Death Where the Bad Rocks Live

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “True. But Dozi threw some not-so-veiled threats my way earlier today.” Manny told Willie about stopping by Dozi’s shop and about how the Secret Service imposter made it known Manny wouldn’t throw a monkey wrench into Ham’s Senate hearings.

  “I’ll talk to Ham again just as soon as I get sprung from here.”

  “That might be pretty soon,” Clara said. “The doctor is making his rounds now. You want coffee while you’re waiting for the doctor to grace the room?” Clara asked.

  “That’d hit the spot.”

  Manny waited until Clara had left before delving into his non-accident. “She was getting kind of hinked talking about the shooting. She worries a lot.”

  “Understood.”

  “Now, did you recover any bullets from my car?”

  “It burned up. Mostly. I doubt we could.”

  “You need to try. Go to the impound lot and go over what’s left. If you could even recover some bullet jacketing material…”

  “We can get a match with just a jacket?”

  Manny shrugged. “Maybe not a match if we find a suspect gun, but we may be able to eliminate guns we suspect. If we find any of Joe Dozi’s guns.”

  Willie jotted what Manny told him on his notebook and pocketed it as fitful coughing in the hallway became louder. An old man staggered into the room, holding his chest and spitting blood into a towel. He started around Willie before he collapsed into a chair. Willie struggled to hold the man from falling onto the floor.

  “He went into Tanno’s room,” someone shouted from the hallway.

  A nurse slightly smaller than Willie burst through the doorway, made even larger in appearance by the full mask and long protective gloves she wore. “Frederick! I told you to stay in your room.”

  Another nurse, young and wearing the same protective garb as the first, pushed a wheelchair into Manny’s room. She didn’t speak as she wrapped her arms around Frederick and helped load him into the wheelchair. She turned and disappeared with him safely strapped in.

  “Frederick slipped by us again.” The big nurse’s voice was muffled behind the mask.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Manny jerked his head toward the hallway where Frederick and his wheelchair had disappeared.

  She shrugged. “Most likely TB by the way he’s coughing. But who knows.”

  Before Manny could grill her further, she turned on her heels and left the room.

  “If he had TB…”

  “Then we both will have to get tested,” Willie answered.

  “One more trip to the doctor,” Manny groaned. “Take my mind off Frederick—tell me how your date with Doreen went yesterday.”

  Willie scooted his chair close so he could keep his voice low. “Things were going pretty well. We hit the Olive Garden by the mall. Low lights. Soft music. Nice glass of wine…”

  “Thought you didn’t drink?”

  “Doreen likes a glass of Chardonnay now and again.”

  “Doreen does or you?”

  Willie looked away. “I do, too, now and then.”

  “Thought you didn’t drink?”

  “I’m in training. Anyways, we patched things up. Or so I thought.”

  “Don’t tell me—she got on you again about quitting the force?”

  Willie nodded. “She said with my college degree, I could be anything besides a cop. She suggested I continue and get my master’s in public administration. Land a job running Tribal affairs.”

  Manny grabbed his glass of ice water and sipped from the bent Mickey Mouse straw. “But that’s not for you.”

  Willie shook his head. “I’d die of boredom. She can’t understand the reason I went to college in the first place is to become a law officer. Help people on the rez.”

  “I thought she resigned herself to be the girlfriend—and eventually wife—of a policeman. What made her change her mind?”

  “Someone broke into my truck in the parking lot.”

  “Again?”

  “When we came out of the restaurant, some SOB had busted the window out. Stole that new SureFire I just paid two hundred bucks for at Neeves. She went through the roof. She wasn’t upset that my light was stolen. She went off because she figures someone’s got a hard-on for me.”

  “Besides her?”

  “Different kind of hard-on. She said—and she was spot-on—that someone’s escalated their hatred for me. She said it started with keying my Tribal unit, then moved to my personal truck. She’s scared for me. She wants me out. Said I could manage a business. Teach elementary school until I got my master’s. I told her it could have been worse. I leave my keys in the ignition, and someone could have stolen the whole truck.”

