Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (5 page)

“You calling pizza delivery or something?”

“I wanted to tell Pee Pee to tow that car for evidence.”

“Don’t you think he knows to do that?”

Willie shrugged and drove slowly toward the rim. “Even damn cell signals don’t escape the Stronghold.”

“Then how do those people living down there call out?” Janet had leaned back over the seat and her arms brushed Willie’s neck. He made no attempt to pull back from her.

“What people?”

“Those ones living in that cabin down there.” She pointed to a cabin a quarter mile away nestled between a steep cliff and a creek washout. A shallow dirt road led to the cabin.

Manny grabbed his binos. The sun-bleached cabin showed gaps in the logs where mud chinking had fallen out over the years. A single smokestack leaned at an awkward angle, as if the constant wind had caused the metal to grow that way as scrub junipers did here. But the cabin itself stood straight and proud. “Just an old shack. Doubt if anyone lives there.”

Willie looked through the field glasses and handed them to Janet. “That’s Moses Ten Bears’s old cabin.”

Janet grabbed the binoculars. “Shit—that the cabin that belonged to that old dude who was such a good artist?”

Willie frowned at her while he took the binoculars and eyeballed the cabin again. “Moses Ten Bears was one of the last of the great Oglala sacred men, the last of the great
wicasa wakan
. Not just some old dude.” He put the glasses back under the seat. “Margaret Catches and I tried to find the Ten Bears cabin last summer.”

“Why would you do that?” Janet asked.

“We thought his
Sicun,
his spirit, might still linger.”

“If a sacred man performs the proper rituals,” Unc had told Manny one night huddled around the fire on the lip of the Stronghold, “the
Sicun
of another holy man will enter him, make his own power stronger. Sacred men need other
Sicun
to build their power. Only then can they give it away to help others.”

Manny had shuddered with the thought, as he did now, thinking of Willie studying with Margaret Catches to be such a sacred man, to possess power that would allow him to help those with Indian sicknesses, sickness of the spirit. Perhaps Moses Ten Bears’s spirit had lingered for so many generations waiting for the right holy man to take possession of his
Sicun
.

“Let’s hike down there and see what’s left inside.” Janet grabbed for the door latch, but Willie stopped her.

“That’d be trespassing. That cabin’s on deeded land that belongs to Marshal Ten Bears—Moses’s grandson.”

“How you know so much about it?”

Willie shrugged off Janet’s arm against his neck and started driving up the two-track. “The Heritage Committee tried to pressure Marshal to move his cabin into Pine Ridge Village last year. They wanted to make it part of their Heritage Exhibit, display it directly across from Billy Mills Hall. But Marshal told them to stay off his land or else.”

“That so?” Janet asked.

“’Fraid so,” Manny said. “Marshal told the committee he used the cabin now and again. Said his grandfather would have wanted it left right where it sits, there at the edge of the Stronghold. Or so my brother, Reuben, told me one night after a sweat. Marshal said if the money were right he’d sell it, though.”

“I take it the Heritage Committee told him to pack sand?”

Manny nodded. “In a polite way. They figure history they have to pay for isn’t history worth displaying.”

As they made their last half-mile ascent out of the canyon, Manny looked back down at the shack. Angry heat waves fought the wind for control of the valley, and for just a heartbeat the cabin disappeared. When it reappeared once more, a feeling of peace overcame Manny, as if he were welcomed to this place, as if Grandfather Moses welcomed them all and offered his protection from the Stronghold’s brutality.

Pee Pee shucked popcorn into his mouth as he waltzed through the swinging autopsy room doors. He stopped midstride, mouth agape. He looked odd standing there with his full set of teeth, bad fitting with a pronounced overbite, gawking at Manny. “You look like hell.”

“I feel like hell,” Manny said.

“Bad night?”

“Long night. Let’s just say there were no sheep left to count.”

“Clara?”

Manny nodded. “I think she’s trying to make me into an Indian Johnny Stud.”

“Poor baby.” Pee Pee handed Manny the bag of popcorn. He grabbed a handful, and Pee Pee flashed Janet a toothy grin. “How about you sweetcheeks?”

Janet shook her head, her eyes transfixed on the sheets covering the skeletal remains of the three victims on the autopsy tables.

“Might help your green.”

She ignored him and continued staring at the sheet.

“I’ll take some.” Willie sank an enormous hand into the bag and came away with half the popcorn. Some spilled on his uniform shirt but he made no attempt to brush it away, or cover the butter stain it made on one pocket. He leaned over and whispered to Manny, “This is my first autopsy. Do we help the doc or anything?”

“Just watch. Doc Gruesome will record everything.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “But you might keep an eye on Janet so she doesn’t hit her head when she faints.”

Janet jumped when the medical examiner came whistling through the doors. Doc Grooson slapped Pee Pee on the back and tipped an imaginary hat to Janet. He smiled at the sheet. “And who will we be talking with this fine morning?”

No wonder we call him Doc Gruesome.

“Don’t we have to mask up or something?” Janet stammered, moving away from the examination room when Doc Gruesome tossed the sheet aside. “Put on robes?”

Doc Gruesome grabbed the last of the popcorn and looked at the clipboard hanging from the end of the stainless steel table. “We would if we were talking with fresh bodies, but these have decomposed long before you were born. And gowns and masks would interfere with our snacks. Besides”—he winked at Janet—“I got a cultural anthropologist coming in from University of South Dakota after we talk with these three lovely souls.”

