Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (24 page)

“Damn,” I muttered when the snack machine in the terminal ate my fifty cents and failed to deliver peanut-butter crackers.

Just then the radio crackled.

“Lieutenant, it’s Roger James.”

“Go ahead.”

“We’re ready to go, and you’ve got the first one, an eastbounder. It should arrive within five minutes. It’s approximately three-quarters-of-a-mile long, mainly hoppers of resin, gondolas filled with rock, and boxcars and chemical tankers headed to the ship channel. The engineer has already been notified that he’ll be stopping at the Killdeer yard for a search.”

“Got it,” I answered. Clicking off the radio, I called out to the dozen men milling inside the station. “We’re moving. Train number one will be here in five minutes.”

Then, on the radio, I hailed eight other deputies stationed along the track. “Get ready, any minute now,” I ordered. “Watch for anyone jumping off that train.”

We took our places. My post was outside the yard office, next to the main track. It was there we planned to stop each train for inspection. Once we searched them, we’d send the trains on their way and set up for the next.

The roar of that first train storming toward us reached us well
before we could see it. I felt my pulse quicken as it drew closer, felt the rumble of the earth beneath my feet even before it rounded the final bend, becoming visible down the track. I’d forgotten how imposing a train is close up until it stopped within a few feet of me. The engine loomed twenty feet high, its cars stretching far into the distance, disappearing behind a grove of oak trees. My crew went into immediate action. Two officers at the head of the train walked toward the rear, covering both sides. Simultaneously, four split off from the center of the train, two walking forward while their counterparts proceeded toward the rear. At the same time, two officers stationed at the rear ran toward the center. As the men passed each hopper car, they checked the platforms that bordered the fronts and backs, where the cars angled inward, leaving enough room for a man to ride. At each container car, they inspected the numbered tin seals that secured the doors, to see if any had been cut, an indication someone might be inside.

All went without incident until, a thousand feet away, I heard someone shout “Stop.” A man dressed in dark clothing could be seen running from the train, with a deputy in pursuit. “Police, stop now or I’ll shoot,” the officer ordered again. Still, the man raced ahead until the officer pointed his gun toward the clouds and pulled the trigger. As the warning blast echoed through the train yard and surrounding woods, the man fell to his knees, where he was handcuffed and brought to his feet. As the others continued the search, an officer escorted his prisoner to the terminal.

“Not our guy,” he shouted out as he approached me.

Instead, the man the officer urged toward me had dark hair and eyes, a complexion the color of a deep golden tan. “Illegal,” he said. “Can’t understand a word. Keeps saying something like qui-dad-dough?”

“Cuidado”
I explained. “He’s asking you to be careful with him.”

“Ah.”

I was just about to order the officer to run the man’s prints, to make sure he wasn’t wanted for anything, and then release him, when the captain’s voice blared over the radio: “All stations. We’ve had a change in plans. We’re already accumulating a number of illegals. This situation will certainly worsen throughout the day. Under the Homeland Security laws, INS will be dispatching agents to each outpost. They’ve asked to have all illegals detained.”

“I thought we’d decided not to do that this time. We had swarms after the last go-around, and they had nothing to do with our guy. If we detain them, I have to assign men to guard them. I need every body I’ve got to conduct the searches,” I radioed back. “Our priority is to find Gabriel, and we just haven’t got that much manpower.”

“As I pointed out to the captain, we can’t do that,” Scroggins cut in. “Under federal law, we’re required to detain them for INS, Lieutenant.”

“Agent Scroggins is right. Can’t be helped,” the captain agreed.

The radio clicked off and I turned to the man, whose entire body trembled with fear.

“Lo siento, señor. Necesitas esperar el INS,”
I said, explaining he had to wait until an INS officer arrived.

“Take him inside,” I ordered the officer. “Find out where he can be locked up, and then get back out here. We need your help.”

