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“No,” said Du Pré, “I am trying to help him, he is too generous, some people take him for much money. He wants to help, he is a rich boy, I want him to know I like him even though he has got a lot of money.”

Pidgeon snorted.

“He is a good guy.”

“I like him,” said Pidgeon. “He has such a sad, sweet face. A middle-aged boy who is sort of bewildered by all the trouble the world causes itself and him personally.”

“Yah,” said Du Pré.

They rode silently the rest of the way to Sheridan. Du Pré got off at the first exit. He could see the Denny’s sign from the highway.

“We’re early,” said Pidgeon.

Du Pré parked the cruiser. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and he rubbed his eyes and he yawned.

He leaned back for a moment, eyes shut.

“Hey, Du Pré,” said Pidgeon. “Guess what? The Denny’s is being robbed. Hey, hey.”

Du Pré sat upright in a hurry.

“No sudden movements,” said Pidgeon. “That car, across from the door out in the street? The one that is running? With the kid at the wheel who is smoking like hell and staring at the front door. And I notice that though Denny’s is open and there are cars in the lot, I can’t see anybody in there. Bet they are all lying on the floor.”

Du Pré looked. Nobody was stirring in there.

“What you going to do?” said Du Pré.

“Have fun,” said Pidgeon. “It’s important in life, you know, to have fun. Real important. Most folks don’t.”

This Pidgeon, she reminds me some of that poor Corey Banning, thought Du Pré. FBI lady poor Packy killed. Some shit, that. Wolves. Balls.

Pidgeon had slid her gun out of its pocket.

She lit a cigarette.

“Oh.” said Pidgeon. “Tell you what. It is so against every Bureau regulation, do what I would like to do, that I’m gonna let you do it. Here.” She racked the slide and handed the Sig Sauer to Du Pré.

“What I don’t like to?” said Du Pré.

“I’ll tell Madelaine you wussed out,” said Pidgeon. “Oh, don’t kill anybody.”

“OK,” said Du Pré. He got out and he tucked the automatic in his waistband at his back. He walked across the little parking lot and down to the sidewalk beyond the decorative planting. The kid in the car glanced at him. Just a cowboy.

The kid went back to staring at the front door of the Denny’s.

Du Pré crossed the sidewalk and he went in front of the car and he stepped out into the traffic lane.

When a truck passed, Du Pré sprinted.

He walked up to the open driver’s window and he squatted down and put the barrel of the gun against the kid’s head.

“Don’ move,” said Du Pré.

The kid shuddered.

Du Pré reached in the window and he turned off the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition and he stuck them in his pocket. He was out of sight, behind the driver.

“How many friends you got in there,” said Du Pré, jamming the gun against the kid’s head.

“Two,” whispered the kid.

“OK,” said Du Pré. “What guns they got?”

“Couple pistols. Twenty-twos.”

“That’s very good,” said Du Pré.

Two young men came flying out of the Denny’s doors. They were each carrying paper sacks in one hand and little Saturday Night Specials in the other. They ran like hell for the car.

When they were twenty feet away Du Pré stood up and he fired one round into the sky.

“Down on the ground,” he said, lowering the gun.

One kid froze. The other stumbled and tripped and he went face-first into the side of the car.

Crump.

The other kid dropped the sack and his gun and he put his hands on the top of his head.

Du Pré opened the driver’s door.

“You get out now,” he said.

The kid did.

Du Pré prodded him around to the sidewalk. The kid who had hit the car was on his knees, holding his face, and blood welled between his hands.

Du Pré heard a siren.

Two cop cars came, lights flashing.

The cops screeched to a stop.

Du Pré waited, gun on the three young men.

O
H, THIS IS GOOD
,” said the Sheriff. He was a big, paunchy man with silver hair brushed back and squinted blue eyes.

Du Pré and Pidgeon were standing with him in the Denny’s parking lot. The thugs were on their way to the jail.

The manager was being carted away in an ambulance. He’d been so scared he’d had a heart attack.

The people in the restaurant were all over the parking lot jabbering at each other.

“Well, thanks,” said the Sheriff. “We know these boys. Two of them got out of the State Pen last week. Guess they weren’t ree-habilitated.”

He spat the word.

Cops know better.

“They were not very good at it,” said Du Pré.

