Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Manny nudged Willie and nodded to the porch. “Better go calm your trainee or she’ll mess her pants. Last thing I want to do is drive all the way back to Pine Ridge with the windows open.” Willie rolled his eyes and disappeared outside.

  Manny began systematically searching the one huge room for anything that might tell him where Ham might have fled. Manny walked into the tiny alcove that Ham used as an office, different than the main rooms in disarray and chaos. Not dirty, just messy as if the Ham had other things on his mind besides business. Like Senate hearings.

  Manny picked up one of the sticky notes that Ham had pasted across the top of the roll top. Cheat sheets. Questions anticipated. Rehearsal cues that Ham would need to practice.

  On Ham’s I-love-me-wall hung his South Dakota Bar license, just above his master’s diploma from the University of South Dakota, and below that a copy of the Argus Leader article that proclaimed Alexander Hamilton High Elk had just performed a jurisprudence miracle by gaining an acquittal for Cal Wolf Guts. The paper had yellowed with age. But then who hadn’t.

  Manny walked into the main room and dropped onto the sofa. He propped his feet on the footstool just as Willie led Janet inside. She stopped just inside the door, looking around, still shaking.

  Deputy Boner’s eyes roamed over Janet’s tight uniform, and he nodded to Willie. “Your squeeze?”

  “Hardly,” Willie answered and turned to Manny. “No sign of the judge or Joe Dozi out back, either. And like the deputies said, there’s recent damage and white paint transfer.”

  “Malibu white?”

  “You got it.”

  Manny stood and followed Willie, while Janet fell in step as they walked to Ham’s Suburban. The front bumper was caved in, and the headlight on the driver’s side was missing. White paint transfer was smeared along the driver’s side fender and obliterated one of the painted eagle feathers. The tire had rubbed against the wheel, pieces of shredded tire sticking to the inside of the fender well. “Standard white.”

  “Got chip samples to send in.”

  “And compare them with what?” Manny asked. “That charcoal barbequed car that used to be my government ride? Any other vehicles out back? In the shed?”

  Willie shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Bikes?”

  He shook his head again and pointed to the two outbuildings. “We checked those sheds. All that was in there was fishing gear, a couple deer mounts, and a lot of pigeon shit.”

  “Then put out a BOLO for that red Indian Chief the judge rides. And see if Sturgis PD can figure out what Dozi might be driving.”

  “You figure they’re on the run?” Janet whispered, as if she didn’t trust the other law officers there. More likely, Manny figured, she stammered because she was still too frightened to speak loudly.

  “Only explanation that makes sense.” Manny sat in one of the Adirondack chairs on Ham’s porch. Boner and the other two deputies were rooting through things inside the cabin. At least it’ll keep them busy.

  “My guess is we’ll find them farther away from here rather than closer. If the judge has to establish an alibi for last night when his ’Burb ran me over, he’ll need to make contact with folks far from here that will vouch for him.”

  Boner and the other deputies emerged from the house. They stared at Janet, and she moved behind Willie. “You think Judge High Elk needs an alibi?”

  “Let’s say I have some questions for him.”

  Janet laughed. “A sitting federal judge? I don’t think he’d stoop to trying to kill you.”

  “Wouldn’t he?” Willie looked down on Janet, talking slowly as a teacher talks to a student. “Put yourself in his shoes, and tell me that anything would stand in your way if you had a chance to be the first Indian anything. Judge High Elk has an opportunity to make history, and by God he’ll do it.”

  “But we don’t have a clue where he might have run.”

  “Maybe we don’t,” Manny said. “But Micah Crowder might.”

  “What’s he got to do with this?” Willie moved away from Janet, and all three Lawrence County Deputies’ eyes gave her the twice over.

  “Micah searched Gunnar’s room when he went missing back in ’69. He went to the Badlands in search of Gunnar when he went missing. He might remember where Ham and Joe searched for him in the Badlands back then. There’s people still missing in the Stronghold that don’t want to be found. Maybe the judge wants to add himself to that list until the confirmation hearings.” Manny stood and started for the car. “You two stay here. Sort of like an advance honeymoon.”

