Death Along the Spirit Road

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Then you figure that Lenny told the truth about Reuben knowing nothing of this ambush tonight?”

  Willie nodded. “I figure Lenny and Jack pulled this stunt all by their lonesome.”

  “And his denials about attacking me a couple nights ago outside my apartment? And the truck incident?”

  “All true,” Willie said. “At least with as little experience as I got, I figure Lenny and Jack did this without Reuben’s knowledge, but I wouldn’t rule out Jack on the others attacks. Either way, there’s at least one other person roaming around the rez that wants you dead.”

  “Oh, thanks for that piece of good news.” Manny opened the door and eased out.

  “One other thing,” Willie said. “Why do you think Jack loaded that six-gun with just five rounds?”

  Manny bent down and peered into the car. “He’s seen too many Westerns. Folks think Rugers are like the old Colts, that it’s unsafe to load them with six, so they load five shells with the hammer on an empty chamber.” Five, an odd number. Five. The same number of rounds found inside Billy Two Moons nearly thirty years ago. But the murder weapon was never found after Reuben tossed it. So how could Reuben have missed Two Moons with that sixth round within touching distance? Just one more question to ask his brother next time.

  “Where do we go from here?” Willie asked before Manny shut the door.

  “You might go to the post office tomorrow and check on Clifford Coyote. No one knows him, but he gets his mail there at least once a month. As for me, all I want to do is hit the rack and sleep for a long time. Even for us adventurous G-men”—he smiled—“it’s not every day we’re shot at.”

  “Well, you watch your backside. Jack’s still out there and he’ll be madder’n hell now that his brother’s locked up.”

  Willie drove away, and Manny’s arm felt for the Glock that wasn’t there since Lumpy seized it. He’d gotten used to its bulk since at least one other person hereabouts wanted him dead. He checked the dark apartment before he entered, and hoped that whoever was after him would allow him one decent night’s sleep.

  Manny peeked around the corner of the building. Desirée’s apartment was dark, and it was late enough that he could tiptoe into his apartment without alerting her he was there.

  He slipped the key in the lock. The door stuck and he nudged it with his shoulder, then stepped inside and eased it shut before he turned on the light. “That you darlin’?”

  Desirée lay on the couch. A blanket over her that had fallen away revealed a bare waist. She stood and the blanket dropped to the floor, revealing all of Desirée in a lace camisole.

  “What’re you doing in here? How’d you get in?”

  “Leon let me in. He said you might need someone to watch over you tonight to make sure your injuries didn’t get any worse.”

  “You got to leave.”

  “It’ll be like old times. We got a lot of catching up to do. And I’m not spoken for at the moment.”

  Manny backed out of the apartment and shut the door. The cool air hit him and he realized this nightmare was in real time, and he called Willie before he got too far away. “Got a spare couch in your apartment?”

  “Desirée?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “I’ll be right there and get you. The last thing you need right now is to work out with her and get a heart attack.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Manny rolled over on the couch and used his good arm to sit up. His ribs had stiffened sleeping on the hard hide-a-bed, with its metal slat jutting into his side all night. He stood to stretch his legs as he read Willie’s note saying he would be back soon with breakfast burritos and coffee for them. Manny pulled the curtain back and squinted into the sun. A new Hertz rental had been dropped off sometime this morning.

  Manny slipped his trousers on and hobbled outside to the car. Something attached to the steering wheel flapped when he opened the car door: a pleading note. We’re running out of cars!!!!!! Be more careful!!!!! He crumpled the note and went back inside Willie’s apartment.

  He hit the shower and had to put on the same clothes he’d worn last night, praying Desirée would be gone when he went back to his own apartment for fresh clothes. He walked back to the living room just as Willie came in. His jeans were as wrinkled as Chief Horn’s face, and his T-shirt bore some dried food on the front. Willie had bags under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved today. He tossed the sack from Big Bat’s on the table and dropped into a chair. His head drooped between his knees.

  “You all right?”

