by Peter Bowen
The St. Francis brothers bought dead animals for the dog food canners and the rendering works. They had a truck with a stainless-steel bin on the back, one that could be steam-cleaned. Winch and tackle.
I bet that cable was long enough to let that damn car with them two dead people in it down into that gully. Careful, so it don’t catch fire.
“The pickup,” said Du Pré softly. “What can you remember? Light? Dark? You tell what make?”
“I don’t know new trucks so good,” said Packy. “It was dark and it had a low camper cap on it and that’s all I remember. I was tired as hell and I hardly looked. I don’t know whether the canner truck was there or not.”
It damn sure wasn’t there.
I find out who run that truck when the St. Francis brothers are in jail or busy sometime other way, you bet.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “I think I tell that Banning now about your nails down there, in the gully.”
“They weren’t mine,” said Packy. “Damn it, they weren’t mine.”
“We got to find out some things,” said Du Pré. “You better come with me, I guess.”
“Christ.”
“It is better than she come for you, maybe with some them fools she got stuck down in the trailer,” said Du Pré.
Packy got into Du Pré’s Rover, and they drove down to the trailer park where the FBI was parked.
Corey Banning’s big diesel pickup was parked out front.
Du Pré and Packy got out and walked on in. Corey and her three assistants looked up from their desks. Du Pré nodded.
“We got to talk, Corey,” said Du Pré.
Corey got her coat and put it on and they went back out and sat in Du Pré’s Rover. Every other second a face appeared at the trailer window.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “I went back out, the place where those two people found dead, up on the bench there. I find some horseshoe nails, I go to talk to Packy, he says they are not his, he did not put them there.”
Corey looked at Packy impassively.
“That night Packy say he is shoeing, I mean taking shoes off for the winter, he does horses at Stemple’s, at them Moores’, then goes on out to the St. Francis place. They are in jail we know. But Packy he see a pickup there, one he don’t know. Don’t know there, anyway. And then I ask him, other trucks the St. Francis got? He says, they got a canner truck.”
“Holy Christ,” said Corey Banning. “Who else drives that truck when the St. Francis brothers are in the jug?”
“Me, I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “I miss that, I don’t sell my dead horses, I bury them, I sign off horse shipments but I don’t sign off dog-food horses already dead. I live here all my life, I know them St. Francis do it, but not who does when they cannot.”
Corey Banning nodded.
“Got a nice long winch on it,” she said. “I don’t think that they thought it would get seen. Didn’t think we’d use choppers.”
“No,” said Du Pré, “it wasn’t important. If the dead people, their truck are found, Martin wants it found.”
“That’s a conspiracy,” said Corey Banning. “Bingo. They means conspiracy.”
Du Pré nodded.
“Other thing, I think that these people knew that those little fools were coming, and they spotted them and they followed them. Killed them. Make a point, them.”
“Uh, huh ho ho,” said Corey Banning. “And who here lives in both worlds?”
“Yeah, I guess we know now,” said Du Pré.
“Whaddya think, Packy?” said Corey Banning. She grinned at him.
Packy looked blank. He looked away.
“I’m scared,” he said. “I’m accused of something horrible. And you think I did it.”
“Nope,” said Corey Banning, “I don’t think you did anything bad, Packy. Not at all. Not a moment. What I think, you little fucker, is that you know something you ain’t telling us. Not even something you saw. Something you heard, I think. What did you hear, Packy?”
“Hear?”
“You move around a lot, Packy,” said Corey Banning, “and the weather wasn’t all that bad, the fall here. Why the fuck are you out there till three in the morning?”
“I do that a lot. It was dry, I do that a lot.”
Corey Banning nodded.
She looked off into the distance.
“Who drives the damn truck, Packy?”
“The canner truck?” said Packy. “I do.”
“You do,” said Du Pré. “You son of a bitch, you quit playing your fucking games with me. Damn you.”
