As the Crow Flies

by Craig Johnson

  He returned to the table with two cans and parked his knees next to mine. “That sounds like a couple of trucks I know.”

  The can made a soft hissing sound as I opened it. “Can you make me a list?” I knew from experience that Lonnie liked making lists.

  He had put on his glasses, and the reflection in them made it hard to see his eyes. It took a while for him to answer. “Yes. Is there something going on?”

  “A woman and her child fell off Painted Warrior this afternoon.” I tried to think if it was this afternoon, my body telling me it had been three days ago. I stretched my eyes to try and keep them open and took a sip of the pop. “Anyway, I helped that police chief of yours today, and I can’t think of another reason in the world why somebody would want to make roadkill out of me.” I felt in my shirt and pulled out the carved object I’d found, tossing it on the table between us. “Any idea what that is?”

  He put his can down and picked it up. He studied it for a moment and then blew into it, moving his fingers over the holes to make a trilling sound just at the height of human audibility. He lowered it and looked at me. “It’s an elk whistle made out of buffalo horn—the old type.” He looked at it again in admiration. “This is a good one. Um hmm.”

  The root beer tasted good, and I could feel some of the knots in my shoulders and neck starting to release. “You know who made that one?”

  He turned the flutelike whistle over in his hands. “No, but I can find out.”

  “Add it to the list.”

  We smiled at each other, but then his faded like an eclipse. “What was the woman’s name?”

  “Audrey Plain Feather.”

  “I know this woman, her family.” He looked up. “She is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “And the child?”

  “Alive, and being checked at the hospital.”

  He reached out a hand and patted my arm. “Thank you for looking into this thing, Walter.”

  “Oh, I’m not—”

  “It is good that you are a friend to the people.”

  Before I could answer, there was a knock at the front door. Lonnie’s expression was one of mild surprise. He held up a single bony finger to keep me from responding. “I am popular tonight. Yes, it is so.”

  He wheeled the chair around the table, and when I started to stand, he sat me back down with a quick movement of the palm of his hand. He disappeared down the hall, and I listened as he opened the door. There was a brief, but fierce, conversation in Cheyenne. I figured it was Henry, who had come to pick me up, but as I listened to the tone of the conversation, it became obvious that somebody was receiving a royal dressing-down.

  After a few moments, Lolo Long entered and stood by the wall in the hallway. Lonnie rolled by her and went straight to the refrigerator again; without saying a word, he placed another can of root beer on the table. As he passed by me on his way back to the hall, he stopped to address the room as a whole. “I am going to bed, but I’m sure that you two professionals have a great deal to discuss. Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

  The kitchen was quiet; the tribal chief of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, having spoken, had rolled to his bed in his portable throne.

  Her arms were crossed, and her hair hung down over her face like a shroud. She lifted her head slowly, her voice a murmur. “I’m sorry.”

  I folded, like I always do in the face of female conciliation, and gestured toward her root beer and the only available chair. “Have a seat.”

  She did and then looked at everything in the place but me. “They’re going to try and take my case.”

  I took a sip of my own soda and waited.

  “The guy you know, the agent, he called and said that the Medical Examiner’s report showed enough reasonable findings to consider this a homicide, so they are going to proceed with their own investigation.”

  Nodding, I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. “That’s pretty much standard procedure with the bureau.” I leaned forward in my chair and rested my elbows on the table. “Maybe you should let them have it.”

  I got the eyes. “No.”

  “Why?”

  She took a slug of her root beer and absentmindedly played with the whistle. “She was a friend.” Lolo held the whistle up to her face and studied it. “We had a house in Billings together once when we were both going to school. We had hopes, and I was kind of a mentor. She got pregnant…” She sighed in exasperation. “And came back here—I went in the military.”

  I did some quick math. “Adrian’s only…”

  “It was before him, another pregnancy that ended up being a miscarriage, but she came back here anyway.” Long glanced around the room in an attempt to find the words that must’ve been lying around somewhere. “Look, Sheriff, I want justice.”

  “Whose justice?”

  The eyes again, but I was getting eyeproof.

  “Help me.”

  I leaned back in my chair, took a breath, and thought about the soon-to-be-married greatest legal mind of our time. “I can’t.”

  “You can. I’ve seen them with you; they’re afraid of you.”

  That made me laugh. “They’re not afraid of me.”

  “Well, they respect you, and the new AIC owes you his life.”

  I narrowed my own eyes at her. “And what does that have to do with you?”

  She set the buffalo horn back in its place, folded her hands on the table, then reached over and lifted the corner of the place mat. She looked at the floor and then lowered the mat back to the surface and smoothed it with her fingers. “I know you think I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  I smiled. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  She nodded very slightly in agreement, and her voice was losing its energy. “And you may not even like me.” I didn’t say anything. “But you could teach me.” Her voice was almost a whisper. “Please.”

  4

  I was drinking my coffee and watching the swirl of light foam that formed a riptide against the far side of the cup, crashed against the edge, and then split to circle around and rejoin with one another where they started. I would look at anything to avoid watching Clarence Last Bull cry.

