I tipped an imaginary cowboy hat. “Just providing service, ma’am.”
“You think I can’t take care of myself?”
“I know you can take care of yourself. But the Eighth Army honchos think you’re just a helpless flower of the prairie.”
“‘Flower of the prairie.’ I like that. Make a good country song.”
She twisted in her seat. Ernie, standing in the back, grinned and waved at her.
“Oh God,” Marnie said, rubbing her temples.
“Who’s that, Mommy?” Casey asked.
“Never mind, honey. You boys aren’t going to be hanging around us, are you?”
“No. We’re just walking through the train, doing our routine security check. And when we get to Seoul, we have to escort you to the hotel.”
“Like hell.”
“Eighth Army will provide a sedan.”
“With a driver?”
“The best.”
Marnie Orville didn’t like risking her life in a speeding tin-can taxicab any more than anyone else did.
“In that case,” she said, smiling, “I accept.”
“If you need anything, you just whistle,” I said.
Marnie pointed her forefinger at me as if it were a pistol and winked. “You got it.”
I waved good-bye to Casey. She waved back.
Ernie and I finished checking the passenger cars. No sign of Parkwood. Up ahead, a locked metal door was marked Chulip Kumji. No Admittance. Even on this side, the big engines vibrated.
“Parkwood’s not on the train,” Ernie said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But we haven’t checked everywhere.”
“Not up here,” Ernie said.
I stared at the locked metal door. “No. And we still need to look at the rear storage compartment. And behind that, there’s a caboose.”
“That’s for the crew, isn’t it? Their break room.”
“Maybe so. I’m not sure. Let’s find out.”
We marched steadily back down the aisles, smiling at Marnie and Casey as we passed. On the way, we policed up the conductor and told him what we wanted. He accompanied us to the rear of the train.
The rain was coming down harder now, and on either side of us rice paddies had started to appear, along with the occasional tile-roofed farmhouse. Taejon wouldn’t be far now.
The conductor led us to the storage compartment. As we entered, two older men in blue smocked uniforms stood to their feet. They were skinny men but wiry, and the conductor spoke to them respectfully, asking if there’d been any foreigners back here during this run. They shook their heads but were cooperative when Ernie and I asked to search the car anyway. Packages and crates were stacked neatly on rows of wooden shelving. Ernie and I checked under and behind them. Nothing. We asked to be shown the caboose. It was empty except for some communications equipment and what the conductor told me was an emergency generator, to be used if the train were ever stranded in a snowy mountain pass and had to create its own electricity. Again, there was no sign of Parkwood. Just to be sure, Ernie stepped out on the rear platform. Once there, he stared at the track behind us, raised both arms in the air, and said, “My friends and fellow Americans!”
“What the hell are you doing, Ernie?”
“Harry Truman started this way, didn’t he?”
“Come on. Let’s check on Marnie.”
Before we reached the dining car, we heard screams. Female screams. Then we were running, and the high-pitched woman’s voice became more distinct. I recognized it immediately.
Marnie Orville.
19
“She’s gone!” Marnie screamed when we reached her car. “Casey’s gone!”
I checked the seat. Marnie was right. No sign of her daughter Casey.
“Calm down,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
People were standing, kneeling on their seats or milling in the aisles, keeping a respectful distance from the tall, blonde, hysterical woman.
“I went to the bathroom,” Marnie said. “Just for a minute. I tried to take Casey with me, but she refused. Said it was too stinky. She can be stubborn when she wants to be, and I didn’t want her to make a scene. So I left her here and told her not to budge an inch from that seat.”
And then Marnie was crying, her words indecipherable now. I should have warned her that Parkwood might be on the train, but at the time I hadn’t wanted to alarm her. A mistake. But too late now.
I turned to the Korean passengers staring at us. “Did anyone see anything?” I asked in Korean. “Did you see where the little girl went?”
People looked at one another. One woman finally spoke up.
“I think she got out of her seat and went that way.” She pointed toward the front of the train.
“No!” another passenger said vehemently. “She went that way,” she insisted, pointing toward the rear. “I thought she was going to join her mother.”
“Yes.” Many people nodded, agreeing with the second woman, maybe because she was older.
I grabbed Marnie by her shoulders. “Look at me. Was this the first time you’d gone to the bathroom without her?”
Marnie looked away.
“Don’t be ashamed. I need facts.”
“No,” she said. “Casey hated those bathrooms. She didn’t like squatting down over the little toilet in the floor and she didn’t like the fact that they were always out of toilet paper. She wouldn’t go unless she was about to pee in her pants.”
“So she’d been left alone before at some time during this train ride?”
Marnie nodded meekly. Then her body shuddered as if she had suddenly remembered something. She straightened her back and knocked my hands off her shoulders.
“Why are you interrogating me? Accusing me of not being a good mother? You should be searching for Casey. Search, goddamn you! Search!”
I hadn’t been accusing her of being a poor mother, but this wasn’t the time to argue.
“Ernie, you go to the front,” I said. “I’ll go to the back.”
Ernie nodded.
I started off toward the rear. Without being asked, the conductor followed me.
By now the train was slowing and we were pulling into Taejon Station. I had already reached the rear. No sign of Casey. We’d checked every bathroom along the way and burst into the baggage compartment and searched once again. I’d even checked the wooden crates, pulling on them quickly, to see if they could be pried open. No luck. The caboose and the back platform were similarly empty.
I turned and ran back toward the front. Crossing from one car to another, I bumped into Ernie.
“Nothing up front,” he said.
“Nor back here. Let’s check on Marnie.”
We ran down the aisles. The brakes of the big engine were catching now and steam hissed out of the sides of the train. Passengers stood, locating their bags in the overhead compartments.
“Did you check the overheads?”
“Yes. She’s not there, unless somebody stuffed her into a freaking suitcase.”
“Even that we’ll have to check,” I said.
Inspector Kill and maybe a couple of squads of KNPs would be waiting for us on the platform. I turned to the
