No Mercy (13 page)

“I know all of ’em. I avoid a couple of these families.” His dirty finger traced Moser and Little Bear’s names. “Bad news.” Jake pointed to the top line. “What’s this Warrior Society?”

I told him Levi’s take on it, and his frown deepened. “Didn’t Levi talk to you about it?”

He shook his head. “You seem to think Levi and I had a relationship. We didn’t, beyond me being the hired help.”

“Think you can find out more?”

“I’ll try. Axel’s dad, Bernie, does all the repairs for the ranch. I’ll talk to him. Who are you starting with?”

I smiled for the first time in days. “The person I’m tracking down first isn’t even on the list.”

Discarded plastic toys competed for front lawn space with vehicles propped up on cement blocks. Broken swing sets were visible in spots through chain-link fences where trash hadn’t accumulated.

Mangy mutts tethered with heavy chains howled outrage at the dogs allowed to run free. A few shrewd-eyed kids watched me drive by, their hand-me-down bikes at the ready to peddle off. Not a lot of door-to-door salespeople schlepping goods at the Diamond T. Bill collectors and repo men mostly. Pity these kids could tell the difference at such a young age.

Rollie’s trailer was a double-wide on a double lot with an oversized garage. Last time I’d been here it’d had a pale pink stripe around the middle. Now the stripe was turquoise. Not a huge improvement.

Six vehicles were scattered around; an Olds Cutlass and a Dodge Durango parked on the street. An El Camino, a Ford Escort, and old VW Bug in the driveway. A Chevy Blazer on blocks under the drooping carport roof. No clue which vehicle was his. Didn’t know if he was even home.

I drove to the end of the road, four trailers from Rollie’s place, parked in the driveway of a 10x13 with a
FOR RENT
sign tacked in the front window. I jammed the gun in my back pocket, untucked my shirt, and hopped out of the truck.

On the set of wooden steps, I peered inside the porthole-shaped window, acting like a potential renter. Knocked for good measure. When no one answered the door, I reversed course. Avoiding a huge pile of dog crap by the propane tank, I made my way the length of the trailer.

Individual metal clothesline poles ran parallel to the barbed-wire fence separating the trailer court from Rollie’s horse pasture directly behind it. I hid in the shadows until I reached the house next to Rollie’s. The windows were covered, two with tinfoil, the rest with cheap plastic blinds. I didn’t hear a window air conditioner, a TV, or a boom box.

Suddenly I felt ridiculous. What was I doing, slinking around a trailer court? What had I hoped to accomplish by stealth? This wasn’t Iraq, where an ambush lurked around every corner.

I marched up to Rollie’s front door and banged on it.

The door cracked only wide enough for a girl to squeak, “Go away. We don’t want none.”

“I’m not selling anyth—”

She slammed the door in my face.

I rapped again. Harder.

The door flew all the way open and a very pregnant Indian girl, no more than seventeen, demanded, “Jesus. You deaf? I said go away.”

“Not until I talk to Rollie.”

“Don’t know who you’re talking about, lady.”

“Tell him if he doesn’t get his ugly ass out here in about a minute, I’m coming in after him.”

I heard the footsteps behind me.

“You ain’t in no position to be making demands.” The soft click of a hammer cocking next to my right ear was followed by, “You got a minute to get
your
ugly ass outta here.”

Rookie mistake.

I pivoted, grasped his gun arm with one hand, and threw him down. His revolver—a S&W .38—crashed to the ground and discharged a shot. The girl shrieked. I placed my boot on the back of the kid’s neck, twisted his arm, and aimed my Walther P22 at his head. “Tell Rollie I want to talk to him right now.”

Rollie’s raspy voice drifted to me before I saw him. “Still feisty as ever, I see.”

I briefly glanced over at his form stuffing the door frame. Besides wrinkles and gray hair, he hadn’t changed much in the three decades I’d known him. He was six feet two inches, 250 pounds, with long gray hair plaited into two braids. Despite his last name, Rollie looked Sioux.

