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falseroar · 1 month

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Murder on the Warfstache Express

Part 12: Now What?

((With the murder solved, everyone now has to deal with the pressing question: now what?

This is the last chapter of the story! Links to the previous chapter and to the masterlist for the series here.))

Abe watched the landscape trundle by outside the wide window, not that there was much to see. Unlike yesterday, the train moved so slowly that the detective suspected he—or maybe someone younger, with a few decades less of smoking and drinking under his belt and without a bullet in his chest—could have outpaced it. Maybe the slow pace could be blamed on an abundance of caution, or maybe the collective dread of what would happen once it finally reached the next station.

With the rising sun on the other side of the car, the shadow of the train stretched out across miles of untouched snow, with little to distract him from his thoughts.

That is, mostly untouched. Turns out, while helping get the power on up front, Professor Beauregard remembered that blaster of hers and formed a little theory about what it could do to the snow the engine had plowed itself into. A theory she was ready and willing to test out, assisted by some of the more adventurous passengers and crew that wanted to take a crack at dissolving the snow into steam with each blast.

Very much not assisted by Wilford, Abe did make sure of that much.

If anyone had tried to sleep last night, after…after everything, they would have found it difficult with the hooting and hollering accompanied by blasts of sound and light that were reflected back by the snow all around.

If Abe had tried to sleep, he didn’t think it would have been the noise, or the light, or the lurch of the train finally moving again, that would have kept him awake.

But he knew better than to try, same as he knew better than to go back to his room.

No, his thoughts could only go in one direction cooped up in that shoebox, especially after he made the trip to the compartment that he’d traded over to Happy, to open the window there and check the victim’s pockets one last time to confirm a suspicion. The window had been Illinois’s idea, tactfully suggesting that the freezing air from outside might help with��well, the normal issues after a body’s been left lying around too long. Probably something Abe should have considered hours ago, but to his immense relief there hadn’t been a noticeable smell when he opened the door. The agent still looked like someone who had just chosen to fall asleep on the floor, if he ignored all the blood.

Abe had a lot of thoughts about dead bodies in general, but those weren’t occupying his mind at the moment.

Instead, he stared out the window with the two slips of paper he’d pulled from his pocket while relaying how the death happened in his hands, mindlessly running his thumb over the edges, over the hole punched in one of them, over the ink that he had read over and over again in the hours since.

“You’ll get a papercut, doing that.”

“…” Abe barely glanced at the pink and yellow reflection in the window opposite him before returning his attention to the snow.

With returning to his compartment out of the question, Abe had bunkered down in one of the empty lounge chairs, aided by everyone else choosing other places to come to terms with how Happy’s death had come about in their own ways. That, and a bottle retrieved from behind the bar which had somehow managed to empty itself without his realizing. That had helped a lot less than he had hoped for, but he was always willing to give it another try.

Until now, he’d had the car to himself. Peace and quiet, at least in theory.

“Both overrated, in my opinion,” Wilford remarked, only to sigh when even that failed to get a reaction out of the detective. He leaned forward until that pink-tinged mustache practically filled Abe’s peripheral vision and said, “Inquiring minds need to know: what’s on your mind, Detective?”

“Minds, plural?” Abe asked, and Wilford responded with a shrug, his big brown eyes still locked on Abe with all the innocence they didn’t deserve. Finally breaking his staring contest with the snowscape outside, Abe asked, “Do you ever feel like…like this isn’t the way it was supposed to go?”

“It?”

Abe struggled for words to describe the feeling lurking in his mind, flitting to the back of his chest and into his stomach then back up again anytime he tried to catch hold of it. “Like…like these moments, this series of events, this…this story jumped the tracks somewhere, or…or got tangled up with something else entirely, and you’re just along for the ride? Like none of this is the way it was supposed to go?”

Wilford seemed to consider Abe’s words carefully, nodding along until he realized that some kind of answer was expected from him. “…Pass.”

“Pass—wh—You can’t just…” Abe ran a hand over his eyes with a heavy sigh. “Right, should have expected you wouldn’t be much help there.”

