Death Along the Spirit Road (33 page)

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Authors: C. M. Wendelboe

BOOK: Death Along the Spirit Road
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“The reservation was embroiled with intrigue back then. Lots of things happened that year. Reuben was sent away for the Two Moons murder. Leonard Peltier killed Agents Coler and Williams near Oglala. Anna Mae Pictou-Aqash was found shot in the back of the head and dumped off a cliff. Bodies littered the reservation when AIM and Wilson’s men feuded in the years following the Wounded Knee takeover.”
“But why do you think she rented that box under an assumed name?” Willie pleaded, as if Manny could pluck answers for anything right out of the clouds.
Manny shrugged. “The only reason someone receives monthly checks for that long is a house payment. Or blackmail.”
“You mean Aunt Lizzy was blackmailing Jason and cashing his checks all these years?”
Manny sat and rubbed his head while he thought. “Clara told me Jason squandered his money. She discovered in the audit that he has been sending Clifford Coyote two thousand dollars every month. Hard to imagine Elizabeth blackmailing anyone, but she was active in AIM, and WARN. As an officer in Women of All Red Nations, she’d had access to inside information. Maybe she knew something that could damage Jason, or maybe she cashed that information in once he became sole owner of the Red Cloud Corporation.”
“Jeeza. There’s gotta be a logical explanation.”
Manny knew Elizabeth was as important to Willie as Uncle Marion had been to him.
“There’s got to be a good reason she rented a box under that name,” Willie persisted. “We just have to find her and let her explain it. I’m going back to her house and wait for her. She’s bound to return, then I can straighten this out. I just can’t see Aunt Lizzy doing anything illegal.”
Willie’s face twisted in anguish. When the man Manny idolized toppled from his pedestal, he knew the sorrow Willie now experienced. Once, Manny believed Reuben could never have murdered anyone. He stood by that faith until Reuben confessed to killing Billy Two Moons. Now, Willie’s world was turned upside down, and Manny knew that if Elizabeth were mixed up in anything illegal, her relationship with Willie would never be right again.
 
Willie called Manny’s cell. “She’s not back yet. She might’ve gotten wind we wanted to talk with her and wanted to avoid an embarrassing explanation.”
“Do you work today?”
“Yes, swing shift. I’d better get cleaned up.”
“I’ll check her house later. If she shows, I’ll give you a call.”
Manny hung up the phone and headed for Martin. If anyone knew where Elizabeth was, Rachael Thompson would.
 
