by Peter Bowen
The brothers looked at him blankly.
“Best place for those wolves come down was yours,” said Du Pré, “but they would not. They smell you, go to Stemple’s.”
“You’re crazy,” said George.
“I am that,” said Du Pré. “I am also right, you know. I be along.”
He walked away.
The St. Francis brothers left right away.
“Hey, Bart,” said Du Pré, leaning over close to Bart’s ear, “those St. Francis brothers, they probably killed those people up in the Wolfs.”
“I talked to them, Banning talked to them,” said Bart. “They both had stories and stuck to them. You know what ranching is. Pretty lonely life. Half the county couldn’t come up with one witness to say they were anywhere in particular on a given day.”
“Them wolves come down to Stemple’s?” said Du Pré. “They should have come to St. Francis place. Closer, and they got some sheep. They smelled the men who killed the wolves up there, Bart, so they went over another entire mountain. Don’t make sense. It was snowing so hard then, wolves are like everybody else, you know, they got reasons to do things.”
Bart nodded.
“I don’t think I can get a warrant on that,” he said.
Corey Banning came in. Eyes followed her across the room. She ignored them.
Bart and Du Pré waited.
When she got to them Du Pré told her what he thought. She listened, nodding.
“They kill animals?” she said. “Set them on fire, torture them? Were they bullies, beat up smaller children, laugh while they did it?”
Du Pré rubbed his eyes. Something, long time ago, what?
A dog. It had a dog in it.
Long time ago. Come on, come on.
Snap.
Du Pré had been driving by the grade school and he had seen some kids outside gathered around a dog that had been killed by a passing car.
The children had either been crying or laughing.
All but the St. Francis brothers were crying. They smiled.
They had laughed.
Them?
Maybe.
Chapter 11
BART KICKED HIS OFFICIAL desk in his official office.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” said Bart. “The ultimate goddamned alibi, for Chrissakes, I can’t stand it.”
The St. Francis brothers had both been in jail when the murders occurred. For beating up a whore in Billings. They were out on bond. They had spent a lot of their lives out on bond. The whore probably wouldn’t press charges.
“How many times that happen?” said Du Pré.
“They’re forty-two,” said Bart. “I would guess this has been one of their little hobbies for quite some time.”
“But we never hear of it.”
Bart shrugged.
It was snowing outside. Montana snowing. Deep and still. Deep as your ass and still snowing. Snowmobiles whined unpleasantly down the streets.
I hate them damn machines, Du Pré thought. Used to be you had to know the country and how to move through it, now any asshole can get on one of those things and chase deer to death for the fun of it. Pigs, like the rest of them, off-road vehicles, dirt bikes, little four-wheelers.
Me, I drive one when I got to, only. I hate it.
“We are not thinking about this good enough,” said Du Pré. “We look for murders, we find them. What are we doing? We say, it is someone that we don’t like.”
“Yes,” said Bart, “because the people we don’t like much were killed by, in all probability, people we do like. I love this fucking job. I get five, six calls a day, long distance, people screaming at me to catch the killers. The killers of the wolves, mind you. I want to be the only Sheriff’s office in the world with an unlisted telephone number.”
Du Pré laughed.
“You know, I think I go see Benetsee,” he said. “I have not seen the old fart, couple weeks, take him some food and wine, tobacco. Each winter I think, he go off, we not find him till the snow melt in the spring.”
Bart flipped a dart at the board.
“He’ll just disappear, Gabriel,” said Bart. “The coyotes will eat him and then, someday, make little coyotes. One kind of immortality.”
Corey Banning’s big four-wheel-drive diesel pickup pulled up and they heard the door slam on the truck. She barged in, knocking the snow off her high packs, and tossed her cowboy hat at the hat tree. The hat landed precisely on a peg.
“You ain’t missed yet,” said Bart.
“I never miss,” said Corey. “Too bad about the St. Francis brothers. We get to wait till they kill some poor whore, I guess.”
“How’s tricks?” said Bart.
