Notches

by Peter Bowen

  Buried about three inches deep, Du Pré thought. Scratch this earth and it breaks up like dry bread.

  Du Pré looked at the knife. Stainless-steel, three-inch blade, double-sided. Black plastic handle. He looked at the brand name but it had been ground off.

  Du Pré grunted. He dropped the knife in a plastic bag and sealed it.

  He tugged a ring out of the dirt.

  The metal was discolored, the gem a piece of dime-store glass.

  The sort of trinket a poor girl would buy for herself.

  Du Pré stood up. He picked up the shovel and pushed it into the ground. The soil broke easily.

  He carried the shovelful to the sieve. He tossed it on the screen.

  Booger Tom hosed it down.

  Five earrings.

  Thin cheap silver chain gone to greenish black.

  A penny.

  Du Pré put them all in the same bag.

  Du Pré and Tom worked the spot carefully, shoveling around the trunk of the sagebrush.

  They found one small brass key, of the size for a jewelry box.

  Nothing else.

  Agent Pidgeon arrived in the tan government car. Wally the mechanic had stuck a new used engine in it. It took him about half a day.

  “Paydirt,” said Pidgeon, holding up the bags. “There won’t be anything else. This guy is very careful.”

  Bart and the ranch hands were standing near. They’d walked the whole half mile of road without seeing a thing that could be useful.

  “It’s him,” said Pidgeon. “He dumps the bodies and he buries a knife and some effects nearby. The effects usually don’t square with the bodies. I expect he buries the trophies from the last killing with the next, and so forth. Only keeps the most current mementos.”

  “Trophies?” said Du Pré.

  Pidgeon nodded. “Souvenirs,” she said, “of his triumphs. Young women are the enemy. When he kills one, he wins. My profile is fairly standard. This guy is white, unmarried, thirty-five to forty. He’s compulsive about cleanliness. He’s quiet. He’s not very skilled socially, and feels very clumsy around women. He probably doesn’t drink or smoke and certainly never takes street drugs. He is, on the surface, very religious, though all his talk of it is about sin and atonement— he’s providing atonement for these poor women. He’s physically very strong, because he fears weakness of any kind. He’s probably been in some trouble with the law as a juvenile.”

  “What kind of trouble?” said Du Pré.

  “Arson, petty theft, violence to kids younger than he is. He would have tortured animals and killed them though he may never have been caught at it. May never have been caught with the other. Probably came from a poor and violent home. Single parent, most likely his mother. She can’t, for whatever reason, offer love. I bet this guy has a young sister who he thinks got all the love.”

  Pidgeon lit a cigarette.

  “He kills with a knife thrust to the juncture of the spine and the skull. That’s why he uses these short blades. The victim is bound. He may have intercourse with the body. Probably can’t, can’t get it up at any time. If he goes with a prostitute, she’ll maybe suck him off, but he’ll do so rarely. If she can’t manage to get him off, he’ll kill her even if he has to wait.”

  “Sweet guy,” said Booger Tom.

  “Fellow Americans,” said Agent Pidgeon. “About forty of ‘em plying their trade at any given time. We maybe catch half of them.”

  “Like that Ted Bundy?” said Du Pré.

  “Dunno,” said Pidgeon. “But I suspect this guy is a lot smarter than Bundy. I suspect this guy is very smart indeed, and he has the instincts of a wild creature.”

  “Why smart?” said Du Pré.

  “Um,” said Pidgeon. “He does some of the things that various of these types do, but never so much they provide us with a weakness. Like the trophies. He keeps a few. There is probably a number he allows himself. He never keeps the knife he kills with. The knives have always been so thoroughly cleaned there aren’t any residues on them. He always uses this kind of knife. The handle is tight and impermeable plastic. Blood can’t seep in between the blade and the handle. He hides the bodies where they will be undiscovered for a long time. He isn’t taunting us directly. He’s not playing chicken with us. He doesn’t want to get caught.”

  “You’re damn right there,” said Booger Tom.

  “No,” said Pidgeon. “They mostly do. See, most of them get crazier and crazier and more and more careless. They’ve been able to milk the system for bennies, con the shrinks. They want to get caught and be famous. They think they’re unique. Living National Treasures, you bet.”