Wilford, for his part, studied the detective with a measure of sadness and sympathy that Abe would have taken offense to if he had noticed, and turned a relieved smile toward Dorene when she approached the pair.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said, indicating the otherwise empty and quiet car. It said something to Abe's distraction that he hadn't even noticed her coming in. “May I…?”

She indicated the empty seat next to the detective and sat when Abe nodded and Wilford gave an enthusiastic yes.

“Take the advice of this old woman with a grain of salt, but I’ve been around enough times to know what you mean, I think,” Dorene said, pulling her burnoose a little closer as she gave Abe a meaning look. “And I’ve found, if you don’t like the story you’ve found yourself in, it’s never too late to change it. We can always choose, to make a better story for ourselves.”

“Tell that to Happy,” Abe muttered with a bitterness that surprised even him at first, until he found himself saying it out loud. “All of our ‘choices’ led to him ending up dead, and none of us even realized we were doing it. And you know what the worst part of it is? I keep thinking how easily that could have been me.”

Abe rubbed his face again, aware of Dorene and Wilford patiently waiting for him to continue. “God, that makes me sound like such an asshole, doesn’t it? But I keep thinking about it: what if I had taken Moneybags seriously about the death threats and agreed to keep an eye on the guy? If I had been awake to see the bandit and Happy going to the luggage car and got caught in that shootout, for example. Or if I’d been the one to overdose on the sleeping pills instead of letting Happy overdo it, or if I’d passed on the cookie, or hadn’t traded rooms with Happy and ended up lying down on that trap because I was too drunk and drugged to think straight. How were any of those good choices?”

“I never said you had to make good choices, Detective,” Dorene answered, smiling at his surprise. “We can’t change the past, of course, and what happened to that man was a terrible accident, but that doesn’t mean you did something wrong or right, that you should have somehow seen this coming any more than the rest of us. You can never be sure in the moment whether it’s the ‘right’ choice or the ‘wrong’ one, because there’s so much more to life than that, isn’t it?”

“Life is ours to choose, after all,” Wilford muttered under his breath without looking at either of them, oblivious to the way both of them instinctively reacted to those words.

Dorene glanced at him and leaned in closer to the detective as she added in a lower voice, “Between you and me, the only wrong choice is not choosing at all—better to have tried to write your own story than leave it to someone else, right?”

“…I guess,” Abe said, for lack of anything else to say. As much as what Dorene said made sense, it still didn’t answer the fundamental wrongness he felt about this whole thing. This stupid death, from a series of stupid, easily avoided accidents and mistakes. This train, these employees, these passengers and stowaways, none of it felt right. None of it felt complete.

He looked down again at the two pieces of paper in his hand, the pair of tickets he’d found in his pocket. He’d double checked Happy to make sure, but he hadn’t taken the dead man’s ticket earlier when he searched him, and of the two tickets only one of them had been punched by the conductor.

Peter had told him, ages ago, that the train only sold eight tickets. He’d assumed that meant eight passengers, had done all the math, but that was before he realized Wilford never bothered with getting a ticket.

Happy, Dorene, Professor Beauregard, Illinois, Richard Bags, Mack, and himself: all together, that made only seven.

Even Wilford of all people had pointed out how it made no sense, how the detective had been put into a double room, how there was clearly something—or rather, someone—missing.

You should have been here.

Abe blinked, hard, and looked out the window until his eyes cleared again and he felt safe to speak, to change the subject to something, anything else.

“How are the others doing?” he asked and Dorene shrugged.

“About as well as can be expected, I suppose. Illinois and the professor are resting in their rooms, and Chef and Benjamin are keeping watch on that young bandit and Richard’s rooms to make sure they don’t try anything silly.”

Silly. That was one way of putting it. The bandit had been put into one of the many empty compartments, although as Benjamin noted there wasn’t really a way to keep a passenger locked in their own room. Honestly, between that and the obvious window, Abe would personally be surprised if she was still there when they stopped at the next station, not that he’d said anything at the time. She might be a stowaway and a thief (if not a particularly successful one last night), but the thought of the agency Happy worked for pinning his death on her just because it was convenient didn’t exactly sit right with him. After all, he’d been on both sides of the gun too many times to blame someone for defending themselves, whatever else they’d been doing at the time.

