Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Manny elbowed Willie, and he let it drop. “We knew he was a guide of sorts, but what’s he do in the off-season?”

  “Firewood,” Willie said. “Sixty-five a cord, stacked and delivered. He went out of his way to tell me it’s just a summer hobby. Says he makes more than enough guiding hunters; he doesn’t have to do much in the summer unless he wants to.”

  “And did he give a sample for DNA?”

  “He didn’t want to.” Janet smiled at Willie and made a point to bat her eyes. “It took some persuasion but we got it.”

  “You?”

  Janet nodded.

  “Good job, huh Willie?”

  “Wasn’t the easiest thing for Janet to do—persuade Marshal. But I think they got something straight between them that convinced him.”

  Janet swung at Willie’s head but he pulled back before she could draw blood.

  “What? I didn’t know what you two were doing when you went back inside the cabin.”

  “Well, we didn’t do what you think we did while you were roaming around outside.”

  “What did you do while Janet was doing her…convincing?”

  Willie sipped his soda. “I walked around the cabin. Saw where Marshal’s been using worn deer trails to get places in the Stronghold.”

  Manny recalled his days with Unc, when they would travel the game trails interfingered with washout gullies to get around that nearly impassable part of the Badlands. He imagined Marshal shared that same innate knowledge of the area with Uncle Marion.

  “On one side of his cabin Marshal had a porcupine hide stretched and drying. With one very small caliber hole that I almost missed spotting. And hanging beside the porcupine was what would have been a nice mountain lion pelt if it had been killed in the winter. Thing was mangy. You know how they get in the summer when they’re not haired-up.”

  Manny nodded.

  “That’s one of Marshal’s side businesses—supplying porcupine quills to local artists. Sells some to the Prairie Edge in Rapid,” Willie added.

  “Quilling is something Oglala women do.” Willie leaned across the table and smiled at Janet, drawing out his words, accentuating his condescending tone. “They’re involved in traditional things, like quilling and beading. They don’t go off on some tangent, wanting to be a criminal investigator.”

  “I had a belly full of traditional crafts when I was in school. They were boring as they are now.” Janet’s face reddened, and her jaw tightened, then she relaxed and flashed a toothy grin that showed off her dimples. “Now I like things that excite me more.”

  “Does Marshal think the body in the car is his grandfather?” Manny said quickly to diffuse the looming storm at the booth.

  “He’s hoping it’s not.” Janet turned to Manny. “He’s made something of a living being the grandson of Moses Ten Bears. People are anxious to buy porcupine quills, take guided tours of the Badlands, book game hunts from the grandson of a genuine Oglala holy man. He’s even sold photos of himself for five bucks to tourists wanting a photo with Moses’s grandson.”

  “Marshal will stand to lose a lot of that business if it is Moses,” Willie said. “It’s more profitable to continue the legend that Wakan Tanka took Moses Ten Bears one night when he prayed to the four winds in the Stronghold instead of him dying liquored-up in a car with some White dude and getting bombed to death.”

  “And just where is the DNA sample?”

  “Pee Pee is overnighting it to Quantico.” Willie finished his soda and started toward the soda machine for a refill. “Along with two molars from that bigger corpse we think is Moses,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Still doesn’t answer what he’s doing at his cabin this time of year. The porcupine quill business doesn’t warrant staying all the way out there.”

  “Herbs.”

  Manny wiped soda from his lips. “Herbs, like for cooking?”

  Willie shook his head and played stare-down with Janet, who sat unblinking across the table. “Ceremonial. He dabbles at being a sacred man like his grandfather.”

  “Someone teach him, like you’re learning from Margaret Catches?”

  “It’s not polite to ask a sacred man where he gets his powers.” Janet smiled at Willie. “I do know some traditional things.”

  Willie ignored her and slid back in the booth. “Every sacred person has a favorite spot to gather herbs he or she uses in their ceremonies. Mine, I go to a special bank of the Cheyenne River and pick them. It’s like they wait for me every year. Marshal picks his peji hota—his sage—close to the cabin. One of the things I was doing outside while my partner was busy doing her thing inside with Marshal.”

