Death Train to Boston Read online

  Yes, I was thirsty. Verla helped me to sit up, helped me to hold the glass because when I tried, my hand shook so badly I would have spilled water all over the bed and all over the soft, worn flannel nightgown I was wearing. It was a few sizes too big for me. I wondered what had happened to my own clothes.

  Then, belatedly, I took note of what she’d called me: Carrie, a shortened form of the name Caroline. My mother had particularly hated to hear anyone shorten my name to Carrie, though I’d rather liked it myself. Certainly I’d preferred it to Caroline.

  As I slowly sipped, getting the hang of it and taking the glass on my own, I thought how odd it was to be called either Carrie or Caroline. Mother was dead, I knew that. Surely I had gone by my middle name, Fremont, for years now?

  A rudiment of memory rushed forcefully back, and I blurted, ‘‘Where is Michael?’’

  Verla gave me a stern look, took the glass from my hand, and set it on the washstand beside the bed. She didn’t answer me right away, but went to a dresser against the opposite wall and took up the pitcher from which she’d poured the water. At the foot of the bed she paused. ‘‘You were askin’ for him before. We don’t know who he is. Father didn’t bring anybody else home but you. Now you’re awake, in your right mind and all, you’d best fergit all about that Michael and not speak his name no more. It makes Father angry. You remember that.’’

  ‘‘But—’’

  Verla ignored my protest as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘‘I’ll go for Father right now. He wanted to know the minute you came to your senses. And while I’m gone, I’ll fix you something to eat. You lay back now, wait for Father.’’

  I sank back on the pillows, noting an emptiness in my stomach that I very much feared had nothing to do with hunger.

  But Verla did not leave the room immediately. Instead she thought better of it, put the pitcher down again, picked up something else from the dresser, and came back to the bed.

  ‘‘Here,’’ she said, pushing a hand mirror and a wide-toothed comb at me, ‘‘with Father coming, you’d best tidy yerself up as best you can. If you think you can manage.’’

  My eyebrows went up; my new-found friend, the only one I had in this place—so far as I knew, which was not far at all—seemed suddenly rather irritated with me. ‘‘I can manage,’’ I said; then, as I felt my weakness assert itself, I amended, ‘‘that is, I’ll try.’’

  ‘‘Best a body can do sometimes is try,’’ Verla muttered, turning back to the door. This time she left, taking up the pitcher on her way out.

  I struggled up higher against the bed pillows, and raised the mirror before my face. ‘‘Oh no!’’ I said in a hoarse whisper, appalled.

  I had always been on the thin side, but the face in the mirror was thin beyond belief. Not much more than a skull with green eyes.

  How long had I been here? What had happened to me? Why couldn’t I remember?

  FROM MICHAEL KOSSOFF HOTEL MORONI SALT LAKE CITY UTAH TO MRS EDNA STEPHENSON MR ALOYSIUS STEPHENSON J&K AGENCY DIVISADERO STREET SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA

  RETURNING TO SAN FRANCISCO STOP WHEREABOUTS OF FREMONT JONES UNKNOWN STOP PLEASE LOCATE IN PALO ALTO MISS MEILING LI STOP SAY HER ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED STOP ASCERTAIN IF SHE CAN BE AVAILABLE STOP ARRIVE TUESDAY STOP KINDEST REGARDS STOP MICHAEL

  I conquered my distaste for my appearance by the simple expedient of putting the mirror aside. I did not need a mirror to comb my hair. Odd Verla hadn’t braided it, I thought, as it should have been much easier to take care of in a braid.

  But as soon as I began to comb it, I understood why: tangles. Masses of them. Not to mention that my hair— indeed my whole self—was badly in need of a washing. I combed straight back as best I could, by fits and starts, wishing all the while for a hair ribbon. Though I had always detested fuss and frills, even as a child, it did occur to me that a well-placed bow might hide that awful gap on the side of my head.

