Tall Man in Ray-Bans (A John Tall Wolf Novel)

by Joseph Flynn

  Darton Blake was at his desk in the homicide unit when he took the call from his son. He listened closely and remained calm. He told Amos that he and Mal should stay right where they were. They’d done the right thing not to touch anything, and they should continue to stand clear of the body, but they had to keep it in sight. He didn’t want to have to go looking for it.

  He told Amos to keep his phone on and not to worry. Officers from a patrol unit would be joining him and Mal directly. After a moment of reflection, Darton stayed on the phone with his son until the uniforms got to the scene. They confirmed the presence of skeletal remains and what looked like a link in a chain.

  The detective told the patrol officers to stand clear, too. Then he informed Lieutenant Ernie Calderon, the homicide unit’s CO of the situation and headed out to Lake Travis. He was accompanied by a crime scene team, and a doc from the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office. Everyone on the scene came to the same conclusion: They had a murder victim on their hands, and they could use additional expert help.

  Darton placed a call to the University of Texas and wrangled the help of an archaeologist, a physical anthropologist and a gaggle of grad students. They arrived at the scene, set up a large tent around the remains, set up portable lights inside and positioned three video cameras. With the preliminaries accomplished, they proceeded very carefully to unearth the last vestiges of a human being who had been dumped into Lake Travis.

  Lieutenant Calderon put in an appearance to observe the work. At that point, responsibility for the investigation belonged to the Austin PD. Only an hour into the excavation, though, the archaeologist found and bagged a turquoise amulet and a silver chain that had been worn around the neck of the victim. Darton Blake thought the amulet looked like a piece of Native American jewelry, the sort that could be found almost anywhere in the Southwest.

  Ernie Calderon stepped in for a look just as Darton turned the plastic bag around to inspect the back of the amulet. Engraved there were the words Randy Mato Chante.

  The homicide unit’s commanding officer wrinkled his brow.

  “Randy I kill Chante,” Calderon said, as if translating the words from Spanish.

  Darton had another idea. “Native American jewelry, could be a Native American tongue.”

  “Yeah, could,” his boss said. “You handle it. I’ve got other things to do.”

  Darton called UT again. Fine school that it was, he reached a research librarian who could help him. After only five minutes of consulting her tomes, or databases as the case may be, she said, “Randy Mato Chante is a name: Randy Bear Heart. I checked on that name, and do you know who that man is?”

  Darton didn’t tell her she was using the wrong verb tense.

  “Sorry to say I don’t, ma’am,” he replied.

  “Well, he isn’t a very nice person. In fact, he’s a federal fugitive.”

  And that was how the FBI got involved.

  Them and John Tall Wolf.

  Chapter 3

  Austin, Texas — July 9th, the present

  SAC Gilbert Melvin and three FBI underlings had flown to Austin from Washington and were on the scene by the following morning. Four feds from headquarters showing up was a measure of Randy Bear Heart’s significance. In 1985, he had gone on a brief but bloody rampage robbing three banks, two in North Dakota one in South Dakota, and killing three cops, with the same geographical distribution. In addition to those crimes, he was suspected of kidnapping a woman and a child from the Mercy Ridge Reservation. He’d been one of the FBI’s most wanted men ever since.

  The temperature that morning had already reached 99 degrees and inside the enclosure, even with the flaps up, the air was a good ten degrees hotter. The heat didn’t move Gilbert or his men to loosen their ties or drape their suit coats over their arms. Darton Blake wore a short sleeve shirt, Dockers and Chuck Taylor Low-Tops.

  He’d dressed down for the weather and for the occasion.

  The skeleton had been completely, painstakingly uncovered by the UT team. The doc from the ME’s office had defined the hole in the victim’s skull as an edged-surface trauma, but would need more than an eyeball look to tell whether it was accidental or homicidal. She’d also allowed for the possibility that such a determination might not be possible if the body had been in the water for a period measured in years.

  The medical examiner wanted to have the remains transported to the county morgue, but Darton thought it would be a good idea to let the feds get a look at the skeleton in situ. The ME approved of his Latin if not his decision.

  SAC Melvin bent over the remains and asked, “You think the blow to the head killed the guy before he went in the water?”

  He hadn’t addressed the question to anyone in particular.

  His head swiveled when an unfamiliar voice answered, “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Melvin and the other cops on hand, federal and local, turned to the guy who’d given the ambiguous answer: a big, Indian-looking guy, all lean muscle, neat haircut, wearing a black polo shirt, nicer khakis than the local dick wore and silver-gray aviator sunglasses.

  A tall man in Ray-Bans. He was way too big to miss, but he hadn’t been in the enclosure a moment ago. Melvin straightened up to eliminate as much of the height difference as he could.

  Still came up a half-foot short.

  He asked Darton, “This guy one of yours? You kind of dress alike.”

  The Austin PD detective just shook his head.

  “So who the hell are you?” Melvin wanted to know.

  The Austin detective was on hand strictly as a courtesy, and his uniformed colleagues outside the enclosure were supposed to keep reporters away. So how’d this big guy get in, and who the hell was he? Someone his size couldn’t sneak —

  He said, “My name is John Tall Wolf.”

