CHAPTER 11
“I know the crazy
coot’ll be there,” Willie insisted. He turned onto the road leading
to Crazy George He Crow’s secluded fiveacre lot. “You think this
ties in with Jason?”
“Remember what I
said,” Manny cautioned. He fingered his empty pocket for the pack
of Camels. “Whatever we find will be just one more brick in
building our case, nothing more. Certainly no smoking gun. It would
be a hell of a coincidence, though, and I don’t believe in
coincidences.”
Manny recalled the
lightbulb coming on last night when he returned to Pine Ridge from
Rapid City. He’d marked down the mileage in his government-issue
log book, as policy dictated. Give or take, the trip odometer of
the rental showed two hundred and fifty miles. Just about the same
mileage Crazy George said someone put on his car before they
returned it. What if someone made a round trip to Rapid City with
George’s car?
“And what if it had
been stolen? I’ll guess I’ll look like the ass.”
Manny smiled. “You
and every tribal cop that doesn’t take Crazy George seriously, but
don’t worry. Every agency has a chronic bitcher that all the cops
ignore. Just be grateful if this pans out.”
“I should have spent
more time on Crazy George’s complaint. Bet you didn’t screw up this
bad when you worked here.”
Manny laughed. “You
have Crazy George. We had Helen Afraid of Horses. And afraid of
everything else in this world. She complained once that her
neighbor’s cows ate so loud it kept her awake, and once that a
passing train caused her to grow plantar warts on her
feet.”
“We don’t have trains
here.”
“That’s what we told
her. Then one evening she called, convinced that the Soviets were
conducting weather modification right above her house as she spoke,
that they’d conjured up a tornado that was headed straight for her.
Our whole shift cracked up laughing when that call came in to
dispatch. That is, until we started getting calls from the National
Weather Service that a twister had touched down west of Kyle. When
Lumpy and I raced to Helen’s house, we found her shack scattered
over the prairie for a hundred yards in either direction. But no
Helen.”
“Where did they find
her?”
“Never did. Sometimes
I look up expecting the crazy old bat to drop out of some wall
cloud. Perhaps she just clicked her heels and returned to Kansas
with Toto.”
Willie laughed as
they neared Crazy George’s trailer, which sat at the edge of a
treeless prairie, a single-wide made in the 1960s, early 1970s at
the latest. One side had been repaired with free-for-the-taking
railroad ties, blocking out any windows that might have been there.
There was no propane tank, but firewood stood stacked by the door,
and duct tape covered two broken windows. The
poor bastard must knock icicles off his ass every winter trying to
heat that shack.
Crazy George hunkered
down drawing in the dirt with a long stick. When he saw the police
car, he grabbed the corral fence and stood.
Manny took in a
quick, short breath. George wore a plaid dress that stopped just
above his knees, and he teetered on high heels several sizes too
small. His hairy legs exposed below the dress made him look like he
was wearing a pair of woolly chaps. He used the stick for balance
as he picked his way toward the road in his elevated
shoes.
“He fancies himself a
berdache.” When Manny’s look failed to
register comprehension, Willie explained. “A cross-dresser. The old
ones used that term to refer to men who were dressed like women and
took on female roles. George thinks he’s the last of the
berdache cult.”
“I’d rather be
remembered as the last of something else besides a cross-dresser,
especially if I was as ugly looking as he is in that
getup.”
George bypassed
Willie and stopped in front of Manny, pausing to smooth his dress
before he spoke. “Who’re you? You’re too damned old to be a tribal
cop.” Crazy George held a stump of cigar between fingers stained
dark yellow.
“I’m Senior Special
Agent Tanno. FBI.”
George tilted his
head back and cackled while he looked sideways with the whites of
his eyes showing. Manny understood why people called him “Crazy
George.”
“Since when does the
FBI give a damn about an old man’s car?” He stepped close enough to
Manny that the stench of his sweat permeated the air between them.
“Don’t you guys usually investigate bombings? Threats to the
president. Fake money. Crap like that?”
“Your car may have
been involved in a murder.”
“A murder! Hot damn!”
Crazy George slapped his leg, and a wide smile spread across his
cratered face. “I told young With Horn here that my car was stole,
but he figured it weren’t. He figured that old Crazy George just
reported one more crazy thing. Didn’t you?”
Willie looked
away.
“I wasn’t here the
other day, Mr. He Crow, when—”
“Crazy George.
Everyone calls me Crazy George ’cause I see a lot. And report a lot
to these yokels.” He jerked his finger at Willie. “Not that it does
any good.”
“Let me see your
car.”
Crazy George’s skirt
fluttered as he sashayed around to the far side of his shed. As
they neared the corral, a roan mare nickered. She hung her head
over the top of the corral and pushed against the rickety boards
that bowed with her weight. She plowed the ground with one hoof,
and her teeth snapped as she stretched to reach Manny.