“Any word out of Bags?” Abe asked, and to his surprise Dorene actually smiled at that.

“Oh, you could say that. Mack has been very persuasive, and together he and I made some…suggestions, about the kind of choices he could make to change his own story, if you will.”

“Choices like what?” Abe asked suspiciously.

“Well, after Mack made it rather clear that he could make sure the blame for those financial crimes landed squarely on Richard where they belonged, I suggested that he could drum up quite a lot of goodwill for himself in the eyes of the public and any potential judges and juries by publicly committing himself to community service, along with some rather substantial donations to various charities.”

“How substantial?” Abe asked, feeling a tug at the corner of his lips despite himself.

Dorene gave him a wicked smile. “I believe Chef suggested that, once all was said and done, the moniker ‘Small Dime Moneysack’ might be more fitting than his current nickname.”

Abe chuckled. “Sounds like a decent start, but I’m not sure there’s enough community service or donations in the world to redeem a guy like him.”

“I think you’d be surprised. Like I said, it’s never too late to change.” Dorene’s smile faded and more seriously she added, “That’s why I have to thank you, for last night. For laying it all out in the open. For suggesting Richard go back to his room and stay there for the rest of the trip, to give us all time to really think about what we were doing here.”

Abe made a sound at that, not really agreeing or disagreeing. He barely remembered what he said after explaining how Happy died. It all just kind of blurred together in a depressed haze, although to be fair that was pretty normal after his other cases wrapped up, after the thrill of it all washed off and he was left to deal with the aftermath.

In fact, he suspected it had less to do with anything he said and more the fact that most of them, when push came to shove, really didn’t have it in them to commit cold-blooded murder. Except the chef, Wilford, and for some reason he suspected also Dorene, the rest didn’t strike him as the kind to pick up the knife and do the job themselves. Hell, half of them like Illinois and Benjamin hadn’t even known there was a murder plot going on as far as he could tell.

That those who did had relied on poison to do the job felt like it was due to Mack’s influence, and it had long since occurred to Abe that if the man really did want to kill his employer, he could have done it ages ago if he hadn’t insisted on being clever about it. Then again, maybe all the complications and smoke and mirrors were Mack’s own way of distancing himself from what he was trying to do, to not face the blood that would inevitably be on his hands no matter how he put it there.

“But I do think they’re all wondering the same thing,” she admitted, studying the detective as she asked, “How, exactly, are we going to explain all of this once we reach the station?”

“Tell them not to worry about it,” Abe said, trying to muster up his usual confidence. “I’ll handle it.”

Something told him he hadn’t succeeded much in the confidence department, judging by the look Dorene and Wilford shared, but he couldn’t bother enough to be offended by it. Point was, he had been asking himself the same question ever since they all split up.

How was he going to explain all of this? Agent Apless said he didn’t do partners, a declaration Abe had brushed off at the time, but the man did work with a group of some kind and they would need and deserve answers. And somehow, he doubted reality would be even close to satisfying here.

“I find, ‘I’m sorry, it was an accident’ tends to do the trick,” Wilford offered with only the slightest of winces from Dorene.

Abe stared at the man. “…Does it? Does it really?”

“…No.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll try the truth,” Abe said.

“But it is the truth!” Wilford protested.

“Okay, but a truth that sounds even remotely possible might help,” Abe pointed out. He sighed and said, “It’s fine, I’ll figure something out. We’ve got plenty of time before we reach the station—”

As if on some perverse cue, the screech of the train’s brakes and the noticeable slowing alerted them to the presence of the train platform swiftly approaching, where more than a few people were waiting for the late train.

Dorene looked at him and Abe, cursing internally, told her, “Tell the others to start packing their stuff while I handle the agents. We could be here for a while, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

Dorene smiled and said with more confidence than Abe felt, “I’m sure you will, Detective.”

---

Abe stepped out onto the train platform, the sharp wind making him pull his leather jacket closer while he looked around and took in the situation. There was a local employee up at the front of the train, demanding an explanation from Peter on how the “express” train ended up being so off schedule, but the detective’s eyes were immediately drawn to the agents.

