As the crow flies wl-8

by Craig Johnson

  “No, you got what I wanted.” She shot a look at me. “What makes you so cozy with the FBI that they just roll over and ask you to scratch their bellies?”

  I took my hat off and rested it on my lap. “Not the entire FBI, just that one agent. And, as point of fact, I’m the one who patched up his belly.”

  Her voice took on the melodic quality that his had, but with more of an edge. “So how do you know ‘Cliff Cly of the FBI’?”

  I grimaced at the thought. “Well, first I broke his jaw.”

  “You what?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She nodded her head. “We’ve got plenty of time-you’re still under arrest.”

  I sighed and thought about a horse that had been trapped on the Battlement… and the woman who loved her. “He was working on a case we were both involved with, ended up gutshot down on the Powder River, and I was lucky enough to get him help.”

  “By breaking his jaw.”

  “That came earlier.”

  She took another curve as the V-8 in the GMC strained under her foot. “Lucky enough to help him, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “So, you’re a lucky guy?”

  We shot through another straightaway and barely missed a logging truck going in the other direction.

  “Sometimes. Hey, speaking of-do you mind if we proceed somewhat under the speed of sound? My daughter’s getting married next week, and I’d like to be there to see the wedding.”

  She let off the accelerator just a little, and I eased back in my seat. “Do you mind telling me why it is that you are so angry when you’re dealing with people?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The way you spoke to Agent Cly and-”

  “Did you hear the way he was with me?” Her knuckles bunched on the steering wheel.

  “I did.”

  “Well, then, you know why.” Her head bobbed in time with the words that she bit off. “He. Pissed. Me. Off.”

  “You’ll excuse me for saying so since I’ve only known you for about six hours, but that doesn’t seem particularly difficult to do.” She shut down again and just stared through the windshield. “All I’m saying is that being angry with him didn’t help your situation.”

  “So your suggestion is that I should’ve broken his jaw?”

  I smiled and thought, that’s what you usually get for moralizing. “Not exactly.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a police chief, not a sheriff, so I don’t have to be a politician-I don’t need the votes.”

  I returned my own gaze to the windshield. It was now righteously pouring down rain. “Votes notwithstanding, you keep going at it the way you are now and you won’t be a chief for very long.” We drove in silence, the emergency sirens echoing off the surrounding hills the only sound. “His jurisdiction supersedes yours, and generally when you argue with the federal government, you lose.”

  She turned her lovely Cheyenne face to regard me. “Tell me all about that.”

  I shook my head and tried to enjoy the ride. “Do you mind telling me where it is we’re going?”

  “To see a man about a Jeep.”

  After a hard left on 212, we rocketed a couple of miles west to a cutoff that had a few signs, one of which read WELCOME TO MUDDY CUSTER, HE’OVONEHE-O ’HE ’E. “What does that mean?”

  “Muddy Custer?”

  “No, the Cheyenne part.”

  She shrugged. “Where they gather.”

  We circled a development where all the houses were exactly the same design but painted in assorted vibrant colors.

  She saw me looking. “Remixes. Every summer Ace Hardware comes down here and has a tailgate sale.”

  She pulled into a driveway where an old Volkswagen minibus, bright yellow with the words OLD SKOOL written down the side, was sitting on blocks, and in front of that a midseventies Jeep CJ-5 with a partial convertible top.

  I watched the rain pelting the canvas. “Somebody we know?”

  “I do.”

  I looked up through the rain that was battering the windshield and thought about how wet we were about to become.

  We both got out and, as I tugged my summer palm-leaf hat down tight, I looked past the rivulets of rain dripping from the brim to examine the Jeep’s twin exhaust tips. I stooped to look at the matching differential drips rainbowing on the concrete surface of the driveway. When I stood, she was already around the other vehicle and headed for the porch to our right with her sidearm drawn.

  I spoke loudly, so as to be heard above the sheets of rain. “I don’t suppose I could have my gun back?”

  She ignored me, and I watched as a curtain in the window to the left of the front door slipped back in place.

  Chief Long stepped up and pounded on the frame of the screen, then turned to look at me as I joined her on the step below. “Hopefully, he’s really drunk and passed out-what we don’t want is him just a little drunk.”

  I crossed my arms and tried to make a smaller target for the downpour. “Because?”

  She pounded on the aluminum door again, the saturated portions of her uniform making provocative patterns. “Then he’s dangerous.”

  I thought I could hear somebody moving around in the small house. “What if he’s sober?”

  “Then I’ve got the wrong house.” She reached out, pulled the screen door aside, and banged on the door itself a half-dozen times with the butt of the revolver. “C’mon, you Indian taco, I know you’re home!”

  I joined her on the porch under the remains of a metal awning that sifted the downpour into interesting streams that were hard to avoid, but it was better cover than nothing. “I’m assuming, and only assuming, mind you, that his real name isn’t Indian Taco.”

  “Last Bull, but he’s part Mexican.” She drummed on the door again, leaving horseshoe-shaped indentations on the cheap, interior-grade surface. “Clarence, I know you’re in there-your shitty Jeep is sitting out here leaking onto the driveway!”