  “I don’t know. I stopped at the post office after I picked up breakfast. I found out who rented that box under Clifford Coyote’s name.” Willie handed Manny a copy of a receipt dated January 2. “Elizabeth Comes Flying pays the box rent every year.” He bent over in the chair and cradled his head in his hands. “She’s been renting the box for Clifford Coyote for the past thirty-one years.”

  “Who’s Elizabeth Comes Flying?” Manny sucked in a quick breath when he recognized his sister-in-law’s maiden name. “Maybe she was doing him a favor.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I see your point. But who’s Coyote?”

  “There is no Clifford Coyote on the tribal books or in our system.”

  “Then Coyote’s a bogus name?”

  Willie nodded. “Georgette White Bird said Aunt Lizzy pays for the box every January. Aunt Lizzy got Georgette her first job at the post office, and Georgette doesn’t ask any questions. She said Coyote gets one letter a month, and figures he drops by at night ’cause she’s never seen him.”

  “Did you talk with Elizabeth about the post office box?”

  “No. She left a note saying she and Rachael Thompson went shopping in Rapid again, but I got hold of Rachael, and she hasn’t talked with Aunt Lizzy in a couple days. What do you make of her renting that post office box every month since 1976?”

  “The reservation was embroiled with intrigue back then. Lots of things happened that year. Reuben was sent away for the Two Moons murder. Leonard Peltier killed Agents Coler and Williams near Oglala. Anna Mae Pictou-Aqash was found shot in the back of the head and dumped off a cliff. Bodies littered the reservation when AIM and Wilson’s men feuded in the years following the Wounded Knee takeover.”

  “But why do you think she rented that box under an assumed name?” Willie pleaded, as if Manny could pluck answers for anything right out of the clouds.

  Manny shrugged. “The only reason someone receives monthly checks for that long is a house payment. Or blackmail.”

  “You mean Aunt Lizzy was blackmailing Jason and cashing his checks all these years?”

  Manny sat and rubbed his head while he thought. “Clara told me Jason squandered his money. She discovered in the audit that he has been sending Clifford Coyote two thousand dollars every month. Hard to imagine Elizabeth blackmailing anyone, but she was active in AIM, and WARN. As an officer in Women of All Red Nations, she’d had access to inside information. Maybe she knew something that could damage Jason, or maybe she cashed that information in once he became sole owner of the Red Cloud Corporation.”

  “Jeeza. There’s gotta be a logical explanation.”

  Manny knew Elizabeth was as important to Willie as Uncle Marion had been to him.

  “There’s got to be a good reason she rented a box under that name,” Willie persisted. “We just have to find her and let her explain it. I’m going back to her house and wait for her. She’s bound to return, then I can straighten this out. I just can’t see Aunt Lizzy doing anything illegal.”

  Willie’s face twisted in anguish. When the man Manny idolized toppled from his pedestal, he knew the sorrow Willie now experienced. Once, Manny believed Reuben could never have murdered anyone. He stood by that faith until Reuben confessed to killing Billy Two Moons. Now, Willie’s world was turned upside down, and Manny knew that if Elizabeth were mixed up in anything illegal, her relationship with Willie would never be right again.

 
; Willie called Manny’s cell. “She’s not back yet. She might’ve gotten wind we wanted to talk with her and wanted to avoid an embarrassing explanation.”

  “Do you work today?”

  “Yes, swing shift. I’d better get cleaned up.”

  “I’ll check her house later. If she shows, I’ll give you a call.”

  Manny hung up the phone and headed for Martin. If anyone knew where Elizabeth was, Rachael Thompson would.

  Asking Rachael to betray her friend shouldn’t bother him, but it did. When he had arrived at Rachael’s house, Manny played the concerned brother-in-law, asking about Elizabeth’s well-being, worried since he hadn’t talked with her today. Rachael hadn’t seen her either, and they hadn’t gone shopping today. Or three days ago, like Elizabeth claimed.

  “Maybe she’s running,” Rachael said. “She’s been training for this year’s Black Hills Classic.”

  Manny recalled the running shorts hanging on the line that first day he visited her. She kept herself in top shape, and had looked as if she could run two marathons back-to-back. He left Rachael’s house with her promise to call him if she heard from Elizabeth, and he started for her house.

