Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

Royce hustled McTavish into a seated position, muttered hold this like he was a mechanic with a screwdriver between his teeth, and shoved McTavish in my direction. I had a second’s hesitation at adding my fingerprints to a crime scene, but the corpse was drooping toward me and I figured, with Royce’s hands all over his tongue and toes, we were past such decisions. I stepped in and held on to his shoulders, keeping him tilted forward, while Royce fumbled off his coat, tapping me to lift one hand here, another there.

Without his coat, McTavish showed more signs of death. The veins in his neck were bold rivulets of blue. Royce set about rolling up McTavish’s sleeves, and I noticed that the skin on McTavish’s left arm was rippled and glossy, the type of mottled flesh caused by burns long healed. This continued up to the side of his neck and assumedly also down his leg. The hit-and-run he’d barely survived, remembered by his skin.

Royce looked inside the creases of both elbows. Then he stood up. “I need to see his room. And the flask.”

Aaron checked his watch again. He’d indulged us with a look at the body under the guise of passenger security, but now we had fewer than forty-five minutes before the real police would board the train, and his caution was kicking in again.

Royce stepped into the bathroom and called out over the sound of the faucet as he washed his hands, “I suspect it’s a drug overdose. I’m sorry we alarmed you, but it pays to be prudent. I just need to check his room and see if any environmental factors, drug paraphernalia and the like, can contribute to my conclusions.”

This mix of truth, in the cause of death, and lies, in our reason for looking at McTavish’s room, was a particularly brilliant piece of manipulation, sold all the more heavily by the casualness with which Royce had expressed it while drying his hands, swapping our intimidation tactics for exactly what Aaron had always wanted to hear. Royce was giving Aaron the opportunity to prove himself right, and Aaron took it.

We exited L1 and Aaron slid the door shut, hanging the cardboard handle-hanger that said Shhhhh—I’m still sleeping in lieu of being able to lock the door, which I thought was more than a little ironic. We followed him down the hall. In the rickety space between carriages, muffled by the clanking of iron and the wind whistling through the gaps, I whispered to Royce, “Didn’t know you were into feet.”

He shook his head. “Junkies usually shoot up in their arms, but if those veins collapse, or if they’re trying to hide an addiction, they shoot up somewhere more discreet—the side of their eyes, or in between their toes.”

“He’s clean,” I surmised.

“Drunk? Yes. Druggie? No. Murdered? Definitely.”

Aaron unlocked the door to the Chairman’s Carriage and swung it open. His shout of surprise cut off my conversation with Royce and we turned to hear him say into McTavish’s room, “What the hell are you doing in here?”

Chapter 15

Brooke’s hands shot into the air as if we’d come in brandishing guns. The blood didn’t just drain from her face, it siphoned down her legs, through the floor and onto the tracks, leaving her with bone-china cheeks and pale, thin lips puckered in surprise.

“These are private quarters,” Aaron said.

“This is a crime scene,” I said.

“Who are you?” Royce said.

I had been so surprised to see her I hadn’t properly taken in the opulence of the Chairman’s Carriage. Though it was named so, I hadn’t quite realized that Henry’s room would be an entire carriage. We’d entered into a private sitting room that could easily seat ten or so people. A yellow leather couch ran in a semicircle against the east wall, facing a table piled with some scattered papers. A television was mounted on the far wall. That particular detail stood out the most to me: to be rich enough to afford this cabin but indifferent to the view you were paying for. Another indulgence was betrayed by the small deposit of ash on the carpet by my feet: a flagrant breach of the no-smoking rule. There was a whiff of blueberry in the air, rather than cigarettes, though. The design of the furniture was like any hotel lobby: wood paneling (not fake, as in my room) and gold-trim finishes, even a glittering chandelier. The whole room felt like being in Air Force One.

Royce picked up a half-full bottle of whiskey and whistled.

“Pricey?” I asked. A number on the side of the bottle was older than I was, which answered my question for me.

Brooke’s scrapbook was next to the messy stack of papers, and I realized they were strewn not because McTavish had left them in a mess, but because she’d been interrupted going through them. She saw my gaze land on them, and the burgeoning excuse that had been bubbling on her lips transformed as she recognized what I’d said.

“Crime scene?” she said. “You think Henry was—” Her hand shot to her mouth. “Oh my God. Please don’t think I—”