Death Along the Spirit Road

by C. M. Wendelboe

  He coughed hard, fighting to normalize his breathing, and the intense pain from his cracked ribs helped to bring him back. His bounding heart threatened to burst from his chest, and for once he was grateful that he had quit smoking. “I’m awake.” He gulped and tried to sit up, but fell back down on the bed.

  Clara put her hand behind his back and helped him sit, then propped a pillow behind his neck. “You had some kind of nightmare, but it’s all right now.”

  “Yes. Some kind of nightmare.” He wanted to leave it there, but he began telling Clara about his vision, about the many times he had seen the apparition, when he had not known the spirit or what it wanted from him. He told her he now knew it was Jason’s wanagi that kept appearing in his dreams.

  “He’ll leave me alone once I solve his murder. I know that now.” Manny had to solve this homicide, for a reason more important than any Niles could dangle in front of him. Jason’s wanagi , and his wandering soul, made it personal.

  Clara walked to the bathroom and soon she returned with a cool washcloth. She ran it over Manny’s sweating face and neck. “Did he give you anything that might help your case?”

  Manny thought of that for the first time. Unc taught him the old Lakota ways, about teachings in a time that most Oglala forgot or chose to forget. “Jason died unexpectedly, and no one performed the Wanagi Yuhapi for him, the Ghost Keeping ceremony. The fact that he still lingers here tells me someone wept for him, someone prayed for him.”

  “But who would do that? Jason had no family, no friends.”

  “Even the bandit has his confessor,” he quoted an old Welsh saying. “Someone must have felt some pity for him.”

  Clara nodded as she put the washcloth on the nightstand, then shut off the light. She lay on the bed beside Manny and held him. What was absent now was the stirring in the loins, as the Big Bellies had a way of saying, and Manny felt content to be cradled in Clara’s arms, and to drift off to a dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER 20

  Willie closed the break-room door. He grabbed a chair and sat backward, his arms threatening to rip his uniform shirt. “You’re asking a lot. I feel like I’m betraying my entire family.”

  “I know how you feel, but we need that information and Elizabeth won’t talk to me. You heard her the last time we spoke in that interview.” Anger in Elizabeth’s voice had cut him short with resentments going back farther than Manny realized, and he knew she wouldn’t talk with him again.

  Willie reached over to the coffeepot and emptied the dregs into a ROSEBUD POWWOW cup. It flowed so slowly that it appeared curdled, but Willie drank it without mention as he stared at the floor. “Why would she tell me? If she’s kept quiet all these years about Jason paying Alex Jumping Bull, aka Clifford Coyote, she’ll clam up on me, too. She knows honor is important, even more than loyalty to one’s tiospaye. She knows it would be my duty to report what she said. She knows I would.”

  Manny paced the room. “Nothing she tells you will affect her outcome. She knows that as well. After her psych eval, she’ll be ruled incompetent to stand trial. This is her chance to get everything off her chest. If the question is posed in the right way.”

  Willie drank the rest of his coffee and wiped a hand across his lips. “All right. I’ll do what I can.”

  “I know you will,” Manny smiled. “Did you get a chance to check in with Desirée?”

  “She’ll be all right. The lieutenant put a guard on her after they admitted her to the hospital. He talked with her for quite a while today. Guess she’s still scared to death of Jack Little Boy.”

  “Any word of him?”

  Willie shook his head and his hand dropped to his gun as if he expected Jack to come into the room at any moment. “We’ve been hunting him, but there’s still enough AIM sympathizers living here that’ll hide him out if they figure he’s got a hard-on for an FBI agent.”

  “Guess you guys are doing all you can. Now tell me what you found out about the murders here in the 1970s.”

  “Not much. Sixty-odd murders here on the rez in the three years following the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee. AIM blamed Wilson’s goons, and Wilson’s men pointed the finger at AIM. Most victims were killed by gunshot, but just one with a .45. Ballistics showed the slug measured .451 inches. A .45 auto round, not one from an old Army Colt. You still think Jason might have used that gun to kill someone here before?”

