CHAPTER 6
Willie leaned over
and opened the cruiser door. “Let’s see the stitches.”
Manny slid into the
passenger seat and eased the bandage away from the side of his
head.
“Jeeza. You were
lucky.”
“Why the hell do you
always say I’m lucky? I get three stitches in my hand from some
damned dog, and more from some a-hole with a club, and you say I’m
lucky.”
“Could have been
worse.”
“Could have been
better—I could have kicked the shit out of them.”
“Maybe breakfast will
help.” Willie drove to Big Bat’s without waiting for an
answer.
Music blared from
speakers hung above the gas pumps: Waylon, Willie, and Johnny sang
about the “Highwayman.” Odd music to eat
breakfast by. Manny felt so out of his element here. He was
used to entering a five- or four-star restaurant at the least, with
the Three Tenors piped in to aid the digestion. Or live performers
drifting between tables taking requests to help set the mood of the
meal. Yet a part of him enjoyed this music and the rustic
atmosphere here. He was becoming comfortable with the
reservation—and that worried him.
With Willie and Manny
her only customers this morning, Angelica smiled as she recognized
him from the night with Lenny the loser. She handed the order slip
to an old, short, fat man in a sleeveless T-shirt sweating over the
griddle. They filled their coffee cups and took a seat facing the
street while they waited for their food.
“What’s so funny?”
Willie asked.
“Does it show? In
D.C., chefs prepare a work of culinary art. I forgot what this was
like.”
“You’ll be pleased
when Franklin there gets done with your order.” Willie jerked his
thumb to the cook, who wielded his spatula like a swordsman
limbering up his rapier. “Who do you figure for that little
souvenir?” He nodded to Manny’s head.
“That’s what I’ve
been wondering.” Angelica brought their food, and Manny waited
until she left before he took his first bite of the sandwich. The
sweetness of the sausage, the gooeyness of the cheese melted over
the egg that ran down the side of the bun surprised him. “Reuben
would be capable of this. He’s slung masonry hammers long enough.”
Pain shot through his head, and Manny tried to ignore the intense
urge to scratch at the stitches, so he occupied his good,
unbandaged hand with his coffee cup. Stitches always hurt the worst
for the first few hours, and he just had to keep himself busy and
distracted.
“When I talked to
Reuben yesterday, he was friendly enough. He even acted like a big
brother for a few moments, given that we haven’t talked in
years.”
Johnny Cash sang how
he would rest his spirit if he could. Manny put his sandwich down
and pressed a hand against his head, which was throbbing along to
the beat of the song. He wished he could join Johnny in resting his
own spirit this morning.
“Your brother’s damn
well unpredictable enough. He’d be at the top of my
list.”
“And who’s right
underneath him in the suspect cesspool?” Manny had grown accustomed
to bouncing ideas off his fresh mind. “There’s others here besides
Reuben who would love to see me gone.”
Willie dropped his
eyes. “Like Lieutenant Looks Twice?”
“You heard about our
discussion last night?”
“The jungle drums. Or
at least the reservation drums. One of the guys called me last
night after someone attacked you. Word is that you embarrassed the
lieutenant big-time here last night.”
Manny took small
bites of his sandwich. At least tiny bites didn’t aggravate the
pain. He washed it down with coffee before giving Willie the
headline version of the argument. “As far gone as he was when I
left him, I doubt Lumpy could have crawled to his own bathroom, let
alone stagger to my apartment.”
“He sure doesn’t like
you. He might have been faking it.”
“Might have,” Manny
agreed. Then dismissed the idea, since as a tribal cop he’d dealt
with enough drunks to spot a scammer. Lumpy was dead drunk last
night, and Manny would lay odds he was still drunk this morning. “I
don’t think that’s his style.” Lumpy would have played on his
panache and set Manny up on another unannounced press conference to
make him look like a boob. Or give some other reporters Manny’s
personal phone number to call and pester, as he had Sonja
Myers.
Willie refilled their
cups and sat across the table. “Who else did you talk with
yesterday?”
“Just your aunt
Elizabeth. But you two had supper last night.”
Willie shook his
head. “I was late for supper, ’cause the lieutenant dispatched me
to a call right after I dropped you off. When I finally got to Aunt
Lizzy’s, her note said she’d gone into the finance office for a
while and to help myself to tuna casserole. So I popped a plate in
the microwave and watched the Braves play the Phillies in a
twilight doubleheader. I caught the last half of the game. When it
was over, I crashed in the spare room. I couldn’t wait up for her
any longer.”
“What time did she
come home?”
