Death Etched in Stone

by C. M. Wendelboe

  She looked up at the ceiling. “Tony comes over now and again. Between trying his hand at ranching at that place of Kenton’s on Pine Ridge, and weekends in jail now and again, it’s been a few months. Neville’s a big shot attorney in Rapid, and I haven’t talked with him for years. We were just never as close as Tony and me.”

  “But Johnny talked with them?” Manny said.

  “I’d imagine so. Neville was his attorney. Though that old blowhard wouldn’t have needed a lawyer for anything.”

  “Then maybe you ought to speak with them,” Manny wiped chocolate frosting off his mouth, and it crumbled in his napkin. “Maybe they’ll let you stay. I wouldn’t pack up just yet.”

  “I’m getting out before they force me out. Now, if there’s nothing else.”

  They stood and started for the door when Willie stopped. “One other thing: How did Johnny usually dress?”

  “Damn fool always wore ranch clothes around here—Carhartts and work boots that didn’t have a speck of cow shit on them. He drove around visiting neighbors, Henry mostly. I think Johnny just liked to watch other people work. Once a week, he’d leave his ranch clothes here, get duded up in his best clothes, and head into town. He would have been a hell of a lady’s man if he’d remembered what to do with the ladies.”

  “Would you say he dressed impeccably?”

  “Like something out of a senior GQ. Only thing missing would be his designer Depends.”

  “Did he ever go without socks?”

  Della frowned, thinking. “Can’t say as I ever saw that. Every time I saw him he could have been in a fashion show.”

  “Even when he had a snoot full?”

  Della stepped close to Willie. “I don’t know about you Lakota, but we Arapaho don’t often imbibe. Johnny might have been a lazy good for nothing that forgot most things, but he stopped drinking years ago.”

  “But the Legion and the Lander bars—”

  “Mountain Dew, that’s all he drank. Sat around bragging about how great his ranch was doing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll finish packing. For when the Charging Bears kick me off.”

  Manny waited until Willie forced the last of the cake down before standing and heading for the door. “Johnny’s body was found near a stolen car from Rapid City.”

  “You’re suggesting Johnny stole a car?”

  “It’s a possibility. Neville’s office is down the street from where the car was taken.”

  “That’d take ambition on his part,” Della said, snuffing her cigarette out in an ashtray. “And I’ve never known him to have an ounce of it.”

  She held the door for them, nodding at the Wind River cruiser. “And you tell that Sergeant Walker: If he ever sets foot on my place again, he’ll take lead.”

  Willie watched their back until they reached Walker’s Expedition. “I think she means it.”

  Manny nodded. “And I think she’s capable of carrying out that threat, too.”

  Chapter 11

  Walker sat up and pushed his hat back on his head when Manny opened the door. “At least you managed to catch a little shut eye while we were in Della’s house.”

  Walker shook his head. “Just checking for light leaks in my eyelids. Besides,” he jerked his thumb toward her house, “With that one, it’s smart to be prepared for anything.”

  They started past Della’s house, Walker keeping an eye on the front door until they’d driven past it. And out of gunshot range. “What she say about me? That I’m an SOB for dumping her?”

  “No,” Willie said, clicking his seat belt. “She wanted us to tell you that you’re welcome any time.”

  “She did?”

  Willie nodded. “ ‘Just tell that Sergeant Walker to come calling,’ she says. ‘The sooner the better.’ ”

  Walker grinned wide. “All right!”

  They had just reached the county road when a purple-fendered Ford truck stopped in the road and waited for them. “Henry Stalks the Enemy,” Walker told them as he rolled down his window. Wind blew clumps of hay into the open window, and Walker brushed a stalk from his cheek.

  A man in OshKosh coveralls cracked his window, and squinted as snow peppered his weathered face. “Did you stop and see Della?”

  Walker grinned. “If I had, I’d be limping right now.”

  “I got no problem with her.”

  “Well, you’re a braver man than me.” Walker nodded to Manny and Willie. “They got the pleasure of talking with her. But,” he smiled again, “things are looking up.”

