The Western Star

by Craig Johnson

  I put a forefinger to my lips and then watched as he turned back and made the same gesture to Lucian. The Bear pointed toward the window in Lola’s room and then at the doorway where he stood and slid the same finger across his throat, indicating to Lucian that he should stay and protect her; then he carefully closed the door behind him.

  The three of us stood there in the middle of the room. “How many?”

  I whispered back. “At least two.”

  “How?”

  “Vic and I will go out, but you stay here. If they get past me, I want at least two more stops before they get to Lola.”

  He nodded, slid the stag-handled Bowie knife from his back, and flipped the handle in his hand until satisfied with the grip. The light glimmered on the blade like it had on my Colt, just as beautiful and just as deadly.

  Vic and I quietly walked toward the door. Turning the knob and gently pushing it open with my free arm, I waited. It was possible they were gone—maybe they had heard me assembling and reassembling the weapon, maybe they’d looked in the windows and seen me sitting there armed.

  Like I said, it was possible, but it wasn’t likely.

  Staying near the jamb, I unlatched the storm door and pushed it open wide. There was still nothing, so I took a small step out, panning the Colt across the deck. Someone sat whistling “This Train.”

  Keeping the gun on the figure, I came the rest of the way out.

  “No need to worry; my friends are gone.”

  The rasp of his voice struck me like a whip, but I didn’t respond.

  Backlit by the streetlights, he gestured weakly toward the steps. “There’s no way I could’ve made it up here on my own, so my friends were kind enough to carry me.”

  I said nothing as Vic came up beside me, also aiming her weapon.

  “They were very quiet, but I assured them you’d hear.” Gesturing toward Vic, he continued. “Or your friends would.” He paused. “You look good, Walt, better than the last time I had the opportunity to kill you.”

  —

  He shouted to be heard over the thunderous internal combustion of the locomotive. “Surprised to see me?”

  I started to reach a hand up to massage my neck, but he stopped me, jamming the muzzle of the stainless Smith & Wesson into my forehead.

  The wig was gone, but he still had the facial delicacy that had made him a beautiful woman and the husky voice that had helped give him away.

  Kim LeClerc sat back in the engineer’s seat and studied me as I studied him. He still wore makeup, but now it was smeared in a sad parody of femininity. The pantsuit and heels were gone; he was wearing the insulated coveralls and logger boots that had been in Gibbs’s toolbox.

  I shouted back, “I don’t suppose you’re going to let me shut this engine down.”

  “No.”

  “Then we’re all going to die.”

  He gestured outside where the freezing night rushed by. “You can jump.”

  I started to turn and sit up, but he leveled the .38 at me again. I slumped against the brakeman’s bench seat and shouted to be heard above the noise of the engine. “Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.”

  “I let the engineer and crewman off. If you’d been here I would’ve let you off, too. I don’t like killing the innocent.”

  “Really? There’s a whole trainload of them behind us.” He didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “I’m going to stand up, and I’m going to pull that lever back, and we’re going to let all these people live because this has gone far enough.” I took my hand and shoved his boot off my chest. “Now, you can shoot me if you want, but that’s what I’m going to do.”

  He leveled the revolver at me again. “No, you’re not.”

  I ignored the pain in the back of my head. “Look, one of two things is going to happen here pretty soon—either this thing is going to blow apart or it’s going to hit the curve at Walcott Junction and skip the tracks, so one way or another I’m pulling that lever.”

  “No.” He shrugged. “Sacrifices are going to have to be made. The one that could did nothing about my sister and now they’re all going to pay.”

  “The sheriffs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like Marv Leeland?”

  He paused, turning in a little from the cold or maybe his feelings. “I didn’t want to kill him, but he was about to find me out.”

  I waited, giving him the opportunity to tell his story. I’d found that few people give up the chance to explain themselves, no matter what the reason or environs.

  “She was my sister.”

  “Melanie Wheeler.”