Willie shrugged. “All
I know is that she was there when I got up this morning.” Then his
head jerked up and he dropped his sandwich. He leaned across the
table, close enough that Manny could smell the egg and bacon as he
spoke. “You don’t suspect her of attacking you last night? I know
my aunt Lizzy, and—”
Manny held up his
hand to stop him. It could have been a woman. It could have been
Elizabeth. But he had known her since they were teens, when she and
Reuben first became an item. More than former in-laws, she and
Manny remained friends. That, and she had too much to lose, with
her finance officer position, her status here on Pine Ridge. Yet
with the hatred of federal law enforcement still prevalent around
here, anyone could be guilty. When his attacker had bent over for
another strike before being frightened off, all Manny had seen was
the hood. His head pounded from the swelling that surrounded the
stitches, and the fresh itchy pain snapped him back to the present
and he fought to keep from scratching.
“I doubt your aunt
did it. I got more old enemies still living here that’d love a
piece of my ass than to suspect her.”
“How about that car
that tried running you over, that peckerwood that opened the car
door on you? When they didn’t get the job done the first time,
maybe they came around for another try.”
“I’ve thought of
that, too.” Manny sipped his coffee from the side of his mouth that
pulled less on the stitches. “I got the impression they were only
trying to scare me. They could have run me over with little effort;
when I get in the zone, I run with my head up my
rectum.”
“Jason’s killer would
want you dead,” Willie blurted out. “Somebody doesn’t want you
solving that murder.”
Their investigation
had stalled yesterday. Reuben’s interview had yielded little new
information. “We’re not much closer than when we started, but
someone must think we are.” Whoever thought he was close enough to
the truth was getting nervous. And dangerous.
They finished their
meal and stayed. They were on Lakota time now, in no rush. “What
did the investigating officer tell you?”
Willie grabbed a
spiral notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped pages. “Martin
Slow Elk said two young couples were walking toward your apartment
when someone attacked you. They saw you go down and started for
you, but Desirée Chasing Hawk beat them to it. She held you until
the paramedics came.”
“I didn’t
know.”
“Close. To her bosom.
Slow Elk said he couldn’t even see you when he ran up. All he saw
was Desirée Chasing Hawk bent over you and cradling your head. Took
three of them to pry her loose, but he didn’t mind.”
“Didn’t
mind?”
“Didn’t mind grabbing
her all over and pulling her away.” He winked.
“Did she see the
person?”
Willie flipped pages
again. “No. She came outside just in time to see you going down.
She saw what the others did: somebody with a hoodie running
off.
“The
couples?”
“Their description
won’t help much. It was dark, and they only got a glimpse. Short to
medium height, not fat. If there were no bulges under the
sweatshirt, that rules out Reuben.”
“Unless he was
hunkered over,” Manny suggested. “And none of the witnesses
recognized the runner?”
“None.” He stirred
creamer into his coffee. “Hoodies can cover a lot of sins. The one
thing they all agree on is that your attacker wielded that hammer
like it was an extension of an arm.”
“What else did Slow
Elk say?”
“Only that Ben Niles
called for you when the doc was patching you up.”
“Now what did the
Pile want?”
“He just left the
message that school starts in a week. What’s that
mean?”
“It means I’ll have a
permanent desk on some reservation if I don’t wrap this up in time
to start the next academy class.”
“Jeeza!” Willie
slammed his cup on the table so hard that it bounced off and rolled
onto the floor. He sprang from his seat and ran to his police car.
He returned with a manila folder under his arm, and dropped back
into the booth as he fumbled through the folder. Some papers fell
out, and Manny recognized one as an Oglala Sioux Tribal incident
report on a stolen car. It bore yesterday’s date.
“Stolen car
yesterday?” Manny’s eyebrows arched. Stolen vehicles should be big
news to a young tribal cop, and he wondered why Willie hadn’t
mentioned it to him.
“That was the call
the lieutenant sent me on last night after I dropped you off. I had
to run back out to Oglala. Crazy George He Crow wanted to report
his car stolen. So I took the report is all.”
“You don’t sound too
enthused.”
“I’m not. Crazy
George is one of our chronic bitchers. He’s always making some
harebrained report on something or other. Last night he wanted to
report someone stole his beat-to-hell old Buick at ten thirty night
before last.”
“Did he see the
thief?”
“See
him?”
“The car thief. He
sounds positive of the time.”
Willie laughed. “Oh,
that. Crazy George’s junkyard horse raised hell at precisely ten
thirty, he told me. That’s how he knows.”
“Junkyard
horse?”
“Mean-ass roan mare
of his. Got a hell of an attitude. Stomp a man quicker ’n Mike
Tyson. No one gets around Crazy George’s place without that mare
letting him know. Damned thing’s better than a watchdog. He’s
positive on the time.”
Manny finished his
coffee and reached for a cigarette in his empty pocket. Of course
it was empty. Would he ever get over craving a smoke at the end of
a meal, of reaching for a pack that wasn’t there? Just a drag. One
small draw from Mr. Camel. “But the thief was able to distract the
horse long enough to steal the car?”