One hundred and fifty years ago his horny French ancestors had traveled down the Missouri River as fur trappers, mixing DNA with the various Plains tribes. Although Rollie claimed he was 100 percent Indian, it’d never stopped him from betraying his own kind for a buck. Which was exactly why I was here.

He eased down the steps. “Let him go and I’ll talk to ya.” He crouched and spoke to the kid on the ground. “I’m cutting you some slack on your poor protection skills this time, Junior, because no way could you’ve gotten the drop on her.”

“Junior?” I said. “This is your son?”

“Yeah, one of.”

I angled my head toward the girl in the doorway. “So is that one your daughter?”

“No, I ain’t his daughter, I’m his girlfriend!”

Rollie sighed. “That’s enough, Verline.”

Girlfriend? Yowza. She could’ve been Rollie’s granddaughter. Not touching that one. Maybe Rollie and Mr. Pawlowski were setting an example for the local senior citizens on the benefits of Viagra.

“I almost had her,” Junior complained.

“Almost ain’t good enough.” Rollie spit a stream of tobacco at an anthill. It exploded into dust the color of powdered milk. “They still calling ya No Mercy?”

“Only once.” I released Junior’s arm. He scrambled away and scowled over his shoulder.

Rollie’s gaze met mine, but he wasn’t smiling. “You look just like her.”

Her.
Meaning my mother, Sunny Fairchild Gunderson. Rollie dated her before my father barged into the picture and “stole her away”—or so Rollie claimed. My mother swore it’d been love at first sight between her and Wyatt Gunderson. Consequently, there’d been no love lost between Rollie and my dad. The fact my mother had been killed by Rollie’s Thoroughbred—and Dad shot the horse upon discovering my mother’s body—only increased their animosity. Rollie had a soft spot for me. Probably because we both felt a measure of guilt over her death.

“Although you’re still acting like him,” he added slyly.

“Rollie. Never insult a woman with a gun.” I flipped the safety and returned it to my pocket.

He grinned. “So what brings you here, Mercy girl?”

“I need some information.”

“You know it don’t come for free.” He spun the cylinder on the revolver, dumped the bullets, and put them inside his beaded suede vest.

I traipsed behind him through the garage, dodging ratchet sets, wrenches, and crushed beer cans. We passed a disembodied welding torch and ended up at a resin table with a dilapidated umbrella. He settled himself in the chair in the corner between the garage and the crooked fence. I sat beside him. No way was I leaving my back exposed.

“How long you sticking around?”

“That a subtle way of asking if I’m selling the ranch?”

Rollie grunted. “You ain’t gonna sell the ranch.”

“You sure?”

“Yep. I know your dad. Bet he demanded some kinda ‘deathbed’ promise from ya, didn’t he?”

“I wasn’t here, remember?” I said tightly. “He died before I could promise him anything.” He’d died before I could say goodbye. That raw, grating sensation I knew would never go away coiled in my gut like a pile of old, rusty barbed wire.

“
Shee
, don’t matter. Wyatt guilted you into keeping your heritage long before he died.” He gave me a crafty smile. “John-John ain’t had no visions, telling what you oughta do?”

“No. Maybe I should talk to your brother Leon. John-John told me his
yuwipi
skills were in demand. Tell me. Did Leon reconnect with his Indian roots in prison?”

Rollie scowled. “Old fool. Between him and Verline, I can’t get a moment’s peace with all that claptrap. It’s driving me to drink.”

“You don’t believe in that woo-woo Lakota stuff?”

Absentmindedly he fingered the stone hanging from his necklace. “Be easier if I didn’t.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t matter. Ask your questions. I ain’t got all day.”

“Fine. What do you know about Judd Moser and Donald Little Bear?”

“Why you interested in them?”

Rollie had the uncanny ability to smell a lie, so I didn’t bother concocting one. “Initially, Estelle Yellow Boy asked me to poke around to see if Albert’s friends would talk to me about why someone might’ve killed him.”

“But now?”

“Now? It’s personal. Those two names I gave you keep popping up. Those boys started some kind of an Indian Warrior club. Albert was a member; Levi wasn’t.”