  “I don’t know what to think. From what Clara said, Jason might have been a real horse’s ass, but he wasn’t violent. Still, we’d better check out old files: Somewhere around here I bet there’s a cold case or two involving that old hogleg as the murder weapon.”

  “Already checked,” Willie said. “There’s no unsolved homicides here on Pine Ridge involving a .45. Maybe Soske will dig up something from Pennington County. Or the sheriff in Hot Springs.”

  “Maybe,” Manny answered. Willie had asked Soske if he could research their homicides for the past thirty years, from when Jason was active in AIM, for anyone killed with a .45 Colt. Ditto for the Fall River County Sheriff’s Office. Manny hoped someone in the two counties bordering Pine Ridge might have an old homicide involving a .45.

  Manny and Willie sat silent. They had no more to say. Manny had asked Willie to betray his aunt, and he had agreed. Manny hoped by the time he returned from talking with Reuben, Willie would have the answers he needed. He started for the door, and Willie called out after him.

  “Be careful when you see him.”

  “Careful of my own brother? Now why would a sacred man hurt me?”

  Manny had started to leave when Lumpy called to him. “Come in here, Hotshot.”

  Manny turned around and walked into Lumpy’s office. Nathan Yellow Horse sat across from Lumpy and smiled at him as if they shared a secret. They did. “Nathan’s been in contact with Ben Niles. He ordered you to give Nathan an exclusive.”

  “Just to offset that skirt from the Rapid City Journal,” Nathan said. “The one you’ve been feeding information to—in exchange for what, I can only assume.”

  Manny started for Nathan, but the reporter jumped back in his chair just as Lumpy stepped between them. “Don’t blame Nathan, here. You’re the one that’s been chasing her.”

  Manny sighed deeply and pulled up a chair across from Nathan. “I only have time for a few questions. Alone.”

  Lumpy laughed. “No problem, use my office. I’ll read about it in the paper, anyway.”

  Manny waited until Lumpy shut the door before turning to Nathan. “Ask away.”

  Manny chuckled to himself. For the first time, he wished the local newspaper would come out early so he could see what Nathan Yellow Horse wrote. He had asked pointed questions, leading questions, questions that would compromise the investigation if they were answered. But Niles had ordered him to talk to Yellow Horse, and he had. Manny told Yellow Horse that Elizabeth had attacked him with a hammer that night, and that she had driven the stolen truck three nights ago.

  Manny told Yellow Horse the investigation had a leak as big as the White River. Yellow Horse pressed. Manny stonewalled. Yellow Horse pressed again with the threat to call Niles one more time. Manny relented—Lumpy had been in the company of Sonja Myers more often than he—and left the implication there. Yellow Horse needed to know specifically if there was a connection between Lumpy, Sonja Myers, and the leak. “No comment.”

  Manny shut the car off and coasted down Reuben’s driveway. He stopped in front of Reuben’s trailer and cracked the car door, listening. A scraping noise came from somewhere behind the house, and he eased the door shut. He brushed his arm against Willie’s Glock, and he thanked Lumpy for returning the gun. He knelt and peeked around the back of the trailer. Reuben stood bare-chested hunched over a smoking fire. He held an eagle feather in his hand and passed it through the smoke, directing it over his body as he chanted softly in a language Manny only vaguely remembered from his childhood.

  Reuben opened the tiny medicine pouch hanging by a thong around
his neck and pinched a small amount of sweetgrass and sage, tossing it into the air away from his body. Then he made a quarter-turn, and repeated the process in all four sacred directions. Manny watched in fascination as his brother performed a ceremony that had not changed with the Lakota since oral tradition was their vehicle of history.

  As he turned, Reuben’s moccasins made faint depressions in the dirt that lasted seconds before disappearing in the wind, while Reuben prayed to Wakan Tanka. Unc insisted on Manny’s pursuit of the traditional Lakota ways, but Manny had fought against it and let them go.

  Reuben prayed and ended the ceremony facing Manny’s direction, but didn’t acknowledge his presence until he had bowed once more to the four directions and passed the eagle feather through the smoke one last time. Reuben placed the feather and medicine pouch inside a small cedar chest beside the fire, then turned to Manny.