  More composed on account of knowing what to expect, I took up the mirror again and ventured another look. It was bad, no two ways about it, but hair grows back. And weight can be gained if one eats enough and doesn’t go around running one’s food all off, which was what my mother always used to say I did when I remained a young, skinny, flat-chested thing long after all my friends had begun to have interesting little buds beneath their bodices. Young girls are such lemmings, and I hadn’t been much different then, I’d wanted breasts too.

  Eventually I’d grown them, after a fashion, but by then my mother was dead. . . .

  I turned my head to gaze out the window at nothing, for there was nothing out there but reddish brown hills with a few trees. Not thickly forested, not farm land either, not much of interest in the visible landscape. But I wasn’t looking at the scenery anyhow, for I had begun to remember . . . many things. Things that included the name of this place with the reddish soil: Utah.

  I remembered being on a train. Eating luncheon with Michael Archer Kossoff in the dining car. I was wearing my new aubergine dress and had looked quite wonderful in it, if I did say so myself; purple and green being my best colors, though Michael also likes me in blue. For lunch I’d had creamed tiny shrimp with peas in a puff pastry shell, and a salad of orange segments tossed with butter lettuce in a sweet dressing, plus a light, fruity white wine to drink, and coffee after, no dessert for me. Michael had had lemon meringue pie.

  I remembered telling him, over the food, about my distant relation John C. Fremont’s maps of this area, which he had made long ago, before the Civil War. About the incredible hardships he and his men had gone through on their surveying expedition, how they’d followed riverbeds that dried up and vanished underground, how their Indian guides had deserted them one by one, how the food had run out. I’d told Michael how everyone, Cousin Fremont included, had believed there was only one great mountain range between the Mississippi and the Sierra Nevada—but this had not proved to be the truth. No, the land of the high Western plateau was all folded, range upon range of mountains pushed up with valleys and even a vast desert in between. So over and over again, Fremont and his starving men had climbed to the top expecting to see the blue waters of the Pacific in the distance, only to have their hopes dashed. All that lay ahead was more desert and another range of mountains. No wonder many of Cousin Fremont’s party had given up hope and gone insane.

  I had told Michael all that, bit by bit, spinning out the grim tale deliciously slowly, while he had done his best to get me thinking, if not talking, on another track entirely. I knew what he wanted, of course, I knew that look in his eye. . . .

  How very odd! I remembered putting my napkin beside my plate, properly draped not folded, and then walking up the aisle between the tables with Michael’s gaze burning into my back. He’d wanted me to turn around, to give him the matching look of desire that would bring him into my compartment, and into my arms. Oh, and I would, but not . . . then, not . . . just yet . . . and as I passed through the door a uniformed porter held open for me, I’d been wondering how long I could hold out against Michael’s seductiveness. . . . And that was all.

  I frowned. There was more, just a bit more, I could almost, almost grasp it. . . .

  But no, not quite. The pictures in my head wouldn’t come together. Only a noise, a terrible, ear-splitting sound, an . . . explosion!

  Yes, that was it, an explosion!

  I touched my head. I lifted the covers and looked at my legs, heavily bandaged and immobile. I tried to move them, which proved not to be a good idea. Far too painful.

  The enormity of what had happened overwhelmed me. I let the covers fall and closed my eyes, but still two tears slipped out from beneath my eyelids.

  So somebody blew up the train, I thought. The good people here saved me. But I couldn’t have been the only survivor, surely not? Where were all the rest? Where was Michael? WHERE IS MICHAEL??

  I heard the latch pop on the door to my room, and I opened my eyes. A very large, rather handsome man came in first, then Verla behind him, and four mor
e women behind her. The women fanned out behind the man in a semicircle, like the chorus in a Greek drama. Verla took one step forward and said her line: ‘‘Carrie, here is Father.’’

  I looked at the large man and said the one thing that was foremost in my mind, even though it was the one thing I’d been told not to say.

  ‘‘Where is Michael?’’

  3

  WELL, I NEVER!’’ said Edna Stephenson, tossing her head with such a jerk that her tightly wound curls bounced. She was a tiny woman who stood not much higher than the waist of the very tall son beside her. ‘‘It’s not nize, that’s all there is to that.’’