Corey shrugged. “I am getting nothing,” she said, “which I expected to get. Killing four Fish and Wildlife agents is a federal offense and so I am here forever. I may retire here. I may die here. But I do not go away from here without I get ’em all.”
“Can’t die till you get ’em,” said Bart, “but I don’t know, we may just never find out. You remember that guy got shot in Missouri, the thug, by the townspeople? They never found out on that one.”
“They didn’t send me,” said Corey Banning. “You don’t have to be very smart to be an FBI agent if you’re a guy. President, either, for that matter. I’ve been north and east. Nothing there. Talked to everybody that the Sheriff’s said could possibly have done it. You know what they do? They shrug. Ask them where they were that day, they shrug. Ask them is there anything they can think of to help me, they shrug. They sure ain’t about to give anyone up. You’d think there’d be one greedy prick or one jealous wife or one goddamned snitch here, but they haven’t bothered talking to me.”
“They won’t,” said Bart. “They think Washington, D.C., is something that ought to be nuked and they’d just have to shoot it if it came here. And Gabriel was saying just before you flounced in that it was someone we know and like and they probably won’t ever be caught. We have no evidence. Nothing. Not a slug, a fingerprint, nothing. Did your people find anything at all?”
Corey Banning shook her head.
“All the killers have to do is keep quiet,” said Bart, “that’s all. They don’t even have to be careful. Even if there were two of them, and one confessed and turned in the other, we can’t get a conviction.”
“I ain’t looking at it right,” said Corey. “It’s like tracking an animal. You don’t look at the ground right, you lose ’em.”
“That ground up there, under ten feet of snow,” said Du Pré, “you won’t find nothing. You know how to track something, you know how not to leave any. I am going to Benetsee’s now, see what he say. He say that these people killed, the earth hates them, he has never known the earth hating like this before.”
“I would think,” said Corey, “that the earth would hate rip-off miners and such a lot more.”
Du Pré shook his head.
That old man know something, or maybe doesn’t yet, he is lost in his dreams, Du Pré thought.
We all are.
What is for the earth to hate, anyway? It still be here long after people have left it, all. I don’t think we last much.
“Well,” said Du Pré, “I go see that old fart now. I got this funny feeling that even if he know something, he won’t tell us either.”
Several cars went by outside, laboring through the deep snow. The plows had been through and would be again soon. The county was so sparsely populated that there were few plows. Almost everyone had a high-set four-wheel-drive truck. There was damn little north of Toussaint and Cooper but the Wolf Mountains, not much against winds that came from the North Pole.
The telephone rang. Bart had his boots up on his desk and a cup of coffee in his hand. He answered his own telephone; the dispatcher for the radio calls worked out of her house, six miles away.
Bart listened. His boots thumped down on the floor.
Du Pré waited.
“Well,” said Bart, “I don’t blame you, Sus
an, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot anybody. I’ll be right there.”
“What?” said Corey Banning.
“Unbelievable,” said Bart. “There are about a hundred flatlanders in that little park across from the bar. Several of them came into the bar and they told Susan that they were having a memorial service for the martyrs who died for the wolves. Then they say that they want to hold it inside the saloon since it’s snowing outside.”
Yah, thought Du Pré, I can see Susan listening to that. Hear what she say to it, too. They don’t move fast enough for her, down go her hand and up come the shotgun. Oh, I hope Benny is there soon.
“I guess we had better go and see what the hell is going on,” said Bart, “though I don’t quite understand why they are doing this now. The murder victims have been dead for quite some time, and so have the wolves.”
“I don’t think these people thought much about it until someone did it for them,” said Du Pré. “I think we got a bunch of extremely dumb people there, probably that asshole Bucky Dassault there, too, saying he is Benjamin Medicine Eagle, and I am worried some because maybe three hours from now this snow it stop and then it get cold and a big wind from the northwest, very cold big wind. Then maybe some more snow.”
Bart looked at Du Pré.
“I think we had better get the high school set up for ’em and send for the Red Cross,” he said.
