by Peter Bowen
She liked that two-step.
No Métis music, that. She danced the reels and clogs, too, but she really liked the two-step. Liked Nashville music. Cheating hearts, drunks, trucks, prison, railroad trains.
Her father had worked all of his life on the Great Northern Railroad, even though it wasn’t called that any more after Burlington bought it.
Line that Jim Hill built, Du Pré thought, then the Catholics, they buy railroad cars that are chapels, run them on to a siding, say to the Métis, hey, François and Helene, you come get married by a priest, you bring your twelve children to watch.
Métis who come down here after Red River Rebellion, they don’t talk to priests much. Priests betray Louis Riel, so the English hang him. Little Gabriel Dumont, Louis Riel’s little general, brother to my great-great-grandfather, he come down here and he the fifty years later he still had not once talked to a priest. Wouldn’t be buried in Catholic earth, either.
Red River.
“I play some music tonight,” said Du Pré.
“Good,” said Madelaine. “I be your … what … gropey?”
“Huh?” said Du Pré.
“Gropey,” said Madelaine. “One them women follow musicians around, you know, want to fuck them.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré. “I got ten, twelve, more of them. You just be my Madelaine.”
Madelaine looked at Du Pré. She smiled. She pegged a big lump of sticky dough at him. Missed. Hit St. Francis on the wall behind Du Pré.
“Damn,” said Madelaine. “What kind of man are you, not save that poor saint? Damn. Poor St. Francis.”
Du Pré laughed.
That evening it was still hot at six-thirty. Du Pré got into his cruiser and he drove down to the bar and he went in. Benny was setting up the little stage.
The two kids showed up, all scrubbed and eager. They were so young that they really couldn’t legally play in the bar, if anyone cared to think about it.
Good kids, Du Pré thought, they never make much musicians, but they want to a lot.
News that Du Pré was playing his fiddle always brought some people down to the bar. Not so many this night, because everyone was working so hard. But there were fifty people in the room when Du Pré and his sidemen started. The harvest crews listened respectfully.
Susan Klein shut down the pool table when Du Pré played. No arguments.
Madelaine came in after nine.
The night crews went out and the day crews straggled in, dusty and hot and tired and covered in bits of wheat hulls. They perked up after a lot of beer and some food.
Du Pré played some reels and some jigs.
People danced, some of them pretty well.
A couple of the Texans were really good.
Du Pré took a break after a long hour.
He bought Madelaine some pink wine.
“Everbody they think they make out pret’ good this year,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré nodded. Everybody always hoped that it would be a good year, wheat’s up, no rain at harvesttime.
After Du Pré quit he and Madelaine danced to the jukebox. Late, till the bar closed.
CHAPTER 22
“CHRIST,” YELLED PIDGEON. “DO you have to drive like this?” Du Pré laughed. The countryside was shooting by very rapidly. They were north of the Yellowstone River and south of the Missouri. The Big Dry. Where the last wild buffalo in America were slaughtered by a Smithsonian expedition.
Du Pré’s great-grandfather had watched from a nearby butte.
The expedition moved on and Du Pré’s grandpère had butchered out the three cows and he had smoked the meat and taken it back to his family. It was the last of the buffalo for the Métis.
Beef is pret’ good, though, Du Pré thought.
“You fucker,” yelled Pidgeon.
Du Pré looked over and he grinned.
“Drive that fifty-five you never get anywhere,” said Du Pré, at the top of his lungs. “Big place, this Montana.”
Pidgeon tried to light a cigarette but she couldn’t get the flame on her butane lighter to keep going long enough to do it. Du Pré took the cigarette from her and he lit it with his old Zippo and handed it back.
Pidgeon smoked and looked out the window.
Du Pré slowed down to eighty-five to humor her.
“How fast were we going?” she said.
“About right,” said Du Pré. From the bench he could see the Interstate along the south bank of the Yellowstone River. It was heavy with traffic and it looked very busy in the calm and empty landscape.