The Sheriff looked at Du Pré. “Most of these assholes got IQs lower’n room temperature,” he said. “They ain’t rocket scientists. Once in a while there’s a bad guy has a brain but I don’t see many. ’Bout two in the last ten years, you don’t count the forgers and scam artists. Holdup guys and burglars ain’t too swift.”

Pidgeon was standing with them. She had on big aviator sunglasses with very dark lenses.

“We’re being rude, ma’am,” said the Sheriff suddenly. “I apologize.”

“Not at all,” said Pidgeon. “Could we go somewhere and talk, though? I have to fly out of Billings late tonight.”

“Surely,” said the Sheriff. “There’s a saloon a couple blocks away has decent food and no jukebox. How’s that?”

He drove them to it. A simple old brick building with MINT CLUB on a sign and no beer neon in the windows. The place was clean and old and a little shabby. Several old ranchers sat at the bar drinking red beers and chatting.

The Sheriff led them to a little back room with one banquette and one table in it. He threw his hat on the table and slid in one side of the banquette.

The barmaid came in.

“What’ll you have?” said the Sheriff.

“Cheeseburger,” said Pidgeon, “glass of soda.”

Du Pré and the Sheriff ordered fries with theirs.

“I don’t know that I can tell you much,” said the Sheriff. “I mean I don’t know more’n the skinny little ME’s report and a bit about the site.”

“Can you fax the full reports to me in DC?” said Pidgeon.

“Sure,” said the Sheriff. “When I get ’em.”

Pidgeon gave him a card.

“Well,” said the Sheriff. “Poor Susannah Granger. She taught typing and some home economics at the school in Billings. It was her first year. She graduated from Bozeman, Montana State. Strict Christian. Didn’t drink or smoke or run around. She had alcohol in her system, she was strangled to unconsciousness and then had her jugular cut, very carefully. The killer left her in the brush, legs splayed and a … uh.”

“She had something shoved up her vagina or anus?” said Pidgeon.

“A stick up each one,” said the Sheriff.

Pidgeon nodded. The little tape recorder sat there in front of her.

Their food arrived. Pidgeon picked at her cheeseburger.

Du Pré and the Sheriff ate like pigs.

“So you wanted to see where the body was found?” said the Sheriff.

“Changed my mind,” said Pidgeon? “Du Pré and me, we need to go on to Billings.”

Du Pré shrugged.

The Sheriff drove them back to Du Pré’s car.

“I’d like copies of the photos of the scene,” said Pidgeon. “How was the body found?”

“Pilot,” said the Sheriff. “He was just logging some hours for his license and he looked down and saw her.”

Du Pré wheeled back out to the expressway and he headed north.

“This is the first one that is fresh and not a young kid who is just in some sort of trouble,” said Pidgeon. “The bastard’s losing it.”

“OK,” said Du Pré.

“When a killer s pattern changes, even slightly, there is something going on with them. There’s something in Billings. Something else. Susannah lived with an aunt.”

They rode on to Billings. When they got there Pidgeon made several calls from a phone booth. She came back to the car with a map in her hand.

“She’ll see us,” said Pidgeon.

She read the directions to Du Pré. They ended at a trailer court. The trailers were neatly kept, and most had little redwood decks built on the back sides.

“Number twenty-eight,” said Pidgeon. “That’s it, where that blue car with the abortion-is-murder bumper sticker is.”

Du Pré pulled in behind it.

“Wait here,” said Pidgeon. “You’d just scare her.”

Pidgeon got out and she went to the front door and knocked. The door opened. Du Pré saw a fat woman in a pantsuit. A blue one. Pidgeon went inside.

Du Pré rolled a smoke. He reached under the seat and he found his whiskey and he had a good long drink. It was getting late. He was hungry. He had some more whiskey.

He looked across the drive. There was a little compact car sitting there. Blue. It wasn’t in any parking space by any trailer.

Woman must have a kid or something, Du Pré thought. It was closest to the trailer owned by the murdered woman’s aunt.

Du Pré had another cigarette.

He waited another half hour before Pidgeon came back. She was excited.

“OK,” she said. “Susannah was at a prayer meeting the night she was taken. After the meeting she did the church’s books—so it was past midnight when she left for home. Never got here. Then, this morning the police call and say they have her car, it was abandoned about a mile from here. Off on the side of the stem road. Not much traffic there at that time of night. There aren’t any fast-food places around. The stem road isn’t a main drag, you can get into or across town faster other ways. So they towed it here.”