They didn’t look like the ‘men in black’ type the professor had described any more than Happy had, but Abe could recognize the look of people on a mission all the same. It helped that the big guys were dressed in black and red uniforms and had blasters on their hips that would have made the professor start drooling and demanding specs, but also something about the one with the white top and cape reminded Abe of Happy, although he couldn’t pin down why. Maybe the haircut, or the admittedly larger than normal ears?

Either way, he counted on that one being the leader of the group as he approached and said, “I’m guessing you’re here for Ha—Agent Harold Apless?”

“How do you know that?” the one in white asked, the initial bashful, anxious smile on his approach being replaced with obvious surprise.

“Just a hunch,” Abe said with a shrug. “Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a lot happened on that train last night—”

“Oh, we already know all about that,” the leader answered with a careless flap of a red-gloved hand. “Agent Apless notified us as soon as he could, of course.”

“He…he did?” Abe asked, unable to hide his astonishment. “How? When?”

Maybe he’d radioed ahead to let them know the crystal was on the train sometime yesterday? Or had he somehow made contact after the shootout, either in the luggage car or back in his compartment, before he died? But the power had been out, and Abe had checked the body and hadn’t seen anything like a radio.

Then again, a small voice in the back of his head piped up, he had barely recognized the gun the agent had on him. Who’s to say he didn’t have a transmitter on him, disguised as something else?

But instead of answers, the USA agent just brushed him off with, “I’m sorry, but that’s confidential business. You really shouldn’t have even known one of our agents was even on the train. If you can just make sure everyone gets off the train, we’ll handle things from here.”

“You want me to…everyone?” Abe asked, stressing that last word.

“Except the agent, of course. And we understand there was an intruder on the train who shouldn’t have been there, if you could make sure she stays on as well that would be quite helpful.” A friendly, professional smile, backed up with, “But really, this is our matter to handle, your people don’t need to worry about all of this, I assure you.”

There it was. They were going to pin Happy’s death on the bandit, just like he suspected.

Which made it a shame, then, that Abe could clearly see a tell-tale figure hightailing it over one of the turnstiles in the distance, not that he said anything at the time. If they were so sure they could handle it, then he’d let them handle it, and not just because he was put off by the borderline sense he was being talked down to.

Well, not just because of that.

A few minutes later, Abe stood with the rest of the passengers milling around the station, watching with the train’s crew as the train was moved off onto a sidetrack and out of the way of any others passing through.

“Really, I thought they would at least speak to me about all of this,” Professor Beauregard said, before hearing herself and quickly adding, “About the crystal, at least. I did think they might have some questions, but instead they shooed us all off like naughty children and said it could wait until later.”

“Imagine how we feel,” Chef muttered, gesturing toward himself, Benjamin, and Peter. “We’re supposed to be taking that train down the line and back again for another week, at least. Now what the hell are we supposed to do?”

Richard glanced at Mack and cleared his throat. “Ahem. As your employer, I would be more than happy to…take you on as personal staff, perhaps?”

“Pass,” Chef immediately answered, with an agreeing nod from Benjamin. “Been there, not doing it again.”

“Uh…paid time off, perhaps?” Richard suggested, again with another look at Mack as if seeking some kind of approval there, and at a sign adding, with more than a bit of a wince, “Plus a bonus, to cover travel expenses? We do all seem to be in need of alternate travel.”

“Oh, I thought you and I could wait together for the next train, discuss some details of what we talked about earlier,” Dorene said sweetly, getting a gulp out of the soon to not be so rich man. “But perhaps we could wait inside of the station, where it’s a bit warmer?”

“They have good hot chocolate here,” Peter offered, leading the way.

“Benjamin,” Abe said, impulsively, when he saw him and the chef turning to follow the others, only to hesitate when the two actually turned around to look at him. “Back there, back at the house…”

“I did mean what I said, Detective,” Benjamin said, but his tone wasn’t unfriendly. “It’s okay, to leave the past in the past. Please, do try and move on from that place, for your own sake as much as any other.”

