Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity (25 page)

To attract little attention, I brought them through a side door and, in the sunlight, escorted them to my Tahoe. When I opened the doors, the father looked at me, puzzled and wary, but he motioned for
his wife and children to climb inside. He sat beside me as I drove. He looked old and tired, but I guessed he couldn’t have been more than forty, his brow deeply furrowed from years of squinting in the sun, his hands thickly callused, and his expression weary.

As I drove, I glanced back at the mother in the rearview mirror. Her features wide and thick, her long black hair parted down the middle and pulled taut in a ponytail, she fussed over her little ones, pressing her finger to her lips, motioning for them to be quiet. She wore her panic openly on her face, reminding me of a red fox Bill and I once found while camping. Caught in a hunter’s trap, it had gnawed halfway through its tethered leg in a vain attempt to break free. Bill tried to help, but terrified each time we approached, the animal bared its teeth and snapped. We abandoned it there, bleeding and helpless.

Minutes later, I pulled into a convenience store parking lot. I lowered the windows, turned off the Tahoe, took the keys, and ordered the family to wait. Inside the store, I hit the ATM for cash then piled up candy bars, sandwiches, and drinks at the cash register. They were still in the Tahoe when I returned. Even if he had been tempted, the father hadn’t risked an escape attempt with his wife and daughters. I then drove ten minutes down the road to the edge of town. I pulled the car onto the shoulder, parked it, and took two twenty-dollar bills from my pocket, handing the money, along with the bag of food, to the father. I got out of the car and opened all four doors.

“You’re free to leave,” I told them in Spanish. They stared at me, the parents searching my face, unsure of my intentions. “Go, now, before someone sees. The next town is just down the road. Please, just be careful. Take care of your little girls.”

A moment’s hesitation and the mother began sobbing. The father shook my hand until I believed my old tennis elbow might act up. I pulled myself away, got in the truck, and drove off.

I’d been gone less than half an hour. Back at the yard office, no one noticed the family’s disappearance, especially Preston whose line grew longer with each passing hour.

At six that evening, I’d had enough. Video footage of the task force dominated the news, and any element of surprise we’d once had was lost. I left Killdeer in the hands of a sergeant with the local sheriff’s department and took the chopper back to Houston. At home, the corral elm tree blazed with lights, and Maggie waited when I walked through the door.

“Our picture’s in the school newspaper. Strings’s and mine,” she said. “Look here.”

I glanced at the edition of
The Armadillo
she held in her hands. It was four pages of computer paper stapled together with the school mascot, a smiling armadillo in a cowboy hat, hand-stamped at the top. Accompanying a short article written by one of the seventh-grade students on Maggie, Strings, and their projects, they’d run a photo of the kids grinning proudly, Strings pointing at his exhibit.

“That’s wonderful, Magpie,” I said. “You two are real celebrities.”

“All we’ve really done is win our district,” she said. “We have to go to regionals, then state, then nationals. Mrs. Hansen thinks at least one of us will probably make it through to the state level, but no one from our school has ever gone to nationals.”

“However far you two go, it’s great,” I said. “Listen, I’m proud of both of you already.”

With that, Maggie looked down at the newspaper again, and her enthusiasm waned. “Mom,” she said, a little hesitant. “Dad would have been really proud of me, wouldn’t he?”

For just a moment, I was startled, surprised that Maggie would even question how delighted Bill would be. “Of course, honey,” I said. “You know Dad. He’d be smiling so big, his chest would be puffed out
so far, Gram would be telling him to take a breath before he burst his buttons.”

She laughed and I realized how long it had been since we’d been able to talk about Bill that way. Before he died, Mom, Maggie, and I loved to tease Bill. He called us silly girls and joked that if he didn’t have us, who would keep him in line?

“Sometimes I’m really mad at Dad,” Maggie said, then, and I saw tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Maggie, no,” I said.

“I think sometimes he should have driven better, so he didn’t crash into that truck,” she whispered, looking up at me. “And then I feel bad, because I know it wasn’t his fault. When the captain came to the house, he said that other driver never gave Dad a chance to get out of the way. So then I feel worse, because I know I shouldn’t be mad at him. But I am.”

