Death Etched in Stone

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “I’m afraid there is,” Manny nodded to Willie. “The longer I’m detained here, the longer it’ll be before I have to go home with him flying.”

  Manny took a seat again and absently thumbed through the case file, until he came across Della’s interview. He took it out and read the notes the tribal officer had made when he had interviewed her at the hospital sitting at Kenton’s bedside all night.

  Manny passed it to Willie and stood, nose to chest with Walker. “It’s damned hard to make out the signature of the officer who filed that interview with Della. Almost illegible. But not quite.”

  “I had poor penmanship,” Walker said. “Even back then.”

  Chapter 13

  Manny awoke sometime between the first and the second bounce of Willie’s jarred landing. Manny cinched his seat belt tighter and dug his hands into the dash. Willie laughed nervously. “You still don’t trust me?”

  Manny remained too frightened to speak just then, helpless as Willie’s Cessna was passing the dilapidated hangars lining the runway at Pine Ridge faster than they should be.

  “Nice crosswind landing, huh?”

  “Crosswind?” Manny looked around. “What speed does the wind sock tell you?”

  “What wind sock? I heard some kid stole it.”

  “See what happens when you’re away from crime fighting?” Manny said, eyeing the plastic Mary swaying on the dash.

  Willie taxied his plane beside a hangar and cut the engine. It shuddered a brief complaint and coughed blue smoke before dying. “Are you coming, or do you want to sit there and savor the ride?”

  Manny used the wing to steady himself. He felt like falling down and kissing the earth, like an airman on one of those B-17 crews when they limped in with severe battle damage.

  Manny followed Willie to his pickup, and tossed his briefcase onto the seat. Willie nodded at the manila folder that stuck out of the case. “You still think Johnny’s death is connected to Butch Hausey’s murder?”

  Manny teetered on shaky legs, and leaned on the truck before he fell over. “Johnny told Henry and Tony that Kenton claimed Della was the one who killed Butch. If she actually thought Johnny had proof . . . You saw the way she kept that rifle of hers close. She’s capable.”

  “I’d be more inclined to think Tony, with his propensity for violence,” Willie said. “Della was like a mother to him, and if he thought he had to protect her because Johnny had something on her—”

  “But why now?” Manny popped a piece of Juicy Fruit and steadied himself against Willie’s truck. “Why after all these years would they want Johnny dead? It makes no sense.”

  “But talking with Neville about it? You’re losing me there.”

  Manny still leaned on the truck. “I’m hoping Johnny had talked with Neville in a client-attorney relationship. Neville couldn’t have revealed anything when Johnny was alive. But there’s no conflict now that he’s dead.”

  “Do you really think Neville would dime off his own brother, and the only mother he’s ever known?”

  “Doubtful, but I have to ask him.”

  “I wish I could come. I wouldn’t mind meeting him.” Willie looked a final time at his Clementine before grabbing his truck keys from his trouser pocket. “From everything I’ve heard about him, Neville’s pretty flamboyant in court.”

  “Then hop in and take a drive to Rapid.”

  “I can’t. The lieutenant’s got me set up for a series of drug interviews.”

  “Speaking of the fat little fart.” Manny chin-pointed to the Suburban kicking up pebbles and dust speeding into the airport. Lumpy skidded to a stop in back of Willie’s truck and scrambled out. “What the hell took you so long?”

  “It’s a ways over to Wind River,” Willie answered.

  “But you flew,” Lumpy said.

  Manny wanted to tell Lumpy how Willie’s following highways over to Wind River was only slightly quicker than driving.

  “Now that you’re here, I need you to conduct some interviews.”

  Willie stuffed Copenhagen into his lip. “So you told me yesterday. I’ll get to the drug interviews—”

  “Not those. We got serious cases,” Lumpy said. “We had two assaults here this morning. Joey One Feather is in the Hot Springs hospital. Kyle Wells was treated at the ER here and released.”

  “How serious?” Manny asked.

