Death Along the Spirit Road

by C. M. Wendelboe

  They drove another twenty minutes before reaching the intersection of Route 41 and BIA Route 2. Willie had given Manny directions to get to Ben Horsecreek’s ranch, and Manny grabbed the hasty map he’d drawn and studied it. He held the paper to the light, trying to focus his one good eye on it. Clara took the map from him.

  “Go east along Route 2,” she pointed. “There’s a dirt trail that takes off to the north after about two miles. You noted here that we should be able to see Horsecreek’s mailbox and long driveway from there.”

  They came to the mailbox and followed the dirt trail that served as Horsecreek’s driveway. Manny slowed, every bump causing his ribs to rub against his side, making breathing painful.

  “Want me to drive?”

  Manny swiveled his head to meet Clara’s concerned look. “Now what could I hit out here?” he said and jerked his head back in time to miss a black white-faced steer on the driveway.

  “The offer stands.” Clara cinched her seat belt tighter.

  They continued driving until they reached a rise that dropped sharply away, and coasted the last hundred yards toward Ben’s house. Crazy George’s Buick was parked alongside Reuben’s paint pony that had been hobbled to allow it to graze. It was so tired from the hard ride here that it hung its head in shame.

  Behind the car and horse stood a simple log cabin, smaller than Manny’s garage at his Virginia home. He grabbed his cell phone to call Willie. No service, and he swore under his breath as he turned in the seat. “I want you to take the car and drive back the way we came. Drive until you have cell service where you can call Willie.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Walk down there. It’s not more than an eighth of a mile. By the time I get there, you’ll have made contact with Willie.”

  “Bullshit.” Manny was taken aback by her choice of words. He had not heard her swear since he’d known her. “Bullshit. It’ll probably take miles to get where this damned thing can catch a tower. You’re not getting rid of me like that. I’m going down there with you.”

  “I can’t allow that. Elizabeth may still be armed, and Reuben is still as unpredictable as an old range bull.”

  “You have no choice. I might be scared to death and I might not be much good, but I’m all you got.”

  Manny gave up. “Well, at least do what I tell you when I tell you.”

  “Fair enough.” Clara took off her seat belt as if readying herself to leap out of the car.

  Manny inched his way down the hill, every step jarring his cracked ribs and causing him to take quick, short breaths. He expected the front door to open, expected a rifle barrel to poke at them from the door or open window, but there was no movement and they stopped beside Crazy George’s car. The hood was warm. Manny unsnapped the retaining snap on his holster before creeping to the cabin door and easing it open. He tried the latch, but it was locked. From the inside? He couldn’t tell, and he motioned to Clara to stay where she was while he crept around back.

  He paused and listened at the corner of the house, then took careful, silent steps toward the back. As he cleared the back wall, Elizabeth sat with her back to him on a tree stump across from Reuben. She bent over him as she wrapped gauze high around his thigh. Reuben saw Manny, and called his name. Elizabeth wheeled around. She held Robert Hollow Thunder’s automatic, her eyes wild with fright. And something else that Manny was quick to recognize. Clara was right: Elizabeth really was mentally disturbed.

  “Come on in and sit a spell.” Reuben used the back of the lawn chair to stand, and rubbed the bandage on his leg. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Elizabeth pointed the gun at Manny’s chest, her knuckles white, the same rage in her eyes as the night she was going to kill him in her house. Manny was certain now as he was then that she would fire at any moment.

  “Come over here where I can watch you.” Her voice had deepened. Her words slurred together. Guttural words, hateful words, coming from the mouth of the sister-in-law he didn’t know anymore. “Tell your lady friend to come here, too.”

  Manny led Clara slowly around the corner of the house, her eyes wide and fixed on the gun pointed at her. She started to shake. Manny took her hand and squeezed, as they moved cautiously, deliberately to where Elizabeth motioned with the gun barrel.

  “You’ll start by shucking that gun under your coat,” Reuben said.

  “How’d you know?”