  “No way.” Willie ran after him.

  Janet ran after Willie. “Wait. If I’m ever going to learn this stuff, I got to stick to you like glue.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Willie said and held the back door for her.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Have you seen Micah Crowder?”

  Joey smiled at Manny from behind her desk and laid her Harlequin romance on her lap. The book jacket showed a swarthy Fabio-type hunk holding a blond vixen by her thin waist. Willie nudged Manny and nodded to the book jacket.

  “Maybe your admirer Joey will be working today,” Willie had chided Manny as they pulled into the Parkside Manor parking lot. “As I recall, she had the eye for you.”

  “She was hot for you.”

  “Not so,” Janet added and nudged Manny. “Willie said the last time she practically hauled you into her room and did the wild thing right then.”

  “Maybe you should take one for the team,” Willie had prodded as they walked the parking lot to the office of the Parkside past Richard Head’s empty parking space. “Get close to Joey for the sake of information.”

  “He’s not answering his door,” Joey said. She stood and came around the counter, standing a little closer than Manny wanted. He remained motionless. This was as close as he’d get to taking one for the team.

  “Have you tried him lately?” Manny asked.

  “’Bout this time yesterday. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Pardon?

  “Micah. The pain in the ass hasn’t been here for the past two days and it’s been nice and quiet. And boring, until now.” She winked with sixty-something-year-old eyes that had started to cloud with cataracts.

  “Where did he go?”

  Joey looked over her half-glasses at Janet and shrugged. “How should I know, I just live here. I didn’t adopt the damned fool.”

  “Maybe something’s happened to him.” Willie put on his best concerned look. “Maybe he’s dead in his apartment.”

  Joey shook her head. “Didn’t see a cloud of flies hovering around his door. He’s gone, all right.”

  “Maybe we could take a little peek inside.”

  “Can’t. Regulations. People might take something once they got inside.” Joey looked over her glasses at Janet.

  “Just this once.” Manny delved into his memory to put on his best Bogart charm. It worked. Joey snatched a ring of keys from an eye hook above the counter. “Just for you. But you got to promise if we find him you got to throw him back.”

  Joey led them to Micah’s apartment and started to insert the key into the lock when Willie stopped her. “Aren’t you going to knock first? Just in case?”

  “The old bastard’s gone, I told you.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Agent Tanno.” Manny’s name rolled off her tongue like she was enthralled by the sound. “Call it women’s intuition. Besides, that beater blue Pontiac of his has been gone from the parking lot for two days. He wouldn’t have sold it. No one would buy that piece of crap metal. You know that nut brush paints his car a different color every spring. Right there in the parking lot.”

  “He’s just enjoying the fine amenities of the Parkside.”

  Joey rolled her eyes as she unlocked the door and stuck her head inside. “See. He’s flown the coop.”

  “We’ll just look around for a moment,” Manny said. “If that’s all right
with you, Joey.”

  She smiled and batted eyelashes hovering over rummy gray eyes. As during their previous visit, she’d forgotten her dentures this afternoon. “Just shut the door when you’re done. I’d hate for someone to wander in here and accidentally clean up this dump.”

  They waited until Joey left before entering Micah’s apartment, typical of other low rent, low upkeep retirement homes: one main room half the size it should be, tiny kitchen barely big enough to accommodate the two-burner stove and micro icebox, and a bathroom too small to allow a man to sit without his knees scraping the wall. Manny hoped Micah was not overly regular.

  “If he planned on leaving he didn’t take much.” Janet stood in front of an armoire missing one door. Slacks and shirts were matched and hung together, and the single drawer below had been left open. Underwear and socks packed the drawer so that it was impossible to tell if any were missing. “Looks like he left most of his clothes.”