  Long had offered him coffee, offered him donuts, and even offered to let him go to the bathroom, but all Last Bull said was that he wanted to die.

  I wanted to die just watching him.

  The chief went so far as to get a box of tissues from God knows where, then placed it on his lap over the inert hands that draped between his legs.

  I pushed the folding chair that I had been sitting on against the wall and went to the hallway with the man’s file under my arm, Long following me. We stood there, the chief with her arms folded and me sipping my coffee.

  Her voice was gruff, but I could see that she was a little shaken. “How long is this going to take?”

  I dropped my head and took a deep breath. “As long as it takes.”

  We waited there like that for a good ten minutes, neither of us saying anything, just listening. It got suddenly quiet, and I could hear him stirring in the cell.

  I raised my head, leaned a little to the side, and peered back through the opening at the end of the hall—he was slumped on the bunk and had his arms wrapped around his lanky legs, as if trying to keep them from running away.

  My legs carried me back into the room, and I could feel Lolo behind me as I tossed my empty cup in the trash can by the door.

  He looked up. “You’re sure it’s her?”

  I nodded and kept my eyes on him. “I’m the one who got to her first; me and a good friend.” I glanced at Lolo. “Chief Long here ID’d her right away.”

  He snorted, “Chief Long.”

  I made the next statement definitive. “Yes, Chief Long.”

  His eyes locked with mine, and we played stare-down for a good four seconds before he looked at the floor again.

  “But you’re sure it’s her? I mean there could’ve…”

  �
�No.” I had to shut this avenue down quickly, or we’d lose him to misplaced hope. “The identification she had with her is unquestionable.”

  “I wanna see her.” He used the palms of his hands to rub his eyes.

  “I’m sure that can be arranged with the ME’s office, but first I’d like to ask you some questions?”

  “I wanna see my son. Where is he?”

  I pulled the chair that I had pushed against the wall across the floor, placed it beside the bars, and sat. “He’s at health services, and we’ll take you there as soon as we go over some things.”

  He stood and looked down at me. “What the hell is there to go over?”

  “Clarence, do you always answer the door with your shotgun?” I took his file from under my arm and began studying it without looking at him. “I think you should sit down so that we can get this done as quickly as possible—then you can see Adrian.”

  He stood there for a few seconds, then backed to the bunk and slowly lowered himself piece by piece.

  My eyes came up and focused on his face. He was young, close to Chief Long’s age, and as I had discovered from the file in my hands, he too had been in the military. “Army, 2-583—Second Battalion, 583rd Forward Support Group.” I glanced back at the file. “Food specialist?”

  The words spilled from him rote and lifeless. “I’m a certified chef; I won the Thirty-fourth Armed Forces Culinary Arts Competition at Fort Lee, Virginia.”

  I nodded. “Is that what you do now—cook?”

  He placed a hand alongside his head. “Till I got laid off over at the casino.”

  I studied him. “Is that your chipotle steak recipe that I almost had last night?”

  He looked a little puzzled, and I was pretty sure it was the first time he’d escaped his thoughts. “Almost had?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced back at Chief Long standing in the doorway, again with her arms crossed and suddenly finding the wall of singular interest. I turned back to him. “Clarence, I need you to tell me the story of what happened yesterday afternoon. I need you to tell me what happened in detail so that we don’t miss anything.”

  “There isn’t anything to tell.”

  I continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I need to know everything, because if I guess right, the FBI is going to sweep in here later and try to scoop you away—and I need all my questions answered before they do that.”

  “They think I did it?”

  “Possibly.”

  For the second time, his eyes lifted to mine. “Do you think I did it?”

  “No, I don’t, but right now I need to hear the story about yesterday afternoon.”

  He sucked in his breath like I’d hit him, and he slowly began to speak. “We were going on a picnic as a celebration; I got a job over in Red Lodge as a sous chef.” He barked a laugh without much humor in it. “The job was advertised as a Sioux chef, S-I-O-U-X—you know, they misspelled it. I told them I was part Cheyenne, part Mexican, and part Sioux, and I think it’s what got me the job. I was going to go there next week, then move them over there next month.” He shook his head, and the tears simmered in his eyes again. “I guess that’s gone to shit now.”

  “When did you head out to Painted Warrior?”

  “I stopped in at the White Buffalo and got something to drink—pop and stuff, around lunchtime.”

  “Eleven twenty-two?”

  His eyes widened just a little. “Um, yeah. I guess so.”

  This part checked out with the receipt we’d found; it didn’t, however, account for the beer cans and the fact that he’d been drunk when Chief Long and I had arrested him. “Clarence, did you go anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  My old boss, Lucian Connally, had taught me a long time ago that if you already know the answer, you don’t ask the question twice—and once you’d asked it, you waited, forever if need be.

  He cleared his throat. “I, um… I got some beer at Jimtown when they opened. I mean, it was a celebration.”

  “Okay.”

  “We drove out there, and I parked the Jeep. I was afraid it was going to rain, so I put the top up while she and Ado played there in the grass.”

  “Not out by the rocks.”

  “No.” He looked at me again. “Hell no.”

  “Then what?”