  Reuben laughed. “I’m an ex-con. I’ve seen that elephant, more than once. Besides, I spotted it in that pile of your clothes that day we had the sweat.”

  With his left hand, Manny took it from the holster.

  “Just toss it away.”

  Manny flung it on the ground.

  “Good. Now we can all sit down and figure out what we’re going to do next.” Reuben nodded to tree stumps to sit on.

  “You going to make your friend Ben Horsecreek an accessory to whatever you got planned?”

  “He’s gone for a few days,” Reuben answered. “Drove to Standing Rock for a Sun Dance. He wanted me to check on his steers while he was away.”

  “Then what do you intend to do?”

  Reuben held his hands up, palms facing Manny. “That depends on what you’re going to do, kola.”

  “You know what I got to do. Elizabeth stole an officer’s weapon as she was to be transported to Yankton for her psych eval. I’ve got to bring her in.”

  “I’m not going to Yankton.” Elizabeth’s gun hand trembled and her knuckles whitened as she took up slack on the trigger. “I’m staying right here with Reuben.”

  “Elizabeth, you’re sick. You won’t be held responsible for that night you attacked me with the hammer, and the night you stole the truck and ran me off the road. You need help. Let me take you back where someone can talk with you. You don’t want to kill me.”

  “She won’t kill you,” Reuben assured Manny. “Not my Lizzy.”

  “Oh, yes she will. Just look at her.”

  Reuben stood beside Elizabeth and whispered to her as he watched Manny and Clara out of the corner of his eye. “Lizzy’s much better now than she used to be. Much better than when she killed LaVonne.”

  “You knew about that?”

  Reuben nodded and stroked the side of her head. “She came to Sioux Falls to visit me right after LaVonne’s car wreck. Lizzy got fed up with the promotion system. She felt LaVonne was inept, that she’d made bad decisions that cost the tribe money. Lizzy worked her butt off getting her business degree, and she knew she could do a better job for the tribe.”

  “She set up the so-called accident, and you think that’s all right?”

  “I didn’t say I condoned it.” Reuben ran his fingers through Elizabeth’s hair. “But she’s my woman. I couldn’t toss her to the wolves. She was beside herself after that. Guilt ate at her, and she talked of suicide. It wasn’t easy, but between Erica and me, we managed to get her into therapy.”

  “Erica knows about LaVonne?”

  “No.” Reuben took his pipe out and filled the bowl from a small canvas tobacco pouch. He tamped the tobacco with his Sun Dance skewer. “All Erica knows is that her mother needed help. Erica lined up a therapist in Rapid City, a first-rate shrink. No one’s the wiser. Everyone on the rez just accepts the fact that Lizzy goes shopping with Rachael Thompson in Rapid once a week.”

  “Does Rachael know about LaVonne? About the therapy?”

  “She’s just my friend,” Elizabeth snapped. “You leave her out of this. She knows nothing, other than she and I drive to Rapid. All she knows is that I see a therapist while she shops. She thinks it’s about Reuben.”

  “So there you have it,” Reuben said. “Lizzy just made a mistake, trying to get rid of you before you figured out Jason’s murder.”

  “I already have,” Manny said. “I know just who’s responsible for burying that club in his head.”

  “And you’ll be prosecuting the killer,” Elizabeth said. “You’ll be sending the killer away for a lon
g time or the death penalty?”

  “I will. It’s not just reservation justice, it’s the law of the land, and I’ve got to do it.”

  “I can’t allow that.” Elizabeth stepped away from Reuben. He took a step toward her, and she side-stepped away. “Leave us alone,” she told Reuben. “Manny and his woman and I have business that I don’t want you to see.”

  “Like what, Lizzy?” Reuben said. “Do you intend to kill them over some asshole like Jason? Do you intend to kill two more people?”

  He stepped toward her.

  “I’ll kill you, too, if you get in the way.”

  Manny calculated the distance, calculated if he could reach Elizabeth before she could get off a round, or two, calculated if he could disengage his hand from Clara’s viselike, trembling grip.

