Badlands (21 page)

Madelaine leaned against the wall.

“I go with you,” she said, putting on a heavy sweater she had knitted.

They went out and got in Du Pré’s cruiser and he drove out to the bench road. It was very dark. He put his high beams on.

A mule deer bounded across the road. The headlights flared red in its eye.

Du Pré turned into the narrow rutted track that led to Benetsee’s cabin and he drove up close and they got out. There was a lamp burning on the little table in front of the window.

Du Pré opened the door.

“Pallas!” he said.

Nothing.

Madelaine went past him.

“Pallas!” she said. “You come out now!”

Some of the clothes on the big shelf moved a little and Pallas looked out, grinning. She slid out. She had a little pistol in her hand.

Madelaine put her hands on her hips.

“Where you get that?” she said. “Give that, me, now.”

Pallas meekly handed it to her, butt first. Madelaine pulled back the slide. A bullet tapped on the floor.

“Where you get this?” she said.

“I find it,” said Pallas.

“In the box, the tractor,” said Du Pré.

“What goddamn tractor?” said Madelaine.

“The one the house,” said Du Pré. “It is for snakes, maybe mice you are plowing. Got birdshot, the shells.”

Madelaine pulled out the clip. She pressed the spring and five shells popped into her hand.

“Hollow points,” said Madelaine. “Birdshot, horseshit.”

Pallas was looking at the floor while she edged toward the door.

“Where you get these?” said Madelaine, holding out the .22 shells.

“Gopher bullets,” said Pallas.

Du Pré was trying to keep his face straight.

“You going to shoot, gopher, behind the clothes?” said Madelaine.

“I don’t know it is you,” said Pallas.

“Where is Benetsee?” said Madelaine.

“The sweat,” said Pallas.

Madelaine relaxed.

“You see him?” she said.

Pallas nodded.

“OK,” said Madelaine, “so what is this?”

Pallas looked up at her.

“Benetsee say I got to hide someone come,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

“Jacqueline,” said Madelaine, “him tell you, hide, her?”

Pallas nodded.

“Bullshit,” said Madelaine. “You … little shit. You got something, you are doing.”

Du Pré went outside so he could laugh.

“You answer me, you listen, me, you little shit,” said Madelaine. “I tan your ass, make coin purses out of it.”

“OK, OK,” said Pallas. “Ripper, well, what if he needs help?”

“Non!” said Madelaine. “You are ten!”

“I know that,” said Pallas.

“What you do? Shoot bad guys shooting at Ripper?”

“Maybe,” said Pallas.

Du Pré went back in. He knelt down.

“Look, you,” he said, “you are ver’ good that math. You want maybe go to a school, does that?”

“Sure,” said Pallas.

“We talk to Bart,” said Du Pré, “and we talk to Jacqueline.”

Pallas grinned.

“Johns Hopkins,” she said. “I go there.”

Madelaine looked down at the little girl. She looked at Du Pré.

“Baltimore,” she said. “It is ver’ close I hear to that Washington, D.C.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Come on,” he said, and he picked up Pallas and carried her to the cruiser.

Du Pré parked in front of his old house where Jacqueline and Raymond and their brood lived now. Pallas looked at her grandfather.

“You make a run for it, Grandpère,” she said. “I am that dead meat anyway.”

The front door opened.

Jacqueline came down the steps. Pallas got out of the car and slammed the door and Du Pré punched the accelerator and roared off, laughing.

He drove to Bart’s, and up the long drive. Someone was staggering down the road. Booger Tom. He had a hand to his head.

Du Pré stopped and got out.

“Bart’s gone,” said Booger Tom.

“Who?” said Du Pré.

Booger Tom looked at the blood on his hand.

“Can’t say,” he said. “I was sleepin’, you see.”

D
U
P
RÉ WATCHED THE
Host of Yahweh return. He sat in his old cruiser by the gravel road as the blue-and-white vans went by. New vans, with California plates.

He shook his head.

“Fucked, ain’t it?” said Ripper. He was wearing worn ranch clothes and had a battered hat pulled down low. “Not a thing we could do. Parker was in the goddamn
infirmary.
Best of care and all that. And the quacks in Billings can’t figure what the hell is wrong with her, other’n viral meningitis. She’s delirious.”

Du Pré spat out the window.

“How is Harvey?” he said.

