Notches

by Peter Bowen

  “Teaching,” he said.

  “OK,” said Du Pré.”What you teaching?”

  “Computers,” said the young man.

  “Christ,” said Du Pré. “I thought you were a fucking longhair.”

  “Oh,” said the young man. “Well, no, not then.”

  “He stick his head out of your computer?”

  The young man shook his head.

  “Christ,” said Du Pré.

  “Me,” said the young man, “I don’t talk about that. It was pretty scary, how it happened.”

  Du Pré heard a car come up the drive. It parked. The door chunked.

  “Du Pré!” said Bart.

  Du Pré turned.

  “You’d better come.”

  “I need that damn Benetsee …” Du Pré said. He looked angrily at the young man.

  “He say you don’t,” said the young man.

  “God damn him,” said Du Pré.

  “Du Pré!” said Bart. He looked anguished, drained.

  Du Pré walked to Bart.

  “Where?” he said.

  “Up on the Hi-Line,” said Bart. “They just found her. It’s out of the county, but you’d better go.”

  Du Pré felt a knot in his gut.

  “It’s the oldest Morissette girl,” said Bart. “Her mother thought the kid had run away to Billings. She did it several times before.”

  Little Barbara Morissette.

  Madelaine s niece.

  The family lived in Toussaint.

  Three houses from Madelaine.

  CHAPTER 26

  “DAMNED BAD,” SAID SHERIFF Paton. “I been on this job thirty year and I never … animal did this dies. He dies. That’s all.”

  There were three of Paton’s deputies there. They all looked like they wanted very much to kill someone.

  Little Barbara Morissette was lying on her back, naked, her legs spread, a tree branch shoved up her crotch.

  And then her killer had sawed off her head and stuck it in a slash in her belly.

  Nightmare.

  Du Pré felt his eyes burn. He remembered the little auburn-haired girl. A sweet child. Musical.

  Dead young woman.

  Fifteen? Sixteen?

  Madelaine will be praying.

  Me, I am sick and mad.

  Jesus.

  Du Pré looked around the rest stop behind him. The girl was off in the brush behind the parking lot. She’d been there a little while. Not very long. Maybe left there last night.

  Du Pré looked at the ground. No drag marks.

  The Morissette girl was slender, small. A strong man could carry her easily.

  Over his shoulder.

  Cut her here.

  The ground was black with old blood.

  Green and blue bottleflies buzzed lazily around, laying eggs.

  The cross, the notch, the place where they meet, Du Pré thought.

  On the Hi-Line.

  They know about each other.

  They have to.

  Are they proud? Jealous? They get angry? When they get angry, does it make them stupid?

  It makes me stupid.

  I got to breathe right.

  Think.

  Damn Benetsee, I need his dreams.

  Have to make do with my own. I quit whining now.

  “Damn,” said Sheriff Paton. “I ain’t gonna sleep a while, here.”

  Du Pré looked at him. Tall man, thin, weathered to wrinkles and washed-out blue eyes behind bifocals. Wore a big hogleg. Probably a .44 Magnum. Light load. Probably killed a few in his time. Kind of Sheriff calls the crook, who he knows, and says, yeah, well, either you come on in or I come and get you. And that ain’t gonna make my mood any too good.

  They come right in, you bet.

  The FBI arrived. Several vans filled with technicians and equipment.

  One car which had Pidgeon in it and two men.

  Pidgeon waved at Du Pré. She stuck her hands in the pocket of her light jacket and she came over. She stared for a long time at poor little Barbara Morissette.

  She bent over to look closer.

  She was biting her lower lip with her straight white teeth.

  The crew of technicians assembled. They talked in hushed voices. Cameras. Measuring tapes. Black attaché cases. The technicians put on light blue coveralls.

  Pidgeon came over to Du Pré and Sheriff Paton.

  “Special Agent Pidgeon, FBI,” said Pidgeon. She stuck out her hand. Paton took it and grasped it firmly. He looked into her eyes and he nodded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Pidgeon smiled.

  “When was she found?” she said.

  “’Fore daylight,” said Paton. “Couple of … tourists was headed back here with a sleeping bag to, uh, take a nap. Stumbled over her.”