  Janet slid from the booth and went to the soda machine for a refill.

  Willie nodded in her direction. “She’s driving me nuts.”

  “I would be nuts, too, if those long bedroom eyelashes were constantly batting at me. She bats them any more and she’ll start hovering.”

  Willie leaned closer and lowered his voice. “If Doreen sees us together, it’ll be the end gate for us.”

  “Thought it already was.”

  “She gave me one last chance. Just keep me and Janet separated.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Janet returned to the booth, her smiling eyes locked on Willie with lashes long enough she could almost hide those eyes. She started to speak, but Manny interrupted her. “Tell me about Marshal’s cabin. I understand it’s untouched since Moses lived there.”

  “That’s one of the reasons the Cultural Committee wanted Marshal to move it so bad—it’s just how Moses left it the day he went into the Stronghold and fell from that cliff.”

  “Or got himself bombed in that car.” Manny watched out the window as a rez rod pulled up to the gas pumps. An old man stumbled out, put two dollars of fuel in. He rolled a smoke and lit it, tossing the match on the ground beside the pump before coaxing his car onto the street amid billowing smoke.

  “People in the tribe believe the cabin where Moses lived is sacred, but I don’t buy it,” Janet said.

  “Of course it’s wakan.” Willie brushed his drink glass with his arm, but he snatched it before it toppled over. “Moses Ten Bears was one of the great Oglala sacred men, and not just of this century. He’s talked about like those sacred men we Lakota had even before the time of winter counts.”

  “But Marshal won’t let the tribe move the cabin into Pine Ridge for display. Does he want money for it?”

  Willie shook his head. “As important as the almighty dollar is to him, he’d never take even a dime for it. I think he gets more mileage with the cabin during his tourist and hunting business. It adds to the persona of Marshal Ten Bears—grandson of Moses.”

  “He’s stupid stubborn,” Janet said, back at Willie. “Like someone else. It would be a good thing for our people to have the cabin moved to a place people—and historians—could look at it. Though I don’t buy it, it’s significant in that it’d make people come and visit and leave wondering how Moses could live in a one-room shack like a pauper when he could have sold his paintings for tons of money.”

  “Some people just don’t understand honor.” Willie emphasized honor as he matched Janet’s stare. “Marshal thinks it’s one more thing of his grandfather’s that will be exploited.”

  Manny shook his head. “But it’s all right that he cashes in on Moses’s reputation?”

  “Not the same, according to him,” Janet said. She dug a compact mirror from her purse. She ran a bead of pastel lip gloss across her thin mouth, checking around the mirror to see that Willie watched her.

  “He said the tribe would go the way of the wasicu,” Willie added. “Sell Moses Ten Bears dolls. Maps where he walked and where they think he fell from the cliff. They’d make a mockery of prints of the few known paintings still in existence. Like the one hanging in Lt. Looks Twice’s office. Marshal just wants to be left alone to guide and collect his herbs.”

  “Bullshit!” Janet threw up her hands. “
He’s just stubborn and mean. I’ve known people who hiked all the way to the bottom of the Badlands just to see where Moses lived. To find out where he got his visions from, only to have Marshal put the gun on them and run them off.”

  “He’s just protecting them.”

  “From what?” Janet laughed. “Some crotchety old man that might put a hex on them?”

  “How should I know?” Willie said, turning to Manny. “What could harm them there, except the blistering heat, sharp drop-offs, and occasional mountain lion.”

  “He’s protecting them from the bad rocks.”

  “What bad rocks?”

  Manny faced Willie. “What, the holy-man-in-training doesn’t know everything about the reservation?”

  “Give me a break, I’m from Crow Creek. Just tell me about these bad rocks.”

  Manny fought to recall what Unc had told him about where the bad rocks live, one night over a small campfire in the Stronghold. “There’s an area of the Stronghold District—not far from Marshal’s cabin—where Big Foot led his band fleeing the 7th Cavalry.”