“Shitting warty pickles,” said Ripper. “You know, shootout with eleven women up to no good, who kill themselves, and nothing in the truck or the van that ties them to anyone here. Yeah, obviously they belonged with this mob. But one of them owned the van and another leased the truck. We got dick. Squat.”

“What about the mine,” said Du Pré, “the weapons?”

“Oh, that,” said Ripper. “Well, the two guys were there are dead, the shit was all blown to hell, and … no way to prove that anyone in the Host knew it was there. They have lawyers. They have lots of lawyers. We just can’t arrest folks ’less we got a
reason.
Can’t just pitch the lot of them in the dungeon. I mean, they are
good.
They fuck up, they die. They make
themselves
die.”

“You don’t ask questions?” said Du Pré.

“Of course we did,” said Ripper, “like, these eleven murderous broads were coming here. Why?”

“They say
we don’t know,”
said Du Pré.

“They say that for a while, then they all scream HABEAS CORPUS and that is that. The stolen weapons were here, all right, trouble is we can’t prove they got here after the Host got here. We looked for any kind of evidence. Fingerprints. Hair. You blew the shit out of all of that, too.”

“Owner, the ranch, arrest him the weapons,” said Du Pré.

“Owner, the ranch, a corporation, officers unknown.”

“Unknown?” said Du Pré.

“Names,” said Ripper, “don’t match any of the names here. California, either. They have a place in Maine, too. North Carolina.”

Du Pré rolled a smoke.

“Parker,” he said.

“Parker,” said Ripper, “cute little blonde. Now she may not make it through. Viral meningitis, very nasty stuff.”

“How she get it?” said Du Pré.

“They gave it to her somehow,” said Ripper, “is how. But what it is we do not know. How they gave it to her we do not know. Why no one else has it we do not know.”

Du Pré nodded.

“So back they come. We did not find so much as an out-of-date
prescription
in there. I shoulda planted some evidence,” said Ripper. “I shoulda done it.”

“Like what?” said Du Pré.

“That was where I got stuck. I hear all the time how we jackbooted government swine plant evidence, convict innocent folk. So maybe I put a couple packets of heroin in one of their bathrooms or something. Then we arrest a few hundred people. Judge would love that. I can see that son of a bitch in Billings. ‘You clowns get outta my courtroom,’ he would say.”

Du Pré laughed.

“Tain’t funny,” said Ripper. “Usually, we deal with a low form of scum who can be persuaded to screw their buddies, for less time in the joint. Works real good. On them. These folks up and shoot themselves before we can start in. I mean, it is fucking seamless.”

“The White Priest,” said Du Pré.

“Ah, yes,” said Ripper. “Would that we knew who he
was.”

“You got a name,” said Du Pré.

“Sure do,” said Ripper, “and when we ask the nice computer for all it knows about that name, it knows only that Gary Carl Smith was born 9-21-48, has a Social Security number, and he’s never been in trouble.”

Du Pré waited.

“That’s
all,”
said Ripper. “Gary Carl Smith, if we got the right one, never filed a tax return, had a driver’s license, or bought a vehicle or property requiring deed or registration. Right away we figure that somebody is using Gary Carl Smith’s name, and that Gary Carl Smith lived just long enough to get a Social Security number. Somebody got his name and he has not been using it ever since. Thing is, there are no
tracks.
He gets the Social Security number and never uses it.”

Du Pré nodded.

“He is not, here in America, then,” said Du Pré.

“We thought of that, too,” said Ripper, “and by the way there is no death certificate for a Gary Carl Smith who fits. There are and were a lot of Gary Carl Smiths in America.”

Du Pré nodded.

“Sooooo,” said Ripper, “we haven’t the foggiest what he looks like, we got no fingerprints, dear old mother with baby pictures, high school yearbook, nothing.”

More vans went past. They all had heavily tinted windows. The people in them were vague shadows.

“The guys who were killed, the eight o’clock murders,” said Ripper, “we couldn’t find connections with the eleven women. I mean, man, this is fanaticism. Fanatics have to have a leader. A führer. They have to
see
El Máximo.”

“No,” said Du Pré.

“No?” said Ripper.

“This guy,” said Du Pré, “he got to have people put his tapes, the machine, say his words, get his messages. Those people, they are one step away, being the leader.”

Ripper waved away Du Pré’s cigarette smoke.

“OK,” he said.

“That is it,” said Du Pré.

“What?” said Ripper.

Du Pré shook his head. He started the engine and looked in the mirror and then he wheeled around and headed back toward town.

