THE PHONE RANG AT Bart’s house. Du Pré knew. He swore and picked it up.
“He was strangled,” said Michelle. “Guy named David Ross, a linguist. Specialized in the dialects of Cree and Chippewa, and he was working on some rare dialect when this happened.”
“Where did it happen?” asked Du Pré. He remembered the smell of the halls in the Smithsonian.
“In the parking garage under Ross’s apartment,” said Michelle. “At about two A.M. We think that the killer was waiting for him. He was found about six by another tenant. Lying right by his car. The keys were on the floor nearby.”
“Why do you think he was waiting?”
“There’s a good place nearby,” said Michelle. “The door is electronic and quick. Good lighting. No place outside to hide near enough to dash in in time.”
“I am coining to that music festival,” said Du Pré.
“I thought you would,” said Detective Leuci. “Remember how strict our gun laws are. Also remember that D.C. isn’t fucking Tombstone.”
“Yeah,” said Du Pré.
“If you can find him, I’ll take care of the rest,” said Michelle.
“I am very confused,” said Du Pré, “which is a good sign.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh,” said Du Pré. “It means maybe Benetsee will help me out.” He didn’t mention anything that Benetsee had already told him.
“Well,” said Du Pré, “how is that Bart?”
“He,” said Detective Leuci, “is a sweet man.”
“You let me know anything else?” said Du Pré.
“If you will do the same,” said Michelle. She was reading him.
“Okay,” said Du Pré. “Benetsee said he saw the man who mangled that bird. He wore moccasins.”
Detective Leuci was very silent.
“I have been thinking it is not Chase,” said Du Pré. “He is too weak.”
More silence.
“So you are not telling me everything, either,” said Du Pré.
“I can’t,” said Michelle.
“Okay,” said Du Pré. “But if you don’t tell me and it puts my people here in danger, I will be very angry.”
“Call me at home after eleven my time,” said Detective Leuci.
She hung up.
Du Pré walked out to the kitchen.
“I got to go to my place a little while, look for something,” he said, “You feed your kids and I take you out, big fun, a cheeseburger and some pink wine, maybe french fries.”
“It is Friday, Du Pré,” said Madelaine. “Tonight they have some fish and the prime rib, you know.”
Du Pré had forgotten what day of the week it was.
“Okay,” he said. “You can be Catholic and have the fish and I will have the prime rib.”
“I am not that kind of Catholic,” said Madelaine. “My God don’t worry about what you eat, just what’s in your heart.” She was chopping cabbage for coleslaw.
Du Pré went out to his old car and started it and drove out to his place. He hadn’t been there in over six weeks, but it was spruce and well tended, his daughter Jacqueline and her man, Raymond, watched it. There was a light burning inside.
Jesus, Du Pré thought, even the windows have been washed.
And I need to talk to my Maria, too, I have forgot her off at that fancy college.
On Friday night, Maria would be off having some good time, Du Pré thought. I tell myself that, anyway.
He walked round back and opened up the long shed where the tools and workbench were. The doors slid open easily—that Raymond had oiled the tracks, too. The workbench was covered in dust marked with pack rat tracks.
The joists overhead were holding a bunch of slowly rotting wood crates. Du Pré couldn’t remember if they’d ever been moved since his parents had been killed by the train thirty years ago almost.
He dug round under the bench for a moment, but all he found were boxes full of little scraps of wood and cans of nails.
He went outside to the overhang and lifted a stepladder down and dragged it back in and unfolded it. The ladder was so old and the joints so weak, it was like trying to climb a staggering drunk. Du Pré caught hold of a joist and pulled himself up. He reached up and felt for the top of the box. There wasn’t one.
He hauled himself up farther and then he swung up on the joists. It was cramped against the shed roof. He started digging around in the boxes, which were dusty, an inch of dust, and crosshatched with old cobwebs.
The last box held what he was looking for. Well, it’s always the last box, yes?
Du Pré was sneezing from the dust. But he’d spotted Catfoot’s old leather-working kit, a sheet-metal box with a leather handle now completely gnawed away. He tried to haul the box back to the ladder, thought about it, and then just jimmied it till it fell through and crashed on the floor.
Dust blew up like the thing had a powder charge in it.
Du Pré swung down, held onto the joist till he leveled, and dropped the two feet to the floor. He went outside, sneezing, then back in and dragged the box out onto the ground. The air in the shed was half earth.
The fall had shaken things loose. Du Pré saw some rat-gnawed coils of old dried babiche, a folded half hide of reddish brown leather cracked with age, and the metal kit. He poked around in the withered scraps and couldn’t find anything like what he was looking for. The old shoes and boots and moccasins…had he given them to the church for the poor? It was so damn long ago.
I must have, he thought. I gave all the clothes to the church.
He remembered Catfoot making moccasin soles from the neck hide of bulls. Thick stuff, he cured it some way, not the babiche way, some other way.
There is something here.
Nothing.
Du Pré fiddled with the trunk latches Catfoot had brazed onto the sheet-metal box. He lifted the lid.
There was a pair of moccasin soles, grayish white and half an inch thick, already buck-punched off at an angle all the way around, ready to lace the uppers to.
The bottom of the box was a welter of leather-working tools, hole punches and needles and little knives and awls.
Du Pré piled all the old learner back in the box and took out the leather-working kit and then put the box in the shed and took the kit to his house. He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
He was all-over gunmetal and ocher from the dust.
He stripped and showered and found some clean clothes in his bedroom. Everything smelled a little musty and unused.
“I will drive fast and blow off the stink,” he said aloud as he got into his car, after putting the leather kit in the trunk. Madelaine was waiting, all pretty, wearing her red silk dress. They went down to the Toussaint bar and had supper. Madelaine drank some pink wine and Du Pré sipped bourbon. He was beginning to feel maybe halfway home.