Derailed (41 page)

“I can't believe it! It's gone!” He turned and almost backhanded the girl, but she cowered and slid to the floor. He grabbed her wrist and yanked her back up to her feet as she began to whimper. “Shut up,” he snarled. “Someone'll hear.”

Just then the door of one of the compartments beyond slid open, and a woman peeked out with a horrified look on her face.

“What're you lookin' at? Get back in there and mind your own business.”

The row suspended as if in midair until the woman retreated. Then the man said in a hoarse whisper, “I thought you talked to her.”

“No, no, you don't understand. She
said
she was going to Chicago. You gotta believe—”

“But she didn't go, did she, and now it's gone!” he hissed. “They're gonna kill me, but not before I kill you.” He raised his hand again.

“No, Max! Please no. Somebody's gonna hear us.” She put her finger to her lips again. “Come on, come on. We'll figure something out. I got her number.”

“What?” He lowered his threatening hand.

“She gave me her phone number.”

“In Chicago? You sure?”

“Yeah. We can still find her there. Number's up in my purse.”

“You dumb slut.” He raised his hand for another blow.

“No, no! Please!” The girl put her arms up to block the blow, and I slid my door all the way open and stepped out, ready to intervene. “Everything okay out here?”

“Yeah, yeah. No problem.”

They stood frozen, and then the girl's eyes dropped to the floor as if she were embarrassed.

“Come on.” The guy grabbed the girl's arm and pushed her ahead of him up the stairs.

When they were gone, I went out and looked in the luggage compartment, even though I knew the blue suitcase was gone.

I'd found my mule.

I returned to my compartment and checked the train schedule. There was almost an hour before our next stop in Trinidad, Colorado, and the mule couldn't jump from a fast-moving train any easier than I could. Even if he decided to chase his drugs, I had a little time to figure out what to do. Should I follow the drugs or stick with the mule? Surely Trinidad would have a little airport. Maybe I could charter a private plane and catch up with Grace. She'd mentioned the name of her agency in her note, so I could
probably find it in Denver, but then I'd have to tell her why I'd tracked her down.

Still, the situation was near the tipping point where it might be necessary to do that for her safety. Yet the mule didn't know where she was going—Colorado Springs, Denver, or someplace else—only that she was from Chicago. It wouldn't benefit him to chase after that Greyhound even if he had a way to do it.

I needed more information from Grace. I picked up her note again and noticed a P.S. at the end: “
If you can, please keep an eye on a young couple in the first coach behind the lounge car. He's tall, blond, late twenties, name is Max. Ramona's just a teenager, has dark hair. Something doesn't feel right. She seems scared. He seems too controlling
.”

That confirmed what I had just seen in the hallway—and reinforced my belief that Grace was innocent. Grace had included her cell phone number in her note and encouraged me to call her. But first, I needed to confirm where my mule and that girl were sitting.

I looked down at Corky. “Come on, girl. We're hot on the trail.”

When I got to the coach car, the girl was talking on a cell phone, while the guy leaned in close, clenching his fist, making hand signals, and mouthing words he apparently wanted her to say. They were so engrossed in their efforts that they didn't even glance my way. I continued on up the aisle until I got to the midpoint in the car, then asked a passenger what car I was in. When she told me, I turned around as though I'd been lost and made my way slowly back, approaching the couple from behind.

The girl was off the phone, but the guy was still lecturing her in a hushed voice while tears ran down her cheeks. Grace had certainly been right about their relationship. He was more than a bully. He was terrorizing her like a controlling pimp.

Once I passed them and entered the lounge car, I sank into an empty seat and reviewed all I'd seen. The girl might be Hispanic, was rather pretty in spite of looking so frightened. But the guy . . . he was Caucasian with blue eyes, clean shaven with a lantern jaw
and spiky blond hair. What was a white dude doing working for the Sinaloa cartel? I hardly needed to ask—money!

