A Knife in the Heart. William W. Johnstone

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      CHAPTER TWELVE

      “Is it always this windy here?” Christina asked the waitress at the quaint Leavenworth, Kansas, café near the Missouri River.

      “Chil’,” the gray-haired, stout woman told her, “’T’ain’t even windy dis afternoon.”

      After they ordered coffees to start and a lemonade for Rachel Renee, the waitress walked to the kitchen.

      “Don’t they call Chicago the ‘windy city’?” Fallon grinned. “And isn’t that where you grew up and worked?”

      “It’s a different kind of wind.” Frowning, Christina sniffed, then sneezed, and a sigh followed that.

      “I thought Cheyenne was windy.” Rachel Renee bounced in her seat, staring after the waitress, eagerly awaiting her lemonade.

      Christina reached inside her purse and withdrew her handkerchief one more time. She blew her nose.

      “Are you sick, Ma?” Rachel Renee asked.

      “I think”—she sniffed again—“I think . . . I must have . . . a cold.”

      “It’s called hay fever,” Fallon said.

      “It’s a cold,” Christina insisted.

      They had arrived in Leavenworth, Kansas, late yesterday morning, found the house they had rented on the western part of town, and basically spent the day unpacking. Fallon had not even been by the federal penitentiary, either the old one or the larger one being built. He was supposed to check in on Monday. Today was Saturday. After getting the house arranged to something Christina could live with, and getting all of Rachel Renee’s dolls and other toys arranged to her liking, they had decided to see what all Leavenworth had to offer.

      It was bigger than Fallon remembered, but he had not been to the city in years. Like most places, it had grown. Brick buildings dominated the business district, a trend Fallon was seeing as the new century approached. Western towns had learned that wooden buildings burned, and when one caught fire, quite often the whole town went up in smoke. Red brick had replaced whitewashed facades. Many of the streets were paved. The streetlights were gas. Telephone and telegraph lines gave crows and other birds a place to watch the bustling of a thriving town.

      One of the reasons Leavenworth thrived, of course, was because of the military fort—and the federal prison.

      The Army and crime were always good for a booming economy.

      The waitress returned with their drinks. Christina greeted her with yet another loud sneeze.

      “If de cedars don’t gets you, den de weeds will,” the old woman said. “Dis time of year be the worse fer pure mis’ry. Dat’s what dey ought to call this town. Spring Mis’ry. Best thing dat could happen would be if de river was to flood. I mean of Jesus in the wilderness proportions. Cover us underwater for thirty days and thirty nights.”

      “Forty,” Rachel Renee corrected, and Fallon thought that Cheyenne’s Bible school had come in handy.

      “Even better,” the waitress said. “Eat honey, ma’am,” she told Christina. “Only cure we got, ’cept fer drownin’.”

      “You don’t seem to suffer,” Fallon observed.

      “I eat honey. By de gallons. Ya might as well jus’ call me Queen Bee. Y’all new here?”

      “Yes,” Fallon said. “Just moved.”

      “Figured. What with her askin’ ’bout de wind, and now sufferin’ the mis’ry of March. What would y’all care to have fer dinner?”

      “Honey,” Rachel Renee sang. “It’s sweet.”

      They ordered the special, fried fish and onions, but the waitress brought out baked bread and two jars of local honey first. Rachel Renee filled up on so much bread and honey she barely touched her plate. Fallon figured his daughter was the smart, and lucky, one. The fish, at least his, was mostly bones anyway, and he could scarcely taste the onions because of all the grease. He had figured, this close to Missouri, he might have something resembling a home-cooked meal. But he had found some bad cafés in Cheyenne, too, and this was pretty much their first foray into Leavenworth. The city was big enough.

      He paid his check, grabbed his hat, and escorted his wife and daughter to the front door, which swung open, and three men entered. They blocked the exit.

      “Hello, Hank,” the weasel in the middle said.

      Only my friends call me Hank.

      The weasel was a runt, standing no taller than five-foot-five, and that included the cowboy boots he wore with their two-inch heels. He wore striped trousers, a plaid shirt, moth-eaten vest, stained bandana, and trail-worn slouch hat. The eyes were too far apart, his left earlobe was missing, his face was pitted with scars, and his nose had been broken countless times. He carried an old Colt tucked inside his waistband.

      To the weasel’s right stood a stout man, the kind Fallon usually saw working in a blacksmith’s shop. The only thing missing was a smithy’s apron. He had huge arms that strained the sleeves of his cotton shirt, a thick beard of blond hair stained on one side by years of tobacco juice. Fallon saw no gun, not even a sheathed knife, but with arms that size, he figured, this leviathan wouldn’t need one.

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