  “In 1890,” Janet added. “Just before the Wounded Knee Massacre.”

  Manny nodded. “A place so inaccessible and spooky, even the army wouldn’t follow them. The Old Ones said that was where the bad rocks live. The rocks that kill people.”

  “What, loose rocks or something?” Willie leaned closer, much as Manny had done as he sat enthralled by Unc’s tale that night, oblivious to the pitch pine sparks that crackled and flickered off his shirtfront. “How can rocks kill anyone?”

  “They didn’t.” Janet patted Willie’s hand. “It’s just an old legend.”

  “Don’t discount the Old Ones.” Manny grabbed his half-empty drink cup and walked to the soda machine.

  Tinkling over the door announced customers, and Manny glanced over his shoulder. Doreen Big Eagle walked ahead of another woman, and she froze when she spotted Willie, still with Janet’s hand covering his, inches from his face, talking. The other woman bumped into Doreen, but she stood staring, her face reddening as she whispered. The other woman took a booth by the door and waited.

  Manny grabbed his cup and hustled back to the booth in an effort to get between Doreen and Willie. But it was too late. Doreen stood cross-armed looking down at them. Willie looked up and the color drained from his face. Or rather, dripped in huge puddles. As did his ability to speak. He jerked his hand back from Janet’s, but not before Doreen nodded to it. Her tirade was in full swing as Manny rushed across the room.

  He tried to squeeze between the booth and Doreen as spittle flew inches from Janet’s face. A trucker just entering Big Bat’s stopped and gave curious examination to the one-sided verbal fight before he turned and promptly left.

  Philbilly emerged from around the counter to break things up. Doreen saw him and gave him an I’ll-kick-your-ass look and he wilted back into the kitchen. No one could ever accuse Philbilly of being brave.

  “Willie’s here with Janet and me.” Manny wormed his way between Doreen and the booth. “We’re discussing business.”

  “You mean you’re all together? That’s sick.”

  “Not that together.”

  She turned to Willie. “After last night, I almost believed you.”

  “But Doreen…”

  Willie’s pleas fell on red, dampened ears as Doreen turned on her heels and stomped out the door, the other woman she’d come in with close behind.

  “She’s pretty sore about nothing.” Janet smiled.

  Willie slumped back in the booth. “Can’t blame her any.” He leaned across the table, his face red, inches from Janet’s. She backed as far away from Willie as the booth would allow as her eyes looked around for an escape route. Manny predicted bad things coming, like one of those visions Moses was said to have had. Except it didn’t take a holy man to see this train wreck about to happen.

  Manny set the cups on the table. “Maybe I can patch things up.”

  Willie shot a glance at Manny as if to tell him to keep quiet while he gave Janet the what-for, when Manny’s cell phone rang. He held up his hand and Willie quieted for the moment.

  “That was the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office. They found the judge’s Suburban at his Spearfish cabin. They’re going to hold off making entry until we get there with a search warrant.”

  Willie left his soda on the table as he followed Manny out the door. “Good luck getting a warrant for the judge’s cabin.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “Took you long enough,” Willie whispered from behind a tree as Manny moved to him, hunched over. “We thought about having pizza delivered as gaunt as we were getting.”

  Manny reached inside his shirt and retrieved the no-knock warrant. “I’d like to see you convince Judge Ames to sign off on a search warrant of a federal judge’s house.” Manny had found Circuit Judge Henry Ames fly-fishing in Spearfish Creek. The old man hadn’t had luck all day, and was as surly as Lawrence County deputies warned him he’d be.

  Ames started to read the probable cause statement Manny handed him. “How the hell you expect me to issue a warrant based on his vehicle matching the one you’re searching for? You know how many black Chevy Suburbans there are running around?”

  “There’s more, Judge.” Manny flipped the statement form and ran his finger over additional information. “First, there’s not many Suburbans—regardless of color—with feathers painted on the fenders. I’m convinced Joe Dozi drove the Suburban that ambushed me on the road and shot at me.

  “And when I went into his shop, I saw enough to convince me he posed as Secret Service to seize files from the Spearfish PD.”