“You read this weather pretty good,” said Corey Banning. “According to the weather reports, that is exactly what is going to happen. And there is a hell of a snowstorm coming in fifty points north of this one. The Alberta Clipper.”
Du Pré nodded. “We don’t have one of them for seven years, and it was very bad.”
“Christ,” said Bart, “we got to get that damn highway closed down. I’ll call ’em now. All three of them, I’ll ask the Highway Patrol to close down.”
“I better go on over there,” said Du Pré, “see what is going on. That Susan, they threaten her too much she will shoot, you know.”
“I’ll follow,” said Corey Banning.
Bart slammed the phone down.
“Goddamn it,” he yelled. “Those bastards!”
“Ah?” said Du Pré.
“They’ve had a ton of cars headed this way and didn’t do dick. They could have called me. Any car left Miles City this morning ain’t gonna make it here.”
“Christ,” said Corey.
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “Usually them ranchers will help but this word gets round they might not.”
“They’ll help,” said Corey Banning.
“I hope so,” said Bart.
“They’re our people,” said Corey Banning, “of course they will. They’ll save ’em and shelter ’em and feed ’em. And I bet they won’t say a word to these idiots all the time they’re doin’ it.”
Du Pré nodded, and they went out the door.
Chapter 12
IT WAS STILL PRETTY warm out, though the air had a crystalline bite to it. The flakes of snow were getting smaller.
Du Pré had to park a half mile from the Toussaint Bar, clear out of town. There were stalled and stuck cars all over the road, and when he slogged into town there were cars and silly little four-wheel-drive station wagons all over the place, in people’s yards, on the playground next to the little elementary school.
There was a crowd across the road from the Toussaint Bar, circling a bonfire made of the picnic tables the high school kids in Cooper had made for the tourists. Someone wearing a feathered headdress was ranting from the back of a pickup truck. Du Pré couldn’t hear the words. He didn’t need to.
Bucky Dassault. Child molester, alcohol and drug counselor, and then he is Benjamin Medicine Eagle, rubbing crystals and talking to fools.
What they call them? New Age?
Same old crap, con artists ripping off fools. Ah, hell, Catholic Church it start off that way. They all do. Jesus probably has three walnut shells, one dried pea, then he’s dead and can’t be questioned.
I maybe kick the shit of Bucky out of him, I don’t think Bart care.
Du Pré tried the front door of the bar. It was locked.
He pounded on it and hollered.
In a couple minutes Benny opened it.
He had an eye swelling shut. Du Pré slipped through the door and Benny threw the bolt to.
Susan stuck her head up from behind the bar. She spat out a pink stream of water.
“Jesus,” said Du Pré, “what the fuck happened?”
“Little fight,” said Benny, “but we got ’em out finally. I got this and Susan got hit in the mouth, somebody threw a full can of beer they brought in.
Christ.
Someone pounded on the door. Du Pré went and opened it. Corey slid in. He locked it again.
“This is a mess comin’ on pretty fast,” she said. “We got to get those damn fools over to the high school before the Alberta Clipper gets here. Got eighty-mile winds and a lot of snow. Who’s the fucking Uncle Tonto giving the speech?”
“Nobody,” said Du Pré. “Listen, I maybe need your help, Corey. You come with me. When I tell you, look over there a minute, then when I tell you it is all right, you can look back, then you speak to these people. We can take care of them at the high school in Cooper, but not here, we don’t got the room.”
“You wouldn’t be thinking of punching out the lights of that idiot in the feathers over there, would you?” she said.
“Oh, no,” said Du Pré. “That would be assault. Against the law. I would not do that thing.”
“I’ll judge what I see and I don’t,” said Corey Banning. “Let’s go do something right for once.”
They went out. The snow was packed down in the street and the little park. Du Pré walked up to Bucky Dassault, who had his back to him, jerked his feet out from under him. Bucky’s knees hit the tailgate of the pickup, and then his hands.
Du Pré grabbed him by the collar and twisted him round.
“Shut up, you,” said Du Pré. “I kick you half dead, you hear?”
Bucky opened his mouth.
Du Pré punched him hard, dumped him on the ground, and kicked him several times.
