Page 31

Twenty-Two

A minute passes before Anna is able to look again at the corpse of Edith Gerhardt.

Unlike after Judd’s death, she doesn’t cry or rage.

All she can do is gaze at Edith’s body and try to summon a bit of the hatred she’d felt for the woman.

It should be easy. She’d despised Edith for so long that it became second nature to her.

Something ingrained. But, much to her surprise, all Anna can think of is Edith’s warmth beside her as she woke her in the mornings.

And the sound of her footsteps, so light for such a sturdy woman, in the hallway outside her room.

And the way the entire house smelled when Edith made her apple strudel.

A rare treat reserved for her and Tommy’s birthdays.

Whatever anger Anna feels is reserved for the person who took Edith’s life.

And for herself.

No, she’s not the person who killed Edith, but she is responsible for her death.

Judd’s, too. Both would still be alive if she hadn’t tricked them into getting onto this train.

It doesn’t matter that each of them came of their own accord.

Or that this trip wouldn’t have been necessary had they not betrayed her father twelve years earlier.

This was all her doing, and now a second person will be denied the justice she so craves.

Anna hears movement in the preceding car, followed by the low hum of voices. She must have screamed, although she has no memory of it. Based on the sound rising behind her, she had to have done something to draw the others’ attention.

Sure enough, when she turns around, she sees the Phoenix’s remaining six passengers huddled around the doorway.

All display various states of shock. None more so than poor Reggie Davis, who Anna is certain didn’t expect one murder when he boarded the wrong train.

Now there have been two. And someone currently standing in front of her is responsible.

“Which one of you did this?” she says, needing to ask the question even though she doesn’t expect an answer.

“If I had to guess,” Lapsford says, “I’d say it was you.”

The accusation isn’t a surprise. Lapsford saw Anna put her hands around Edith’s throat. They all did. They’d watched her knuckles clench as she squeezed.

“I didn’t do it,” she says. “I found her like this. I swear.”

Seamus pushes past Lapsford. “Did you leave this car after the rest of us?”

“She did,” Herb says. “I saw her go by.”

Anna had all but forgotten Herb cracking open the door to his room and watching as she passed. She wishes she’d remembered, for it now makes her look more suspicious than she already does.

“Yes, I stayed here,” she says. “There’s no reason to lie about it because, one, Mr. Pulaski saw me and, two, I have nothing to hide.”

“Was Edith here with you?” Sal asks.

Again, Herb plays the part of tattletale. “She was. I heard them arguing.”

“We weren’t arguing,” Anna says, knowing it’s just a matter of semantics. She thinks of it as a confrontation, which is different from an argument, though not by much.

“It sounded like one to me,” Herb says. “?‘You should be afraid of what’s coming.’ That’s what she said. I heard it with my own ears.”

“That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“What did it mean?” Sal says.

“That she—and all of you—should fear what’s going to happen once we reach Chicago.”

Sal honks out a derisive snort. “Like you plan on letting us get there.”

“Getting you there is my only plan,” Anna says.

Exhaustion settles over her as she wonders just how that plan has gone so awry.

Yes, she assumed there’d be hiccups, but nothing she and Seamus hadn’t prepared for.

Never did Anna think she’d be forced to plead her innocence to the likes of Sally Lawrence, Jack Lapsford, and Herb Pulaski. They’re the guilty ones. Not her.

“Did you see anyone else go by?” she asks Herb.

“Only you,” he says.

Anna’s heart sinks into the pit of her stomach. She was hoping Herb had seen the man she glimpsed roaming the train, ideally as he snuck back into the observation car after she’d passed.

“Did you see someone?” Seamus says.

Yes, Anna thinks. My brother.

“No,” she says, because it’s safer that way. Not to mention more logical than what she’s thinking. Tommy is gone. No part of him exists. “But Edith was still alive when I left. I didn’t strangle her.”

“She wasn’t strangled.”

This comes from Reggie Davis, who had slipped into the observation car unnoticed while the rest of them cast accusations. Through the open door between the cars, Anna sees him kneeling next to Edith’s body, looking but not touching.

“How do you know that?”

Anna drifts closer, rapt, as Reggie points to Edith’s neck, where unblemished skin is visible beneath the drapery cord. “There aren’t any ligature marks. If she had been strangled with this cord, we’d see abrasions on her skin.”

By then, Seamus has joined them. Standing on the other side of Edith’s body, he says, “Then how did she die?”

“I’m thinking suffocation. See how her lipstick is smeared?”

Reggie sidles next to Anna and points to a pale pink smudge on the edge of Edith’s mouth. Anna knows the color well. It was Edith’s preferred shade.

“Was it like that when the two of you were in here?” Reggie asks.

“No,” Anna says.

“My guess is she was smothered. It would have to be something within easy reach yet also unobtrusive.”

Anna looks around, settling her gaze on one of the swiveled chairs facing the windows. “Like a cushion?”

“Exactly,” Reggie says as he begins moving from chair to chair, removing their cushions and flipping them over. He makes it almost completely around the car before stopping and exclaiming, “Found it!”

He shows Anna and Seamus the underside of the cushion. There, centered in the gray fabric, is a streak of pale pink.

“The killer likely snuck up on Mrs. Gerhardt, forced her to the floor, grabbed this cushion, and held it over her nose and mouth.”

“Then what’s the point of the cord?” Seamus says. “Why make it look like she was strangled?”

Anna knows why. “Because it makes me look guilty.”

“Bingo,” Reggie says.

She studies him as he stands there gripping the murder weapon, framed by the snow-studded window behind him. “You’re not an insurance salesman, are you?”

“No, I am not,” Reggie says, casting his eyes downward.

“And you didn’t board the wrong train.”

“I did not.”

“Then who are you?”

Reggie returns the pillow to the chair and reaches into an interior pocket of his jacket, producing a copper-colored badge.

“Special Agent Reginald Davis,” he says. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”