As the Crow Flies

by Craig Johnson

  Boy howdy.

  “Can you do me a favor and check to see who in the health services records has prescriptions for all of these medications?”

  “I’ll need a warrant.”

  I appealed to a higher power and looked at her daughter. “Chief?”

  Long looked at the head nurse. “Mom.”

  It was the three-syllable “Mom” I’d heard my daughter use on my wife for years, and a variation of the “Dad” that I would be hearing very soon.

  Mrs. Long held out her hand for the bracelet. I deposited it in her palm and watched as she began writing the medications on a pad.

  I turned to Lolo. “How’s Adrian?”

  “He’d be better if you brought back the dog; what’s his name, anyway?”

  I scored major points on the lack-of-imagination scale and told her. “I’ll bring him in; he loves my daughter, but he takes up a lot of room.” I gave Henry a look and started toward the car. “Lolo, any word from Clarence?”

  “Nothing; why?”

  “Don’t you find it strange that he wouldn’t be in to check on his son?”

  She shook her head, the thick, loose hair mimicking her movements. “You mean if Adrian is really his?”

  I stopped and turned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve been asking around, and it would appear that Clarence indeed has some problems in that area, and besides, he’s probably passed out somewhere. Anyway, I thought you didn’t like him for this.”

  I slipped on my teaching hat as I turned to go. “Remember, you’re in the business of liking everybody for this—until you find out who did it.” Then I added, “I’m in the wedding business, until my daughter kills me, which should be in a little over an hour.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  I shifted to turn and look at the two beautiful women in the backseat of the Thunderbird, one family and one soon to be. “I’m sorry, Cady.”

  Lena Moretti kept her counsel but placed a hand on my daughter’s knee in hopes of calming her.

  “There’s a case on the Rez that’s kind of landed in my lap.”

  “A case.” I could see the tears beginning to form in her gray eyes. “Unless I’m mistaken, Montana’s not your jurisdiction.”

  “It’s a homicide.”

  She turned her head, looked out the side window, and wiped her nearest eye with a swipe.

  “A woman fell from a cliff with her child in her arms.”

  “I don’t want to hear this; I really don’t.” Both hands came up this time, scrubbing the tears away. “I don’t mean to come across as some self-centered bitch, but I just thought for a few days. I mean…”

  Her mouth opened as she breathed and then turned her head toward Lena, the next words tumbling out. “Did I ever tell you about my college graduation? My dad couldn’t make it because there was a case. My graduation from law school? There was another case.” She sighed and smiled into her lap. “I can mark the progression of my life, every landmark—in cases.” She looked up at me. “There’s always a case, Dad.”

  There was a very long and uncomfortable silence in the car as we all listened to the tires on the interstate highway, rolling us into Little Big Horn country. She laughed a sad gasp, and it was far harder on me than the tears. I reached a hand out. “You’re right.”

  Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine and searched the floor mats at her sandaled feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right.” I cleared my throat in an attempt to stay steady. “If your mother were here, she’d kick me.” This, at least, got a laugh. “I’ll just gracefully back out of the case.”

  The eyes came up as she shook her head at me. “Daddy, you’ve never backed out of anything in your life, gracefully or otherwise.”

  The Cheyenne Nation grunted, and I gave him a quick look. “Well, maybe it’s time I started.” I took my hat off and rested it on my drawn knee. “They’ve pretty much figured out who did it, so it’s just down to a manhunt at this point. They don’t need me for that.”

  Cady took Lena Moretti’s hand and held it, gently pounding her knee with both their fists. “It’s okay.”

  I glanced out the side and noticed we were approaching Hardin and had taken the exit ramp for the Blue Cow Restaurant and Casino. Henry took the left at the overpass toward the Texaco station and the venerable café. “I have to get gas; is anybody else hungry?”

  I smiled at Ray Bartlett, who was behind the counter, and he seated us by the window so the Bear could keep an eye on Lola and so we could enjoy the day. Wanda Pretty On Top came over and took our orders, and about a minute later, Cady excused herself.

