Death Along the Spirit Road

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “I didn’t kill Jason. If this Ricky Bell killed Jumping Bull, he could have killed Jason with little effort, given the kid’s rap sheet you mentioned. As much as I like your visits, kola, maybe we’ll run back to my trailer and you can leave me while I am still in control of myself.”

  Reuben was still capable of killing if he saw the need. “Come on, big brother. Kick yourself in the ass, unless you want to concede.”

  Reuben found a burst of speed that overtook Manny for ten yards until Manny picked it up and passed him. He kept just ahead of Reuben on their way back to Reuben’s trailer. He beat Reuben by a hundred yards and squatted down, waiting for him to catch up. Reuben’s hand rubbed one leg as he limped over and sat on the ground beside Manny. He hung his head between his legs and coughed.

  “You know who Jason killed in his AIM days, and somehow this is mixed up with his murder,” Manny said when he caught his breath.

  “That might be,” Reuben said, calm once again. “But that’s no concern of mine. And especially no concern to a wicasa wakan.”

  Manny’s cell phone beeped a message to call Soske. “We had several unsolved homicides around here in the 1970s,” he said. “But only one killed with a .45. That was Billy Two Moons.”

  “.45 auto or Long Colt?”

  Papers shuffled on the phone. “The autopsy report doesn’t say, except that the coroner recovered two intact slugs from the body. The other three hit bone and were too deformed to help.”

  “Does it mention the type of bullet, the style, or the weight?”

  Papers shuffled again. “Solid lead slugs. Semi-wadcutter design. Each weighed 255 grains.”

  Manny knew officers from the Hostage Rescue Team who shot Colt .45 auto pistols, but they shot hollow points with a sharper nose for feeding reliability, not the semi-wadcutter, blunted-style lead bullets recovered from Two Moons.

  “Tell me the evidence from the Two Moons case is still available.”

  “I’m certain it is,” Soske said. “The sheriff’s office here never gets rid of anything involving a capital offense.”

  “Can you overnight those two intact slugs to Quantico?”

  “Sure. Just a matter of clearing things with the SO.”

  Manny told Soske the address of the FBI ballistics lab at Quantico. He figured that both slugs and the old revolver he seized from Jason’s display case would arrive there at about the same time.

  On the way to the OST police building, Manny detoured and pulled to the curb at the Cohen Home. The same young woman at the front desk glanced up at Manny and waved him on. He started for Chief Horn’s room, even now feeling like a young tribal officer reporting for duty. Manny rapped on the door and Horn jerked it open. He held a beer in one hand and what was left of a sandwich in the other. A smile spread across his face and he stepped aside.

  Manny thought he’d fallen into the twilight zone as he stepped into the apartment. Gone was the mound of empty beers overflowing the garbage can containing last week’s leftovers. The kitchen table was visible this time, though a stack of papers hid one corner. Horn motioned to an overstuffed chair. Manny was unsure whether it was there on his previous visit.

  “It wasn’t my idea.” Horn seemed to be reading Manny’s mind. “My granddaughter Shannon thought I should clean up my act if I have the FBI visiting. I told her it was just Manny Tanno, but she insisted on cleaning it anyway.”

  “I like it.”

  Horn’s smile broadened as he basked in the compliment. “I don’t get many visitors. Shannon said I might get more if I keep my place clean. That, and maybe be more sociable. What do you think she meant by that?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Manny lied.

  Horn finished his beer and set his sandwich on a paper plate on the table. “But this isn’t a social call.”

  Manny shook his head. “I’m still struggling with the Red Cloud murder. You said something the other day that struck a chord, Chief. You said Billy Two Moons and Alex Jumping Bull hung together a lot.”

  “Inseparable. If one got tossed into the hoosegow, the other did; just for solidarity, I always thought. Or maybe they were lovers.” He tossed his head back and laughed.

  “Where was Jumping Bull the night Two Moons was killed up by Hill City?”

  Horn shrugged. “No one knew.”

  “But if you had to guess, where do you figure he was that night?”

  “With Two Moons,” Horn answered immediately. “Alex would have been with him that night like every other night.”