  There was a pause, a short one, but a pause nonetheless. “Well, we were fighting.”

  “About?”

  The pause was longer, and this time I looked at him. “Inez Two Two?”

  He froze, and I stood in an attempt to display the fact that I was not behind bars and could walk out of the room at any time. “Clarence, up until now you haven’t been completely honest with me, and if you don’t start, I’m going to personally hand you over to the FBI.”

  “No.”

  I placed my hands in my pockets and leaned my back against the wall beside Chief Long. He stood and walked over to the bars, hanging his thin arms between them; for a sous chef, he must not have been sampling a great deal of his wares.

  “We were arguing about the job and moving. She wanted to go over there at the same time as me, but I wanted to get things ready. I rented an apartment over a bookstore from a guy named Gary. I just wanted the place to be nice.” He quickly added. “You can check all this.”

  “We will. What happened after the argument?”

  “Look, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea—that it was some huge, shitstorm fight; it was just the same argument we’ve been having for over a year now.” He studied me. “You married?”

  “Widower.”

  He looked contrite, an appearance I was not particularly unacquainted with from people looking at me through bars. “I’m sorry, but you know what I mean about living with a woman?”

  I smiled, just to let him know that the conversation might not be going as poorly as he thought. “Martha’s been dead about six years now, and there are disagreements we’re still having.”

  He nodded at me, and his eyes filled with tears again. “We kept arguing, and I drank beer; I don’t know, I guess I fell asleep.”

  “You don’t know, or you fell asleep?”

  “I fell asleep.” He glanced back and forth between me and the chief. “I know it sounds lame, but that’s what happened. I swear to God.”

  “Then what?”

  “I woke up, and they were gone.”

  “Did you look for them?”

  “Yeah, I looked all over the place but they weren’t there. I figured she’d gotten all pissed off and had taken Ado and walked home.”

  “Did you look over the cliff?”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “No—I mean, it never occurred to me.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “I got in the Jeep and started home—thinkin’ I’d pick them up on the way, but I never found them.”

  “Do you have any idea what time it was when you left?”

  “No. Why, is that important?”

  “Maybe.” I paused for a moment, a conversational indication that we were changing gears from him to the wide world. “Clarence, do you have any idea who might have some kind of grudge against you or your family?”

  The thought hadn’t dawned on him. “You think somebody did this to her?”

  “It’s possible, and it’s up to us to investigate all the possibilities. Now, can you think of anyone?”

  “Against me, yeah.” He stared at the speckled white tiles on the floor. “But Audrey and Ado, no.”

  “No enemies she might’ve had—family members, people she worked with?”

  “No. Her parents are dead, and the only family is a sister of hers in Billings.”

  “What about where she worked? Any difficulties there?”

  “No. I mean, not that I know of.”

  “Where did she work?”

  The chief’s voice rose from behind me. “Human Services, over in the tribal building.”

  “No arguments with anybody lately?”

  “Only me.”<
br />
  I checked my Colt, worked the slide mechanism, reinserted the round into the clip, and slapped it back in the stag-handled grips that Cady had given me one Christmas. “Does this mean that I’m no longer a suspect?” I carefully placed it in the pancake holster at my back.

  Chief Long shrugged. “You’re low on the list.”

  We stood there in the hallway of the Native Health Services building while Chief Long’s mother accompanied Clarence Last Bull in to see his son. “So, do I charge him?”

  “That’s up to you. Do you think he’s a flight risk?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “No.”

  I shrugged. “Neither do I, but there might be a problem with his story.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Henry and I were at the base of that cliff when Audrey fell, so if Clarence was up there, why didn’t he hear me yelling at him, and why didn’t we hear his Jeep start up and drive off?”

  “He was drunk, and we didn’t get up there until hours later.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “What other explanation is there?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s important to keep inconsistencies in mind.”

  She nodded and hooked her thumbs in her duty belt. “He started opening up after he found out you were a widower; that was slick.”

  I rested against the wall and tipped my hat back. “It wasn’t slick, it was heartfelt.” Wondering if Lolo Long was a lost cause as a student, I turned my head and looked down the hall. “There is a common humanity in all of us, and if you need something from somebody, you’d better understand that—it makes the job easier. Clarence might be guilty and we need to be aware because we are in the suspicion business, but he’s also a man who just lost someone who was very close to him.”

  I pushed off and circled behind the reception desk to a coffeepot and a tray of mismatched mugs. She watched me.

  “I’m separated, in case you were wondering.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  She fought with herself for a moment and then pointed to the .45 at my back. “Not to change the subject, but do you mind if I ask why you wear that antique, anyway?”

  I poured myself a cup. “It’s what I got used to in the service.” I thought about it. “It’s a failing to have a favorite, but there it is. Being overly familiar with a weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it at all.” I rapidly listed the 1911’s shortcomings. “Heavy, hard to aim, slow rate of fire—there’s a cult of weapons which blinds you to their weaknesses, but it’s what I’m used to.” I sipped my coffee and gestured toward her large-frame Smith in return. “Unless things have changed a great deal, I’m thinking that’s not what they had you carrying in Iraq.”