Death Along the Spirit Road (5 page)

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Authors: C. M. Wendelboe

BOOK: Death Along the Spirit Road
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“Jeeza! No way! My job was to make sure no one drove up here and messed things up.”
“Then whose car made these tracks?”
Willie stepped closer, careful not to disturb them, and squatted beside Manny. “These are the tracks the evidence tech cast this morning. We didn’t know anything about them except they weren’t any of our outfits. What do you make of them?”
Manny’s reputation often caught up with the real-life Senior Special Agent Tanno. He knew Willie had read his case write-ups in the
FBI Bulletin
, because he was asking about recent cases on the drive up here. Willie asked about the child abductor Manny caught at the Rosebud four years ago, and about the serial rapist and murderer at Lower Brulé two summers after that. Those cases set him apart from other investigators, and made them look at him with awe. Willie expected him to conjure up some insightful analysis, like the tracks belonged to a 1999 Chevy Lumina, and the tires are R78x14 Firestones. With one bad shock and driven by a midget transvestite missing two toes. But Manny didn’t have any magic answers. “All I know is they’re new mud-and-snows. And by the clarity of the impressions, they haven’t been run very much.”
“Jeeza. New tires. That’ll narrow it down.”
Manny nodded. How many times had Unc sent him out to help a friend who had blown a tire? Everyone around here rode skins on their cars, and people called them “maypops,” because they may pop at any time. Manny called them “willpops,” because with cords poking through the treadless rubber of the tires, flats were inevitable. Even government cars rode baldies. Only high-ranking folks with some stroke had new tires.
“You know anyone around here running new rubber?”
Willie shook his head. “The lieutenant bought a new Mustang last month, and there’s a few other new cars I’ve seen now and again. Could be a rental. Bet your Hertz got new tires.”
“Bet it does. What else did forensics find?”
“Sweetgrass,” Willie answered. “I thought that was odd.”
“Sweetgrass is pretty common around here.”
“But not crushed up. Like someone conducted a ritual. That’s what Margaret uses in her ceremonies, crushed sweetgrass.”
“And nothing was said of the cut-grass?”
Willie’s smile faded. “What cut-grass?”
“Here.” Manny squatted and grabbed a spindly green stalk from the middle of the tire print where it had been run over and imbedded in the dirt. He touched the sharp slender leaf, and instantly blood appeared on his finger. “Now where does cut-grass grow in these parts?” he mumbled with his finger in his mouth.
Willie dropped his head. “Riverbanks. Ponds. Places that are a hell of a lot wetter than this place.”
“Well, we haven’t found the Holy Grail.” Manny nudged Willie. “Just one more thing to keep in mind, though. Now show me precisely where Jason died.”
Willie pointed to a spot three yards from where Jason had parked. The depression in the dirt was blown clear, but the large pool of blackened blood showed Jason’s position where he was killed. Manny knelt and ran his hand over the dirt.
Willie knelt beside him. “Find something?”
Manny looked into the light and studied depressions around where Jason had lain. Someone had walked around the murder scene to make those prints; their flatness stood in contrast to the deep V marks made by Willie’s boots. “These are shallow but they should have been obvious hours ago. Did the tech take a cast of any?”
Willie shrugged. “Not while I was watching them. What is it?”
“Shoe prints. Blowing clear pretty fast. They’re older than the tech’s footprints, and the soles are flat.
Hard to age
, Unc told him.
When the wind blows strong, tracks can fool you into thinking they’re older than they are.
Sometimes he and Unc would close on the animals they tracked, then let the animal go its way. Other times they killed the animal for the food, but always with a deep respect for the gift of its life. It had been years since he had to study tracks such as these, but something about these footprints gnawed at him.
“It’ll give you a chance to reconnect with your roots,” Niles had told him when he explained Manny’s temporary assignment to Pine Ridge. “Practice up on that tracking you are always so good at.”
