Martin Limon: Mr. Kill

“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.

“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 conductor. “We’ll have to check all luggage,” I said in haste and in a state of near panic. Just then, the train jerked and the brakes hissed louder than ever.

We entered Marnie’s car. I sprinted forward. When I stopped, Ernie bumped into me. We both stared at an empty seat. I turned to the people around me.

“Where is she?” I asked.

In reply, I received a lot of blank looks. I repeated the question in Korean.

People shook their heads. They hadn’t been watching her. An elderly man stepped forward.

“I’m not sure where she went,” he told me. “But I noticed after you left that she searched in her daughter’s traveling bag. She pulled out a piece of paper, like a note, and unfolded it and read it. It was pink paper with a drawing on it for children. Shortly after that, she picked up her bag and left.”

The train shuddered to a halt. People started filing toward the doors. I wiped steam off the window and stared outside. No sign of the KNPs. Inspector Kill was probably farther back, keeping his men hidden, waiting for Parkwood to make a move. And then I saw her, carrying an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Her head was down, and she moved through the crowd quickly.

“There she is!” I shouted.

Ernie peered out the window. “She’s alone.”

We ran toward the front of the car. A man in greasestained overalls was hurrying down the aisle toward us. He shouted at the conductor. We stopped. Apparently he was one of the engineers who worked up front.

“We heard about the missing child,” he said to the conductor, speaking rapid Korean. “I’m not sure what it means, but I thought I would tell you. When one of our young assistants came out back, just after we left Taegu, a foreigner slipped in with us up there. He smiled and acted very friendly and used sign language to indicate that he was interested in the engines and how we conducted our business. Occasionally people come up there and if they don’t cause too much trouble we let them watch. And also, he was a foreigner, and who knew how he’d react if we told him to leave. Maybe it was a mistake, but we let him stay.”

The conductor nodded. I wanted to tell the engineer to get to the point but knew that my interruption would only slow things down. The engineer continued.

“He stayed up there with us the entire ride. Finally, he came out, back here, and when he returned he pounded on the door and we let him back in. This time, he had a foreign girl with him and he acted like he wanted to show her the engine and the controls and such, but she seemed frightened and just stared at the ground. He laughed and tried to coax her into having fun, but she would have none of it. Finally, just before we pulled into Taejon, he opened the door, peeked outside, and then pulled the girl out with him, almost running.”

“Where did he go?” I asked.

“Onto the platform. After that, who knows?”

Outside, there was no sign of Marnie. And no sign of Parkwood, and no sign of Casey.

I went to the train station’s KNP office and asked for Inspector Kill; but instead of helping me contact him as I expected, the officers on duty acted strangely reluctant.

“What’s wrong?” I asked in Korean. “Inspector Kill said he’d be here, waiting, with police officers to help us.”

“He will be along,” one of them said.

More entreaties yielded no further information.

Ernie and I walked toward the center of the open lobby of the huge domed station. “What’s going on?” Ernie asked. “It’s almost as if they’re trying to help him.”

“Yeah. Parkwood with Casey in tow would’ve been easy to spot. Even by a rookie cop. They should’ve collared him before he took ten steps off the train.”

“How the hell did he pull it off?” Ernie asked.

“Parkwood suspected that we, or somebody, would be on the train searching for him. After he made it from Kuangju to Taegu, he bought a ticket; and shortly after boarding the train, he bullied his way into the engineer’s compartment.”