Du Pré looked at the little compact car.

“OK,” he said. “So what we do.”

“I want to see if that car starts,” said Pidgeon.

She held up a key.

Du Pré took it and he went over and got in and stuck the key in the ignition and he turned it and the starter motor turned over but the engine didn’t catch. He looked at the fuel gauge. Dead empty.

No gas.

Susannah Granger had pulled over because her little car was out of gas. It was dark.

And somebody came along.

“Where this car when it was found?” said Du Pré.

“Dunno,” said Pidgeon, “but I can call and find out. I’ve talked to the cop handled the case here.”

Du Pré drove back out to the stem road and found a telephone booth.

Pidgeon was on the, phone for ten minutes.

Du Pré had a smoke and some more whiskey.

“OK,” said Pidgeon. “I got to get to the airport but I want you to find where the hell this place is, Spurgin Road.”

“We are on it,” said Du Pré.

“Oh,” said Pidgeon.

“What is the number?”

“One seven five four five,” said Pidgeon.

“It is about a half mile toward the airport,” said Du Pré.

When they got to the place, Du Pré pointed it out. A dirt parking lot in front of a long metal building.

WELDING SUPPLIES.

OK.

So she was coming home, he thought, and she pulled off there when she ran out of gas.

Du Pré went on, up to the rimrocks above the city, to the airport.

He helped Pidgeon carry her luggage in and check it.

“Thanks, Du Pré,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek.

“You come back,” he said.

“You find those pricks,” said Pidgeon. “You know how to get ahold of me. Or Harvey.”

“You tell Harvey hello,” said Du Pré. “Maybe he come out, we go hunt or something.”

“Harvey hates the great outdoors,” said Pidgeon. “He’ll go out in it, but not for fun.”

Du Pré laughed.

“But I will,” said Pidgeon. “You give my love to Madelaine.”

Du Pré nodded. Pidgeon went on up to the departure lounge.

He drove back down to where the car had been found. It was dark now. He got out of his cruiser and he switched on a powerful flashlight. He scanned the ground where a car might have rolled to a stop with no power.

It had rained here, three, four days before. Old mud puddles, dried now. Du Pré saw a piece of paper stuck in pale clay.

Folded many times.

Du Pré tugged it free.

FREE WILL EVANGELICAL CHURCH

A printed service.

Du Pré opened the pamphlet and he looked at the second page. He walked over toward his car and held the program in the headlights.

“solo … Susannah Granger …”

So she was a singer. In the church.

Wouldn’t sing for God no more.

D
U
P
RÉ SAT ON
the hood of his car. It was four in the morning. He was up on the Hi-Line at Raster Creek, waiting for Rolly Challis. Who said he would be there at four-fifteen. Du Pré rolled a smoke.

Guy drives this road so much he knows to the minute where he will be anywhere along it, Du Pré thought. Looking for whoever killed little Shelly Challis. Du Pré had some coffee from a steel thermos. He glanced at his watch.

He heard the thrummm of Rolly’s big black eighteen-wheeler. Du Pré was looking at the second hand on his watch when Rolly came to a stop and hit the air brakes to hold the rig. A minute early.

Damn.

Rolly stepped down from the cab. He walked on the balls of his feet, stretching his arms and back.

“Lo, Du Pré,” he said. He held out his hand.

“Yah,” said Du Pré. “Well, I don’t see the papers much. Your guy he doing any good work out there, eh?”

“Maybe,” said Rolly, “but nothing’s turned up. Guy dumps the bodies in places where they are found by accident. I guess that there are some more. Real hell for the families, was for ours.”

Du Pré waved the steel thermos.

Rolly shook his head.

“We had another down, Sheridan,” said Du Pré.

Rolly nodded.

“You know about it,” said Du Pré.

“Yeah,” said Rolly. “Schoolteacher, young. Saw a picture, not an attractive young woman. Christer.”

“Yeah,” said Du Pré. “Fundamentalist. But she is maybe older than most this guy kills on the old Great North Trail.”

“We got two. Well, I want ’em both,” said Rolly. “Hard to find, though. Thought I might be getting close, case in eastern Washington, but it turned out the girl was raped and murdered by her uncle.”