“Just one more question: are George’s things still in your cabin?”
“Yes, why?”
“Did he take anything with him when he left, a bag or something?”
“No.” She thought about it. “Well, there was a small case he had.”
“Any idea what was in it?”
“No.”
“Would you mind if I take a look around your berth? I thought if I could go through his things it might give us an idea of where he went.” I smiled at her. “Do you have a key?”
She rifled through her pocketbook and finally produced it, attached to a large brass chain. “Here you go.”
“No, you hold on to it. I’m going to go have some breakfast and then, when you’re through here, I’ll meet you at your cabin. Deal?”
She sniffed once more. “Deal.”
“Now, you’d better get in there and tell Mr. Holland everything you know.”
“That won’t take long.” She stood, and I did the same. She placed a hand on my chest. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” I was just pulling away when, with an amazing amount of strength, she brought my face down to hers, but I wasn’t taken by surprise this time and resisted.
She smiled disappointedly. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
She turned away and approached the office door where Holland stood, holding the knob and studying the floor. “Miss LeClerc?”
She straightened her fur and turned, giving me a playful wave. I pulled my hat down, bandages be damned, flipped up the collar of my jacket, and stuffed my hands in my pockets as I bumped open the door and took the metal stairway back down to the huffing Western Star.
As I walked up the tracks toward the dining car, I saw Sheriff Connelly knocking the used tobacco from his pipe by tapping it on the heel of his boot. “How’d it go?”
“He let me walk.”
Lucian handed me my paperback. “Gibbs said he found this in the caboose. Thought you might want it.”
I took the book and stuffed it in the pocket of my jacket. “Thanks.”
He looked up at the ironclad sky. “Weather’s changing,” he pronounced as if it were a philosophical statement. “I’d say that if we don’t get moving we’re gonna get snowed on.” He glanced around dismissively at the flurries, but his eyes sharpened. “I mean really snowed on.”
“Yep.”
“You tell him about my gun?”
“No.” I studied him. “Should I have?”
He lit the pipe with a match and puffed to get it going. “I’d say that’s up to you.”
I smiled down at him. “That’s why I didn’t.” I thought back to the interview and then the postinterview with Kim LeClerc. “But I just spoke to her—she had something interesting to say.”
“The chanteuse?”
I shook my head at the nomenclature. “Yep. She intimated to me that George McKay had made a number of trips to different counties over the last couple of years for the sheriffs’ association.”
Lucian’s eyes darkened. “What kinds of trips?”
“Well, he said fund-raising, but I don’t think either of us would be inclined to believe that.”
He smoked his pipe, unconsciously imitating the steam emanating from the locomotive behind us. “Bringing George McKay in for fund-raising would be like bringing me in for public relations.” He then stamped his foot and turned, lifting his good leg up onto the stairs, trailing the prosthetic behind him. “C’mon, I’ll buy you breakfast.”
“Does that mean I’m back on the payroll?”
He thought about it. “We’ll call it probation.”
—
The first lady was sitting on a rolling ladder when I entered the mansion library, cradling an ancient-looking leather tome in her manicured hands. “This is a first edition of the English version of Les Misérables, Carleton Publishing, 1862. Do you believe that?”
I looked around at the tiger-striped oak furniture, the wood paneling, Tiffany fixtures, and the oriental carpets. “Maybe we should sell it and raise some money for the care of inmates.”
She ignored my comment. “I keep telling Wally that we should take all these books and put them at our place, just to protect them.” She glanced around. “But he says this mansion belongs to the people of Wyoming and that the collection needs to remain here.” Her eyes came back to me. “How many of the people of Wyoming do you think have actually read this book?”
“Does starting it count?”
She smiled. “I know you have, Walter. That’s one of the things I really like about you—both a man of action and a man of thought.”
I walked closer and laid an arm on the brass rail. “Say, you are in politics, aren’t you?”
“And you’re not?”
I made a face. “I think I’ve run my last race.”
“Gonna let that Basque deputy of yours or that spitfire of an undersheriff handle the county?”
“Maybe.”
She studied me for a moment and then looked back at the book in her hands. “I’ve always loved this novel; it has so much to say about human society, character—”
“Justice.”
She smiled again, but it quickly faded. “I’m surprised by you, Walt. I never thought of you as . . . as a vengeful person.”
“Pharisaic, I think, is the word you’re looking for.”
“Maybe.” She looked down. “You know, I’m not used to begging for prisoners’ lives.”
“Is that what you’re doing, begging?”
“I don’t want to have a grudge match in the papers with you, Walt.”
“I haven’t said a word to anybody.”
“You don’t have to. The fact that you’re here in Cheyenne speaks volumes.” Feeling the grain, she rubbed the palm of her hand over the cover of the book. “Mistranslated from the French, most people think it means ‘the miserable’ or ‘wretched ones,’ but I think a better translation would be ‘the dispossessed’ or ‘the outsiders.’”
“Pretty much describes everyone in the book.”
