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“I am sorry,” said Du Pré. “I am pret’ mad, say things.”

“Don’t blame you,” said Harvey, “now, he’ll probably come on back and want you to take a polygraph.”

“Lie detector?” said Du Pré. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” said Harvey. “Please take it.”

“Why the fuck I take
that?”
said Du Pré.

“Well,” said Harvey. “If you pass it, then you’re out of it altogether.”

“Harvey,” said Du Pré, “I am out of it now.”

“No,” said Harvey. “You aren’t. Tell you a story. Ten years ago, we had a case, guy was killing little girls, you know, like five years old. Cops are stumped. We come in. We don’t get squat. Couple more little girls get found. There’s no thread.”

Du Pré rolled a cigarette with one hand. He’d taken two years off when he was sixteen and he had done nothing much but try to roll cigarettes with one hand. Like his Papa, Catfoot, did. Got so he could do it pretty good. Two years.

“I come in on it and I look over all the reports. Nothin’ I can’t see anything. Case drags on a year. Three more little girls. The people in this city are ready to lynch all the incompetent bastards in the FBI.”

Du Pré struck a match with his thumbnail. Some of the match’s phosphorous stuck under his thumbnail, burning. It hurt like hell. Du Pré glared at the pain.

“I can’t see a fucking thing. Hundreds of leads followed, a few suspects but nothing worth spit, they all got good alibis, nothing, not one fucking thing. So I send all the reports to Statistical Analysis. They put the data into the computer. The computer notices that there is this one cop who is around more than he should be, it’s not his case but he’s around it a lot.”

“You give him the pollywog, whatever,” said Du Pré, “And it’s him?”

“Not quite,” said Harvey. “I have him take the polygraph and he’s lying about something. But he didn’t kill the little girls. Polygraph says so, so does a bunch of other things.”

Du Pré sucked on his burnt thumb.

“I am curious,” said Harvey. “So I grill this poor bastard over a nice hot flame, woulda put burning toothpicks under his fingernails, skinned him slowly, it is the way of my people.”

Them Blackfeet, mean fuckers, thought Du Pré, looking at his thumb.

“Well,” said Harvey, “after working his kidneys over with a rubber hose and threatening to fry up his pet guppies for lunch, he finally breaks and tells me about the report he didn’t file. Seems he was working and a call got routed to him, the dicks on the case were all out. Some little old lady had seen something suspicious. Ho-hum, little old ladies drive us nuts.”

Du Pré clenched his teeth. His thumb hurt like hell.

“Well, this poor cop was going through a bad divorce and he’d gobbled too many Valiums and he was kinda addled, and he scrambled everything he jotted down and then he went home and slept it off and when he came back the next day he couldn’t make fuck-all out of his notes so he trashed them.”

Du Pré farted.

“Case goes on, the cop is obsessed with this little old lady who called in when he was all fucked up, but he can’t find her. It’s the one time he’s ever done this. He’s ashamed. The little old lady had given him the license plate number of a car.”

Du Pré waited.

“Finally I say, look, here’s what you do. Go back and work out from the places where the little girls were found. See if any little old ladies croaked after the day you were too fucked up to take the call.”

“By midafternoon the cop’s got a name of an old lady who stroked out three days after one of the bodies was discovered. He goes to look at the house. House has a clear view though it’s pretty far off. Goes up to the house. It’s sealed, pending probate. He gets a court order and gets in. What do you think he finds?”

“This old lady,” said Du Pré, “she has this telescope, she looks out the window with. She writes things down. There is a note by the telephone, got description of a guy, a car, the license plate number, the time, and everything.”

“Exactly,” said Harvey. “How’d you guess that?”

“I never heard you speak more than fifty words at once, all the time I know you,” said Du Pré. “So I figure it has to be a real story and so that is how a real story would work out.”

“Indeed it did,” said Harvey. “Picked the guy up, grilled him, sent in Come-to-Jesus Wilkins, and the guy confessed just like that.”

“Come-to-Jesus?” said Du Pré.

“FBI agent who, so help me, can go into a room with a raving sociopath and convince the motherfucker that he ought to do the best thing. Come-to-Jesus, get it off his chest and straight with the Lord. I saw him do it once with a wacko who ate everyone he killed.”

Du Pré snorted.

“So,” said Harvey Wallace/Weasel Fat, “I’d appreciate it if as a personal favor to me you would take the polygraph.”

