Parallel Lies Read Online Free Page B

have regional offices?”
    “I’m new,” Tyler answered, not wanting to give this guy too much information. He carried NTSB credentials but did not feel like a federal employee, a federal agent. For the last eleven years he’d distrusted the feds. Now he was one.
    Madders replied, “Which means you’re some kind of expert, right?”
    “I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
    “Homicide,” Madders said. “You gotta be some kind of expert in homicide. Am I right?” They walked a few more feet—it was treacherous going—when Madders said under his breath, “You’d better be.”

    Lit by a number of battery-powered fluorescent lights, the boxcar in question held crated dishwashers. A St. Louis Police Department uniformed patrolman stomping his cold feet together was at a stepladder leading up into the car. Tyler showed the man his credentials.
    “Feds are here!” the cop announced.
    Inside the car were two crime scene technicians busy with stainless steel tools and plastic bags. They had attached littleflags of various colors around the car. Supervising the two was a detective by the name of Banner, or Bantock—the man was so cold his jaw didn’t move properly and Tyler missed the name. The detective was short and stocky and wore a gray wool overcoat. His street shoes looked wet all through, and his face was a florid pink, from either temperament or the cold. Clearly he didn’t want to be here—it was written all over him, from his hunched shoulders to the squinting eyes that conveyed resentment.
    “Blood?” Tyler asked. The floor, the boxes, the walls appeared sprayed in it. The air smelled sour.
    “No lie,” the detective answered.
    “It was a question,” Tyler explained. He’d attended hundreds of crime scenes, most of them bloody, but this was among the worst.
    “The cold helps us,” one of the technicians explained. “If the fluids hadn’t frozen, nearly on impact, they would have been absorbed, spread out. Instead, we got some real good splatter indicators here.”
    The other tech added, “We’re thinking two people. Both bleeders—we’ll know for sure when we type the blood. If either one’s still standing I’d be surprised, but this one—” he said, indicating the boxcar wall behind his partner, “—this one’s a couple quarts low. He’s either dead or wishing he was.”
    “Have we identified that?” Tyler indicated the brown mess on the boxcar’s floor.
    “We were thinking fecal matter or vomit,” the first tech answered. “But now I’m guessing soup. Frozen chili, maybe.”
    “Chili,” Tyler said curiously.
    “Go figure,” the technician said.
    “These riders will fight over anything,” Madders said from outside the car. Snow covered his head like a thin handkerchief.
    The detective, plainly suspicious, inquired, “What’s NTSB care about a fight in a railcar?”
    Tyler nodded. He’d been expecting this. “The homicides and the subsequent arrest—”
    “The Railroad Killer,” Madders interjected.
    Tyler continued, “—have everyone in Washington oversensitive about reports of blood in railcars. If we’ve got a copycat out here, the sooner we shut him down, the better.”
    Madders said, “Good riddance to all riders—these two included. We chase a dozen out of here every day.”
    Both the detective and Tyler turned to face Madders. His breath fogging in the cold boxcar, the detective asked, “You chase any out today?”
    Tyler in turn asked Madders, “Who do you mean by ‘we’?”
    Madders answered the detective first. “None that I saw. Listen, we got bums coming and going, twenty-four, seven. The ones who know anything know to jump way before they ever reach the yard. It’s only the dumb ones we see here. You trespass onto company property, that’s a crime. We see the same face two, three times, and we arrest ‘em.”
    “Who’s ‘we’?” Tyler repeated.
    “Northern Union
Security,”
Madders emphasized.
    “They got their own company, their