  “You won’t kill me,” Reuben said. He stepped closer, his hand held out to accept the gun. “You killed LaVonne in a moment of rage, that’s all. You can’t kill again.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Even you are too damned naïve. There was no moment of rage involved. My cousin sneaked back to the rez to rig her car.”

  “Alex came back here?”

  “He was the only one I knew who could rig it so it would look like an accident. He got the idea from Billy Two Moons when he rigged the Red Clouds’ wreck.”

  “So he couldn’t tell anyone he helped you kill LaVonne,” Manny said, “because you’d tell where he was hiding up in Minneapolis.”

  “Pretty good for a crazy lady, huh?”

  “But you always said LaVonne was a spur-of-the-moment thing.” Reuben stepped closer to Elizabeth. “You couldn’t have planned LaVonne’s death.”

  “Like I didn’t tie Anna Mae up in that safe house in Denver before she was driven here and killed?”

  “You were mixed up in that, too?”

  Elizabeth’s laugh came from deep inside and her knuckles whitened on the trigger. “She was an informant, and I had no problem tying her up and gagging her. I even helped load her into that Pinto for her ride back to the rez.”

  “You helped them murder Anna Mae? But she was no informant.”

  “I know that now. But that, as they say, is water under the bridge over Wounded Knee Creek.”

  “Give me the gun.” Reuben stepped closer. His eyes pleaded, his hands pleaded for her to give him the gun.

  In one motion she wildly swung the gun around and fired.

  The bullet hit Reuben in the upper shoulder. He staggered and slumped, then regained his footing. Blood saturated his Sioux Nation T-shirt. He pulled his shirt down. The bullet had struck high in his shoulder, and his left arm lay limp at his side.

  “So now you intend to kill me, baby? After a lifetime together, it comes to this? You’re killing me along with my brother and his woman?”

  Elizabeth looked at the gun as if aware for the first time that she held it. She lowered the muzzle and staggered toward Reuben and began crying, hysterical shoulder-shaking sobs, violent crying that wouldn’t soon stop.

  Reuben eased the gun from her hand, and tucked it into his waistband. He wrapped his good arm around her as he stroked her head and kissed her forehead. He looked at Clara for help.

  “It’ll be all right, baby,” he said. “Go with this nice lady while Manny and I talk.”

  Clara looked at Manny. “She’ll be all right now.” Clara put her arm around Elizabeth.

  “There’s some stools to the front of the house,” Reuben said. “Please take her and sit there. And be gentle with her. She’ll give you no more grief.”

  Clara led Elizabeth around to the front of the cabin.

  “Lizzy’s out of it now. She won’t be any more trouble.”

  “Good.” Manny looked around for Willie’s Glock. He stepped toward it but Reuben stepped in front of him and leveled Hollow Thunder’s gun at Manny’s chest. “I think it’d be better if you don’t grab that piece right now. Just sit back down there, kola, and we’ll jaw awhile.”

  “About?”

  “Lizzy,” Reuben said. “For a while there, I’d swear you thought she murdered Jason.”

  “I do.”

  “Rez drums have Jack Little Boy right up there for Jason’s death. I hear he tried to kill you again last night. That kid always was nuts. I did what I could, but Jack looked up to me, would do anything to protect me. I figured him for Jason’s murder after Jason shit on me and the rest of the Heritage Kids.”

  “Jack’s on the run. Armed himself last night.”

  “There you have it.”

  “But he didn’t kill Jason. Elizabeth did.”

  Reuben sat slowly back on his stump and rubbed his leg. His limp arm hung by his side as his T-shirt continued to soak up blood. “How the hell could she kill him?”

  “The same way she killed LaVonne for that finance officer position. Jason represented a major threat for her. He intended to embezzle the tribe’s money and go on the run, leave Erica to take the rap for it. I always thought that Jason had figured it out about Elizabeth setting up that car accident that killed LaVonne. That’s why Elizabeth couldn’t go to the police with the embezzlement information.”

  “But she’ll be evaluated at the state hospital,” Reuben said. “You said they’ll find her incompetent when she attacked you both times.”