  Henry pointed to Manny. “This the FBI agent that’s supposed to come snooping around?”

  “The moccasin telegraph travels as fast as it does on Pine Ridge,” Willie whispered.

  Manny stuck his head out the window. “We’re looking into Johnny Apple’s death.”

  “I was sorry to hear about him.” Henry took a pinch of snuff. “But it wasn’t a surprise he drowned, the way he was starting to get senile.”

  “You knew about that?”

  “Climb in here and jaw,” Henry said, rolling the window up. “I’m freezing my wrinkled old nuts off.”

  Manny got out of the Expedition and ran around to Henry’s truck. He knocked the snow off his boots before climbing in. “How did you know about Johnny’s problems?”

  Henry turned in the seat. “Brandi told me.”

  “Did she always confide in you?”

  Henry nodded. “About her dad she did. I was about the only real friend Johnny had. God knows he could never go to Della with anything. I thought she was going to shoot me few days ago when I stopped and told her Johnny wouldn’t be coming back. Ever.”

  “I thought you had no problem with her?”

  “Just had to say that to piss him off.” Henry Stalks the Enemy grinned and looked at Walker, head tilted back, hat covering his eyes. Not sleeping, Manny thought. Just checking for light leaks. “Actually, she and I don’t talk, unless her cows get into my pasture, or my bull breaks through the fence.”

  “But you’ve been neighbors for a long time.”

  “Forty-odd years. It don’t mean we’re on friendly terms.” He spit out his chew and shook out a Pall Mall. He lit it from the truck’s lighter and cracked the side window. “We share a fence is about all we got in common. Over the years Della’s blamed me for everything from stealing her brother Kenton’s cows to accusing Kenton of killing Butch Hausey at that rodeo in the Sixties. Worse, ever since Kenton died, she’s insinuated that I tried to buy the land from the Charging Bears just so I could kick her off.” He nodded toward Della’s house, the chimney just visible over the hill. “Now they can kick the old prune out, and she’ll have to find her own place.”

  Manny took out his notebook. He opened it on his knee as he warmed his hand over the defroster vent. “Is there any truth to her accusations?”

  Henry took a last drag of his smoke and crushed it in the overflowing ashtray on his dashboard. “Fifteen years ago my bull broke through Kenton’s dilapidated fence—damned fool left the fence mending chores to Johnny—and impregnated six head of their cows before we spotted the fence down. They calved next spring. Registered shorthorns, too. I didn’t charge Kenton for stud service, I just took one of the calves, and Della accused me of being a thief.”

  Manny jotted down Henry’s words, though he wouldn’t need his notes to remember what the old rancher said. “And some guy named Butch was killed . . . ?”

  “At that rodeo back in the Sixties,” Henry nodded. “Kenton and Della and I all hit the rodeo circuits together.” He pointed to Walker asleep at the wheel. “We all hit the rodeos back then. It was something to do. A little excitement. Anyway, Butch beat the starch out of Kenton one night after the saddle bronc event. When they later found Butch dead under the bleachers with a broken neck and a bloody tire iron by his body, well, I had to go to the police with
my suspicions.”

  “Did Kenton kill him?”

  Henry’s head dropped. “Naw. But by then it was too late. The rumor was out there. Kenton forgave me. Even after Johnny had a fight with Della and spilled the beans to me.”

  Henry lit another smoke and cracked his window. “Me and Tony and Johnny were having more than a few drinks one night. I think that was the last time Johnny ever drank.”

  “Johnny spilled the beans on what?” Manny pressed.

  “Della,” Henry answered. “Johnny claimed he and Kenton were passing the jug one night, years ago, when Kenton broke down and said the tribal police thought Della killed Butch Hausey.”

  “Did he say how she did it?” Manny asked.

  “Was no way she could have,” Henry said. “Even Johnny admitted it that night. He was just pissed at her is all.” He snuffed his smoke out in the ashtray.

  “Did Della know Johnny told you that?”

  “I didn’t say anything to her,” Henry answered. “But as tight as she and Tony always were, I can see him mentioning it.”

  Manny made a note to read the tribal police interview with Della from after the murder.