“Look,” said Packy, “I didn’t do it and I just don’t know if that truck was there that night. That’s all I said. Now I’m tired of being yelled at. Take me home, damn it.”
Du Pré looked at Packy. He looked at Corey Banning.
“Let him go,” said Corey. “But, Packy, you stick around. And if I ask you a question, you bastard, you give me an answer. All of it.”
Packy got out of the Rover and he limped off.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette. He lit it, offered a pinch of tobacco out the window.
“Give me some, too,” said Corey Banning.
She did the same, mumbling.
“These people who were killed,” said Du Pré, “they belong to some group want to take the West, make it over for them. That group decide, this night, we cut fences, we shoot cows. Maybe all of them aren’t killed, maybe some they chicken out, you know.”
Corey Banning nodded.
“At last,” she said. “Useful work for my three dear friends in the trailer. Who’s a member of Earth First or whatever who is also from here?”
“I hate this,” said Du Pré. “I could maybe take them being mad. Not waiting on these kids like that, I cannot take that.”
Corey held out her hand for Du Pré’s tobacco and they smoked for a while. Du Pré reached under the seat, had some whiskey, put it back.
“Packy,” said Du Pré, “he is some scared, you know.”
“He should be,” said Corey Banning.
“I am scared, too,” said Du Pré.
“You should be, too,” said Corey Banning.
“Why, you think?” said Du Pré.
“ ’Fore this is over we are all going to find out things about our people we will really wish that we did not know,” she said.
Chapter 28
“I DON’T GIVE A shit you don’t like it,” said Bart.
Both of the St. Francis brothers were standing beside their canner truck. It was a lot bigger than the two of them, so Bart and Du Pré could look at it anyway.
“How much cable you got on this thing?” said Bart.
“What’s it to you?” said the St. Francis on the left.
“Listen, asshole,” said Bart, “if I got to go get a warrant I’ll be pissed off and I’ll get a nice fat one and toss your fucking house, too. Now, how goddamn many feet of cable?”
He was looking at a big winch mounted on a high frame at the rear of the truck bed, over the stainless-steel bin.
“A hundred and fifty yards.”
“Pull a couple ton?”
“Yeah. We never had to, but it could.”
Bart walked over to the truck and he swung up to the winch drum and he grabbed the hook and undid the brake and pulled out three feet of it.
“My, my,” said Bart. “Which one of your dead horses had dark green paint on it?”
“What?” said the same St. Francis.
“I said your fucking truck is impounded. Now get me the goddamn keys.”
Du Pré raised his eyebrows.
So now we are going out the other side, the fog.
I liked it better in there, but the sun, it always come up, burn that fog away.
Now I carry that other nine-millimeter, too.
Shit.
“The damn keys are in it.”
“I’ll call you when you can have it back. There gas in this turkey?” said Bart. He looked blood mean.
“Full tank.”
/>
“You want to flip, see who drives the hearse?” said Bart.
“Nah,” said Du Pré, “you can do it.”
“What if I order you to?” said Bart.
“Ah,” said Du Pré, “I guess you can still drive it, you know.”
“I thought so,” said Bart.
He clambered down and got in the cab and started the truck. It was well tuned and settled into a rolling hum quickly.
Du Pré drove on ahead to Cooper. He unlocked the gate at the impound lot and waited. It took Bart another fifteen minutes to get there.
“I believe we will share our newfound lead with our FBI friends,” said Bart.
“Good,” said Du Pré. “She scream when we don’t do that.”
They went in and called Corey Banning’s office. She wasn’t there. The flunky on duty patched Bart through.
“The meat wagon from those asshole St. Francis brothers has a cable winch. There is dark green paint on the three feet of cable just above the hook. The four-wheeler pulled out of the arroyo was dark green on the bottom. I think we have our first piece of actual evidence, if I can guess what evidence is.”
“Sounds good,” said Corey Banning. “Cut it off and send it to the State Crime Lab boys.”
