"He gave you a temporary conservatorship to sell sixty cords of pulpwood off the ridge," Arthur said. His voice was terrible in its stillness. "And you used the seal to rob your own blood."
Garrett reached down and unclipped the leather thumb-break on his holster.
The sound was tiny—the dry snap of brass against oiled leather—but in the narrow cut between the hemlock trees, it was louder than the diesel engine idling on the main line. He didn't draw the sidearm, but his hand closed over the checkered walnut grip.
"You're an old man with a cracked skull, Arthur," Garrett said, his eyes narrowing as he took half a step forward. "You're confused. You're trespassing on an active commercial siding, and you've interfered with an interstate rail switch. If I have to drag you off this lever, you aren't going to make it to the Glenville clinic before your head bleeds out into the floor mats of my cruiser."
He reached out his left hand to seize Arthur’s shoulder, his fingers clawing into the rough wool of the field jacket.
Arthur did not pull away. He didn't flinch, and he didn't raise his hands to defend his face. Instead, he leaned his full weight back against the switch rod, locking his heels against the creosote tie, and looked past Garrett’s shoulder toward the cab of the stopped locomotive.
A steel ladder on the side of Engine 8140 clanged.
A man in a heavy black canvas utility coat stepped down onto the ballast stone, holding a heavy metal clipboard in one gloved hand and an olive-drab tactical flashlight in the other. Behind him, two men wearing dark windbreakers with yellow lettering stenciled across the shoulders—UNITED STATES MARSHAL—dropped down into the drainage ditch, their boots splashing through the cold runoff with purposeful, synchronized weight.
The man in the lead walked with a slight, stiff hitch in his right hip, the same hitch Arthur had carried since the summer of 1968. He had iron-gray hair cropped close under a dark knit watch cap, and his jaw was set like a vice.
Garrett froze. His hand stayed locked on Arthur’s collar, but his shoulders went rigid as the beam of the tactical light cut through the halogen glare and hit the gold star pinned to his sheepskin coat.
"Garrett Vance," the man with the clipboard said. His voice was dry, clipped, and devoid of regional drawl. "Step back from the switch."
Garrett didn't drop his hand immediately. He blinked against the new light, his face flushing a dark, mottled purple. "This is Mercer County property. I'm the county sheriff conducting an emergency right-of-way inspection under municipal code."
"This is Federal Reserve Section Twelve, Kanawha River Navigation District," the man said, stepping between Garrett and the switch rod. He didn't look at Garrett’s badge. He pulled a silver-embossed leather folder from his coat pocket and snapped it open, revealing a gold shield centered over a federal commission warrant. "I am Chief Deputy Marshal Thomas Miller, Southern District of West Virginia. You are standing sixty feet inside an interstate rail right-of-way with an unsecured county vehicle obstructing the line."
Miller turned his head slightly, his eyes taking in the blood smeared across Arthur’s temple, the torn fabric of his denim shirt, and the yellow carbon document gripped in Arthur’s trembling fingers.