Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Pee Pee winked at Manny. “Roadside stand across from Mother Butler’s in Rapid.”

  “It original?”

  “If it were it’d cost Pee Pee a month’s pay.” Lumpy turned sideways to Pee Pee, but he sneaked a look at the vest out of the corner of his eye.

  Manny ran his hand over the vest. It folded under his touch with the supple toughness of elk hide. “Sure it’s not vintage?”

  “Hell no,” Lumpy repeated.

  “Oh chill out, boss.” Pee Pee lowered his chair. “You’re just mad ’cause they were sold out when you got there.”

  “They said they never had any.”

  “Well, they had this one. You just had to pour on the old charm, like I did, to get them to sell you one.”

  “If I’d have been a little quicker, I’d have got the bid on one that came up on eBay.”

  Pee Pee chuckled and popped a PEZ from his plastic Elvis into his mouth. He offered one to Manny. “The chief’s just mad ’cause someone else collects Elvis memorabilia.”

  “Uncle Leon just collects the finer things.” Janet scooted her chair close to Lumpy and draped her arm around his shoulder. “I can understand why he’s mad—everyone on the rez knows he’s a big Elvis fan.”

  “Let’s just get on with this.” Lumpy slid a manila folder across the table. With his stubby arms and potbelly, he barely slid it far enough for Manny to grasp, and Willie got to it first. He turned his chair around and leaned across the table as he opened the folder. Chairs never seem to fit Willie, even as thin as he’s become these last couple of months.

  “Looks like that old Buick in the bombing range was owned by an Ellis Lawler. Who’s he?”

  Janet smoothed her uniform shirt. “He was a geology professor from the School of Mines. The school had archival files that indicated he might have been cheating on his wife.”

  “They keep records on stuff like that on professors?”

  “Got you stumped there, Hotshot?” Lumpy leaned back and crossed his arms as he grinned at Manny. “We country Indians—mainly Janet—managed to dig that up.”

  “His infidelity was only speculation,” Janet volunteered. “He failed to come home to his wife a week before Christmas in 1944. Lawler was a ladies’ man, from what the missing person report says. The investigator thought it too much of a coincidence that he’d leave right before Christmas, especially since he was known to have affairs with students.”

  “This Lawler got relatives for DNA testing?”

  Janet shrugged. “The Rapid City PD’s missing person report doesn’t list any.”

  “But it did say he had a house where Dinosaur Park is now, if that helps.”

  Lumpy tipped his head back and laughed. When no one else did, he looked around the room. “Tell me no one else finds this funny—the guy lived at Dinosaur Park and we dug him up in the land of the dinosaurs.”

  “A real riot.” Manny took the file from Willie and thumbed through the forensic autopsy report. “One of those guys found in that car was Indian.”

  “And big.” Pee Pee popped a PEZ. “The anthropologist from USD said he was much bigger than the White dude.”

  Lumpy snatched the report. “Where’s it say that?”

  “Just read it,” Manny smiled. “We city Indians can.”

  Lumpy scanned the report and tossed it back onto the table. “Doesn’t mention anything about size differential.”

  “Sure it does.” Pee Pee turned slightly so that twin lapel Elvises faced Lumpy, the leather rippling and giving the impression that the King winked at him. Pee Pee spread the report on the table. “Says here, Doc Gruesome had a hard time matching one arm bone. They’d been scattered, but not by predators. Time and wind did their work. The damned Badlands weather. But some critter got inside the car at some point, and Doc said there were two large femurs but only one small leg bone. That critter I mentioned had a snack when he could have had a meal.”

  “It’s still just an accidental death case.” Janet dabbed lip gloss on her finger and ran it across her lips as she eyed Willie. “As much as Uncle Leon would like you to be tied up with this, it’s still just a case of two guys driving into the Stronghold and getting knee-walking drunk, probably died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Old car like that was sure to have some exhaust leak.”

  “The car was in gear,” Pee Pee added.

  “So. That just tells us they were getting ready to pull out,” Lumpy said. “They had one last pull before the exhaust got to them. But we still got to identify the remains. We know Ellis Lawler owned that Buick. That should be easy enough to verify.”

