"I guess they figured to set me loose to die on my own. I needed the money. That's how I took this job."

"Jake, you were always a craftsman, never a killer. Why are you covering for a killer?" Bell pressed.

Jake answered in a hoarse whisper. "He's in the livery stable on Twenty-fourth, across the tracks."

Bell snapped his fingers. Wally Kisley and Mack Fulton rushed to his side. "Twenty-fourth Street," said Bell. "Livery stable. Cover it, station the sheriff's deputies on the outer perimeter, and wait for me."

Jake looked up. "He's not going anywhere, Mr. Bell."

"What do you mean?"

"When I went back to get my second half of the money, I found him upstairs, in one of the rooms they rent out."

"Found him? What do you mean, dead?"

"Slit his throat. I was afraid to tell--they'd pin that on me, too."

"Slit his throat?" Bell demanded. "Or stabbed?"

Jake ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Stabbed, I guess."

"Did you see a knife?"

"No."

"Was he run through? Did the wound exit the back of his neck?"

"I didn't stick around to examine him close, Mr. Bell. Like I said, I knew they'd blame me."

"Get over there," Bell told Kisley and Fulton. "Sheriff, would you send a doctor? See if he can reckon what killed him and how long he's been dead."

"Where will you be, Isaac?"

Another dead end, thought Bell. The Wrecker wasn't just lucky, he made his own luck. "Railroad station," he answered without a lot of hope. "See if any ticket clerks recall selling him a ticket out of here."

He took copies of the lumberjack's drawing to Union Depot, a multigabled, two-story building with a tall clock tower, and queried the clerks. Then, driven in a Ford by a railway police official through tree-lined neighborhoods of cottages with jigsaw woodwork, he visited the homes of clerks and supervisors who were off work that day. Bell showed the drawing to each man, and when the man did not recognize the face, Bell showed him an altered version with a beard. No one recognized either face.

How did the Wrecker get out of Ogden? Bell wondered.

The answer was easy. The city was served by nine different railroads. Hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers passed through it every day. By now, the Wrecker had to know that the Van Dorn Agency was hunting him. Which meant he would choose his targets more carefully when it came to preparing his escapes.

Bell enlisted Van Dorn agents from the Ogden office to canvass hotels, on the odd chance that the Wrecker had stayed in the junction city. No front-desk clerk recognized either drawing. At the Broom, an expensive, three-story brick hotel, the proprietor of the cigar store thought he might have served a customer who looked like the picture with the beard. A waitress in the ice-cream parlor remembered a man who looked like the clean-shaven version. He had stuck in her mind because he was so handsome. But she had seen him only once, and that was three days ago.