The Wrecker by Clive Cussler (book club reads .TXT) 📕

in my own hand authorizing you to charter a special train anywhere you need one. You’re working for the railroad now.”

“No, sir. I work for Mr. Van Dorn. But I promise to put your specials to good use.”

“Mr. Hennessy has equipped you with wings,” said Mrs. Comden.

“If only you knew where to fly ...” The beautiful Lillian smiled. “Or to whom.”

When the telegraph key started clattering again, Bell nodded to Van Dorn, and they stepped quietly off the car onto the platform. A cold north wind whipped through the rail yard, swirling smoke and cinders. “I’ll need a lot of our men.”

“They’re yours for the asking. Who do you want?”

Isaac Bell spoke a long list of names. Van Dorn listened, nodding approval. When he had finished, Bell said, “I’d like to base out of Sacramento.”

“I would have thought you’d recommend San Francisco.”

“For personal reasons, yes. I would prefer the opportunity to be in the same city with my fiancée. But Sacramento has the faster rail connections up the Pacific Coast and inland. Could we assemble at Miss Anne’s?”

Van Dorn did not conceal his surprise. “Why do you want to meet in a brothel?”

“If this so-called Wrecker is taking on an entire continental railroad, he is a criminal with a broad reach. I don’t want our force seen meeting in a public place until I know what he knows and how he knows it.”

“I’m sure Anne Pound will make room for us in her back parlor,” Van Dorn said stiffly. “If you think that’s the best course. But tell me, have you discovered something else beyond what you just reported to Hennessy?”

“No, sir. But I do have a feeling that the Wrecker is exceptionally alert.”

Van Dorn replied with a silent nod. In his experience, when a detective as insightful as Isaac Bell had a “feeling” the feeling took shape from small but telling details that most people wouldn’t notice. Then he said, “I’m awfully sorry about Aloysius.”

“Came as something of a shock. The man saved my life in Chicago.”

“You saved his in New Orleans,” Van Dorn retorted. “And again in Cuba.”

“He was a crackerjack detective.”

“Sober. But he was drinking himself to death. And you couldn’t save him from that. Not that you didn’t try.”

“He was the best,” Bell said, stubbornly.

“How was he killed?”

“His body was crushed under the rocks. Clearly, Wish was right there at the precise spot where the dynamite detonated.”

Van Dorn shook his head, sadly. “That man’s instincts were golden. Even drunk. I hated having to let him go.”

Bell kept his voice neutral. “His sidearm was several feet from his body, indicating he had drawn it from his holster before the explosion.”

“Could have been blown there by the explosion.”

“It was that old single-action Army he loved. In the flap holster. It didn’t fall out. He must have had it in his hand.”

Van Dorn countered with a cold question to confirm Bell’s conjecture that Aloysius Clarke had tried to prevent the attack. “Where was his flask?”

“Still tucked in his clothing.”

Van Dorn nodded and started to change the subject, but Isaac Bell was not finished.

“I had to know how he got there in the tunnel. Had he died before or in the explosion? So I put his body on a train and brought it to a doctor in Klamath Falls. Stood by while he examined it. The doctor showed me that before Wish was crushed, he had taken a knife in the throat.”

Van Dorn winced. “They slashed his throat?”

“Not slashed. Pierced. The knife went in his throat, slid between two cervical vertebrae, severed his spinal cord, and emerged out the back of his neck. The doctor said it was done clean as a surgeon or a butcher.”

“Or just lucky.”

“If it was, then the killer got lucky twice.”

“How do you mean?”

“Getting the drop on Wish Clarke would require considerable luck in the first place, wouldn’t you say?”

Van Dorn looked away. “Anything left in the flask?”

Bell gave his boss a thin, sad smile. “Don’t worry, Joe, I would have fired him, too. It was dry as a bone.”

“Attacked from the front?”

“It looks that way,” said Bell.

“But you say Wish had already drawn his gun.”

“That’s right. So how did the Wrecker get him with a knife?”

“Threw it?” Van Dorn asked dubiously.

Bell’s hand flickered toward his boot and came up with his throwing knife. He juggled the sliver of steel in his fingers, weighing it. “He’d need a catapult to drive a throwing knife completely through a big man’s neck.”

“Of course ... Watch your step, Isaac. As you say, this Wrecker must be one quick-as-lightning hombre to get the drop on Wish Clarke. Even drunk.”

“He will have the opportunity,” vowed Isaac Bell, “to show me how quick.”

4

THE ELECTRIC LIGHTS OF SANTA MONICA’S VENICE PIER illuminated the rigging of a three-masted ship docked permanently alongside it and the rooflines of a large pavilion. A brass band was playing John Philip Sousa’s “Gladiator March” in quick time.

The beachcomber turned his back to the bittersweet music and walked the hard-packed sand toward the dark. The lights shimmered across the waves and cast a frothy shadow ahead of him, as the cool Pacific wind flapped his ragged clothes. It was low tide, and he was hunting for an anchor he could steal.

He skirted a village of shacks. The Japanese fishermen who lived there had dragged their boats up on the beach, close to their shacks, to keep an eye on them. Just past the Japanese he found what he was looking for, one of the seagoing dories scattered along the beach by the United States Lifeboat Society to rescue shipwrecked sailors and drowning tourists. The boats were fully equipped for launching in an instant by volunteer crews. He pulled open the canvas and pawed in the dark, feeling oars, floats, tin bailers, and finally the cold metal of an anchor.

He carried the anchor toward the pier. Before he reached the edge of the light fall, he plodded up the sloping deep sand and into the town.