Ernie shrugged. “At the time, it didn’t seem so important. Besides, I had other things on my mind.”
“This must be his mom,” I said, showing the photo to Inspector Kill. “And him and his sister, the one who was abused on the train when they were children.”
I repeated the story Parkwood had told us to Inspector Kill. His face looked grim.
“Marnie Orville,” he said, pointing at Parkwood’s mother, “does she look like this woman?”
“A little,” I said. “Both tall, both blonde.”
“And both traveling with children,” Ernie added.
Once we were in the air, the chopper pilot flew low, following the track of the Blue Line. Mr. Kill was tense. He didn’t like flying and avoided it whenever possible. Eventually we caught up with the train, moving past Kyongju, the ancient capital city of the Silla Dynasty.
Inspector Kill ordered the pilot to take us to the East Taegu station, the next stop on the Blue Train’s itinerary, with all due haste. He had a plan. I listened. Ernie and I would board the train in Taegu. Alone. The Korean National Police, meanwhile, would not try to board the train in Taegu because they had not yet mustered their forces and Inspector Kill was worried that a haphazard operation might scare Parkwood away. He was a resourceful criminal, according to Kill, and at the first hint of police gathering, he would flee. How long it would take us to find him then was anybody’s guess; but while we searched for him, he could cause a lot of damage.
“We have to assume,” Kill told us, “that Parkwood will try for Marnie Orville, and if he does, we have to catch him today, while he’s still panicked and on the run. There can be no mistakes.”
So the plan was for me and Ernie to board the Blue Train in Taegu, keep a low profile while the train was rolling, and then, as we approached the next stop, Taejon, to search every compartment for Parkwood. Meanwhile, Inspector Kill would be waiting for us at Taejon, with an emergency team ready to surround the train and respond to any unforeseen contingencies.
“Are you armed?” he asked.
I showed him my. 45.
Inspector Kill nodded approvingly.
Of the four stops along the route of the Blue Train-Pusan, East Taegu, Taejon, and finally Seoul-East Taegu is the most bustling, second only to the Seoul Station itself. It’s a large station, monumental in its concrete dimensions. As the Blue Train huffed and chugged its way into the station, four or five dozen people stood on the loading platform, holding tickets, waiting to board. None of them was Parkwood.
Ernie and I waited under a dark awning. Steam blew out of the sides of the Blue Train and it finally came to a halt.
“Did you see Marnie?” Ernie asked.
“Not yet. The windows are all fogged.”
“She has to be in there.”
A few dozen people filed off of the Blue Train. As soon as they had pushed their way onto the platform, the new passengers holding tickets started to board. Ernie and I waited until the last minute-when the Blue Train started to roll forward-to sprint to the train and hop on. We took a seat in the last car, one arranged for us by Inspector Kill. At first we did nothing, just stared ahead at the sea of black-haired Koreans in front of us.
The uniformed conductor came by and punched holes in our tickets. The stewardess smiled as she walked by but didn’t make eye contact. A vendor came by with a tray strapped around narrow shoulders, selling dried cuttlefish and ginseng gum and tins of imported guava juice.
Ernie fidgeted in his seat. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply.
I felt bad about the rape of Mrs. Oh Myong-ja, the first victim, and worse yet about the rape and murder of Mrs.
Hyon Mi-sook, especially considering that her children were forced to huddle in the bathtub while she was systematically humiliated and then sliced to death. But those were crimes that I had no personal hand in, crimes that would have been impossible for me to prevent. The murder that bothered me most was the murder of Specialist Vance, the young technician who worked at the Mount Halla Communications Center.
“We shouldn’t have left him there alone,” I told Ernie.
“Bull,” Ernie replied. “At the time, we had no way of knowing Parkwood was the killer.”
“Sure we did.”
“How?”
I explained it to him. First the stalker of the Country Western All Stars. We hadn’t taken the musicians’ complaints particularly seriously, assuming they were random acts. But what had disappeared was a microphone, a pair of the bass player’s underwear, and finally a lone cowboy boot. All three of those things were among the piled-up junk in the G.I. living quarters on Mount Halla.
“That could’ve been coincidence,” Ernie replied. “And anyway, how were you going to pick them out?”
“And the checklists,” I continued. “When you work at a remote signal site, your life centers around checklists: maintenance checklists, communications checklists, electronics checklists. That’s all you do, hour after hour. Day after day.”
“Parkwood had checklists on the brain, you’re saying,” Ernie said.
“And he was about to be barred from reenlistment for lousy performance on an IG inspection,” I said. “He knew things had been going wrong for too long there at the Mount Halla commo site. He’d never correct it all.”
The third reason I should have known was by Vance’s demeanor. He was frightened, covering up the unscheduled absences of his partner even though he himself claimed never to go to the ville.
And finally, Parkwood had tried to run us off the road.
“Maybe he’s just a bad driver,” Ernie replied. “There’s plenty of them around.”
To Ernie, whatever happened, happened. No sense stewing about it. No sense blaming ourselves.
A half hour north of Taegu, rice paddies started to give way to woodland. The Blue Train was rising into the Sobaik Mountains. Once we reached the summit, we’d be on our way down into the broad valley that held the city of Taejon. It was then, during our descent, that Inspector Kill had instructed us to begin our search. That way, by the time the train pulled into the Taejon Station, Parkwood-if he was aboard-would be in a panic. He’d flee from the train, right into the arms of the waiting Korean National Police.
Inspector Kill’s plan, however, didn’t take into account the possibility that if Parkwood was on this train, he might harm someone-particularly Marnie-before we reached Taejon. Ernie and I felt that we couldn’t wait any longer. We started our search.
For the moment, we didn’t check the rear baggage compartment. We wanted to check the people in their seats first. Ernie waited at the end of each passenger car, ready to provide cover, while I walked down the center aisle, slowly working my way forward. I took my time, making sure that Parkwood wasn’t lying in between two seats or hadn’t ducked down to avoid us.
Was he carrying a weapon? I doubted it. Not firearms, at least. In Korea, there’s no such thing as a convenient gun shop to stop in and pick yourself up a Saturday night special. If Parkwood were armed, it would be with a knife or a club or a straight razor. Still, since Parkwood not only kept himself in good shape but had also proven himself to be ruthless, we had to be careful.
The Korean passengers stared up at me curiously as I passed. Some of the men frowned. Occasionally, a woman smiled. For the most part, I was glanced at and then ignored.
In the third car forward from the rear, there were a few American passengers. Some of them were reading, some of them trying to catch some shut-eye. None of them was Parkwood. One was a private first class wearing his khaki uniform, munching on the contents of a can of potato sticks. A brown leather briefcase was handcuffed to his wrist. I sat down.
“You the courier?”
He nodded to me, mouth open, lips still moist with flakes of pulverized potato. His name tag said Arguello.