Abe didn’t answer, beyond a parting nod as the two walked toward the station doors. He had meant to tell them, about what happened with Mark, with the Colonel, with you. But now he wasn’t sure if it would do any good, or if it would just reopen old wounds that both of them had, seemingly, healed from where he hadn’t.

Not yet, at least.

The only other person lingering behind was Mack, who was staring after the train with lost, thoughtful eyes and only seemed to notice the detective when he spoke.

“What about you? You going to keep working for Bags?”

Mack gave a short, unamused laugh at that and said, “No, I don’t think so. I’m a free man, Detective, for the first time in years. I think…I think I’m going to take some time to figure things out, before anything else.”

“Same,” Abe admitted, glancing down at the pair of tickets he still held in his hands. He had a lot to think about, to decide where he wanted to go from here.

The two men stood together in silence before both awkwardly said goodbye and went their separate ways, silently agreeing that whatever soul-searching they needed to do, it didn’t involve a team up with the other guy.

Still, Abe was slow to leave the platform. Slow to leave the train behind, to leave behind what happened there. He looked down at the pair of tickets in his hand, one used, the other not, and sighed.

---

On board the train, Allu Minium and the other agents of the Universal Stability Agency split up, the agents going toward the front and back of the train to do a full sweep while Allu went to the passenger car and, after a few wrong attempts, opened the door to Agent Harold Apless’s compartment and looked down at the body on the floor.

“It’s us,” Allu said, and the agent groaned with relief before rolling over and standing up with a few winces, careful to keep pressure on the gunshot wound on his chest. “How long have you been lying there?”

“Hours,” he admitted. “I only risked calling in when everyone else was in the lounge car and not paying attention, but the detective nearly walked in on me sitting up earlier and I thought it best to keep playing dead.”

“Why did you play along in the first place?” Allu demanded to know while passing the agent some bandages to deal with his wounds. “All you had to do was hide your injuries and they would have been none the wiser.”

“Which I would have done, if I hadn’t passed out as soon as I got back to my room,” Apless said, and at Allu's look admitted, “I might have been a little inebriated. And poisoned. By the time I woke up, they’d already found my ‘dead’ body and there wasn’t much else I could do but wait it out.”

While the Universal Stability Agency employed many species, both Allu and Apless hailed from the same one that could easily shrug off little things like being shot or stabbed. Handy when on assignment, up until the local population that definitely wasn’t ready to know about the universal community at large started asking questions about why you were still standing up after said little things.

“At least they managed to catch the thief,” Allu said. “If this is who we think it is, she’s a repeat offender who’s pawned off dangerous tech in the past—no telling what she could have done, if the power source is anything like what our scans suggest.”

Apless nodded, rolling his shoulders with a crack from his back before saying, “Not bad work from that detective. I believe they put her in this compartment over here.”

He opened said door, to be greeted by an empty room and a conspicuously open window.

“…Ah. Maybe it was this room…?”

After a search of every compartment failed to turn up anything but an extremely suspicious teddy bear donning a monocle and pink mustache that Allu Minium immediately pegged as some kind of guardian totem belonging to one of the locals, Agent Harold Apless was forced to admit that, perhaps, the bandit might have gotten away.

“Well,” Allu said, trying to maintain the usual cheerful optimism, “At least we have the power source. Who knows what that kind of thing could do if it was left lying around on a planet like this.”

“Uh,” one of the other agents said as he stepped into the passenger car from the baggage car. “About that…”

Some time later, Professor Beauregard would lead a pair of agents from a very different agency into the same baggage car, unlocking the crate as she talked about safety measures and countermeasures and radiation measures for good measure, only to find what the USA agents had already discovered: the definite lack of a very obvious, glowing crystal. In its place was a glimmering jewel that the professor only needed a glance at before slamming the door shut on it.

Once the agents were done dry heaving, they agreed that while it wasn’t what they were expecting, the Ohio jewel definitely belonged in protective custody, preferably somewhere deep underground where no one had to look at the thing.

---

Earlier, Illinois had found a private moment with Dorene to explain that when he opened his trunk while packing, he’d discovered that the Ohio jewel was missing, replaced with another gem and a note.

