Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train Read Online Free Page B

above his nose.
    “I mean it didn’t look like he was falling. It looked like he’d been thrown. Almost like he was shot out of a cannon. Head first.” She thought about it. “Oh, I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I certainly didn’t see anyone throw him out, but if he fell out, wouldn’t he have been tumbling? Sort of grappling? Grabbing at the air?” She made similar hand motions.
    “I don’t know.”
    “He wasn’t falling like that. He looked more like a mail sack getting tossed off. Inert.”
    “Unconscious?”
    “I think so.”
    Lacy realized all the men were staring at her. Was she committing a faux pax? Was this not done in Turkey? She had been here long enough to adapt to Muslim rules on what women could and couldn’t do but this was a new situation. If travelers of both genders and all ages are on a train, and some of them are persuaded to disembark at an unscheduled stop, can anyone get off, or only men? Her T-shirt was sleeved but her head was bare. She was dressed appropriately for a foreign woman. Still, she felt she was expected to leave.
    She tramped back toward her car and her belongings, wishing she’d asked the New York policeman to tell her his name again. Jason something, wasn’t it? She might want to get in touch with him again to satisfy her curiosity. Who was this dead man? What was he running from? Or to? Why couldn’t he buy himself a ticket? Since Jason Whoever was out here to help train new recruits, he’d likely be privy to more information in the days to come as local authorities endeavored to locate the dead man’s relatives.
    Climbing back aboard, she felt all eyes follow her down the center aisle. Unintelligible mutters. She paused and said, to the car in general, “A man fell off. He is dead.” No response. No one seemed to understand.
    Still standing, she saw the dark green trench coat draped casually on the seat across the aisle from her own, its lining exposed and traces of the dead man’s weight still visible in its creases. Lacy picked it up and examined it. She recognized the label as English and expensive. She ran her hands into the outside pockets. Empty. Then she spotted a nametag sewn into the back beneath the designer’s label.
    Maxwell Sebring.
    Not the usual cheap nametag like the ones her mother ironed onto her school clothes, but woven in a graceful script especially for someone with a lot of money. Lacy dashed out of the car again, ran down the length of the train, and handed the coat to the policeman from New York. “He was wearing this. Make sure they know.”
    The man she had pegged as the engineer ambled toward them, one hand extended. The policeman from New York handed him the coat.
    * * *
    Back aboard, Lacy looked at her watch. According to the printed schedule she held they should have arrived thirty minutes ago at the station where Paul was waiting for her. Would he get antsy and leave without her? She imagined him standing on the platform, fiddling with the yo-yo he always carried in his pocket to keep himself entertained and his hand busy—much as Turkish men fiddled with their worry beads. When she’d originally met him in Egypt, he’d explained having taken up the hobby to help him quit smoking. Now he was skilled enough, she knew, to entertain others with it.
    Paul was the reliable sort who wouldn’t leave even if she was late, and thinking this made her feel even worse about keeping him waiting. When she called up a mental image of Paul, it was his smooth, sensual mouth she remembered most clearly. She couldn’t imagine those lips with a cigarette between them.
    She heard a siren and stood to look out the windows on the north side of the car. Two blue vehicles with “Gendarmerie” emblazoned on their sides sped westward on the road running parallel to the tracks. An ambulance van followed a moment later. Lacy wondered how the police would go about investigating. They’d need to know the names of all passengers, wouldn’t they? Her