They crossed over the river and went up an on-ramp and headed west.
South at Hardin, on the Crow Reservation, headed for Sheridan.
Du Pré drove at sixty-five. You could drive like hell on the two-lane but the superhighways were heavily patrolled.
This schoolteacher, she was from Billings.
Dumped near Sheridan.
Missing for two days.
First one we got that’s fairly fresh, Du Pré thought.
He’s around.
I find him.
“I think we’ll get some cooperation,” said Pidgeon, “but you never know. The Bureau didn’t try to spare anyone’s feelings till recently.”
No shit, thought Du Pré.
“So I talked to the Sheriff and he’s meeting us at the Denny’s at the north exit into the town.”
Du Pré nodded.
Find your way around America by hamburger.
Bad hamburgers, too.
They came to the exit for the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Eleven Métis, they die there. That Mitch Bouyer, he is leading the scouts, he try to send his friends away. He knows how many Sioux, Cheyenne, all them Plains people are down there.
Custer sends his favorite Crow scout, Half Yellow Face, away.
Mitch, he die there. Lonesome Charley Reynolds, the old trapper, he die there, too.
That Custer, he is a bastard.
Them Indian, they have their Day of Greasy Grass.
“My heart has quit pounding,” said Pidgeon. “You can speed up now. I know it hurts you to obey the law.”
“Me,” said Du Pré, “I obey all them good laws.”
“Right,” said Pidgeon.
She was dressed in jeans and hiking boots and a cotton shirt and a photographer’s vest. Her gun, ID, handcuffs, and such were in the pockets. She carried a camera and many rolls of film. Little tape recorder.
“There have been three other bodies left near Sheridan in the last ten years,” said Pidgeon, “all young women, all mutilated, none identified. All of them treated as isolated cases. Since they were dumped years apart, I suppose.”
“Me,” said Du Pré, “I never know that so much of this happens.”
Pidgeon nodded.
“I got into this,” she said, “because of a term paper. How many women were killed and dumped and no one ever charged in their murders. Over the last twenty years, there have been thousands. Thousands. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Pret’ hard to find, people who do it,” said Du Pré. “They are not part of any place. Come in, kidnap someone, kill them, leave them somewhere else. Don’t go back. Or kill them poor whores. They got to get in cars with men. Can’t attract too much attention, cops bust them.”
“These are young girls mostly,” said Pidgeon, “of lower-class origin. I have heard them called trailer trash. Money’s pretty damned important in this country.”
Du Pré nodded. Pretty important everywhere.
“Was Bart pissed when you said you didn’t want to take the offer of a plane from him?” said Pidgeon.
“No,” said Du Pré, “I am trying to help him, he is too generous, some people take him for much money. He wants to help, he is a rich boy, I want him to know I like him even though he has got a lot of money.”
Pidgeon snorted.
“He is a good guy.”
“I like him,” said Pidgeon. “He has such a sad, sweet face. A middle-aged boy who is sort of bewildered by all th
e trouble the world causes itself and him personally.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré.
They rode silently the rest of the way to Sheridan. Du Pré got off at the first exit. He could see the Denny’s sign from the highway.
“We’re early,” said Pidgeon.
Du Pré parked the cruiser. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and he rubbed his eyes and he yawned.
He leaned back for a moment, eyes shut.
“Hey, Du Pré,” said Pidgeon. “Guess what? The Denny’s is being robbed. Hey, hey.”
Du Pré sat upright in a hurry.
“No sudden movements,” said Pidgeon. “That car, across from the door out in the street? The one that is running? With the kid at the wheel who is smoking like hell and staring at the front door. And I notice that though Denny’s is open and there are cars in the lot, I can’t see anybody in there. Bet they are all lying on the floor.”
Du Pré looked. Nobody was stirring in there.
“What you going to do?” said Du Pré.
“Have fun,” said Pidgeon. “It’s important in life, you know, to have fun. Real important. Most folks don’t.”
