“Chief Deer Slayer.” The BIA chief stood and smoothed his black uniform before offering Manny his hand. He towered over Manny, his grip strong, but not crushing. He held the air of authority Manny had seen in other BIA chiefs. He jerked his thumb toward the tribal policeman. “This is Matthew LaPierre. We call him Stumper.”
Stumper looked up from his all-important tooth picking and caught Deer Slayer’s scowl. He swung his leg down and stood. He was shorter and thinner than Manny, and the tension in his grip, as tight as the coil of braided hair hanging down his back, belied his small stature. He grinned at Manny’s shorts and Hawaiian shirt. He ignored Willie as he dropped back into the chair, picking his teeth as he counted ceiling tiles.
Manny accepted the iced tea Deer Slayer’s secretary handed him, and Willie grabbed a chair opposite Deer Slayer. “So what do we got? Word is, you fellas think there’s more to White Bird’s death than accidental?”
“Stumper.” Deer Slayer pointed at his subordinate.
Stumper dropped his boot from the tabletop and slid his chair close. He tossed a manila folder across the table. Inside were preliminary photos taken by the BIA evidence tech, along with Harlan White Bird’s information.
“Looks like Harlan was a busy man this year. Spent three months in jail this spring. Thought he owned an auction house?”
“He did,” Stumper answered. “Being a drunk was just his hobby.”
Deer Slayer glared at Stumper and turned to Manny. “Even though Harlan was an alkie, he was the foremost expert on Plains Indian artifacts from here to the West Coast. He owned the only auction house in the Rocky Mountain region specializing in genuine Plains Indian items.”
Manny flipped through Harlan’s file. “He have an auction every year at the end of the reenactment?”
“When most tourists are here.” Stumper grinned at Manny’s garb. “When most gullible tourists are here for the Real Bird reenactment.”
“So Harlan sold to us ‘gullible’ tourists’?” Manny envisioned Harlan hawking fake Indian artifacts on the sidewalk in front of an auction house. “Did he sell imitations?”
“He sold enough of those.” Stumper smiled at Manny and Willie. “To fools that wanted authentic Indian artifacts. But after the repros and the stuff slapped together by workers in Hong Kong were sold, he’d start with the real McCoy. Artifacts that would cost me a year’s wages to bid on.”
Willie thumbed through the file. “How is it that Harlan could have been shot with a live .45-55 round? Don’t they have people checking guns before the show?”
Deer Slayer stood and walked over to a card table. Next to a bronze buffalo skull a coffeepot was steaming. He picked up the pot and held it out to Manny and Willie. They shook their heads, and Deer Slayer replaced it for the next unsuspecting coffee guest. “That’s the problem. The folks organizing the show have prop men that check and double-check the guns right before the action starts, making sure there’s only blanks in them. They’ve never had an incident involving live ammo.”
“Then what makes you think it was something more than an accident?”
“Him.” Deer Slayer nodded to Stumper. “He thinks he had a vision that Harlan was murdered.”
“It wasn’t a vision.” Stumper locked eyes with Deer Slayer. “It was a hunch. Call it police intuition.”
“And why didn’t any other officers with twice your experience have these intuitions?” Deer Slayer turned to Manny. “Stumper here’s been on the force four years, and sometimes he acts like your garden-variety rookie.”
Stumper ignored Deer Slayer and turned his chair to face Manny. “Someone replaced blanks with live rounds. I’ve got two officers asking everyone leaving the grounds if they have any photos or videos of the reenactment.”
“You sound sure the ammo was substituted.”
“Of course it was switched,” Stumper snapped at Willie. “Whether or not it was on purpose—with the intent of killing Harlan—is another matter.”
“Then I suggest you three take a look at Harlan’s shop.”
Stumper scowled at Deer Slayer. “Us three? I thought the FBI did their own investigations. I got my own methods.”
“Being Agent Tanno’s liaison while he’s here at Crow Agency, you’ll assist him any way you can.”
