As the crow flies wl-8

by Craig Johnson

  It took both hands, but I wrenched one thumb away, reverse-wrist-locked the large man all the way down the hallway, and shoved him against the far door with a heavy thump. I held him there until he stopped struggling. “Knock it off.”

  He didn’t respond verbally-no surprise there-and tried to throw his body against me.

  I applied so much pressure that I was afraid I was going to dislocate his thumb. I repeated the words again and felt his body relax just a bit. I let him go and stepped back.

  He turned quickly and squared off with me, his face red from the exertion. “Keep your hands off me.”

  I raised mine, just to indicate that I was done for now. “How about we all just keep our hands to ourselves?”

  Charles raised a finger and pointed at Nate. “Get him out of my jail.”

  Nate and I were sitting in Artie’s truck in the Tribal Police parking lot under the yellowish glow of the arc lights as the young man pulled on the light switch and then held the two wires together, causing the small-block to cough, sputter, and then rumble into a lopsided idle. “You gotta have the engine running to get the player to work.”

  I handed him the CD-he took it and slipped it into the slot in the dash. We listened to the whole recording three times. “I’m sorry, but it’s not broken into tracks, so we have to listen to it all.”

  “That’s all right.”

  He leaned in at the portion of the recording where the woman was speaking in the background and focused on what seemed to be the one discernable word. He swallowed and then hit the EJECT button and handed me the CD.

  “Do you recognize the woman’s voice?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I, but I probably wouldn’t.” I tipped my hat back and looked into the night, the streetlights of Lame Deer trailing away from 212 into the heart of darkness. “Well, it was worth a try.”

  “The word she says…”

  “Yep. I still can’t quite make it out; something about ‘dome’ or ‘dose’?”

  “Dole, she’s saying dole. It’s a word my grandmother uses.”

  I waited a moment. “You think that’s your grandmother?”

  “No, but that’s the word the woman is using-dole.”

  My limitations loomed audible. “What about the music in the background?”

  “The jukebox up at Jimtown is always playing.” He shrugged and slipped the truck into reverse. “I can take us to a place where we can hear everything that’s on there.”

  I grabbed the open passenger door and held it. “I can’t go anywhere.”

  He looked incredulous. “What, you’re still under arrest?”

  I looked past him and into the lighted windows of the Tribal Police Headquarters. “Do I have to remind you who Charles’s half-brother is?”

  He cleared his throat and rubbed his neck where the patrolman’s grip still showed red. “Oh, man.” He dipped his head and looked up the hill to the blinking light at the top of the radio tower. “KRZZ’s got production studios that can do anything; slow the track down, pump up different levels.” He looked at the wristwatch on the carabiner attached to his belt loop. “I gotta be up there in two hours anyway-why don’t you meet me there?”

  “I thought Herbert His Good Horse did morning drive.”

  “He does, but he also gets hung over and I get stuck pulling doubles.” He shrugged. “That was mean. He takes care of his nephew, the one that’s got no legs.”

  “I saw a poster of him winning some marathon in Japan.”

  “He’s unreal.”

  I nodded. “If you’re going to be up there all morning, I’ll head to the radio station once Chief Long comes in and replaces Charles.”

  “Cool, man.”

  “Well, I’d better get back inside before Charles tries to drown your uncle in the toilet.” I closed the door.

  Nate tossed a worried look to the jail as I walked around the truck. “Hey, Nate?” I pulled the small revolver from my belt and tossed it into his lap through the open window. “No more of this Indian outlaw stuff, okay?”

  He looked genuinely embarrassed. “Okay.”

  Inside, I found Charles reading the newspaper with his feet up on the counter, the black and white monitors showing the holding cell, the duty room, and the parking lot where Nate was turning around and pulling away.

  I yawned and placed my elbows on the high counter. “I’m thinking you need to put a few hours into some sensitivity training seminars.”

  He was reading the Billings Gazette but looked up at me; predictably, he said nothing.

  “Just for the record, I don’t think Artie’s the one who killed your brother, which means that the person that did do it is still out there and needs to be brought to justice. Have you got any ideas of who might’ve held a grudge against Clarence and his family?”

  He folded the paper, placed it in his lap, and looked at me. “Everybody has enemies.”

  “Including you?”

  He cocked his head. “Including me; it goes with the job.”

  “Anybody dislike you enough to go after your half-brother?”

  He shrugged.

  “How about Audrey and Adrian?” I stifled the yawn in my throat. “That’s a lot of dislike.”

  He unfolded his paper and rustled it to straighten the pages.

  “You know, generally you don’t have to look very far for people who do things like this; it’s usually friends, so-called, or family.”

  He continued to study his paper.

  “It seems to me that somebody is looking to wipe out your entire family, Charles. And you don’t seem to care.”

  The tribal policeman’s voice rumbled over the Billings Gazette. “I care enough that if you leave here for another five minutes, I’ll go into that holding cell and do society a favor.”

  I waited a moment and then continued on like a wrecking ball. “You a killer, Charles?”