  Oh, thought Du Pré, there is one sex life shot for a while.

  Pidgeon nodded.

  “You know about this guy?” she said.

  “Yup,” said Paton. “We’ve had, oh, six, I guess, twenty year. Don’t know if they was all his. Bastard.”

  “We’ll find him,” said Pidgeon.

  “I expect you will,” said Paton. “Now, you need anything you call Myra—she’s the dispatcher—and I told her to arrange it. Myra lets me run for election and get shot at once in a while, but she runs the department. Always has.”

  “I’m the coroner, too,” said Sheriff Paton. “I done all I have to. Pronouced her dead. Filled out a form. Some job. You find this s.o.b.”

  “We will,” said Pidgeon.

  “Um,” said Sheriff Paton. “I’d best go. Got a wreck to sort out up the road.”

  “We passed it,” said Pidgeon, “It looked pretty bad.”

  “Eighteen-wheeler hits a passenger car it’s always pretty bad,” said Paton. “Only this one flipped and killed the truck driver, too. Don’t usually do that. I expect we’ll find he was on pocket rockets. Long road. They gobble them speed pills, try to do fourteen–fìfteen hundred miles in a straight twenty-four hours.”

  “Yeah,” said Pidgeon.

  “Can’t blame ’em,” said Paton. “Tryin’ to make a livin’. It’s not easy. I got a boy does that. Hope I don’t have to scrape him off the side of this damn highway.”

  A couple big diesel trucks roared past.

  The Sheriff walked away slowly. Loose. A little sad.

  “She is my Madelaine’s niece,” said Du Pré. “My Madelaine, this girl’s mother don’t like each other much. But she will go crazy, it is someone her family, anyway.”

  “At least someone cares about her,” said Pidgeon. “Most of ’em, no one gives a damn. But I was in Seattle, and I talked to a couple prostitutes who were scared, of course, and grieving for their friends. I hate this.”

  “How is that Harvey?” said Du Pré.

  “Pain in the ass. Worried about you. He’s gonna chew on you a lot when he sees you. He’d about just as soon kill these assholes with a shovel himself. You know, we’re pretty good. We nail most bad guys, take a little time. But the serial killers are very hard to catch. And of serial killers, of course, the really intelligent ones are the worst and the hardest to catch. That little fuck Bundy wasn’t all that smart, but he did some real damage. Green River Killer, not a trace. The Chain Killer, not a trace. There’s a guy down South, burns his victims in the swamps. Does it when the swamps are burning. Not a trace.”

  “These guys leave some traces,” said Du Pré.

  “Yeah,” said Pidgeon. “We just don’t know which traces are theirs. This could take years, Du Pré.”

  Du Pré shook his head.

  “Be over before the snow flies,” he said.

  Pidgeon looked at him.

  “Well,” said Pidgeon, “I guess I’ll go watch the wizards there for a while, see what they find.”

  Du Pré looked down at his feet. There was a little scrap of clear plastic, the kind that packages some small object. He bent down and picked it up. Pretty heavy plastic.


  “What you got there?” said Pidgeon.

  “Piece of plastic,” said Du Pré.

  “All kinds of crap blows over here from the highway and the rest stop,” said Pidgeon. “I want it though. We’ll see how long it’s been in the sun, at least.”

  They walked over to where the technicians were working. Two of them were zipping up a heavy yellow body bag. They rolled the filled bag onto a stretcher and carried it off to a morgue wagon.

  A couple of blue-suited men were minutely examining the ground that the body had lain on.

  They kept their faces close, but didn’t put their hands down on the bloody earth.

  One of the two supped a dentist’s pick from his pocket and he prised something up out of the dirt. He lifted it and dropped it in a little plastic bag, already numbered. He straightened up and made some notes.

  “This one is the Hi-Line Killer,” said Du Pré.

  “Um,” said Pidgeon.

  Or maybe not, Du Pré thought. Maybe it is Come-to-Jesus, trying to look like the Hi-Line Killer.

  Maybe they tease each other with dead young women. See, I got her before you did.

  I got to think like them sometime and I don’t want to.

  Got to find out what their dreams are.

