Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Even accidentally? Could you have shot him by accident, thinking he might be a deer?”

  “Give her a break,” Willie said. “It was dark and he was hidden by those cedar trees.” He turned to her. “Give me your canteen.”

  Janet stood and cautiously walked to within arm’s reach of the body as she handed Willie her canteen. She jerked her hand back and retreated a safe distance away, dropping wild-eyed and crying onto the ground. Willie poured water in the cap and trickled it over Marshal’s lips. Marshal coughed, but his eyes remained closed, his body limp in that predeath manner Manny was certain was just over the horizon.

  “We got to get a chopper in here.”

  “Good luck finding a signal.” Willie flipped his cell phone open and closed it just as quick. “Not even a half bar. This man’s dead.”

  “Not if I can help it. Can you make him comfortable until I can get help?”

  “Where are you going to find help out here?”

  “There.” Manny pointed to a cliff a mile away and three hundred feet above the floor of the Badlands. “If I get to that spot, I might get a signal and call for a medevac.”

  “It makes more sense for me to go. I’m younger…”

  “And clumsier.” Manny forced a smile. “I’ve seen your big ass try to scramble over these hills. Besides, I’m not so old I can’t still walk down a deer if I needed to. Besides, you’ve studied healing.”

  Willie’s eyes widened. “Nothing like this. I can treat corns or hemorrhoids. But nothing like this.”

  “We got no choice. You and Janet stay here.”

  “Now I got to take care of Marshal and Janet.”

  “It’s a curse.” Manny lowered his voice. “You got another reason for keeping her here. Whoever shot Marshal might be close. You’ll need another set of ears and eyes.”

  Willie looked back at Janet still hunched over twenty yards away. “You think it was Judge High Elk?”

  Manny shrugged. “That’d be too pat now, wouldn’t it, him coming here with Marshal?”

  “But I don’t see the judge here helping him out. If it were my hiking partner…”

  “I know.” Manny patted Willie’s shoulder.

  “And one other thing—Janet might have shot Marshal by accident last night.” Or on purpose, Manny thought.

  Manny called to Janet, “You stay with Willie. He’ll need your help.”

  “Think he’ll make it? Enough that he can tell us who shot him?”

  Manny shrugged. “He just might if Willie can keep him alive and I can catch a cell signal. That being the case, you’ll get a ride out of here like you wanted.”

  Even at this distance, Manny saw the dust the helicopter kicked up as it lifted off. For a moment, the Chinook from Ellsworth seemed to ride a heavenly dust cloud, like some drab-colored Thunder Being carrying Marshal and Willie and Janet south along the Spirit Road.

  Manny shielded his eyes, watching the helicopter disappear over the horizon. He imagined this is what the Old Ones saw when they fled to the sanctuary of the Stronghold, imagined them watching their pursuers becoming lost and succumbing to the heat, all the while telegraphing their movements by the fine dust that permeated the Badlands.

  Manny had used the last of his water and tried whistling through cracked lips. Clara will be furious with me, not even being able to kiss these lips until they heal. He checked his watch. His own rescue chopper would be a tourist helicopter from Mt. Rushmore that was still an hour away.

  He forced his mind away from his plight and thought over the investigation. Something gnawed at his mind and he needed to get a handle on it. He needed a sweat-your-ass-till-it-drops run, where he got into his zone to sort things out. His own sort of vision quest. His own special sweat.

  The sun was directly overhead now, and Manny flipped up his collar to protect his neck, while his mind wandered to the bombed-out Buick that had been the grave of Moses and Ellis Lawler. He didn’t believe for a moment that the pair had driven into the bombing range to pass the jar of whiskey. Ellis, maybe, but Manny has the odd feeling that Moses never drank, a feeling strong enough it sent shivers along his spine, as if the sacred man himself sat beside him on the hilltop. Something more important than booze had lured them there. Something as skillful as his shooter luring him into the night by Marshal’s cabin to ambush him.

