by Peter Bowen
He walked back over to the pool and the dead Chase and the cops.
Some ambulance attendants were lifting the body. They carried it to the edge of the shallow pool and set it down carefully on a black body bag. They climbed out, zipped up the bag, lifted it to a gurney, and wheeled it away.
An owlish-looking woman, huge glasses with pinkish frames and hair in a severe knot at the back of her head, scribbled notes in a small black notebook. She had a microphone attached to the lapel of her blouse and she was talking to it while she wrote.
Detective Leuci stood, her arms around her chest. It was hot. She wasn’t cold from the weather.
Michelle came over to Du Pré.
“It seems he was stabbed,” she said. “There’s a hole in his shirt, on the back, where the heart is. The ME waded out and poked it and she said the blade was still in him. Could feel the broken end, real narrow.”
Killing blade, Du Pré thought. You grind away where the blade meets the tang so when you stick the thing in somebody, you can break off the handle and leave the blade in and nothing to grab to pull it out.
“Guy said the lights were out for half an hour,” said Du Pré.
Michelle nodded.
“It’s the same man killed the others,” said Du Pré. “He was hunting Chase, then it got dark, and in he came. I wonder if Chase was running?”
“The building lights stayed on,” said Michelle. “The circuits out here were tripped and a big fuse fried. Why it took so long for them to get the lights back on, finding another fuse that fit.
“Well,” said Michelle, after a moment. “We know where he is, sort of.”
They walked back to the parking structure. Bart was sitting in the Rover. Too smart to follow Michelle around while she did her job. Du Pré nodded at him, half-smiling.
“I will know him this time when I see him,” Du Pré said.
I will know him when he moves. What Benetsee gave me is as good as a photograph of someone you have never seen. He will know me, too. Will he have a gun? So far, he has not used one. So far.
Thousands of people here. Wonder if my chanky-chank band will be here.
Least Chase can’t run me off.
He must not have had much of a life. Didn’t deserve one, either.
“Du Pré,” said Michelle, “You worry me. You can’t just kill this guy and scalp him. Then I’d have to arrest you. Christ, you people out there watch High Noon three times a week till you believe it?”
Du Pré looked at her a long time. He shrugged.
“This guy is crazy,” said Du Pré. “How many more dead people do you want, eh? You can have them, you know. When I find him, he will do something.”
“You don’t have a gun, do you?” said Michelle.
“No,” said Du Pré.
“We haven’t got enough to arrest anyone or we would have,” she said.
“When I find him,” said Du Pré, “I am going to crowd him till he jumps. That’s all. He will jump.”
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” Bart said, sensibly.
They went to a twenty-four-hour franchise and ate horrible food and drank weak coffee. The sun was coming up by the time they finished.
“I think I go and sleep for a while,” said Du Pré, “go over to the festival later.”
Bart dropped him off and he and Michelle headed back down to her office.
Du Pré crawled back in bed and fell into a rolling sleep. Dreams rose and sank. He tossed and writhed and the covers wrapped around him. Nonsense dreams full of dread he could not fathom.
He woke. He was on his back, looking at the ceiling, the last ephemeral scene clear in his mind. Benetsee and his bullroarer, on the rock.
Du Pré showered and put on fresh clothes. A linen shirt Madelaine had made for him, cool in this weather, cool as anything.
He called a cab and went out to wait for it. It was two in the afternoon. The heat and humidity pressed down on him. He was running sweat.
The cabbie dropped him near the festival. Du Pré walked to a ticket booth, paid, and went in, carrying his fiddle case.
He heard zydeco, began to move through the knots of people toward the sound. He couldn’t tell if it was the band he had played with last year.
It wasn’t.
He wandered on.
He heard the eerie trilling of the Inuit throat singers and went toward the band shell it came from. The crowd was small but marveling.
Du Pré found some shade but not any breeze. He squatted on his heels and waited.
The singers paused.
A man vaulted up on the stage, smooth as water flowing—flowing back uphill. Smooth as a cat gaining a ledge.
Du Pré sat, hunting.
The man was carrying a big bottle of mineral water. The Inuit passed it round. How miserable they must be in this heat.
Du Pré waited.
The man flowed back down to the ground.
He was wearing soft, high moccasins with a crosshatch lace.
Du Pré stood up and began to move toward him casually. He moved in spurts and jerks, from one knot of people to another.
The man was hunkered down, butt on his heels. He was with several Indians.
Du Pré knew all of them.
Du Pré slid up behind the little half-moon of people looking up at the Inuit.
“Hey, Lucky,” said Du Pré, face next to Lucky’s ear, “that Hydro-Quebec, they pay you kill those two little Indian girls, too?”
Lucky turned slowly.
Du Pré saw something red pass behind Lucky’s eyes, like a curtain drawn.
Lucky turned slowly on his bent toes.
He looked at Du Pré and his eyes were sleepy.
Then his hand moved and Du Pré felt something slice across his forehead. He flinched.
Lucky jammed a knuckle into Du Pré’s windpipe.
Someone screamed.
Du Pré couldn’t see. Blood was welling down over his eyes.
He stood up, trying to protect his throat.
People were yelling.
