Kaufman had joined Bell and stared fascinated at the stacks of bills stuffed in the trunk. “How much do you reckon there is?”

Bell closed the lid and motioned at the other four trunks. “A wild guess? Maybe four or five million.”

“What happens to it?” asked Kaufman with a glint in his eyes.

“Goes back to the bank whose depositors were robbed of their savings.”

“Better not let my crew know about this,” said Kaufman seriously. “They may get it in their heads it’s open salvage.”

Bell smiled. “I’m certain the banking commissioners in San Francisco will be most generous in granting a reward to you and your crew.”

Kaufman was satisfied, his gaze sweping through the car. “This must have been one luxurious palace on wheels before it sank. I’ve never seen a boxcar fixed up like a private Pullman parlor car.”

“No expense was spared,” said Bell, eyeing several bottles of vintage champagne and expensive brandy that were scattered in the sediment on the floor.

Kaufman’s expression turned grim as he nodded at two misshapen mounds protruding from the floor. “These the two you were looking for?”

Bell nodded solemnly. “Jacob Cromwell, the infamous Butcher Bandit, and his sister, Margaret.”

“The Butcher Bandit,” Kaufman said softly in awe. “I always thought he’d disappeared.”

“A legend handed down through the years because the money was never recovered.”

The adipose tissue that once stored Cromwell’s fat had broken down and his body, like the corpses in the cab of the locomotive, had turned waxlike in saponification.

The notorious killer looked less than something that had once been a living human being. It was as though he had melted into an indiscernible lump of brown gelatin.

His body was twisted, as if he’d died writhing in terror when tons of water gushed into the freight car as it followed the locomotive down to the bottom of the lake.

Bell knew better. Cromwell might have struggled to survive, but he would never have been gripped with terror. No longer was he a menacing figure. His reign of robbery and murder had ended forty-four years ago under the cold waters of Flathead Lake.

He waded through the muck to where Margaret’s body lay. Her lustrous hair was fanned out in the silt and tangled with strands from a reedlike weed. The once-lovely face looked like a sculpture an artist had left unfinished. Bell could not help but remember her beauty and vivaciousness the night they met in the elevator of the Brown Palace Hotel.

Kaufman interrupted Bell’s thoughts. “His sister?”

Bell nodded. He felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow and remorse. Her final words before he fell from the car came back to haunt him. He could never explain his feelings toward her. There was no endearing love on his part, more a fondness coated with hatred. There was no forgiving her criminal actions in league with her brother. She deserved to die as surely as he did.