Chapter Fifteen

Glimpses of I-25 show from the taxi—scant vehicles moving among the orange traffic drums.

The fall of snow is constant as the taxi works its way into downtown, windows dark in the low-rise office units.

Sidewalks are deserted, storefronts unlit, doors closed on the shopping malls.

“Bus station's up on the right,” the taxi driver says. “But I don't imagine you'll be going any place.”

“I called ahead,” Whicher says. “They got some lines still running.”

The taxi driver shakes his head.

Lauren DeLuca sits rigid in the seat alongside Whicher.

Rental car offices are closed, nobody looking to lease out till the storm eases.

The cab pulls in at a curb piled with dirty snow.

The marshal pays the man, Lauren steps out.

She carries her case toward a glass-front bus station—foot long shards of ice hanging from the roof.

Inside the Greyhound bus, the heat is cranked. At the back, looking out through misted windows, Whicher eyes the few cars and trucks on the interstate.

A radio plays snatches of news on the worst winter storm to hit the Mountain West in years.

Lauren sits by the window.

Eight other travelers are on the bus, none of them seated close.

“I don't know how you think this is going to work,” Lauren says. “Look at it.”

Traffic’s slow moving on the single-wide lanes, road crews out in both directions.

“You cut a deal with a federal attorney, the Marshals Service expect me to get you where you need to go.”

“You think it's that simple?”

“You made a deal. All I’m saying. A man died already. Just to get you this far.”

Her eyes widen. “They found Corrigan?”

He looks at her. “They found him.”

For a minute, neither one of them speaks.

Whicher listens to the whine of the drivetrain, the growl of the diesel engine—noise coming up from the road.

“No free rides,” he says.

Heat steals into her eyes. “I never said there was.”

The marshal looks off down the length of the bus. Three hours to Denver—three hours ahead of them, at best.

He pushes back in the worn leather seat.

Beneath his suit jacket, he feels the Ruger in the shoulder-holster. “I told you I took a guy out to Florence ADX, yesterday morning? I was headed home, I took the call about your train.”

“So you said.”

“They picked him up with human remains in the trunk of his car. Burnt human remains. Cutter Maitland. An enforcer for the Chicago mob.”

She stares out of the window of the bus.

“He made a deal with the feds to plea-down,” Whicher says. “Agreed to testify for the government. But then he skipped out. They picked him up again in Dallas. He’ll spend the rest of his life in the highest security prison in the country.”

She shakes her head.

“He reckoned me and him were no different...”

“I’ll honor the terms of my deal.”

“All the way up from Texas,” Whicher says, “the son-of-a-bitch told me we were just working different sides. Him for the mob. Me, an enforcer for the law.”

She looks at him. “And did it bother you?”

“It don’t bother me none. I guess. So long as too many folk don’t get confused.”

She folds her arms on her chest. “You see everything in black and white?” She leans a fraction to look at him. “Don’t you ever get confused?”

“Maybe.”

She leaves her eyes on his. “Are you confused now?”

A beat passes.

Another.

“How long,” he says, “did you work for them?”

“Twelve years.”

“All that time keeping books for the mob?”

“That's not the way it started,” she says. “I was naive.”

“Y’all were busted?”

“Three of us, from my office.”

“Anybody else cut a deal?”

She shakes her head. “FBI have been investigating the Coletti family for years. They decided on a different approach; forensic accounting. They offered me immunity, a new identity, relocation out of state.”

“In return for testimony to convict.”

Lauren nods.

“What kind of level?”

“All the way up to the top.”

Whicher gives out a low whistle.

She glances at him sideways. “It's really only blind luck? That I get you?”

“Deaf, dumb. Blind.”

“At least I know,” she says. “That I can trust you.”

The bus rumbles forward, through the dull, gray of the morning.

The marshal lets his eyes blur on a line of orange traffic drums out of the window.

“And I'm truly sorry,” she says.

Whicher looks at her—sees the water welled at the corner of her eye.

“Everybody says to keep your distance—I hardly even talked to Marshal Corrigan...” Her voice catches in her throat.