  “So you don’t suspect Judge High Elk?”

  Manny wanted to tell him he hadn’t crossed Judge High Elk off the list, but didn’t. “Our target is Joe Dozi.”

  In the end, Judge Ames had agreed that, more likely than not, Dozi was the driver and shooter on the road going to Pine Ridge, and had signed off on the no-knock before he went back to drowning flies in Spearfish Creek.

  “That front door’s about half a foot thick,” a deputy said. He had run over to Manny and squatted next to him. Willie had joined Janet and two other Lawrence County deputies hidden on the other side of the door by a stand of pine. Manny cramped up as he squatted watching the cabin from a different vantage point than Willie and Janet.

  “It’s going to be a bear to get inside.” The deputy’s voice had a happy tone to it, as if he relished taking doors off at their hinges.

  Manny stood, his knees popping so loudly he feared someone inside might hear him. A few more pounds less and that popping will stop. Hopefully.

  The deputy sporting a name tag reading BONER peeked from around Black Hills spruce, and Manny was uncertain if the name tag referred to the deputy’s name or what he was experiencing as he anticipated breaking the door down. He clung to a heavy round battering ram that, like the man’s knuckles, hung nearly to the ground, and Manny was certain there was nothing under his hat but hair. “Not much I can’t bust through with this baby, but this is going to take some thinking.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need it.” And hope you won’t need to think.

  Janet squeezed herself thin, hiding behind Willie peeking around a stand of spruce. Even twenty yards from where Manny and Boner squatted, Manny could see her tremble at her first no-knock warrant.

  “Sturgis PD said it looked like Dozi’s shop had been locked up,” Boner said, as if explaining the reason they’d called Manny here. “This was the next logical place.”

  Manny nodded. He took a final deep breath and wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers. He got a death grip on his Glock before giving the others the thumbs-up. Willie, Janet, and the other two deputies reached their side of the door a split second after Manny and Boner did. Willie flattened himself against the side of the door, no mean feat for such a big man, and Janet followed suit. She held her gun in the TV Ready Position, like fools on television or movies did, barrel beside he
r ear, just waiting for a sharp sound or movement to frighten her and put a Hydra-Shok hollow point through her temple. Manny prayed she wouldn’t shoot herself in the head when the action started. Lumpy would be pissed if his niece accidentally shot and killed herself.

  Boner stepped around Manny and adjusted his grip on the battering ram. And began singing. Although Boner’s fine baritone voice bounced off the cabin porch, Manny stopped him. “What are you doing?”

  Boner looked at him as if he were daft. “We do singing search warrants here.”

  Manny expected someone being alerted inside to start shooting at any moment. “What the hell’s that?”

  “Like a singing telegram. Only better. It’s our little touch of irony we like to inject just before we take a door down.” Boner reared the battering ram while his voice belted out “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” but Manny stopped him and tried the knob. The door swung open and hit the back of the inside wall as loudly as if a shot had been fired. Janet jumped, and Manny expected to see another hole in her head she didn’t need.

  Manny took in deep, calming breaths, listening. How many of these had he been on where the short pause before entering had saved a life, had told him someone dangerous waited just around the corner of a wall or under a table. He detected nothing, and motioned for the others. They quickly button-hooked around the door. Boner dropped his battering ram and followed, with Willie and the other two deputies close behind as they took up a covering position on either side of the massive door. Janet stood on the porch, shaking. Watching our six, no doubt. Comforting.

  Willie bounded up the stairs to the loft faster than his cover officer could follow, and stood looking over the railing at the others below as he holstered his gun. “Clear up here.”

  Manny holstered his own Glock. “Looks like they cleared out quick. Food still in the skillet. Dirty dishes in the sink. I wouldn’t figure the judge to be a sloppy man.”

  “Unless he was on the run,” Boner said. “A shame.”

  Unlike Boner, Manny was grateful they didn’t have to use the battering ram. Or their guns. And a small part of Manny was glad they didn’t find the judge home, either. He’d just started warming to the man.