He drove up behind the saloon and went to the double room that Pidgeon was in. He rapped on the door.

Pidgeon opened it. Three computer screens were on, and there was a smell of electricity and perfume that wafted out of the door.

“Where is that Harvey?” said Du Pré.

“He had to go to Billings,” said Pidgeon.

“Call him,” said Du Pré.

“Talk,” said Pidgeon.

Du Pré shook his head.

“Come in,” said Pidgeon. “Send that one off to wash that crappy old car of yours. With a fucking toothbrush.”

“She looooooooovvvvves me,” said Ripper.

They went in. An air conditioner was humming and the air was cool and dry. Pidgeon motioned to a couple of chairs. Du Pré sat and so did Ripper.

“What?” said Pidgeon.

“I am not sure,” said Du Pré. “Tate, the guy who was in the robes, him, who are they?”

Pidgeon went to her files and pulled a couple of folders out. She handed them to Du Pré.

“Guys who are killed,” said Du Pré.

More folders. Du Pré went through them slowly. He nodded once or twice.

“I need to talk that Foote,” said Du Pré.

“You have a number?” said Pidgeon.

Du Pré fished it out of his wallet.

Pidgeon punched numbers in her cell phone. She put it to her ear. She looked at Du Pré. She handed the phone to him.

“Leave your message,” said Foote’s voice.

“I am at …” Du Pré looked at Pidgeon. She took the phone and said her numbers twice.

“I wish,” said Ripper, “I knew what the fuck was going on.”

Du Pré nodded.

“I am not sure,” said Du Pré, “but I am maybe right.”

“What?” said Ripper, exasperated.

The cell phone trilled. Pidgeon answered.

“Oh, you,” said Pidgeon.

She handed the phone to Du Pré.

“What’s up?” said Harvey.

“I think of something,” said Du Pré. “This Gary Carl Smith.”

“The White Priest,” said Harvey.

“You don’t know him,” said Du Pré, “what he looks like.”

“No,” said Harvey. “Guy’s completely buried. Invisible.”

“No,” said Du Pré, “him dead. He has been dead a long time.”

“Christ,” said Harvey.

“First place this Host of Yahweh has,” said Du Pré. “Christ,” said Harvey. “The Lucas farm.” Somebody banged on the door.

“I’ll see about it,” said Harvey. Du Pré shut the phone up.

Pidgeon went to the door. Booger Tom was standing there. He looked at Pidgeon appreciatively.

“Doo Pray,” said Booger Tom. “Where’s that fat wop?”

“T
HIS BETTER BE ONE
good hunch,” said Ripper. “One very good hunch.”

Du Pré nodded. He looked down at the Lucas place from a line of trees on a knee of the mountain. The green mercury lamp that threw light on the dirt turnaround between the house and the two barns and the sheds was blazing.

“Who answered the phone?” said Ripper.

“Mrs. Lucas,” said Du Pré, “said she had flu. Wasn’t feeling good. Lucas, gone to Dakota to look at a combine.”

“They haven’t got enough wheat to need one,” said Ripper.

Du Pré nodded.

“Harvey thinks you’re nuts,” said Ripper.

Du Pré shook his head.

“Bart is there, Tate is there, that other guy is there, couple more maybe. Lucases are dead, probably.”

“Well,” said Ripper, “I am going to wriggle down there and peek in the window.”

Du Pré shook his head.

“No,” he said, “we go to the ditch there, road passes by. They got to move, now, by this morning maybe they find Gary Carl Smith, then everything comes apart.”

“Yes,” said Ripper. “It do, it do.”

Du Pré looked back toward the county road. A pair of headlights was coming east on it. The car slowed and turned on to the ranch road. It speeded up.

“Right on time,” said Ripper.

“OK,” said Du Pré, “they maybe got some electronic stuff. We don’t get too close.”

“If they come out we get close,” said Ripper.

Du Pré nodded.

Ripper moved down the path quickly, young and agile. Du Pré kept up, hurting here and there.

The car pulled into the brightly lit area.

The cop cruiser stopped dead in the middle of the lot. It was not a terribly big lot, and electrical lines crowded one end of it. Benny Klein got out and looked around for a moment, then walked to the front door of the house and knocked. He waited for a moment and then knocked again, hard.

Du Pré and Ripper were a few feet up the hill, and they could hear Benny’s knuckles on the door.