Rollie measured me. “Seems strange that Estelle would ask you to help her. You hiding investigating experience I don’t know about?”

“No. And don’t get pissy. I’m not looking to hang out my PI shingle. This is strictly a one-shot deal.” South Dakota was one of the few states where private investigators didn’t have to be formally licensed by the state. I could call myself a PI if I wanted, and Rollie or Dawson couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Which, near as I could tell, allowed me lots of leeway.

Ironically, Rollie considered himself a PI above all else, touting his “modern-day Indian tracking” skills. He’d work for anyone who could pay his hefty fees. As a council member of the tribe, he had access to people and information white people didn’t.

No matter how many times Rollie turned in his brethren, those Indians still confided in him. Some folks claimed he maintained files on every tribal member and their families, dating back decades. Others claimed he had spies everywhere on the rez and knew everything about everyone. So though he was generally reviled, no one dared cross him. Even my father had had to play ball with Rollie a couple of times.

“So you know anything about this group calling themselves the Warrior Society?”

He looked at me consideringly. “Not much. An elder heard a rumor some young punks were doing their own version of the Seven Sacred Rites. According to one of the kids who was there, they did ’em wrong, not in harmony with traditional at all.”

Even among Lakota people discrepancies abounded about which ceremonies were “traditional” to Native religion, and which ones were transformed after Christianity gained a foothold on the reservation. I knew a few, simply because Jake and John-John participated in the common ceremonies: the sweat lodge, vision quest, making of relatives, and the Sun Dance. The other rites, preparing a girl for womanhood, spirit keeping, and the throwing of the ball, weren’t as prevalent. And contrary to popular belief, the Ghost Dance, which played a part in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, wasn’t part of Lakota ritual at all.

“Who’s leading them?”

“I don’t know. I just know them rituals weren’t about dancing for healing or a prayer offered to the Great Spirit for guidance, it was more like a… sacrifice.”

“What kind of sacrifice?”

“Blood. Flesh. Tears.” His troubled gaze connected with mine.

I played devil’s advocate. “But isn’t that what the Sun Dance is all about? Men piercing their flesh? Crying to the Great Spirit as they dance in the sun? Then blood flows from the wounds after they’ve ripped away the sticks attaching them to the sacred pole?”

“That’s the simplified version, yes. But what I’m talking about is blood, flesh, and tears from
unwilling
participants.”

Chills tracked down my spine. “Like Levi?”

“I ain’t sure.” Again, Rollie touched the teeth and stones on his choker like it was a talisman. “You been to the rez and talked to them boys?”

“Not yet.”

An engine revved down the street. A woman’s screech was lost in spewing gravel and the thump of rap music.

“Lemme offer you a piece of advice before you go charging in. The only thing those punks understand is fear. Don’t think of them as kids; think of them as animals. Get the upper hand right away.” He chuckled. “But you don’t have no problem invoking fear in people, do you?”

I shrugged.

“I recognize the hardness in your eyes, Mercy.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I saw it in the mirror when I came back from Vietnam. That look will fade in time.”

“And if I don’t want it to fade?”

“Then your past deeds will eat you from the inside out until there’s nothing left but a bitter black hole where your soul used to be.”

Rollie summed it up better than the army shrink. But he was just as wrong. The hardness in me
was
the truest part of me. I’d accepted it long ago. Why couldn’t everyone else? I didn’t answer, merely stared at him.

“What’re you gonna do when you find whoever killed your
tunska
?”

“If you have to ask, Rollie, I haven’t made myself clear.”

He nodded. No judgment.

I released a pent-up sigh. “Is there anything else you know about the Warrior Society?”

“For whatever reason, there’s at least one adult tribal member helping them with these so-called rituals. Which is why it’s so disturbing that he’s teaching them wrong.”

“Any whispers on who the elder might be?”

“A couple. Paul Yellow Boy, for one, which was why I was surprised when you said Estelle asked for your help.”

No wonder Estelle wanted Paul kept out of it. But surely she didn’t suspect he had something to do with Albert’s death?