Willie’s eyes dropped, but Manny was quick to prop him up. “It’s not your fault. She fooled me, too. There’s just no good news today.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Lumpy said. He rose slowly and refilled his cup, then put the pot back on the burner without refilling theirs. “We matched the tires on Crazy George’s car to those found at Jason’s murder.” He smirked as if vindicated for Manny’s earlier implication about his own car tires.
“Any match with the latents?”
Lumpy frowned. “We lifted enough partials to know the driver didn’t care if we found them or not. Just not enough points to ID anyone.”
“Smudged?”
“Who knows, the evidence tech just couldn’t pull enough points.”
“Then do something for me,” Manny asked. “Tomorrow, have your tech pull Jack and Lenny Little Boy’s prints. Ricky Bell’s, too. See if anything comes close to matching the prints found in Crazy George’s car.”
Lumpy nodded. “That I can do.”
Manny stood and stretched, his exhaustion reaching a new level. “As for me, I’ve had about as much fun as I can stand for one night. Take me home, please.”
On the way to Manny’s apartment, Willie remained quiet, and Manny knew the guilt was gnawing at him. “You couldn’t have stopped her. Elizabeth chose to do what she did.”
“But I should have seen it coming.” Willie stared out the window. “I told her everything we did these last few days. I might as well have given her my incident reports, passed my field notes to her. I trusted her. And she stabbed me in the back.”
“She felt she had to protect Erica.”
“Does Erica need protecting?”
“No,” Manny answered instantly. “Elizabeth had it in her mind that Erica knew all along about the embezzlement of the tribe’s funds, but when I talked with Erica about it, she hesitated. I plan to have one of the Rapid City agents reinterview her, but I’m certain Elizabeth had it all wrong about her own daughter.”
“Do you think Aunt Lizzy knew there was no Clifford Coyote?” he said, barely audible.
Manny nodded. “She knows. When I confronted her about it, she hesitated. She admitted that the big fight with Jason in her office a week before he was killed was over Jason’s demanding Coyote’s physical address. She caught him rooting through her files trying to find it. He might have gotten it if she hadn’t threatened him with the same gun she held on me. She knows. Jason sent Coyote checks to his Pine Ridge PO box all those years. Elizabeth picked up the checks and deposited them into her Edgemont Bank account, then drew cash. She knows who and where Clifford Coyote is, if he even exists. But we’ll never break her down.”
“What’ll happen to her now?”
Willie had all but lost his family, and Manny wished he had words of comfort to give, but he had none. “She’ll be psychiatrically evaluated. Her mental condition will preclude her from standing trial for the attempted murder charge and the assault charges, but she’ll need help. The best you can do for her is to be there for her, despite her betrayal.”
Tears formed at the corners of Willie’s eyes, and Manny hurried to get out of the car. The last thing Willie needed right about now was for Manny to see him crying again.
Manny squinted in the dark and jabbed the key into the apartment lock. The door swung in, unlocked. Manny froze and strained to hear anything inside. Anger replaced fear as he realized Desirée may have used her key to get in again. She could be inside, waiting for him in some provocative pose.
Scraping noises came from the bedroom. Or was it crying? He reached for the gun and cursed under his breath for letting it be seized after the chase. Manny crouched and pain tore through his chest as his breathing became increasingly labored. His hand felt for the light switch. Stopped. Whimpering came from the bedroom, pained whimpering, followed by muffled sounds.
Manny groped in the dark and his hand found the upright ashtray made from an old aluminum piston, and he silently thanked Lumpy for furnishing the apartment in Old-West-slum. He hefted it close to the base, felt the power he could wield. He duckwalked toward the bedroom, and his foot kicked the coffee table. A woman cried from behind the closed door. Manny stood and his hand found the light switch just as someone rushed him. Light reflected off a knife thrust at his throat. Manny jerked back and swung the ashtray as light flooded the room. The piston glanced off Jack Little Boy’s shoulder, and he staggered before he disappeared outside.