  After a moment he released one side of the paper, lowered his hand to hit the button under the counter so that the door behind me buzzed in a persistent manner. He sat there with that expressionless look on his face and watched me.

  I straightened up, took the two steps to the door, and yanked the thing open, his stare following me into the hallway. “Good to know, since we’re looking for one.”

  13

  I was having this dream where the talking animals were at it again-even Dog was having a go at me. It was only when he asked me the second time if I wanted coffee that I started thinking that things seemed suspicious.

  Flapping my eyelids open and shut cleared a little of the bleariness and allowed me to focus. Lolo Long had pulled up another folding chair from the Law Enforcement Center’s endless supply and was holding two cups from the White Buffalo convenience store, a manila folder under her arm again. “I understand we had an attempted jail break last night?”

  I peeled the blanket back a little more. “As jail breaks go, it wasn’t much.” I sat up and looked out the small rectangular window at the sky, already worn to a lighter shade of blue. “It’s midmorning?”

  “Say… you are a detective.”

  I slumped back onto my blanket-pillow. “Shoot me?”

  “There is a member of my dwindled staff who would be happy to comply with that request, but in consolation, I bring you coffee and photographs.”

  I struggled up and thought my back was going to fragment like not-so-fine china. Groaning, I reached out and took the Styrofoam cup she proffered. Written on the side in a ridiculously perky font were the words FRESH BREWED. I undid the top and looked at the complex, frothy content with what looked like mouse droppings decorating the top. “What is this?”

  She leaned forward, taking a look in mine, and then undid her own and traded cups with me. “Sorry. Mocha Chip Frappuccino.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She sipped what she called coffee and raised one of those samurai-sword eyebrows. “I take my comforts where I can.” She handed me the envelope. “Here are the
photos from Henry’s camera that you guys took. There’s not much there, but one thing jumped out at me.”

  I pulled out the prints and looked at them one at a time, finally looking up at her. “She wasn’t facing forward when she went over.”

  “No.” She sighed. “And as far as I know, nobody does a suicide holding their child and attempting a back flip.” She waited a few moments. “There’s nothing else that I can tell.”

  “Me either.” I placed the photos back in the envelope, careful to close the metal tabs.

  Long glanced at the still-snoring man in the holding cell. “You caught Artie.”

  “Henry caught Artie.” I sipped my regular black coffee and watched as she made the same face she always did whenever I mentioned the Cheyenne Nation. “How come the cavalry hasn’t shown up?”

  “The Feds?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t think they know-no access to the moccasin telegraph.”

  I thought about it. “Let’s keep it that way for a while, shall we?”

  After I’d given her the rundown on last night’s events, she stood and walked over to the bars. “Strange behavior for a guilty man.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. I mean if he was guilty, why would he care what I thought?” I stretched the remnants of my back. “We played the recording for him.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “That he didn’t do it.”

  She turned to look at me. “What do you think?”

  “That he didn’t do it.”

  She nodded her head in a defeated fashion. “Well, our only other suspect is dead.”

  “Inconvenient, isn’t it?” I strained a little more coffee through my teeth. “Have you listened to the recording?”

  “Your buddy, Cliff Cly, played it for me yesterday, but the sound isn’t so good.”

  “You didn’t happen to hear a woman in the background, did you?”

  She turned her full attention to me, placing her broad back against the bars of the holding cell. “No. I mean, we were listening to Clarence and Artie; I don’t think anybody paid much attention to anything else.”

  “Did you hear music in the background?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Well, fortunately, I’ve got an expert in the field who says he can help us out.”

  “Who?”

  “The jail breaker.”

  She looked dubious. “Nate?”

  I gestured toward the snoring man. “He’s got a vested interest.”

  “I can call my mother and have her bring in food and Artie-sit.” She nodded and continued chewing her coffee. “As you know, we’ve got a shower here; would you like to use it?”

  I ruffled my hand through my hat hair, I’m sure causing it to stand up at all angles. “Is that a hint?”

  She did her best to suppress the grin caused by my appearance but failed miserably. “Could be.”

  I didn’t have any clean clothes to change into, but Chief Long was kind enough to loan me a shirt from Tribal Police supplies with a nifty little patch set like hers but with the name PRETTY WEASEL printed on the pocket. “Is this my undercover name?”

  She drove south on the gravel road leading to the radio station, the tail end of the Yukon swinging around behind us like a flat-track racer. “What?”

  I braced a hand against the dash. “Nothing.”

  KRZZ’s was not the most inspiring of buildings, but then most everything concerning radio rarely is. I’d done a brief semester as a freshman at KUSC, University of Southern California’s student radio station, where I had been the worst DJ they’d ever heard. The programming in the early sixties was almost exclusively classical and didn’t require a great deal of talk between the twenty minute tracks, but even I had to admit that I was horrible.

  It looked to be a utilitarian building from the sixties with a slab roof and a wall of small-pane windows overlooking what there was of downtown Lame Deer. The white paint was peeling off the concrete block, and the front screen door was propped open with a cardboard box full of CDs that had been marked on the side with the plea, TAKE ME, I’M FREE! There was a battered Honda Civic in the parking lot as well as Artie’s truck.