  It had been three hours since Willie left Elizabeth’s house for work. Manny cleared the shelter belt and saw her Impala parked by the back door. Manny parked beside it and painfully stepped out. He used the handrail to step up on the deck. His ribs rubbed against the binding and sent sharp spasms of pain throughout his body, and his legs ached as much from driving the last hour as from the accident. He stretched against the house. Elizabeth’s clothes were drying on the line: two pairs of running shorts and sports bras hung beside a set of paisley sheets.

  He knocked on the door with his good hand, and rapped again before he poked his head inside. “Elizabeth, it’s Manny.” He stepped inside and strained his eyes to see in the dark. “Elizabeth?”

  In the living room that smell drifted past his nose. Lilac. He smelled lilac the night his car was rammed, and lilac when his attacker checked if he was dead, lilac when Elizabeth visited him in the hospital, lilac when she helped him stand in her office. The smell grew stronger. Someone watched him. A corner lamp clicked on.

  Elizabeth wore running clothes drenched in sweat, and held a gun leveled at Manny’s midsection. Light bounced off dark eyes that held no emotion.

  “Elizabeth. It’s me.”

  “I know who it is.”

  “Then put that gun away.”

  “Can’t do that.” She took a step closer and raised a small revolver to his chest as she cocked the hammer. Manny’s firearms training classes raced through his mind. He knew that the chances of surviving a single handgun shot was ninety percent. Unless the small .38 caliber held the hot +Ps, which would do more damage when they struck. If he rushed her and she shot him, he might survive, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to cross the room before she got off a second shot, or a third. His ribs made it nearly impossible to breathe at times, and seeing out of only one eye made depth perception nonexistent. No, the odds were slim indeed that he could cross the room and disarm her before she pumped several slugs into him.

  “What do you want, Elizabeth?”

  “It’s too late to have what I want.” He listened to her voice as a trained interviewer would. She sounded hollow, onedimensional, with no warmth in her voice. The Elizabeth he knew was gone. The woman he now faced was used to imposing her will on other people—and getting her way.

  “I wanted you to leave the rez that first night. You got too close and I tried to scare you off. I waited for you outside your apartment, knowing that if I used a hammer then somebody else would be blamed, somebody like one of Reuben’s little shithead Heritage Kids he’s always defending. You deflected my blow just like I thought you might, rolled with the punch, but that was OK because I really didn’t want to hurt you seriously. I just wanted you gone.”

  Manny’s legs buckled, and he leaned against a chair. “But why?”

  “Erica. You hung around and found out about Erica and Jason.”

  “Erica and Jason what?” Elizabeth’s arm muscles tightened, and again he calculated his chances of rushing her. “Erica said there was nothing between them. They argued about Jason embezzling the tribe’s money. Not about an affair.”

  “People will think the worst here on Pine Ridge. People always think the worst. They’ll think you covered her involvement because she’s your niece, and that would make us both look bad.”

  Manny still leaned against the chair and stretched his calf muscles, slowly. Too slowly. Stalling. Could he make it across the room?

  “People will say she was in knee-deep with Jason on his scheme to bilk the tribe out of the money. Her reputation will be ruined, her marriage will be ruined, her life will be ruined, and they’ll look at me like I put her up to it, and I’ll be ruined, too.”

  Manny forced himself to stand upright, but his motions came agonizingly slow. Was this the fight-or-flight syndrome his instructors spoke about? It was the flight option that appealed most to him as his eyes darted to the door. Could he make it before Elizabeth reacted?

  “Think about what you’re doing.” Manny tried not to sound as if he was pleading. But he was. “Even if you kill me and get away with it, it’ll stay with you the rest of your life.”

  “Like that would bother me,” Elizabeth laughed. “Like I haven’t had to kill before. After all, I was in AIM when I was young, remember. What’s another body to bury somewhere?”