Manny hobbled to the door and peeked around the corner. Jack was gone, but crying rose from the bedroom again. He eased himself along the wall and buttonhooked the door. Desirée Chasing Hawk lay on the bed, her hands tied with sash cord, and duct tape held a pair of Manny’s socks in her mouth. He ran to her and peeled the tape from her mouth and untied the cord that bound her hands.
She threw her arms around him, and he gently pulled her away to examine her injuries. One of her eyes had closed shut from swelling, and her lower lip protruded where blood pooled from a blow. “He said he’d kill me if I made any noise.”
Manny eased Desirée back on the bed. He called 911 before he grabbed a cool, wet washcloth and began dabbing at her lip and eye. “He was going to kill you.”
“Tell me later, after the EMTs transport you to the hospital.”
“No!” She snatched the cloth away. “He’s crazy and I need to tell you this. He wants you bad.” She brushed hair out of her eyes and wiped her bloody nose with the back of her hand. “I used the key Leon gave me to come in tonight. I looked real good. Had my hair fixed. Makeup just right. Though you wouldn’t know it now.”
Manny smiled. “You look just fine.”
She winced in pain as she forced a smile. “As soon as I flipped on the light, he grabbed me. He was waiting here for you with that damned big knife. And for sport I guess he passed the time working me over. Way I figure it, he’d have killed us both and been off the rez before our bodies were found.”
Manny nodded as sirens approached. “We’ll get him. What you gotta do now is get better.”
“But he’ll come after me again.” Desirée sobbed and buried her face in Manny’s shoulder. “I’m afraid.”
“I’ll get Lumpy to post a guard at the hospital. We’ll find him.”
An EMT burst through the door toting his jump bag. He glanced at Manny in passing as he pushed him aside, and he knelt beside Desirée and started assessing her injuries as another EMT maneuvered a gurney through the door.
Manny used the edge of the coffee table to stand, and he watched as Desirée squirmed when the EMT prodded her for injuries. Yesterday she was a manipulating, conniving woman who wanted to wrap Manny around her little finger and get whatever she wanted from him. Now she lay as a victim in need of his empathy. And his concern.
CHAPTER 19
Manny dreamed of days on Pine Ridge when he was a boy, and days of the Lakota before he was born, when all a warrior had to worry about was where to store all his surplus buffalo meat for the winter, or when he would next count coup on a Crow or Pawnee.
Then the figure that had haunted his vision reappeared and beckoned with his bony hand. Manny knew that following the dream figure could be dangerous, even fatal. The spirit of the man who taunted him yet lived, and this wanagi would do what he could to entice Manny into the dark part of the afterworld where he didn’t want to go.
Danger followed the spirit, but the warrior lured him to crawl from his dream bed and go with him. Manny took two steps when his cell phone rang. He startled awake, sweat dripping from his nose and his face, and he fumbled for the phone on the nightstand.
“Bob Andrews here. Minneapolis Office.” It took a moment for Manny to clear his head and connect Andrews to the homicide investigation. After the “Alex” letter Clara had given him had been processed for prints, Manny sent out an Attempt To Locate for matching prints to FBI field offices in the five-state region. “We’ve got a positive match on your latents. They came back to an Alex Jumping Bull.”
; Chief Horn thought that Alex Jumping Bull might still be alive, that he might have fled the reservation when Reuben killed Billy Two Moons. This might be the same Alex Jumping Bull, alive and not murdered that night with Two Moons. Manny just didn’t believe in coincidences.
“What kind of contacts you have with Jumping Bull?”
“Nothing since 1984,” Andrews answered. “It’s just dumb luck that a set of majors was sent in back then by the Hennepin County SO. Jumping Bull was arrested on a public intox charge where he told the booking officer he was Clifford Coyote. The detention officers got hinked by the way he acted, evasive when they asked him standard intake questions. They thought there was more to Mr. Coyote than what he was telling them so they rolled additional prints.”
“So Clifford Coyote is an alias for Alex Jumping Bull?” Manny asked as he realized his question had already been answered. “Can you put the grab on him?”