But he couldn’t see a fucking thing.
CHAPTER 45
DU PRÉ FELT THE prick of the needle and the scritch of the suture being drawn through.
“You want something for the pain yet?” said the doctor.
“No,” said Du Pré.
The doctor shrugged and went on with his tapestry work.
Well, I was right, Du Pré thought. And Lucky saved me some trouble there. If he had just asked me what the fuck I was talking about, I wouldn’t have known what to say.
The doctor finished stitching.
Du Pré stood up. He was just a little light-headed, maybe from the pain. He still had some blood stuck to his eyelashes.
He felt like an asshole.
“Thank you,” he said to the physician. But the man was hurrying off to another patient. There had been the approaching wail of an ambulance while Du Pré was on the table.
He looked down at his bloody linen shirt.
Damn head wounds bleed some quick, he thought. So much for Madelaine’s nice shirt that she made for me.
Bart was waiting in the lobby. He had his hands shoved in his hip pockets and he was looking at the ceiling, maybe counting the holes in the acoustical tile.
“I am all embroidered,” said Du Pré.
Bart looked at him. “I can’t tell,” he said. “You got a bandage on it.”
They went out to the Rover.
“Lucky took off like a streak of shit,” said Bart, “and they are after him for assaulting you. But they don’t have enough to get a warrant for anything else.”
“I won’t press charges,” said Du Pré.
Bart nodded. “I told Michelle I thought you might not.
“She pissed?”
“Uh,” said Bart, “I wouldn’t, you know, ask her for a kiss for a couple days.”
“Maybe it wasn’t even Lucky,” said Du Pré. “Maybe it was someone who was behind me and I didn’t know it.”
I barely saw Lucky move, Du Pré thought. He is very fast.
“Are you sure it is Lucky?” said Bart suddenly. “Absolutely sure?”
“Yes,” said Du Pré.
“Well,” said Bart, “what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “You won’t just kill him?” said Bart. He was remembering how Du Pré’s father had killed Gianni Fascelli, Bart’s brother. He was a little bit afraid of these Montana people.
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré.
The telephone in the car chirred. Bart picked it up and listened for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “I told you I thought probably he wouldn’t.”
He listened.
Du Pré could hear Detective Michelle Leuci yelling on the other end.
“You might as well yell at a stump,” said Bart. “Yes, you can.”
Bart handed the telephone to Du Pré and changed lanes.
“Goddamn it,” said Michelle, “at least we could hold him and grill him.”
“I don’t think that would do any good,” said Du Pré, trying to sound apologetic.
“Goddamn you,” she said.
“You catch him or something?” said Du Pré.
Silence.
“He will go back home,” said Du Pré. “He will go back home and he will wait. You can’t arrest him. You can’t hold him if you do.”
“The Mounties are checking up on his movements,” said Michelle.
“Big shit,” said Du Pré. “They are going to run into a lot of Indian time, what they run into. They ask their questions and no one remembers. When he came back here, I bet he drove, he come across the border with some other folks. He…”
They were passing a new building going up. The steel girders were partly assembled. The building wasn’t too tall yet. A couple of men lounged far up enough to kill them if they fell, casually as people lean against walls.
“Shit,” said Du Pré.
“What?” said Michelle.
“Nothing,” said Du Pré.
“Look,” said Michelle, “just sign the complaint, please. Humor me. At least if we find him, we can hold him on that.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré.
“Have Bart bring you downtown,” she said.
“I go and sign the complaint, I guess.” said Du Pré.
“Now what?” asked Bart.
“I changed my mind,” said Du Pré.
“Bullshit,” said Bart. “Something changed it for you.”
Du Pré sat silent.
“Okay,” said Bart, “we go down and play scritchy-scritch on the little piece of paper. While my bullshit detector melts down. Why did you go and change your mind?”
They parked by the big building that held Michelle’s office and went in. They found her talking quickly into her phone.
“Well,” she said, to the phone, “I don’t know where he might cross or if he will…I know that…I know that, too. Just hold him. We want to talk to him.”
She hung up.
“You asshole,” she said pleasantly, smiling at Du Pré.
“I will sign your form,” he said.
“Shit.” Michelle sighed. She took Du Pré by the arm and down a couple long halls and into a courtroom. A judge was waiting. Du Pré signed a complaint.
“Will he be available to testify, Detective Leuci?” the judge said offhandedly.
“If I have to bring him in a sack,” said Michelle sweetly.
They walked back out.
“What have you got on your tiny little mind?” she said, hurrying Du Pré back down the hall to her office.
“Couple hundred stitches,” said Du Pré.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” said Detective Leuci.
“You aren’t going to catch him,” said Du Pré. “You going to try to get the Canadians give him back, when I can’t even say for sure it was him who cut me?”
“Motherfucker,” said Michelle.
“I can’t say,” said Du Pré.
“Shit,” said Detective Leuci.
Bart was waiting out in the hallway.
They walked up to him.
“Gabriel,” said Michelle tiredly, “what are you going to do now?”
“Go see my daughter maybe,” said Du Pré. “Get my fiddle first.”
