer.

“Wait,” said Bell.

He jumped down from the caboose and ran alongside the train, peering inside each car and each chassis underneath. Midway to the locomotive, he paused at a green cattle car that stank of mules.

Bell whirled around and ran full tilt back toward the caboose.

He knew that smell. It wasn’t stew. And it wasn’t an unwashed brakeman. A man who had ridden in the green cattle car that stank of mules was now hiding somewhere in the caboose.

Bell bounded up onto the caboose’s platform, shoved through the door, flung the nearest mattress off a bench, and pulled up the hinged top. The locker held boots and yellow rain slickers. He flung open the next. It was filled with flags and light repair tools. There were two more. The conductor and the brakeman were watching curiously from the far door.

“Get back,” Bell told them. And he opened the third bench. It contained tins of lubricating oil and kerosene for lamps. Gun in hand, he leaned in to open the last.

“Nothing in there but lanterns,” said the brakeman.

Bell opened it.

The brakeman was right. The locker contained red, green, and yellow lanterns.

Angry, baffled, wondering if the man had somehow managed to run for the trees from one side while he was watching the other, Bell stalked to the locomotive and told the engineer, “Move your train! ”

Gradually, he calmed down. And finally he smiled, remembering something Wish Clarke had taught him: “You can’t think when you’re mad. And that goes double when you’re mad at yourself.”

He had no doubt that the Wrecker was a capable man, even a brilliant one, but now it seemed he had something else going for him too: luck, the intangible element that could throw an investigation into chaos and prolong capture. Bell believed it was only a matter of time before they caught up with the Wrecker, but time was short-terribly short-because the Wrecker was so active. This was no ordinary bank robber. He wasn’t going to hole up in a brothel and spend his ill-gotten gains on wine and women. Even now, he would be planning his next attack. Bell was painfully aware that he still had no idea what motivated the man. But he did know that the Wrecker was not the sort of criminal who wasted time celebrating his victories.

Twenty minutes later, Bell ordered the train stopped beside Lillian Hennessy’s special, which was still on the siding. The crew moved the freight ahead to the water tank.

THE WRECKER WAITED UNTIL the train crew was busy taking on water. Then he dropped down from the cupola’s shelf and slipped back into his first hiding place, the lanterns locker. The next water stop, he slipped out of the caboose and back into a boxcar, as the crew would be reaching for lanterns when the sun went down.

Ten hours later, in the dead of the night, he jumped off at a staging area at Redding. Seeing many detectives and railroad police searching trains ahead, he hid in a culvert and watched their lights bobbing in the dark.

While he waited them out, he used the time to think about Isaac Bell’s investigation. He was tempted to mail him a letter: “Sorry we didn’t meet on the freight train.” But it wasn’t worth the joke. Don’t gloat. Let Bell think he wasn’t on that train. That he got away by some other means. He would find some better way to sow confusion.

An empty freight rumbled out of the yard, heading south, just before first light. The Wrecker ran alongside, grabbed a ladder on the back of a boxcar, and worked his way under the car and wedged himself into the supporting framework.