  “Not serious enough that we need the feds to butt in.” Lumpy handed Willie a police incident report. “Both victims said some big, bald-headed bastard with arm-to-asshole tattoos kicked the dog shit out of them last night.”

  Willie jotted notes on the back of the incident report. “What did they get in a fight with the guy about?”

  “They refused to say. Like they’d seen the devil himself and was afraid to testify against him.”

  *****

  Manny checked the address to Neville’s office against the sticky note on his dash. He looked once again to make certain he had the right address before he pulled to the curb. Neville’s shingle must have since been taken down and used for firewood by the homeless, because all that indicated a law office resided somewhere inside the shabby brownstone was a sticker pasted outside the dirty door leading up to the building: Charging Bear, Criminal Attorney. A redundant phrase if there ever was one.

  Two men crawled from under a large bush to the side of the building and brushed snow off their tattered coats. One wore a dirty green Army field jacket with a faded 1st Infantry patch on the sleeve, the ashen outline matching his nearly-white hair. His younger companion stumbled in red Keds tennis shoes, his toes sticking through holes in the worn ends. They wobbled as they blocked Manny’s path to the door. “We just need a couple bucks for a meal,” White Hair said, his breath fermented as much as his partner’s body odor.

  “Sure, buddy,” Red Keds said, stepping closer to intimidate a handout. “You give us a couple bucks to eat, we’ll let you pass.”

  Isn’t that something: white men begging from an Indian. “Are you offering me protection?”

  Red Keds glanced at his companion and smiled. His teeth were rotted, and he looked like a chipmunk in a petrified forest. “Yea, that’s what it is. Protection.”

  Manny waved his hand around. “Do you think I need protection in this neighborhood?”

  “What do you think?” The younger drunk scanned the abandoned car across the street, the empty apartment next door with the windows broken out, wine bottles piled in a heap under the bush as if they were collecting them. He shuddered and stepped closer to Manny. “Well, what you got?”

  “I got a lot of things,” Manny said. “I got an ingrown toenail. I got a case of diabetes. I got developing hemorrhoids. Oh, and I got this,” he flipped open his ID wallet. The FBI badge glinted in the morning sun.

  Red Keds stumbled back, tripping over White Hair already shuffling to get away. Both men disappeared around the corner of the building, leaving Manny to take in the rundown street by himself.

  He mounted steps partially occupied by a Godfather’s Pizza box. Shimmering waves of warm steam floating upward, rising, mixed with the cold air, the warm yeast odor drifting past Manny’s nose. It surprised him the drunks hadn’t stolen the pizza, but then he checked himself: they hadn’t actually wanted anything to eat. They wanted to drink their breakfast.

  Manny stooped and picked up the box before trying the knob. It turned, but the door didn’t budge. Manny nudged the bottom of the door with his foot where it had collected moisture and warped. It gave way, hitting the wall behind with a bang. A cow bell over the door tinkled his arrival, yet no one sat at the gunmetal gray desk that stood guard just inside the door where a receptionist should have been.

  “Come on back,” a man yelled from down the hallway. “Set it down. Check’s in the mail slot. Like always.”

  Manny brushed dust off his pant leg as h
e walked past the desk, following the voice. “What if I don’t need a check?”

  “Then give me the pizza for free if you like. Either way, leave it on the floor. I’ll have to leave a tip next time.”

  Manny leaned back against the wall and waited.

  “I said leave the pizza.”

  Behind the wall leading into an office, a chair clanged against a metal filing cabinet, and someone cussed knocking over papers. “I said . . . ” A man came around the corner of the doorway and stopped when he spotted Manny. “Aren’t you a little old to be delivering pizzas?”

  Manny flipped open his ID case. The man bent down and squinted at it. He straightened to his full height, towering over Manny. “What’s the FBI want with me?” A beaded lizard hair tie held his twin braids together. He pulled his John Deere ball cap down and smoothed his shirt front. “You guys harassing one of my clients again?”

  “Are you Neville Charging Bear?”