  Manny flipped pages as if he had questions listed he wanted to ask Henry. The only list Manny kept was in his head. “Did you try to buy that spread of Kenton’s after he died?”

  “This piece of dirt?” Henry waved his hand around. “After Kenton died, I’d talked with the Charging Bears about selling it. I needed more space for my cows. Della got wind of it and waltzed over to my barn with her Winchester and a bad attitude. She threatened that if I ever tried undercutting her again, I’d be fertilizer for the sagebrush.”

  “Did you report it to the tribal police?”

  Henry grinned. “That’s a good one, a Shoshone reporting that an Arapaho threatened him. And a woman no less. Now where on Wind River could I have gone that people wouldn’t have pointed and sneered?”

  Henry grabbed his pack of cigarettes and shook another one out. He saw Manny eyeing the pack. “Want one?”

  “If you only knew how badly,” Manny answered, and turned the notebook pages. “Who did Johnny know on Pine Ridge?”

  Henry held the smoke a bit longer, thinking before exhaling. “Tony lives there. He always stopped and visited with Johnny when he came to see Della. Then there’s Neville’s office in Rapid City. But Johnny said he and Neville usually did their lawyering business through the mail. Why?”

  “Just putting together why Johnny might have gone all that way over there.” Manny opened the door when he paused and shut it. “One last thing: Who do you think would want Johnny dead?”

  Henry shrugged. “Besides me, because I wanted to buy Kenton’s ranch? Or Della, because she wanted to stay on the ranch? Or Neville and Tony, because they wanted to reclaim this little piece of heaven? I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did.” He waved his hand around. “But if you think this land is worth killing anyone over, you got to be in the stupid business.”

  Chapter 12

  Sergeant Walker tossed the yellowed manila folders onto his desk. “Those are the Charging Bears’ contacts. The whole family.” He extracted another one from the cabinet and slid the brown envelope across the desk. “And here’s Johnny Apple’s police contacts. I can’t imagine how any of these would help.”

  Willie picked up Johnny’s police file as Manny opened the Charging Bear folders. He laid the reports side by side on Walker’s desk. Kenton’s only law enforcement contact occurred when he was interviewed following the Butch Hausey killing in 1964. The BIA investigator then had cleared Kenton as a suspect when he determined that Kenton had been confined to his hospital bed at the time of the homicide.

  Manny opened Neville’s file. Like his father, he’d had but one contact with the law, when he had shoplifted a pack of cigarettes from a Riverton grocery store at age sixteen.

  By contrast, Tony’s rap sheet needed two pages. The list of arrests began when Tony attended Wyoming Indian High in Ethete. He was cited when he threatened another boy with a broken beer bottle, again when he chased a fellow student around the parking lot with a tire iron. “Looks like the kid was a model delinquent.”

  Walker leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee. “Kid liked to fight. Guess we’re natural-born warriors. Or didn’t anyone tell you Lakota that?”

  Manny ignored him and flipped to the next page. “It looks like your tribal judge gave Tony the option of going in the Army or going to jail after he kicked the shit out of some guy at the Shoshone Tribal Service & Food Mart.”

  Walker put his cup down and leaned close. “Like your judges never gave a kid that option?”

  “It’s been a long time since our judges did that,” Willie blurted out.

  “Been a long time for us, too.” Walker stood and refilled his coffee cup. He paused like he was going to offer a cup to Manny and Willie when he replaced the carafe on the burner. “That was back in 1990. A year before Desert Storm.”

  “It looks like Tony was clean until 1994, when he resumed in earnest: Tony arrested when he made a pass at another man’s wife and beat the husband. Tony arrested when he called two Shoshone out at a wedding and took a tree limb to them.” Manny passed the folder to Willie. “I’m assuming when he was off the radar it was because he was in the Army.”

  Walker tapped Tony’s rap sheet, spilling coffee on the manila folder. He dabbed at it with his shirtsleeve. “And that’s not the half of it. Riverton and Lander PD’s got stacks thicker than that. I could excuse Tony of being a fighter growing up. That’s natural for us Arapaho. But if you ask me, Tony used the war as an excuse to get into trouble. That I can’t excuse.”