  “Social workers done this,” said Tom.

  “Yeah, right,” said Pidgeon.

  “Well,” said Tom. “Ever’ time ya turn around someone is getting off scot-free because his mother pulled the tit too quick or something.”

  “Whatever,” said Pidgeon. “This guy worries me, though. They all worry me, but this guy really worries me.”

  “OK,” said Du Pré. “But why?”

  “He’s very smart,” said Pidgeon. “He’s probably an autodidact. He reads a lot. High IQ. If he works, it’s at a highly skilled job where he doesn’t have much to do with people. He doesn’t have close friends, but people will think of him as a friend. He’ll be thoughtful and ingratiating. He’ll wear clothes in muted tones. He doesn’t talk a lot and when he does it will be about inoffensive subjects. He won’t argue with anyone. He won’t get into rows in bars. He doesn’t vote. He has a driver’s license and a Social Security card, but no charge cards. He always pays cash and in small bills. He doesn’t save receipts. He most likely cuts the labels out of his clothes. He wears jogging shoes, or the heavier walking shoes, in dark brown or green. Black is too much of a statement. He wears glasses, probably black frames, heavy ones, with ordinary lenses. No bombardier glasses for this boy. May not even need them. He’s clean-shaven. He gets his hair cut short regularly. He may still live with his mother, or, if she’s dead, with a sister or older female relation. He always makes his bed. Unlike most of you guys, when he does his laundry he bleaches his whites and keeps them separate. He cleans up after himself. He knows a lot about women and he hates them if they are young and pretty and innocent or if he thinks they are whores.”

  “How you know all this?” said Tom.

  “I read fucking tea leaves,” said Pidgeon.

  “I thought so,” said Booger Tom.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” said Pidgeon. “I’m buying. Thank you for all this stuff.”

  “I’ll take the rig back and meet you to town,” said Booger Tom.

  “Du Pré?” said Pidgeon.

  “My car is in Toussaint,” said Du Pré. “I come out with Tom, he had to come to town to get a belt for the truck.”

  “Ride with me,” said Pidgeon. “I need to talk to you anyway.”

  “Social workers and fairy shrinks,” said Booger Tom.

  “Fuck off, you old bastard,” said Agent Pidgeon.

  CHAPTER 12

  “SHE IS SOME PISTOL,” said Du Pré, into the telephone. “Oh, yes,” said Harvey Wallace. “I would dearly love to make a dozen little Redbone Blackfeet with her, but Angela would object and she’s Sioux and you know what they do to unfaithful husbands.”

  “You are married?” said Du Pré.

  “Twenty-seven years,” said Harvey. “Six kids. Lovely wife. Two dogs. Home in the burbs. A station wagon and a Jeep Cherokee.”

  “Oh,” said Du Pré.

  “Yeah,” said Harvey. “I’m hopelessly middle-class. And I don’t like buffalo meat. Or horse meat. Or chokecherry jam. Makes my teeth hurt. Moccasins make my feet hurt. Poor-ass Indian.”

  “Uh,” said Du Pré. “Well, she did tell me a lot about this guy, she thinks she knows this stuff about him.”

  “If she says the guy does this or that, he does this or that,” said Harvey. “She’s a damn fine psychologist and then on top of that she’s intuitive as hell
.”

  “What’s intuitive?” said Du Pré.

  “Senses things without thinking them through.”

  “Yeah,” said Du Pré, “she is a woman, you bet.”

  “Whatever,” said Harvey. “Under law, there is no difference between the brains of men and the brains of women.”

  “Laws are pretty much bullshit,” said Du Pré.

  “I wish you would quit talking like that,” said Harvey. “I have a sick feeling that if you find the guy he’s gonna have more holes in him than a fucking colander and then we’ll have to arrest you and try you and toss you in Walla Walla. For a long time.”

  Du Pré said nothing.

  “Benetsee back?” said Harvey.

  “No,” said Du Pré. “I do not know where he is.” The old bastard, may he drop slowly through all me levels of hell, frying while he falls.

  “Shit,” said Harvey. “Agent Pidgeon needs to meet him.”

