CHAPTER SIX

Jenn Roston was seething as she turned to follow her colleagues away from the crime scene. She trudged through the trees behind Riley and Agent Jeffreys as Deputy Chief Jude Cullen led the way toward the parked vehicles.

“Bull” Cullen, he calls himself, she remembered with contempt.

She was glad to have two people between her and that man.

She kept thinking …

He tried to demonstrate a blood choke on me!

She doubted that he’d been looking for an excuse to grope her—not exactly, anyway. But he sure was looking for a chance to show physical control over her. It was bad enough that he felt the need to mansplain the blood choke hold and its effects to her—as if she didn’t know all about it already.

She thought they were both lucky that Cullen hadn’t actually gotten his arm around her neck. She might not have been able to control herself. Although the man was ridiculously muscular, she would most likely have made short work of him. Of course, that would have been pretty unseemly at a murder scene and would have done nothing to promote good relations among investigators. So Jenn knew it was just as well things hadn’t gotten out of hand.

On top of everything else, now Cullen seemed to be pissed off that Jenn and her colleagues weren’t going away just yet, and that he wasn’t going to hog all the glory of solving the case.

Tough luck, asshole, Jenn thought.

The group emerged from the trees and got into the police van with Cullen. The man said nothing as he drove to the police station and her FBI companions were quiet too. She figured that they, like her, were thinking about the grisly crime scene and Cullen’s comment about having “something pretty unpleasant to deal with” at the station.

Jenn hated riddles, maybe because Aunt Cora was so often cryptic and threatening in her attempts at manipulation. And she also hated living with the sense that something in her past could destroy her present dream-come-true of being an FBI agent.

When Cullen parked the van in front of the police station, Jenn and her colleagues got out and followed him inside. There, Cullen introduced them to Barnwell’s Chief of Police, Lucas Powell, a middle-aged man with a sagging chin.

“Come with me,” Powell said. “I’ve got the guys right in here. My people and I just don’t know how to deal with this kind of thing.”

Guys? Jenn wondered.

And what kind of “thing” did he mean?

Chief Lucas Powell led Jenn, her colleagues, and Cullen straight to the station’s interview room. Inside, they found two men seated at the table, both wearing neon yellow vests. One was lean and tall, an older but vigorous-looking man. The other was about Jenn’s own shorter height, and probably not much older than she was.

They were drinking cups of coffee and just staring at the table.

Powell introduced the older man first, the younger man second.

“This is Arlo Stine, the freight conductor. And this is Everett Boynton, his assistant conductor. When the train stopped, they’re the ones who had to walk back and find the body.”

The two men barely looked up at the group.

Jenn gulped. Surely they must be terribly traumatized.

There definitely was “something pretty unpleasant” to deal with here.

Interviewing these men wasn’t going to be easy. To make matters worse, they weren’t likely to know anything that would help lead to the killer.

Jenn stood back as Riley sat down at the table with the men and spoke in a soft voice.

“I’m awfully sorry you’ve had to deal with this. How are you guys holding up?”

The older man, the conductor, shrugged slightly.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “Believe it or not, I’ve seen this kind of thing before. People killed on the tracks, I mean. I’ve seen bodies mangled up a lot worse. Not that anyone ever gets used to it, but …”

Stine nodded toward his assistant and added, “But Everett here has never been through this before.”

The younger man looked up from the table at the people in the room.

“I’ll be OK,” he said with a shaky nod, obviously trying to sound like he meant it.

Riley said, “I’m sorry to ask this—but did you see the victim just before …?”

Boynton winced sharply and said nothing.

Stine said, “Just a glimpse, that’s all. We were both in the cab. But I was on the radio making a routine call to the next station, and Everett was making calculations for the curve we were taking just then. When the engineer started braking and sounded the whistle, we looked up and saw … something, we weren’t sure what it was really.”

Stine paused, then added, “But we sure knew what happened when we walked back to the spot for a look.”

Jenn was mentally reviewing some of the research she’d done on the plane flight. She knew that freight train crews were small. Even so, there seemed to be one person missing.

“Where’s the engineer?” she asked.

“The hogger?” Bull Cullen said. “He’s in the custody suite.”

Jenn’s mouth dropped slightly.

She knew that “hogger” was railroad slang for an engineer.

But what the hell was going on here?

“You put him in a jail cell?” she asked.

Powell said, “We didn’t have much choice.”

The older conductor added, “The poor guy—he won’t talk to anybody. The only words he’s said since it happened are, ‘Lock me up.’ He just kept saying that again and again.”

The local police chief said, “So that’s what we wound up doing. It seemed the best thing for now.”

Jenn felt a flash of anger.

She asked, “Haven’t you brought in a therapist to talk to him?”

The railroad deputy chief said, “We’ve asked for a company psychologist to come in from Chicago. It’s union rules. We don’t know when he’s going to show up.”

Riley looked truly startled now.

“Surely the engineer doesn’t blame himself for what happened,” she said.

The older conductor looked surprised at the question.

“Of course he does,” he said. “It wasn’t his fault, but he can’t help it. He was the man at the controls. He’s the one who felt the most helpless. It’s eating him up inside. I hate it that he’s shut himself off like this. I really tried to talk to him, but he won’t even look me in the eye. We shouldn’t be waiting around for some damned railroad shrink to show up. Rules or not, somebody ought to do something right now. A good hogger like him deserves better.”

Jenn’s anger sharpened.

She said to Cullen, “Well, you can’t just leave him in that cell by himself. I don’t care if he insists on being alone. It can’t be good for him. Somebody needs to reach out to him.”

Everyone in the room looked at her.

Jenn hesitated, then said, “Take me to the custody suite. I want to see him.”

Riley looked up at her and said, “Jenn, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

But Jenn ignored her.

“What’s his name?” Jenn asked the conductors.

Boynton said, “Brock Putnam.”

“Take me to him,” Jenn insisted. “Right now.”

Chief Powell led Jenn out of the interview room and down the hall. As they walked along, Jenn wondered whether Riley might be right.

Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.

After all, she knew that empathy was hardly her strong suit as an agent. She tended to be blunt and outspoken, even when a softer touch was needed. She certainly didn’t have Riley’s ability to turn on the compassion at appropriate moments. And if Riley herself didn’t feel up to this task, why did Jenn feel like she ought to take it on?

But she couldn’t help thinking …

Somebody’s got to talk to him.

Powell led her into the row of cells, all with solid doors and tiny windows.

He asked, “Do you want me to come in with you?”

“No,” Jenn said. “I’d better do this one-on-one.”

Powell opened a door to one of the cells, and Jenn stepped inside. Powell left the door open but stepped away.

A man in his early thirties sat on the end of the cot, staring directly at the wall. He was wearing an ordinary T-shirt and backward baseball cap.

Standing just inside the doorway, Jenn said in a soft voice …

“Mr. Putnam? Brock? My name is Jenn Roston, and with the FBI. I’m so terribly sorry about what happened. I just wondered if you wanted to … talk.”

Putnam showed no indication of even hearing her.

He seemed especially determined not to make eye contact with her—or with anybody else, Jenn felt sure.

And from her research flying out here, Jenn knew exactly why he felt that way.

She swallowed hard as a knot of anxiety filled her throat.

This was going to be a lot harder than she’d even imagined.