  “You ought to know better than that, as many stolen vehicles as you’ve investigated.”

  “But my truck’s antitheft device is its condition. No one would want to steal that beater. Anyway, she’s convinced public administration is for me. Or worse, elementary school. She said I could get my teaching license this summer.”

  Manny laughed, and his hand shot to his ribs. “Oh, that’d go over well with the kiddies, you in your double-breasted Western shirt a size too small. Wearing one of those funky bolo ties with some kind of cheesy bone clasp. They’d figure you came straight out of a Gene Autry movie.”

  A smile crossed Willie’s face for the briefest moment, then he hung his head once more.

  “Look, I know what you’re going through. I almost lost Clara because of the attacks and that truck running me off the road a couple months ago on Pine Ridge. When she finally figured out there’s nothing else I can do except investigate crimes and put bad guys away, she learned to live with it.”

  “How’d you convince her?”

  Manny smiled, and winced in pain as stitches in his forehead pulled against one another. He glanced at the door but Clara hadn’t returned yet. “I pointed out how dangerous other jobs are, like construction work or oil field rig hands. And she mentioned my degree like Doreen did.”

  “What did she suggest for you?”

  “The funeral business. Clara actually thought I’d be a natural for managing a funeral home.”

  Willie laughed. “Mister Compassion in a black suit? I take it you got her off that notion.”

  “I did. When I pointed out I’d be coming home every night smelling like forever juice and making love to her with perpetually cold hands, she reeled. Said that was sick, but she dropped it.”

  “That’s one angle I haven’t tried yet.”

  “Aside from that little tiff with Doreen and the loss of your flashlight, how’d the rest of the night go?”

  “A disaster.” Willie stood and paced at the foot of Manny’s bed. “When I told her I intended to remain a criminal investigator with the tribe, she clammed up. Didn’t say a word until we crossed the reservation line. Then she let me have it about Janet, as if I hadn’t got my ass chewed enough.”

  “What about Janet?”

  Willie looked at the door and leaned closer. “Before dinner, we stopped at the mall. Doreen wanted to get some of that smelly stuff at the bed and bath shop.”

  “Enough already, tell me about Janet.”

  “We saw her in the commons area at the mall. She ran up to me and gave me a huge bear hug. Pinched my butt. Right there with a hundred people looking on. Including Doreen.”

  “Bet that went over like a fart in church.”

  “Tell me about it. Doreen’s look bore a hole right through me, and through Janet. It didn’t help that Janet was dressed to the nines, like she was coming off some escort assignment. She had so much damned makeup, you couldn’t tell if she’d blushed. I swear she goes out of her way to get between Doreen and me.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time to have a serious talk with Janet? Insist your relationship with her remain professional. And to give you your space, especially when you’re with Doreen.”

  Willie shook his head. “I got to be careful. Being the lieutenant’s niece, she could get me checking pa
rked cars at powwows instead of real police work. Besides, telling Janet to leave me alone would be like you telling Clara to give you some rest. It’d just egg her on.”

  Manny looked at the door as if expecting Clara to come back any moment. “Clara’s everything I’ve always wanted, and twenty years ago I could get it triweekly. Now I try weakly to get it up just once. Even that wears me down. But Clara’s at her peak. I hate to admit it, but this accident will give me an excuse to back off from the loving. Give me a little recuperation time from the bedroom.”

  “You won’t be recuperating long.” A tall, blond doctor looking more at home in a health club commercial than at the Pine Ridge Hospital entered the room. An equally young nurse, her white dress showing more leg than a nurse ought, sashayed behind the doctor. Clara trailed them as they entered the room.

  The doctor unfolded a stethoscope from around his neck and opened Manny’s pajama top. He put the cold scope against his chest. He dropped the scope and it dangled around his neck. He snatched a clipboard hanging from the foot of the bed and nodded to the monitor above Manny’s head. “I was worried about the concussion, but you’re coherent enough.” He extracted a penlight from his pocket and shined it into each of Manny’s eyes. “How do you feel?”

