Authors: Peter Bowen
“Um,” said Agent Pidgeon. “We could get a table.”
They found an empty table with four chairs and they sat. Susan Klein came over.
“I know what they want, dear,” she said. “How about you?”
“Red wine?” said Pidgeon.
“Cabernet?” said Susan. “It’s pretty good. What I drink.”
“Wonderful.”
“Steaks are good,” said Susan. “The special is gone, sorry.”
“Rare,” said Pidgeon.
“OK,” said Susan. She went off.
“Harvey sends his love,” said Pidgeon.
“Ah, he is such a good dancer,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré looked at the ceiling.
“Nice man, too,” said Madelaine.
“Harvey?” said Pidgeon. “Harvey maybe changes he comes out here. Back there he’s a giant pain in the ass. Always staring at my tits and wondering when I am going to get what he needs out of the computer.”
“He is a guy,” said Madelaine. “They got only the two heads, think with the little one, they all belong, hospitals.”
“Mama!” said Lourdes.
“My daughter, she wants me in a cage,” said Madelaine.
Lourdes was blushing.
Why she run away? thought Du Pré. He hadn’t been told.
“Lourdes,” said Pidgeon. “This Challis guy who brought you back here? How did he pick you up?”
Lourdes looked down at her lap. Her lower lip quivered.
Pidgeon reached over and she patted Lourdes’s hand.
“It’s OK, honey,” she said, “as long as you’re all right.”
Du Pré looked at Lourdes.
I wonder any of us know any of us, he thought.
D
U
P
RÉ THREW A
shovelful of earth scraped from the hard ground near the barrel against the sieve. Booger Tom played a hose that ran from a spray tank on a big flatbed truck against the earth. The soil ran yellow from the screen. Gravels gleamed.
Nothing.
They had been doing this for three days.
They had found one post from an earring for a pierced ear.
Little Karen Morse had not had pierced ears.
Du Pré thought about the skinned child. She had been white-blond.
Five years old.
He threw another shovelful of earth against the sloping screen.
Bart and a couple of the ranch hands were walking slowly on each side of the rutted track that led back to the dry wash, stooping to look at anything out of the ordinary. There were a few condoms left by kids who had pulled off here to fuck. Beer cans and bottles, a couple bright paper bags that once held potato chips.
Booger Tom had spotted a hank of the child’s hair stuck on a sagebrush a hundred feet away.
“Moved wrong,” said Booger Tom. Tracking, you looked for what should not be there and was, or what should be there and was not.
Tracking.
Du Pré shoved the tip of the shovel’s blade toward a thick old sagebrush trunk. The earth parted easily. Something gleamed.
A chain, the sort that made a bracelet. The links were bent flat.
Du Pré whistled.
He dropped down on his hands and knees and he stared hard at the chain peeking out from the broken earth.
A green gemstone sparkled.
“What you got, there?” said Booger Tom. He had come after he shut off the hose.
“A chain,” said Du Pré. He took a pencil from his pocket and he put it through the loop of chain and he tugged it away from the earth that held it.
Several clods came up with it. Du Pré saw a knife blade, a stainless-steel one, short and wide.
“I’ll get some bags,” said Booger Tom. He limped off toward the cab of the truck.
Du Pré waited and he stared.
When Tom came back Du Pré dropped the bracelet into the first of the locking plastic bags. He took a pair of folding pliers from his pocket and he jabbed the needlenose points around the knife blade and pulled the knife away from the soil.
Buried about three inches deep, Du Pré thought. Scratch this earth and it breaks up like dry bread.
Du Pré looked at the knife. Stainless-steel, three-inch blade, double-sided. Black plastic handle. He looked at the brand name but it had been ground off.
Du Pré grunted. He dropped the knife in a plastic bag and sealed it.
He tugged a ring out of the dirt.
The metal was discolored, the gem a piece of dime-store glass.
The sort of trinket a poor girl would buy for herself.
Du Pré stood up. He picked up the shovel and pushed it into the ground. The soil broke easily.
He carried the shovelful to the sieve. He tossed it on the screen.
Booger Tom hosed it down.
Five earrings.
Thin cheap silver chain gone to greenish black.
A penny.
Du Pré put them all in the same bag.
Du Pré and Tom worked the spot carefully, shoveling around the trunk of the sagebrush.
They found one small brass key, of the size for a jewelry box.
Nothing else.