  So he was an Indian.

  “And who said you could join the party, John?” Melvin asked.

  “The Great White Father.”

  Darton Blake cracked a smile, but SAC Melvin didn’t like smart-ass from anyone.

  He said, “Which great white father would that be?”

  “The one with the place on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “The president sent you?”

  “Through the offices of the agency I work for.” John showed his ID. “I’m a fed, too. BIA.”

  It took Melvin a moment, then the acronym registered. “Bureau of Indian Affairs?”

  “Office of Justice Services,” John said. “Of the three cops Randall Bear Heart killed, two were Caucasian, but one was a Native American, a Mercy Ridge Reservation cop. That part of the case is my responsibility.”

  “Shit,” Melvin said.

  “A great big pile with a cloud of flies,” John agreed.

  Melvin hated this development, and he wasn’t crazy about the Indian’s attitude either. The FBI had been given responsibility for major crimes committed on Indian reservations, but since the 1975 killing of two special agents on the Mercy Ridge Reservation, the Bureau had come to accept the wisdom of letting BIA agents, inevitably Native Americans, carry part of the load. The BIA had authorization to conduct concurrent investigations on reservation related crimes.

  Bank robberies, however, were the exclusive domain of the FBI.

  So it was time to let the Indian know who was boss.

  Melvin told John. “You’ll coordinate all your efforts through me.”

  “I’ll conduct my investigation as I see fit,” John said.

  Before the federal pissing match could go any farther, Darton Blake asked, “Special Agent Tall Wolf, what makes you think Mr. Bear Heart might have been alive when he went into the water?”

  John took his eyes off Melvin and looked at the Austin detective.

  “I worked a case in Minnesota. Guy was thrown out of a powerboat wearing chains, but he was still conscious. He tried to kick his way to the surface. Almost made it. The bad guys, though, circled back to check their work. The propeller on their boat clipped the victim�
��s head. Did damage that looked a lot like that.”

  John gestured to the crease in the skeleton’s skull.

  All the cops present took another look.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine John might be right.

  Melvin, still displeased, said in a snide tone, “Or it could have been a tomahawk made that wound.”

  John considered the possibility and nodded. “Maybe. Anybody find one?”

  Nobody had.

  “The case I worked,” John continued, “I found the boat before the bad guys could ditch the motor. The damaged propeller blade was a dead-on fit to the wound.”

  Melvin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t like competition, but he wasn’t dumb enough to overlook a potentially valuable resource. So he choked back a little pride.

  He said to John, “How about you liaise with me? That too much to ask?”

  John said, “I’ll talk with the detective here.” He nodded to Darton. “You’re nice to him, maybe he’ll share with you.”

  Darton Blake smiled. He’d just been made a relevant member of the team.

  The detective said to Melvin, “We casual Friday guys have to stick together.”

  None of the FBI men sweating up their business suits so much as grinned.

  “I can coordinate with the FBI,” Darton said to John. “If they’re nice to me.”

  The feds didn’t think that was funny either.

  But Melvin still managed to nod in agreement and lead his men outside.

  Once they’d gone, Darton asked John, “How’d you know I’m a detective.”

  “I asked your guys outside who was inside. You dress a little different than an FBI agent.”

  Darton smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I do. So do you. You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t know the extent of your authority. This is the first time I’ve ever worked with someone from the BIA. You have any special legal powers I should know about?”

  “You know how James Bond has that license to kill?” John asked.

  Grinning, feeling something good was coming, Darton said, “Uh-huh.”

  John told him, “I’ve got one to take scalps.”

  Chapter 4

  Santa Fe, NM — June 26, 1975

  The baby boy took in the neonatal formula that Haden Wolf had long ago devised for newborns whose mothers were unable to nurse. It was an organic lactose liquid fortified with vitamins, minerals, iron … and a few herbal derivatives even forward-looking companies were unlikely to catch on to for some time. In addition, though it wasn’t a big draw locally, the formula was kosher.

  Serafina had dressed the baby in one of her clean T-shirts and given him his first bottle. After consuming every drop, he fell asleep in her arms, utterly relaxed, except for the fact his eyelids were not only closed, they were squeezed shut. She repositioned the baby so his head rested on her shoulder.

  “Poor little guy got too much sun in his eyes?” she asked.

  Haden nodded. “He would have closed them reflexively, if the coyote hadn’t been terrifying him. As it was, he didn’t know what to do.”

  “You think there’s any permanent damage?”

  “Too soon to say.”

  But not too soon to feel. Serafina sat on her bed and closed her eyes, let her respiration and heartbeat synch up with that of the baby she held. In moments, their body temperatures meshed. Watching the two of them, Haden saw the boundaries between woman and child blur. Serafina had established a rapport with the infant that all good parents know with their newborns at the closest moments they share.

  Only with Serafina, that bond was conscious, detailed and searching.

  Haden sat motionless on a chair, content to watch, feeling a sense of peace and joy unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He didn’t know how long the moment lasted but at some point he took notice of the baby’s eyelids relaxing. A smile formed on the child’s tiny lips. A tear appeared at the corner of Serafina’s right eyelid a heartbeat before she opened it.