This Pidgeon, she reminds me some of that poor Corey Banning, thought Du Pré. FBI lady poor Packy killed. Some shit, that. Wolves. Balls.
Pidgeon had slid her gun out of its pocket.
She lit a cigarette.
“Oh.” said Pidgeon. “Tell you what. It is so against every Bureau regulation, do what I would like to do, that I’m gonna let you do it. Here.” She racked the slide and handed the Sig Sauer to Du Pré.
“What I don’t like to?” said Du Pré.
“I’ll tell Madelaine you wussed out,” said Pidgeon. “Oh, don’t kill anybody.”
“OK,” said Du Pré. He got out and he tucked the automatic in his waistband at his back. He walked across the little parking lot and down to the sidewalk beyond the decorative planting. The kid in the car glanced at him. Just a cowboy.
The kid went back to staring at the front door of the Denny’s.
Du Pré crossed the sidewalk and he went in front of the car and he stepped out into the traffic lane.
When a truck passed, Du Pré sprinted.
He walked up to the open driver’s window and he squatted down and put the barrel of the gun against the kid’s head.
“Don’ move,” said Du Pré.
The kid shuddered.
Du Pré reached in the window and he turned off the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition and he stuck them in his pocket. He was out of sight, behind the driver.
“How many friends you got in there,” said Du Pré, jamming the gun against the kid’s head.
“Two,” whispered the kid.
“OK,” said Du Pré. “What guns they got?”
“Couple pistols. Twenty-twos.”
“That’s very good,” said Du Pré.
Two young men came flying out of the Denny’s doors. They were each carrying paper sacks in one hand and little Saturday Night Specials in the other. They ran like hell for the car.
When they were twenty feet away Du Pré stood up and he fired one round into the sky.
“Down on the ground,” he said, lowering the gun.
One kid froze. The other stumbled and tripped and he went face-first into the side of the car.
Crump.
The other kid dropped the sack and his gun and he put his hands on the top of his head.
Du Pré opened the driver’s door.
“You get out now,” he said.
The kid did.
Du Pré prodded him around to the sidewalk. The kid who had hit the car was on his knees, holding his face, and blood welled between his hands.
Du Pré heard a siren.
Two cop cars came, lights flashing.
The cops screeched to a stop.
Du Pré waited, gun on the three young men.
CHAPTER 23
OH, THIS IS GOOD,” said the Sheriff. He was a big, paunchy man with silver hair brushed back and squinted blue eyes.
Du Pré and Pidgeon were standing with him in the Denny’s parking lot. The thugs were on their way to the jail.
The manager was being carted away in an ambulance. He’d been so scared he’d had a heart attack.
The people in the restaurant were all over the parking lot jabbering at each other.
“Well, thanks,” said the Sheriff. “We know these boys. Two of them got out of the State Pen last week. Guess they weren’t ree-habilitated.”
He spat the word.
Cops know better.
“They were not very good at it,” said Du Pré.
The Sheriff looked at Du Pré. “Most of these assholes got IQs lower’n room temperature,” he said. “They ain’t rocket scientists. Once in a while there’s a bad guy has a brain but I don’t see many. ’Bout two in the last ten years, you don’t count the forgers and scam artists. Holdup guys and burglars ain’t too swift.”
Pidgeon was standing with them. She had on big aviator sunglasses with very dark lenses.
“We’re being rude, ma’am,” said the Sheriff suddenly. “I apologize.”
“Not at all,” said Pidgeon. “Could we go somewhere and talk, though? I have to fly out of Billings late tonight.”
“Surely,” said the Sheriff. “There’s a saloon a couple blocks away has decent food and no jukebox. How’s that?”
He drove them to it. A simple old brick building with MINT CLUB on a sign and no beer neon in the windows. The place was clean and old and a little shabby. Several old ranchers sat at the bar drinking red beers and chatting.
The Sheriff led them to a little back room with one banquette and one table in it. He threw his hat on the table and slid in one side of the banquette.
