Death Along the Spirit Road (29 page)
Read Death Along the Spirit Road Online
Authors: C. M. Wendelboe
Manny shook his head. “Never got the taste for it.”
“Suit yourself, kid, but why the visit? I thought you were an instructor at that FBI academy there in Quantico.”
He wanted to tell Horn he wouldn’t be in Quantico for long unless he found Jason Red Cloud’s killer soon. “Sometimes I get field assignments.”
“I know.” Horn’s grin showed a full set of perfect pearly whites, despite his age. “Whenever I hear your name bandied around, I remind people I trained you.”
“And you did well.” Chief Horn wanted his new officers to be aggressive and to enforce tribal statutes. But he also pushed them to demonstrate honesty and integrity. It was those virtues Manny learned as a tribal cop that he was struggling with now, and he couldn’t get his
kola
out of his head as the murderer.
kola
out of his head as the murderer.
“I hear you have a case right here on Pine Ridge.” Horn chugged his beer, placed the can between his large hands, and crushed it. He hollered and grinned at Manny. “The old fart’s still got some lead in his pencil, huh?”
“That you do, Chief.”
He peeled another can off the plastic. “You didn’t come here to jaw about old times.”
Manny brought Horn up-to-date on the Red Cloud investigation. Chief Horn possessed a fine analytical mind, and Manny hoped he could tap into that logic. “I think Jason Red Cloud’s death ties in with his parents’ car wreck.”
Horn slammed his fist on the picnic table. It bounced and came back to rest on all four legs. “That was no accident. I said so that day we found the car.”
“Why did you think it was deliberate?”
Horn opened the beer and took a long pull. He slammed it on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Those brake lines were cut. Not sloppy, so you’d know it, but professional-like. I had a repair shop in Gordon check it out, and they thought they had been cut, too.”
“You’re certain it was no accident?”
Horn leaned closer. “I investigated enough accidents through the years where the brakes had failed. Like LaVonne Drapeaux’s wreck that time, with the brake lines cut, not ruptured. Someone sliced those lines on that Red Cloud car.”
“Is the car still around?”
“That red Impala? Naw.” He picked up his beer and sipped it more slowly. He had come to the part of his story he was sure of, and didn’t want to rush it. “The crusher came through here a few years after that and bought up junkers for scrap, the Red Clouds’ Chevy among them. But they’d always kept their cars in top shape. Traded every other year. There’s no way those brakes could have failed.”
“Who would have wanted them dead, and who would know how to rig a murder to look like an accident?”
Horn shook his head. “I’ve asked myself those same questions a hundred times, and it’s always bothered me. Jason was the only one who profited from their deaths, but he never had a harsh word with his folks. AIM had more bitter enemies than the Red Clouds, so that was an angle I thought held the most promise.” Horn finished his beer and tossed it into a sack beside his chair. He reached for another. “As for who could have done it, any knowledgeable mechanic could have. It wouldn’t have been hard to pick a time to cut the lines, either. The Red Clouds drove to Scenic every Saturday night to play bingo at the Episcopal church. Anyone familiar with their routine could have picked that time.”
“What about my brother? Reuben was one of AIM’s enforcers.”
Horn stood and stretched. “I interviewed Jane Afraid of All two nights after the wreck. Reuben was on my short list of suspects, and Jane had the apartment below Lizzy’s. I thought if anyone knew if Reuben was there or not, it would have been Jane.”
“And she saw him there?”
Horn nodded. “Jane saw Reuben going into Lizzy’s apartment about sundown that night. She knew Reuben was there until morning because the bedsprings upstairs kept her awake half the night. Reuben couldn’t have killed the Red Clouds.”
Horn opened the beer. Manny declined once more. “Trying to cut the waistline some.”
Horn tilted his head back and laughed. “Kid, you get to be my age, you start worrying about that. For now, live a little and don’t sweat the small shit.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, Chief, not sweat the small shit. It’s this big shit—this Red Cloud murder—that has me puzzled. A lot of things don’t add up. Like Billy Two Moons’s murder.”
“How does that fit in?”
Manny shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t. But tell me what you recall about him.”
Horn set his beer on the table and leaned back. “Billy was a sneaky little bastard. He did a bit of everything, never for any length of time, just ’til he got his paycheck so he could make a run down to White Clay with the other alkies.” He rested his hands on his protruding belly. “You know, I condemned people like that back then. Now look at me.”
Manny let that pass. “What kind of work did Two Moons do?”
“Day jobs. Sometimes he’d help Harlan out at his shop fixing tires or doing tune-ups. Him and that other worthless piece of shit, Alex Jumping Bull. I threw the pair of them in my hoosegow for one reason or another about twice a month. When Billy was in jail, at least I got free tune-ups and repairs for the squad cars.”
“So Two Moons had some mechanical ability?”
“Considerable, though he was rarely sober enough to take advantage of it.”
“Was he ever connected with the FBI or the BIA?”
“Never, though we tried to turn him more than once, to get him to snitch for us. He wouldn’t bite, said he had another source of lucky bucks that would be coming due soon, and he didn’t need government money. Besides, he made it known that he’d join AIM if they’d have him.”
“But they didn’t?”
Horn shook his head.
“Then the rumor that he was an FBI informer was false?”
“Totally. But most folks thought he was a snitch anyway, like they thought Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash was a snitch.”
“But she wasn’t.”
Horn shook his head. “All that mattered is the wrong people thought she was. That’s another case that’s bothered me through the years. If I could ever have identified those women that hustled her from that Denver safe house, I would have been a step closer to nailing her killer.” He eased back into his chair, and the wood slats creaked beneath his weight. “But getting back to Two Moons, the weasel didn’t hang with anyone except Alex Jumping Bull.”