  Somehow the pair was connected to Gunnar Janssen, who had hired Marshal Ten Bears to take him into the Stronghold during spring break from college. Gunnar had booked Marshal under the guise of a hunting trip, but claimed to have forgotten his rifle. Had Moses and Ellis and Gunnar all been the victims of the bad rocks, with their own evil wakan?

  Manny tucked his head between his legs, waiting for his ride off the cliff, and his thoughts drifted to Willie. Both had their own special problems with relationships: Willie fighting depression and guilt while fending off Janet’s advances; Manny fighting to demonstrate he still loved Clara despite his diabetes, despite what it had done for his libido. Marshal’s sudden near-death experience reinforced that a man has to be ready for whatever Wakan Tanka decides to throw his way. And to make amends to those he’ll leave behind. Manny vowed not to leave Clara with second thoughts about their relationship when he himself departed along the Spirit Road.

  Rotor blades cutting the air and getting louder woke Manny from his drifting stupor. He thought he saw a helicopter nearing, a helicopter bearing the orange and blue markings of the Badlands Tour Company. Just before it touched down yards from him, he imagined Lumpy emerging as the tour guide, running hunched over with water bladder in hand, frown on his florid face. Now this was one of those daymares Unc had warned him about.

  “Willie called me an hour ago. Marshal is out of surgery at Rapid City Regional. He’ll recover.”

  “When can I talk to him?”

  Lumpy scowled. “How should I know? You want predictions, get a holy man. Like your brother. It’s bad enough that I gotta sit here in the waiting room with your sorry ass.”

  “You don’t sound very appreciative.”

  “Of what?”

  “Us taking care of your niece.”

  “You two shouldn’t have taken her in the first place.”

  “And Willie risk the ire of her uncle Leon?”

  “All right, I’ll say it. Thanks for keeping her in one piece. Though I still don’t know how she managed to fit that much makeup and feminine things in her pack.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear. You can leave if you need to. I’ll catch a ride from someone.”

  “And leave you to muck things even more? Not a chance.”

  The Pine Ridge ER receptionist called a patient’s name, and a woman stood cradling her crying baby as she disappeared through the examination room doors. “Benny Black Fox saw the judge’s Suburban speeding away from the Stronghold this afternoon.”

  “Don’t tell me he shot out another lightbulb on the KILI tower?”

  Lumpy shrugged. “All we know is he was up on the Battle Creek tower when he spotted the judge’s outfit driving away.”

  “Thought there weren’t any roads that way.”

  “Neither did I, but Benny says there are trails there that’re wide enough for a vehicle, if you know where to look.”

  Reuben had showed Manny a trail on his map that was once used. Perhaps Ham knew the same trail. “Then we need to find the judge fast.”

  Lumpy laughed. “You have been in the sun too long. The rez is five thousand square miles. If the judge don’t want to be found, he won’t be.”

  “He’ll go to Sophie’s house.”

  “Not hardly. We’ve learned something about police work, we lowly tribal cops. He’s on the run and won’t come back to his mother’s. He won’t want to implicate her. He might be our best suspect in Marshal’s shooting—among the many others you’ve come up with—but he won’t stick around.”

  The receptionist called Manny’s name and he stood. Lumpy put his hand on his arm. “I got shit to do, but I’ll
have Pee Pee give you a lift to Rapid. It’ll get him out and away from his house for the afternoon.”

  “Not you again.” The ER physician flipped through the chart. “Says here you reinfected your leg wound from that cat. And you were pretty dehydrated when the helicopter picked you up.”

  “That was two hours ago—long enough that I could have knitted a sweater if I wanted. Good thing I just didn’t keel over out there.”

  “Didn’t you ever hear the Indian Health Service is just a little underfunded? Now put this gown on.”

  Manny winked at the ER nurse scowling at him over her half-glasses. “You just want to see my butt.”

  “Put it on,” she ordered.

  The nurse and attending physician left, and came back in a few moments. Manny could never figure out why they left the room if they were going to see you naked eventually anyway. The old nurse had it right after all.

  The doctor motioned for Manny to sit on a butt-cold steel examination table that sent goose bumps up his leg and into the cat scratches. The doctor pulled up Manny’s gown and peeled away the bandage. He handed Manny a prescription, one for the antibiotics, and one for balm to apply to his split lips. “I’ll have the nurse clean up and dress the wound. Again. And that shoulder.” He started out the door when Manny stopped him.