“I picked up your fiddle at the hospital,” said Bart. “They brought it in the ambulance.”
“Then I will go and see my daughter,” said Du Pré.
“Don’t do this,” said Michelle.
“What?” said Du Pré.
“Just don’t,” said Detective Leuci. She bit her lip and went into her office.
CHAPTER 46
YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT Gianni and Catfoot.” said Bart, looking at the card in his hand. It was the card the woman reporter had given Du Pré in the little Inuit village on Hudson Bay after he and Bart and the Quebec Indians had come down the Rivière de la Baleine.
“I think you find out that Lucky isn’t Chippewa and that he came and went from the village,” said Du Pré. “They will cover for him, but they are not very good at it. I don’t drink that they talk to the Mounties, though.”
Two percent of Canadians are Indian, one-quarter of prison inmates are, too. So the Indians don’t like the Mounties much.
“How’s Maria doing?” said Bart. He looked a little shamefaced. He had been so besotted by Michelle Leuci that he had been thinking of little else.
And I don’t blame him one bit, Du Pré thought. He has had very little love in his life and is trying to do right by it. He remembered Bart’s bloated, sick face, and Bart three-quarters dead from booze. But Bart was struggling and he had faith in the possibility of love in the world. Which took a great deal of courage, come to think of it.
“She is fine,” said Du Pré. “Little Métis girl from Montana, where the schools are not much good, trying to go to a tough eastern university. But she will just work till she gets it. She is tougher than either you or me, I think.”
“That would not take very much,” said Bart, “as we are nothing but a couple of middle-aged marshmallows.”
Du Pré nodded. Fair enough.
“But you are really going to go and hunt Lucky,” said Bart. “You know Michelle will bust you if you kill him. She’ll bust you if you threaten him.”
“It will be out of her jurisdiction,” said Du Pré, “but I have to find him first.”
“You won’t tell me where you are going to look?”
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré.
Bart let it drop. Du Pré was lying, sort of. He didn’t know where he was going yet, but he’d decide soon enough—as soon as Bart was off to find that woman reporter and go back to the village and hound Eloise and Françoise and Hervé and Guillaume. Bart would not be good at it, but that woman, Sulin Bickhoff, would be very good at it. Strange name. So, for that matter, was Gabriel. Du Pré wondered if Bart’s family owned her newspaper. Probably. They seemed to own just about everything.
If Bart and this Sulin Bickhoff found out what Du Pré thought they would, then Michelle would have something better to work with than she had now.
Du Pré’s forehead itched. He would not be blending into any crowds for a while. Probably have a narrow white scar across his browned forehead.
I can’t even kill the fucker, Du Pré thought angrily. I got to goose him till he screws up, and he is plenty smart for sure.
Du Pré called Maria. She was in her room at the boardinghouse near the school, working hard.
“You be ready in the fall,” said Du Pré. “You worry too much.”
“I know,” said Maria. “I know I worry too much and that I will be ready in the fall. But…this is some different place, Papa.”
“I got to ask you a favor,” said Du Pré.
“Okay,” said Maria. She would hear him out at least.
“I need for you to go someplace safe where no one knows you are except Madelaine until I call her to call you. This g
uy, killing these Indians down here in D.C.? I have found him and he ran. I don’t know he even knows about you, but you do me this favor, huh? Just go hide till Madelaine calls you?”
Maria didn’t say anything for a while.
“Okay,” she said. “I will tell you what, I will take some books that I have to read and my computer, I will go someplace—I am not even going to tell you where— and then I will wait. But you got to call Madelaine to call me so I know that you are all right.”
“Sure,” said Du Pré, not knowing where he was going or if there were telephones there. Or if Lucky would get him, too.
“Where are you going, Papa?” said Maria. “You got to tell me so I can worry about some place.”
Shit, Du Pré thought, now she will come after me. Maria, she don’t have any fear bones.
“Maria,” said Du Pré, “I know how this song ends. Now you going to go and come with me, I guess.”
“Papa,” said Maria, “you are so smart, I am more proud of you every day.”
Why, Du Pré wondered for the ten thousandth time, don’t I keep my big fucking mouth shut and not think for my daughter, who will not have it? She would not have it when she was two and she will not have it now.
“I will drive up and get you,” said Du Pré.
“I will be ready,” said Maria. “Do I need a gun?”
“Christ, no!” said Du Pré. “They are illegal everywhere here, you know.”
“What,” said Maria, “has that got to do with anything?”
“Where you get a gun, anyway?” asked Du Pré.
“I brought two with me. There are these drug people and burglars and rapists here, you know. I don’t like that shit.”
Du Pré was speechless. I send my little girl off to get ready for college, she is ready to kill. Where did she learn this? Me. Montana. Your Honor, that asshole needed killing. Case dismissed.
“What kind of fucking guns do you have, anyway?” asked Du Pré.
“I got a nine-millimeter Sig-Sauer and a Colt Python,” said Maria.
“You ever shoot them?”
“Sure,” said Maria. “I can do a four-inch group at fifty feet with the nine-millimeter. The Python is a little sloppier, but it fits in my backpack, on the side pocket there where it is easy to hand.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré, “I will come and get you.”