Agent Pidgeon arrived in the tan government car. Wally the mechanic had stuck a new used engine in it. It took him about half a day.
“Paydirt,” said Pidgeon, holding up the bags. “There won’t be anything else. This guy is very careful.”
Bart and the ranch hands were standing near. They’d walked the whole half mile of road without seeing a thing that could be useful.
“It’s him,” said Pidgeon. “He dumps the bodies and he buries a knife and some effects nearby. The effects usually don’t square with the bodies. I expect he buries the trophies from the last killing with the next, and so forth. Only keeps the most current mementos.”
“Trophies?” said Du Pré.
Pidgeon nodded. “Souvenirs,” she said, “of his triumphs. Young women are the enemy. When he kills one, he wins. My profile is fairly standard. This guy is white, unmarried, thirty-five to forty. He’s compulsive about cleanliness. He’s quiet. He’s not very skilled socially, and feels very clumsy around women. He probably doesn’t drink or smoke and certainly never takes street drugs. He is, on the surface, very religious, though all his talk of it is about sin and atonement— he’s providing atonement for these poor women. He’s physically very strong, because he fears weakness of any kind. He’s probably been in some trouble with the law as a juvenile.”
“What kind of trouble?” said Du Pré.
“Arson, petty theft, violence to kids younger than he is. He would have tortured animals and killed them though he may never have been caught at it. May never have been caught with the other. Probably came from a poor and violent home. Single parent, most likely his mother. She can’t, for whatever reason, offer love. I bet this guy has a young sister who he thinks got all the love.”
Pidgeon lit a cigarette.
“He kills with a knife thrust to the juncture of the spine and the skull. That’s why he uses these short blades. The victim is bound. He may have intercourse with the body. Probably can’t, can’t get it up at any time. If he goes with a prostitute, she’ll maybe suck him off, but he’ll do so rarely. If she can’t manage to get him off, he’ll kill her even if he has to wait.”
“Sweet guy,” said Booger Tom.
“Fellow Americans,” said Agent Pidgeon. “About forty of ‘em plying their trade at any given time. We maybe catch half of them.”
“Like that Ted Bundy?” said Du Pré.
“Dunno,” said Pidgeon. “But I suspect this guy is a lot smarter than Bundy. I suspect this guy is very smart indeed, and he has the instincts of a wild creature.”
“Why smart?” said Du Pré.
“Um,” said Pidgeon. “He does some of the things that various of these types do, but never so much they provide us with a weakness. Like the trophies. He keeps a few. There is probably a number he allows himself. He never keeps the knife he kills with. The knives have always been so thoroughly cleaned there aren’t any residues on them. He always uses this kind of knife. The handle is tight and impermeable plastic. Blood can’t seep in between the blade and the handle. He hides the bodies where they will be undiscovered for a long time. He isn’t taunting us directly. He’s not playing chicken with us. He doesn’t want to get caught.”
“You’re damn right there,” said Booger Tom.
“No,” said Pidgeon. “They mostly do. See, most of them get crazier and crazier and more and more careless. They’ve been able to milk the system for bennies, con the shrinks. They want to get caught and be famous. They think they’re unique. Living National Treasures, you bet.”
“Social workers done this,” said Tom.
“Yeah, right,” said Pidgeon.
“Well,” said Tom. “Ever’ time ya turn around someone is getting off scot-free because his mother pulled the tit too quick or something.”
“Whatever,” said Pidgeon. “This guy worries me, though. They all worry me, but this guy really worries me.”
“OK,” said Du Pré. “But why?”
“He’s very smart,” said Pidgeon. “He’s probably an autodidact. He reads a lot. High IQ. If he works, it’s at a highly skilled job where he doesn’t have much to do with people. He doesn’t have close friends, but people will think of him as a friend. He’ll be thoughtful and ingratiating. He’ll wear clothes in muted tones. He doesn’t talk a lot and when he does it will be about inoffensive subjects. He won’t argue with anyone. He won’t get into rows in bars. He doesn’t vote. He has a driver’s license and a Social Security card, but no charge cards. He always pays cash and in small bills. He doesn’t save receipts. He most likely cuts the labels out of his clothes. He wears jogging shoes, or the heavier walking shoes, in dark brown or green. Black is too much of a statement. He wears glasses, probably black frames, heavy ones, with ordinary lenses. No bombardier glasses for this boy. May not even need them. He’s clean-shaven. He gets his hair cut short regularly. He may still live with his mother, or, if she’s dead, with a sister or older female relation. He always makes his bed. Unlike most of you guys, when he does his laundry he bleaches his whites and keeps them separate. He cleans up after himself. He knows a lot about women and he hates them if they are young and pretty and innocent or if he thinks they are whores.”
