Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “I understand with you being the front runner for the appointment to permanent police chief, you’ve had a lot of pain in your ass lately. I’ll bet you can suck start every car driven by the selection committee.”

  Lumpy turned his back on Manny and spoke to Pee Pee. “Make sure you help our federal friend here all you can. We’re just country yokels here, but we’re all he’s got.” Lumpy turned to Janet. “And stick with sloppy boy here like flies on a gut wagon.”

  Janet looked Willie’s uniform up and down. “That won’t be hard, Uncle Leon.”

  Willie shot her a glance and she shrugged. “Family’s got to count for something.”

  Lumpy grabbed the oh-shit handle and struggled to get into the new Suburban with ACTING CHIEF plastered across the hood. He tromped on the gas, kicking up dirt, pelting the old Buick where Pee Pee still worked bent over, sharp dings from rock hitting the car echoing off the steep canyon walls. Just before Lumpy disappeared over the ridge, he hit sagebrush that knocked a wheel cover off. It caromed off a rock and sailed over the side and into the deep canyon like a silver Frisbee. Another victim lost to the Stronghold.

  Manny bent to help Pee Pee, but he waved Manny away. “I’ll holler if I need you guys. No sense for all of us to sweat our asses off in this heat.”

  They sat in the shade of the Durango. Manny wiped the sweat from his face and neck and draped the damp bandanna on top of his head to catch the breeze. Badlands in August. Just where I want to be. Shimmering heat waves floated off shrubless spires and turtleback mounds that had eroded with the wind and rain that came upon the Stronghold with sudden anger and chipped away at the land, always angry when men invaded her privacy. Welcome to the wonderful world of National Parks.

  But the Badlands had been wonderful, back when Unc and he would travel to the rim and leave the car on top, walking down to the bottom in one of their yearly pilgrimages. “It’s so desolate down here,” Manny said on one of their hikes. “Nothing can live in this heat. And there’s no water, Unc. No food.”

  Unc smiled and chin-pointed to silver and red and yellow blooming flowers crowding each other in the shade of a dead cottonwood tree. “Pick those wild onions and bee plants so we can eat.”

  They had eaten over a fire fueled with sacred sage, eating cottontail Unc had snared. He thought then that Unc was the smartest man he’d ever met even though he’d never completed school. Unc had run away from the boarding school in Rapid City so many times they gave up dragging him back.

  It had all been an adventure for young Manny. In retrospect, he now knew it wouldn’t have mattered if he and Unc had done nothing except walk until they dropped, as long as they were together, for Unc always knew where to lead them to show Manny the secrets of the Badlands. As if Unc talked with the spirits that Manny felt even now might be watching them. He rubbed the hair standing on his neck.

  That was a lifetime ago, before Manny’s brother Reuben was sentenced for an AIM-style murder. That was before Manny vowed to do what was necessary to escape Pine Ridge. That was before Manny’s assignment to the FBI Academy as an instructor, and before his fall from grace this summer when he’d failed to solve the Red Cloud homicide case. At least publicly.

  “How did the Old Ones ever survive in this heat?” Janet wiped her face with a handkerchief and dabbed at sweat dripping down her neck. “Especially with no water.”

  “They knew of water holes.” Willie took off his Stetson and wiped the inside with his bandanna. He set the hat on the ground, careful not to dirty the pheasant feather hatband. “They passed on that information to other generations.”

  “Like travel guides.”

  Willie smiled. “Sort of. We Lakota had to rely on each other for survival, and locations of water holes were primary.”

  “But the water in this part of the reservation is alkaline. Undrinkable. Clay can’t settle to the bottom. Uncle Leon tells me nothing good ever came out of the Stronghold, including water.”

  “Old Ones sliced prickly pear cactus and dropped them into their full water bladders.” Unc’s teaching came back to Manny at odd times such as now. “It cleared the water enough they could drink it. And survive.”

  Janet rolled her eyes and Willie caught it. “It’s true. If you’d gotten a degree in Lakota history you’d know some of these things. Which brings up: Just what is your degree in?”