  Manny glanced at Clara hovering over the bed. “I feel good enough, except it’s hard to breathe. Like maybe I shouldn’t exert myself too much for a while.”

  The doctor smiled. Either he’d heard the discussion he and Willie had just had or Clara had paid him off. “You should be able to do anything you did before the accident. After all, your ribs are bruised, not broken. You may have to adjust some things.” He winked at Clara.

  Manny forced a smile. “Thanks, doctor.”

  “Yes,” Clara said, stroking Manny’s forehead. “Thank you so much.”

  “I understand you had a visitor here a moment ago.”

  “Some old man,” Willie said. “Coughing like he had a foot on the banana peel. Nurse said he has TB.”

  “I can’t discuss another patient with you, but I’m not sure it is TB.”

  “Come on, doctor,” Manny pressed. “Frederick there looks and sounds a lot like those kids of Adelle Friend of All’s, hacking like he was and paler than the Lone Ranger. He looked terrible.”

  “You know HIPAA and hospital regulations won’t allow me…”

  “At least tell me where Frederick lives.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can get hold of his relatives,” Manny lied.

  “That’s mighty white of you. Since when is the FBI so compassionate?”

  “Where’s he live,” Manny pressed.

  “He lives somewhere around Cuny Table.”

  “Where around Cuny Table?”

  “North along the Cheyenne River,” the nurse volunteered.

  The doctor gave her a stern look. “We can’t discuss another patient with you.”

  Manny swung his legs over the bed and tested his ribs. “Then at least do this for me, doctor—at least compare Frederick’s symptoms with Adelle’s kids’ and see if they’re similar.”

  “What are you getting at?” The physician’s tone rose an octave, as if irritated that Manny had thought of something medically he had not. “Whatever the symptoms, I won’t be able to discuss them with you.”

  “Fair enough. But please, do it.”

  The doctor began signing the medical release form so Manny could leave. He handed him a slip with a fax number on it. “Make an appointment this week and have your physician get back to me.”

  “Appointment for what?”

  “Frederick,” the doctor said. “Like I said, we’re not sure what he has. That’s why the nurse got so flustered when he left isolation. And until we know, you and Officer With Horn will have to get tested for TB.”

  Manny waited until the doctor had signed the release form and left the room before he stood. He gasped as the pain of bruised ribs reminded him how close he had come to being killed in the crash. He hobbled to the closet and grabbed his trousers, holding the back of the insane hospital gown to hide his butt. “Tell me what you learned from Marshal Ten Bears when you talked with him yesterday.”

  “Janet interviewed him inside his cabin. He didn’t cotton to me much.”

  “What were you doing while she took notes?”

  “Getting an eyeball around his cabin.”

  “Why did you take Janet along again?”

  “Remember? Uncle Leon.”

  Manny understood but he didn’t remember much prior to the accident. “Put out a BOLO for the judge’s black ’Burb, and for Joe Dozi. Call Janet so we can meet up with her.”

  Willie sighed and held the door for Clara and Manny. “I can hardly wait.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Clara ran red-faced from the bedroom, tossing her scarf off as she dropped into the couch in the living room. Manny followed her and started sitting beside her, but her scowl warned him away and he pulled up an occasional chair. “I can’t help it. My ribs are killing me.”

  “You heard the doctor: You’ll be able to do anything you did before. At least what I remember what you did before, once when you had an attack of romance.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Then get some more Viagra or something.” Clara shook her head. “Maybe this was a mistake, you moving in with me. I’ve known women before that had a spectacular love life until they got married or had their boyfriend move in, then it petered off. Forgive the pun.”