“How you know all this?” said Tom.
“I read fucking tea leaves,” said Pidgeon.
“I thought so,” said Booger Tom.
“Let’s go get a drink,” said Pidgeon. “I’m buying. Thank you for all this stuff.”
“I’ll take the rig back and meet you to town,” said Booger Tom.
“Du Pré?” said Pidgeon.
“My car is in Toussaint,” said Du Pré. “I come out with Tom, he had to come to town to get a belt for the truck.”
“Ride with me,” said Pidgeon. “I need to talk to you anyway.”
“Social workers and fairy shrinks,” said Booger Tom.
“Fuck off, you old bastard,” said Agent Pidgeon.
“S
HE IS SOME PISTOL
,” said Du Pré, into the telephone. “Oh, yes,” said Harvey Wallace. “I would dearly love to make a dozen little Redbone Blackfeet with her, but Angela would object and she’s Sioux and you know what they do to unfaithful husbands.”
“You are married?” said Du Pré.
“Twenty-seven years,” said Harvey. “Six kids. Lovely wife. Two dogs. Home in the burbs. A station wagon and a Jeep Cherokee.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré.
“Yeah,” said Harvey. “I’m hopelessly middle-class. And I don’t like buffalo meat. Or horse meat. Or chokecherry jam. Makes my teeth hurt. Moccasins make my feet hurt. Poor-ass Indian.”
“Uh,” said Du Pré. “Well, she did tell me a lot about this guy, she thinks she knows this stuff about him.”
“If she says the guy does this or that, he does this or that,” said Harvey. “She’s a damn fine psychologist and then on top of that she’s intuitive as hell.”
“What’s intuitive?” said Du Pré.
“Senses things without thinking them through.”
“Yeah,” said Du Pré, “she is a woman, you bet.”
“Whatever,” said Harvey. “Under law, there is no difference between the brains of men and the brains of women.”
“Laws are pretty much bullshit,” said Du Pré.
“I wish you would quit talking like that,” said Harvey. “I have a sick feeling that if you find the guy he’s gonna have more holes in him than a fucking colander and then we’ll have to arrest you and try you and toss you in Walla Walla. For a long time.”
Du Pré said nothing.
“Benetsee back?” said Harvey.
“No,” said Du Pré. “I do not know where he is.” The old bastard, may he drop slowly through all me levels of hell, frying while he falls.
“Shit,” said Harvey. “Agent Pidgeon needs to meet him.”
“Me, I need to talk to him,” said Du Pré. “But I can’t find out where he has gone.”
“He’s his own guy, for sure,” said Harvey. “Well, Agent Pidgeon did call from Billings and she raised merry hell down there with the cops who screwed up some evidence.”
“I like her,” said Du Pré.
“She’s a good one,” said Harvey. “By the way, you talk to Challis at all? He’s on my mind some.”
“No,” said Du Pré, “I have not.”
“Well,” said Harvey. “No more bodies turn up there, I hope, you can maybe work on what you got. I wish to Christ we knew more about time.”
“Yeah,” said Du Pré, not quite knowing what Harvey meant.
“When this guy is dumping them. Time we find them, they’ve been out there for months, usually. Your three were under the snow until late, it was a late spring.”
“Four,” said Du Pré.
“I haven’t forgotten,” said Harvey. “Poor little Karen was skinned and her skeleton was fleshed out. All sorts of knife marks on the bones.”
“Jesus,” said Du Pré.
“I want this guy alive, Du Pré,” said Harvey. “I have heard bad rumors about you. Some guy up in New York State.”
“Ah,” said Du Pré.
“Ah?” said Harvey. “OK, I’ll go now. Don’t make me sad, my man, I beg of you.”
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“Enough of this bullshit,” said Harvey. “I’m calling Madelaine.”
Du Pré hung up.
He went outside on the porch again.
Harvey and Pidgeon are not telling me everything, Du Pré thought, they play to win. I kill this asshole, they will try to get me.
Him call Madelaine, she tell him her Du Pré do what he is gonna do, which, for Madelaine, would be kill this bastard anyway.
Then everybody’s babies safe from him.