  “Even if Two Moons planned on meeting Reuben and partying, as he claimed?”

  “Even then.” Horn took another bite from his sandwich. “When Jumping Bull came up missing right after the murder, we all thought Reuben was good for that one, too. We told the Pennington County deputies investigating the homicide that Jumping Bull would have been at the scene, but they came up with a dead end on that. I always figured that they had their confession to one murder, enough to put Reuben away, and they were satisfied at that. Jumping Bull’s body was never found. Oh, they put out the obligatory BOLO missing-persons bullshit, but I don’t figure they worked too hard to ‘be on the lookout’ for a missing Indian.”

  Manny stood and stretched, eye to eye with his old chief sitting down. Manny explained that Jumping Bull, under the alias of Clifford Coyote, had been murdered in a Minneapolis apartment two weeks ago, at an address where he had been living and receiving checks from Elizabeth for nearly thirty years.

  Horn chuckled. “So the peckerwood’s been in Minneapolis all this time.”

  “Why do you figure he ran away?”

  “Best reason in the world I can think of: fear. The little bastard was afraid of being found and killed like his pal Two Moons.”

  “My feelings exactly. I just had to have someone else that’s sane say the same thing.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Manny pulled into the parking lot just as Willie emerged from the OST police building. “I was coming to hunt you up, but we can jaw inside.”

  Manny followed him through the locked door and into the empty break room. Willie shut the door and shuffled to the coffeepot. Empty. He scrunched his nose at the burnt coffee in the bottom of the pot before putting it back on the burner. He turned a chair around and sat facing Manny. “I talked with Aunt Lizzy, but I don’t feel very good about it.” He looked down. The guilt Willie held inside made the room feel as heavy as a low-flying summer storm cloud.

  “Did she tell you about Clifford Coyote?”

  “She did. I just can’t figure why I didn’t see some of this.”

  “What?”

  “There never was a Clifford Coyote.”

  “We knew that, but we didn’t know why the ruse.”

  “After the Two Moons murder, Jumping Bull took the name Coyote out of fear of being killed next. Jumping Bull was Aunt Lizzy’s cousin from Crow Creek. When she moved out here after she married Reuben, she got Jumping Bull his first place to stay here in Pine Ridge, and tried to recruit him into AIM right after that Custer takeover fiasco.”

  “But he never made the grade.”

  “How’d you know?”

  Manny forced a smile. “There are some things I recall about those days. For one thing, a man had to be a warrior, or be considered a warrior by some convoluted standards in order to be accepted by the others and allowed to join. From what Chief Horn said, Jumping Bull was anything but. He was just a drunk and a petty thief.”

  “Anyway, Jumping Bull fled after Reuben killed Billy Two Moons.”

  “Then he was blackmailing Jason?”

  Willie nodded. “Jumping Bull knew that Jason paid Billy Two Moons to kill his parents.”

  “How did he know?”

  “Two Moons and he were partying on the money Jason shelled out to rig that car wreck with the Red Clouds. When Reuben found the car that night in China Gulch, Jumping Bull hid in the backseat, because he knew Reuben would have him killed, too. But before he fled to Minneapolis, Jumping
Bull also told Aunt Lizzy what he knew. At first, he was content to just be alive and gone from the rez. Then he got greedy and started blackmailing Jason. Aunt Lizzy felt like Reuben did, that Jason sold out for the almighty dollar rather than stay in the movement with the other AIM brothers. She was happy to help Jumping Bull bleed some of that Red Cloud money from Jason.”

  “You believe that?”

  Willie nodded. “It’s what she told me.”

  “Chief Horn said that Two Moons did mechanic work for the police when he was in jail, and on his own when he was out. He could have made the wreck appear as if the brake lines had ruptured, to make it look like an accident.”

  Willie nodded again. “Jason’s lackluster performance with the family business disappointed his parents. The year after Jason graduated college and started working for them, he lost the company’s clients tons of money. The Red Clouds didn’t want their business pissed away, and tasked their corporate attorney to deed their assets to the tribe when they died.”

