BART’S PLANE FLASHED DOWN out of the blue sky and onto the runway at the Billings airport.
Du Pré was standing with Madelaine, holding a bag and his fiddle case.
“Pret’ good for some ol’ cowboy from a place in Montana so far from anywhere, we got to pipe in the daylight,” said Du Pré.
They kissed. Du Pré walked toward the plane, which had turned around and was moving rapidly toward the terminal.
The steps came down and Du Pré went up. There would be a few minutes delay, but the pilot had an errand in Rapid City and would refuel there.
Du Pré was alone in the cabin. The furnishings were leather and expensive woods. There was a bank of telephones on one wall and a few complicated machines Du Pré didn’t recognize and wouldn’t care to.
One phone rang. Du Pré picked it up.
“Good afternoon,” said Bart, “I hope you have a pleasant flight.”
“I could have driven,” said Du Pré.
“I’d worry,” said Bart.
“Well, I thank you.”
“I bought a house,” said Bart.
Okay, Du Pré thought. Maybe the White House?
“It’s a nice house, not very big.”
“Servants.”
“Just one,” said Bart.
“A butler?”
“No, asshole, a housekeeper. I never learned to wash dishes. How’s Booger Tom?”
“Haven’t seen him,” said Du Pré. Which was strange, but then, Tom could get an itch and decide he’d like to be an old cowboy in Texas and that would be the last anyone heard of him.
“Is that Paul Chase around?” asked Du Pré.
“Yeah, I guess. They pulled the tails off him, you know. The guy is a crazy weasel, but, hell, not capable of murder.”
“He will be the next one killed, I think,” said Du Pré.
“Good,” said Bart. “Now I must ask why?”
“I just got this feeling.”
“Benetsee give you that feeling?”
“Yes, sort of,” said Du Pré. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll pass it along.”
“I suppose I got to stay in your house there,” said Du Pré.
“Of course,” said Bart. “The hotels are all full of crack dealers and lobbyists. Very noisy. I have a very quiet house.”
The plane’s engines began to whine. They said goodbye and Du Pré braced himself for the takeoff. The little jet was quick and fast and in moments they were at altitude and cruising. In the time that it took Du Pré to roll and smoke two cigarettes and look out the window a little, they were descending to Rapid City.
The pilot and copilot came back through the cabin and said that it would take about an hour. Du Pré followed them down the stairs. He found a bar and had a couple drinks and went back and waited for ten minutes. He was paged. He went to the gate and down to the plane and they were soon off.
Du Pré fiddled thirty thousand feet over America. Bart met him at the D.C. airport. He was driving a Land Rover. He was wearing a jacket and a tie.
Detective Leuci waved from inside the Land Rover.
Du Pré went with them to dinner to a very fancy place, so fancy that no one paid any attention to his jeans and boots and worn denim shirt.
“This place costs so much, they figure you have to be a rich eccentric to dress like that,” Bart explained.
“I am just an eccentric,” said Du Pré.
They ate good French food in tiny portions. Bart drank mineral water. The two of them looked happy.
“So,” said Michelle over coffee, “why Chase?”
“I just have this feeling,” said Du Pré lamely. He didn’t know why except he knew it was going to happen. Like he could tell from the air when a storm was coming even though the western sky was clear.
“It was Benetsee,” Du Pré went on. “He said I was looking in the wrong place. Not exactly said that…but…” But the old man had changed to a fox, a cat, a hunter coiled and stalking.
They left. The night was thick, the syrupy air clogged Du Pré’s lungs, made his skin feel oily.
Bart had bought a modest house in Georgetown, one with a high brick and iron fence around it. The gate opened when Bart pressed a button on the dash of the Rover. They drove into a spotless garage with a crimson floor. There were no signs at all that anyone lived there. No lawn chairs hanging, no stuff.
The house was spare and bleak, wood floors drummed, without carpets and furniture to damp them.
“I’m getting some more stuff soon,” said Bart, leading Du Pré through the downstairs. “I just bought it four days ago.”
Probably a half million, Du Pré thought. House here can cost two ranches where I am, I bet, maybe four.
They went into the living room, which had a sofa and a couple heavy stuffed chairs and a thick glass coffee table. Bart went to a pantry and made drinks.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette.
“Why exactly do you think Chase is in danger now?” asked Michelle.
Du Pré squirmed.
“Dreams,” he said finally.
“You have been having dreams about Chase being killed?”
Du Pré shook his head and cleared his throat. “No. When I am out hunting sometimes, I will…I always dream the deer before the deer comes a little. I can’t explain it very well.
Michelle lit a cigarette. Bart brought a couple soda cans to use as ashtrays.
“I’m…I don’t understand,” said Michelle.
“I know that I know the killer,” said Du Pré. “I know him if I see him. I will know him when he moves. I won’t till then. It is many things. When you go to track something, you are not just looking for footprints or the marks of hooves. You look at the country and see what isn’t right about it, something; sometimes you stare for an hour without moving. You try to see everything.”
“The killer was in…whatever that unpronounceable village was where you came out of the forest to the bay.”
Du Pré nodded. Benetsee had said so, he had felt it himself, and then there was the mutilated raven. He had gone over and over that scene in his mind and he couldn’t see what must be there.
Raven. Dead soul.
“I am very tired,” Du Pré said. Bart showed him to a bedroom. Du Pré undressed and crawled between the cool sheets. The air smelled canned from the air conditioner.
In the middle of the night, Bart came and shook him awake.
“They just found Chase,” Bart said. “Come on.”
Du Pré rubbed his eyes and willed his mind to rise.