Death Where the Bad Rocks Live Page 21

  Moses looked sideways at Clayton. “What good can come out of them?”

  “Jobs. Prosperity. Independence you have so long sought.”

  Moses looked to the west, to the saddle that protected the rocks on the other side, as if seeing the rocks through those huge pieces of earth. There was so much to think about, with his critters fighting to survive, the sour thought of having to travel to New York with his paintings, and now, Clayton piling it on demanding to be shown the rocks. And one very pressing matter. “I will show you the place where the bad rocks live, but I cannot show you them alone.”

  Clayton stepped back and looked up at Moses. “What the hell you mean, you can’t show me alone?”

  “I need help guiding you.”

  “Okay, get your help.”

  “Not just any help. I need Samuel. Out of jail with nothing hanging over his head.”

  Clayton’s jaw tightened and his lip began to quiver. “That’s bullshit! That’s blackmail. You’d blackmail a U.S. senator?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Damn it.” Clayton dug a furrow into the dirt with his boot tip. “All right. I’ll get Samuel out of that Pennington County lockup. But you have to promise to show me those rocks.”

  “You sound as if you think I would go back on an agreement.”

  “Just promise me you’ll show me as soon as I spring Samuel.”

  Moses smiled. “We will show you. Trust me.”

  CHAPTER 22

  “We’re headed to Cuny Table to meet up with Benny Black Fox.” The sound of the police dispatcher in the background echoed in Willie’s phone.

  “We?”

  “We. As in me and Janet.” Willie sounded as if he expected Doreen Big Eagle to ride up and deliver another verbal whipping.

  “But Marshal Ten Bears has agreed to take us right where he found Micah’s body,” Manny said. Marshal had found Micah Crowder’s body within walking distance from his cabin this morning.

  “Don’t think I’m not pissed over this. I planned to go with you, but these are orders from Acting Frigging Chief Looks Twice—orders that I take his niece along.”

  “Can’t talk him out of it?”

  “Not today. He’s upset that someone outbid him on that pair of Elvis boots on eBay and needs to take it out on someone. Who better than the man training his niece to be the next tribal investigator. Shit, here she comes. Wouldn’t do to get caught talking about Uncle Leon.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  The line went dead, and Manny called Pee Pee. He’d meet him at the justice building and go to the scene in the evidence van. Manny knew his limitations, and his ineptness behind the wheel. He’d trade Pee Pee’s sick graveside humor for a safe ride any day.

  “Come in here while Pee Pee’s warming the evidence van up.” Lumpy held his office door for Manny.

  “It’s one hundred degrees. What’s to warm up?”

  “Humor me.”

  Lumpy shut the door and dropped into his Elvis chair. The King wrapped his vinyl arms around Lumpy, who reached over and turned off his stereo. “Love Me Tender” faded into silence.

  Many waited while Lumpy fiddled with a pencil, making increasingly smaller circles on his desktop planner. The tip of the pencil broke and flew across the desk. “Willie. I just don’t know what to do with him.”

  “You got him meeting up with Benny Black Fox this morning.”

  “Not that. He’s not the same Willie that hired on.”

  “People change.” Manny stood and poured a cup of coffee. Lumpy waived it away.

  “People change, but not everyone changes for the worse. Have you seen how he wears his uniform these last months?”

  “So he hasn’t time to stop at the Laundromat.”

  “Laundromat? I can tell what the hell he’s had to eat for the last week by looking at his uniform shirt. And he’s got more bags under his eyes than Hillary Clinton.”

  “He mentioned he’s been having a hard time sleeping.”

  “You know what’s going on with him?”

  Manny shrugged. He wanted to tell Lumpy that Willie was having some prostate problems, but thought better. Young Lakota men didn’t want their private lives bandied around their bosses’ offices. And he sure didn’t want to mention Willie had taken up drinking lately. “Maybe it’s the stress of training his replacement.”

  Lumpy slammed the pencil on the table. “He better be able to handle stress like that or he won’t make it in law enforcement. There’s something else bothering him. I’m thinking he’s been having a hard time after his aunt Lizzy wound up in the state hospital.”