“It’s late in the twentieth century,” said Bart. “I believe there are girls there, too, actual medical examiners and like that.”
“Anything else need to go?” she said, ignoring him.
“I’d say the whole thing. The bodies may have been hauled in the bin in back. It looked spotless. But you never know.”
“Very thorough. Who’s going to drive it over there?”
“How about one of your guys?”
“I wouldn’t really trust them with a rubber duck,” said Corey, “but if you insist.”
“I do.”
“OK.”
“Where are you, anyway?” said Bart.
“Up on the bench.”
“OK,” said Bart, “why are you up on the bench?”
“Following Packy around. Just want to see if I can make him run a little.”
Du Pré looked idly at the speakerphone on Bart’s desk.
So many damn gadgets here now today. I don’t like any of them.
“Well,” said Bart, “you want to come in and look at this?”
“Nah,” said Corey, “I’ll call one of my bozos.”
“OK,” said Bart.
The speakerphone sounded with shattering glass and then popping sounds and then silence and gurgling.
Bart and Du Pré looked at each other.
“Oh, my God,” said Bart.
They ran out to Du Pré’s Rover. He gunned the engine and switched on the light bar and they shot along the road fast enough for the rear end to wallow.
“The damn bench is only twenty miles long, fer Chrissakes,” yelled Bart. “Where on the bench? Where’s the phone, damn it, I’ll call Booger Tom.”
Bart dialed and waited and waited and then he shouted into the phone.
“Not there,” he said, shutting it off. “Booger Tom says Packy went on toward the Stemple place when he drove away, but he didn’t talk to him so he isn’t sure really where he was headed.”
Du Pré turned to miss a dead porcupine and then swerved back. He gunned the engine again.
“I go down below and you watch the line up there,” said Du Pré. “We can see a car easy, there is no trees there.”
He took a fork in the road and raced back down to the county road in the bottom flats. Bart scanned the line of road up on the bench.
They drove and drove.
“There!” Bart said, pointing.
Corey Banning’s big diesel pickup was up near a gravel pile on the bench road. Du Pré roared onto a cutoff that led up to it. They flew coming up over the top. Du Pré braked hard and they skidded to a stop behind her truck.
The rear window on the driver’s side was shattered.
Du Pré went to the right, Bart to the left, guns out, looking at any nearby cover.
Du Pré looked in the cab.
Corey had fallen over toward the passenger seat, most of her head blown away. Her hair was thick with clotted blood. The phone was still in her hand.
“Damn,” said Du Pré. “Now the shit really hit here.”
He turned away and breathed heavily.
Pile of rocks down there in the field.
Rifle barrel sticking through them.
“Get down, Bart!” Du Pré screamed. He jerked one of his nine-millimeters from his holster and squeezed off several rounds at the rocks. Keep his fucking head down, you bet.
A slug slammed into the grille of the truck and whined off.
She probably had a rifle, that truck somewhere, Du Pré thought. He squirmed backward and reached up and opened the door.
A black hole appeared, just below the handle.
Very nice assault rifle, on clips in there, couple extra stacks for it.
Du Pré pulled it out.
He slithered over far to his right and edged slowly through the rank green grass at the edge of the road.
He set the sights on the rocks and he waited.
The rifle barrel moved a little.
Right there.
I hit that it ricochet on through, if he is aiming it, it kill him maybe.
Du Pré waited.
“Du Pré!”
“Yah, Bart!”
“What do I do?”
“Stay back, don’t get shot.”
There. I see that damn barrel twitch a little. I know.
Wish my eyes was good like I was twenty.
The barrel moved a little.
Du Pré squeezed off six rounds.
The barrel was gone.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “I am going down the hill now. You stay back, you know, I got a better gun.”
Du Pré coiled around, stood up and ran downhill suddenly.
Nothing moved there.