“Whatever testimony you have,” he says, “I hope it’s worth it.”

“You mean, worth a man's life?”

Inside the grand hall of Union Station, Whicher sits on a tall-backed wooden bench.

The waiting room is run down, tan painted walls detailed brown.

The ticket office is closed, kiosks boarded up. He studies signs left over from the fifties; Pullman, Rock Island, Sante Fe.

Every major road east is blocked or severely disrupted. A thousand miles to Chicago, fifteen hours straight. The bench is hard, the grain of the wood worn smooth from long years of use. He stares at the high, arched windows, caked with snow.

At best, the roads will be a crawl—narrow corridors cleared with salt trucks and plows. Any breakdown, any wreck, they’d be trapped for hours.

All the airlines have pulled their schedules; flying conditions are way too bad.

The marshal watches the street door—opening every few minutes, people coming in, going out.

The Amtrak service is due in half an hour; the California Zephyr, still running, despite the snow. Nineteen hours. All the way to Chicago—the train running all night, all through the next day, arriving the middle of the afternoon. In time to make it to the court the following day.

The marshal takes in the folk in the waiting room, around twenty, all told. Mostly couples, older couples, not in any kind of rush. One group that might be college friends, three young women, two men.

A handful of single men are traveling, some with backpacks, two others dressed for business, no luggage. Nobody looks out of place.

Whicher shifts his weight on the seat. The only people out of place are Lauren and him—in ill-fitting coats that don't belong to them.

He tells himself they’re just a man and a woman waiting on a train. A winter's night in Denver, tickets out of a machine, nobody knows who they are.

“You alright?” He looks at Lauren sitting beside him.

He feels a flicker of warmth in the smile she gives.

She holds his eye a moment. Puts her hand on top of his on the wooden bench.

Standing by the ticket machine, Jerzy Belaski allows himself a single glance straight at her. He turns away, stifling a yawn.

Only ever a matter of time, he tells himself.

Following the Greyhound bus had been child's play.

The drop-off in Denver was outside the rail station. They'd gone inside. They hadn't come back out.

He’d ditched the stolen Chrysler, found a side entrance, checked with a rail employee—the only service coming through was headed east—bound for Chicago.

A block out from the station, he found an outdoor store, bought a backpack, bought another winter coat, nondescript, fawn.

In a service-alley, he transferred the gun and the parka into the backpack, slipping on the new-bought coat.

Lauren DeLuca had never seen him before.

The guy in the hat wouldn’t recognize him; on the train he hadn’t seen his face.

He takes the ticket from the machine, crosses the terrazzo floor.

At a wooden bench on the side, he settles. He takes out his cell phone, opens it.

Two missed calls.

Coletti.

Two messages.

He reads the first—I’m sending people. Where are you?

The next; Why didn’t Jimmy call? Call me NOW.

He stares at the waiting room floor, thinking.

Some disturbance registers in his senses. As if eyes are turned upon him.

Somebody looking at him.

Had the guy in the hat started to look?

A cluster of lights move beneath a road bridge—flashing, wide-set, pulsing left to right.

Lauren DeLuca shelters beneath the roof that spans the platform.

Whicher listens to the sound of clacking rails above the muffled noise of the city.

A train horn splits the night air.

The locomotive approaches along the base of a high-rise office building—plow blade mounted to its front—the blue and silver paintwork of the cars just visible.

Pieces of packed snow fall silent from the wheels to the ground.

The train slows, the sound of the engine shakes the air. The California Zephyr pulls in to Union Station, brakes squealing.

Doors on the lower floors of the cars open. Attendants step out, holding their jackets in the bitter wind.

A handful of passengers step down from three of the cars.

The Denver travelers move toward the train, the marshal picks up Lauren’s case.

They walk fast to the nearest open doorway.

A carriage attendant holds out his hand.

Whicher pulls two tickets from his pocket.

The attendant checks, waves them onboard.

Looking up and down the platform, the marshal nods.

Nobody following behind.