“Your father wouldn’t have left us for anything,” I said, slipping my arms around her.
In a few years
, I thought, I
won’t have to bend down to hug her. One day she’ll probably have to lean down to hug me
. “Your father loved us as much as anyone can love. He never would have left us if he’d been given a choice. You have to believe that.”

Maggie said nothing, so I went on. “I understand being upset. I am too. But don’t be angry with Dad.”

“I forget sometimes what he was like,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I try to remember things we did together, but sometimes I can’t.”

I hugged her tighter and whispered, “I’ll never let you forget your father. I remember him like he just left us yesterday. Remember at the Softball games, how he’d run his hands through your hair and say he was rubbing you with luck? Then when you hit the ball, he’d whoop and holler, louder than any other parent in the stands.”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I used to get really embarrassed sometimes, ‘cause he was so loud.”

“Remember how he laughed at me when I tried to cook?”

“He really laughed,” Maggie said, wiping away a tear. “He said he was going to find out what Gram was cooking for dinner.”

“He sure did, didn’t he?” I said, hugging her tighter. I put my hand under her chin and tilted her face back, so I could look in her eyes. “Anytime you want, you just talk to me, and we’ll remember together.”

“Promise.”

“Promise,” I said. “Always.”

Maggie’s smile grew broad, and she hugged me back.

“You know, if only one of us makes it all the way to nationals, I hope it’s Strings,” she said, pulling away and brushing off the tears. “I want to go, but I think I’d like it even better if he did.”

I’ve never been prouder of my daughter. I thought,
It was a busy day, but this makes up for a lot
.

Yet even at that moment when things started to seem right again, I couldn’t forget—Gabriel was still out there, maybe stalking his next victim, while the public went about their business, unwarned. And unless the captain had a change of heart, I had only one day left to stop him.

I
t felt like
Groundhog Day
, that movie where Bill Murray portrays a TV-weatherman who keeps reliving the same day, over and over. The second morning in Killdeer, except for the fact that I’d had a few hours sleep and breakfast, wasn’t any different from the first. Our only accomplishment: slowing the entire rail system in Texas to a crawl. At our little station alone, trains backed up fifty miles out of the terminal, waiting to be inspected.

Although the captain had called in reinforcements, it seemed hopeless. Even if Gabriel lived in a vacuum, if he’d missed the news reports on the task force, he’d figure something was up when the trains bottlenecked. The hilly terrain around Killdeer didn’t have the woods to disappear into that, say, the piney woods of east Texas offered. But there were plenty of gullies and oak trees big enough to hide a man. Not to mention barns and stables. Or maybe he’d just hide out near the tracks, waiting to hop a train heading in the opposite direction.

Couple that dismal outlook with a gaggle of reporters milling outside the terminal and news choppers circling overhead, and we were
just going through the motions, carrying on with what had become a charade because none of us really knew what else to do. Still, I figured we just needed the right break. The truth is, more of law enforcement than most police would like to admit boils down to luck. One of Bill’s old stories was about John B. Armstrong, no relation, the ranger who arrested outlaw John Wesley Hardin, back in 1877. That time the luck was in the form of a suspender that caught on Hardin’s gun when he tried to draw it. Those extra seconds gave Armstrong the opportunity to knock Hardin unconscious by walloping him over the head with his weapon. That’s what we needed now, a good pair of suspenders to tie this Gabriel up long enough so we could catch him.

About then, I heard Captain Williams’s voice on my radio.

“Sarah, David’s apprehended a couple of gang members,” he said. “He wants you in on the interrogation. He’s got them in the lockup at the Dallas County jail. The chopper’s waiting for you.”

“Got it,” I said, praying this was the break we’d all waited for. “I’m ready.”

“You need to tell us everything you know about this Gabriel,” David ordered the thug sitting before him. Pounding his fists on the jail’s old wooden table until I thought it might crack in two, he threatened, “If you don’t, you’re withholding evidence, and that’s a criminal offense. We’re talking a multiple-murder investigation here. You want to spend the next dozen years or so in a Texas prison?”

When the man in front of him stayed mute, I took over. “Listen, we know you’re not involved in these killings. We’re not trying to implicate you in any way. All we need is a little information,” I said. “Tell us what you know about this Gabriel and you can be on your way. We’re not looking to tie you up over the drugs. Nobody here really cares about that.”