  Manny scooted the chair closer and put his hand on Clara’s arm. She jerked it away and turned her head to avoid looking at him. “I got other problems.” Sometime ago, he’d decided to tell Clara about his checkup, how he had been diagnosed with diabetes. He had hoped to be able to put it off, but knew he must say something to salvage their relationship. “I’ve been diagnosed with Type II diabetes.”

  Clara looked back over her shoulder. “So you said before. That’s what your doctor keeps calling about. When did you find out?”

  “Last month, though the doctor said it’s been developing for some time.”

  Her look softened and she inched closer to Manny. “How’d you find out?”

  “The yearly exam the bureau requires of us. Besides, I was experiencing terrible numbness in my legs and feet.”

  “Your Uncle Marion had numbness, didn’t he?”

  Manny nodded. “About thirty years sooner than he should have. But not before they amputated both legs and made him sit in a wheelchair looking at rabbit ears that barely received one channel.” Unc had vegetated in the nursing home in Rapid City. Manny made it a point to fly back from D.C. every other month. But each time, Unc slipped further and further until he wished to fly to the Spirit World. Manny’s big regret was that he was off on another reservation case when Unc’s time came. No man should have to die alone, Unc had often told him.

  Clara turned to him and patted the couch. Manny sat beside her, and she hugged him. “What kind of medication does the doctor have you on?”

  “I’m not on medication.”

  “But you just said…”

  “I want to get a second opinion before I commit to shots, if that’s what it’ll take.”

  Clara’s face became red once again, and her brows came together in what Manny had come to recognize as a pre-tongue-lashing. “Your doctor diagnosed you with diabetes a month ago and you haven’t seen him since? What kind of bonehead maneuver is that? Why haven’t you talked to another doctor?”

  “No time.”

  “No time? I’ve been nonexistent in your life for months now, and there might be a way to fix it? Might be a way to give you back some of your libido? Remember what that was, back when you came home all horned up?”

  Manny dropped his eyes. “I’ll make an appointment next week.”

  “You’ll make an appointment tomorrow unless you want to be bunking with Willie.”

  “I’ll make the appointment tomorrow.” The last thing he wanted was to babysit Will
ie and his problems. He had his own right this minute.

  CHAPTER 18

  Janet started to slide into the booth next to Willie at Big Bat’s. She frowned as he got up and moved across from her next to Manny. Philbilly came over to their table carrying three sodas, one spilling onto his forearm and onto the floor. He set the sodas down and rubbed the soda into the floor with his foot.

  “Thought you were quitting, Phil?” Phil Ostert had lived on Pine Ridge since his folks had abandoned him in his teens. Legend around the rez was that his folks pulled up to Big Bat’s to fuel as they were passing through on their way back home from working lettuce fields in Oregon. When teenager Phil went to use the bathroom, they’d seen their chance and skied off. Even Phil didn’t know much about his past, other than he was a hillbilly from Arkansas. And acted like it. Manny had run out of fingers long ago counting the one- and two-week jobs Phil had quit when he thought he was being slighted. Manny always suspected the jobs lasted just long enough for Phil to get his fill of sweating and he’d quit. “Thought you were fed up with working here?”

  Philbilly squatted beside the table and lowered his voice. “They did me wrong two days ago.”

  “Now what’d they do to you?”

  “They made me help the women unload a semi of frozen chicken patties and corn dogs.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Philbilly choked. “I was hired as part-time cook. Unloading trucks ain’t in my job description.”

  Willie looked after Philbilly disappearing through the kitchen doors. “If Philbilly got any dumber, we’d have to water him.”

  Manny agreed, and he turned to Janet. “Tell me what Marshal Ten Bears said yesterday.”

  Janet fished in her purse for a spiral notebook. “Marshal hires himself out as a hunting guide in the winter months. Deer. Coyotes. Mountain lion if the customer has enough lucky bucks. For Marshal to take you somewhere, you got to have the cash. Swears he claims it on his income tax every year”—she shrugged—“but he’s a little bit shady.”

  “In your vast experience?”

  She glared at Willie. “Intuition.”