“What are we going to do now, Ian? What are we going to do?”
Normally, Nellie didn’t talk with so much desperation dripping from her voice. But she and Ian were now barricaded in the cattle car that still held McKenna’s corpse. Ian had taken a pipe he found and rammed it between the handle and the doorframe so they didn’t have to worry about any unwanted visitors. Although that just meant that they couldn’t easily get out of the room either. And although the temperatures were hovering just above freezing, and so they didn’t have to worry about the smell of a disintegrating corpse, the rot still filled her senses.
She was looking to Ian for guidance, because when you can’t find a confident soul, an insane one would do. To her surprise, though, Ian was sitting in the far corner, staring blankly ahead, his hands wrapped around his knees. To air out the car and the deadly gases that had built up from the faulty equipment, Ian had opened the rear door to the car. He had tied a length of rope between the door handle and an exposed nail in the wall. The storm tried to let itself in, but the rope held and the most the door did was fan itself, opening and closing again and again.
Nellie tried to be patient. But the repetition of the door opening and Ian’s silence made her repeat the question, this time a little louder, “What’s the next step? If your plan is to wait here and freeze, I just want to let you know that my loyalty will last until they bring me a blanket.”
“Or until the symptoms of the poisoning kick in,” Ian said listlessly. “That reminds me, if you’re feeling off-key, let me know. The rest of the gas should have dissipated by now, but one can never be too careful.”
“It sounds like the gas has already gotten to you,” Nellie said, hearing the sluggishness in his voice.
“No, it’s not that. It’s this case. I have no idea what to do.”
“Why not? You know everything else, or at least you act like you do.”
“That’s the problem,” Ian said, the emotion rising in his voice. “I’m not being given the chance to know anything. I have to find out who is responsible for these murders, all the while dealing with those marshals and surviving the class war that’s brewing out there.” He paused then added, “And I still have to figure out is the hitman that is traveling with us to Cheyenne. If I don’t find him, then I’m going to lose someone who’s very important to me.”
“We have to work with we’ve got,” Nellie said with a shrug. “Let’s review the deaths, shall we?”
“Okay,” Ian said, pointing to McKenna’s corpse in the center of the room. “We confirmed his death as being due to natural causes. It’s not part of the pattern. So instead, we have to draw from two crime scenes. Unfortunately, two can only prove coincidences, not patterns.”
“But the two sets of murders eliminated the Rowes and their bodyguards,” Nellie pointed out. “There has to be a pattern to that. What would the motive be?”
“I don’t know,” Ian said, feeling the helplessness now.
Nellie marched over to Ian and kneeled down in front of him. Ian was startled when Nellie reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. Staring intently at him, Nellie said, “I never thought I would have to say this to someone before, but I need you to be a jackass. You’re at your best when you’re most awful. I know it seems like a lot of people have already died, but even more will die if we don’t get to the bottom of this.”
Ian stared at her. “Of course more people are going to die,” he said. “Everyone is going to die. We’re stuck on a train in the middle of a blizzard. Our food is running out, our coal is running out – I don’t know if we’re going to starve or freeze to death first. It’s enough to make everything else pointless.”
“I don’t believe that,” Nellie said quietly.
“You don’t believe that,” Ian repeated, uncomprehending.
“When I did my trip around the world for an assignment, I met a gypsy on an island off the coast of Greece. He told me some things I didn’t want to hear but that I needed to hear. One of those was that a person’s fate can’t be found in their future.”
“Yes, it can. That’s what fate is – it’s your future.”
Nellie shook her head. “You would think so, but no. He told me that your fate is actually in your past. Every single thing that has ever happened to you is just another piece of ivy that wraps around your body like a piece of thread on a soldier’s uniform, until you find that all you’re fighting for is your past.”
“Were those his exact words?”
“Well, his English wasn’t perfect, so I had to fill in some of the gaps, but that’s not the point. The point is you shouldn’t look at it as you’re going to die, because everyone is going to die. You look at it as you just solving another mystery in your life. You seem at your happiest whenever you’re hard at work. Before I met the gypsy, I was struggling with my work. After I got into the public eye with my first big story, I was constantly worried about living up to their expectations. I was afraid that I had risen so high only to fall hard. But after the gypsy told me that over a cup of cheap wine, I realized that I had been going about things all wrong. I was worried about where my writing would take me, when I should have just been worried about writing. I’ve been working with that mindset ever since, and I’ve been sleeping better at night because of it.”
