Chapter 8 - TRACK FOURTEEN
Luca didn't waste a second looking at the five million dollars in bearer bonds scattered across the station floor.
While Vanessa lay groaning against the base of the lockers, clutching her fractured ribs, Luca kicked her silver pistol down the corridor, snatched the yellow freight manifest off the tiles, and hit the call button for the freight elevator.
"Stay here and call the police," Luca told me, shoving Andrew Keller's body aside so the heavy iron grate could rattle closed.
I slid into the elevator right before the gate slammed shut.
"You can't read a railroad manifest, Mr. Moretti!" I panted, leaning my bruised back against the rusted wall of the cage as it groaned downward into the subterranean baggage tunnels. "My father worked thirty years for the Burlington Northern line before he died! Give me the clipboard!"
Luca looked at me—really looked at me—taking in my torn uniform collar, the empty white sling hanging loosely around my neck, and the fierce determination in my eyes.
Without a word, he handed me the yellow clipboard.
It was 11:41 P.M.
Across the bottom of the tunnel, the diesel engines of the St. Louis mail train were already idling on Track 14, filling the underground concrete cavern with thick gray exhaust and a deafening mechanical roar.
I scanned the carbon-copy sheet as we ran out of the elevator onto the loading platform.
"Keller checked the crate under St. Jude's Medical Supply," I shouted over the screeching brakes of a switching engine. "Lot number 884! That's a refrigerated car—three cars back from the locomotive!"
We sprinted down the concrete platform alongside the massive steel train cars.
Railroad workers in orange vests were pulling up the metal loading ramps. A conductor near the front blew two sharp blasts on his whistle, waving his lantern toward the engineer.
The heavy iron wheels of the train gave a violent jerk against the tracks.
It was starting to move.
"There!" Luca pointed toward the third car.
The heavy sliding door on the side of the freight car was already rolled shut and latched from the outside with a thick steel padlock.
Luca grabbed the iron ladder on the side of the moving car and hauled himself up onto the narrow steel lip beside the door. He pulled his Beretta from under his jacket, wedged the barrel against the brass shackle of the padlock, and fired twice.
The gunshots were swallowed by the roar of the diesel engine.
The padlock shattered.
Luca wrenched the heavy sliding door open as the train began picking up speed toward the tunnel exit.
"Pull the emergency brake cord inside the car!" I screamed, running alongside the platform as fast as my legs would carry me. "It's a red valve by the rear coupling!"
Luca vaulted inside the dark freight car.
Five seconds passed. Then ten.
The train was moving faster now, the third car passing the end of the concrete platform where the dark river tunnel began.
Suddenly, a deafening hiss of compressed air exploded from beneath the train's undercarriage.
Sparks showered from the steel wheels as the emergency air brakes locked up along the entire length of the consist. The massive mail train screeched to a violent, shuddering halt thirty feet from the tunnel mouth.
I climbed up the iron ladder at the end of the platform and scrambled through the open door of the freight car.
Inside, stacked among pallets of cardboard mail bins, sat a six-foot gray fiberglass medical transport crate fastened with four heavy steel butterfly latches.
Luca was already tearing the last latch open, his hands bleeding where he had scraped them against the jagged metal of the broken padlock.
Together, we threw the heavy lid back.
Inside, curled up on a thin foam pad beneath a thermal foil blanket, was a ten-year-old boy with dark, messy hair and Luca's exact sharp jawline.
His eyes were closed, his lips slightly blue in the beam of Luca's flashlight. Clutched tightly in his small hands was a battered, silver Leica camera—one he must have grabbed from Keller before he was locked inside.
"Leo!" Luca's voice cracked completely.
He reached down and lifted the boy out of the crate, cradling him against his chest just as the cold draft from the open freight door hit the boy's face.
Leo gasped, coughing weakly as fresh air flooded his lungs.
His dark eyes fluttered open, squinting against the dim light. He looked up at Luca's terrified face, then raised one trembling finger to touch the collar of Luca's black suit.
"Uncle Luca," Leo whispered hoarsely. "You came."
Luca buried his face in the boy's dark hair, his shoulders shaking as he held his sister's child for the first time in three years.
"I've got you, kid," Luca choked out. "I've got you. You're never going in a box again."
Leo's small hand shifted, holding up the silver Leica camera between them.
"The bad man dropped this when the lady in the red dress shot him upstairs," Leo mumbled, leaning his head exhaustedly against Luca's shoulder. "He took pictures of the big man who gave her the white powder for my mom's drink."
Luca slowly lifted his head.
He took the camera from Leo's hands and clicked the playback button on the digital screen on the back.
The last photo on the memory card hadn't been taken at the mansion.
It had been taken at five o'clock that evening in the parking lot of the St. Jude's motel.
It showed Vanessa standing beside Keller's van, handing a thick stack of cash to the man who had supplied the lethal dose of sedatives that killed Elena.
It wasn't Dr. Harris.
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And it wasn't her father, Viktor Bellini.
It was the Deputy Police Commissioner who had been sitting three seats down from Luca at his engagement dinner all night—waiting for the phone call to arrest Luca for Vanessa's "murder."