Once back in my compartment, I dialed Grace. Cell phone coverage was spottier in the mountains, and at first she sounded like she couldn't hear me, but after a few moments, her voice stopped breaking up. She said she was sorry she hadn't said good-bye, but they'd changed their plans at the last minute, getting their tickets changed in Albuquerque.

I assured her it was okay, then casually asked her about the couple she'd mentioned in her note.

“Well, maybe it's nothing, but the girl was all friendly when we talked in the LA station. But as soon—”

“Wait a minute. You met her before?”

“Yeah, in the station before we got on the train. She asked if she could sit down beside me in the waiting room, and we got talking. She wanted to know where I was from, and it went from there. But when I saw her on the train with her ‘man,' as she called him, she was completely different. That's why I asked you to look out for her. Seemed like he was . . . I don't know, very manipulative. So, if you—”

“Excuse me for interrupting, but back in the station, did you have your luggage with you?”

“Oh, sure. We hadn't gotten on the train yet; in fact, Ramona—that's her name—asked if we were going to check it.”

“Really?” I was getting a picture of the girl scouting a likely carrier for the drugs. “She actually asked if you were going to check your bags?”

“Yeah, just making conversation. She was really friendly, but like I said, I didn't like how that guy treated her, all cozy one minute, then snapping at her, making her sit down when she wanted to get up, stuff like that.”

“Can you describe them a little bit more?”

The description fit, and then Grace said she'd had a big accident spilling some coffee and mustard on the girl's fancy jacket when they were talking in the café.

“So you talked to her again?”

“Yeah, but I felt so bad about ruining her jacket that I insisted on taking it with me to get it cleaned on my own and return it to her in Chicago.”

“She give you an address?”

“No. She didn't want to give me an address.”

“Phone number?”

“No. Said she didn't have a phone, but she would call me. So I gave her my phone number. She just called me a few minutes ago. Guess she saw us get off the train, she sounded upset. I assured her we'd be back just one day later, coming in from Denver, and I'd —”

“She called you?” This might be a break. “Uh, what number did she call from?”

“Oh, I don't think she wants me to call her back—Sam thinks the phone belongs to the guy, and she doesn't want him to know about the jacket.”

Hmm
. Probably was the guy's phone. Not allowing the girl to communicate on her own was a way for him to maintain more control over her. Grace had good cause to be concerned. “Grace, is that number still in your phone? Might be useful to have it just in case . . . you know, the concern you raised. Might be nothing we can do, but if something did happen, perhaps we could use it to get in touch with her.”

Grace found the number and gave it to me.

Bingo! A Chicago area code. We said good-bye, then Grace added, “Tell your wife hello for me, will you?”

I held my phone in my hand for a moment after hanging up. The implications of what I'd learned were two-edged. It wasn't possible to reach down into the handle cavity of most roller luggage bags. My little bag had a shield past which I couldn't get my hand. So to find their “mark,” the perps needed to not only know who was traveling to Chicago, but that the brand of luggage they carried would suit their purposes. They were not mere opportunists. This job had been well planned.

On the brighter side, it appeared the drugs hadn't been hidden in Grace's bag until
after
she got on the train. I sighed with relief as
I mentally moved Rodney and his limo company to the bottom of my suspect list.

Time to call Gilson. At first he was upset that I'd lost contact with the drugs, but when I assured him that I'd identified the mule, and that he was still on the train, the captain calmed down.

“Better yet,” I said, “I think I have the perp's cell phone number.”

“So you want to call him up for a chat?”

“Ha! Ha! Look, just get a court order for the cell phone company to give us the information on who it's registered to and any GPS tracking they have on it.”

“A guy like him has probably disabled the tracking.”

“Maybe, but unless it's a prepaid throwaway, there'll be a billing and registration address.”

“Okay, I'll check it out. Meantime, you stick like glue to that mule. Ride him all the way into town. What about telling your neighbor what's going on? She could be in danger.”

“Don't like involving civilians in a sting operation. Too many chances for mistakes.”

“She's already involved.”