  A recent copy of the Lakota County Times lay open on the table beside Indian County Today. The newspapers had been carved up, with old clippings glued to notebook pages and arranged in a binder. Manny flipped the pages, all pertaining to mining in the Badlands.

  Under the clippings a hand-drawn map of the Badlands lay beside a National Park Service trail map. Manny put on his reading glasses and opened the curtain in the single room window. He turned the Park Service map around to look at different angles until he recognized the area: the Stronghold District. He picked up the hand-drawn map, yellowed and aged and drawn on the back of a 1969 Publishers Clearing House come-on ad. The ad was addressed to Gunnar Janssen.

  “Looks like Micah went camping, back in the day.”

  “How’d he get Gunnar’s mail?” Willie asked, than answered his own question. “I guess he took it from Gunnar’s apartment after the judge reported Gunnar missing in college. Micah mentioned he went into Gunnar’s apartment looking for anything that might tell him where he’d gone. Some obsession to have kept it all these years. Wonder if he found Gunnar?”

  “You wonder if he found him and killed him back in 1969?” Manny held the map to the light. Damned desolate area.

  “These maps put Micah in the area where that ordnance crew found Gunnar’s skeleton.” Willie handed Manny a crumpled letter addressed to the U.S. Senate, dated two days ago, written—or scratched—longhand. “And this looks like Micah had other things besides camping on his mind.” Micah had outlined the reasons he felt Alexander Hamilton High Elk shouldn’t be confirmed for the Supreme Court, but the letter had several words crossed out and written over as if Micah perfected it before he sent the final copy.

  “So he sent the final copy?” Janet asked.

  “Or maybe someone interrupted him before he was able to send it,” Willie added. “Someone not wanting this kind of rhetoric hitting the newspapers right before the hearings.”

  Manny kicked those arguments around in his head. Micah—though getting on in years—appeared pretty sharp the time Manny had spoken with him. His guess was that Micah would be one step ahead of the one or both of the only men who could figure out where he’d fled; men who had gone into the Badlands a time or two with Gunnar back in the day, both men who would benefit the most if Ham was confirmed. One man that could make anyone disappear, the other with the most to gain by such a disappearance: Joe Dozi and Judge Alexander Hamilton High Elk.

  CHAPTER 21

  FALL 1939

  Moses pulled Clayton behind a rock. Dirt clung to his sweaty cheek as he chanced a peek over the hill. “That’s a nice buck, hoss.”

  “Wait until he walks away from those doe,” Moses said. “We do not want to shoot one of them by accident.”

  Clayton chuckled. “There’s enough to spare in that herd if we shot one by mistake.”

  “We do not shoot what we do not need.”

  Clayton looked sideways at Moses and grabbed the binoculars from the case. “Of course, the Lakota way.”

  “You say that with some sarcasm. Like it is a bad thing to want to preserve life.”

  Clayton let the binos drop by the leather thong and dangle at his chest. He abruptly stood and whistled. The nearest deer barked a warning to the rest of the herd and bolted over the canyon rim, flickering tails waving good-bye.

  “Why?”

  “I got a bigger one last year. I want a nice one, with at least a thirty-inch spread to hang in my Senate office.”

  Moses shook his head. “You get to be a bigger pain in the rear every year.”

  Clayton smiled. “But I’m your pain in the rear. Where can we find a bigger buck?”

  Moses stood and brushed the dust from his trousers. He pointed toward V-Tail Draw. “Through that narrow pass we can get to Cottonwood Creek. There is a watering hole there that never dries up. Deer know that, too.”

  “How about there?” Clayton pointed to two large buttes on either side of a deep saddle of sandstone and dirt and fine alkaline dust. “We saw some big ones hightail it thataway yesterday.”

  “We have been over this before. That is where the bad rocks live.”

  “Not that cock-and-bull story again.” Clayton sat in the shade of a shale outcrop and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from his backpack. He started to hand it to Moses, who reached for it a second before Clayton jerked it away. “I know what you’d do with it.”

  “What I should have done years ago.”