“But I got a class starting up. I’ve got prep work I have—”
“Reconnect like you did a couple years ago when you went to the Rosebud Reservation.” Niles ignored him.
“Screw you. I got no desire to reconnect with my roots. Any more than I wanted to connect with my roots that time you sent me to Lower Brulé. Or Standing Rock. Or Crow Creek. You know Niles, if you had half a brain, your ass would be lopsided.”
“Now, Manny.” Niles smiled at him, and ordered another drink. “I am not going to fire you, so don’t get potty-mouthed. Just take the assignment, and solve the case so you can come back here and teach.”
“And wonderful Supervisory Agent Ben Niles will get the credit for solving the homicide. You might even get promoted for it.”
“I might. After all, a good supervisor knows how to assign his resources.”
Niles’s resource would now have to take all his knowledge of Pine Ridge and more to solve this case in two weeks before the academy started.
“Here’s another print,” Willie announced proudly. He ran his hand over a faint depression. “And one there, going in another direction.”
“You look at Jason’s shoes?”
“They were hiking shoes with Vibram soles. Not smooth like these.”
Manny stood and heard snap, crackle, and pop in his knees. He needed to get some road time in to work out the kinks. “Looks like the killer was worried that someone might come along and spot him. Looks like he turned all around. Watched everywhere while he waited for Jason.”
“Or maybe he looked around after he killed him.”
“That’s another possibility.” Willie’s chest puffed slightly. “In any event, the killer wasn’t worried about covering his tracks. These prints are so faint, the only thing I can tell about them is that they are big shoes. Maybe size ten or larger.”
Willie put his foot beside the track. “At least ten.”
“And Jason had Vibram-soled hikers so it wasn’t his.”
“I understand you knew him.”
Manny hesitated. “I knew him through my brother, Reuben. I was quite a bit younger than them.”
“The lieutenant said your brother and Jason were active in AIM together.”
“They were.” Manny had looked up to Reuben and the others in the American Indian Movement. Manny’s friends constantly prodded him for stories about Reuben, stories about AIM’s takeover of government offices in the name of Red rights, or stories about retribution against store owners hostile to Indians. Tales abounded of AIM Indians fighting non-AIM Indians who had sold out to the
wasicu
. People pressed him so much about his older brother’s exploits that Manny was often the center of attention himself. Lumpy wasn’t the only one who accused him of taking the easy way off the reservation rather than face the Lakota problem. Reuben had stayed and fought for Red rights. Too bad he chose to toe the wrong side of the line.
As a boy growing up in Reuben’s shadow, Manny adored his older brother. Until Reuben was sentenced to the state penitentiary for the murder of another Indian. Suddenly, Manny was a fifteen-year-old boy without a brother to show him the way to fight for his own rights. Manny always believed Reuben was innocent, but then he was found guilty for murdering Billy Two Moons. And Manny no longer had him to look up to.
“You hungry?” Willie finally broke the silence.
“Famished. Next you’ll be telling me Margaret Catches has you eating tubers or deer droppings. If that’s what you had in mind …”
“Not hardly,” Willie laughed and led Manny back to the cruiser. Willie grabbed a Budweiser cooler from the trunk and sat in the shade of the car. “Aunt Lizzy knew you wouldn’t take a break, so she fixed a late lunch for us.” They sat on the ground with their backs against the car and the cooler between them. Willie passed Manny a sandwich and a bottle of Hires root beer.
Before Manny unwrapped his sandwich, he grabbed his cell phone from his belt. Niles had left a message for Manny to return his call. Manny looked at the signal bars and frowned.
“They don’t work so hot around the rez,” Willie said. “There’s not many phone towers around here because the cell company thinks us Skins use smoke signals and don’t need cell service.”
“I thought the Apaches used smoke signals.”
“Might as well have been all the way down there for as hard as service is to get here. I can have the dispatcher place a call.”
“Naw. It’s just my boss reminding me about a new academy class in two weeks. He can wait. Now, let’s look at those crime scene photos,” Manny said between mouthfuls of turkey sandwich.
