Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Don’t be.” Douglas beamed. “That’s what I’m trying to say thank you for. I ran away when it happened. Across an ocean. And I stayed there and tried to forget it all. But today . . . I scattered his ashes. I was able to let him go. After thirty-two years. Because of what you’ve done. I am free!” He looked up at the sky and gave a semi-howl. I noticed droplets of beer clinging to strands of his beard, like dew on a rainforest fern or, less generously, the jaw of a rabid dog. Whether he was ecstatic or lunatic, it was hard to tell.

I thought back to my brief conversation with Douglas. He’d asked me what it felt like to kill someone. He wanted to know if revenge was bitter or sweet. Even given the context of my first book, those questions were particularly intense.

Hang on, I thought. What had he just said? Because of what you’ve done. Sorry to flash back to a sentence literally two paragraphs up, but it’s important. Pieces clicked. Three specific events found their correlation.

Douglas had brought a gun on the trip.

Henry McTavish had died.

Douglas had disposed of the gun.

Douglas wouldn’t have gone to all the effort of getting a gun just to use heroin for the murder. The only reason to dispose of the gun was if he didn’t need it anymore. Which logically meant the man he’d come to kill was already dead. Was he accusing me of killing McTavish? Thanking me for saving him the trouble?

“I’m sorry to ask,” I said, lowering my voice. “But you said it’s thirty-two years you’ve had Noah’s ashes. Your partner—how did he die?”

Douglas’s eyes, without embellishment I swear, twinkled. “Oh, you are good. Why don’t you tell it? So the scene plays better in your book. Like you’re explaining it.”

I took the invitation. I knew a certain tragedy had happened thirty-two years ago. “Noah was a teacher, I’m guessing.”

“Not only that, but a good one. A great one. He knew his kids. Schools out here, they’re different. There’s none of that faceless point and learn, it’s about getting to know all the kids. Noah could tell something was wrong, but he just had a hunch and a hunch doesn’t get you far—especially in the nineties if you’re a gay man in the outback, let me tell you. I don’t want to put into words what this man had been doing, but some people are monsters. Noah had noticed, though. A girl in his class, usually so bright and happy, had fallen quiet. He finally convinced her to tell him what was happening, and he was going to help her tell the police. I don’t know how the guy found out he was about to get exposed, but he did. So he had to think of a way to shut them up. Everyone that knew about it.”

A schoolteacher. An abused child. An abuser about to be exposed. Four kids and a teacher killed in a train accident.

“The bus driver,” I said. “It was the bus driver. He was molesting the kids.”

What had Aaron said? Bus driver was a bit hard to ask, flat as he was. Just like the plot of a certain book.

Douglas nodded somberly. “Parked that school bus right up on the tracks. Locked the doors. Noah’s ashes are more ceremonial than real. So let me ask you this, do you think you could identify a body from that mess?”

I imagined again those tiny palms against the glass, the plume of dust charging, but this time I saw a lone shadow running from the tracks, sweat-slicked hands slipping off a locked door, as Douglas brought his hands together with a bang.

Chapter 18

The bus driver’s name was not Archibald Bench, by the way.

Of course, that was the first thing I googled.

Alice Springs gave me the gift of internet reception, and a freight train crunching a school bus was newsworthy enough to pop right up in a search. I found a list of the dead: four children; a teacher, Noah Witrock; and the driver, Troy Firth. Nothing in the article alluded to accusations being leveled against Troy, or anyone being directly at fault: it was a tragic accident and nothing more. But the story itself, mixed with Douglas’s version of it, did hew shockingly close to the plot of Off the Rails, the book that Majors had accused McTavish of pinching from her. Swap the parents for the bus driver, a car for a bus, and it was essentially the same method of murder. And the same method of getting away with it.

Troy Firth, unfortunately, is not an anagram of Archie Bench no matter which way you cut it. However, you’ll have thought the same thing Douglas did: it’s entirely plausible that the bodies were unidentifiable or irretrievable from the crash. It would also be fair to remind you here that Henry McTavish was crippled down his left side. I don’t want to lead you up the garden path, but I have already told you some people in this book go by several names. All these thoughts ran through my mind but were too slippery to connect.

Douglas left me to rejoin the dance floor. I passed through the tables. As I walked past Wyatt, he grabbed at me.