He went down to his knees and slammed onto his belly and snaked through the sage and grass.
He edged slowly around the rocks.
A hand, outstretched.
Gun stuck up on a sagebrush.
Du Pré stood up and moved around slowly.
“Damn,” he said, looking down. “I want to arrest you, Packy, and I say no to myself, and then you do this. Shit.”
He looked back up the hill.
No Bart. He must be calling.
Oh, shit.
Bye, Packy.
Chapter 29
DU PRÉ SAT ON BENETSEE’S porch, leaning against the woodpile. His boots were in the iris shoaled round the old man’s shack. Plants here grew well and close. The old man never tended them.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette and snapped his old brass lighter till it caught. Some hairs from his moustaches turned to ash in the flames. He inhaled tobacco and rank stink. He blew the mingled smokes out.
Ah, old man, I need you, I do not know what to do. Corey Banning, FBI, gets her head blown off and I kill poor Packy and now we got a dead FBI and a dead end and we got maybe fifty FBIs headed here and not even Bart and Lawyer Foote can stop them when one of theirs been killed. Even if the killer is killed, too.
Me, I know out there all them soldiers come back from some wars, they are looking to their guns and making sure they got the ammunition, take a lot of FBIs with them, and out there in the sheds and attics of my friends and neighbors there are assault rifles and machine guns and heavier stuff, too.
The Constitution, it say the government may not stop the people from having arms. Then the government, it argue, well, no machine guns for you or heavy artillery, bombs, grenades, bazookas, even sawed-off shotguns. We government, we can have them, but not you.
My friends and neighbors some say bullshit, Christ, I got no idea what they got out there, but I got, me, in my attic that MP-40 Catfoot bring back from the Second World War, I got that Russian assault rifle I buy and take to Dave the gunsmith who files down the sear and I got twenty-twenty
five thousand rounds of ammunition for them both, nine-millimeter and the long cartridges in that funny curved clip, and I got fifty pounds of dynamite and diesel fuel and fertilizer and I can easy make a great big bang I want to.
There is somewhere around here two hundred them onetime rocket grenades, stolen from that Great Falls Armory. Couple twenty-millimeter cannon not counting the ones on that old war-plane, that Lightning P-38, keeps driving the FAA nuts ’cause it is not registered but it is out there fully armed. I don’t know who got that.
That’s just the stuff I know about.
Corey Banning’s brains splattered on the dashboard.
Packy not got no face when I get through with him, them rock chips see to that.
Time of the Blood Moon. Time of Sorrow.
They hurt my Madelaine, they hurt my Jacqueline, my people, I will kill every one of the sonsofbitches myself. Me, I am sick of these assholes, we were doing pret’ good before some shitheads from the flat come here and cut fence, shoot cattle, get the government put them wolf up in the mountains. It is like you are leaned over your kitchen table some Sunday morning, bunch of preachers kick your door down, bang a gong make your headache worse, go through your whole house and when they are done then they stay, how nice, we will just live here, help you. You can be just like us.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Goddamn twentieth century.
Nineteenth wasn’t so fucking wonderful either.
Hope that Bart, he can keep his temper, too, he got one, them FBIs come here now they are out for blood. Don’t care whose long they get some and a promotion, bigger office.
It is all so wrong.
Never would have happened, them fools stay home, don’t come here, do what they did.
Du Pré heard the bull-roarer. He went around back to the sweat lodge. The flaps were up. The sound of the cedar shake on its rawhide string bellowed and died and bellowed again.
Old Benetsee, out from the house a ways, behind the lilacs and the red willows.
Du Pré walked through the bushes. The old man was squatting in the shade. A younger man, short and stocky, was whirling the bull-roarer overhead and Benetsee was either nodding or raising a finger. When he raised the finger the younger man stood up on tiptoes and put all of his strength to the task.
Du Pré squatted down beside Benetsee and he waited. The old man would speak when he wished to and not before.