“Whatever happened to him?” Manny asked.
Chief Horn shrugged. “He disappeared the same time Two Moons was killed. I always thought Reuben was good for that, too, but he just wouldn’t come off it. Jumping Bull’s body was never found, and the Pennington County deputies searched that area around China Gulch for days, but came up short. I always figured some deer hunter would come upon his body at the bottom of a deep ravine someday. For all I know, he could still be alive still getting drunk somewhere.”
Chief Horn’s eyelids drooped, and Manny switched subjects to the old times, amazed at how sharp the old man’s memory was. They talked about their old department, and the growing pains it experienced following the AIM-BIA feuds of the 1970s. They talked about Lumpy, and Horn regretted not firing him before he retired as tribal police chief. The chief said Lumpy was a political animal even back then, and would get ahead by whatever means he could.
Chief Horn’s head nodded, then settled onto his chest. He woke long enough to say good-bye, and Manny left him sipping beer under the cottonwood as he stood quietly to leave. He wished he had Horn’s investigative talent. The chief had fingered Two Moons for the brake-line job, and with the Red Clouds’ anti-AIM stance, killing them might have curried favor with AIM members and they might have accepted him. And if that was the case, did Jason find out about Two Moons cutting the brake lines that killed his parents? If Jason learned that and then killed Two Moons, then Manny could lobby for a pardon for Reuben. Thoughts filled his head fast, and what he needed most right now was to feel well enough to put some miles in his running shoes—he needed to get into his zone to sort things out.
As he drove away from the Cohen Home he passed Nathan Yellow Horse’s truck. Manny watched in the rearview mirror as Yellow Horse got out of his car and started into the Cohen Home. He knew Yellow Horse would interrupt Chief Horn from his nap. And perhaps the chief would take care of Manny’s reporter problem for him.
CHAPTER 16
Manny pulled into the public safety parking lot beside Lumpy just as he grabbed on to his doorjamb and, with a grunt, pulled himself out of the car. He gently closed the door of his new Mustang GT, white and sporting-blue racing stripes running the length from the hood to the trunk, and sauntered to Manny’s car.
“What you here for, Hotshot?” The dark purple stain from two days ago was lighter. Lumpy put his hand over his cheek to hide it. “If you’re here for Willie, I can’t spare him today either.”
“I’m checking on any more lab results that might have come in.”
“None yesterday.” Lumpy grinned as he eyed Manny’s rental, then glanced back at his own car. “What kind of ride you got there in Virginia?”
“Nothing like that fancy machine you got, just an eight-year-old Accord. How long you had that?”
Lumpy smiled wide. “I got it last month. Still got the dealer tags on it. Why, you looking to upgrade?”
“Not me,” Manny said. “Guess we don’t get paid what you tribal cops do. I was just looking at those new tires. Kind of odd.”
Lumpy laughed nervously as if he had missed an important point in their debate. “What’s your point?”
Manny hung his head out the window, and looked down at the tires. “They’re new, just like those impressions of new tires we found at Jason’s murder.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Lumpy stepped between Manny and his car, as if shielding the Mustang from suspicion. “You implying something?”
Manny held up his hands. “Of course not. Just not many cars here with new rubber. That’s why it’s so important that old Crazy George’s car be processed, just in case those tire marks at the crime scene match his old Buick.”
“I’ll get Pat Pourier on it this morning.” Lumpy turned and tripped over his own feet, caught himself, and disappeared into the station. Manny had too easily convinced Lumpy that processing Crazy George’s car was a priority, but he had scant moments to savor his small victory when his cell phone rang. “Niles here. Good morning.” The Pile didn’t intend it to be a good morning for Manny. “How’s the investigation going?”
“Slowing.”
“I’m not surprised. What the hell you doing out there in the Wild West? Reports I get, you’ve been chasing skirts rather than chasing leads.”
“Don’t tell me: Lieutenant Looks Twice.”
“And a reporter for the local rag, a Nathan Yellow Horse. Seems like his paper is up in arms that you’re lovin’ this babe Sonja Myers, who landed an exclusive. How’s that going to look for the bureau?”
“Take a breath, Niles.”
And rub yourself with some Preparation H.
“I’m not sleeping with her.”
And rub yourself with some Preparation H.
“I’m not sleeping with her.”
“Bullshit! Yellow Horse says Lieutenant Looks Twice and you are feuding over her. He swears you’ve been dissing his paper because this Myers woman has been sleeping with the lieutenant, and you gave her a story to woo her back.”
“First I’ve heard about it. Look, the fact is that I’ve run up against a stone wall here. Actually, a stone wall would have felt much better.” Manny filled Niles in on what little information he had uncovered, and how his injuries from his two assaults had delayed things. “That sound like I’m having fun? How about you come out here. Give me a hand.”
Niles laughed. “You know I don’t do fieldwork.”
“Then how about sending a couple agents from the Rapid City office down here?”
“Can’t do,” Niles said. “Like I told you before, we don’t have any other agents with a background in Pine Ridge.”
“But Harlan LaPointe’s Lakota from Rosebud. I talked with him a couple days ago in Rapid. He doesn’t have anything on his plate right now.”
“But he’s not full blood,” Niles said. “He’s one-eighth Sicangu Lakota. That’ll just remind people there that he’s seven-eighths White, and he’ll get nowhere on Pine Ridge. But I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.” Then, after a long pause, he added, “I called you just as a friendly reminder that the academy begins in a week. And I need you to leave that woman alone.”
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