  Lena Moretti placed her hand on me this time, and I had to admit that it was a nice hand that I remembered from my adventures in Philadelphia no more than a year ago. “She’ll be all right.”

  I nodded.

  “She’s just nervous.”

  I nodded some more.

  “Christ, she’s marrying my son—that’s enough to throw a scare into any woman.”

  I laughed. “How’s the family?”

  The little curve came up at the corner of her lipsticked lips, sly and dangerous, just like her daughter’s. “Mean as snakes, and they’ll all be here in less than a week and a half.” She crossed her legs and thanked Wanda for the collective iced teas she’d brought over. “How’s the Terror?”

  I thought about Vic. “Doing a public relations seminar in Omaha.”

  “Public relations? You’ve got to be kidding.” She laughed. “So, she escaped?”

  “Something like that.”

  Lena glanced at Henry. “This reservation thing: big case?”

  “Well, maybe not the crime of the century, but it sure looks like a homicide.”

  “Aren’t there Reservation police?”

  Henry finally smiled. “Tons of them, federal, BIA, and tribal.”

  Her buckskin eyes shifted back to mine.

  “Can’t they take care of this?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  Her turn to smile. “It always is, isn’t it?”

  I explained about Chief Lolo Long in all its three-part harmony and found myself studying Lena Moretti more and more as I spoke.

  “But there’s a suspect?”

  I nodded and tried to not get distracted by the shape of her neck. “A couple of them, but one has some truly antisocial tendencies.”

  “Such as?”

  “A closet full of guns, and he pretty much threatens to kill everyone he comes in contact with.”

  “Sounds like wild, wild Westmoreland Street in Philadelphia.”

  Henry and I both laughed, and my eyes wandered toward the alcove where the bathrooms were located.

  “Would you like me to go check on her?”

  I scooted my chair out and stood. “I think that’s my job—I’ll just knock on the door and see if she’s okay.” I sipped my tea in preparation for the conversation to come and glanced at the Cheyenne Nation. “But, madam, I leave you in expert hands.”

  I walked toward the bathrooms, but Ray caught my eye and jerked his head toward the casino portion of the establishment. I nodded and walked into the windowless area where the electronic sounds of the numerous one-armed amputee machines drowned out everything else.

  Cady was sitting at one of them, dropping quarters in and pulling the lever as if she were working on an assembly line. I watched her dispatch a good two dollars and two bits before crossing and sitting on the seat next to her.

  She paused for a second and then went on playing, if you could call it that.

  “I remember when your mother and I got married.” I sighed. “Her parents didn’t care for me all that much. She was kind of their princess, and I guess I wasn’t their idea of prince charming. Then I lost my deferment. After the war, I got back and looked her up and we got in a whirl again. She wanted a big church wedding, but her father said he wasn’t going to invest a big bunch of money in failure and that we’d be divorced i
n a year. I was working odd jobs, just trying to pay the rent on a little apartment south of town and have a little gas money. I’d heard Miles City was nice, so I threw your mother in a ’66 Plymouth Belvedere and drove her up there for a long weekend. We got married by the justice of the peace and his wife played the wedding march on an accordion. It snowed like a bastard the whole time.” I cleared my throat and laughed at the thought of it. “After a day, we were running out of food so your mother went off to the grocery store down the street with five dollars—all the money we had. She came back with two bottles of Coca-Cola, a package of bologna, a loaf of bread, and little jar of mustard—and change from a twenty.”

  Cady’s hand paused on the lever.

  “The man at the grocery store had mistaken the five for a twenty, and when he gave your mother the change, I guess she just nodded her head, stuffed that money down in her pocket as quick as she could, gathered up her things, and went out of that place like a shot.”

  I watched her swallow, and her hand slipped from the handle.

  “For the rest of the weekend, she wouldn’t walk on the same side of the street as that grocery store. I did, and I’d call over to her—Hey, Martha, Mrs. Longmire? How come you won’t come over here and walk with me?”