Andrews chuckled. “I can, but it would be a mighty cold grab. He was found shot to death in a south Minneapolis apartment.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago. Coyote, or Jumping Bull, lived in a flea pad among other dregs. One of the upstairs tenants heard shots, but the meth-head was tweaking at the time and waited until he’d wound down to call the Minneapolis PD. He told them Jumping Bull had been shot five times.”
“Certain about the number of shots?”
“Quite. The witness is a Gulf War veteran. Meth-head or not, he knows his weapons. He said he thought it was so odd that the killer shot five times.”
“Odd in what way?” Manny asked, somehow feeling he knew that answer, too. He always thought it was odd that Billy Two Moons had been shot five times, not six as Reuben claimed, just as he thought it was odd that Little Boy had loaded his revolver with only five rounds the night he attacked Manny. What the hell, did everybody count their rounds with their toes?
“He thought it was strange that the guy didn’t shoot six times. Six-shooters are a lot more common than the five-shot revolvers. And if he was shooting an auto, there’d have been a lot more rounds fired.”
“Maybe the shooter used something like a Chief’s Special .38,” Manny said, thinking back to Elizabeth’s snubbie. “Maybe a Charter Arms. Something that’s designed to hold five rounds.”
“No. The ME dug .45 caliber slugs out of Jumping Bull.”
“What kind of .45?”
“What’s that?”
“The round, what kind of .45 slug? Was it a ball round? Lead? What was the exact diameter of the bullet?”
Andrews said he didn’t know, but promised to fax Manny a ballistics report at the OST Office when he had the answers.
Manny remained on the line for one more surprise from Andrews: Alex Jumping Bull was murdered the same weekend that Jason Red Cloud flew to Minneapolis.
Manny held the car door open for Clara. She slid into the seat and fastened her seat belt even before shutting the door, and read his questioning glance. “Because if you don’t wreck your cars, someone else does it for you.”
“Can’t argue there.” Manny buckled his own seat belt before starting for Rapid City Regional Airport. Between his crappy driving and people trying to kill him, a little insurance in the form of a thin web strap couldn’t hurt. “Tell me about Jason’s flying phobia.”
“He abhorred flying,” she began as they left the Red Cloud building. “He’d start shaking just talking about it.” By the time they had cut through Rapid Valley on their way to the airport, she’d convinced Manny that Jason had not flown to Minneapolis the weekend Alex Jumping Bull was murdered.
“You’re certain he didn’t catch a bout of brave just one time?”
She shook her head and winked. “Jason wouldn’t mind me opening his mail just this once.” She took an envelope from her handbag. It was a receipt from the Crook County, Wyoming, Clerk of Court for a ninety-eight-dollar speeding ticket on I-90 just out of Devils Tower. “Jason got the ticket the Saturday that he should have been in Minneapolis.”
“In law enforcement,” Manny grinned, “we call that a clue.”
Clara grinned back, a wry smile that melted Manny’s thoughts, and he turned his attention to his driving.
They pulled into the airport and followed the signs to Business Voyages Charter Flights. An elderly couple waited in a small lounge, while a young receptionist greeted them from behind a service counter. “And you wish to go where today?”
Manny was tempted to tell her back to Quantico before he lost his instructor’s slot, but he kept it to himself and showed her his ID and badge. “He would have flown out that Friday evening on one of your charters.”
“I remember him,” the receptionist said. She sat in front of a computer terminal. “Mr. Red Cloud flew out of here that Friday at 2:24 in the afternoon.”
“Alone?”
“Oh, yes. He insisted he wanted no company on the trip. After all, he did charter the flight.”
“Are you certain it was Jason Red Cloud?”
She stepped back, her poker face faded, and anger replaced her congeniality. “Of course I’m sure. When he called, he paid by credit card.”
“Company?”
“Personal card. When he arrived here, I insisted on the verification number, which he gave me.”
“Could you please describe Mr. Red Cloud,” Clara said.
The receptionist warmed to Clara, and turned her back on Manny as she spoke. She described a man shorter than Jason, stocky, but in shape. “I heard so much about Mr. Red Cloud, I thought he’d be a much older man.”