  “It didn’t help any that you kept reminding him she’ll never get out of there.”

  “He feels responsible.”

  “And what responsibility do you have? You pushed him…”

  “I didn’t force him into anything.” Manny stood and walked across the room. “He was an officer doing his job.”

  “He looked up to the legendary Manny Tanno. That was enough. Then to heap insult on top, you talk down to him like he’s a rookie.”

  “I don’t talk down to…”

  “You talk down to everyone, mister hotshot agent.” Lumpy turned to the wall, and Manny couldn’t tell if he was smiling at his victory or angry. “Guess you have to do that when you abandon your people and go to D.C.”

  “That’s about enough!”

  “Or what?” Lumpy turned and stepped closer. Even though Manny had trounced Lumpy every time they’d wrestled as schoolboys, Lumpy showed no fear now. “You going to beat me again? How about you try talking down to me?”

  Manny stood and walked around the desk, his knuckles whitening with each step. He took deep breaths and shoved his hands in his pockets. The hand with the cat bite shot pain through his entire arm. “Maybe I got into the habit of talking down to my students.”

  “That’s not right, either. You didn’t use to be such a condescending bastard.”

  “At least you don’t mince words.”

  “Did I ever?”

  Lumpy had always told Manny just what he thought. It had remained the one thing Manny could count on—even though it was often painful. “I thought you wanted to talk about Willie.”

  Lumpy nodded and dropped in his chair. He scooted it close to the desk so his short arms could reach across and shoved a notebook at Manny. “That lists the times Willie’s been late. And sick. And just plain not calling in when he’s supposed to be working.”

  Manny looked over the list. “What explanation did he give?”

  “He just shrugged. Said ‘like whatever,’ or something as vague. Even the threat of Janet replacing him for the investigator position—and I can tell you he wanted that job badly—can’t seem to snap him out of his rut.”

  “How about ordering Willie to talk with a counselor?”

  Lumpy shook his head. “I can’t mandate that.”

  “If he worked for the bureau, we could mandate it.”

  “Is that how you handle everything? Force people into it?”

  One fender of Micah Crowder’s blue Catalina jutted from one side of a short hill as if drawing attention to the car’s final resting spot. “I saw it when I was out this way gathering herbs.” Marshal Ten Bears pointed to a trail adjacent to Cottonwood Creek. “You can get there along that two-track.”

  “Hop in.”

  Manny climbed in back of the evidence van as Pee Pee put it in four-wheel drive. Marshal crawled in the front and directed Pee Pee along a shallow arroyo between two shifting sandstone spires. The van crawled over a rise and Pee Pee stopped beside the Pontiac. The driver’s door was open and a dark trail in the dust showed where Micah had crawled into some sagebrush and died. Flies seemed to hover over Micah’s body, their buzzing getting louder as the three walked toward the corpse.

  Pee Pee led the way with his camera in hand. He breathed in and held it for long moments before exhaling and smiling at Manny. “Don’t you just love the smell of maggots in the morni
ng.”

  Manny waited until Pee Pee had photographed the scene before he walked to the body. Manny squatted on his heels. Generations of flies had already laid their eggs, and the back of Micah’s head crawled. Pee Pee fished into his evidence bag and grabbed small vials and tweezers and began plucking the larvae from the body. “Collecting creepy crawlies. Want to help?”

  “I’ll pass.” Manny stood and moved upwind. “Looks like he got popped near his car and crawled the twenty yards.”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Pee Pee said, continuing picking larvae.

  “Know what he was doing out here?”

  “Haven’t the slightest,” Marshal said between a bandanna that he had covering his nose. “I haven’t been to my cabin in a couple days so I don’t know when he showed up. And he would have had to come past my cabin to get here.”

  “Get many people down this way?”

  “Hell no.” Marshal joined Manny upwind, while Pee Pee whistled as he collected bugs. “I get some hikers down this way now and again. Usually some damned granola-head from Colorado or some Californicator hiking this way to live the adventure only to get in trouble. They get this far before they realize this land is no joke. We get a few every year that end up like that poor stiff. But I never see someone trying to make it through here in a car.”