  “Me, I need to talk to him,” said Du Pré. “But I can’t find out where he has gone.”

  “He’s his own guy, for sure,” said Harvey. “Well, Agent Pidgeon did call from Billings and she raised merry hell down there with the cops who screwed up some evidence.”

  “I like her,” said Du Pré.

  “She’s a good one,” said Harvey. “By the way, you talk to Challis at all? He’s on my mind some.”

  “No,” said Du Pré, “I have not.”

  “Well,” said Harvey. “No more bodies turn up there, I hope, you can maybe work on what you got. I wish to Christ we knew more about time.”

  “Yeah,” said Du Pré, not quite knowing what Harvey meant.

  “When this guy is dumping them. Time we find them, they’ve been out there for months, usually. Your three were under the snow until late, it was a late spring.”

  “Four,” said Du Pré.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” said Harvey. “Poor little Karen was skinned and her skeleton was fleshed out. All sorts of knife marks on the bones.”

  “Jesus,” said Du Pré.

  “I want this guy alive, Du Pré,” said Harvey. “I have heard bad rumors about you. Some guy up in New York State.”

  “Ah,” said Du Pré.

  “Ah?” said Harvey. “OK, I’ll go now. Don’t make me sad, my man, I beg of you.”

  “OK,” said Du Pré.

  “Enough of this bullshit,” said Harvey. “I’m calling Madelaine.”

  Du Pré hung up.

  He went outside on the porch again.

  Harvey and Pidgeon are not telling me everything, Du Pré thought, they play to win. I kill this asshole, they will try to get me.

  Him call Madelaine, she tell him her Du Pré do what he is gonna do, which, for Madelaine, would be kill this bastard anyway.

  Then everybody’s babies safe from him.

  Lots of others out there, though.

  Forty of them, any given time.

  Pret’ bad people.

  I wish Benetsee would show up.

  Du Pré rolled a cigarette. He whistled a little in between drags. This afternoon he would go to the bar in Toussaint and fiddle with a couple of cousins down from Canada.

  Big family, mine, Du Pré thought. Indian family. These cousins they are from people come down here with my great-great-grandfather, then they go to North Dakota and back up to Canada. Always in the Red River country. I like that country, sings in my bones.

  Goes to Hudson’s Bay.

  Wonder how them whales are doing.

  Wonder that Hydro-Quebec kill that River of the Whale yet. Damn it. I should ask Bart, he sends money to fight that.

  The fields of winter wheat were ripening now July. They were going to red-gold and that hard red wheat was getting ready for the harvest. Ring good on the shovel, that hard red wheat.

  Du Pré remembered threshing, the combine crews, everybody itching from the chaff. The streams of dark red winter wheat shooting out of the pipes and into the trucks lumbering along on the side of the combines. Sell all the hard red wheat you could grow, anybody. Make pasta, them good noodles. One-fifth protein. Come from Russia, that hard red wheat.

  The Dukhobors brought it, I hear.

  Du Pré liked the Dukhobors, a pacifist Russian sect. If a Dukhobor got really mad with you, they undressed. I will not fight you, I am naked before your violence, but I am mad at you.

  The Mennonites, during the First World War they came and got the men and hung them from handcuffs on a pipe till their shoulders dislocated, because they wouldn’t fight.

  The Hutterites. Good farmers, shrewd traders.

  Good people, just don’t have much truck with the rest of the world. Who can blame them?

  Du Pré flicked his smoke out into the yard. The grass was meadow grass, already drying and yellowing and going dormant.

  Du Pré got his fiddle and he went to his old cruiser and he got in and turned around and went down the long drive.

  That Bart he is off digging a big irrigation ditch with Popsicle, his lime green diesel shovel. One we find the answer to his brother’s death with. Find a lot of things. Find out more truth than maybe we want to know. That is the thing about truth, there is only too much or not enough.

  Du Pré drove slowly, windows down, listening to the meadowlarks trill. Big yellow-breasted birds got a black wishbone on their chests. He glanced over and saw a brilliant bluebird, winged sapphire, sitting on the fence post its house was nailed to.