  “Not again. What bug crawled up your ass this morning? You know I need a nip now and again.”

  “That is not what I am upset about and you know it.”

  “Will you let it lie for a couple hours at least?”

  “How can I?” The morning sun bounced off Moses as he paced in front of Clayton. “Samuel needs you. Needs your influence right now. You could talk to the prosecutor. See if they could go easy on the boy. Cut a deal.”

  Clayton propped his pack against the overhang and leaned back against it while he supported his head with his hands. “If it were just another drunk and disorderly charge, there’d be no problem. But Samuel got himself hoary-eyed drunk and knifed that man. I’d play hell getting him out of that charge, U.S. senator or not. He shouldn’t have been liquored up at that barn dance.”

  “I remember someone else getting himself drunk and on the fight at a dance some years ago. Someone that was lucky that the man he fought with did not kill him for what he did to two Indian boys.”

  “That was different.”

  “Was it?”

  Clayton looked away. “Samuel got himself into that mess; no one twisted his arm. He went to that dance knowing he’d be the only Indian there. He went looking for trouble.”

  “What else did the kid have to do with his time?” Moses sipped water from his deerskin bladder, the same water bladder he’d offered to Clayton that first wagon ride to the Charles Town Ranch. They’d come a long way together, yet they hadn’t even taken the first step as brothers should, and Moses had long ago thought of Clayton as his brother. Moses stooped to get under the overhang and dropped beside Clayton. “Your people took our land and treated us like pets. Except your people treated your dogs better than you did my people. And you have never treated Samuel properly.”

  “Properly! Like you treat those scrub cows of yours?”

  Moses looked to the saddle where he knew the cows wandered on the other side, looking for food and some semblance of water. “I have done what I could for those cows, but nothing helps. Think I want to ever see a living thing suffer as those critters have?”

  “I might be able to help.”

  “How?”

  “Supplements. Cake. Hay and alfalfa. Those cattle need nourishment they’re not getting here in this damned desert.”

  “Okay, then have it delivered.”

  “Can’t.” Clayton shook out a cigarette. He waited until the smoke had dissipated inside the overhang to continue. “How would it look if the chairman of the Senate Indian Commission gave preferential treatment to his friend? Even if I could arrange it, i
t’d look like I’m buying you off. But I know a man who could do so legally.”

  “Not that fat Frenchman again?”

  “What’s wrong with Renaud?”

  Moses kicked the dirt, and a scorpion crawled from under the dust cloud. Moses held out his hand and the creature crawled into his palm. Moses rested his hand on the rock outcropping and it scampered into a crevice. “Renaud LaJaneuse wants to get his hands on my paintings. I told him a dozen times they are not mine to give.”

  “I’ve heard your argument a dozen times.” Clayton stood and flicked his butt into a clump of sagebrush. Embers shot skyward then as quickly died. He stood and dusted off his chinos. “You always say you can’t destroy them, even if the people you paint them for don’t want them. He understands that and respects your decision. The only thing he wants is for you to bring some of your paintings to New York.”

  Moses chuckled. “A Lakota Picasso I think is what he called me.”

  “The world deserves to know how the Lakota think of their world. There’s no better way than to let them experience the Lakota vision through your work. And your cattle might live because of it.”

  Moses stood and scraped his head on the outcropping. He put his Stetson back on. “You think I would come to New York in trade for supplements for cows that will be dead by winter anyway?”

  “No, I don’t.” Clayton stood and draped his arm around Moses’s shoulder. “But you would for your own people. Renaud’s already promised food for the Oglala.”

  “Let me think it over.”

  “Sure, hoss. And think over another thing—the place where the bad rocks live.”

  “What is to think over? We have been there…”

  “I talked to this geologist friend at the School of Mines, Ellis Lawler. He’s got a notion what those rocks are.”

  “Already told you they are bad. Nothing good will come out of them.”

  “If what my friend says is right, good things will come out of them. For the Oglala.”