Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless Read Free Book Online Page A

hanging from her lips. She was whip-thin under her gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, her long feet thrust, sockless, into filthy Keds. Her hair was greasy and shot through with gray, her eyes at half-mast.
    We stopped next to the table.
    “Morning, Jane.”
    She blinked at me. Recognition filtered in like light through a dirty window.
    “Senior Special Agent Parnell. And Clyde.” She squinted. “Your first name Bonnie?”
    I smiled and shook my head. “How’s life treating you, Jane?”
    “Rough here. Rough there.” She barked a phlegmy laugh. “Rough all through. So who cares?”
    Her voice was husky, tattered, as if her vocal cords had been scraped raw. She pursed her lips, blowing cigarette smoke up into the skies, then knocked ash on the ground. “Heard I done missed your pancakes.”
    I gave her a chocolate bar from my bag. She tucked it into the pocket of her sweatshirt.
    “You can get food at the shelter,” I said, my voice soft.
    “Yeah.” She snorted. “I get me a steamed hot dog, then some shit be wanting head as payback. I done with that.”
    Nik had had enough of the pleasantries. “We’re looking for someone.”
    Her eyes cut to him, and she used one skinny fist to gather the blanket at her throat. “Yeah?”
    “A bum known as the Burned Man. You seen him?”
    “He been around. Came in early, when it all still dark. Took off near as fast. What you want with that poor boy?”
    “He’s a material witness.”
    She waved a hand dismissively. “We all material witnesses. Only we ain’t got none of the material.” She cackled.
    “You heard anything about where he might have gone?”
    “He didn’t do no check-in with me, that what you asking.”
    Nik exhaled sharply, his last bit of patience a single thread in a fraying blanket. “What do you know?”
    “Maybe I seen him.”
    “Where?”
    She shrugged, coy. “Then again, ain’t nobody paid me to watch him.”
    Nik leaned in, putting his cop’s eyes on her. “You want to tell the same story down at the station?”
    “You can’t arrest me ’cause I don’t know where that boy is.”
    “Loitering. Vagrancy. Illegal drug use. Vandalism. Trespassing.” He put his hands on the table and stepped in until his face was inches from hers. “I can haul you in for ass-fucking a rabbit if that’s what I decide you did. You get my drift, you piece of filth?”
    Nik. Old school all the way.
    Jane dropped the blanket. She looked ready to take a swing at Nik, and I began to get an idea of how she’d lasted on the rails.
    “Ah, Jesus, Nik.” I grabbed his arm, yanked him back, out of earshot. It was his show, but that didn’t mean he had to throw it all away. “You’re going about this all wrong.”
    “She knows where he is.”
    “Maybe. Give her a chance to share. These people, it’s all about honey. They get enough shit from everyone else. You really want to find Rhodes, be smart about how you do it.”
    He looked at my hand on his arm, and for a moment it was like he didn’t see me at all, just something standing in his way. I released him and gave him my own cop’s eyes. “Nik.”
    It took him a moment, but he came back. “Right.” He moved back toward Jane and nodded at her. “Sorry.”
    Jane lifted her chin and shoulders, pissed off and righteous. “There no call for him to be talking to me like that. I ain’t some trash he can shit on.”
    “We just want to have a little chat with the Burned Man,” I said. “A bad thing went down this morning, and he might have seen something. You notice when he came and when he left?”
    She kept her eyes on Nik, but relented. “Don’t know ’xactly when he come in the first time. Just heard people goin’ on about his face. But I was here when he come back. One, maybe two hours ago. Left on a freight after that.”
    “Going which way?”
    For the first time, she seemed uncertain. She lifted her hands, dropped them, then finally jerked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing north.
    “You