  A hint of a smile flickered across Michael’s lips at Edna’s consternation, which was as typical as her putting a ‘‘z’’ in the word ‘‘nice.’’ But he immediately suppressed any hint of amusement, which in the circumstances was not hard to do.

  ‘‘What Mama means—’’ Wish began.

  ‘‘I don’t need an interpreter, Aloysius,’’ Edna interrupted, glaring up at him, then turning her small but piercing eyes on Michael. ‘‘Mr. Kossoff knows just ezzactly what I mean. Right? Right.’’

  ‘‘Let’s continue this conversation in the kitchen,’’ Michael suggested, ‘‘over a cup of coffee.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t make it yet,’’ said Edna with a hint of satisfaction in her voice.

  Michael deduced that their secretary and office manager was quite angry with him. But he suspected her anger was the kind a parent displays when a child, lost through his own adventurousness, finds his way back home. He said, gesturing with his good arm, ‘‘In that case, I expect I can manage a coffeepot one-handed. It will be good practice. After you, Edna. You too, Wish.’’

  Darting one last glare Michael’s way, Edna took off in her tottery gait, aiming for the archway that led from the J&K Agency’s front office into the conference room, which had once been a dining room, and on into the kitchen.

  Wish—as he was called by everyone except his mother—rolled his eyes at Michael, then turned to follow her. Wish was by nature a quiet, thoughtful man of great integrity. He made an excellent private investigator due to his police training and his passion for justice. Michael and Fremont had been quick to snap him up and add him to their team at J&K. Yet Wish’s temperament also worked against him; there was always the question, at least in Michael’s mind, of whether experience would toughen Wish or break him. The young man had been through one of those make-or-break experiences over the summer, and as Michael followed him through the archway, he thought the verdict was not yet in. Wish had survived, but he still seemed a bit tender, perhaps fragile. In the present situation Michael knew he’d best bear that in mind.

  Michael fixed his face in the expression that Fremont described as ‘‘enigmatic.’’ He did not want either Edna or Wish to know how worried he really was, or how physically debilitated he felt. His shoulder ached. His eyes burned as if he had not slept at all the previous night, his first back in this house that he and Fremont shared on San Francisco’s Divisadero Street.

  It was a large, double house, in the Italianate Victorian style. He owned one side and Fremont the other— hers was the side that had the J&K Agency’s offices on the first floor; her own living quarters were on the second and third floors. Therefore he now paid her rent corresponding to his half-ownership in the business. Their financial arrangements had become rather complex since, on her twenty-fifth birthday a few months back, Fremont’s father had given her a large part of the estate she’d expected to inherit only on his death. And most particularly since she would not marry Michael— which would have greatly simplified everything. At least to his way of thinking, though Fremont vehemently disagreed.

  Michael sighed. Their not being married bothered him now more than ever. Yet perhaps she was right. Perhaps it did not really matter and he was only being a hidebound traditionalist. If they had boarded that fateful train as man and wife, would it have changed a single thing? Anything at all?

  No, he admitted to himself as he sat down at the kitchen table, forgetting he’d said he would make the coffee, probably not. They would still have been working together as partners, as equals, each with an aspect of the investigation to conduct. They would have been traveling incognito, would have gone through the same charade, played the same enticing game of pretending to be strangers who’d met in the club car. Fremont would still be missing.

  Michael sighed, unconsciously, as once again the vivid picture of Fremont as he’d last seen her flooded his mind. A piece of paper and a wedding ring—on this trip she would have worn it on a ribbon around her neck rather than on her finger—would not have made Fremont turn around that last time he’d seen her and, with her eyes, invite him to follow. That was the only thing that could have made a difference: If he had been walking right behind her at the very moment of the explosion, most likely they would have been thrown off the train together. Only that, having her by his side no matter what happened, could have prevented this never-ending pain in his heart, this cold fear in his gut that he might never see her again.

  ‘‘Michael,’’ said Edna in a voice so soft she did not sound like herself at all, ‘‘I’m sorry. You’re not the one I should be mad at. I wasn’t thinking. Just . . . it’s easier to be mad than sad, y’know?’’