  It sounded like someone knocked a bottle off a table inside, and I waited as Long pounded some more. After a moment the door opened about four inches and a red, bleary eye looked past the security chain while the smell of alcohol and vomit breathed out.

  “What?” His voice was deep and slurred, and it looked as if the chief had gotten the condition she’d hoped for.

  “Open the door.”

  The eye seemed to consider it. “Wh… Why?”

  “Because I said…” Her response was cut short when she noticed he had slipped the barrel of what appeared to be a shotgun into the opening.

  His movements were slow, and he fumbled with the chain as he repeatedly attempted to undo it with the weapon stuffed under his arm; from my perspective, I could see that the breech was jacked and the thing was unloaded. I started to mention this to Long, but she had already reared a foot back.

  “Chief, wait…”

  Her foot hit the door-from personal experience I knew what the cheap, single-ply doors did in these kinds of situations-and she booted a round hole in it about ten inches in diameter, admitting her foot into the house but little else.

  Clarence Last Bull dropped the shotgun and, predictably, ran-as best he could.

  I reached over and grabbed Long by the collar of her wet uniform shirt and yanked her back to the side in an attempt to get her free from the door. As we fell backward alongside the concrete steps into some grandfather sage, she elbowed me, scrambled off, and charged toward the doorway.

  “Wait a minute!”

  She continued to ignore me and splashed up the steps with the long barrel of her. 44 leveled, careful this time to kick the more structurally rigid side.

  I decided it was time to cut Clarence off at the pass.

  There was a sidewalk that led to the back of the house and, after rounding the corner, I slapped open a cyclone fence to find a concrete stoop not unlike the one in the front. There was a wooden-handled garden rake leaning against the painted siding, and I grabbed it. Last
Bull was pretty intent on getting to the dirt that constituted the yard, which kept him from noticing the rake handle I slipped between his legs.

  Fortunately for him, he cleared the concrete steps; unfortunately, he then hit the largest puddle in the yard face first.

  I had dropped the landscaping tool and started toward him when Lolo Long blew through the rear screen door and pitched herself on top of Last Bull just as he had started to get up.

  He was tall but skinny and incredibly inebriated, which gave the chief the upper hand. The air had gone out of him and now they were both covered in mud. He flipped her to the side, but she wrapped her legs around the trunk of his body and pulled him over after her. He tried to reach a feeble hand back, but she struck him a nasty blow to the head with the revolver, and he slumped still.

  She pushed him over and lay there breathing, looking up at me from the detonation of drops that struck the puddle surrounding her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Thanks for the help.”

  “It was nothing.”

  She kicked at the dead weight of his body, and when his face slumped into the murky water, she holstered the Smith and cuffed his hands behind his back.

  I looped a hand under one of Clarence Last Bull’s arms and dragged him away from the puddle before he drowned.

  It was dry in the Cheyenne Tribal Police Law Enforcement and Detention Center, and the environs were as comfy as could be expected; of course, I couldn’t speak for the man snoring fitfully in the holding cell with a blanket over his head. A stolid-looking patrolman with a pockmarked face, who was gently humming a tune to himself and eating portions of an apple that he carved with a yellow-handled pocketknife, was watching me.

  I twirled the tiny ring on my little finger, glad that it hadn’t fallen off in the backyard melee. “Can I have a piece?”

  He cut off another eighth, shoved it in his mouth, and looked at me, his expression as blank as the walls that surrounded us.

  I leaned back in the chair that Long had told me to sit in and glanced around the empty office at the couple of other tables pushed against the bare walls. After placing the suspect in the holding cell, the chief had deposited me with the quiet man and had repaired to the locker room in the back. From the sound of it, she was taking a shower as the sphinx guarded me. I guess I was still under arrest.

  “So, you barked too much and they cut your vocal cords?”

  I looked out the vertical window next to Long’s desk and watched the wind rock the trees and plaster rain against the double-paned glass. You can learn a lot about a person by examining her desk, even if there’s not anything on it. Chief Long’s was completely vacant, except for an old, push-button line phone and one manila folder.

  “Hey, do you mind if I make a phone call?”

  He sighed deeply and continued to hum.

  I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. After a while, I started dropping my attempts at social graces and surrendered to the exhaustion I felt. I leaned back in my chair and pulled my hat down partially over my face.

  It was that way sometimes with the Cheyenne-conversation simply wasn’t required and silence was very often a sign of respect; however, even though I knew he wasn’t attempting to make me feel unwelcome, he wasn’t exactly knocking himself out to become my newfound pal, either.

  Nothing happened for a while; then, from under the brim of my hat, I saw Lolo Long walk in our general direction. She sat in a chair beside the deputy, but they didn’t look at each other, preferring to sit at an angle with their eyes centered on an area roughly midwall.

  As far as I could tell, the two danced around subjects-one providing a counterpoint to the other’s silences with singular responses and small sounds that I’m sure carried their own meanings of verbal sustenance. They were not whispering but were still respectful of my supposed sleep, and the consonants sounded like small, bright birds in faraway trees, the vowels like a lullaby.

  His chair squeaked and he closed a door, and then she moved to my left.