  Got to get the hole the right size in the house or you got starlings. Yuppie birds, maybe. Lots of squawk and sharp elbows. No taste.

  Du Pré was in no hurry. It took him an hour to go the twenty miles to town. He went to Madelaine’s.

  He parked and went in the front door.

  “Du Pré!” Madelaine called. “There is a box for you there!”

  Du Pré looked at the box on the coffee table. Shirt box.

  Madelaine, she make me another shirt.

  “OK,” said Du Pré. “I see, shirt box.”

  “Smarty,” said Madelaine from the bathroom. “You look in that, see how your woman love you.”

  Du Pré lifted off the top.

  Bright red shirt with black piping and fiddles over the pockets made of porcupine quills. The shirt was heavy silk. Du Pré picked it up. A red silk Métis sash was folded underneath. Fiddles on that, too, and DU PRÉ on the back in black beads. Very fine beads. Two circlets on each side with coyotes howling at yellow moons on them. Du Pré felt something crinkle in the sash’s pocket, on an end that hung down. He fished out a dollar bill.

  Bad luck to give an empty purse.

  Madelaine came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a heavy turquoise silk/satin shirt with yellow flowers embroidered on it in fine beads, a long yellow skirt, and yellow cowboy boots. Her rings were all turquoise and silver and coral.

  Her hair was in two long braids. Beaver fur wrapped around them.

  “You play that good music, eh?” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré nodded. He was shrugging into the shirt. He put his fiddle rosin in the pocket of the sash and he stuck the other end through the loops on his jeans.

  He drove down to the bar. Two old cars with North Dakota plates stood outside. Cousins.

  Du Pré was a little late and his cousins were picking and singing already. He tuned his fiddle and then joined them.

  They played the old voyageur stuff, the longing songs of men far from their women, thinking that maybe they would not see them again.

  Long time ago, on the lakes bordered by the deep black woods. The Company of Gentlemen Adventurers of Hudson’s Bay. The Métis voyageurs. Red River.

  CHAPTER 13

  ROUND MIDNIGHT DU PRÉ and his cousins were playing very tight and the crowd had thinned to those who simply loved the music. The whoopers had gotten drunk and left. Madelaine was looking at Du Pré with her bright and saucy black eyes and she would smile when he looked at her.

  Got plans for you, her face said.

  Du Pré grinned and rosined
his bow.

  There is nothing left of us but songs and stories finally, Du Pré thought.

  Even maybe when the earth is ice again and the Red River sleeps for a long time. Missouri, she used to flow to Hudson’s Bay, but ice come and now she goes to the Gulf of Mexico.

  I am a man, but we are not very big.

  “‘Baptiste’s Lament’!” said Sonny, the accordion player.

  Du Pré nodded. The song was about a young voyageur who misses his love and he sees her in the moon on the water, smiling. And when he gets home she is dead, and he drowns when he sees her in the moon on the water again, swimming down after her, singing.

  Sad song.

  They took a break. Du Pré was leaning up against the bar kissing Madelaine when Susan Klein tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the telephone. Du Pré looked at Susan. She shrugged.

  “Eh,” said Du Pré.

  “Du Pré,” said a soft drawling voice.

  “Who is this?” said Du Pré.

  “Rolly Challis,” said the soft voice. “I’m in Browning. I’ll be at Raster Creek in four hours. Could you meet me there?”

  Five in the fucking morning.

  “Sure,” said Du Pré. “You got something.”

  “Maybe,” said Rolly. “Some things I need to talk over with you anyway. Sorry about the time but that’s my run. I can take a couple of hours there, highball later.”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré, “I be there.”

  The phone clicked.

  “Girlfriend?” said Madelaine.

  “Yah,” said Du Pré, “She meet me at five in the morning. I got time for you before, maybe after. I am busy man, you know.”

  Madelaine smiled suddenly. She reached up and took Du Pré’s right earlobe in her teeth and she bit it softly.

  “You see that man brought my Lourdes back?” she hissed. Du Pré’s ear was a little wet. “You thank him for me. No, I will not go, but sometime I like to thank him, smile at him with my face.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  Sonny and Bassman were chatting with a couple pretty women from Cooper. Everybody looked happy. Be even happier later.