The mare’s eyes
followed his as she looked sideways at him, much like Crazy George
did a moment ago, and Manny knew she would stomp him if she could.
Unc had taught him some things about horses, and his inveterate
Lakota knowledge filled in the rest. He had not been close to a
horse in years, yet he knew this one would kill him if she had the
chance.
He often got close to
the mounted police horses in D.C., felt the need to stroke the
animals’ withers, to somehow communicate with them. But then he’d
always had a way with animals. He rubbed the stitches in his hand.
All right, except for the dog that bit me the
other night and this loony horse, I have a way with
critters.
“Don’t mind
Clementine.” George stepped to the corral and cradled the horse’s
head in his arms. “As long as you’re on this side of the fence,
you’re safe.”
George led them past
the corral to a barn with one side caved in from age. The collapsed
roof listed dangerously far to one side, threatening to fall over.
On the far side of the barn, George pointed to his old Buick. “I
don’t drive this here car much, but I do keep it running good. When
I do got to use it, I know it won’t leave me stranded along the
side of the road in the middle of a blizzard.”
Except for one faded
brown fender, and one door still in primer, the Buick’s sky blue
color showed shiny beneath a layer of fine dust. Manny walked
around the car. Tiny rubber flecks still stuck out of the
sidewalls. “New rubber.”
“Guess I missed that
the other day,” Willie said from somewhere behind
them.
“No harm.” Manny was
certain Willie wouldn’t make the same error again.
“What’s that you
say?” Crazy George blurted out. “No harm! The thief—the killer—has
two days’ head start on you. How are you ever going to find
him?”
Manny ignored him and
walked around the car again before opening the driver’s-side door.
Keys dangled from the ignition switch. “You always leave your keys
in the ignition?”
“Of course. No one
would ever steal a beater like this.”
“Until a few nights
ago.” Manny bent and peered inside. The seat was too far forward
for Crazy George, who towered over Manny and had a protruding belly
several inches bigger than his. If George drove it, he would need
the seat back farther than it was. “You drive with the seat that
close?”
“Hell, no. That’s
what I tried telling young With Horn the other day, but he looked
at me like a cow looking at a new gate.”
Out of the corner of
his eye, Manny caught Willie writing in his pocket notebook, taking
for gospel everything George said now.
“So the driver was a
lot shorter than Crazy George,” Willie announced.
“Not necessarily,”
Manny said. He stood up, and his knees crackled and popped. “It
might have been someone shrewd enough to know that seat position is
something we’d look for. Could have been a taller person who just
moved the seat up when they brought it back.”
Willie nodded and
wrote in his notebook before he looked in the car. He grabbed a
small SureFire from his duty belt and shined the light onto the
floorboard. “What do you make of that?”
Manny followed the
beam of light to a piece of leather under the brake pedal. He bent
and grabbed it. “A piece of leather thong,” he said as he held it
to the light. “Could be from anything. A moccasin thong. A choker.
Maybe a jacket pull. Could be used for most anything.”
Manny shined Willie’s
flashlight on the floorboard. He lifted the mat and picked up a
small, dried stem and held it to the light. “What’s
this?”
Willie studied the
foliage. “Peji wacanga. Sweetgrass.
Same as we found at the murder scene. This
significant?”
“You tell me.” Manny
used the car door to help him stand. He knew he’d have to lose a
few more pounds. “You’ve been studying with Margaret Catches: What
do you use sweetgrass for?” Like an attorney asking a witness
questions that he already knew, Manny wanted Willie to think on his
own. He had asked Willie that question at the murder scene, and now
he wanted to know if Willie had been thinking about it since
then.
Willie faced Manny
with that deer-in-the-headlights look, until finally his own bulb
came on. “Ceremonies. Sings. Just like Reuben said he was doing the
night Jason was murdered.”
“But Reuben isn’t the
only holy man on the reservation. Or holy woman. Sweetgrass can be
picked up most places a person walks in these parts. Someone could
have walked through sweetgrass before climbing back in the
car.”
“But Reuben lives
only a half mile from here.”
“Whoa.” Manny held up
his hands. “We don’t even know that this car was involved with
Jason’s murder. George has other neighbors that live close besides
Reuben. Call for a wrecker. Your evidence tech needs to process
it.”
“Just wait a minute.”
Crazy George stepped between them. “You’re telling me my car’s been
stole. But I got it back. Only now you tell me the police are going
to steal it again.”
“We’ll release it as
soon as we can,” Manny said. “Until then, maybe you can ride that
mare of yours around.” If you can find a
sidesaddle, he thought as he admired George’s dress flapping
in the breeze. Then he told himself he’d better be good to George:
with his own age and paunch going against him, this might be the
closest Manny got to a skirt anytime soon.