CHASE WAS FACEDOWN IN the ornamental pool. The cops had brought lights and photographers were clicking away. An ambulance sat off a little ways, lights slowly revolving. Three cop cars doing the same.
It was after four in the morning and some workmen were still on the job. The music festival began the next morning. Du Pré walked away from the revolving lights. The sidewalks were well away from any cover and Chase was a good hundred feet from the nearest shadow, and it wasn’t large.
A big man in white coveralls carrying a tool kit walked past.
“Hey,” said Du Pré, “did these lights go out ever tonight?”
“Oh yeah,” the man said. “Somebody shorted everything out real good. Took us half an hour to get the damn things back on. I been here since seven yesterday morning. All so a bunch of goddamned hippies can listen to then fucking music.”
Du Pré laughed. Well, boys, there you have it.
He walked back over to the pool and the dead Chase and the cops.
Some ambulance attendants were lifting the body. They carried it to the edge of the shallow pool and set it down carefully on a black body bag. They climbed out, zipped up the bag, lifted it to a gurney, and wheeled it away.
An owlish-looking woman, huge glasses with pinkish frames and hair in a severe knot at the back of her head, scribbled notes in a small black notebook. She had a microphone attached to the lapel of her blouse and she was talking to it while she wrote.
Detective Leuci stood, her arms around her chest. It was hot. She wasn’t cold from the weather.
Michelle came over to Du Pré.
“It seems he was stabbed,” she said. “There’s a hole in his shirt, on the back, where the heart is. The ME waded out and poked it and she said the blade was still in him. Could feel the broken end, real narrow.”
Killing blade, Du Pré thought. You grind away where the blade meets the tang so when you stick the thing in somebody, you can break off the handle and leave the blade in and nothing to grab to pull it out.
“Guy said the lights were out for half an hour,” said Du Pré.
Michelle nodded.
“It’s the same man killed the others,” said Du Pré. “He was hunting Chase, then it got dark, and in he came. I wonder if Chase was running?”
“The building lights stayed on,” said Michelle. “The circuits out here were tripped and a big fuse fried. Why it took so long for them to get the lights back on, finding another fuse that fit.
“Well,” said Michelle, after a moment. “We know where he is, sort of.”
They walked back to the parking structure. Bart was sitting in the Rover. Too smart to follow Michelle around while she did her job. Du Pré nodded at him, half-smiling.
“I will know him this time when I see him,” Du Pré said.
I will know him when he moves. What Benetsee gave me is as good as a photograph of someone you have never seen. He will know me, too. Will he have a gun? So far, he has not used one. So far.
Thousands of people here. Wonder if my chanky-chank band will be here.
Least Chase can’t run me off.
He must not have had much of a life. Didn’t deserve one, either.
“Du Pré,” said Michelle, “You worry me. You can’t just kill this guy and scalp him. Then I’d have to arrest you. Christ, you people out there watch High Noon three times a week till you believe it?”
Du Pré looked at her a long time. He shrugged.
“This guy is crazy,” said Du Pré. “How many more dead people do you want, eh? You can have them, you know. When I find him, he will do something.”
“You don’t have a gun, do you?” said Michelle.
“No,” said Du Pré.
“We haven’t got enough to arrest anyone or we would have,” she said.
“When I find him,” said Du Pré, “I am going to crowd him till he jumps. That’s all. He will jump.”
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” Bart said, sensibly.
They went to a twenty-four-hour franchise and ate horrible food and drank weak coffee. The sun was coming up by the time they finished.
“I think I go and sleep for a while,” said Du Pré, “go over to the festival later.”
Bart dropped him off and he and Michelle headed back down to her office.
Du Pré crawled back in bed and fell into a rolling sleep. Dreams rose and sank. He tossed and writhed and the covers wrapped around him. Nonsense dreams full of dread he could not fathom.
He woke. He was on his back, looking at the ceiling, the last ephemeral scene clear in his mind. Benetsee and his bullroarer, on the rock.
Du Pré showered and put on fresh clothes. A linen shirt Madelaine had made for him, cool in this weather, cool as anything.
He called a cab and went out to wait for it. It was two in the afternoon. The heat and humidity pressed down on him. He was running sweat.
The cabbie dropped him near the festival. Du Pré walked to a ticket booth, paid, and went in, carrying his fiddle case.
He heard zydeco, began to move through the knots of people toward the sound. He couldn’t tell if it was the band he had played with last year.
It wasn’t.
He wandered on.
He heard the eerie trilling of the Inuit throat singers and went toward the band shell it came from. The crowd was small but marveling.
Du Pré found some shade but not any breeze. He squatted on his heels and waited.
The singers paused.
A man vaulted up on the stage, smooth as water flowing—flowing back uphill. Smooth as a cat gaining a ledge.
Du Pré sat, hunting.
The man was carrying a big bottle of mineral water. The Inuit passed it round. How miserable they must be in this heat.
Du Pré waited.
The man flowed back down to the ground.
He was wearing soft, high moccasins with a crosshatch lace.
Du Pré stood up and began to move toward him casually. He moved in spurts and jerks, from one knot of people to another.
The man was hunkered down, butt on his heels. He was with several Indians.
Du Pré knew all of them.
Du Pré slid up behind the little half-moon of people looking up at the Inuit.
“Hey, Lucky,” said Du Pré, face next to Lucky’s ear, “that Hydro-Quebec, they pay you kill those two little Indian girls, too?”
Lucky turned slowly.
Du Pré saw something red pass behind Lucky’s eyes, like a curtain drawn.
Lucky turned slowly on his bent toes.
He looked at Du Pré and his eyes were sleepy.
Then his hand moved and Du Pré felt something slice across his forehead. He flinched.
Lucky jammed a knuckle into Du Pré’s windpipe.
Someone screamed.
Du Pré couldn’t see. Blood was welling down over his eyes.
He stood up, trying to protect his throat.
People were yelling.
But he couldn’t see a fucking thing.