As we would do with each train that afternoon, we took our places to inspect the hatches on the tops of the hopper cars’ bins as the train departed the terminal. We knew from the first operation that riders often unlock the lids and then lower themselves inside, lying horizontally on top of the cargo, like the plastic resin. “In the south, in spring, fall, and especially summer, the boxcars and container cars get too hot to ride inside,” James had explained to the newcomers at a hastily called task force meeting in the wee hours of the morning. “So they
ride on top of the cargo in the hoppers, where they can leave the tops open, get fresh air, and stay cool with the breeze.”

On twenty-six-foot ladders, at four different positions, I placed men to inspect the tops of the hopper cars as the train moved slowly out of the terminal. Halfway through the long chain of cars, a deputy suddenly yelled, “Found something.”

I radioed James who communicated with the engineer, ordering him to stop the train again. We ran up the track after the train, the deputy who’d said he’d seen “something human” leading the way. In the sixth car we searched, we found what had attracted his attention. Protruding from a bin of plastic pellets, we found a motionless, cold arm.

“We need to pull this train into the yard,” I ordered the engineer. “Notify your dispatcher and make it happen.”

I knew what we’d find—a body. If they didn’t ease themselves carefully on top of the plastic pellets or the gondolas of rock, maybe bring along a flattened cardboard box to lie on, a certain number of the riders were drawn into the cargo. Unable to pull out, the plastic pellets slowly sucked them in, like quicksand, suffocating them.

Ten minutes later, we had the train safely tied down on a yard track. As my crew searched another train that had just pulled into the terminal, two switchmen cut the car with the body out of the train. Then they coupled the remaining cars to the train and signaled the engineer. Nearly half an hour after its scheduled time, the first train was on its way.

The local police chief monitored the operation as his men unloaded the small, bright yellow balls of resin that covered the body. Although no one suspected the man might be alive, the town doctor stood vigil nearby. Uncovered, the arm belonged to a young Hispanic man, maybe even a teenager. The officers laid the body out on the ground and the doctor slowly removed the clothes and examined it. “No surprises. My guess is he suffocated,” he told me a
while later. “You can order an autopsy, but this doesn’t look like murder to me.”

By noon, with another day and a half ahead of us, we had one body on its way to the Houston medical examiner’s office and thirty-five illegals—men, women, even two children found with their parents inside an otherwise empty boxcar—detained in the yard office lobby, guarded by five officers I couldn’t afford to lose in the search, but I had no choice. I gave one of the local deputies money, and he brought back thin burgers on stale buns for the officers and the unfortunates caught in our web. I couldn’t eat. Somewhere, that morning, I’d lost my appetite. I couldn’t imagine how the day could get any worse until I heard a thrashing overhead. I looked up and discovered, hovering above the terminal, a TV news helicopter.

“They’ve found us,” I radioed to the captain.

“We know,” he said. “The press conference starts at one
P.M.
”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Sarah, there’s no other way.”

T
his is the largest task force in Texas history,” the captain said to the television cameras.

“Who’s the target?” asked a reporter.

“While we can’t comment at this time,” he said, to a chorus of protests, “we can tell you that INS is involved and that this is a combined effort of many agencies. Our intent is to enforce our borders, to put teeth into the Homeland Security laws.”

“This doesn’t look like you’re just rounding up illegals. This dragnet is a lot like the methods used to try to trap that railroad killer, Resendiz. Have we got another serial killer riding the trains? Is it true that you’re looking for Lieutenant Armstrong’s supposed serial killer?” a voice prodded.

Watching on the small television inside the main lobby, I knew before the camera revealed his face that the reporter would be Evan Matthews.

“As I said, we cannot comment on specifics at this time. All we can say is that this is a combined effort enlisting the aid of many agencies and that INS and Homeland Security are both actively
involved. We should have more information for you at the end of the sweep.”

“When will that be?” another reporter prodded.

“No comment,” said the captain.

“Since the INS is involved, can we conclude that this search is targeted at apprehending aliens entering the country illegally and traveling via railroad?” another reporter asked. “And that they’ll be deported out of the country.”

“As I’ve said, I have no comment on specifics at this time. You can infer what you wish from the fact that the INS is an integral part of this operation.”