Manny turned to Stumper. “Then we better take a look at Harlan’s shop.”
Stumper glared a last time at Deer Slayer. “Sure, Agent Tanno. Just as soon as we talk with the killer.”
CHAPTER 4
Stumper stopped in front of a door marked INTERVIEW. “Don’t mind if I sit in on this, do you? It might be entertaining.”
“Entertaining?”
Stumper smiled. “Wait till you see this guy. He’s a candidate for the rubber room.”
Stumper held the door for Willie and Manny. The cavalry sergeant Manny saw earlier, whose shot started the reenactment, sat in a captain’s chair holding his head as his elbows rested on a long, oval Formica table sporting numerous cigarette burns along the outside edges. The sergeant’s own cigarette had burned down, threatening to scorch the side of his head, and it was only a matter of time before the smoldering butt would add another insult to the embattled table.
Manny eyed the cigarette and patted his empty pocket. Even after he’d quit last year, he still craved a smoke. “Put your cigarette out, please.”
The sergeant dropped it into an empty Orange Crush can. It hissed and a small tendril of smoke rose from the can.
Manny nodded to the other door opening into the squad room area. “Make sure that’s locked,” he told Stumper.
The sergeant jumped as if he expected rubber hoses and bright lights to come out. “We just need to make sure no one interrupts us.”
The sergeant said nothing and nodded. Or did he shake?
Manny introduced himself and Willie, and the sergeant had started to rise when Manny put his hand onto the man’s shoulder that shook as much as his nicotine-stained hands. One of the sergeant’s suspenders had fallen off his shoulder, and he’d missed two buttons on his fly. Stumper was right: The man was a basket case, and the last thing Manny needed on vacation was to pick a basket case up from the floor. “Just sit back and relax, mister.”
The man considered Manny’s shirt and shorts. “Don’t you FBI agents usually wear a suit and tie?”
“I’m in disguise,” Manny answered.
“Ian Tess.” He seemed to accept Manny’s explanation as he offered his hand, which lacked the firmness of Stumper’s and the strength of Deer Slayer’s, instead feeling lifeless like the body of the man he’d just killed. Manny wiped his sweaty hand onto his shorts. “This never happens at Gettysburg.”
“What’s that?”
“Gettysburg,” Tess repeated. “I participate in the reenactment there every year, and nothing like this ever happens.”
“You mean you never killed anyone at one of these before?”
Tess looked through reddened eyes from Stumper, smiling as he leaned against one wall, to Manny. Manny rolled the only other chair in the room close to the card table and sat, careful not to gouge himself on the broken chair arm. Manny had long ago learned that the best attribute of an investigator was silence, knowing when to wait until the person decided to get their burden off their chest.
“Back there they check our loads before the shooting starts,” Tess said at last. “We never have anything on our uniform belts except powder. Never a ball to ram on top of the charge. And they check it many times before the battle begins.”
“And this is the first you’ve killed anyone?”
Tess sat back in the chair and his face flushed. He leaned across the table, and Manny smelled the whiskey on his breath. “Of course I never killed anyone,” he said, annoyance entering his voice, and Manny was glad Tess was starting to come around to the land of the living. He reached for his cigarettes,
but Manny placed his hand on his arm.
“You didn’t know someone had switched a live round with the dummy. Tell me what you did this afternoon leading up to the battle.”
Tess slumped back in his chair, his eyes softening, grateful that someone had confirmed he was no murderer. “After I loaded the Springfield, the prop man checked my rifle and stuck the yellow ribbon in the action.”
“And the rifle was in your possession the whole time?”
“Whole time?”
“Even when you went to the port-a-potty?”
Tess straightened up and a smile crossed his face. “No, it wasn’t. I left it there when I got the two-minute warning and ran to the blue house.”
“I saw you run for the port-a-potty,” Manny said. “There were people around your tent.”
Tess nodded. “People come to these events ’cause they love history. They love it when I fold a little history into the events. Some background on cavalry equipment. Weaponry. Stuff like that. Anyway, I finished in the crapper just in time for the reenactment to begin. Everyone had cleared out—probably sitting in the bleachers. Even the safety man was gone.”