  “And the Indian?”

  Lumpy shrugged. “If I were White, I’d say he was just another Indian went into the sticks to get loaded and never made it out. Not much chance that any lawman back then would work very hard locating an Indian.”

  “Sometimes, relations aren’t any better now.” Manny recalled Henry Lone Wolf’s scalding burns.

  “How’s that?”

  “Nothing.” Manny closed the folder. “We still got to try.”

  “Janet’s already checked missing persons reports in Rapid,” Lumpy said. “She narrowed the year down to 1944. Ellis Lawler was the only one reported missing that year.”

  “Now if we find out just who Lawler’s partner was in the car,” Willie said, “we’ll be a step closer to finding out what happened.”

  They all turned to Janet, who continued buffing her nails. “I’m a jump ahead of you. I already poured over files in the tribal office from that time period. There were four Indians missing from the roles in 1945 that were listed in early 1944. Two of the four had been killed in the Pacific with the Third Marines, and another with the army in North Africa.”

  “And the last one?”

  Janet remained mute as she put her nail kit in her purse.

  “Come on,” Lumpy said. “You got an idea who our croaker is, you tell us.”

  Janet smiled, playing the room like a comedian about to deliver the much-anticipated punch line. “The only man not accounted for on the books is Moses Ten Bears.”

  “Moses Ten Bears the painter?” Lumpy looked with disbelief at his niece.

  “Moses Ten Bears the artist and—as Willie will point out—Oglala holy man.” She nodded to an oil painting hanging on Lumpy’s office wall. It was a mass-produced copy in subdued colors, and shared the wall with a copy of a Charles Russell print of a branding. Both looked as if Lumpy had liberated them from the Honeymoon Suite at the Motel 6.

  “That’s one of Ten Bears’s paintings?” Pee Pee winked at Lumpy.

  “You know it’s a reproduction.”

  “I know,” Pee Pee smiled. “If it were an original it’d cost you a month’s pay.”

  “More like a year’s.” Manny stood, his leg cramping from the bandages, and walked to the painting, standing in front of it as if it could speak to him. It did. “If my memory serves me, legend claims Moses Ten Bears disappeared someplace between his cabin on Cottonwood Creek and the Stronghold around Christmastime in 1944. Unc told me stories—or rumors of stories—that Moses must have slipped and fell off one of those steep cliffs while he hiked there to pray.”

  “Folks figured that was the only explanation,” Willie said, joining Manny at the wall, “that he would ever leave his Victory Garden untended, what was left after the first snow. It’s said he gave away most of his garden to others during those years of World War II. Folks said the water was bad and his garden never produced much, but that he did the best he could to feed the hungry.”

  “Was he artist or holy man?” Janet asked.

  Willie tapped the picture with his finger. “He was both—he couldn’t have been such a spiritual inspiration without his artistic ability, and he couldn’t have such talent without Wakan Tanka guiding him.”

  “He painted what he saw in his visions,” Lumpy said. “People would visit him, and he’d tell their future with his paintings.”

  Manny eased himself back into the chair, hid
ing the wince of pain as his hand bumped the table. “Unc said people rarely took their paintings with them, once Moses showed them their vision he’d had of them, so frightening were they.”

  “And most of the paintings were never found,” Pee Pee added, smoothing Elvis. “But you know the Badlands—it would be impossible to find something there unless you got lucky.”

  “About as lucky as Moses being in that Buick with Ellis Lawler all these years,” Lumpy said. “Moses got any relatives living around here?”

  Willie frowned. “Just his grandson, Marshal Ten Bears.”

  “That guy with the firewood business?”

  Willie nodded and dropped in a chair across the table from Janet. “And he guides hunters during the season.”

  “Then put the habeas grabeas on him.” Lumpy bent and flipped through the autopsy report. “I understand there’s enough DNA in bones to make a comparison. If we could get Marshal to submit a sample…”

  “He won’t give us a sample.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Willie stuffed Copenhagen in his lip and puffed out his cheek to Janet. “Marshal hates law enforcement.”