  The man rubbed his two-day growth of beard. Who says Indians can’t grow facial hair, Manny thought. “I am. Attorney at law. Like I said, who are you people harassing now?”

  “We need to talk about Johnny Apple’s death.”

  Neville dropped his head, and he slumped against the door jamb. “Come in.”

  Neville led Manny into an office occupied by a surplus gray metal desk matching the one in the other room. Two sets of filing cabinets parked under a Snap-on tool calendar showing Miss December’s nipples at attention while she sat nude in a snow bank, smiling. Neville stacked papers on one corner of the desk, and brushed dust from a chair. He opened the pizza box and nodded to it. “Help yourself. It’s only cheese, but as you can tell,” he waved the slice of pizza around the room, “I’m not exactly rolling in the pizza dough.”

  Manny patted his stomach. “Thanks for the offer, but diabetes limits what I can eat.” And Clara the Food Nazi’s inquisition once I come home. “I called earlier to set up an appointment, but your secretary didn’t answer.”

  “That’s ’cause she’s in Florida.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Yeah, a permanent one. I had to let her go last year. Like I said, I’m not exactly rolling in dough here. Most of my clients can’t pay. Or won’t.”

  Neville bit off half a slice of pizza, and waited until he swallowed before continuing. “I do a lot of pro bono work. Mostly for Indians who have had the screws put to them.” He held up his hand. “Not accusing you of anything, Agent Tanno.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So they pay me what they can. Sometimes in beadwork.” He nodded to the top of a filing cabinet covered with beaded chokers and coin purses, earrings and watch bands. A dozen dream catchers hung over the heater vent, feathers fluttering. “Not that I’d ever be able to sell them to recoup my fees.” He paused in his feast and held up his right wrist to show off a wide, beaded watch band. “Could I interest you in a beaded—”

  “I have plenty,” Manny said.

  “How about a second car? I have a couple parked out back I got in lieu of my fee.”

  “Thanks,” Manny said. “But I get to drive my government car most of the time.”

  Neville grabbed another piece of pizza from the box. “But my work goes to a good cause. There’s more important things in life than money. Like pizza. Sure you don’t want a piece?”

  Manny waved the offer away.

  Neville shrugged, and grabbed a salt shaker. He paused mid-shake. “I guess I’ve always been blessed with good health. Even though most of us skins are prone to the disease, I’m healthy as a horse.”

  Healthy as a horse. And big as a horse. Manny envied the way Neville inhaled the slice of pizza in three bites before grabbing another. Manny guessed Neville was his own age, yet he had no worries about eating the entire pizza. A man as stout as Neville probably needs calories. “What can you tell me about Johnny Apple?”

  “Uncle Johnny was a good guy.” Neville set his slice of pizza on his empty daily planner. “Uncle Johnny was always there when we were growing up. We called him ‘uncle,’ but he wasn’t really our uncle. He was more like a big brother. Doing things with us.” Neville laughed. “Most times when he should have been working. So when Dad passed, and his will allowed Johnny to stay there until he died, that was all right by Tony and me.”

  “Can his daughter live on the place, now that Johnny’s died?”

  Neville frowned and leaned closer to Manny. “Johnny’s will—and I ought to know, I wrote it for him—has no authority to allow Brandi to live there. Dad was quite clear in his own will: upon Uncle Johnny’s death, the land reverts back to Tony and me. However, Brandi certainly could live there as far as we’re concerned. But she doesn’t want to live in that dump. Besides,” he winked, “she does all right, with shaking her little behind in attorneys’ faces.”

  Manny nodded to Neville. “And this attorney?”

  Neville held up his hands. “It never crossed my mind. It would be like messing with your own sister. Have you seen her? Would it cross your mind?”

  “Never,” Manny lied. “But you must have had some specific lawyer in mind.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’m talking about whatever attorney she’s working for at the moment. She’s got a subscription to the attorney-of-the-month club. Goes through them like Imelda Marcos went through shoes. But this attorney keeps her at arm’s length. As you can tell, I’m on a pizza diet, not a crab and lobster one like she’s accustomed to.”