“Unless he doesn’t cooperate,” David blustered. “Then this whole thing could take a real bad detour. You won’t walk out of this jail by the door. You’ll be driven out the back, in the jailhouse van.”

“Agent Garrity, I’m sure he’s a reasonable man. He doesn’t want that to happen,” I said, leaning forward. “Do you?”

The focus of our attention snickered. “Listen, you two assholes can play all the games you want. I’m not talking,” said the tall young man with the long, greasy black hair who traveled the trains under the nickname Quaker. “I’m not telling you anything. I been through this before, lots of times, and nobody else has been able to turn me into a snitch, and you two won’t either.”

With that, he crossed his tattooed arms across his chest and stared at us, defiant.

We’d already run his fingerprints and knew Quaker was a minor criminal, mainly drug charges, whose real name was Billy Joe Bobbins from Little Rock, Arkansas. David spotted him and his traveling companion, another gang member, as soon as they were taken off the train. Both were dressed as we’d been told they would be, all in black. Quaker carried a backpack filled with dirty clothes, Xanax and Ecstasy pills, and a two-ounce bag of crystal meth.

“So, you’re some kind of big man. Unbreakable,” David said, the sarcasm dripping. “Well, we’re real impressed, Billy Joe. The truth is that we meet hoodlums like you every day. You’re ordinary, a smalltime druggie.”

“I may be a druggie, but I’m a druggie who has information you want,” he said, smirking and showing off the silver cap over a front tooth. “And I’ll burn in hell before I give it to you.”

“Listen, asshole. I have no doubt you’ll burn in hell. That day may come sooner rather than later if you don’t cooperate,” David said, grabbing Quaker. “Come on, get up.”

“Hell, you found me with drugs. That’s nothing,” he said, jerking his arm away. “I can do that kind of time without breaking a sweat.”

“But you’re forgetting, Mr. Bobbins, or would you rather we call you Quaker?” I asked.

“You can call me whatever you want, I ain’t doing real time for this. It’s a penny-ante offense,” he said. “Nickel and dime stuff.”

“Now, see, that’s where you’re mistaken,” I said. “You’re in Texas, and we’ve got this little law in the state that’s called the habitual offender act. Ever heard of it? You’ve got two felonies. One more conviction and it’s three strikes, you’re out. Sentence is a mandatory—and that’s the key word here, Quaker,
mandatory
—twenty-five years in a Texas prison. You think about that, Quaker. You think about twenty-five years behind bars. Twenty-five Julys in a Texas prison cell without air-conditioning.”

The kid glared at me, eyes wide, and I knew I’d hit my mark.

Wanting to give Quaker time to ponder his fate, David pulled him out of the chair, and then pushed him into an open holding cell, locking the door behind him.

“We’ll be back,” he said. “Meantime, enjoy your new quarters. Your cell in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice won’t be this big, and you’ll share it with three other inmates.”

Across the hall we opened the door on another interview room where “Rusty” sat waiting in a cell. David unlocked the door and pulled him out by his arm, pushing him into a chair.

“You ready for a little talk now?” he asked.

“Sure. Anytime you are,” he said. “I told you. I know nothing about this guy Gabriel, not a damn thing to help you.”

Short, sullen, with straggly red hair, Rusty, we’d learned from his record, was a high school washout named Mike O’Brien from Madison, Wisconsin, who’d recently been released from an Ohio prison
after serving eight years on a robbery conviction. Rusty and Quaker were buddies. The two men were found riding just two cars apart, on top of hopper cars, reclining on sheets of cardboard to keep from sinking in. We had an ace on Rusty. He’d been found with a 9mm, semiautomatic handgun in his duffle bag, a clear violation of his parole.

“I don’t think Rusty wants back in prison…do you, Rusty?” David taunted.

“No, shit-for-brains. But I’m telling the truth. I’ve never met this psycho you’re looking for. The most I’ve done is hear about him, that he’s some kinda looney tunes, and that if you run into him, you hop off the train and wait for the next. If you stay in the car and fall asleep, what I hear is that you never wake up.”

“What else have you heard?” I asked.