  Be in those dreams.

  Maybe I get close and make them run.

  Hunt them like the coyote hunts. One coyote, chase until he is tired, run that rabbit in a circle, then the other one take over, and so on, till that rabbit is run to death.

  Something like that.

  Young-Man-Who-Has-No-Name. Old Benetsee, he is some coyote himself.

  Always joking.

  Tells coyote stories.

  God’s dogs. They must know everything. Me, I always told everything to my dog and I don’t hardly know nothing.

  “Du Pré,” said Pidgeon, “you please give my love to Madelaine.”

  “You be down?” said Du Pré.

  “No,” said Pidgeon, “I’m going with little Barbara, talk to her when they do the autopsy. I do that when I can.”

  “What do you say?” said Du Pré. “When you are there?”

  “I’ll say, Barbara, I’m so sorry. I need your help now. I promise you I will find this man. And he won’t do this to anyone else after I do.”

  “Good,” said Du Pré. “I tell my Madelaine that.”

  CHAPTER 27

  “I DON’T KNOW HOW he gets that damn plane down on that rotten little piece of runway you think is an airport,” said Harvey. “Christ, my asshole was in my throat. I ate my worry beads. I thought of my orphaned children and beautiful, impoverished widow. I thought of the asshole who would follow after me with my beautiful, impoverished widow. I hated him. Christ.”

  Du Pré laughed. Harvey had always hated flying. He was a worrier.

  The little jet had screamed in and the pilot had set it down and reversed the thrust of the engines. Du Pré well remembered being thrown against the seat belt. Sometimes there were cows, sheep, and horses in the field at the end of the runway. Sometimes they were on the runway since the rancher who owned the pasture at the end of it was careless about the fencing.

  Small jet hit a cow, that is all, Du Pré thought. It would fold up pretty good.

  Harvey Wallace, tall and thin and lean and dark and sardonic. Also Harvey Weasel Fat, a Blackfeet boy made good.

  Mean bastards them Blackfeet, Du Pré thought, sit out there on the prairie without any cover. Have to be mean. Remember them Athapascans, Du Pré thought, some of them old songs, they describe the Athapascans come down that Great North Trail. They come from the north slope of the Himalayas. They are mean bastards. Them slaves, them Apaches, them Navajos, them Haida. Cannibals and fighters.

  Come down the Great North Trail, from Asia over them Bering Straits, down the inside of the Rockies. Not so long ago. Them Haida trade with Japan and China. They leave them Queen Charlotte Islands, go across the North Pacific, some woman singer with a song tells them how to get there sings that song. Get home, sing the song backwards.

  Mean bastards. Run us Cree the hell east. Run the Sioux south and east. We get guns from the whites and come back.

  Things were not so peaceful then.

  “Du Pré,” said Harvey, “what you been thinkin’?”

  Du Pré started. He had forgotten that Harvey was there. Standing next to his bag.

  “I am sorry,” said Du Pré. He picked up Harvey’s bag.

  They walked to Du Pré’s old cruiser.

  The little jet had turned around and the pilot had jammed the little plane down the runway and into the air and the roaring shriek was fading.

  “How is Madelaine?” said Harvey.

  “Not so good,” said Du Pré. “Her cousin’s girl, you know. Madelaine, she is helping her cousin, the sorrow. We are having a wake.”

  Harvey nodded.

  “Songs, some old dances, the brothers and sisters of Barbara they are very sad. Mother is sad. Madelaine don’t much like her cousin—never mention her name, I know her only as Mrs. Morissette. Morissette, him killed working on railroad, eight, ten years ago.”

  Harvey nodded.

  “Madelaine probably dance with you, though,” said Du Pré.

  “Dance with a Blackfeet,” said Harvey.

  “My Madelaine, she is very liberal woman,” said Du Pré. “I think she even dance with a Mormon.”

  “That’s pretty liberal,” said Harvey. “OK, what’d Pidgeon think?”

  Du Pré shrugged. He didn’t know what Pidgeon thought. “It is either that Hi-Line guy or the other one or someone trying to make us think it is him,” said Du Pré. “How anyone know anything?”

  Harvey nodded.