“Fuck,” said Du Pré.

“Fine,” said Harvey. “Just after you take the polygraph. Now, after you take the polygraph I can be more helpful than I can before.”

“Shit,” said Du Pré.

“Du Pré,” said Harvey, “humor me. This is almost the twenty-first century and gadgets rule us.”

“You think I maybe done this?” said Du Pré.

“Don’t be an asshole,” said Harvey. “Of course not. But once you take it then all the guys in the agency who live and die by the damn things are stalemated and they cause less trouble. I won’t be assigned to that case. Wish I could be. I keep telling them they are fools and they keep promoting me.”

“OK,” said Du Pré. “You gonna have Benny take it? He is so upset he probably
flunk it
.”

“You don’t worry about that,” said Harvey. “Benny’s the Sheriff and he’s not the problem. You are. You have no official status.”

“Oh,” said Du Pré.

“Which means I can’t talk to you much,” said Harvey.

“I am going, this murderer, I am going to find him,” said Du Pré.

“Probably,” said Harvey. “Benny won’t. You might.”

“OK,” said Du Pré, “I get him to deputize me?”

“Yup,” said Harvey.

“Then what?” said Du Pré.

“I send Agent Pidgeon to see you.”

“Why?” said Du Pré.

“She’s a specialist in serial killers,” said Harvey.

“She?” said Du Pré.

“Yeah,” said Harvey. “We quit binding their feet, taught ‘em how to read, write, things like that. Nothing to be done about it now, we got ‘em.”

“How long she been doing this?” said Du Pré.

“Couple years,” said Harvey. “She got her doctorate in psychology and then she joined the FBI. Nice young woman. Beautiful, too. Ambitious. Great knockers. Smart. If she heard me tell you she had great knockers, I’d be jailed for sexual harassment. Lose my job.”

“Why she pick serial killers?” said Du Pré.

“You’d have to ask her,” said Harvey. “I’d be afraid to, myself.”

“OK,” said Du Pré. “I go to this polygraph.”

“It makes things simpler,” said Harvey.

“Who do I call?” said Du Pré.

“Oh,” said Harvey, “I already did.”

“Prick,” said Du Pré. “You know I say yes, huh?”

“Yup,” said Harvey. “I need you on this one, we do anyway.”

“OK,” said Du Pré.

“Bodies are dumped out in the sagebrush,” said Harvey. “Very few FBI guys know much about sagebrush.”

“Yah,” said Du Pré. “I am trying to find Benetsee.”

“That would have been my next question,” said Harvey.

“He is in Canada,” said Du Pré.

“I’ll send you some money,” said Harvey. “You buy him some wine and tobacco and meat.”

“Oh,” said Du Pré, “I take care of it.” “Thanks,” said Harvey. “Yeah,” said Du Pré.

“D
U
P
RÉ!” SAID
M
ADELAINE
. “You ask him to ask you them question I give you.”

“Yah,” said Du Pré. “He ask me I am fucking twelve women, like you keep telling me I am, I say no, the machine, it says I am lying.”

“OK,” said Madelaine. “I thought so.”

“It is fourteen, anyway,” said Du Pré. “My dick, it is huge and it is very hungry. Twelve women, they do not quite do it for me, you know.”

“OK,” said Madelaine. “I fix that. You don’t be telling me, you have a headache, you hear.”

Du Pré nodded and grinned at her.

“Now on, you don’t got time, fuck more than me,” said Madelaine.

“Love is holy,” said Father Van Den Heuvel. “And never more so than when the two of you discuss it.”

The three of them were sitting at Madelaine’s kitchen table having lunch. Elk and vegetable soup and Madelaine’s good bread and home-canned corn and peppers.

The big, clumsy Belgian Jesuit had splotches of elk soup and kernels of corn down his cassock.

Been a while since he knock himself out shutting his head in his car door, Du Pré thought, he should maybe do that pretty soon again.

Three times the good priest had been found lying by his car, out cold. He was the clumsiest human being Du Pré had ever known. He was not allowed to split wood anymore. He had split his own foot so badly he was two years on crutches.

It was maybe the only congregation in the world which laid bets on whether or not the priest would drop the Host during Communion.

There was half a foot of snow outside on the ground. Even though it was the first week of June, it was Montana, and it seemed to snow at least every other year in early June. Late June.