  “Did he ever serve any serious time?” Willie asked. He walked to the vending machine, and fished quarters out of his pocket. He dropped them into the slot, the circular vendor lining up with his selection. A dull thud and the sandwich fell into the bin below. “Tony should have been in the pokey, as much trouble as he got into.”

  Walker grabbed a paper towel to catch the crumbs as he eyed Willie unwrapping the sandwich. “Only reason he dodged the inside of a jail cell for any length of time is Neville. He worked for a local law office here before he opened his own practice in Rapid City. And when you’ve got a big brother who’s an attorney good at pulling strings, you mostly stay out of the slammer.”

  Willie bit into the tuna sandwich. He spit out the bite and dropped the rest of it onto the paper towel. “Jesa! How long’s this been sitting in the machine?”

  “Week,” Walker grinned. “Maybe two. Maybe more. That’s why we call it the Wheel of Death.” He nodded to the vending machine. “You wouldn’t catch me eating out of that.”

  Manny slid the manila folder back across the desk. “Tony must have cleaned up his act a few years ago. He hasn’t had any police contacts since . . . ”

  “Six years ago.” Walker dunked a donut in his stale coffee. “When Kenton died, Tony took over Kenton’s Pine Ridge ranch along Whiteclay Creek east of Oglala. That’s the only reason we haven’t dealt with him since.” He wiped his mouth with a paper towel. “I heard through the moccasin telegraph that Neville’s even been keeping his ass out of jail over there.”

  Willie tossed the rest of his hard sandwich into the trash. It sounded like a gong when it hit bottom. “I didn’t realize Kenton had a farm on Pine Ridge.”

  Manny leaned across the desk while he studied the files. “My old police chief said a Charging Bear owned a farm on Pine Ridge at one time. Must have been Kenton.”

  “It was,” Walker explained, “but he hadn’t worked it since he’d married Winona and moved here. Kenton had some management company in Rapid City handle the lease. Tony thought he could farm it and kicked the last farm foreman off.”

  “Doesn’t get us any closer to finding out who murdered Johnny,” Willie remarked.

  “If he wa
s murdered at all.” Walker filled Willie’s coffee cup to wash down his near-death meal. He chuckled. “You boys will play hell figuring out who killed him.”

  “Who says we have to figure it out?” Willie said. He took another swig of cold coffee. “Johnny most likely will be a Wind River case.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Willie’s right,” Manny said. “Johnny was found dead on Pine Ridge, but he didn’t die there.”

  Walker hung his head. “I’m too old for this shit.”

  “Then tell us something that might help us solve this before it’s dumped in your ample lap. Like when was the last time you saw Neville or Tony here on Wind River?”

  Walker looked to the ceiling, reading the tiles like he was reading tea leaves. “I saw Tony at the Ethete Store a couple months ago. He comes back now and again to visit Della. She was the only mother they knew after their mom died.”

  “And Henry?” Manny stood and arched his back. “Della said he was hot to buy the Charging Bear property once Johnny was dead.”

  “Is that what the FBI teaches you, keep casting out a line for suspects and hope you hook one who confesses? I’m sure Henry’s told you—and you saw for yourself—there was nothing on that piece of dried-up ground worth killing Johnny over.”

  “Well, someone wanted him dead.” Manny said as Walker gathered up the police folders and pivoted in his chair toward the file cabinet.

  He stood and grabbed his Expedition keys from a peg board beside his desk. “I’ll give you guys a ride to your car.”

  Manny wrapped his knitted scarf around his neck and paused. “Is there a police report on Butch Hausey’s murder?”

  “Of course there is,” Walker looked warily at Manny. “What do you need that for?”

  “Call me a sucker for cold cases.”

  “It’s been investigated to death. There’s nothing there.”

  “Just humor me.”

  Walker opened another file cabinet, and let his fingers do the walking. “There’s another reason you want to look at that report, isn’t there?” he said as he handed Manny a filed marked Butch Hausey Homicide.