  ‘‘What?’’ He emerged from his thoughts to realize the corners of his eyes were wet. He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips and leaned his head back, as if his eyes were only tired, but Michael doubted he was fooling Edna. The woman was not much bigger than a child, and had certain mannerisms that were child-like, but in truth she was both wily and wise. And incredibly efficient.

  ‘‘What I’m sayin’ izzz’’—she drew out the ‘‘z’’ sound —‘‘the railroad’s gotta be held accountable for every single person as was on that train. They gotta satisfy you, not the other way around. We’ll make ’em find Fremont!’’

  ‘‘Mama,’’ Wish said from the long drainboard next to the sink, where he was doing the task that Michael forgot, ‘‘I’m sure Michael has thought this all through. I for one would like to hear the whole story of what happened, from the time of the explosion ten days ago to when he decided to return to San Francisco and got on the train in Salt Lake.’’ Wish put the coffeepot on the gas stove and turned on a burner, which he lit with a long sulphur-headed match. Then he turned to join them at the table.

  Michael sighed again, this time caught himself at it, then nodded and cleared his throat. In the hope that a relaxed posture might lead to a more relaxed mind-set, he crossed his right leg over the left and slouched as best he could, considering his tautly bandaged left side, which he needed to keep immobile for the sake of the mending collarbone. Then he began:

  ‘‘The force of the explosion threw the back half of the train off the tracks. That’s where I was, still in the dining car. Fremont and I had finished the midday meal only minutes before. I was debating between going to the club car for a smoke and going back to my compartment to read, when it happened.’’

  He paused, his mind going again over territory it had covered a million times by now, or so it seemed. ‘‘I cannot be sure exactly how many minutes passed from the time Fremont left the dining car to when the explosion occurred. Also, it’s not possible to know whether she was delayed along the way, for example by someone temporarily blocking the corridor; or if she might have stopped to admire a pet, such as the silky little terrier belonging to that woman. . . .’’

  Michael’s voice trailed off as he became lost in the memory of Fremont so foolishly and atypically taken with the tiny dog—what had it been?—a Maltese terrier. The only sounds in the kitchen were the measured tick of the Regulator wall clock and the hiss of the coffeepot coming to a boil. After a moment he gave his head a quick shake and resumed: ‘‘At any rate, the exact timing is impossible to know, and essential if we’re to determine Fremont’s fate with any hope of accuracy. We do know, it has been established, that one of the tw
o train cars that fell to the bottom of the gorge and burned was the one in which Fremont’s compartment was located. The other, directly in front of it, contained my compartment. Both these cars had burned completely by the time anyone was able to get down into the gorge and begin a rescue.’’

  Again a silence fell, as Michael deliberately paused before speaking all that was in his mind. He had a suspicion that seemed bizarre, yet he could not let go of it: that those two train cars might have been targeted; that someone had wanted not only to blow up the train but also to do it in such a way as to maximize the chances of harming him and Fremont. Yet who had known, aside from the Director of the Southern Pacific, who had hired J&K, that they would be on the train?

  The coffee began to perk, and Wish got up to adjust the flame under the pot. Michael waited for him to return to the table, then focused his eyes on the younger man’s lean, sensitive face, as if by directly addressing Wish, the pain of what he had to say might become easier to bear.

  ‘‘The trainmen—conductors they’re called—who had put themselves in charge of things, wouldn’t allow me to go down there. I had no identification to prove that I was working for Southern Pacific in the capacity of private investigator, nothing to suggest I might have any authority or any special skills to contribute. So I was forced, along with the other ambulatory survivors, to get onto the rescue train that was sent along up the tracks—I don’t know how much later. I lost track of the time. They took us to Provo for medical attention and booked us into hotels. Fremont was not on that rescue train. She was not booked into any of the hotels. She was not kept in the infirmary at Provo or sent on to the big hospital in Salt Lake City. Her body was not among the dead.’’

  Here Michael’s voice cracked. ‘‘At least, not the visually identifiable dead.’’

  ‘‘Oh!’’ Edna exclaimed, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. She’d made the sound involuntarily.

  Wish frowned and blinked. He said, ‘‘My God.’’