“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.”