  Manny opened his bag and set papers aside. “So, what do you know about Johnny’s death?”

  Neville looked around for a napkin and settled on a crusted bandana he snatched from his hip pocket. “Just what Henry Stalks the Enemy told me when he called yesterday.”

  “Your Aunt Della didn’t call you?”

  “She did, right after Henry called. Uncle Johnny hadn’t even dried off from drowning in the lake before Henry made another offer on Dad’s Wind River place.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Neville finished the last of the pizza and turned in his seat. He held up a coffee pot, burnt liquid sloshing around with the surface tension of an oil slick. He poured the rest of the coffee in a cup and washed down the pizza. He picked up a frayed toothpick from his desktop and knocked something off the end before sticking it in his mouth. “I told Henry the place wasn’t good for much, but it was where Mom and Dad had lived. It’s where Tony and I grew up. It holds some sentimental value for us, even if it worthless. You ever have a place like that?”

  Manny nodded. The one-room, dirt-floor shack where Unc had brought a five-year-old Manny when his folks died held such sentimentality, even though that had been decades ago and he had not returned since. Manny needed to go back, to see if the shack was even still standing, he told himself. But not today.

  “I told Henry to pack sand, the way he treated Uncle Johnny.”

  “I thought Henry and Johnny were friends?”

  “Who told you that?”

  Manny jotted on a notepad to ask Henry again about his relationship with Johnny. “Did Henry make the same offer to your brother?”

  Neville opened his top drawer and took out an ashtray. He moved snipes around until he found one longer than the rest and lit it. “I don’t know where Tony is. I can’t say if Henry talked with him or not. The next time my brother waltzes past on his way to the bar,” Neville flicked his head to indicate the west, “I’ll ask him.”

  “Do you intend to move to the Wind River ranch?”

  Neville snubbed the butt out in the ashtray and rummaged for another. “If you’ve been to the ranch, you know what that land is like. It’s slightly more worthless than this office. Now if the place was in the Bahamas,” Neville laughed. He gave up looking for another butt. “You got a smoke?”

  Manny patted his pocket out of habit. “I used to.”

  �
��Tony and I discussed some years ago of what to do with the ranch when Johnny died. We didn’t tell Henry—or even Aunt Della yet, we wanted it to be a surprise—but we agreed to let her stay there as long as she wanted. We figured that was the best way to piss Henry off.”

  “Does he need pissing off?”

  Neville opened his draw again and took out a pack of Zig-Zag papers. He started taking apart small butts of tobacco. “Damned vulture. When Henry called last night, he made an obligatory apology for Johnny’s death, then hit me up to buy the land again. I have half a notion to sell him the place just to waste his money. That three hundred acres would support just about thirty head of cows is all.”

  Manny flipped pages in his notebook and stopped at a blank page as if he was about to jot down what Neville told him. “Brandi said her father had stopped by her law office in Lander. He wanted to tell her something important. Something he intended telling his attorney.”

  Neville shook his head, and wet the edge of the cigarette paper with his tongue. “I’ve always done Uncle Johnny’s legal work. He never mentioned it to me the last time I saw him.”

  “Which was a couple months ago?”

  “About that.”

  “And he wouldn’t have talked with another lawyer?”

  “Agent Tanno, you’ve been to his ranch. Or what he thought was a ranch. Even with Aunt Della working her tail off, do you think Johnny could have afforded an attorney? Unless,” he shook his head, “he found some down-and-outer like me who charged about the price of a pizza.”

  Manny smiled. “I see your point.”

  Manny stood to leave and stretched his back. “Where can I find your brother?”

  Neville leaned back in his chair. “Tony doesn’t know anything about Uncle Johnny.”

  “How do you know? I thought you haven’t talked with him lately?”

  Neville stood abruptly and came around his desk. “If you find Tony, you see to it he says nothing until his attorney is present. That’s me.”