“You're right about that. But she doesn't know it, and civilians act more natural if they don't know what's going on.”

I said it more confidently than I felt. Ignorance wouldn't keep Grace and Sam safe—not the young girl either, who was obviously the mule's pawn.

“You ain't gonna try and jump the train again,
are you, Mr. Bentley?”

“No ma'am. Sorry 'bout that before.” We were slowing for the stop at Trinidad, and Corky and I had come into the vestibule where Sylvia was preparing to open the door. “If you don't mind, though, Corky and I need to step outside for a minute.”

“This ain't no smoke stop, Mr. Bentley—just stop and go.”

“I won't be long.” I'd be able to see whether Ramona and Max got off or not. If they got off, I might have to break cover and run after them. I couldn't let them get away, especially if the mule was deciding to follow Grace.

Sylvia was eying Corky. “Does she really need to go? She don't act like it.”

I leaned slyly toward Sylvia. “I think it's me,” I said in a conspiratorial voice.

She chuckled. “All right. Trinidad's nothin' but an Amshak anyway, just a square trailer and a port-a-potty for a station. Make sure she goes on the gravel next to somethin' where no one'll step on it.”

No one got off the train at Trinidad, and Sylvia was soon urging me to get back on, coming to hold my elbow and walk me back to the sleeper. “Did she go? I didn't see her.”

“We're good, Sylvia. Thank you.”

I returned to my room and looked at the schedule again. La Junta was an hour and a half down the track, but it'd be a ten-minute stop. No need for shenanigans with Sylvia. If Max and Ramona hadn't
detrained by then, I could be pretty sure they'd decided to continue all the way through to Chicago. Was “pretty sure” good enough? The whole operation was at stake, not to mention the potential safety of Grace and Sam. Maybe I should move up to the mule's coach where I could watch him, though I dreaded the idea of another vigil.

Then it hit me . . . why hadn't my motion detector worked? I pulled the receiver from the plug and looked at it . . . and moaned. When I'd tested it by asking the woman to retrieve my shaving kit, I'd turned the alarm down to its lowest level. The
beep, beep, beep
had been barely audible in my compartment above the noise of the train, but I'd been listening for it. But I hadn't turned it back up before going to sleep! As tired as I'd been, it could've beeped all afternoon at that level without waking me up.

Felt like kicking myself, but there wasn't much I could've done had I known Grace was removing her luggage. Man, derailed again.

I breathed a desperate prayer. “Come on, God. You gotta help me catch this guy and make a good collar of it.”

All I could do now was wait. I sat there thinking about all that had happened on this trip. “Thank you, Jesus!” I wanted to say, “Thank you that Rodney doesn't have anything to do with it.” Of course, I couldn't scratch him completely off my suspect list. An organization as sophisticated as the Sinaloa cartel might well have a backup plan, and the next most logical person to handle that bag alone would be a limo driver. “But I do thank you, Lord, for protecting me from making any premature, disastrous moves.”

My thoughts drifted to all the things over the last couple months that had felt so confusing but now seemed to be working out. Such a labyrinth! But I was beginning to feel back on track even though there were still some loose ends. “O God,” I prayed. “There're still so many things about tomorrow I don't understand . . .” That phrase rang a bell. Where had I heard it before? I said it over and over until its rhythm triggered the memory of an old Barrett Sisters record my mom used to play . . . 
“But I know who holds tomorrow, And . . . I know who holds my hand
.”

Maybe that was the key to walking through the mazes of life. I'd been angry at God over all the turns and switchbacks when I shoulda been sayin',
Give me Jesus
. Shoulda been trusting that he was holding my hand and would work it all out.

I needed to trust God with Rodney and to work it out renting the apartment too. At least we weren't in as desperate a situation as poor Mattie Krakowski.

Wait. Mattie Krakowski. What was it Estelle had said?
Maybe it doesn't have to be a fantasy
. Hadn't made any sense to me then, not with her finances, but . . . we hadn't checked it out. We didn't really know why the bank had foreclosed on her.