“Is this him?” Clara handed her a publicity photo of Jason. The picture was of a younger, thinner Jason Red Cloud, wearing a fringed buckskin jacket and beaded headband that held his long braids together.
The receptionist shook her head. “No. That’s not him.”
Manny threw Clara an “I-told-you-so” glance. “Could the man flying as Jason Red Cloud have gotten a gun on the plane?”
The girl scowled. “He did. Mr. Red Cloud had some Indian artifacts he was taking to Minneapolis for a museum loan. Among the items was an old cavalry Colt he claimed was used at Wounded Knee in 1890, but it didn’t work.”
“How do you know it didn’t work?”
“He told me. He said it was too old to shoot, so I let him have it on the flight with the other items.”
“Anything else you can think of about the man who posed as Jason Red Cloud?” Manny asked.
The girl looked to the ceiling for a moment. “Not much. Unless you think it would be important that he looked like a weight lifter. And had a pronounced limp to one side.”
“Good God!” Manny led Clara out of Business Voyages. He dialed Harold Soske as he shuffled to his car.
Manny didn’t object when Clara took the elevator to the Red Cloud Development floor. She led Manny through the outer office and into Jason’s office. “You’re certain of this?”
“Pretty sure. Ricky Bell fit the receptionist’s description, and Soske confirmed that Bell has a pronounced limp from a prison fight.”
By the time Clara found the key and unlocked the sliding door on the display case, Manny had put on latex gloves. He reached into the case and took the Colt Army revolver from the wooden peg holding it to the wall. He stepped away from the case and held the gun to his nose, then held it for Clara to sniff.
She drew back. “I don’t much know guns, but this thing’s been fired recently, long after Chief Red Cloud owned it. But how’s that possible? It’s been hanging here since I’ve worked for Jason.”
“That Gulf War vet living above Alex Jumping Bull in Minneapolis heard five shots that night. Five shots, which he thought was odd, and I did, too.”
“But this is a six-shooter,” Clara said. “If someone would have used the gun, they would have shot six times, not five.”
Manny shook his head. “These Colts, even the ones manufactured today, have no hammer block to prevent an accidental discharge. People who know guns load these with only
five, leaving the cylinder under the hammer empty in case it’s dropped or caught on something. Ballistics will find only five chambers recently fouled on this gun. I’m certain.”
Manny folded the top of a paper sack around the gun. “I’ll call you.” He kissed Clara on the cheek and left before she spotted his embarrassment.
Manny met Detective Soske at the Pennington County Detention Center. “Ricky Bell’s in interview room one.” He led the way down the long corridor and unlocked the door. “I’ll be outside if you need anything.”
Bell sat with the legs of his chair tilted back. He met Manny’s gaze, then dropped his chair down, his muscular arms remaining crossed, and he mustered defiance as he spoke. “I told you everything I know.”
“About the burglary, not the murder.”
Bell sat upright. “What murder, Jason’s? You can’t pin that on me.”
Manny didn’t answer, but placed his briefcase on the table and opened it.
“What kind of crap is this?” Bell’s voice raised an octave.
Manny placed his recorder on the table, and dropped a manila envelope beside it. He noted the time, date, location, and that he’d read Bell his Miranda rights. When he was finished, he made a little tent with his fingers and sat looking over his hands at Bell.
“I didn’t kill Jason.”
“Why should I believe you? You had every reason not to trust him. After all, he arranged for you to fly to Minneapolis and kill Clifford Coyote. ‘Alex Jumping Bull’ to you. If Jason would have talked, you’d be looking at life in Stillwater.”
Bell slumped in his chair looking like a balloon that had just been pricked with a needle when Manny mentioned Alex Jumping Bull. He looked down at the floor as he spoke. “What bullshit is this?”
“You got this huge problem, Richard. You tell me what I want to know, and I let Minnesota have your young ass on a state murder charge. You might cop a plea to second degree if you’re lucky, out in ten. You jerk me around and make me work for this, and I’ll see you’re charged federally for Jumping Bull’s murder. And federal sentencing guidelines what they are, you won’t see the light of day until you’re too decrepit for Social Security.”
Death Along the Spirit Road Page 23
