Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

No more words came and I looked down at him. “I tried to tell you,” I said. “The code is a myth. The only code any of them followed was, get the other guy before he gets you. That’s what I did.”

Bonney’s eyes turned to glass and I knew he was dead. Holstering the Colt, I walked to the saloon. Mary Kay was sitting in a comer, her hands and feet tied, but unharmed.

“What happened?” she asked. “Did you kill him?”

“He’s dead. He just didn’t understand what the real West was like. In a way, I feel sorry for him.”

I untied Mary Kay and she came into my arms. “I’m just glad it wasn’t you,” she said. “Take me home.”

As we drove out of Gunsight I glanced back at the body still lying in the middle of the street. “I think my next novel will be a mystery,” I said. “Or science fiction. I believe I’ve had enough of the Old West for a while.”

Ed Gorman is one of those figures whose presence is felt in every area of the crime field. He has distinguished himself as a writer, earning an Edgar nomination in 1991; he is the editor of many notable crime fiction anthologies, including the successful series Cat Crimes; and he is one of the founders and the publisher of Mystery Scene Magazine, an important journal of mystery fandom...

In the darkness, the girl said, “Are you all right?”

“Huh?”

“I woke you up because you sounded so bad. You must have been having a nightmare.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” I tried to laugh but the sound just came out strangled and harsh.

Cold midnight. Deep Midwest. A Greyhound bus filled with old folks and runaway kids and derelicts of every kind. Anybody can afford a Greyhound ticket these days, that’s why you find so many geeks and freaks aboard. I was probably the only guy on the bus who had a real purpose in life. And if I needed a reminder of that purpose, all I had to do was shove my hand into the pocket of my peacoat and touch the chill blue metal of the .38. I had a purpose all right.

The girl had gotten on a day before, during a dinner stop. She wasn’t what you’d call pretty, but then neither was I. We talked, of course, the way you do when you travel; dull grinding social chatter at first, but eventually you get more honest. She told me she’d just been dumped by a guy named Mike, a used-car salesman at Belaski Motors in a little town named Burnside. She was headed to Chicago where she’d find a job and show Mike that she was capable of going on without him. Come to think of it, I guess Polly here had a goal, too, and in a certain way our goals were similar. We both wanted to pay people back for hurting us.

Sometime around ten, when the driver turned off the tiny overhead lights and people started falling asleep, I heard her start crying. It wasn’t loud and it wasn’t hard, but it was genuine. There was a lot of pain there.

I don’t know why — I’m not the type of guy to get involved — but I put my hand on her lap. She took it in both of her hands and held it tightly. “Thanks,” she said, and leaned over and kissed me with wet cheeks and a trembling hot little mouth.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and that’s when I drifted off to sleep, the wheels of the Greyhound thrumming down the highway, the dark coffin inside filled with people snoring, coughing, and whispering.

According to the luminous hands on my wristwatch, it was forty-five minutes later when Polly woke me up to tell me I’d been having a nightmare.

The lights were still off overhead. The only illumination was the soft silver of moonlight through the tinted window. We were in the backseat on the left-hand side of the back aisle. The only thing behind us was the john, which almost nobody seemed to use. The seats across from her were empty.

After telling me about how sorry she felt for me having nightmares like that, she leaned over and whispered, “Who’s Kenny?”

“Kenny?”

“That’s the name you kept saying in your nightmare.”

“Oh.”

“You’re not going to tell me, huh?”

“Doesn’t matter. Really.”

I leaned back and closed my eyes. There was just darkness and the turning of the wheels and the winter air whistling through the windows. You could smell the faint exhaust.

“You know what I keep thinking?” she said.

“No. What?” I didn’t open my eyes.

“I keep thinking we’re the only two people in the world, you and I, and we’re on this fabulous boat and we’re journeying to someplace beautiful.”

I had to laugh at that. She sounded so naive, yet desperate, too. “Someplace beautiful, huh?”

“Just the two of us.”

And she gave my hand a little squeeze. “I’m sorry I’m so corny,” she said.

And that’s when it happened. I started to turn around in my seat and felt something fall out of my pocket and hit the floor, going thunk. I didn’t have to wonder what it was.

Before I could reach it, she bent over, her long blond hair silver in the moonlight, and got it for me.

She looked at it in her hand and said, “Why would you carry a gun?”

“Long story.”

She looked as if she wanted to take the gun and throw it out the window. She shook her head. “You’re going to do something with this, aren’t you?”

I sighed and reached over and took the gun from her. “I’d like to try and catch a little nap if you don’t mind.”

“But—”

And I promptly turned over so that three-fourths of my body was pressed against the chill wall of the bus. I pretended to go to sleep, resting there and smelling diesel fuel and feeling the vibration of the motor.

The bus roared on into the night. It wouldn’t be long before I’d be seeing Dawn and Kenny again. I touched the .38 in my pocket. No, not long at all.

If you’ve taken many Greyhounds, then you know about layovers. You spend an hour-and-a-half gulping down greasy food and going into the bathroom in a john that reeks like a city dump on a hot day and staring at people in the waiting area who seem to be deformed in every way imaginable. Or that’s how they look at 2:26 A.M., anyway.

This layover was going to be different. At least for me. I had plans.

As the bus pulled into a small brick depot that looked as if it had been built back during the Depression, Polly said, “You’re going to do it here, aren’t you?”

“Do what?”

“Shoot somebody.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’ve just got a feeling is all. My mom always says I have ESP.”

She started to say something else, but then the driver lifted the microphone and gave us his spiel about how the layover would be a full hour and how there was good food to be had in the restaurant and how he’d enjoyed serving us. There’d be a new driver for the next six hours of our journey, he said.

There weren’t many lights on in the depot. Passengers stood outside for a while stretching and letting the cold air wake them up.

I followed Polly off the bus and immediately started walking away. An hour wasn’t a long time.

Before I got two steps, she snagged my arm. “I was hoping we could be friends. You know, I mean, we’re a lot alike.” In the shadowy light of the depot, she looked younger than ever. Young and well scrubbed and sad. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. Whatever it is, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. It won’t be worth it. Honest.”

“Take care of yourself,” I said, and leaned over and kissed her.

She grabbed me again and pulled me close and said, “I got in a little trouble once myself. It’s no fun. Believe me.”