“Yes, it does. Especially the police investigator, Javert.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Pharisaic, isn’t that the word you used? Imagine a man so bound by the rule of law that he would rather die than bend even the smallest one.”
“All the characters and their motivations are products of their society; that’s why it’s such a marvelous book—but there’s a difference between the story in your hands and ours.”
“And what’s that?”
“The prisoner in our story is not guilty of stealing a loaf of bread but of taking lives—numerous lives. Now you may think I’m intractable, but I see myself as an instrument of the law, and in my county or in my book, for that matter, there is no slide rule of justice—guilty is guilty.”
She replaced one of the greatest novels ever written on the top shelf and lowered the heavy glass that protected the books. “And the difference between you and Javert?”
I held out a hand, which she took. “I can reconcile my devotion to the law and the knowledge that a lawful course can sometimes be immoral.”
She walked past me toward a large partners’ desk. “And you don’t see anything immoral in forcing an aged, weak, terminally ill man to die in prison?”
“It’s the law. He was tried, found guilty, and duly sentenced. Why does this come as such a surprise? He was given multiple life sentences—why is it suddenly so difficult to understand that he was condemned to die incarcerated?”
“Walt, I can’t help but think that this is something personal.” She turned to look at me. “I’m going to advise Wally to commute the sentence.”
I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “You do as you see fit, Carol, but you weren’t there.”
—
&
nbsp; “This is the best damn biscuits and gravy I’ve ever had.”
Gibbs grinned, refilling Lucian’s coffee cup. “I got that recipe from the chef at Gadsby’s Tavern on the George Washington, C&O line. They retired the 965 about five years ago, but it was a heck of a galley. Monsieur Henri Lafontaine was the chef, a Creole from down Louisiana way, and he wouldn’t use anything but that good andouille sausage. That’s what makes the difference.”
I paused between bites. “Mr. Gibbs, how long have you been working for the railroad?”
“All of ’em? Since nineteen and thirty-two, but it ain’t the same as it used to be. Once upon a time we had class, rolling class, but since they been making all the cuts an’ everything—I don’t know how much longer there will even be a railroad; pretty soon we’ll just be a bus on rails.”
Lucian sipped his coffee. “There’ll always be railroads as long as Wyoming’s got coal, and we got plenty of that.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t know about these passenger trains, Sheriff.” He refilled my cup. “But it ain’t just the trains, it’s the people.”
I nodded. “Taking the current events as an example? I wouldn’t judge everybody like these sheriffs, Mr. Gibbs—most of the regular citizenry are better behaved.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Longmire; every time we run a train, things have been disappearing. These cups you’re drinking out of, hats, blankets—somebody even ran off with the meat cleaver outta’ the kitchen.”
Lucian looked at his watch. “The world ain’t what it used to be, that’s for sure.” He stood. “I’m supposed to go talk to that goofball Holland.” He glanced at me. “Where the hell is he, anyway?”
I nodded toward the back. “He’s in the office up in the tower, second floor.”
Lucian looked at his leg. “Well, hell.”
I got in one more sip of coffee before folding my napkin and placing it over my empty plate. “Which reminds me, I’ve got an appointment with Miss LeClerc to see if I can find anything in their cabin that might help us figure out where McKay is.”
Sheriff Connelly pulled his jacket from the back of his chair as a few of the other sheriffs stumbled in for an early breakfast, and Gibbs went over to pour them coffee. “Holland know about that?”
“I don’t care if he does or not. The LeClerc woman says she’ll unlock the berth, and I’ll have her stand there while I search the place, just to prove there’s no monkey business going on.”
“What’s your take on Holland?”
“A burnout, I’d say. He’s been at it too long.” I grabbed my own coat and hat. “You know, nobody has taken blood samples from the back of the caboose or photographed what we assume is the crime scene. Nothing.”
He moved past me toward the group of sheriffs who had just come in. “I suppose they figure they can just wait till the train gets back to Cheyenne and then let the state crime lab go over it.”
He pulled up a chair and sat at the sheriffs’ table, and I muttered to myself, “An outdoor crime scene traveling over six hundred miles at sixty miles an hour through inclement weather . . . brother.” Slipping my jacket on, I lodged my hat on my head again and walked past the group of sheriffs, who quieted when I approached. I tipped my hat. “Gentlemen.”
There wasn’t a lot of traffic in the passageways, most of the revelers having decided to sleep in, I supposed. When I got to our cabin I could see that the door next to ours was propped open. “Miss LeClerc?”
Her voice sounded from inside. “Present.”
I peeked in and found her lying on the lower bunk in pajamas and a robe. “Planning on a nap?”
“Just plain going back to bed—care to join me?”
Not for the first time, I felt a little uncomfortable in her presence. “I’m afraid I’ve got work to do.”
She shrugged. “You mind if I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“You seem sad.”
I nodded. “Personal problems.”
“With that blonde I saw with you on the platform back in Cheyenne?”