  I tipped my hat back up and opened my eyes. Her hair was still wet from her shower, and she had changed uniforms.

  “I don’t think your staff likes me.”

  She studied the folder that had been on her desk, shrugged, and kept reading. “He’s probably just pissed off because we’ve got his half-brother in the holding cell, but Charles says only about three words a week anyway, so who knows.”

  “Every family has a black sheep; some have two.” I looked around at the half-dozen empty desks that were shoved against the wall. “Where are the rest of your personnel?”

  She gestured with a distracted hand and continued to study the file. “I fired them.”

  I turned and looked at her, expecting more but not getting it. “Excuse me?”

  She shrugged. “I fired Charles, too, but he keeps showing up; he hasn’t been paid in two weeks. I don’t know if he understands that he’s been fired. He lacks imagination, and I have to admit that it’s a trait that’s growing on me.” Her eyes came up. “I don’t like people with imagination.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I nodded toward the sleeping man through the doorway. “That the file on the lodger?”

  She looked back at the folder, and about a minute passed. “No, it’s the file on you.”

  “I’ve got a file?”

  She closed it. “As of today.”

  “So, am I still under arrest?”

  “Yes. No…” She tossed the file on her desk. “Maybe.”

  “Do you mind if I ask for what?”

  She puffed a breath out with her lips. “Reasonable suspicion, which covers being friends with Henry Standing Bear.”

  There was a lot going on there, kind of like a nascent volcano. “What, exactly, is it you’ve got against Henry?”

  Her eyes flared, which reaffirmed my concern. “He thinks he’s above the law, and I don’t like that.”

  I smiled. “Maybe not above, but certainly beyond.” I stood, looking down at the phone on her desk. “I’d like to make a phone call.”

  She splayed a hand and pulled a wave of the damp, raven-colored hair past her shoulder. “I already made all your calls. You’re spending the night at the tribal chief’s house, and I’m going to drop you off.” She leaned back in her chair, stretched out her arms, and left her fingertips on the edge of her desk like a kid testing her reach. “But right now I thought I’d buy you dinner.”

  The Charging Horse Casino is a strange-looking building tucked away along the main road of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and if it weren’t the largest gaming facility on the high plains and covered in neon, you might miss it.

  A thickset man a little older than me with a salt and pepper ponytail and a weathered face met us and opened the door of the casino. “Hello, Chief.”

  Lolo Long didn’t respond but continued in.

  I nodded to the man, who gave me the slightest smile, and then continued on to catch up with her. “Somebody you know?”

  “Ex-police chief.”

  “Oh.”

  Most of the building was taken up by the five-hundred-seat bingo hall in the back, but the three-a-week sessions didn’t start till tomorrow night, so the place was pretty much empty except for the professionals who were scattered around the slots and poker machines. We were seated in front of one of the diamond-shaped windows in the farthest corner of the restaurant, where we could watch the late light flare with a horizontal glow just before dying out.

  “Is this your usual seat?”

  She looked around. “They try to keep me away from the patrons.”

  I nodded and sat there, waiting; it was her party, so I figured I’d let her swing at the pinata, which gave me plenty of time to study the sickle-shaped scar that started under her right cheekbone, circled around the orbit of her eye, and disappeared into her dark eyebrow.

  The waitress, a middle-aged Cheyenne woman, quietly approached with water and menus. We ordered, and the waitress came back
with a pitcher of iced tea. I nodded, and she filled up two glasses, then left, giving Lolo Long time for the window and herself.

  She turned back to me. “So, how did I do today?”

  I felt like I’d just hit a pothole. “Excuse me?”

  “On the job-how did I do?” Her eyes went to the surface of the table. “Look, I know you’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. A long time. I thought you might have some opinions.”

  “It’s really not any of my business, but I think maybe you should give the badge back.”

  It took a moment for her to work up a response. “I know I didn’t do everything exactly right today.”

  “Well, you didn’t do much right today.” I glanced around to make sure that no one was in earshot and continued. “With all due respect, Specialist, I don’t know what your specialty was, but it wasn’t law enforcement.”

  She didn’t move.

  I felt bad about saying it, but she’d introduced the subject and I was beginning to think that it might be my only opportunity. I tried to soften my voice. “I’m sorry to be the one, but I have to tell you this before you get yourself or somebody else killed.”

  The muscles bunched in her throat. “Well, what did I do wrong?”

  I glanced around in an attempt to get a handle on the subject. “Let’s just use the altercation with Last Bull as an example: with any kind of decent public defender, he’ll walk.”

  “He had a shotgun.”

  “An empty one that he did not brandish toward us in any way. If you’d been paying attention rather than trying to gain admittance to a residence where you had no warrant-”

  “I know him; he’s a drunk and dangerous.”

  “Which makes it even worse. You approached the house with your sidearm drawn. I don’t care how dangerous he is or isn’t-you offered him up a written invitation to resist. He is a potential suspect-the operative word there is potential — and should be treated with at least a tiny bit of respect.” She started to interrupt again, but I wouldn’t let her. “What if you’re wrong? What if he’s a guy who just lost a loved one and his child and that’s all? What then?”