  “It’s good to see you. If I knew you were coming, I’d have waited so we could worship together.”

  “I worship my own way.”

  “Of course,” Reuben grinned. “Unc’s Catholicism. But there’s still room for Native ways in your world. Many of our people share dual beliefs.”

  Reuben was right. Many Lakota shared their belief in traditional ways alongside Christianity, finding no difference between Wakan Tanka and God, but now was not the time for a theological discussion. “This isn’t a social call.”

  “It never is.” Reuben bent to a cooler and grabbed a Snickers bar. He tossed it and a Diet Coke to Manny without asking. Manny caught both as Reuben grabbed a Diet Coke for himself before dropping into his lawn chair. Manny looked at the Snickers: Reuben knew his weaknesses. How the hell did he know how long it had been since Manny ate? And how long since he ate a candy bar? Manny peeled the wrapper off the Snickers, and guilt visited him for only a moment. The Diet Coke would even out the calories in the candy bar.

  Manny’s lips smacked Snickers. Reuben slurped Diet Coke. Two brothers on Lakota time sharing moments that did not pass, in a hurry to be nowhere while the aromatic cedar smoke of Reuben’s fire passed over them.

  “Where’s Jack Little Boy?” Manny blurted out.

  Reuben sipped his soda slowly, all the while matching Manny’s stare. “I heard about that stunt he pulled in your apartment . . .”

  “Rez drums again?”

  “If I knew where he was I’d put the grab on him myself. Can’t have someone running around trying to kill my only brother.”

  “Then at least tell me who Jason would have killed when he was younger.” He wished he could drag it back, but he couldn’t.

  “You teach that in your interrogation classes? I thought you were supposed to lead up to touchy questions, gain my confidence first before you pop the big question.”

  “I also teach that tough questions make men stall when they don’t want to answer. Like you’re stalling now. It’s a simple enough question. You knew Jason back in his AIM days. Who would he have killed back then?”

  Reuben finished his soda and crushed the can in one hand before tossing it into a trash sack with others. Reuben spoke deliberately, calculating each word he said now. “Jason couldn’t have killed anyone. He was never an enforcer, never involved in the tough things we had to do. He was a milquetoast. Why do you ask?”

  “Because he told Ricky Bell he killed someone before,” Manny interpolated.

  “Who’s Ricky Bell?”

  “The guy who stole the artifacts from the Prairie Edge, the one Jason hired to kill a man in Minneapolis.”

  “What man?”

  “Clifford Coyote.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You may have known him as Alex Jumping Bull when he lived here on Pine Ridge.”

  A noticeable twitch attacked the corners of Reuben’s eyes. Manny always pointed out to his students that slight tics were involuntary and indicated non-truth.

  “You do remember him?”

  Reuben reached for another Diet Coke. Stalling again. “Last I knew, Alex Jumping Bull disappeared about the time I killed Billy Two Moons. FBI goons came to visit me at the lockup in Rapid City to question me about that. I didn’t know anything about Jumping Bull back then, and I don’t now. But it sounds as if your Ricky Bell does. If Jason paid him to kill Jumping Bull, that lets me off the hook as your main suspect. I’d say Bell had a lifetime of reasons for wanting Jason dead.”

  “Not entirely.” Manny paused while he felt the last of the caramel from the Snickers bar slide down his throat. A sliver of goo stuck on his lip and he licked it away. “Bell may be crowding you out from the top of my suspect list. But just a bit.”

  “And why not put him higher?”

  Reuben was fishing, trying to find out what Manny knew. That was all right. He’d tell Reuben things that might help him lose sleep at night, things that would cause him to make a mistake if he killed Jason. “If Bell murdered him, he would have driven here. Maybe not with his own car—he doesn’t own one—but in a stolen car if he had to.”

  “What makes you think he didn’t?”

  “Crazy George’s Buick,” Manny answered. “It had two hundred fifty miles on it, just enough to get to Rapid City and back. You’re within walking distance of Crazy George.”

  “I don’t drive anymore, remember? Scares the hell out of me.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t.”