  “Sociology. Straight 4.0.”

  Willie laughed. “Just what we need on the police force—a social worker.”

  “I’m no social worker!” Janet stood and kicked pieces of volcanic rock and alkaline pebbles as she stomped away from the Durango.

  “See what I’m stuck with? A damned rookie.”

  Manny nudged Willie. “Is that your vast experience talking? Seems like you don’t have much more experience than she does.”

  “Well, she bugs me. Always asking questions. Getting underfoot.”

  “Almost like she’s trying to learn?” Manny hadn’t minded Willie being underfoot. Working reservation cases with Manny, Willie had shown a desire to be a top investigator. He’d asked appropriate questions during the investigations that Manny had been happy to answer. “Like another officer I work with did recently?”

  “Damn it, you know what I mean. She wants to learn so she can take over my job when Uncle Leon decides he wants to stick me back on patrol.”

  “Over here!” Pee Pee yelled.

  Before Pee Pee’s words died out Willie had jumped to his feet and ran to the car, with Janet and Manny close behind. “What’s the yelling about?”

  Pee Pee popped a PEZ into his mouth and gummed it as his one fang shone through his wind-cracked lips. “Bonus round!”

  Pee Pee used the car to help himself stand and pointed to the windowless opening. “Bonus round. Some lucky contestant will have the pleasure of investigating two more croakers.” Pee Pee gave them a come-hither gesture with his finger and dropped back onto his knees. Red flannel fluttered, still attached to an arm bone jutting up from the exposed sand. Beside the white cloth a brown muslin shirt clung to the remains of a breastbone.

  “When I got to stiff one”—he turned to Janet—“that’s what we call our customers, ‘stiffs’.” He winked at Manny and turned back to Janet. “When I finished digging stiff one out of the dirt, I saw an arm bone with red cloth still attached to it underneath him, buried to the wrist. Now, I got no fancy degree like you three, but I suspected stiff one didn’t come from the factory with three arms, the other two which I had already carted off to the evidence van. So I got to sculpturing some more and uncovered two more lovely souls. My uneducated guess is those two would be that sixty-five- or seventy-year-old case that the chief mentioned. I’d wager they’ve been here since the bombing range was active, given the amount of dirt that’s blown into the car.”

  “Sixty or seventy years,” Janet said under her breath. “How will we ever figure out who they are, let alone what or who killed them.”

  “FM,” Willie said, brushing dirt from his uniform trousers.

  “FM?”

  “Friggin’ Magic. We can do wondrous things nowadays,” Pee Pee said, meeting Manny’s stare as if he were defending his years of evidence experience. “Stuff like DNA profiles, missing persons records, dental records.”

  Janet turned away from the two skeletons. “But if we don’t know who they are, how are we ever going to find out who their dentist was?”

  “If you’d gotten a degree in criminal justice instead of sociology”—Willie smiled—“you’d know these things.”

  “When’s he going to be done with that mumbo jumbo?” Janet chin-pointed to Willie. He stood beside the Buick, his black uniform shirt coated with white alkaline dust, settling heavier around the armpits and middle of his back where the sweat broke through, his singing rising and falling in time with the gusts of wind that coated the Durango with dirt.

  “He needs to do a Sending Away ceremony for the spirits that still linger.” Goose bumps grew on Manny’s arms,
and he wished Janet hadn’t asked.

  “That’s old superstitious stuff they tried to teach us in school. We’ve evolved beyond that now.”

  Three months ago Manny would have agreed with her, before he’d experienced visions of Wounded Knee, and visions of Jason Red Cloud that screamed for Manny to find his killer and allow Jason’s wanagi to travel south along the Spirit Road, the Wanagi Tacanku. He had denied his Lakota heritage then, as Janet did now. He knew how she felt, knew she tossed aside the old ways, just as he had, forgetting where he came from as he lived comfortably in the White man’s world to the east. Now he wasn’t sure, and a part of him sympathized with Janet’s rejection of tradition.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  Willie dipped into his wopiye, his medicine pouch, and tossed peji wacanga into the air. The sweetgrass seemed to hang on the breeze for solemn moments before being carried away. “He’s praying to the four winds. Have you never heard that a man has four wanagi, four spirits? Those victims’ first spirits—their niya—are gone, but the other three are there. Willie’s wishing them well as they travel along the Spirit Road.”