“Is that really what all this is about?” Matthews shouted. “Or is that spin to cover up a massive manhunt for one man?”

“Again, no comment,” the captain said.

“Just answer the question, Captain Williams,” he said. “Should the people of Texas be on the lookout for a serial killer?”

Without answering, the captain turned and left the hastily erected lectern in the parking lot outside our Houston offices.

“Sometimes that Matthews guy gets things right. People should be warned,” I muttered to no one in particular. I noticed an officer standing behind me at the doorway—munching on a candy bar—shrug.

Of course, the press attention hadn’t come as a surprise. Everyone in charge acknowledged from the beginning that we couldn’t keep the task force a secret, not an action this massive, one with so many agencies involved. Still, we’d hoped for more time, at least one full day, before the information flooded the television news. Scroggins’s decision to call in Homeland Security and INS played right into the hands of the muckety-mucks at the central office. The captain had been instructed to say precisely nothing while insinuating we were involved in a sweep for illegals crossing the border. The biggest disappointment was what the press coverage would
do to the manhunt. Whether or not Gabriel realized the effort was aimed at him, he’d be alerted to the existence of the search points. Sure, there was a chance he might not see the television and newspaper coverage, but not much of one. We already had evidence he read the newspapers: the newspaper clip he’d personally mailed to me at the office.

The afternoon wore on like the morning. The train station’s lobby bustled with all the illegals, the vast majority young men. INS arrived and the agent in charge, Tim Preston, who looked more like an accountant than a law officer, worked through the paperwork with each of the detainees. After processing, they would all be fingerprinted, checked for outstanding warrants, and then sent back across the border, most to Mexico but others to Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

About four that afternoon, when I had a break in the action, I put a deputy in charge and did something I’d been considering all morning: I walked into the lobby and motioned for the back half of the line to follow me. Preston looked up, startled.

“Where are they going?” he asked.

“It’s too crowded in here. This is a fire hazard,” I explained. “I’m going to break them up into a couple of rooms and have them brought out when you’re ready.”

“Good idea.” He nodded. “I’ll let you know when to bring in the next batch.”

“You bet,” I said.

At the yard office storage room, nearly empty except for shelves of office supplies, I motioned and the first group filed past me, entering their temporary prison without protest or questions. Many had been through this drill before, and for them being detained was a minor inconvenience. Within weeks they’d cross the Rio Grande again and hop another train. A little more than half my charge of illegals secured, I stationed a deputy at the door and then continued on with
the remainder of my procession to an empty office, furnished with a desk and a few chairs. Anticipating my orders, the remainder of the prisoners breezed past me, until I reached the end of the line, the final four would-be immigrants, a family with two small daughters, maybe five and eight. I motioned for them to wait outside the room, and they stopped, the children looking up at me, their eyes clouded with fear.

“Deputy Cox,” I called out to one of the men nearby. “Secure these prisoners. I’m going to put this family in a separate room. Keep the children segregated from the rest of the population.”

“Sure,” said Cox, a plump deputy in his fifties. “Good idea, Lieutenant.”

“Señor y señora”
I said to the family. In Spanish, I instructed them to bring their children and follow me. The youngest, a small girl with dark brown eyes rimmed by a startling fringe of long black lashes, wrapped her arms around her mother’s leg, afraid to move. But the nervous woman pried her off and pulled her forward.

We’d found them in a boxcar, sleeping on the hard metal-and-wood floor, most likely exhausted from the heat. The interior of those cars, even on a day like this when the thermometer hadn’t broken eighty, must have been nearly a hundred. I couldn’t help but consider what would happen to them if we sent them back and they tried to reenter the States again in a few months, when summer was in full force. By then the heat inside the boxcars would be at least twenty degrees higher, too hot for anyone, especially a child, to survive for long. There was a strong probability that they’d die of heat stroke, like the eight unfortunate illegals whose lifeless bodies we’d carried out of boxcars, reeking of urine and sweat, the summer we searched for Resendiz.