  “Yes.”

  Moving a hand behind my back, I started to shift my weight, but he aimed the S&W at my head and placed the work boot back on my chest. “You knew?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Bullshit, there’s no way.” He studied me, trying to get a read on whether I was telling the truth or not. “How?”

  “The conversation I had with Ed Schafer at the Asylum for the Insane.” I sat up a little, noticing my .45 lodged near his feet along with the paperback, far out of reach. “Ed said that both he and his brother left your sister alive that night.”

  His eyes widened a bit.

  “The night you killed her.”

  He said nothing.

  “For whatever reason, you were there and saw your sister with the two of them and then killed her.” I sat up a bit, and my hand bumped into something under the seat. “Why, Kim?” Carefully, I ran my hand along the length of the big box-end wrench that the brakeman had left underneath his seat. “Was it because she was a woman and you weren’t?”

  “Shut up.”

  I lifted the big wrench just enough to slide my fingers underneath, tightening my grip. “Was that how it started? You killed your sister and then killed another young woman on that same date for the next five years in some sort of crazy memoriam?”

  “Shut up.”

  “But when John Schafer arrested his own brother last year, you had to stop or risk giving yourself away.”

  His breath heaved, and he didn’t deny it.

  “So, you attempted to get on the train with Schafer—yep, he told me—and when he wasn’t game, you went with McKay?” I raised my voice, even louder. “Or did you just get so desperate you decided to kill every sheriff on the train?”

  He sat there looking at me.

  The wind was deafening, and the train shifted again, shuddering as it tried to stay on the tracks. “You killed Marv Leeland because he was figuring things out and then you killed George McKay with Lucian’s weapon, and when that wasn’t enough to muddy the trail you chopped his arm off to convince us that he was Leeland.”

  I waited for some sort of response, but none came. “You killed six young women, and now you’ve killed two more people; I’m not going to let you kill an entire trainload simply because you can’t come to terms with the fact that you killed your sister.” I felt the weight of the chromed steel in my hand. “You’re sick, Kim.”

  “No.”

  “You need help.”

  The elongated snub-nose revolver shifted a little, so I swung the wrench at him as hard as I could. It struck his cheek, and the gun went off, firing a round up and behind me. I grabbed his leg and pulled, then grasped his wrist and slammed it against the metal floor. The .38 slid away as I placed a knee on his chest and held him there clutching his face and sobbing, the blood leaking from his fingers.

  Scooping up my Colt, I stood and kept it aimed at him. Reaching up, I slowly pulled the lever back, and the screaming of the engine began dying down, our speed immediately diminishing.

  I looked at the frozen landscape and thought about the body of the one-armed sheriff still lying out there somewhere. Then my eyes dropped to the man at my feet and the paperback lodged under his side, a
nd I thought about what Leeland had said: that there were only so many permutations to the whodunit—he did it, she did it, nobody did it, and they all did it.

  As I lodged the .45 in my jeans, sat on the brakeman’s bench, and listened to Kim Wheeler, aka LeClerc, weep, I thought, I guess she didn’t figure on this one.

  —

  “Where is my daughter?”

  He wheezed. “I’ll get to that, but how have you been, Walt?”

  I ignored the question, still holding the muzzle of the Colt aimed at his so-called heart.

  “C’mon now, it’s been so long since we’ve talked. I mean, you can’t count all those parole hearings where we were sitting opposite each other in a courtroom.” He sighed and paused a moment, trying to catch what was left of his breath. “Before I forget, I’ve got something for you.” He extended his hand, a small, stiff piece of paper between his fingers.

  I reached out and took what appeared to be a postcard, tucking it in my shirt pocket without looking at it. “Where is my daughter?”

  “You might want to read that.” He sat there, fumbling with something in his lap, then looking back to me. “Now, is this any way to greet an old friend? I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get here to see you.” He turned his head and sighed. “Made a lot of deals. . . .”