  “Right.” Janet sat back in the seat, arms crossed, looking out the side window. Willie’s voice—singing the Lowanpi. The wakan songs rose and fell with an eerie staccato captured by the ashen rock formations comprising the Badlands. Nothing escapes the Stronghold.

  Manny dozed, his head falling back against the headrest, lulled by Willie’s voice as he performed the Sending Away ceremony under the blistering noonday sun. Manny dreamed of long ago times when the Oglala were one with others of the Oceti Sakowin, Seven Council Fires, strong and able and capable of driving their enemies from this place that sheltered them in times of crises. Old Ones came to this Sheltering Place to pray to the Great Mysterious. And so many would be buried in this Sheltering Place where their spirits would be helped south to the Milky Way.

  Manny sat upright when Willie’s voice stopped, realizing he was here in the Durango, with Janet snoring in the backseat. Sweat beaded on Manny’s forehead and he wiped it with his shirtsleeve. He breathed deep to ease his heart thumping in his chest. Had he been dreaming just now when he felt someone tug at the corner of his sleeve? The hairs stood on the nape of his neck just like they had when he came here with Unc, feelings a boy could never explain, any more than the grown man could now.

  Willie climbed back into the car. Janet leaned over the seat and started to speak, but Manny shook his head and she dropped back, arms crossed, glaring at Manny. Willie started out of the Badlands bottom and was nearly to the top when he stopped and grabbed his cell. “Shit! No signal.”

  “You calling pizza delivery or something?”

  “I wanted to tell Pee Pee to tow that car for evidence.”

  “Don’t you think he knows to do that?”

  Willie shrugged and drove slowly toward the rim. “Even damn cell signals don’t escape the Stronghold.”

  “Then how do those people living down there call out?” Janet had leaned back over the seat and her arms brushed Willie’s neck. He made no attempt to pull back from her.

  “What people?”

  “Those ones living in that cabin down there.” She pointed to a cabin a quarter mile away nestled between a steep cliff and a creek washout. A shallow dirt road led to the cabin.

  Manny grabbed his binos. The sun-bleached cabin showed gaps in the logs where mud chinking had fallen out over the years. A single smokestack leaned at an awkward angle, as if the constant wind had caused the metal to grow that way as scrub junipers did here. But the cabin itself stood straight and proud. “Just an old shack. Doubt if anyone lives there.”

  Willie looked through the field glasses and handed them to Janet. “That’s Moses Ten Bears’s old cabin.”

  Janet grabbed the binoculars. “Shit—that the cabin that belonged to that old dude who was such a good artist?”

  Willie frowned at her while he took the binoculars and eyeballed the cabin again. “Moses Ten Bears was one of the last of the great Oglala sacred men, the last of the great wicasa wakan. Not just some old dude.” He put the glasses back under the seat. “Margaret Catches and I tried to find the Ten Bears cabin last summer.”

  “Why would you do that?” Janet asked.

  “We thought his Sicun, his spirit, might still linger.”

  “If a sacred man performs the proper rituals,” Unc had told Manny one night huddled around the fire on the lip of the Stronghold, “the Sicun of another holy man will enter him, make his own power stronger. Sacred men need other Sicun to build their power. Only then can they give it away to help others.”

  Manny had shuddered with the thought, as he did now, thinking of Willie studying with Margaret Catches to be such a sacred man, to possess power that would allow him to help those with Indian sicknesses, sickness of the spirit. Perhaps Moses Ten Bears’s spirit had lingered for so many generations waiting for the right holy man to take possession of his Sicun.

  “Let’s hike down there and see what’s left inside.” Janet grabbed for the door latch, but Willie stopped her.

  “That’d be trespassing. That cabin’s on deeded land that belongs to Marshal Ten Bears—Moses’s grandson.”

