Bitter Creek (12 page)

Chapter 23

DU PRÉ AND BART GAPED
at the floodlit gate that led from the county road to the bloody ground of Bitter Creek. Du Pré pulled over.

Several television stations had trucks there.

Chappie and Patchen were standing by an upended trunk that held a square of plywood, and on that were some folders and papers. They were both in uniform.

A young blond woman was holding a microphone to her mouth and speaking to a camera held by a man balancing it on his shoulder.

A generator purred off in the darkness, a cable snaked to some arc lights on stands near where the two marines stood.

Patchen had taken off his artificial arm and his left sleeve was pinned up.

Chappie wore his leg but not his eye. The scarred red mess the shrapnel had left glowed in the harsh light.

Du Pré stopped in back of one of the TV trucks. The doors were open and lights played on the inside from monitors.

Another crew from another station went to the two soldiers­ and another reporter, this time a young man, asked questions.

“I'll be damned,” said Bart. “Manipulating the media. …”

Du Pré laughed. He reached under the seat and he pulled out a flask. He had a drink. He put it back and he got out and rolled a smoke and sat on the hood of the cruiser.

Two of the three TV trucks were loading up and in moments they all were turned round and headed back toward the highway. Du Pré and Bart drove on into the lighted patch. Bart got out.

“Whose idea was this?” he said.

“Mine,” said Patchen. “I thought that if more people knew about what we were trying to do, there would be less trouble over doing it. …” Bart nodded.

Chappie was over by one of the SUVs, putting in his artificial eye. He took off his uniform and he put on jeans and a heavy cotton shirt and his boots.

The generator suddenly stopped running, the lights began to fade.

Patchen walked back from the dark, along the cable. He climbed into the SUV.

“Well,” said Bart, “I now own a massacre site.”

“Yes,” said Chappie, “one of the security people told us.”

“Where are they?” said Bart.

A dark-haired man in a dark windbreaker stepped out from behind one of the three SUVs.

“We're here, Mister Fascelli,” he said. “I'm Knowles and there are four more people here. Mister Foote called. …”

Knowles had a thin white wire running from his collar to his left ear. He stopped and half turned.

“Right,” he said.

He motioned to Du Pré and Bart to go to the SUV.

The last of the lights failed and it was dark save for the interior light in the SUV Patchen was in. Then it went out.

Du Pré and Bart walked to the dark vehicle and stood.

Knowles took a pair of night-vision binoculars from his jacket. There was a faint green light radiating from the lenses. He put them to his eyes and he looked across the road. “Yes,” he said, “I see them, two of them. …”

Du Pré leaned against the SUV.

“It's off Bart's land,” Knowles said, “but it would be nice to know who they are and why they are traipsing about in the dark like that. …”

Du Pré looked around under the starlight. He turned so he was looking out of the side of his vision. A movement, black to black, as something went from one shadow to another.

“Go,” said Knowles.

Du Pré saw another movement, this one near the road, just a flicker.

Knowles was still looking through the binoculars.

“Six. Sixteen. Forty,” he said.

More dark and silence and waiting.

“Be right there,” said Knowles.

An engine started and another SUV, this one large and black with dark windows, came out of the shadows in back of the now dead lights.

It went out the gate and straight through the fence on the far side of the road, the barbed wire parting with loud pings, and then the big truck lurched as it roared over the rough land.

Headlights and rack lights flared.

Du Pré glanced to his left and saw flashing blue lights, far away, cresting a hill, and then they were gone as the speeding police car dropped into a bank of shadows.

Two men leaped out of the rear doors of the black SUV and they grabbed at the ground, lifted up two people, hustled them to the SUV, and stuffed them in.

The lights went off, and the big truck turned around and roared back to the place it had torn through the fence. It crossed the road and pulled up close.

The doors opened and three men in black jumpsuits got out; they went to the rear of the SUV and opened those doors and pulled two men out.

Du Pré saw the flashing blue lights, closer now.

He walked to the men, standing now, blinking in the light.

Bonner Macatee and another man Du Pré did not know.

One of the men in the black jumpsuits held out a rifle, which had a huge night-vision scope on it.

“Russian,” he said. “They aren't too bad if you can get the damned batteries to keep a charge.”

He dropped the rifle on the ground.

Knowles looked at Macatee and his friend, just standing there now. The security men in the black jumpsuits had melted back into the darkness.

“Odd time to be huntin' gophers,” said Knowles.

Macatee looked straight ahead. The other man looked everywhere. He was scared.

“So,” said Knowles, “out for a little killin'?”

“I told you this wouldn't work,” said the second man. “Dammit, Bonner. Look, we was just going to shoot close, not at. …”

He looked at the blue lights, on top of another hill, a faint sound of a siren.

“Shut up, Clay,” said Macatee. “They can't do anything.”

Du Pré heard a clicking sound, metal to metal. He looked across the road. A man was stretching the wire back over the hole the SUV had cut through it.

Du Pré walked up to Macatee.