  “Who with?”

  “The devil, I suppose. . . . But I’ll get to that.” He turned his head and laughed. “A meeting decades in the making.” As his face swiveled back to mine, the streetlights caught the dented portion of his cheek where the wrench had hit him and ruined his face. “You know, I don’t think I knew what I was doing when you and I had our confrontation all those years ago—letting you take my life.”

  “Where is my daughter?”

  He coughed, and then his voice sharpened. “I guess we’re not in a giving mood, huh?” His gaze turned to Vic, standing beside me. “Hello, young lady, and how are you?”

  “Fine. Actually, trying to decide if I fucking shoot you now or later.”

  “You work with this brute, or is it more than that?” He choked a small laugh and adjusted himself on the railing, where I could now see that he held a small semiautomatic pistol.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  His head dropped, as if I’d disappointed him by reintroducing the subject. “Let’s not talk about that just yet.” He sighed deeply and looked back up at me. “Do you ever lie awake at night and think about the lives you’ve ruined? I mean, I thought my life was bad before I went to prison, but do you know what it’s like in there for someone like me?” He stared up at the dark sky and almost lost his balance. “I’ve waited my whole life to do something more to you that would damage your life as badly as you’ve damaged mine.”

  Vic leaned in. “More?”

  He sat there silent for a moment. “You don’t know?”

  She re-aimed her 9mm. “Know what?”

  “She doesn’t know; I guess you’re not that close after all.” He turned back to me. “So when the Asociación Punto Muerto came to me, it just seemed like a gift.”

  Vic insisted. “What more?”

  He shook his head. “The Dead Center Association, a little dramatic, don’t you think? There was a member of the organization in Rawlins who put me in touch with Bidarte. They had plenty of leverage and money, and I was able to provide them with something that they couldn’t seem to get access to—you. You’ve made a lot of enemies over the years, Sheriff. You’d be amazed at the lengths people are willing to go just to get a piece of you.” I took a step toward him, but he raised the pistol, not directing it at me, but reminding me that he had it. “No, I’ve waited too long. This all has to play out the way I want.”

  “It didn’t last time.” I heard a slight noise behind me but wasn’t worried, knowing the only person who could’ve possibly been that quiet was the Cheyenne Nation.

  LeClerc leaned to the side, looking past me. “Hello.” He coughed again and grimaced. “Sorry, they tell me I haven’t got long, and I guess they’re right.” He nodded his head and leaned forward, and I was almost sure he was going to slip from the rail. “Where were we?”

  “My daughter.”

  “They really wanted your granddaughter, and I know he wanted to do it on your watch so it would be more personal, but I guess that was becoming problematic with this gauntlet of protection—especially the noble savage behind you there.” He shrugged. “He never goes with something simple, so he chose me to accomplish a common vendetta. They arranged for me to take a medicine to fake the heart condition, but then the doctors discovered the cancer.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Oh, but you see that’s the beauty of it: I don’t know. They took her, but they didn’t tell me where, so I can’t help you even if I wanted to.” He coughed some more and then caught his breath. “You killed my family. My parents, they died of shame after what you did to me.”

  “You’re insane, Kim; your crimes killed them, after you killed your sister, and eight other innocents in an attempt to run from the responsibility, or maybe because it felt good.”

  He ignored me and gazed into the dark, his voice almost wistful. “Now I’m going to be that itch you can’t scratch for the rest of your life, that thing that hangs over your every hope and desire.”

  “Where is my daughter?”

  “I’ve really got only one more thing to do.” Resignation overtook his voice. “I thought it would be more frightening than it is, but all this talk is just making me tired. I just want it to end.” He looked directly at me. “You’re never going to see her again, and you’re never going to know what happened to her—whether she’s in some concrete cell being raped and beaten every day like I was or if she’s already dead and lying in a grave just a mile from where you live.” Slowly, he began raising the pistol. “You’re never going to know.”