  “Then why haven’t I heard of him before now?”

  “He keeps a low profile. Keeps to himself.”

  “And if you’d work the street now and again”—Manny stirred the pot even more—“you’d be able to listen to the moccasin telegraph and know who Marshal is.”

  Janet popped her compact from her purse. “Shouldn’t be hard for an FBI agent to get a search warrant for his DNA.”

  “You’ve been watching too much CSI,” Manny said. “Hard enough to get a judge to sign off on a recent case, let alone one older than most judges.”

  Lumpy ignored him and turned to Willie. “Somebody’s got to interview Marshal and get consent for a sample. At least try.”

  “Janet.” Willie turned to face her. “You being my gal Friday—or Tuesday morning now—why don’t you hunt up Marshal. Charm him into giving a sample.”

  “Not me. I’m going to Rapid City this afternoon to go over that missing person report on Ellis Lawler. Besides, J. C. Penney in the mall’s got a huge sale going on.”

  “Then that leaves you or Hotshot there.” Lumpy smiled and hooked his thumbs somewhere behind his belt, under his overhang.

  Willie sighed at Janet. “Then Manny and I draw the assignment. But we’ll miss your company.”

  “Will you really?” She smiled at Willie, but Lumpy rescued him.

  “You two line up a date later. Right now I want to know what you’ve found out about the first stiff—if you want to keep your investigator position.”

  Willie’s face reddened but he kept quiet as he retrieved his notebook from his back pocket and flipped pages. Manny noted Willie didn’t read from his notes, but kept it open as a distraction. The kid was learning after all. “Alexander Hamilton High Elk reported Gunnar Janssen missing in the fall of 1969.”

  “High Elk the Supreme Court nominee?”

  Willie nodded. “And there’s more. Gunnar and the judge were arrested just a week before Gunnar disappeared.”

  “I’ll have someone interview the judge in Washington,” Manny said. “I imagine he’s there preparing for the confirmation hearings.”

  “You’re in luck, Hotshot.” Lumpy grinned through a full set of perfect choppers. “He’s taking a leave of absence from the bench in Sioux Falls. He’s in Rapid City today giving a talk to the Rapid City Bar Association. You can catch him there and interview him after the presentation. A high profile case like this might shoot you back to Quantico—leave us yokels without the benefit of the Great Manny Tanno. Somehow, we’d survive. Maybe Janet should interview the judge after all.”

  Manny held his hands up and his injured one throbbed in the movement. “Suit yourself, Lieutenant. But you want your niece eaten alive by some federal judge—or worse, make a mistake in interviewing that will come back to haunt this agency—then be my guest, have Janet talk with the judge. Just let us know what he says when you get through recovering from the ass chewing he’s bound to give you for sending a rookie.”

  “Wait a minute you chauvinistic…”

  Lumpy stopped her. “This one time, he’s right. Besides, you’re going to be tied up looking into that missing person report between mall shopping. Go right ahead, Hotshot, interview the judge till he makes you bleed.”

  Lumpy left Manny gathering the autopsy reports on all three bodies, and he stuffed them in the manila folder. As he started out of Lumpy’s office, the Ten Bears painting drew him close as if it had powers that wouldn’t let him leave. The muted colors shimmered yellows and grays and tans, bouncing off Badlands spires and undercut erosions and Devil’s Corkscrews rising higher than anything else in the picture.

  Off to one side, crows fed on a dead and bloated coyote while scraggly cows looked on, their ribs poking through their mangy hides. Manny pinched his nostrils shut, but the stench crept through, the odor overwhelming him, along with the maggots crawling from the coyote’s nostrils, ears, eyes. Amid the sounds of the crows pecking on carrion, and of maggots consuming flesh, the waves of heat put off by the insects rose in rippling waves against the already intense Badlands scorching heat. Manny swayed on precarious legs. His hand shot out to the wall to steady himself. He jammed his hand and the pain brought him back to the land of the living.