“I find that morphine helps with sleeping better, too,” Ian said.
Nellie looked insulted. “Don’t try to trivialize this, Ian. I’m just trying to help. You don’t want to fall into the same rut that Mr. Davis fell into.”
“Who?” Ian asked.
“Ezra Davis,” Nellie said. “He’s one of the people traveling in first-class. I heard people talking about him in the dining car when we first left Burlington. Now there’s a good example of what we were just talking about. Apparently, he was some nobleman who got chopped off the family tree, and he’s been obsessed over fighting his way back to the top by joining the WSGA. He was hurting himself over the future when he should have recognized where he came from: a sheltered background that didn’t prepare him at all for the real world.”
“I remember that name,” Ian muttered. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“I’m not your secretary – I can’t keep track of all of the terrible people you’ve had the misfortune of meeting.”
Ian’s eyes widened. “I know where I’ve heard that name. He’s the Scottish noble who lost his title and inheritance over an affair. I remember when the story broke.”
“That’s funny – I don’t recall ever seeing that in the gossip column,” Nellie said. “That woman he’s traveling with – she must be his new wife then.”
“No, they can’t get married. The Church of England frowns strongly on remarriage, especially if it’s between two adulterers. Ironic, given that the church was founded by Henry VIII when he couldn’t get his marriage annulled by the Pope.”
“How could you possibly know all of this?” Nellie asked, exasperated.
But Ian ignored her and continued talking. “I also remember the controversy that erupted when he was kicked out of his family. The establishment wanted to make an example of him philandering ways, but he had a lot of support from other nobles, especially given his age. Men twice as old could only dream of having royal support as far away as Sweden. I saw him once before – I never understood his charm. He acted like a little, petulant man-child that got everything he ever wanted. I guess he’s what every nobleman aspires to.”
“Well, now I know more about him than I ever wanted to know,” Nellie said. “Please tell me it has some relevance to the murders.”
Ian never smiled so widely in his life. “How’s this for a theory? Let’s pretend we’re Mr. Davis for a moment. We’ve just been shamed from society for carrying on an affair. We’ve lost all legitimacy within our family, so there’s no hope of us securing our father’s title of duke. We can’t remarry in the eyes of the church, and so we can’t earn a
n estate through marriage. We have support from other nobility, sure, but they don’t dare say so publicly for fear of losing their own credibility.
“So we hear about opportunities across the ocean in America, and we decide to move there. We have no idea what we’re going to find, but by this time we’re desperate for anything. We go as far west as Wyoming, where we weasel our way into the ranching business. But we show up at the wrong time, with our organization dealing with competition that’s growing as fast as our costs. But what if it wasn’t the wrong time? What if it was right? What if we saw a chance to profit from the chaos around us, like a gunpowder mill during a war?”
“But how could Davis possibly hope to cash in on a range war?” Nellie asked.
“Remember what I said about Davis having the private support of nobility back in Europe? Well, a check can be private enough. The ranchers out west are hurting from the conflict, and Davis has the financial backing to keep them afloat. And when you’re desperate enough, you don’t care where your money is coming from. That’s what he’s up to: he’s instigating another range war to make the ranching organization come to him for help.”
Alarmed, Nellie said, “So, all of the deaths, all of this chaos that’s unfolded…”
“It’s Davis at work. I’m still confident that he didn’t have a hand in McKenna’s death, but I don’t doubt that he saw an opportunity there. Then, it was a simple matter of sacrificing the Rowes and their bodyguard and making the marshals believe that one of the poor ranchers onboard was responsible. What we’re witnessing right now is the opening act of a power play. Although a lot of good his scheme is doing him. We’re going to die in this snowstorm before Davis ever becomes the face of ranching out west.”
“Help’s going to come,” Nellie replied, not really believing it anymore.
“Still, we’re going to air the truth about this, one way or another.”
“So you’re going to somehow slip past those marshals, catch Davis, and force a confession out of him?”
“Yes, and all just in time before we freeze to death,” Ian said brightly. “And I just need your help to pull it off.”
Nellie rolled her eyes. “Of course you need my help.”
“Come on now – I wouldn’t be this optimistic if I didn’t have a solid plan. Just nod your head and follow me.”
Nellie thought for a long moment. “Well, it won’t be a good death, but it’ll be an interesting one.”
“That’s the spirit!”