Willie shook his head
and retrieved his can of Copenhagen. “The car was parked by Crazy
George’s toolshed. It’s outside the corral, so the horse couldn’t
get to the thief. Odd thing is the car was still there when Crazy
George woke up that morning.”
“Then why does he
think it was stolen? Did his horse whisper it to him?”
“Mileage,” Willie
winked. “Crazy George knows it was stolen because there’s exactly
two hundred fifty more miles on the odometer than when he drove it
last.”
“That’s a pretty good
memory.”
“Crazy George is
crazy,” Willie said. “Not stupid.”
Manny eyed the fresh
sandwiches. On cue, his stomach growled in mock hunger. He felt a
tug at his waistline from a belly bigger than he wanted, and passed
on another sandwich. Jenny Craig wouldn’t approve, and neither
would his side stitches when he hit the road tonight. “What’s all
the rest in that folder?”
“Lab tests,” Willie
answered. “At least some results are back on the homicide.” Willie
rifled through the papers. He licked his thumb, then turned a page.
Lick and turn. Lick and turn.
“You going to tell me
what the tests results are, or just watch me squirm?”
Willie dropped the
folder on the table and handed Manny the fingerprint report. “They
developed a set of partials on the handle of the war club,” Willie
pronounced as if educating a jury. “Five points on one latent,
seven on the other. Report says they appeared smudged and
unreadable.”
“Wiped?”
Willie shrugged.
“Can’t tell. Not enough points for an ID. But there was a second
set of prints.” He handed Manny another report. Twelve full points
had been developed on this second set, enough to identify a
suspect. “The lieutenant sent the prints into Pierre and faxed a
set to Quantico.”
“And the prints on
the blood around the handle?”
Willie grabbed
another sheet. “Unidentifiable, same as the other
set.”
“DNA?”
Willie laughed. “Here
on the rez? Now where would we get the funds for a private lab to
do DNA testing?”
“I’ll take care of
that. I’m certain the blood will match Jason’s.”
Willie stood to
refill both cups again when two girls walked into the convenience
store. “Han, sic esi,” one said to
Willie. She smiled as she passed him.
“Hau, hankasi,” he answered back, and matched her
smile. Willie’s glance wandered down to the girl’s tight
Levi’s.
He didn’t take his
eyes off the girls as he walked back with the coffee. Was Manny
ever that young? Not worried about what to do about his diet, not
worried about what to do about his nicotine withdrawal, not worried
about what the hell to do with himself when retirement came.
“Pretty friendly there.” Manny snapped his fingers in front of
Willie’s eyes. “Girlfriend?”
“Who, Doreen? Nah,
she’s in one of my college classes.” When Manny just looked at him,
Willie blurted out, “She’s a Big Eagle. Moved here from Crow Creek
this last year to go to college. She’s just a friend.”
“Well, you talk the
talk pretty good with her.”
“Margaret’s been
teaching me that, too,” Willie said, and leaned sideways around
Manny to watch the girls. “Besides teaching me the healing ways,
Margaret’s teaching me Lakota. She says if we don’t keep our
language alive, it will die as surely as the mazaska, the corn, dies every fall.”
Manny once sat across
from Unc at the base of a cottonwood, a blanket between them
holding their afternoon snack. They hiked the steep cliffs of
Buffalo Butte to gather elderberries that afternoon. “Tunska, if we don’t talk the talk,” Unc told him as
he addressed him in the traditional word for nephew, “we’ll be like
a man losing an arm or a leg. Our society will never recover our
heritage without constant stumbling.”
It was up to the
youth of each generation, Unc told him, to carry on traditions that
White people scoffed at, and Manny often regretted not keeping up
with his Lakota language. He intended to get back into it when he
was discharged from the army and working on the reservation as a
tribal cop. He’d even attended a Sun Dance that first summer to get
his mind right with the old ways. But when the FBI hired him, he’d
figured his Lakota language skills would be useless in Virginia.
He’d been wrong. As many times as he was assigned cases on
reservations, being able to converse in Lakota would have been
useful. At least being back on the Pine Ridge again was bringing
back some of his dormant skills.
“Why don’t you take
Doreen somewhere for a nice meal and a movie?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,”
Willie blushed. Manny laughed. The very large man in front of him
had turned into a shrinking, intimidated little boy, and Manny
empathized.
He let Willie off the
hook. “You said other tests were back.”
“So I can quote you
by saying Jason’s blood was found on the murder weapon? Along with
unknown prints?” Sonja Myers stood beside their table and sipped
delicately from a Coke cup. “May I?” She slid in the booth beside
Manny and scooted close. Her legs touched his, but he was as close
to the window as he could get.
“How did you know
where to find us?” Then he answered his own question. “I’ll bet
that nice Lieutenant Looks Twice.”