  They walked to Du Pré’s old cruiser. Grasshoppers whirred past. A few of the dusty locusts, black wings with yellow borders.

  Du Pré stuck Harvey’s bag in the backseat.

  They got in.

  Du Pré started the car and he turned it around and headed for Toussaint. They were at the little airfield in Cooper. Bart had paid to have the runway lengthened so small private jets could land.

  Du Pré rolled a cigarette. He lit it.

  Harvey picked up the little cardboard box on the seat.

  “Very nice,” he said. “When you get these?”

  “Couple days,” said Du Pré.

  “Well,” said Harvey, “you stick the beeper on a car and this receiver will tell you right where the car is, up to fifty miles. Tell you if it is moving, where, and if it’s headed to you how long it will be before it gets there.”

  “Always wanted one,” said Du Pré.

  Twelve big grain trucks passed them heading toward the elevators in Cooper. There was a railroad spur there, and huge towering metal silos to hold the grain. Some ranchers were selling the wheat right from the fields, some were storing it and hoping that the price would rise and not fall.

  Du Pré parked in front of the Toussaint bar. There were a lot of cars, mostly old and shabby, parked around.

  “The wake is here?” said Harvey.

  “Yah,” said Du Pré. “Can’t have booze at the schools and so it is here. We don’t got too many buildings, rent.”

  Toussaint had maybe fifty houses and those were mostly trailers.

  Poor little town. Lots of Métis. Poor people.

  There were a few more expensive houses, not many.

  Harvey and Du Pré got out. They went on in.

  The place was packed.

  Over in one corner Mrs. Morissette was sitting, receiving people who were bearing condolences. There was a trestle table filled with casseroles and salads and Susan had a huge joint of beef set under a heat lamp on a serving table. A rancher stood near it, ready to slice off the meat.

  “You hungry?” said Du Pré.

  “Starved,” said Harvey. “I can’t eat before I fly. After, I am ravenous. I escaped the fiery splat once more.”

  Susan poured Du Pré a drink. She looked at Harvey.

  “Hmmmm,” h
e said. “Bloody Mary?”

  Susan nodded. Du Pré tilted his head toward the book she kept tabs in. She would write the drinks down.

  Damn, Du Pré thought, I must pay my tab, can’t remember when I did that last.

  Harvey went off to get a plate of food.

  “Susan,” said Du Pré, “I pay my tab?”

  “You got money on it,” said Susan.

  “Damn Bart?” said Du Pré.

  “Lips are sealed, Gabriel,” said Susan. “I think you still got a thousand in credit.”

  Bart, sure enough.

  “Look,” said Susan, “Bart’s frustrated. He wants to do something about all this horror. He just came in and slapped the money down and he cleared off all the tabs. People he doesn’t even know.”

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “I guess he don’t know all the people make the money for him, either.”

  Susan laughed.

  “Benny’s coming along pretty quick,” she said. “Had a fight out on one of the ranches, some pair of kids with a combine crew got into it. One kid hit the other with a wrench.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “One got hit had to be taken to the hospital, then flown down to Billings. Head injury. Don’t know how bad, but it must be pretty bad. Anyway, Benny had to arrest the other one and book him.”

  So he can sit on his ass, jail, wonder if it is manslaughter or just assault he is guilty of. Everybody wonder that until the guy in the hospital either makes it or he does not.

  Mrs. Morissette began to shriek. Several women went to her and they held her. She wailed.

  That bitch don’t even really mean it, Du Pré thought.

  Madelaine looked over at Du Pré, then up to the ceiling.

  OK, thought Du Pré, I am right, once.

  Harvey was sitting at a table far away from the knot around Mrs. Morissette. He was eating like he hadn’t for days.

  Him probably not eat for days. Pretty brave guy, fly when it do that to him, Du Pré thought, me, I just have the shits bad for three days before I got to fly. It don’t bother me.

  I don’t like this twentieth century. Won’t like that twenty-first one, either. I am sure of it.

  Madelaine left the little group and she came over and she put her arms around Du Pré and she kissed him.

  “You bring back that ugly Blackfeet,” said Madelaine.

  “Had to,” said Du Pré. “I was the only car there.”