Asking Rachael to betray her friend shouldn’t bother him, but it did. When he had arrived at Rachael’s house, Manny played the concerned brother-in-law, asking about Elizabeth’s well-being, worried since he hadn’t talked with her today. Rachael hadn’t seen her either, and they hadn’t gone shopping today. Or three days ago, like Elizabeth claimed.
“Maybe she’s running,” Rachael said. “She’s been training for this year’s Black Hills Classic.”
Manny recalled the running shorts hanging on the line that first day he visited her. She kept herself in top shape, and had looked as if she could run two marathons back-to-back. He left Rachael’s house with her promise to call him if she heard from Elizabeth, and he started for her house.
It had been three hours since Willie left Elizabeth’s house for work. Manny cleared the shelter belt and saw her Impala parked by the back door. Manny parked beside it and painfully stepped out. He used the handrail to step up on the deck. His ribs rubbed against the binding and sent sharp spasms of pain throughout his body, and his legs ached as much from driving the last hour as from the accident. He stretched against the house. Elizabeth’s clothes were drying on the line: two pairs of running shorts and sports bras hung beside a set of paisley sheets.
He knocked on the door with his good hand, and rapped again before he poked his head inside. “Elizabeth, it’s Manny.” He stepped inside and strained his eyes to see in the dark. “Elizabeth?”
In the living room that smell drifted past his nose.
Lilac.
He smelled lilac the night his car was rammed, and lilac when his attacker checked if he was dead, lilac when Elizabeth visited him in the hospital, lilac when she helped him stand in her office. The smell grew stronger. Someone watched him. A corner lamp clicked on.
Elizabeth wore running clothes drenched in sweat, and held a gun leveled at Manny’s midsection. Light bounced off dark eyes that held no emotion.
“Elizabeth. It’s me.”
“I know who it is.”
“Then put that gun away.”
“Can’t do that.” She took a step closer and raised a small revolver to his chest as she cocked the hammer. Manny’s firearms training classes raced through his mind. He knew that the chances of surviving a single handgun shot was ninety percent. Unless the small .38 caliber held the hot +Ps, which would do more damage when they struck. If he rushed her and she shot him, he might survive, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to cross the room before she got off a second shot, or a third. His ribs made it nearly impossible to breathe at times, and seeing out of only one eye made depth perception nonexistent. No, the odds were slim indeed that he could cross the room and disarm her before she pumped several slugs into him.
“What do you want, Elizabeth?”
“It’s too late to have what I want.” He listened to her voice as a trained interviewer would. She sounded hollow, onedimensional, with no warmth in her voice. The Elizabeth he knew was gone. The woman he now faced was used to imposing her will on other people—and getting her way.
“I wanted you to leave the rez that first night. You got too close and I tried to scare you off. I waited for you outside your apartment, knowing that if I used a hammer then somebody else would be blamed, somebody like one of Reuben’s little shithead Heritage Kids he’s always defending. You deflected my blow just like I thought you might, rolled with the punch, but that was OK because I really didn’t want to hurt you seriously. I just wanted you gone.”
Manny’s legs buckled, and he leaned against a chair. “But why?”
“Erica. You hung around and found out about Erica and Jason.”
“Erica and Jason what?” Elizabeth’s arm muscles tightened, and again he calculated his chances of rushing her. “Erica said there was nothing between them. They argued about Jason embezzling the tribe’s money. Not about an affair.”
“People will think the worst here on Pine Ridge. People always think the worst. They’ll think you covered her involvement because she’s your niece, and that would make us both look bad.”
Manny still leaned against the chair and stretched his calf muscles, slowly. Too slowly. Stalling. Could he make it across the room?
“People will say she was in knee-deep with Jason on his scheme to bilk the tribe out of the money. Her reputation will be ruined, her marriage will be ruined, her life will be ruined, and they’ll look at me like I put her up to it, and I’ll be ruined, too.”
Manny forced himself to stand upright, but his motions came agonizingly slow. Was this the fight-or-flight syndrome his instructors spoke about? It was the flight option that appealed most to him as his eyes darted to the door. Could he make it before Elizabeth reacted?
“Think about what you’re doing.” Manny tried not to sound as if he was pleading. But he was. “Even if you kill me and get away with it, it’ll stay with you the rest of your life.”
“Like that would bother me,” Elizabeth laughed. “Like I haven’t had to kill before. After all, I was in AIM when I was young, remember. What’s another body to bury somewhere?”
He watched her eyes. The telltale dilating of the pupils meant a shot was imminent, and he willed his muscles to relax, telling himself that tense muscles reacted slower. What were the odds of throwing himself away from the muzzle blast when it came? Elizabeth’s knuckles whitened. Gun arm outstretched. Muzzle hole swallowing Manny’s attention.
Someone shoved Manny hard from the side and he fell against a coffee table. Pain shot through his body as his ribs scraped his lungs, and he lay on the floor gasping for breath. Willie stood between him and Elizabeth. In the dim light, Willie’s black OST uniform blended with the background, but his face seemed illuminated by an outside light.
“You can’t do this, Aunt Lizzy.”
Willie glanced down at Manny. “The techs identified Aunt Lizzy’s prints from the stolen truck,” he said to explain his presence.
“Nonsense! My prints aren’t on file anywhere.”
“You’re wrong. Remember when you and the others were arrested in that Mount Rushmore occupation in 1971, the one time you were arrested and printed at booking.”
Willie glanced down at Manny. “I hoped to make it back here before things got this bad.”
“Step out of the way.”
“You can’t do this Aunt Lizzy.”
“I have to. He’ll ruin Erica with his investigation.”
“He’s only doing his job.”
“Right. The FBI has always ‘only done its job’ here on the rez.” Elizabeth shuffled to the side to aim at Manny. Willie stepped to shield him.
“Give me the gun.”
“Erica’s the only good thing that came out of my marriage to Reuben, and you want me to throw that away? And give up my finance officer position to boot? Never. Now move away.”
Willie stepped toward Elizabeth. “And what am I? We’re of the same
tiospaye
, you and I. What kind of person would I be if I allowed you to shame yourself by killing Manny? I won’t let you do it. You’ll have to shoot me first.”
Willie took another step toward her, and the muzzle of the .38 drooped. Another step, and she dropped the gun. Willie draped an enormous arm around Elizabeth’s shoulder and gently led her to his cruiser for the ride to jail.
 
“I owe you my life.” Manny and Willie had just spent the last four hours in the interview room listening to Elizabeth rambling. Exhausted, they shared a pot of coffee in the OST break room. The night shift was out on patrol or taking calls, so they sat alone. “She would have shot me, you know.”
Willie nodded. “I couldn’t let her do that. Even though she raised me, I couldn’t let her shoot you. I was only doing my job.”
“That’s right. He was just doing his job.” Lumpy waddled through the doorway and grabbed a chair. He turned it around backward, and draped his portly arms over the back. “It looks like we solved the case of the truck stolen from Reuben’s jobsite.”

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