“Why, yes.” She
looked sideways at Manny, her flowing hair cascading down
her—what?—“bosom,” as Willie would say.
“We really have
nothing new …”
“Well, this is new.”
She reached for the lab report. Manny snatched it and jammed it
into the manila envelope. “We have nothing more. I can call you
when we do.”
“Look, Agent Tanno. I
got a job to do same as you. If I don’t give my editor something on
this Red Cloud case, it’s back to the mail room for me. Can you see
me exiled to the mail room?”
Be a damned shame to stuff her somewhere people couldn’t
see her. “I’ll call you when I have something I can
release.”
She feigned
disappointment, then smiled. “That’s a promise?”
“Promise.”
“Don’t force me to
look you up.”
“I won’t. But I’d bet
the lieutenant will have new information. We haven’t checked in
with him this morning yet.”
“You might be right.”
Sonja stood and smoothed her white blouse, and her eye contact
lingered a moment longer than Manny thought the occasion warranted.
“We’ll meet again soon.”
“Of course,” he
stammered.
Now it was Manny’s
turn to watch tight Levi’s walk away.
“You could ask her
out. A nice meal, maybe a movie.”
“I got other things
on my mind right now. Like the lab results?”
“Oh, yeah.” Willie
flipped through the papers until he found another page and handed
it to Manny.
“That stuff we
thought was sweetgrass? It was. And that leaf you thought was
cut-grass: It was.”
The report showed
that the material embedded in Jason’s trouser cuffs was concrete
dust.
“That’d fit your
brother.” Willie seemed to be reading Manny’s mind.
“Or it could have
been picked up on Jason’s pants legs when he was inspecting the
construction site. More people than Reuben work with concrete
around here.” What the hell was he doing, defending Reuben? Manny
dismissed it as being just the open mind of a trained investigator,
not a kola protecting his brother. “Who
else works around concrete?”
“Can’t
say.”
“Think.” If he could
get Willie reasoning on his own, one day he would be a top
investigator. And spare Manny another trip to places like Pine
Ridge. “Who else could have deposited this at the crime
scene?”
“The Heritage Kids,”
Willie said. “There’s six of them by last count. How do we narrow
it down among them?”
“Not so fast.” Manny
reached deep into his pocket and came away with a piece of
Nicorette gum to take the edge off his craving. Unless the gum could be rolled and
smoked.
“But they work
concrete all day.”
“Construction is
pretty common here. New foundations, footings for houses, curb and
gutter work. That doesn’t mean one of them killed
Jason.”
“I see your point.
Just one more thing to add when we put all this
together.”
“Now you’re
learning.”
Willie smiled and sat
a little straighter in the booth. Manny knew the praise of a senior
officer. His first pat on the back by Chief Horn had raised his
rookie head inches one day. It was the end of a long night, when
Manny had tracked a runaway boy from the Red Cloud School to the
edge of the Stronghold region. The kid had been a runner, but Manny
had humped these hills with Unc, and still ran when he got the
chance between work and college classes. When he caught up with the
runaway, the kid was as surprised as the rest of the officers were
when Manny returned to town with him.
“Oh, and we got some
info on the war club.” Willie smiled and spread papers on the
table. This time Manny allowed Willie to explain the report at his
own speed.
“The war club—which,
to the lieutenant’s chagrin, was an original—was stolen. Along with
other artifacts from the Prairie Edge store in Rapid City three
weeks ago. Forty grand worth.”
“When the other
antiquities surface, we might know more.”
“They have.” Willie
handed Manny a list of stolen Lakota artifacts dating back to
pre-1890: a bone whistle, a medicine pouch in the shape of a
turtle, a pair of beaded moccasins, a stunning pink and rose
colored star quilt. “All original. And all returned.”
“Returned?”
Willie paused as if
speaking to an anxious crowd. “The morning of Jason’s murder,
someone left them on the front doorstep of the Prairie Edge. They
were all stuffed into a Sioux Nation grocery bag,
undamaged.”
Returned undamaged.
Manny rolled that around in his mind. Someone stole forty thousand
dollars’ worth of artifacts, then just returned them. “Have they
been seized?”
“They have.” Willie
slid a pinch of Copenhagen under his lip, dragging his explanation
out like a skilled attorney. “Rapid City PD seized them. Detective
Harold Soske told me they developed some good prints from the bone
whistle, and some partials on the grocery bag. He’ll call if they
get a suspect.”
Manny stood abruptly.
He grabbed their paper plates and tossed them into the garbage. He
patted his pocket for his notebook, and checked his watch for the
first time since entering Big Bat’s. “You going to be on Indian
time all day?” he called over his shoulder. “I need to get some
work out of you today.”
Without waiting for
an answer, Manny walked to the patrol car with his hand on his
throbbing head to ease the itch in his stitches, grateful that he
had the case to take his mind off the pain.