  He looked around. He was still alone in the room. Sweat dripped from his face and forehead, and he wiped it out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He stared back at the painting, now just a cheap imitation with none of the sounds or smells or sights he’d just experienced. Had he had a vision of sorts, or was Moses telling him something? No wonder people didn’t want to keep their paintings. But somewhere deep in the recesses of Manny’s mind, in that special file reserved for “Things Needing an Explanation,” he knew Moses had had a purpose for such a vision painted on canvas seventy-five years ago.

  CHAPTER 6

  Manny hobbled to a tree stump opposite Reuben’s lawn chair and dropped onto it. A piece of bark cut into his butt and he picked it away. “I should have let you doctor me. My leg and hand feel like crap.”

  Reuben shook his head. “I’m a sacred man—not a medicine man. I can treat Indian sickness, but I can’t doctor this. But that’s all right, kola. What’s the worst that can happen—these cat scratches get infected to the point where you get blood poisoning. Or worse.”

  “I didn’t come here to be lectured about getting to the hospital sooner.”

  “Then why did you come, misun? Just to be close to your big brother?”

  Manny patted his shirt pocket for cigarettes that would have been there three months ago. Before he quit. Whenever his stress level was under siege, he needed one badly. Like now. His stress level was always under siege whenever he visited with his brother the felon. “I need some information.”

  “That’s usually why you come around. What is it this time?”

  Manny grabbed a soda from a cooler sitting on the ground between the tree stump and the lawn chair Reuben sat in. Manny handed him a Diet Coke, dripping with water, but Reuben waved him away.

  “I don’t want any of that diet stuff.” Reuben’s shorts bound up his crotch and he pulled them down for comfort. “When I journey to the Spirit World, I want the Old Ones to know I went out in style.”

  Manny nodded to Reuben’s shorts. “Some style.” He kept the Diet Coke for himself and handed Reuben a full lead version. He shook off the water and popped the top. It fizzed over onto his hand and he flicked the cola droplets into the dirt where they made tiny mud balls when they hit.

  “Must be something important for you to come limping way out here.”

  Manny rubbed his leg, feeling the itch, and he struggled to ignore it. “We found three bodies in the Stronghold District where the Air Corps had their bombing range during World War II.”

  Reuben laughed. “I’m surprised that you found only three. That’s some rugged terrain
up thataway. More than a few corpses have been tossed over the edge or left to the mercy of the coyotes and mountain lions.”

  “Personal knowledge?”

  Reuben’s face reddened. “You know better than that shit.”

  Manny nodded. “I do. Old habits die hard, or some philosophical crap like that. Sorry.”

  “None taken,” he replied, though Manny knew Reuben had taken offense. When Manny was working the Jason Red Cloud homicide on Pine Ridge two months ago, he’d accused Reuben of knowing where so many dead and missing bodies could be found on the reservation.

  “You were an AIM enforcer back then,” Manny had blurted out one day when the investigation had stalled.

  “I never killed anyone like your FBI said I did.”

  “Bullshit. The kids in school had you pegged…”

  “The kids you went to school with got their rumors from their parents, who got them from Wilson’s goons. I never murdered anyone.”

  “You murdered one.”

  Reuben had turned away then, but Manny pressed his point. “You confessed to killing Billy Two Moons. Shot him to death in his car outside Hill City. Spent twenty-five years in the state pen for it. Don’t tell me you never murdered anyone.”

  “I tell you, I never murdered anyone!”

  And before Manny’s assignment was finished, he learned he’d been wrong about Reuben in so many ways. Manny dropped his head.” I didn’t mean…”

  “Of course not.” Reuben waved the comment away as he eased back in the lawn chair, his butt poking through missing plastic slats, sipping his soda. Reuben—with his love for Manny—had a way of deepening the guilt Manny had felt for so long, making it harder to deal with his feelings. For most of his life, Manny had fought against having any kind of relationship with his brother. And it had been an easy fight, with Manny representing every federal lawman and Reuben representing what every AIM member could achieve if they committed the right crimes. Now as Manny feebly played catch-up, he knew he’d missed Reuben’s love for these many years. And that had hurt them both.