  “Wasn’t the land that killed this dude,” Pee Pee called cheerily over his shoulder. Manny stepped to the body and looked over Pee Pee’s shoulder as he attached a macro lens to his camera for a close-up shot. “Pretty good-sized hole in the back of his head. You want to see the exit wound, step around and take a look-see at his left eye.”

  Manny walked around and squatted on his heels. Except for the eye socket being disintegrated, the insects that had invaded the body as it cooled, and the blackened condition of the corpse, Micah looked just like Manny remembered him.

  “Ever see this car around here before?”

  Pee Pee whistled as he shook his head. “Never. But then I don’t get to the northern fringes of the frontier, as Elvis would have put it.”

  Manny turned to Marshal, still with the bandanna covering his nose. “Ever see this man before?”

  Marshal shook his head.

  “Micah Crowder?”

  Marshal shook his head again. Either he was telling the truth or, together with Joe Dozi, he was one of the best liars he’d had the misfortune to meet. “Should I know him?”

  “He used to be a policeman in Spearfish in the late sixties, early seventies.”

  “Don’t recognize the man.”

  Manny let it drop for the moment. “How long you going to be?”

  Pee Pee smiled. “At least until the sun is so hot overhead a new batch of larvae hatch.”

  “Pee Pee…”

  “All right. At least two hours.”

  Manny turned to Marshal. “Mind if we wait in the shade of your cabin?”

  Marshal grinned. “Sure, if you’re up to the half-mile walk back.”

  “I’ll pace myself.” He called over his shoulder to Pee Pee, “Pick me up when you’re through with your orgasms.”

  “Sure thing,” Pee Pee answered, whistling and rummaging through his evidence kit. Then Pee Pee always was a multitasker.

  They arrived at Marshal’s cabin fifteen minutes later. Marshal tossed his sweaty ball cap on an antler coat hook before he turned to the water jug and began making coffee.

  Manny dropped into a chair at the table and wiped his head with his handkerchief. Marshal’s one-room shack was neater than Manny had expected for being a seasonal dwelling. Two cots were suspended by a length of chain anchored to one log wall, handwoven blankets resting on the bottom bunk, mountain lion rug on the top bunk that served as storage for a sleeping bag, rifle, and camping gear. The north and west walls where the bunks were anchored had wood nailed over the exposed logs.

  “Keeps the wind out.” Marshal chin-pointed to the wood. “I don’t think grandfather ever had much mud chinking between these old logs. I don’t know how he survived winters here.” Marshal tossed a match into the Franklin stove in the middle of the room. The door clanged shut and the loud sound was lost somewhere inside the cabin, much like things—and people—were often lost to the Stronghold. “This and a few scrub cows were all my father left me.” Marshal waved his hand around the room. “’Cause that’s all Grandfather Moses left him.”

  “Moses Ten Bears must have been a busy man, what with running cows and tending to the spiritual needs of the Oglala.”

  “Don’t forget those visions he painted that made him exactly zero.”

  Manny ran his hand over the Pendleton blankets on the bunk. “You don’t sound too enthused with your lot in life.”

  “Not too enthused?” Marshal grabbed two metal cups from a cup rack on the table. “Why would you think that? Grandfather left my father, and now me, with this splendid Badlands getaway. Kind of a Shangri-la in the Stronghold.” Marshal kicked the wall beside the cots and mud chinking fell from the cracks between the logs.

  “I understand the Cultural Committee wants you to move this into Pine Ridge, in that lot by Billy Mills Hall so everyone can see how Moses Ten Bears lived.”

  Marshal chuckled and opened the door. He gestured outside. “That’s where my grandfather lived, out there in the elements. That’s where he gathered strength for his visions. Where he laid his head most nights.”

  “Then that’s what people would experience.”

  “They’re willing to give nothing for it. If it was that important to the Lakota, the tribe would pony up some bucks for it.”