Willie reached through the car window, grabbed the manila folder, and set it on the cooler. Manny licked a bit of mayo from his finger before he opened the folder. The top photo showed the overall crime scene, including where Jason had parked his maroon Lincoln Blackwood and where Manny had spotted the tire tracks.
He placed the photo facedown and grabbed the next one. Jason’s body lay on the ground in front of the truck. Manny turned the picture to the light. A war club protruded between the skull plates at the top of his head. The stone head of the club was buried so that most of it was below the skull, with the shaft resting against Jason’s head. Manny knew about artifacts from a theft investigation on Standing Rock, but he was no authority on them. The single feather attached to the club’s shaft fluttered, animated because the wind had been blowing strongly the moment the picture was snapped. The effect made the scene come alive.
The next photo showed Jason’s head cocked toward the cameraman. The
hiakigle
, the teeth setting in death, grinned at the photographer as blood pooled beside Jason’s cheek in the dirt. Manny had examined many crime scenes and photos of scenes in his years as an investigator, but even he had to put his sandwich down and look away.
“Know anything about the war club?” he asked after a long silence.
Willie finished his root beer and grabbed another from the cooler. “It’s authentic. Lieutenant Looks Twice said I’m nuts. He said it was a good copy produced by some Brulé in Piedmont. I took a course in Indian artifacts last semester, and I told the lieutenant it was original, but he doesn’t believe me. He’s calling in some expert from the Rosebud to verify it.”
“Then if it’s original, it’s worth a bundle.”
“A big bundle,” Willie agreed. “So why would anyone leave it buried in Jason’s head?”
“You tell me.”
Willie put down his bag of chips. “How about our man’s wealthy and wanted to make a statement that money means little to him. Or maybe he didn’t know it was authentic.”
Manny nodded. “But why would the killer leave the club for investigators to find and process for latent prints?”
Willie paused again. “Maybe the killer figured he had no chance of being caught. Thumbing his nose at us. Taunting us to catch him.”
Manny nodded approval. “Or the club’s been wiped of prints. Or the killer’s never been arrested, and knows the prints wouldn’t be on file anywhere.”
“Or wore gloves.”
Manny agreed, and continued looking at the pictures. “What did your crime scene tech make of this?” Manny pointed to bruising on Jason’s left cheek and nose. “It’s apart from any lividity, and by the dark color it looks several days old.”
Willie grabbed the photo while he reached inside his shirt pocket and grabbed a can of Copenhagen. He put a pinch under his lip and offered the can to Manny. He shook his head and instinctively reached for the pack of cigarettes no longer in his shirt pocket. “Those bruises are old. Lieutenant Looks Twice and Jason got into a fight a few days ago when Jason was making unwanted advances on Aunt Lizzy.”
“Why would Lumpy jump to Elizabeth’s defense?”
“She says the lieutenant’s always had a thing for her.”
Manny grabbed another photo of Jason lying on the ground beside his truck. “Blood splatter here.” Manny pointed. Willie leaned closer. “And here. It shows Jason faced his pickup when he got clubbed. That would coincide with those faint footprints facing his truck.”
Willie opened his bag of chips. “How can you tell?”
“A blood pattern shows a lot, like where someone stood or knelt at the time the weapon contacted the body.” He pointed out blood on the door and seat. “He was clubbed as he faced his truck. Probably leaning in. Blood cast off here shows he was hit twice.” Manny ran his finger over the arc along the outside of the pickup where blood mist had landed. “Here’s where the killer cocked the club for a second blow.”
“Does that help us any?”
Manny shrugged. “Jason turned to get something from inside his truck, perhaps. Maybe he was running from his attacker and started to dive in? Who knows why victims or killers do the things they do. We may never know.”
Manny held the last photo to the light. A small revolver lay in the dirt several feet from Jason’s hand. “Was it fired?”

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