“Safety man?” Willie asked. “As in the man that checked your rifle?”
Tess nodded. “The second safety check of the day.”
Manny scooted his chair closer to Tess. “Like Gettysburg, multiple safety checks?”
“Just like Gettysburg.” Tess shook his head. “Making sure no accident happens. But it did somehow.”
“Tell me about this second safety man.” Manny took a notebook from Stumper, not to actually take notes, but to appear to be taking notes. It’s what people expected an interviewer to do.
Tess looked at the ceiling before dropping his head and nodding to Willie. “Tall guy, like him. But not nearly as heavy. And sloppy, too.”
“How so?”
“Wore an old T-shirt that looked like he served last night’s dinner on it.”
“Indian?”
Tess nodded. “But don’t ask me what kind. They all look alike.” Tess looked to all three men in the room and slid his chair back from the table. But there would be no escaping his stupidity. “Sorry, but you guys know what I mean?”
Manny waved it away. “What did the second safety man do?”
“Well he checked my rifle, of course.”
“Did you watch him?”
Tess laughed nervously. “What’s to check. He opens the rifle’s action and checks that there’s a dummy chambered. Then sticks the yellow ribbon back in the gun.”
“Did you watch him?” Willie asked. He leaned over the table, and Tess backed up as he craned his neck up.
“I went in my tent for a moment while he did that.”
“To take a nip?” Manny asked.
Tess’s hand automatically went to his back pocket. “You know they don’t allow booze at the reenactment.”
Manny shook his head. “I don’t care about that. Could you give a description to a police sketch artist?”
Tess rubbed his eyes. “Wouldn’t do any good. All I know is he was an Indian.”
Manny had stood and started for the door when Tess stopped him. “What happens to me now?”
Manny looked to Stumper and Willie. “Somebody that looks Indian will come get you soon. Just sit tight.”
Tess leaned on the table and once again cradled his head in his hands as he rocked back and forth. “Nothing like this ever happens at Gettysburg.”
CHAPTER 5
Manny squirmed in the seat as he tried to stretch out his legs. “I offered to sit back there,” Willie said. “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
Manny leaned over and rested his arms on the seat back. “If I can’t fit back here, just think what it’d be like for you.” He tapped Stumper on the shoulder. “How far is it to Lodge Grass?”
“Twenty minutes,” he said as he turned onto I90. Stumper retrieved his can of Copenhagen from his back pocket and stuffed his lip. He had started putting it back when Willie reached over and snatched the can. He started filling his own lower lip, and Manny scowled at him. But just for a moment. Willie was fighting his other addiction, alcohol, and Manny could overlook his tobacco habit for the moment.
They started around a ’60s International pickup missing the hood, the seventy-year-old-going-on-ninety driver pedaling as fast as she could. She glared at the tribal Tahoe as it went by and thrust her middle finger high out the door as they passed. Stumper chuckled.
“That funny?” Manny asked.
Stumper shook his head. “Not that, it’s us. It’s ironic that you and this big ugly Lakota sitting beside me are working a criminal case with me, a Crow. Wasn’t but a century ago and we’d be fighting for each other’s scalps.”
Willie reached over and flipped Stumper’s braid. “Who’s to say we won’t come away with a scalp today?”
Stumper flipped his hair back and slapped Willie’s hand away.
Manny was quick to intervene. “Hate to have pulled you away from anything important.”
Stumper shook his head. “The only thing you pulled me away from is another methamphetamine case. I get tired of working those.”
“Same as us.” Willie worked the snuff into his lower lip. “Not a week goes by that we don’t have some new meth case dumped in our laps.” He rolled his window down to spit. “It’s ruining our kids.”
“But it comes onto the rez at odd times. Keeps us second-guessing where it’s coming from, who’s bringing the shit onto Crow Agency.” Stumper rolled his window down and spit. Manny scrambled to the other side of the seat just as droplets of tobacco juice splattered where he’d sat. “And if that were my only problem, it would be bad enough. But we got Della Night Tail.”