  “How many cases of radiation poisoning have you seen here this last year?”

  The doctor stopped, and Manny was unsure if he’d heard him. “What makes you think there are more than Frederick and Adelle Friend of All’s kids?” he said over his shoulder.

  “The cattle in that part of the reservation have always been sickly. But more so. Their hide is pale, and blotchy from losing their hair. Like Morissa’s that falls out in clumps. Like Frederick’s did by just lying on his bed. And the cows abort their calves far more than healthy ones do. All the symptoms of radiation poisoning.”

  “You’ve had experience with radiation?”

  “In the army. Required study in the European theater when I was in Germany. How many cases?” Manny pressed. “Surely you care enough about the number of cases, even if you’re not from here. How long you got before your obligation’s met?”

  “Next week.”

  “Then where to? Beverly Hills? Upstate New York? Atlanta? Maybe the Mayo Clinic? Someplace far enough away from the reservation that you’ll forget?”

  The physician turned and walked back to the examination table. “What do you want me to do, violate my oath?”

  “I want you to be a healer. I want you to care, and oath be dammed. There’s problems here with radiation sickness, and I need your honest assessment.”

  The doctor rolled a chair beside the examination table and sat in front of Manny. “Look, Agent Tanno, this is none of my business…”

  “How many?”

  He sighed in resignation. “Far too many to be a coincidence. I suspect there’s radiation poisoning coming from the Cheyenne River.”

  “Will you tell that to the EPA?”

  The doctor hesitated and broke eye contact. “Only if it doesn’t delay leaving Pine Ridge.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Willie sat across the conference room table and shook his head. “The hospital will let us know when Marshal’s able to talk.” He sat in a clean shirt and pressed jeans for the first time in months. A piece of tissue clung to his cheek from a recent shaving cut.

  “Then we’ll have to do old-fashioned police work, Hotshot.” Lumpy fingered the Cuban with the pink and white Elvis cigar band. Pee Pee leaned over with his lighter, but Lumpy jerked it away. “This is the only one I got, you know that. I’m not going to let it go up in smoke.”

  “If you look hard enough you might find some more for sale. Sometime.” Pee Pee lit his cigar and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling fan, swirling the smoke around as if to taunt Lumpy. “Now I see why the King loved these.”

  “Damn it, Pee Pee! How the hell did you outbid me? I assigned you to give Manny a lift home at the time the auction closed.”

  Pee Pee flashed a single-toothy smile, giving appropriate meaning to the term toothbrush. “Wi-Fi. I made a winning bid on these cigars while we were on the road to Rapid. And a good price, too, or I wouldn’t have been able to give you one out of the pure goodness of my old heart.”

  Lumpy swiveled his seat and faced Manny. “Let’s get back to this cockamamie theory you have about Marshal and Joe Dozi and Micah all being connected to the bombing range skeletons.”

  Manny motioned to the Ten Bears print hanging on the wall. “I think that’s Moses’s vision of where the bad rocks live.”

  Lumpy laughed. “And did you find that place while you were doing your camping excursion?”

  “Not even close,” Janet volunteered. She scooted close to Lumpy.

  Manny ignored her. “I think Moses knew that place was dangerous. And it had everything to do with the legend. I think he knew those rocks were radioactive.”

  “Uranium?”

  Willie leaned across the table. “Not so far-fetched. There’s been uranium mining around Edgemont for decades. And the northern Black Hills have uranium mining up the wazoo. Along with the medical problems that accompany it.”

  Manny walked to the picture and tapped the painting. “Look at these cattle—scraggly bleached hides. Sickly. Like we saw at that watering hole. I think we were close to finding that place. And the judge.”

  Lumpy joined Manny in front of the wall. “I’m not ruling him out, but you got to convince me better than that. We country Indians are real simple, so overwhelm me with your proof.”

  “Start with Moses Ten Bears, whom we now know was in that car with Ellis Lawler, geology professor at the School of Mines. Finding a uranium deposit in the Badlands could have meant millions, even back then.”