  Lolo parked and we got out. I could hear music drifting through the open door, John Trudell’s Bone Days, a stream of consciousness blues opus I recognized from hanging around Henry.

  In the tubular-style font of the seventies were the words KRZZ, LOW POWER-HIGH REZ, the lettering also peeling like a second-day sunburn.

  “Looks like Native radio’s seen better days.”

  Inside there was a green carpet that showed the fiber grid underneath, and a surplus steel government desk where a pretty-enough young woman, who was a friend of Melissa Little Bird’s, was working on a book full of Sudoku. She raised her head as we entered. “Can I help you?”

  Lolo looked at the large poster behind the girl’s head-it was a badly done offset print of four men dressed in period western costume with the words REGGAE COWBOYS, I SHOT THE SHERIFF in red. She glanced at me. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” I thumbed my Tribal Police patch. “Anyway, Poppa’s got a brand new bag.”

  The young woman was uncertain, looked at the two of us, and decided the only course was to repeat her request. “Can I help you?”

  I smiled. “I’m sorry. Is Nate here?”

  She rolled her eyes toward the inner sanctum and immediately went back to the puzzles as we turned and made our way into another room with a few more desks and a glass wall that gave a view of the “on-air studio,” principally discerned by the large red light with white lettering that read ON AIR. Nate was standing in the middle, swaying to the Native beat-poet’s words and the searing guitar accompaniment.

  I stepped forward and knocked on the thick glass. The young man couldn’t hear us with the headphones on, so I knocked a little louder, afraid that if I applied much more pressure the glass would most certainly fall out of the frame onto the floor.

  Nate finally swayed around so that he was looking at us and immediately motioned that we should join him through the door he pointed to at the left.

  KRZZ’s studio was a world apart from the tawdry outer office where the receptionist sat-there were multiple computer screens, sound boards with about a hundred slide controls, and banks of CD and computer inputs. The inside of the room was covered in acoustical foam and at the center was a stylish, air-cushioned chair. There was another window to the outside, but it was so plastered with Indian Power, AIM, Thunderchild, and New Day Four Dances Drum Group stickers that I doubted you could tell the weather by looking out of it.

  “Welcome to the nerve center. Federal grants can go only to actual transmission equipment. Say what you want about Herbert His Good Horse, he knows how to write grants.”

  It was an impressive setup. “I guess.”

  “Hold on just a second.” He reached up and, just as the song finished, swung the elevated mic in front of his face. “John Trudell, my brothers and sisters, just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human. It’s ten o’clock in the AM, daytime for you Indians, and you’re listening to KRZZ 94.7, Low Power-High Rez, the voice of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Nestaevahosevoomatse! ”

  He touched another button on the computer and a strong drum beat filled the studio with background singers chanting something I vaguely recognized. “Are they singing about Mighty Mouse?”

  Nate smiled. “Yeah, a group called Black Lodge. It’s a favorite of the kids down at the elementary school.”

  I pulled the CD out of my pocket, slipped it from the paper envelope, and handed it to him. “This isn’t likely to make it on your top-ten list.”

  Lolo added, “Even with a bullet.”

  Nate put the CD in one of the players, punched a few buttons, and we listened to the beginning of the recording before realizing we were hearing it over the same speakers as the Mighty Mouse powwow song.

  “Is t
hat going out over the air?”

  He rapidly hit a few more buttons and made a face. “Just a little.”

  “I don’t know if this is a two-party consent state, but I’m pretty sure we could get sued for what just happened.”

  He shrugged. “We’ll just keep it between ourselves.”

  “And a couple of thousand listeners?”

  He adjusted the volume on another off-air track. “I think you’re overestimating our listenership.”

  I glanced at the studio phone as the lights began blinking, not unlike the ones in my office that regularly plagued me. “Uh huh.”

  We ignored them and carefully listened to the recording again, but I couldn’t make out anymore than I had before. Nate’s fingers jigged on the computer keyboard, and then he hit a button on the CD player. “I downloaded it to the computer, so now we can manipulate it any way we want.”

  The Sudoku woman flung open the studio door. “Nate, did you just put some kind of crazy shit on the air? People are calling and want to hear the John Trudell song about Mighty Mouse again.”

  “Um, tell them it was a demo.” He flicked his hand at her, and she disappeared. He hit a few more buttons and turned down the on-air volume, and we were once again listening to the hiring of a hit man.

  We got to the portion where I thought I’d heard music; Nate’s fingers tapped on the keyboard and isolated the track, bringing the background noise up and the primary voice down, allowing us to hear the melody of something.

  “Do you recognize that song?”

  He listened intently to the simple chord progression but shook his head. “No.”

  Lolo leaned in and propped an arm on the counter. “Play it again.”

  Nate did as he was told, and we listened to the music as he lifted the volume-a strong bass-baritone and a chicka-boom rhythm passed through the speakers. “Jail was often his home They’d let him raise the flag and lower it…”

  The rest was lost in the background noise and angry voices.

  “Johnny Cash-that’s The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”

  Nate looked at me. “Who?”