  “That new car Two Moons drove the night he was murdered,” Manny said. “That’s how someone without a pot to pee in managed a new Chrysler.”

  Willie walked to the vending machine. “You’re right on there,” he called over his shoulder. “The new car was Two Moons’s payment for rigging the wreck.” When the machine spit out a MoonPie, Willie returned to his seat.

  “And Elizabeth despised Jason enough that she kept Jumping Bull’s whereabouts secret all those years?”

  Willie nodded. “When she was in AIM and WARN, the thing she hated the most was the status quo. Jason’s hiring Two Moons to kill his parents for control of the family business got to working on her. She knew she could turn in Jason at any time, but she thought it would hurt him more to be bled dry all those years.”

  “But things went south for Jason. Clara showed me a letter. Jumping Bull was fixing to pull the plug on his long-distance relationship with the ‘Donald Trump of the West.’ ”

  Willie nodded. “Aunt Lizzy confirmed what Clara told you, that Jason ran the business into the ground. He had a string of mediocre properties mixed with some that fell flat. He spent money like there was no tomorrow—or no yesterday to catch up with him. He bought Lakota antiquities he couldn’t afford, and something had to give. So Jason thought that he could cut off his blackmail money to Jumping Bull, that after all those years no one would believe him if he implicated Jason in masterminding the car wreck that killed his parents.”

  “But that letter called Jason’s bluff.”

  Willie nibbled on the outside edges of his MoonPie. “Jumping Bull sent Jason that letter threatening to expose him. He became obsessed about finding his address, and charmed information out of the new girl at the post office. He learned that Aunt Lizzy received Jumping Bull’s monthly checks in Pine Ridge under Clifford Coyote’s name, and figured Aunt Lizzy was Jumping Bull’s go-between. He snuck into her office one night a few weeks ago and tried finding Jumping Bull’s address.”

  “The argument that Lumpy walked in on.” Manny stood and reached for his pack of cigarettes, but his pocket was empty. A Camel used to help him sort things out, like an obnoxious yet trusted friend at his side. “Lumpy said file drawers were strewn all over. Jason and Lizzy arguing fiercely. Did Jason find the address that night?”

  “Now she thinks he did, and she’s carrying a powerful amount of guilt because she didn’t warn Jumping Bull that Jason might know his address in Minneapolis.”

  Willie looked at his empty MoonPie wrapper, turned it over, read the nutrition facts. The young officer had matured with his interview of Elizabeth, but Manny had one last question that needed answering. “Did you ask her about Jason’s murder? If she could kill me, she could kill him, too.”

  Willie dropped his eyes and stared at the floor. “She told me she didn’t know anything about Jason’s death, even though she hated him enough that she could have killed him. She knew all about his embezzlement of the tribe’s money and how he would implicate Erica if he was caught. Sure, she could have killed him, with considerable pleasure. But I don’t think she did.” Willie looked away. Manny knew Willie didn’t believe his aunt was in the clear on Jason’s death.

  Manny put his fingers together, building a tent with them, as he often did when things came together in an investigation. He thought of his suspect list—when Lumpy blocked the doorway. He was backlit by the bright hall light, and he still had a fading purple stain on his right cheek from the thief powder. Manny swallowed down a smile.

  “You think this is funny?” Lumpy said. “It’ll be on my skin for a month.”

  “A week,” Manny said. “A week is more like it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s what I remember when we used it back in the day, remember?”

  Lumpy ignored him and tossed a manila envelope on the table between Manny and Willie. “FedEx overnight. Must be important.”

  It was from the FBI lab in Quantico. Manny left it unopened on the table. “Thanks.”

  Lumpy stood waiting for Manny to open the envelope. When he didn’t, Lumpy started to leave, then turned back. “Before I forget, Hotshot, your boss called.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t say much, but he seemed to get pretty upset when I told him you were in Rapid City visiting your girlfriend.”

  Manny could argue that Clara was not his girlfriend, but Lumpy probably didn’t know about Clara and was referring to Sonja. “What did Niles want?”

  “Not sure,” Lumpy answered. “All he said is: ‘Two days. Things start in two days, you tell Manny Tanno that.’ And what the hell did you tell Nathan Yellow Horse when he interviewed you?”