  “How you know so much about it?”

  Willie shrugged off Janet’s arm against his neck and started driving up the two-track. “The Heritage Committee tried to pressure Marshal to move his cabin into Pine Ridge Village last year. They wanted to make it part of their Heritage Exhibit, display it directly across from Billy Mills Hall. But Marshal told them to stay off his land or else.”

  “That so?” Janet asked.

  “’Fraid so,” Manny said. “Marshal told the committee he used the cabin now and again. Said his grandfather would have wanted it left right where it sits, there at the edge of the Stronghold. Or so my brother, Reuben, told me one night after a sweat. Marshal said if the money were right he’d sell it, though.”

  “I take it the Heritage Committee told him to pack sand?”

  Manny nodded. “In a polite way. They figure history they have to pay for isn’t history worth displaying.”

  As they made their last half-mile ascent out of the canyon, Manny looked back down at the shack. Angry heat waves fought the wind for control of the valley, and for just a heartbeat the cabin disappeared. When it reappeared once more, a feeling of peace overcame Manny, as if he were welcomed to this place, as if Grandfather Moses welcomed them all and offered his protection from the Stronghold’s brutality.

  CHAPTER 3

  Pee Pee shucked popcorn into his mouth as he waltzed through the swinging autopsy room doors. He stopped midstride, mouth agape. He looked odd standing there with his full set of teeth, bad fitting with a pronounced overbite, gawking at Manny. “You look like hell.”

  “I feel like hell,” Manny said.

  “Bad night?”

  “Long night. Let’s just say there were no sheep left to count.”

  “Clara?”

  Manny nodded. “I think she’s trying to make me into an Indian Johnny Stud.”

  “Poor baby.” Pee Pee handed Manny the bag of popcorn. He grabbed a handful, and Pee Pee flashed Janet a toothy grin. “How about you sweetcheeks?”

  Janet shook her head, her eyes transfixed on the sheets covering the skeletal remains of the three victims on the autopsy tables.

  “Might help your green.”

  She ignored him and continued staring at the sheet.

  “I’ll take some.” Willie sank an enormous hand into the bag and came away with half the popcorn. Some spilled on his uniform shirt but he made no attempt to brush it away, or cover the butter stain it made on one pocket. He leaned over and whispered to Manny, “This is my first autopsy. Do we help the doc or anything?”

  “Just watch. Doc Gruesome will record everything.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “But you might keep an eye on Janet so she doesn’t hit her head when she faints.”

  Janet jumped when the medical exam
iner came whistling through the doors. Doc Grooson slapped Pee Pee on the back and tipped an imaginary hat to Janet. He smiled at the sheet. “And who will we be talking with this fine morning?”

  No wonder we call him Doc Gruesome.

  “Don’t we have to mask up or something?” Janet stammered, moving away from the examination room when Doc Gruesome tossed the sheet aside. “Put on robes?”

  Doc Gruesome grabbed the last of the popcorn and looked at the clipboard hanging from the end of the stainless steel table. “We would if we were talking with fresh bodies, but these have decomposed long before you were born. And gowns and masks would interfere with our snacks. Besides”—he winked at Janet—“I got a cultural anthropologist coming in from University of South Dakota after we talk with these three lovely souls.”

  He crunched down on an old maid as he turned to the first pile of bones on the table. “Since you’re the first one found,” he addressed the body under the sheet, “You’ll be the first we visit with.”

  He turned on the microphone hanging from the ceiling and smiled at Janet. “Just in case this fella says something memorable.”

  Manny stood beside an elderly couple at the Burger King order counter. They glanced his way, bent and whispered to each other, then looked his way again. At one time, Manny would have felt flattered that they had recognized him, perhaps from a Newsweek article, or a CNN interview concerning some high-profile case he was investigating at the time. Now it just felt as if they talked in hushed tones about the Great Manny Tanno, solver of all homicides. Except the Red Cloud case and the one that dragged him away from his FBI Academy position and landed him this lovely transfer to the Rapid City Field Office.