“What we look for, this will be found,” he said. “You should quit, before somebody gets hurt. …”

Macatee stared straight ahead. He would not look at Du Pré.

Knowles cocked his head, listening.

“Oh, no,” he said, “let him by. We don't need to get into a war with the local law. …”

The blue lights came up over the last hill.

The big SUV suddenly blazed with lights, and the cop car began to slow.

It pulled over to the verge and the siren died.

A huge bald man got out, big head and belly, thick arms. He reached in the car after he stood up and found a cowboy hat and he clapped it on his head. He walked very slowly over to where Macatee and his friend stood.

“Name's Rudabaugh,” said the huge man. “Sheriff of this county. I see you got Bonner Macatee, who I just happened to be lookin' fer. …”

“No law against being out at night on open land,” said Macatee.

Knowles lifted up the rifle with the Russian night-vision scope on it. He handed it to the sheriff.

“Bonner, you dumb son of a bitch,” said the Sheriff. “People get sent to Deer Lodge Prison, shit like this. …” He dropped the gun and stood on the scope, which crunched.

“Haven't done a thing,” said Macatee.

“Eleanor says otherwise,” said Rudabaugh. “Said you beat up on her. Got a good shiner, too. 'Gainst the law, Mac, so I am arrestin' you for assault. …”

The other man backed away from Macatee.

“Clay,” said Rudabaugh, “I 'spect you got one or another of your vee-hickles parked some hidden spot. I was you, I would go and find it and go on home. It's late and my acid reflux is painin' me and my temper ain't too good. …”

Rudabaugh reached out for Macatee's arm. Macatee pulled it away, angrily.

“Mac,” said the sheriff, “I don't want to have to break yer fucking neck but I will. Yer under arrest. Turn around and give me yer danged wrists or I will do it on the ground while I stand on yer neck. …”

Macatee breathed deeply. He turned and crossed his wrists, and Rudabaugh clipped silver handcuffs on, clicking them tight.

He took Macatee's arm and led him to the car and stuck him in the back.

Then Rudabaugh walked back.

“He ain't the only hothead round here,” said the sheriff.

“You know why we are here and what we are doin'?” said Du Pré.

“Oh, yes,” said Rudabaugh. “And as a matter of the peace, I wish you was not. Matter of right and wrong, I am glad you are. Easy for me to say, my people didn't get here till 'bout 1920. …”

“So what do you think?” said Knowles.

“I'm just the sheriff,” said Rudabaugh. “I don't think.”

He looked at Du Pré levelly.

“Hear you are good at figurin' things out,” he said, “but take care with this one, 'cause not everything is what it seems. …”

Du Pré nodded and Rudabaugh went to his cruiser.

Chapter 24

DU PRÉ STOOD BY THE
little creek, looking at the willows in leaf. A small breeze made the long thin leaves dance, and caddis flies wobbled through the air, pale brown and numerous. He looked down at the creek.

The bottom was clean now; a heavy rain in the night had run so much water over the stones they were scoured and shining.

He jumped over the little rivulet and he walked along the flat. A meadowlark flew up, flapped a few times, and settled back in the tall grass.

A cutbank rimmed the flat on the south side of the little creek. It was six feet high where it began, to the west, and came down to about half that at the east end.

There was an odd cut in the bank, one made a long time ago, about ten feet wide.

A ramp had been dug, and left to the weather, but there was little rain here and the land above the cutbank didn't cover much ground. Other low spines lifted up, not much water collected, so not much moved.

Du Pré saw something, brown, curved, thought it was a root. He bent over and he grasped it with his fingers. An old hayhook, one of the long ones the man on top of the rising stack used to reach down and grab bales and pull up. The steel hook was rusty. A few shreds of gray wood still sat in the socket of the handle. A brilliantly green beetle crawled out of a crack, opened its wing cases, flew away.

Du Pré walked up the little ramp.

He looked south.

A faint track, double, one made long ago by wagon wheels, the thin iron tires pressing down the earth.

The grass was new, the color of the grass on the track just a little lighter than the grass beside it.

Du Pré walked on to the top of the little ridge, looked out over the huge land.

Rolling hills cut with rocks and knees of reddish stone, odd banks of clay left by glacial lakes, compacted nearly to the density of plaster, cut only by the wind.

A few miles to the south there was a small line of big hills, and dark green foliage in their watercourses, deeper clefts than the rocks here had.

Du Pré looked up when a shadow passed overhead. A big vulture lazily floated along a hundred or so feet up, looking for the corpse of something.

Du Pré walked back, brushing the duff and some of the rust from the hayhook. He went down the bank, saw another hook, pulled it up. A long one, top-stack hook. He held them out, nodded. He sighed.

… pull a bale, pull a dead body on to a wagon … but they don't like it; when they are done they toss these over, don't want to touch them again …

He made his way up to the little bench. It was covered in lines made of strings and pegs and had little flags here and there, with notations on them.