  “Why?”

  “He left in a damned hurry. Didn’t say a word, just brushed past me.”

  “Oh, I just hinted at some places where he might begin his story.”

  Manny waited until the sound of Lumpy’s footsteps died down then propped his feet up on another chair and waited for Willie to continue. Elizabeth had told Willie more, and he was anxious to get it off his chest.

  “Aunt Lizzy still has a thing for Reuben,” he said. “She got used to them being a couple, got comfortable being the woman of a local celebrity, even if he was a violent AIM celebrity. I think she protected him as much as she protected Erica.”

  Willie reached into his briefcase and took out a bundle of letters held tight by a single deer-hide thong. Willie started untying the bundle when he dropped the letters. They scattered on the floor. “Pick one, any one, they’re all alike.”

  Manny grabbed one postmarked SOUTH DAKOTA STATE PENITENTIARY, SIOUX FALLS, MARCH OF 1989.

  “They’re all dated that way, up until Reuben was paroled from the penitentiary.” Willie pulled up a chair and sat beside Manny. “I’ll spare you reading them. Aunt Lizzy and Reuben never actually broke up, even after the murder. They were corresponding all those years he was in the lockup. And they’ve been intimate. They were divorced on paper only.”

  “How’d you find these?”

  “Aunt Lizzy asked me to pack her some clothes for her stay at the state hospital. I found these in Reuben’s old Marine footlocker in her bedroom closet.”

  Manny picked up several letters, all sent during Reuben’s incarceration in the South Dakota State Penitentiary.

  “She hid her love for him all these years because folks wouldn’t have trusted a finance officer who was involved with a convicted killer, especially one with Reuben’s reputation. And she added one thing when I asked her about Jason’s funding Erica’s college: She said Jason felt bad about Reuben going to the pen. She said that Jason loved Erica like she was his own daughter, and that Reuben knew from the beginning that Jason intended paying her way through college.”

  “But Reuben just found out about it within the past few years.”

  Willie shook his head. “She was quite adamant that Reuben knew it from the start, even if he told you different.”

  “That’s just one mor
e thing I will talk to Reuben about,” Manny said. “Now let’s see what Quantico has to say.”

  He used his penknife to open the manila envelope overnighted from the FBI lab. As he watched Willie waiting expectantly to see the contents, Manny felt like one of those Academy Award presenters about to read the winner’s name. He pulled the lab slip out. “The ID section was unable to come up with a match between the latents lifted from Crazy George’s car and those of Jack Little Boy. Little Boy’s got six points on each finger, at the most.”

  “How could that be?” Willie asked. He scooted his chair close and took the report. “Everyone has at least twelve points.”

  “Not if you’re a mason. Little Boy’s been bricklaying for the last eight years, according to his rap sheet. Eight years of constantly rubbing his hands against brick and mortar will erode fingerprints.”

  “Then he could be Jason’s killer. There was only partial prints found on the war club along with Ricky Bell’s. We thought at first they were smudged prints, but they could have been Little Boy’s.”

  Manny nodded. “And we can’t use even the partials if Little Boy is our man.”

  He picked up the other sheet. The crime lab had failed to locate Reuben’s fingerprints. The sheet suggested they contact the South Dakota State Penitentiary.

  “Jeeza! How could Reuben’s prints not be on file? He’s a felon.”

  “Sealed, would be my guess. The Special Task Force on Organized Crime investigated AIM heavily in the 1970s. The Tenth Federal Appeals Court ruled they’d been unjustly targeted by the government, and most of their records were sealed. But that didn’t apply to state courts. I’ll call the state pen later and have them fax over Reuben’s print card.”

  He returned that paper to the envelope and grabbed the last one. And whistled. “The .45 slugs Soske had sent to the lab from the Two Moons homicide matched that old cavalry Colt I seized from Jason’s office.”

  Willie read the lab report over Manny’s shoulder. “Let me get this straight: Billy Two Moons was killed with the same gun Ricky Bell used to kill Alex Jumping Bull?”