“That would be the one. We’re married, or were.”
She glanced out the window and bit a fingernail in a provocative manner. “Hell, that’s no big deal. I’ve been married three times.”
“She’s having my child.”
“Oh. How far along?”
“About four months. She came to visit me in Alaska, and things seemed really good then.”
“Maybe things’ll be good again.”
“I’m beginning to doubt it.” I took a deep breath and sighed it out. “So, where’s George’s case?”
“Upper bunk.”
I flipped the latches on the Samsonite. For the moment, I ignored the pink set. I pulled the bag closer to get a clearer view and was in the act of sifting through George McKay’s belongings when I felt a tug at my jeans. I looked down to find Kim LeClerc had unzipped my pants and now had a hand inside. She was looking up at me from crotch height with a lascivious smile. “You don’t mind if I check out a few things myself, do you?”
I was about to disengage her from my nether parts when I heard a noise at the doorway. I turned in time to see a familiar blonde standing there taking in the tableau.
9
“Let me explain?”
She said nothing, only looked at me with those big hazel eyes, her hands neatly folded on the table.
“Um, she’s a nurse . . . for the state, and I needed to have an examination and I was just turning my head to cough when you showed up.”
She smiled faintly and turned her coffee cup in her saucer.
“She works for the railroad and was looking for contraband?”
She smiled again, a little broader this time.
“Actually, she’s a singer from Casper with an overly active libido.”
She gazed out the window of the dining car, but the smile held.
“I played piano last night and she joined in, and evidently she thought there was a stronger bond between us than I did.” I reached out and took her hands in mine: they were warm and soft. “I’ve missed you.”
She took her hands back and sipped her lukewarm coffee, grimaced, and returned it to the saucer with a soft clip of china. “It’s only been a night, but evidently you’ve kept busy.”
“You don’t believe my story?”
“Which one?” She shook her head and a lock of hair fell across one eye like always. “Actually, I do. You’re so inept with women that I find it hard to believe that you could’ve possibly initiated that encounter.”
“It’s true.” I grinned and then took a sip of my own coffee just to give the talk a little air.
She glanced around to make sure we were out of earshot. “Walt, it might be none of my business, but what’s happening on this train?”
“Nothing.” I sighed. “Really.” She continued to look at me, and I leaned in. “One of the sheriffs was killed, Martha.”
Her eyes widened.
I looked at the surface of the table and the spotless white linen. “His name was Marv Leeland. He was from Uinta County, and he had a theory that there was a group of sheriffs within the association that might’ve been swapping murders, and now he’s dead, which may or may not prove him right.” Hoping to change the subject, I fingered my silverware, sipped a little more of my coffee, and studied her. “You know, I’m having a hard time remembering what we fought about back in Cheyenne.”
“Your future, among other things.”
I took a quick breath and set my cup back down, getting the feeling that I was surrounded by land mines. “Oh, yeah.”
“Go back to school, Walt. Use the GI Bill and get a master’s and go teach at some college somewhere.”
A few sheriffs finished up their breakfasts and ambled out, giving Martha the once-over as they passed. Feeling a heat come
into my face, I looked up at them. “Can I help you fellas?” They looked away, and I tried to settle myself. “I think I’m through with classrooms, and if I am as a student, then I certainly shouldn’t be there as a teacher.”
She glanced up as another group passed, and Wally Finlay tipped a hat to her. She gave a tight smile in return, finally looking back at me. “You’re a really good teacher, Walt.”
“I’m a really good cop.”
The eyes flared a bit. “You’re really good at whatever you want to do.”
“I want to continue to be your husband.”
We both sat there in the silence. “Look, things moved pretty fast up there in Alaska. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get married.”
“We are having a baby.” I could see Gibbs glancing our way from farther down the car to see if we needed a refill, but I waved him off. “You act like you and the baby won’t make me happy.”
“What about what will make me happy, Walt?”
I reached into my jeans and pulled out the tiny, antique piece of jewelry. “Look . . .”
“Don’t do this again.” She stared at the ring like I was pointing a gun at her. “Not again—not here, and not now.”
I looked at the promise in my hand and felt like I was floating. “You want to know what I learned in Vietnam? I learned that if you’re lucky, I mean really lucky, you find the one thing you want in life and then you go after it; you give up everything else because all the rest of that stuff really doesn’t matter.”
“Walt . . .” A little extra moisture appeared in her eyes, giving them that glow that killed me. “Please.”
“I saw Henry Standing Bear’s car out there on the street, and I couldn’t believe it was you.” I glanced at the flurries galloping by the window, their speed multiplied by the velocity of the train. “Call it simplistic maybe, but I know what I want now.”
“You and me and Henry, we all grew up together, but a lot of the times it doesn’t have a fairy-tale ending. All those years in Vietnam apart when I sat here waiting for you . . . Walter, it happened way too fast in Alaska. Maybe we’re not supposed to be together—maybe we’re not meant for each other.”
The Western Star Page 13