  He watched her eyes. The telltale dilating of the pupils meant a shot was imminent, and he willed his muscles to relax, telling himself that tense muscles reacted slower. What were the odds of throwing himself away from the muzzle blast when it came? Elizabeth’s knuckles whitened. Gun arm outstretched. Muzzle hole swallowing Manny’s attention.

  Someone shoved Manny hard from the side and he fell against a coffee table. Pain shot through his body as his ribs scraped his lungs, and he lay on the floor gasping for breath. Willie stood between him and Elizabeth. In the dim light, Willie’s black OST uniform blended with the background, but his face seemed illuminated by an outside light.

  “You can’t do this, Aunt Lizzy.”

  Willie glanced down at Manny. “The techs identified Aunt Lizzy’s prints from the stolen truck,” he said to explain his presence.

  “Nonsense! My prints aren’t on file anywhere.”

  “You’re wrong. Remember when you and the others were arrested in that Mount Rushmore occupation in 1971, the one time you were arrested and printed at booking.”

  Willie glanced down at Manny. “I hoped to make it back here before things got this bad.”

  “Step out of the way.”

  “You can’t do this Aunt Lizzy.”

  “I have to. He’ll ruin Erica with his investigation.”

  “He’s only doing his job.”

  “Right. The FBI has always ‘only done its job’ here on the rez.” Elizabeth shuffled to the side to aim at Manny. Willie stepped to shield him.

  “Give me the gun.”

  “Erica’s the only good thing that came out of my marriage to Reuben, and you want me to throw that away? And give up my finance officer position to boot? Never. Now move away.”

  Willie stepped toward Elizabeth. “And what am I? We’re of the same tiospaye, you and I. What kind of person would I be if I allowed you to shame yourself by killing Manny? I won’t let you do it. You’ll have to shoot me first.”

  Willie took another step toward her, and the muzzle of the .38 drooped. Another step, and she dropped the gun. Willie draped an enormous arm around Elizabeth’s shoulder and gently led her to his cruiser for the ride to jail.

  “I owe you my life.” Manny and Willie had just spent the last four hours in the interview room listening to Elizabeth rambling. Exhausted, they shared a pot of coffee in the OST break room. The night shift was out on patrol or taking calls, so they sat alone. “She would have shot me, you know.”

  Willie nodded. “
I couldn’t let her do that. Even though she raised me, I couldn’t let her shoot you. I was only doing my job.”

  “That’s right. He was just doing his job.” Lumpy waddled through the doorway and grabbed a chair. He turned it around backward, and draped his portly arms over the back. “It looks like we solved the case of the truck stolen from Reuben’s jobsite.”

  Lumpy looked happier over solving the stolen truck case than clearing both cases of assault, the hammer and the truck.

  “I missed the signs,” Willie said. “How could I have missed the signs?”

  “Easy,” Lumpy said. “Folks got used to seeing Elizabeth around. Sometimes running, sometimes doing things job-related. No one connected her.” Manny detected a bit of humanity in Lumpy’s voice as he tried to let Willie off the hook. “She was like the UPS delivery man no one sees because he’s always there, or the wino that’s always passed out along the curb. No one notices them after a while.”

  “He’s right.” Manny refilled their coffee, and poured Lumpy a cup as well. “We’re just now getting reports that people saw her running to Reuben’s jobsite. They saw her, but they didn’t connect her with the stolen truck.”

  “The night she attacked Manny with the hammer, she ran into town,” Lumpy added. “She always ran along the road, day or night, and people were used to seeing her.”

  Willie held his head. His eyes burned red from crying during the interview. Elizabeth was more his mother than his aunt, and she’d just confessed to attacking Manny with the hammer and trying to kill him by running him off the road in the stolen truck. His life would never be right again.

  “But why the charade about shopping with Rachael Thompson?”

  “Too easy to verify or refute,” Manny suggested. “Elizabeth knew that no one would question Rachael Thompson. And no one did until I drove to Martin today and talked with her. As for the truck, Elizabeth knew—through you—that one or more of the Heritage Kids was suspected in the ambush at my apartment. What better way to misdirect than to make us think one of Reuben’s kids stole the truck right off their own jobsite.”