“And what did that note say?” Dorene asked, already smiling when she recognized the scrawling signature at the bottom.

“Says here someone thought I might have an idea about what to do with this thing,” Illinois said, tipping the brim of his hat back. “Or at least, ‘Something more interesting than whatever those men in suits would do with it.’”

“And do you have an idea?” Dorene asked, as if she didn’t already know the answer.

Illinois smiled, weighing the jewel in his hand before saying, “Seems to me, this belongs in a museum. Think you could make that happen?”

“Oh, I think I know just the place.”

---

Abe was oblivious to all of that though, as he stood there on the station and studied the tickets before finally coming to a decision.

“Where are you headed?” Wilford asked, smiling when he got a jump out of the detective.

“Where have you been?” Abe asked.

“Touche,” Wilford said, as if both questions were about the same, and fell into step with the detective as he started walking toward the station doors and, somewhere beyond them, the exit. Unbeknownst to both of them, they just barely missed witnessing a very much alive Happy exiting the train with the other USA agents, all of them trying to figure out much the same thing.

“To be honest, I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing next,” Abe admitted. He tore the pair of tickets in half and dropped them in a trash can without stopping. “Should be fun.”

“Oh, I know a few places,” Wilford said, slowing by said trashcan to peer inside before hurrying to catch up with the detective. “How do you feel about boats?”

“Nope, I’m good,” Abe said, picking up his pace. “In fact, you could not follow me—”

Wilford grinned, sensing the tables had turned somehow as he practically chased after the detective. “How about a secluded island, only reachable at high tide? Oh, or a plane! No, wait, not a fan of snakes after the whole Jumanji incident. What about an art museum, get some culture, maybe take some ‘souvenirs’ if you know what I mean—”

Abe pressed his hands over his ears and ran faster, but as he dashed through the exit doors and out into the bright sunshine glinting off of the snow outside the station, for some reason he found a mad smile spreading across his face.

Suddenly it felt like he had all the choice in the world, and he was going to make sure it was a beautiful one.

((End of Part 12, and of Murder on the Warfstache Express. Thank you so much for reading!

And thank you for the patience; I really did mean to get this last chapter out sooner than I did, and overall this story took a lot longer to write than I ever expected (mostly because of personal things going on). Now, in no particular order, my attempt to head off some questions/talk a bit now that spoilers aren't an issue:

In case it's unclear, Allu Minium is "Lady" from ISWM--that name is the one Lio Tipton (the character's actor) suggested in a stream. I'm hoping Happy's non-death doesn't feel like too much of a cop out, but I also think the idea that Abe met not one but two obvious aliens and completely failed to notice a little funny.

I dodged this question ages ago, but this story did take place between ISWM and AHWM--Dark passed the stone to Richard before the story, and Wilford slipped the stone to Illinois/Dorene at the end to make sure it ended up with the museum. Both cases, just for funsies/to see what would happen.

To be honest, a lot of the "this isn't how the story goes" bits in this chapter come down to the suspicion that (someday, maybe) Mark really will do his own version of Murder on the Orient Express. (I can dream, can't I?) But I also wanted Abe to keep up with his character development from WMLW--he's becoming more aware of the story around him and by the end ready to do his own thing for once, instead of just falling into the same old beats (even if Wilford is tempting him into some familiar circumstances...). The line about making beautiful choices and a lot of the stuff Dorene said about choices is directly ripped from her dialogue in ISWM, if you choose to let go at the end.

And...I think that's everything on my mind at the moment. Thank you again for reading, and I really do hope you enjoyed it!

Tag list: @silver-owl413 @asteriuszenith @withjust-a-bite @blackaquokat @catgirlwarrior @neverisadork @luna1350 @oh-so-creepy @95fangirl @a-bit-dapper @randomartdudette @cactipresident @hotcocoachia @purple-star-eyes @shyinspiredartist @avispate @autumnrambles @authorracheljoy @liafoxyfox @hidinginmybochard))

#markiplier #fanfiction #wkm abe #wilford warfstache #dorene whitacre #iswm lady #agent harold apless #i'm not tagging all of these characters #you can't make me #murder on the warfstache express

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