The barmaid came in.
“What’ll you have?” said the Sheriff.
“Cheeseburger,” said Pidgeon, “glass of soda.”
Du Pré and the Sheriff ordered fries with theirs.
“I don’t know that I can tell you much,” said the Sheriff. “I mean I don’t know more’n the skinny little ME’s report and a bit about the site.”
“Can you fax the full reports to me in DC?” said Pidgeon.
“Sure,” said the Sheriff. “When I get ’em.”
Pidgeon gave him a card.
“Well,” said the Sheriff. “Poor Susannah Granger. She taught typing and some home economics at the school in Billings. It was her first year. She graduated from Bozeman, Montana State. Strict Christian. Didn’t drink or smoke or run around. She had alcohol in her system, she was strangled to unconsciousness and then had her jugular cut, very carefully. The killer left her in the brush, legs splayed and a … uh.”
“She had something shoved up her vagina or anus?” said Pidgeon.
“A stick up each one,” said the Sheriff.
Pidgeon nodded. The little tape recorder sat there in front of her.
Their food arrived. Pidgeon picked at her cheeseburger.
Du Pré and the Sheriff ate like pigs.
“So you wanted to see where the body was found?” said the Sheriff.
“Changed my mind,” said Pidgeon? “Du Pré and me, we need to go on to Billings.”
Du Pré shrugged.
The Sheriff drove them back to Du Pré’s car.
“I’d like copies of the photos of the scene,” said Pidgeon. “How was the body found?”
“Pilot,” said the Sheriff. “He was just logging some hours for his license and he looked down and saw her.”
Du Pré wheeled back out to the expressway and he headed north.
“This is the first one that is fresh and not a young kid who is just in some sort of trouble,” said Pidgeon. “The bastard’s losing it.”
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“When a killer s pattern changes, even slightly, there is something going on with them. There’s something in Billings. Something else. Susannah lived with an aunt.”
They rode on to Billings.
When they got there Pidgeon made several calls from a phone booth. She came back to the car with a map in her hand.
“She’ll see us,” said Pidgeon.
She read the directions to Du Pré. They ended at a trailer court. The trailers were neatly kept, and most had little redwood decks built on the back sides.
“Number twenty-eight,” said Pidgeon. “That’s it, where that blue car with the abortion-is-murder bumper sticker is.”
Du Pré pulled in behind it.
“Wait here,” said Pidgeon. “You’d just scare her.”
Pidgeon got out and she went to the front door and knocked. The door opened. Du Pré saw a fat woman in a pantsuit. A blue one. Pidgeon went inside.
Du Pré rolled a smoke. He reached under the seat and he found his whiskey and he had a good long drink. It was getting late. He was hungry. He had some more whiskey.
He looked across the drive. There was a little compact car sitting there. Blue. It wasn’t in any parking space by any trailer.
Woman must have a kid or something, Du Pré thought. It was closest to the trailer owned by the murdered woman’s aunt.
Du Pré had another cigarette.
He waited another half hour before Pidgeon came back. She was excited.
“OK,” she said. “Susannah was at a prayer meeting the night she was taken. After the meeting she did the church’s books—so it was past midnight when she left for home. Never got here. Then, this morning the police call and say they have her car, it was abandoned about a mile from here. Off on the side of the stem road. Not much traffic there at that time of night. There aren’t any fast-food places around. The stem road isn’t a main drag, you can get into or across town faster other ways. So they towed it here.”
Du Pré looked at the little compact car.
“OK,” he said. “So what we do.”
“I want to see if that car starts,” said Pidgeon.
She held up a key.
Du Pré took it and he went over and got in and stuck the key in the ignition and he turned it and the starter motor turned over but the engine didn’t catch. He looked at the fuel gauge. Dead empty.
No gas.
Susannah Granger had pulled over because her little car was out of gas. It was dark.
And somebody came along.
“Where this car when it was found?” said Du Pré.