“It ever snow here in July?” said Father Van Den Heuvel. “I think it has snowed every other month.”

“Yah,” said Du Pré. “We got two feet once, Fourth of July.”

“Ah,” said Father Van Den Heuvel, “God’s love is wonderful.”

“It is sad, them girls, no one know who they are,” said Madelaine.

Only one of the three bodies could be identified. Father Van Den Heuvel had buried the unknown two this morning. The county had paid for the coffins.

“Poor children,” said the big priest. “I wonder where their families are.”

“Lots of runaway kids,” said Madelaine.

The pathologists had said that the two bodies that Du Pré had found were approximately sixteen. Dental work had been of minimal quality. One of the girls had a tattoo, the kind made in jails with pen inks and dull needles. A skull with a cross sticking out of it.

On the web of skin between thumb and forefinger of her left hand. The girl may have done it herself.

“How come they bury them so quick?” said Madelaine.

“They get their samples and that is that,” said Du Pré.

Modern times.

Don’t want to pay the cold storage on them, Du Pré thought. These are not kids from nice homes. People who have some power, money. These kids, they will be forgotten. They always were forgotten. Their parents never even knew that they were there, I bet.

Only Du Pré and Madelaine and Benny had come to the interment.

Benny left immediately.

Father Van Den Heuvel had said his few words and then he and Du Pré and Benny had let the coffins down. They were very light.

“Du Pré!” Madelaine said. “I want you to promise these two little girls that you will find who did this to them. They got no one else to speak for them, you know.”

“Yah,” said Du Pré.

“You promise them.”

“They don’t got names,” said Du Pré, “so I say, OK, you are my people, I find this bastard.”

Madelaine reached up and touched Du Pré on his cheek.

“Everybody is our people,” said Madelaine. “We are Métis.”

Du Pré nodded. That was true. The Mixed Bloods. That is pretty much everybody.

Long time ago, my people who were in France come to the New World and they marry my people who were already here. Then we really catch hell. Whites call us Indian, Indians call us whites. English, they hang us, steal our land. Send us all across Canada, move them furs for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Here Before Christ. Most places they were, too.

Long time ago.

They come down here after them English crush the Red River Rebellion, got nothing, bunches of children.

Had each other, my people did.

These poor girls, they have no one at all.

They got my Madelaine, who would feed all the world. Wipe all the tears.

They got me, too, I guess.

I find this bastard.

Du Pré rolled a cigarette while he waited for Father Van Den Heuvel to come back from taking a leak. The old police cruiser, light bar and sirens taken off, decals off the doors, still runs good. Runs fast.

There were a lot of cigarette burns on the backseat, where smokes Du Pré had flicked out the window flew back in.

Du Pré rolled a cigarette and he offered it to Father Van Den Heuvel. The big priest nodded and he took it. He had never tried to roll his own smoke. He couldn’t do it.

“I must go,” said the big priest. “I have to drive to Miles City and see Mrs. LeBlanc. She is dying.”

“I send her something?” said Madelaine.

“She can’t eat,” said Father Van Den Heuvel.

Madelaine dug around and she found a St. Christopher medal.

Father Van Den Heuvel put it in his pocket.

Madelaine walked him out to his car. Du Pré had some more coffee.

Tomorrow, I got to go sign off, some cattle. His son-in-law, Raymond, did most of the brand inspections now, but Du Pré did what Raymond could not do. Cattle business was not too good. Hate someone, give them a cow. Cattle business was mostly not too good.

Du Pré heard the priest’s car drive off. Madelaine came back.

“You sure like, devil that poor priest,” said Du Pré.

“Poo,” said Madelaine. “Him like it. He is a nice man.”

Du Pré laughed.

“Devil me, too,” he said.

Madelaine stood in front of him, hand on her hip.

“Fourteen, huh?” she said. “You come on now, I show you some damn fourteen.”

After, Du Pré sat on the edge of the bed, smoking. Madelaine was in the shower. Du Pré could smell the potpourri soap she made, the smell of the steam from the hot water. The door to the bathroom was open and he could see her shape through the glass door of the shower.

Fourteen, huh? Du Pré thought, I got as much trouble I need, just this Madelaine. She fuck good. I am a lucky man.

Where is old Benetsee? My old coyote friend. Him, he got things to tell me that I need to hear.