THE LITTLE PRIVATE JET SHOT across the sky. Du Pré watched the Midwest’s patchwork of fields move beneath the wings. He toyed with a glass of bourbon.
Lawyer Foote sat in one of the other chairs, Bart in the third.
Bart was enraged.
Du Pré was both angry and bewildered.
Foote, the elegant attorney from Chicago’s Gold Coast, looked bored.
“You two calm down,” Foote said finally. “This is a farce. I don’t even think it is necessary for us to go there. A deposition would have sufficed. It is up to them to find some evidence, for Chrissakes. I would bet things are closing in on Chase.”
“I am just sick of that lying little prick,” said Bart.
Foote sighed, picked up a book, and went back to reading.
“Do I have to cage the pair of you?” he said, offhandedly.
Bart and Du Pré sank back in their chairs for a minute. Then they tensed up and began to lean forward again.
“You are to keep your tempers, gentlemen,” said Foote. “An attack on Chase would not be worth it, to put it mildly.” He did not look up from his book.
The plane got to Washington and circled just once before shrieking in to land. A limousine moved slowly out to the plane. The ramp went down. Foote got off first, carrying a slim attaché case and glancing grimly at his watch. Du Pré and Bart had no luggage. The black driver got in and drove off. He was separated from them by a glass panel.
The police station was new, in the late seventies architecture best called inhumane.
Foote spoke briefly to the desk officer. The man picked up a telephone. He talked for a moment and then pointed down the hall to the right. They began to walk toward it.
The big, rumpled detective whom Du Pré had spoken to in June, while he held the frightened horse, came out of a doorway and stood there waiting for them, hands in pockets.
They got closer. The detective stared at Foote with distaste.
“Just a few questions,” said the cop.
“If I think the questions reasonable, I shall instruct my client to answer,” said Foote. His disdain chilled the hall.
They all took seats at the conference table. There was a voice-activated miniature tape recorder sitting on it. No ashtrays. A sign on the wall thanked them for not smoking.
The detective rattled the case number into the recorder. Foote had scribbled a short note. He pushed it over to the detective, who looked sourly at it and then spoke the names of Bart, Du Pré, and the lawyer.
“You ever date this Annie McCrae?” said the detective.
“No,” said Du Pré. “I don’t even know what she looked like.”
The detective rattled off questions; Du Pré looked at Foote before answering each one. Foote nodded; Du Pré spoke.
“But Paul Chase says you did,” the detective said finally.
“Paul Chase is a liar,” said Du Pré. He recounted the story of the expedition and Chase’s grandstanding at the end of it. Told him to contact Samantha Ford at the Post.
“Thanks,” said the detective suddenly. He waved to someone behind the mirrored wall. A door opened in the hallway. Heels clicked on the tiles. A tall, pretty woman came in the door.
“This is my partner,” said the detective, “Detective Sgt. Michelle Leuci.”
Bart was staring at her, and not just because she was Italian.
“You dragged their asses all the way here from fucking Montana?” said the lovely woman. “Rollie, you are an asshole. He could have been deposed there. For Christ sweet sakes.”
Rollie shrugged.
Foote stood up. “We came to assist,” he said.
Du Pré was looking at the beauty with the foul mouth. She had thick dark red hair, bright sapphire eyes, and a stainless steel 9mm automatic pistol in a holster in the small of her back, so her suit coat would cover it.
“This guy Chase has some connections,” she said, “but they won’t help if we can build a case. But what’s he like? You said he cut in on you at the end of the expedition. Why’d he leave in the first place?”
Du Pré told them about the bear, Chase climbing the tree in a panic, the canoe capsizing the next day, and Chase’s hysterics. How one of the assistants had said he wasn’t taking his medication.
“So, what was he like?” Detective Leuci repeated. She sat down, lit up, and gave the bird to the thank-you sign.
“A little spoiled kid,” said Du Pré. “Seemed like he couldn’t think of anyone but himself. I began to have this bad feeling about him at the festival…”
“Bad feeling?”
“I don’t like him, you know. Hard at first to put a finger on it, but he smiles too quickly, says too many right things. I don’t trust him. I wasn’t going to come at all, because I didn’t really want to …”
“Why did you?”
Benetsee, Du Pré thought. He looked at Foote, who smiled.
“This old man I respect told me to,” said Du Pré. “It’s hard to explain.”
Detective Sergeant Leuci leaned forward, eager to be explained to.
“He’s an old man I know since I am a child,” said Du Pré. “He sees farther than the rest of us can.”
“A medicine man?”
Du Pré didn’t know what to say. He thought.
“He just seems to know a lot of things there doesn’t seem to be a way for him to know,” Du Pré said finally. “When he tells me I ought to do something, he has always been right.”
“A psychic?”
“He has visions, I think,” said Du Pré lamely.
“Indian?”
“Some,” said Du Pré.
“You have visions?”
Du Pré sighed. “Only when I am fucking drunk.”
Detective Michelle Leuci roared with laughter. She had a big, honest, booming laugh.
“So,” she said, still shaking. “My partner here finds you holding on to a horse, belonging to the rider who spotted Annie McRae’s body. Where were you when you saw the horse?”
“I am onstage, playing with a Cajun band,” said Du Pré.
“Before that?”
“I am onstage, playing my Métis music.”
“What’s a Métis?”
“Red River breeds,” said Du Pré. “We are mostly Canadian. Voyageurs were Métis. Cree, Chippewa, Ojibwa, French, some little English. We come down to Montana after the second rebellion, in 1886.”
“Fascinating.”
She stood up.
“Thank you,” she said. “We’ll look hard at this Chase character. Get hold of Samantha Ford.” She glanced at Rollie, who went out of the room.
“We’re going to get some dinner,” said Bart, standing up. He bowed to Detective Sergeant Leuci. “Would you care to join us?”
“Who’re you?” said Leuci.
“Bart Fascelli,” said Bart, “and please go get your fucking coat.”
Leuci stared at him for a minute, she shrugged.
She nodded. She went out into the hall, in the next door, and came back.
“No place too fancy,” she said, “or folks might think I’m corrupt.”
Bart offered her his arm gallantly. She took it and they went out the door.
“We have been abandoned and forgotten,” said Lawyer Foote. “They will go to some nice place. It’s McDonald’s for the help.”
“We could catch them,” said Du Pré.
Foote shook his head. Then he shook his finger.
They both laughed.
When they got out of the building, the limousine was gone. Foote waved down a cab.
They had barely enough money between them to pay the cabbie off when they got to the hotel.
Midway through dinner, the hotel manager sidled up to Foote and gave him a plain white envelope. Foote thanked the man, getting up to do so. He sat back down, peered into the envelope, and counted out three thousand dollars in hundreds. He handed them to Du Pré.
“Well,” said Foote, “I think we should go. The plane can always come back for Bart when Bart surfaces.”
“Why all this money?” said Du Pré.
“The rude prick pays,” said Foote, taking a bite of his fish.