A dozen people in shorts and many-pocketed shirts were down on the ground digging carefully with long awls, and when they found something, they carefully brushed the dirt from it, leaving it in place.

Chappie and Patchen were sifting soil through screens, then stirring the dust, picking out something here and there.

Du Pré made his way over to a white-haired man, whose skin was burned so dark by years of sun he looked as though he was made of walnut. His eyes were very blue in his dark skin.

Du Pré held out the two rusted hayhooks, light now with time eating at the steel.

“Uh-huh,” said the man. “In Vietnam the Vietcong used those to drag its dead to the river. Whack them into the back of the neck, made it easy to pull. …”

Du Pré nodded.

“They took all the bodies,” he said.

“No human bones here yet,” said the man, “just the leftover ordnance. But I can tell you what happened. The shooting started back there. …” He pointed up the creek.

“We found some old cartridges by that red chimney,” he said. “That was where it started, and then there were more back there. Some people had got in front of the refugees. They were trapped. Then the real shooting started, but it was up close. Several shotguns, the old shells, the ones that were all brass with a paper plug in the end. But then it gets odd. …”

The white-haired man nodded toward a folding table that had some large sheets of paper on it.

Du Pré followed him over.

“These are piles of thirty-forty Krag cartridges,” he said. “There are six of them, they are about twelve feet apart, they all held twelve cartridges but the two places you say you dug shells from. …”

Du Pré nodded.

“The other cartridges are a mix,” said the white-haired man, “and they are set as one would expect in a massacre where the killers were moving to get a better shot, or closer to the people who were hemmed in. But this group seems to indicate six men firing twelve shots twelve feet apart. …”

Du Pré nodded.

“And absent the bones,” said the white-haired man, “we are done here today. If we could find the grave we could find out more. …”

“They moved the dead,” said Du Pré.

“Obviously,” said the white-haired man. “And now we must move on. A site in Guatemala. There just seems to be no end of demand for our specialty.”

Du Pré walked up to one of the big green SUVs and he put the hayhooks in the back. He went to the big barrel of water, flipped on the spigot, and he washed his hands.

He moved to where Chappie and Patchen were sifting soil.

“I am going, go over to the roadhouse,” he said. “I have some things to think about.”

“This team is leaving,” said Patchen. “And we heard there will be a piece on this on the evening news—that right-wing idiot who was here last week. …”

“Yah,” said Du Pré.

He walked to the SUV he had driven down from the road and he took it as far as the gate, and then he left it and got in his old cruiser, which was too low to get over the rough ground.

He drove off with the windows open. The meadowlarks were trilling.

Du Pré rolled a smoke and he lit it and he speeded up.

When he got to the two-lane blacktop, he cut loose and he soon was going over a hundred. He slowed as he approached the tops of the hills and speeded up if it was clear ahead when he could see.

The hidden dell opened up when he got to the top of the last hill and he could see the roadhouse white in the green of the cottonwoods.

He pulled off the road.

A number of cars and trucks and SUVs were parked there, more than he had ever seen there before.

Du Pré sighed and he pulled the old cruiser round and he parked over the road, pointed back the way that he had come.

He looked at his watch.

Almost five.

He went in.

Heads turned, and people either stared or looked away.

Eleanor Macatee was behind the bar. Her eye was not so discolored now, but there was still a faint splotch of green where Bonner's middle knuckle had hit hardest.

“'Lo, Du Pré,” she said. “You know, we used to have meetings where we talked about what might bring the tourists …”

Du Pré nodded.

Half of the people in the bar were reporters.

Eleanor made him a whiskey ditch, and Du Pré put five dollars down, and after he drank that she made him another. He sat at a table, quietly drinking.

Clay, the man who had been with Macatee, sneaking through the night with the rifle, got up and went out in some hurry. Du Pré looked at his watch.

He went back to the bar and got another drink; he rolled a smoke and looked at the TV over the bar. It had no sound on; some talking head was mouthing words.

The little strip of news at the bottom said
Twelve US soldiers killed in Iraq
.

“You want the sound on, I can do that,” said Eleanor Macatee.

Suzette's round face appeared.

Du Pré nodded.

“My grandmama she is kidnapped, taken down to America, she die there, it is terrible,” said Suzette, “I am heartbroken. …”

“Why was she taken?” said the talking head.

“She knows, a massacre done there by American soldiers,” said Suzette.

“But there is no record of any such massacre,” said the talking head.

“She see it,” said Suzette, “it happen, 1910.”

The talking head smirked.

Chappie and Patchen appeared on the screen. They looked ill at ease and the wind was harsh enough so that they squinted. “A massacre occurred here in 1910,” said Patchen, “and we are trying to find what evidence might remain.”

“Who killed those people?” said the interviewer, the wind making her jacket flap.

“U.S. Army soldiers,” said Patchen, “we think.”

“In 1910,” said the interviewer.

The two talking heads appeared again.

“At a time when our troops are fighting in Iraq,” said one, “there are those who dishonor them. …”

“Outrageous,” said the other head. “It makes me sick.”