  She put the child down on the comforter atop their bed.

  They built a barricade of pillows around him.

  Haden placed another chair at the foot of the bed and they watched the child sleep. They’d never seen anything so fascinating. Each of them was in perfect health. Neither of them had any concerns about infertility. Still, they’d never entertained the idea of either having their own children or adopting.

  They had their work, their studies and each other.

  The subject of children had never come up.

  Until now.

  Never bound by empirical thought or conventional notions, the Wolfs were strong believers in omens. Their choices of how to spend that morning were to gather herbs or to drive down to Albuquerque to visit a friend who was recovering from a car accident. They’d heard that the friend was doing well and felt she would be better off spending quiet time with her husband. For the two of them, gathering herbs would be the right choice.

  The activity with the greater benefit.

  Which at that moment lay before them sleeping peacefully.

  “He’s going to be big,” Haden said.

  “A tall Wolf?” Serafina asked.

  Haden smiled at his wife. “It was that good?” he asked.

  He referred to her bonding with the child.

  “It was true on every level.”

  “His eyes?”

  “No focal damage, but he’ll always be sensitive to light.”

  Haden raised an issue to be considered. “There’s only one reason for a mother to abandon a healthy child that way.”

  Serafina said, “The conception was taboo.”

  “The child is regarded as a source of shame.”

  They sat in silence. That anyone should consider a newborn in such a negative way …”

  “The mother had to see us save him,” Haden said.

  “It’s all but certain she believes in signs, too.”

  They both knew what that meant. There would be a fight to keep the child.

  The birth mother would inevitably have her regrets.

  Haden and Serafina made their preparations for when that day would come.

  They named the boy John Tall Wolf.

  Chapter 5

  Austin, Texas — July 9, the present

  The question was raised by the commanding officer of the Austin PD Homicide Unit, Lieutenant Ernie Calderon. “If this pile of bones really is Randall Bear Heart, why should anyone give a shit who killed him? Sonofabitch killed three cops, he’s dead, good.”

  Detective Darton Blake and John Tall Wolf were sitting in the lieutenant’s office.

  Darton said, “I think it’s the if people are concerned about.”

  “Even if it is him,” John added, “it’d be a good idea to learn how he got to Texas and managed to live under a new identity for the past twenty-seven years. That and what happened to the woman and the child he kidnapped from Mercy Ridge.”

  Calderon rubbed his chin. “Yeah, that’s a good point. And I guess with all the terrorist assholes running loose in the world, it’d be worth knowing how he could live off the radar.”

  “And we don’t want the FBI to have all the fun, do we?” John asked.

  Calderon laughed. “Hell, no, can’t have that. But —”

  “Better the manpower costs come out of the federal budget?” Darton asked.

  “Every time possible,” Calderon agreed.

  “Your modesty is truly impressive, Lieutenant,” John said. “Willingly forsaking any glory that might come out of this case.”

  Calderon snorted. “Glory, huh?”

  “Good PR anyway,” Darton said.

  Blake had that much right, Calderon thought. Good publicity was always welcome.

  He’d want his name in the headline. Spelled right, too.

  Any managerial cop on the make would.

  “Okay, Darton, barring riots, plagues or budget cuts, you can work with Special Agent Tall Wolf. Until I can find a better way to have you
make me look good.”

  The two working cops left the lieutenant’s office, crossed the detectives bullpen to Darton’s desk and began to read the information John had collected on Randy Bear Heart from the BIA’s files. John had printed out the stack earlier that morning.

  Randall Bear Heart had been born on the Mercy Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on June 26, 1965, ten years to the day before the shootout that killed two FBI agents who had tailed a suspect in an armed robbery, Tommy Big Crow, to the reservation. The FBI agents were met by a hail of high-powered rifle fire coming from the White Horse Ranch. A BIA marksman later killed the leader of the hostile forces holed up in the ranch’s big house. That put an end to the fight but it didn’t keep a number of people inside the house from slipping out the back door as the federal forces mounted a frontal assault.

  An informant later said that Randall Bear Heart and his parents, George and Nellie, were among those who had fled the big house. Randy, as the boy was called, said he was never there. He was reading in the reservation library at the time of the hostilities. Two librarians vouched for his presence there.

  When George and Nellie couldn’t be located, Randy was asked where his parents were. He said he didn’t know, but they’d both talked of going to California to try to break into the movies. They thought it was time some good-looking Native Americans landed leading roles. George and Nellie, Randy said, thought they’d try to jumpstart their acting careers by seeing if they could take a meeting with Marlon Brando.

  The feds thought the kid was fucking with them, but both George and Nellie were exceptionally good looking people, and the kid was flat-out child star handsome — and Brando openly sympathized with the American Indian Movement. So maybe it wasn’t bullshit.

  Randy got a good laugh years later when a reporter at the reservation’s newspaper — where Randy also worked — told him he’d heard from a famous celebrity biographer that Brando had once refused to let a boatload of feds land on the little island he owned way the hell out in French Polynesia after they told him they were looking for fugitive Indians.