  There was a tiny sob of a laugh.

  “When I got my first paycheck from the sheriff’s department, she made me drive her up to Miles City so that she could pay that man back at the grocery store.”

  Her face turned toward me, and the tears were flowing freely, and I guess mine were, too.

  “To my knowledge, that was the only illegal act your mother ever committed in her life.”

  We both laughed, and the greatest legal mind of our time launched from her stool and into my chest.

  I held her there, wrapping my arms around her, and felt my hat flip off and fall to the floor as I rested my chin on the top of her red head. “I promised her that someday we’d have some kind of big wedding celebration, but we never got around to it; there was always something else that came up. About six months later the transmission went out in that Plymouth, the plumbing in the apartment froze up and the landlord wouldn’t fix it, so we had to move; then she went and got herself pregnant.”

  Cady pulled her head away and looked up at me. “She did, huh?”

  “Yep, and she had a girl so they could gang up on me.” I pulled her back in and placed my chin back on the top of her head. “This daughter, she cried a lot at first, then she quieted down and didn’t speak until she was two—no practice words, nothing—and began talking in full sentences, paragraphs, and pages; she has yet to stop.” She tried to pull away, but I held her fast. “She kind of grew on me, and now she’s the most important thing in my life, and I’m going to make sure that there will be a wedding here the likes of which she’s never seen, in a little more than a week.”

  She sniffed again and grabbed my shirt. “It’s okay.”

  “Hush.”

  She pulled away, and this time I let her. She clutched her hands in her lap and looked to me to be about ten, but maybe that was the way I would always see her. I was consistently surprised whenever she got off a plane and reentered my life. I always expected her to look like she did whenever she came back from the HF-Bar dude ranch where she would disappear from us each summer, and she would hit our cramped, little rental with the force of a teenage hurricane, generally with a retinue of broken adolescent male hearts in tow.

  I looked into those gray eyes and could see the reflection of myself, a man who had mislaid some of the most prized moments in his daughter’s life. I was ashamed of myself.

  Pulling my handkerchief from my pocket, I handed it to her. “We’ll get everything squared away. It’s not like we haven’t done anything, and we’ll get all the details worked out.”

  She nodded and dabbed at her eyes. “I’ve got Lena with me, and she’s a wonder.”

  “Yep, I know.”

  Her hand went self-consciously to her head and the scar along her hairline where the surgeons in Philadelphia had opened her skull to allow her brain enough room to swell, and I was momentarily reminded of Lolo Long’s scar close to the same location. Cady’s eyes drifted past me and over my shoulder, and I turned to find Lena Moretti standing a respectful distance away.

  Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her black linen slacks as she pivoted on one heel of a flat-soled shoe. “I’m sorry, but I think your food is getting cold.”

  By the time we topped the hill overlooking Lame Deer, regular conversation had been restored.

  “Oh Daddy, I can’t believe you did that.”

  I gave Henry the eye, but he remained silent. “It wasn’t my choice.”

  “A peyote ceremony?”

  “Well…” I glanced past the Cheyenne Nation’s profile at the inordinate amount of unmarked and marked cars, along with a Mobile Task Force trailer emblazoned with the FBI’s insignia, that were crowded into the small Tribal Police parking lot.

  Henry finally spoke. “Uh oh.”

  We slowed at the stop sign, and the Bear and I looked at each other. Cady leaned up between us and glanced at the hubbub to our left, her natural Philadelphia lawyer tendencies getting the better of her. “What’s happened there?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She looked at the Bear and then back to me. “Well, shouldn’t we find out?”

  I took a deep breath and gestured for the Cheyenne Nation to advance forward. “Not my job.”

  Henry didn’t move, and someone honked an air horn behind us.

  Cady leaned her face close to mine and pointed toward the clock in the ornate, chrome-slicked dash—it was almost three. “You can be a cop for another eighteen minutes.”

