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

sure?” I asked.
    “Yeah.” She didn’t meet my eyes. “I’m sure.”
    “Powder River,” Nik said. “Bastard’s leaving the state.”
    “What else, Jane?”
    “What you mean?”
    “Something’s got you nervous. What aren’t you telling us?”
    “Nothing.” She kept her eyes on the ground. “Ain’t nothing else.”
    “Jane. C’mon, help us out. If there’s something you know—”
    “Ain’t nothing . I told you what I know.” She shot me a defiant look. “Believe whatever make you happy.”
    “Okay.” I blew out a breath. “You happen to see what part of the train he caught?”
    “Just that most the dragon done gone by.”
    “He set up camp at all?”
    She shrugged. “Spent time in his usual spot. Started a fire. It got quiet, so I up and took a look. He just sitting there. Thought he was drunk asleep, too tired even to lie down. Soon as that train come, though, he moving like the Devil after him.”
    “Show us where he camped,” Nik said.
    Some fire came back in her eyes. “Tell me why I should help, you talk to me like that.”
    Nik spread his hands. “Bad day. Nothing personal.”
    She sniffed. “Well, then.”
    She squashed out her cigarette and hefted herself off the table. We followed as she pushed through the brush and shuffled down the slope toward the riverbank. She stopped under a cluster of cottonwoods and pointed toward a cleared space that held a fire pit in the middle of a twenty-by-twenty-foot patch of dirt. To one side of the cleared area was a heap of trash, neatly scraped into a pile and weighted down with rocks. Next to that, a small stack of canned food—hash and tuna and peaches. On the other side of the clearing, Rhodes or someone had dragged a fallen tree to a place where a man could sit and watch his food warming on the fire and think about what he’d done with his life, what he still might do.
    I thanked Jane, gave her a twenty-dollar bill, and she turned back the way we’d come. I heard her crash through the underbrush, then silence.
    I led Clyde to a patch of ground away from the camp and ordered him to stay. He watched me curiously, waiting for me to give him something to do.
    Nik squatted on the edge of the cleared area and surveyed the camp. I stood over him.
    “There was no need for that,” I said.
    “We missed him by an hour.”
    “I mean it. This isn’t a good idea. You shouldn’t be here.”
    “Won’t happen again.”
    “Good.” I tugged off the pins holding my braid and stuck them in my mouth while I tucked stray strands back into the plait and re-coiled it under my cap. “You want to hold this area while I call Cohen and lead him here?”
    But Nik was staring at the pile of cans. “Why’d he leave all his food?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe he wanted to go light.”
    “You got gloves in that bag? And a camera?”
    “We have our lead, Nik. We’re done here.”
    “We’re right on top of his camp.” He stood. “Let’s give the regulars a little more than a possible lead from a strung-out bum, okay? Let’s pretend we’re cops a few minutes more and give your detective something to work with.”
    I glanced down the river, toward the snarl of cheatgrass and thistle where I’d seen the Sir that morning. I let Nik’s nastiness go. It was grief talking. And grief was why he needed to see things through. I got it.
    The dead can be very compelling.
    Plus I’d never been able to stand up to Nik. Going along with him now would cost me something with Cohen. But Nik was essentially family. And in Royer, family is always first.
    I shrugged. “You’re pushing it,” I said, just to make my point.
    He knew he had me. “Appreciate it, Sydney Rose.”
    I opened the bag and handed him the box of latex gloves. I removed the camera and took shots of the camp and the surrounding area, stepping carefully around the periphery of Tucker Rhodes’s jungle as I photographed from all angles. The packed earth held few