The Erotic Adventures of Katrina Grimm, private detective
Part one
Private detective Katrina Grimm stepped out of her car and glanced around. The damp air had just enough chill to make her shiver, or was it fear? While it had plenty of lights the train station appeared gloomy at this hour of the evening. No one else seemed to be about so Grimm locked her car and started towards the station. Had anyone been watching they would have thought the scene perfect for an old noir crime movie. The tall woman moved with grace in her heels, her trench coat trailing behind like a cape, revealing the red dress she wore. A proper fedora topped her head of blond hair.
Stepping up to the ticket window Katrina could see a middle aged man in a somewhat disheveled uniform intently staring at his phone. Clearing her throat got both his attention as well as a smile. "Good evening ma'am can I help you?" he said as his eyes took in the low cut of the dress, her revealed cleavage and bright red lips. "One ticket to Far Harbor please, open return." Her words barely having escaped from her lips when his response "End of the line" caught her off guard. "Let's hope not" Kat said trying to sound confident. "I mean the train line ma'am, it ends at that station" handing her the ticket he returned to his phone.
Kat stood still looking at the six car train stretched out before her as a cool wind blew bringing her another shiver. "Boarding miss?" the conductor said from the narrow steep steps into one of the silver cars. Tall and black the older gent looked like her had done this countless times. She handed him her ticket which he punched quickly and returned. "You will have lots of seats to choose from as well as several cabins seeing as there are only six other passengers tonight, not many traveling these days, what with the killings and all." He motioned her into a car and stepped back down the steps.
Forty two year old Katrina Kat Grimm was a little on the tall side at 5'9. It had served her well in her career as a Police officer and detective. But that was behind her and tonight she stepped out of her normal catch my spouse cheating cases for what everyone called a wild goose chase or Kats folly. The killings the conductor had mentioned had all been committed on a train like this going between the city and Far harbor nearly four hours away. All had been committed at night, three men and two women over a period of 8 months with no discernable pattern and there had been no witnesses. Kat started investigating it in what little spare time she had but when she had finished her two active cases she didn't take on a new one, instead focusing her talents on the killer the press had briefly named the choo choo killer. She hated the name but what can you expect from rustic New England. Her investigation had led her here, where even though she knew the police had expended most of their efforts she felt the cases break would be found. See unlike the police she had discovered one and only one common fact, none of the murders had occurred on the same train twice, and by that she meant that none of the cars on any of the previous trains had been on any of the other trains where a murder had occurred. Just like this train.
The train itself was unremarkable, a simple pair of diesel electric engines pulled from the front six passenger cars. It was always six passenger cars even when the ridership dropped to nearly nothing. The cars themselves were old and somewhat dingy, smelling of to many years of people. Katrina walked to the front of the train with her coat draped over her arm and her hat in her hand. The old black conductor took notice of her but said nothing, sitting in a special seat at the front of the first carriage. Now she really began to observe and take mental notes. Her return walk was slower as she looked for anything unusual, and to see each of the other six passengers. One of them could be the killer who had taken 5 lives with a thin narrow double edged blade without leaving enough evidence that they could determine whether right or left hand, height, or even sex. Two crew up in the lead engine, the conductor and six passengers and it could all be for nothing.
The only interesting thing to happen during her stroll was one handsome guy undressing her with his eyes and making her body react as it always does to attention. Back where she started in the forth car she had now seen all but one passenger and while it really could have been any of them the mother and toddler didn't really fit and neither did the very obese guy who reminded her of one of her teachers. No, she really couldn't afford to make assumptions. The fifth car was all small cabins with doors that slid to separate them from the all that ran along the one side of the car. No one was in any of the cabins so into the sixth and final car she stepped and instantly knew the last passenger had to be here. A beautiful expensive smelling perfume hung in the otherwise stale air. This car was cabins as well and her heels made that lovely click clack sound as she walked on the hardwood floor of the hallway.