  “Thought you wouldn’t sell it for any amount?”

  “I wouldn’t.” Marshal opened a tiny cupboard and grabbed two more “I’d turn down whatever the tribe offered. But they got to want it bad enough. Haven’t you ever heard that what you get for nothing is worth exactly what you paid for it? I might have donated it to the tribe if they’d offered a chunk of change. No, I think I’ll leave it here and enjoy the looks on people’s faces as they finally make it down here to see this shack where Moses lived.”

  “And near where he died? You think that was him in that car on the bombing range, don’t you?”

  Marshal turned away. “Possible.”

  “You believed it enough that you gave a DNA sample.”

  Marshal handed Manny a cup of coffee and motioned to a chair at the tiny table. He examined his own cup and the FREE ICE AT WALL DRUG all but faded beneath the broken handle. “One of those skeletons was large. Very large. It’s almost a certainty it was Grandfather. Not that you’ll be able to make anything of it.”

  “You don’t much like law enforcement, do you?”

  Marshal stood in the doorway and spread his arms across the frame, standing immobile long enough that Manny was uncertain if he’d heard him. When he turned back, Marshal’s jaw tightened, working muscles beneath into an angry mood. “Cops arrested my old man. Often. Tribal cops and those bigots in Rapid City.”

  “I wouldn’t say they’re racist. That might be back in your father’s day…”

  “It still exists. Point is, my old man went the way of so many of our people with the booze.”

  Manny sat at the table, moving aside last month’s Rapid City Journal. The corner of a crude map jutted out of the Sports section. A crude map with handwriting Manny recognized as Micah’s. While Marshal turned to the stove and refilled his coffee cup, Manny palmed the map. “Maybe your father needed arresting.”

  Marshal laughed, but his face remained taut. “I almost forgot—you were once tribal police. Dad might have been a mean drunk later in life, but he wasn’t when I was growing up. He was just a rummy that needed his hooch every day. There was no one to help him.”

  “Even back then there was AA. People he could talk to. If he wanted to get clean…”

  Marshal laughed again, this time his face softening as he remembered Eldon Ten Bears. “Dad knew about AA. He was proud he was just a drunk. Said if he was an alcoholic he’d need t
o attend all those meetings.”

  “And you blame the law for his addiction?”

  Marshal spit tobacco juice outside the door. He wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve. “Dad died in the lockup in Pine Ridge. I didn’t even have a chance to say my good-byes. He died while I was stationed in Germany.”

  “I was stationed in Germany.”

  Marshal glanced over his shoulder. “That the strategy—establish some solidarity with the one you want information from. That it, Agent Tanno?”

  “Just making conversation until Pee Pee finishes processing the scene.”

  “Then let’s cut the games.” Marshal closed the door and refilled his coffee cup. “You want to find out if I killed Gunnar Janssen?”

  “Then you do remember him?”

  “I guided him on a couple hunts when I was home on leave. At the time he went missing, I was a Spec Four drinking warm beer in Bonn.”

  Manny grabbed his notebook, his prop, from his pocket while he slipped the parchment map into his back trouser pocket. “Right now, I’m here to investigate Micah Crowder’s murder, but now that you mentioned him, let’s talk about Gunnar. Your army records show you were home on leave during the time he went missing.”

  Marshal laughed “So you think I lied?” Manny had interviewed enough people to detect nervousness in Marshal’s question.

  Manny shrugged. “Apparently. What other explanation is there?”

  “So now I’m a suspect? People make honest mistakes. I thought I was back in Germany when Gunnar went missing.”

  Manny flipped pages that had no writing on them. “You could have had the opportunity to kill Gunnar. Either lure him here to your cabin, or lead him off into the Badlands and shoot him. With something like that .22 hanging on your wall.”

  Marshal snatched the rifle from the deer antlers and turned toward Manny. The muzzle crossed his midsection for a brief moment before Marshal unscrewed the magazine tube in the butt. He tipped the rifle up and shells fell into his hand. He handed both the rifle and ammunition to Manny. “Lot of people here have .22s. Great hunting gun.”