“Meth head?”
“Pain in the ass. She’s our chronic bitcher.”
Willie laughed. “I’ll put our Crazy George He Crow or Henry Lone Wolf against any complainer you got.”
Stumper started passing a stock truck hauling yearling heifers, and he quickly rolled up his window against the odor. “There’s no bitcher like Della. She’s a professional. She reports her old man, Little Dave Night Tail, missing about once a month. Like she did this morning.”
“Little Dave use meth?”
Stumper shook his head. “Little Dave just doesn’t come home about every other payday. He lays carpet for an outfit out of Hardin, and claims he needs to tie one on now and again. Claims the carpet kicker trashes his knees, and he drinks to kill the pain.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
Stumper looked at Manny in the rearview mirror. “If I were married to that witch Della, I’d manage to stay away every chance I could, too. What I think is that Little Dave got himself some stray tail in Hardin, which makes it hard for us. Every time he doesn’t come home, Della gripes to the tribal council, and we all know what direction shit rolls.”
Willie drew his legs under him and tried to turn in the seat. He just didn’t fit. “If he’s anything like our drunks, he’s on the backside of a twelve-pack of Budweiser, and he’ll stagger home when the beer runs out. I know.”
Willie caught Manny’s eyes in the rearview mirror and he quickly looked away. Willie struggled daily with the booze, and talk of Little Dave Night Tail only reminded him of the comfort a bottle of whiskey or a cold six-pack could bring.
They took the off-ramp to Old Highway 87 onto Main Street. If a town of five hundred souls had a Main Street. “Where’d you get a nickname like Stumper?” Manny asked.
“Yeah.” Willie slapped his arm. “Where’d you get that goofy name?”
Stumper leaned his head out the Tahoe and spit. The wind caught it and blew brown tobacco juice back onto his arm. “Some dude from Billings robbed the Little Big Horn Casino my first year on the job. I got there in time to shoot the guy as he ran out the door.”
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“Doesn’t explain your name.”
“My aim was a little off.” Stumper turned onto Hester Street. “I was shooting a .357 Magnum then, and the ER docs in Billings couldn’t save the guy’s arm. He’s working in a prison laundry folding clothes one-armed.” Stumper laughed. “Or should I say one-stumped. So the name stuck.”
Stumper drove past a rusting street sign proclaiming they had turned off Hill Street when they reached Taft. They turned down a gravel street and Manny caught sight of yellow crime scene tape encircling a large pole building. Harlan’s gray-sided auction barn sat at the end of a dead-end street. In Manny’s last home in Arlington, Virginia, such faults of street planning would be referred to as cul-de-sacs. Here at Crow Agency, it was just one more street that ran out of money before it was connected to another.
Stumper pulled up in front of police warning signs that had been posted at Harlan White Bird’s auction house. The sign proclaimed the business had been seized as evidence. “Odd for a business to be located on a dead end.” Manny unfolded his legs from the backseat and stretched his hamstrings. He needed to get some road miles in his running shoes, even on vacation. “Wouldn’t think that’d be good for business.”
“Didn’t matter.” Stumper stuffed his can of Copenhagen in his back pocket before Willie could grab it. “Harlan did enough business that people came from all over the country. He could have held his auction in an outhouse and still drawn a crowd. Besides, Harlan was paranoid as hell. Insisted it was easier to watch anyone coming up if the place set on a dead end.”
Willie walked to the corner of the windowless building and back. He tapped the security keypad hanging on one side of the door. “Did Harlan have a reason to be paranoid?”
“The quality of the artifacts he gathered for auction would be reason enough for someone to break in.”
Stumper walked to the door and stood on his tiptoes as he felt for the key above the jamb. Willie reached up and grabbed it, smiling as he handed it to Stumper. “Don’t say a word, big man.”
Death on the Greasy Grass Page 3