  Lumpy let Elvis’s arm wrap around him as he dropped into the chair. “You figure they went there to verify their findings, and just happened to be killed in a practice bombing run? And twenty-five years later Gunnar Janssen just happened to get shot in that same car?”

  “Or killed and stuffed in that old Buick.”

  “That’d be a coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Then what the hell are you saying?” Lumpy rolled the cigar between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to smash Elvis’s picture.

  “Judge High Elk ruled against mining in that part of the Badlands six times during his tenure as federal judge,” Willie volunteered. He slid an open file folder across the table. Janet reached for the folder, and her hand brushed Willie’s. He jerked it back. “Now either he ruled that way because it was in the best interest of the tribe, or else he knows there’s uranium there. And plans to cash in on it himself.”

  Lumpy scanned the file and closed it. “That still doesn’t prove he’s anything but a person of interest.”

  “He might have been the last to see Gunnar alive before he disappeared in his college days.” The tissue paper dropped onto the table and Willie trashed it. “And he was the last to see Marshal.”

  “And,” Manny added, “it would take someone like the judge to drop Joe Dozi’s guard. As we figured before, he wouldn’t have been an easy man to kill.”

  Lumpy stood, looking down at Willie and shaking his head as a father does as he scolds his errant child. “You got a lot to learn. If you keep your job long enough. We don’t know that Judge High Elk was even in that part of the Stronghold where you found Marshal, let alone know for certain they both set out together.”

  “How about Benny Black Fox spotting the judge’s Suburban racing away from the Stronghold yesterday?” Janet said, making eye contact with Willie as if to convey that she agreed with him. “Maybe the judge had planned for Sonja to pick him up at the south end of the Stronghold unit.”

  Lumpy laughed. “We know Sophie’s car’s been in repairs in Gordon, just like she said. And we found the judge’s Suburban at her house yesterday, after Benny Black Fox said he spott
ed it. But the judge didn’t arrive with her. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll interview the judge when we find him, but we’re not actively looking for him. I called the surveillance off Sophie’s house this morning.”

  “You did what?” Manny leaned across the table so quickly Lumpy scooted Elvis back. He groaned when he hit the wall. “The judge is missing in action. Even if he’s not a suspect—which I’m still not ruling out—he may know something he’s not telling us. The very least we can do is clear his name if he doesn’t have anything to hide, before the confirmation hearings next week. And”—Manny pointed his finger at Lumpy—“the judge may be the next victim if he’s not the killer.”

  Lumpy held his hands up in surrender. “All right. I’ll put the BOLO back out for the judge. But not because he’s a suspect, but just for a welfare check. Make sure he’s all right.”

  “We can do better than that, Lumpy.” Lumpy’s face reddened but he remained silent. “I’ve got some more questions for Sonja Myers, like if the judge has met with her since Marshal’s shooting. I’ll send an agent there to talk with her again. We may luck out and find the judge at Sonja’s. A man snuggling next to her in a teddy might not want to leave, huh?”

  Lumpy’s face flushed more, the veins throbbing across his forehead. Manny had scored another direct hit with Lumpy, one of many walking wounded left in the wake of the passing Sonja Myers. He changed the subject, turning to Pee Pee sucking on an Elvis PEZ. “You get ballistics back on Micah Crowder yet?”

  “This morning.” Sucking. “FBI made a positive ID on Joe Dozi’s gun.” Sucking. “Guess that leaves the judge off the hook for Micah’s murder.”

  “Not yet.” Janet stood, pacing. “He might have borrowed Dozi’s gun. Or, as tight as Dozi and the judge were, the judge might know all about Micah’s murder, right?”

  Lumpy turned to Janet. “That bothers me more than a little, and it’s the one thing that would explain why the judge might still be a suspect. A man with a Supreme Court nomination might do most anything to succeed in that appointment. Even covering up a homicide by his best friend.” He leaned across the table at Manny. “All right, we look for the judge as a person of interest, both for knowledge of Micah’s murder and for Marshal’s shooting.”