  “Did you ever think it was pure coincidence that Crazy George’s car was stolen the night of the murder? As I recall, you and a couple other kids swiped a car and went joyriding when you were about twelve or thirteen.”

  Manny thought he’d forgotten that incident when he and Freddie Leaping Star and the oldest Collins boy had taken a car double-parked in front of Billy Mills Hall. They drove it around the reservation until they ran out of gas. They had been caught, but not prosecuted. The owner, who was passing through on his way to Chadron, didn’t want to return to Pine Ridge for court. They would have returned the car eventually, if the gas had held up. Maybe Reuben was right, maybe joyriders had taken Crazy George’s car and returned it before it ran out of fuel.

  “I don’t believe it was kids joyriding that old beater of Crazy George’s,” Manny said. “And I don’t believe in coincidences. Especially where murder’s involved.”

  There was nervousness in Reuben’s laugh. He stood and dropped the soda can into the sack. He grabbed another from the cooler along with a cold towel that had been trifolded with the ends tucked neatly into each other and handed it to Manny. He opened it and wiped the sweat from his neck and face, then draped it over his neck.

  “Indian air-conditioning,” Reuben said, and they both laughed. Reuben remembered some things Unc said, after all. They laughed together, and sat awkwardly looking at one another until Reuben asked, “Are you still running?”

  “Every day, when I can.”

  “I bet you a can of pop this old man can run circles around you with arthritis and all.”

  “With my ribs being bruised, that’d just about make us even. Let me slip my shoes and shorts on and I’ll meet you in front.”

  Manny grabbed his gym bag from the trunk and slipped his running shorts and shoes on. He was just donning a T-shirt when Reuben came from around the trailer. He started at an easy lope, one that seemed to favor his arthritis-aged leg.

  “I hear tell Lizzy’s going to the state mental hospital in Yankton for evaluation. She ever say why she wanted you dead?” Reuben’s words came in gasps now, matching Manny’s grunts every time his foot hit the pavement.

  “Erica,” Manny huffed, again wishing he could pull it back. His brother was better at playing this game than he was, but then Reuben had always been able to lower Manny’s guard. He picked up the pace so he could get into his zone to think more logically. “Elizabeth told me she thought Erica and Jason were having an affair. She thought Erica would be implicated in Jason’s embezzlement scheme.”

  “Lizzy’s dead wrong,” Reuben wheezed, struggling to keep up with Manny. “E
rica could never do such a thing, she’s a good kid. Makes me proud.”

  A piece of buffalo grass blew across the road and caught in Manny’s teeth, and he spit it out. “You knew Jason was footing the bill for Erica to attend Harvard those six years.”

  “Lizzy finally told me a couple years back.”

  Reuben was once again the composed ex-convict, hard to read, unemotional and in control. Manny needed to shake him up, destroy that confidence. “I’m convinced Jason killed someone before. And I think you know who it was.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Manny picked up the pace, fighting his own battle to exchange air with his aching lungs. He started leaving Reuben behind and he had to slow. “No bullshit, big brother. When I mentioned Alex Jumping Bull a moment ago, you damned near choked. You know who Jason killed, just like you knew Jumping Bull.”

  Reuben ran his hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes, and gestured with his arm to the vast prairie beyond his barren forty acres. “Much of this land remains in tribal hands because of things we endured in AIM years ago.” He paused to gulp dusty air. “We led a resurgence in Indian sovereignty and Lakota pride. If Alex Jumping Bull got himself killed, it’s got nothing to do with AIM. Or me. If he pissed off AIM now, all he’d get is pissed off Indians. Even I will admit that AIM doesn’t have the power it once had, but that’s got nothing to do with me. I haven’t been involved since they sent me to the prison.”

  “Just what do you remember about Jumping Bull?”

  Reuben slowed, then stopped. He bent over, hands on his knees, breathing, coughing. Stalling. “I remember he was a weasel like Billy. What do you want from me? I did my time for killing Billy. All I want to do is live the rest of my life here as it was intended. I made mistakes, now I am trying my damndest to rectify them.”

  “And to maintain this life, would you kill again? Would you have killed Jason to keep it?” Manny started off at a pace that allowed Reuben to keep up.