“Will you just do it and not enjoy yourself so much?” said Corey. “We got work to do, you know.”
Du Pré nodded and he cracked Bucky on the back of the skull with his nine-millimeter.
The crowd watched silently.
Corey cupped her hands around her mouth.
“I am Special Agent Corey Banning, FBI,” she said, “and you are in great danger. There is a terrible storm coming and you need to go back down this highway immediately”— she pointed—“to the Cooper High School. There isn’t room for all of you here, and you didn’t impress the natives well. Please go now. You could die. Do not go any farther than Cooper. If you try to go back to Billings you will die. Go now to Cooper. We have not got much time. Help each other. Get the cars turned around and on the way. Start with the ones in the back.”
The crowd stared at her.
Sheep, thought Du Pré. I have seen these faces going into a slaughterhouse. Same expressions.
“We came to honor the people killed for the wolves,” shouted one tall, greasy-looking hippie in the back.
“I ain’t going to argue with you,” said Corey Banning. “You’ve done worn out your welcome here. Get going or freeze to death. There’s not much room here. If women with young children get stranded there may be room for you. Maybe not. There’s no time. Get going.”
The crowd shifted and then it began to break up. The people moved back toward the scattered cars, and soon the furthest ones were grinding back down the road to Cooper.
A man and a woman waited till they could get through to Corey, still standing by the pickup. Bucky Dassault was still flat on his face in the snow. Groaning a little.
Damn, thought Du Pré, I wanted to maybe kill him, he was a public danger.
“Agent Banning,” said the woman, “I’m from th
e Minneapolis Star. Bobbie Larkin. He’s from Seattle. Reporters. Now, you are investigating these murders, and nothing has been found? At all? You have no leads? Nothing? Why is the FBI stymied? Do you expect a break in this case? Six people have been killed and not one statement has been made by you or the regional office. What’s the story?”
Corey Banning tucked a packet of snoose in her cheek and she chewed it some. She looked levelly at them and didn’t say one word.
“Why did the deputy attack that man?” Bobbie Larkin went on.
“You knew him,” said Du Pré. “You would maybe run over him, your car. We got a bad storm coming in and these foolish people could die in it, you know. Bucky, here, he don’t care about that.”
Corey Banning stepped down off the back of the truck and she walked off toward the Toussaint Bar.
“No comment?” shouted the woman reporter at Banning’sback.
“You better get to Cooper,” said Du Pré. “We are not kidding, it will be thirty below, three hours, then the big storm, stay cold. It is from the Arctic, not the Pacific, this storm. You will not be able to see ten feet and if you get out of your car in it you try to walk somewhere you die maybe fifty yards.”
He jerked Bucky Dassault to his feet.
“You fucking prick,” said Du Pré, “anybody die because you start this chicken-shit I will personally kill you very dead, I swear to you. Anybody. What you doing? Make a video? Sell it, these fools? I come look at your ads, such.”
“I…” said Bucky.
Du Pré bashed him in the mouth, slammed him facedown on the bed of the pickup, and handcuffed him. He jerked him up by his hair and shoved him off to the bar.
“That’s police brutality!” yelled the guy from Seattle.
Du Pré left Bucky standing.
“Listen, you stupid motherfuckers,” he said, “I think lot of people die because this asshole set up this fool memorial service. Pocket all the donations, I bet. He say we have it here. He don’t care that they die. He would never think of it. He finally think he make some money, get to screw some pretty women. He never think of it. I will be out, three, maybe four days now. All others, too. We try to save all these dumb people you know. And if they are dead, it is because of this prick, maybe some of the people come here, you know. Now he do this and I got to clean up after him. You maybe understand. This is not a lie. It is not a game. That storm she will be here soon. Anybody on the highway, they don’t know how to stay alive, they are dead. You want to bet me how many, uh? I think maybe a lot. We try, but the snowdrifts, can’t see so good, maybe a car in there, maybe not. And these people here, some of them maybe die trying to save people they don’t like, like they didn’t like the ones that got killed. Why should they?”