He crunched down on an old maid as he turned to the first pile of bones on the table. “Since you’re the first one found,” he addressed the body under the sheet, “You’ll be the first we visit with.”

He turned on the microphone hanging from the ceiling and smiled at Janet. “Just in case this fella says something memorable.”

Manny stood beside an elderly couple at the Burger King order counter. They glanced his way, bent and whispered to each other, then looked his way again. At one time, Manny would have felt flattered that they had recognized him, perhaps from a
Newsweek
article, or a CNN interview concerning some high-profile case he was investigating at the time. Now it just felt as if they talked in hushed tones about the Great Manny Tanno, solver of all homicides. Except the Red Cloud case and the one that dragged him away from his FBI Academy position and landed him this lovely transfer to the Rapid City Field Office.

Willie slouched beside him and ordered a Whopper and fries, ignoring Janet standing in line beside him, pale and silent since the forensic autopsy. Manny caught the wonderful odor of hot grease wafting past his nose, grease that all things tasty would be cooked in. He was about to match Willie’s order of a Whopper when Clara popped into his mind, and he ordered the chef salad instead. Extra pounds sneaking upon him to match his diabetes diagnosis made him think twice about ordering the good stuff. That and Clara’s scowling face popping into his head.

Pee Pee followed suit and grabbed a salad. “Out of solidarity for Johnny Stud.” He smiled as he drowned his salad with four packs of full-fat ranch dressing. “Going to eat yours?” He motioned to Manny’s cheese and crouton packs.

“And invoke the wrath of the Health Nazi?”

Pee Pee shrugged and grabbed the packets, doubling the cheese and croutons smothering his greens.

Willie picked at his hamburger and looked at it, nibbling at the outside. Even though he still presented an imposing figure, his trousers were now a size too big and his shirt hung loose over shoulders that slumped more often now. The old
Willie would have wolfed the burger down in two bites and ordered another. The new, depressed Willie just picked at it. Even visits to his aunt Lizzy in the state mental hospital couldn’t bring Willie out of it. And neither could Manny.

Janet nibbled at her Chicken Tenders. “How long will DNA take to come back?”

Pee Pee licked dressing that had leaked out of the small pack and settled on the web of his hand. “Depends. We’ll have it back from the FBI lab in a couple days if Manny can grease the wheels.”

Grease again. “I’ll overnight the samples today. DNA takes a while to come back, but I’ve still got some pull with the lab.” Manny stabbed his salad with the flimsy plastic fork/spoon combination, the spork, jail being the only other place in the civilized world where you had to eat with one of these fast-food instruments of torture. Manny prayed the spork wouldn’t break like it usually did when he stabbed salad. Greens always reminded him of cows grazing.
Wakan Tanka
had made him a Lakota, a carnivore, and he couldn’t imagine his ancestors sitting around the campfire and diving into a Caesar salad. But the ancients didn’t have Clara’s line of questioning to contend with at the end of the day. “I intend to wrap this up quick.”

“Why the rush?” Janet finally spoke. “The first body’s been in that car longer than I’ve been alive. And the other two longer than any of us.”

“I just want to piss Lumpy off.” Manny smiled at her. “I mean, Uncle Leon. He’s got it in his mind that this will keep me tied up for some time. For the record, I’d just as soon be a pain in his behind.” Manny knew that whatever he said in front of Janet would get back to Lumpy. That in itself was worth having Janet around.

Willie left the rest of his burger on the plate and stood for a soda refill. “That draft card we found in the first stiff’s wallet should get things rolling.”

“I’d just like to know what caliber the poor bastard was shot with,” Pee Pee said as he heaped more cheese onto his salad, making it slightly less calorie-dense than Willie’s Whopper. “Doc Gruesome said gray matter hadn’t leaked out, which meant the guy lived for some time before he died. A small caliber projectile, most likely.”

At the mention of gray matter leaking out of the victim’s skull, a young couple in the booth beside them squirmed in their seats. Looking like twins, with their cardigan sweaters and tweed gray golfer hats, they shot Pee Pee a worried look as if they shared a booth with Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer.

“Do they usually mummify like that?” Janet was coming around, shaking off the effects of watching her first autopsy. Or first three. “You’d think the badgers or coyotes would snack on them.”

The couple behind them left their remaining food on the table and hurried out, eyes darting to the booth they’d just escaped from. Manny eyed the burgers the couple left. Even used hamburgers appealed to him. “The dryness of the Badlands often causes bodies to mummify.” Janet leaned across the table listening to Manny and her hand brushed against Willie’s arm. “Probably the reason they weren’t snacked on was they all died in that car. Or at least all three ended up inside. Made it hard for predators to get to them. We’ll know when we look it over, but I suspect not every window shattered from the bombing nearby. By the time the elements ate enough of the car away where critters could get to them, the victims were too decomposed to be appealing to scavengers.”

Janet shook her head. “But I still can’t figure out the oldest two—how was it they were lying under the guy with the tennis shoes?”

“What’s puzzling?” Pee Pee finished his salad and patted his stomach. “Great to be eating healthy.” He got up and returned
within moments carrying a triple-decker hot fudge sundae. Manny eyed the sundae, envious of Pee Pee, not for his single tooth, but because he could eat anything and stay rail thin.

Pee Pee sat beside Manny, the ice cream inches from Manny’s salivating mouth. “The last two—or should I say the first two that died in that car—were long dead before passenger number three came along. By the looks of that whiskey bottle busted on the floorboard, I’d say those first two drove out there to pass the jug. Wouldn’t be the first time one of our people whiled away an afternoon sucking the sauce.”