  “It’s okay.”

  The horn behind us blasted again, and the Cheyenne Nation calmly slipped Lola into PARK, removed his lap belt, pulled the door handle, and stepped out.

  I swiveled my head to get a look back, but Cady countered to block my view. “Henry and I can just go ahead over to Ashland and get you women into your motel room.” There were noises coming from behind the car, including the opening and slamming of a door and loud voices. I redirected my attention to Lena, who was now looking out the back window. “And get you settled in.”

  Cady reached up and gripped my chin, redirecting my attention to her—a trick she’d adopted from her mother. “I’d rather you go over and get things settled than have you worry about this case, okay?”

  There was suddenly no noise from the street. “I’m not going to worry about it.”

  Her eyebrows rose to the point where I thought they were going to fall off the back of her head as the Bear reentered the Thunderbird, sat, and reattached his seat belt.

  I looked at him. “Sorry about the trouble.”

  He shrugged. “What trouble?” He gripped the wheel. “I am assuming we are making a stop at the jail to see what’s going on?”

  I shot a look at my daughter, who ricocheted it to the Cheyenne Nation, who, in turn, whipped the wheel to the left and blew across the intersection onto the street beside the full lot. I caught a glimpse of a large man behind us holding his nose in an attempt to stop it from bleeding while leaning against the fender of his eighteen wheeler. No problem—right.

  Henry pulled up behind the Task Force trailer and parked as we opened the doors, and I flipped the seat forward so that the Philadelphia contingency could join us in witnessing the spectacle.

  Federal agents in flak jackets and full tactical gear were flying out of the adjoining buildings, jumping in the assorted cars, trucks, and SUVs, and making swift departures onto 212 and points beyond. Lolo Long and Cliff Cly were engaged in a heated conversation on the ramp of the Tribal Police Headquarters. Cady and Lena appeared to be enjoying the show. Henry and I looked at each other.

  “Hopefully we’ll be right back.”

  Cady waved and pointed at her wristwatch. “Fourteen minutes.”

  I bumped the Bear’s shoulder. “Don
’t beat anybody else up, okay?”

  We advanced on the ramp as Agent Cly broke from Long and stepped toward us, stopping when he saw me, extending a hand in admonition. “Don’t even start.”

  “Have we missed something?”

  “Well, hell, yeah.” He looked over both our shoulders. “Nice car. Hey, is that your daughter?”

  “Cliff, what’s going on?”

  He looked exasperated. “Listen, I wanted to let your little friend back there handle her end of the log, but its lumberjack time and we’ve got fugitives, okay?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That moron, Clarence Last Bull, was dealing out of his house and had a wire on his phone.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I know; nobody knew, especially me. I mean, why would you check any of this with the fucking agent in charge, huh?” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and bit one between his teeth; I noticed that the stubble on his face was the exact length I’d seen days ago; he probably had an electric razor set to that length. “I swear to God my title should be Agent-Who-Doesn’t-Know-What-the-Fuck-Is-Going-On.” I could see Chief Long advancing as he lit the Marlboro and took a vicious inhale. “To make a long story short, we’ve got a tape on this asshole from an anonymous informant where Clarence is discussing with Artie Small Song how he wasn’t going to pay him the money he owed him for pushing his wife and kid off the cliff.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yeah. A very heated conversation that ends with an inordinately pissed-off Artie Small Song promising to turn Clarence Last Bull into the Native American equivalent of Jimmy Dean Hickory Smoked Sausage.” He turned. “Did you know about this?!”

  Chief Long had arrived. “No.” She looked doubtful. “No.”

  Henry’s voice cut through the emotion. “Where is Clarence Last Bull?”

  The agent in charge removed the cigarette from his mouth. “That’s a good question, and one we wish we had an answer to.” He turned to the young Cheyenne woman. “Chief Long?”

  “His Jeep is gone, but somebody spotted it in Birney.” She added, before I could ask, “Red Birney.”