  He’d almost gotten it up to where he could take aim when I fired.

  He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, and the slug from the .45 hit him like the train that had carried the two of us all those years ago. Propelled by the impact, his chest blew backward and his limbs followed like fringe as he dropped from sight and landed on the surface of the alley, two floors below.

  The echo of the gunshot rang off the buildings and you could see lights coming on all around us as I walked to the edge of the deck, my Colt trained on the lifeless body. I don’t know how long I stayed like that—I only became aware when Vic reached out, dislodged my fingers, and took my gun.

  EPILOGUE

  The snow was bad on Elk Mountain, but the wind was worse, as it always is in Wyoming, and the caprice of that wind scoured the train’s passage clean, allowing The Western Star to climb her way through like a parting gift.

  There was no shortage of sheriffs ready and willing to buy me drinks—some I accepted and some that I didn’t—and there was an almost holiday spirit that overtook the train as it chugged its way downhill out of the Vedauwoo territory and into Cheyenne.

  Sheriff Connelly sat with me in the dining car as Gibbs, who stood by the table, refilled our glasses and then retreated to the galley. “How did you know?”

  I took a sip of the Rainier beer that was growing on me since I’d gotten back. “Know what?”

  “How the holy hell did you figure out Kim LeClerc was a man and that he was really Kim Wheeler?”

  I grunted a laugh, knowing full well that would be his first question. “My investigative experience in Vietnam. In some Asian cultures it’s an art form, the ability to mimic women. The armed forces were concerned primarily with prostitutes, but they also wanted us to know about the pretenders. They taught us to always look for the Adam’s apple, which is more prominent in the male, and the hands, which are usually larger and more masculine—everything else is pretty easy to hide but not those two.” I took another sip of my beer. “I suspected, but at tha
t point it didn’t mean anything. I mean, what’d I care what McKay’s tastes were?”

  “You think he knew?”

  “Not right at the start, but eventually—he must have confronted LeClerc, which led to him killing McKay and cutting off his arm to get us to think it was Leeland. That way, we would think only McKay was missing, when in fact he had killed them both. I suppose to put the blame on any of us since Marv had suspicions about the sheriffs’ cabal.”

  “Then why kill Leeland?”

  “I think LeClerc was telling the truth—Marv was pretty shrewd and was beginning to put two and two together, that Kim was a man, and LeClerc jumped the gun and killed him. Did they find Leeland east of Fort Fred Steele?”

  He nodded and looked out the window. “That, they did.” He stroked his chin. “How’d LeClerc get my gun?”

  I lowered my voice. “Probably Gibbs let him in our cabin by mistake. After the first mix-up with the rooms, I noticed Gibbs never really looked at the numbers when you asked him to unlock and I’m betting LeClerc noticed, too.” I set my beer down. “I figure he shot Leeland with your gun because rather than take me head-on, he’d implicate you and get rid of me—of course, that was after he’d hit me in Medicine Bow.” I shrugged as the older man shook his head. “We might stop him; he was planning on wrecking the train and killing all the sheriffs on board, at least that’s the idea his mixed-up brain finally came to.” I lodged my elbows on the table and made a double fist, resting my chin. “I’m no psychologist, but I’d say it’s a case of what they call transference; in the heat of the moment Kim killed his sister, and it felt so good he found himself killing another woman on that date every year.” I glanced out the window. “He had to stop to keep from giving himself away after Schafer arrested Ed, but he couldn’t deal with the guilt and wanted to kill again, so he blamed the sheriffs’ association and started going after us.”

  Lucian shook his head.

  “The clippings that Schafer had in his suitcase mentioned that Melanie Wheeler had a brother, Kim, but there was no mention of a sister.” I watched as we pulled into the all-but-empty station. “Then there were Gibbs’s missing coveralls and boots; why would anybody else want them, they wouldn’t fit?” It was late, and the cold had finally arrived in the state capital, driving the denizens inside until spring.