  “Those times,” Manny answered. “And probably for LaVonne’s death as well.” As he looked at the gun, he wondered if his brother really was a sacred man now. Manny weighed his odds of solving Jason’s homicide while saving his, and Clara’s, life. “She won’t be held accountable for those times. But for Jason’s murder—that’s another story altogether. I’m certain I can find enough people she works with every day to testify that she was in a proper state of mind two weeks ago. I’m sure I can find enough people who will say she was quite sane at the time of Jason’s murder.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then the federal government will prosecute her to the fullest extent of their resources.”

  “Hard time, like I did?”

  “Harder time. Federal time.”

  Reuben shook his head as he aimed the gun at Manny’s chest.

  Then the wicasa wakan emerged, and the sacred man lowered the gun and handed it to Manny, butt first. “I can’t let you do this. Lizzy didn’t kill Jason. I did it.”

  “I know.” Manny tucked the gun in his waistband. “Now we can jaw a little, while I look at that shoulder.” Manny cut Reuben’s shirt with his pocketknife and tore the fabric away from where the bullet had entered. “Hurt?”

  “Naw,” Reuben flinched. “It feels just wonderful. I think the bullet broke the collarbone.”

  The bullet had entered just below the clavicle and angled up. There was no exit wound, but heavy bleeding had saturated his shirt. Manny looked around for the roll of gauze Elizabeth had dropped earlier.

  “When did you first suspect me?”

  “When you stole Crazy George’s Buick.”

  “Anyone could have stolen it.”

  “But you live close, and we found cut-grass and sweetgrass in the car.”

  “A lot of folks hereabouts use sweetgrass in their ceremonies.”

  Manny started wrapping Reuben’s shoulder to stop the blood. “But cut-grass grows close to water. There’s a drought going on, in case you didn’t notice. Not much water in these parts, but you happen to have a little running creek in back of your place, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Then Lenny Little Boy told me that the morning after the murder you dragged onto the jobsite looking like hell—said you hadn’t slept all night.”

  “You can’t convict me on coincidences.”

  “No, I can’t.” Manny patted his pocket for his beloved smokes. “But I finally recognized the faint footprints we saw at the murder scene, footprints that looked like someone checked all around for witnesses. But you weren’t checking for witnesses. You were praying to the four directions just like the last time I stopped by. Your foot patterns were just like those at the murder scene, prin
ts made by moccasins. Ones needing new leather ties, like you were making that first time Willie and I came to your house. Like maybe one got caught in Crazy George’s brake pedal and it broke off.”

  Reuben sighed. He held his head in his hand before looking up at Manny. “Jason wasn’t one of us.” Reuben’s voice was calm now, grateful to get things off his chest. “But he was Lakota. He deserved whatever I could do for him. After I killed him, I performed a Sending Away ceremony. He’s wandering the Spirit Road now.”

  “I know.” Manny thought of Jason’s wanagi visiting him in his vision. “Was it just the fact that he intended sacking the tribe’s funds that led you to kill him?”

  Reuben forced a smile. “After so many years, the tribe finally had a project that could get them on their feet. Folks have always criticized me and my AIM involvement, but all we wanted was the best for the people. The Red Cloud Resort would have restored Oglala pride, padded their coffers, which they dearly need. Jason’s scheme would have left the tribe broke. Not to mention Erica holding the legal bag.”

  “Put pressure on this.”

  Reuben pressed the gauze into his shoulder.

  “Elizabeth knew about the murder, didn’t she?”

  Reuben nodded and looked past Manny as if he could see Elizabeth on the other side of the cabin. “We’ve always told each other everything. We met the evening after I killed Jason, and I told her what I’d done. She understood why I killed him. I should have realized she would have gone to hell and back to protect me, as well as Erica, if anyone figured it out.”

  Manny had his murderer. But there was no satisfaction in his victory, no sense that his investigation had brought justice to Jason Red Cloud. All that remained was a hollowness that perhaps one last piece of information could fill. “I always figured there was more to you and Jason these many years. I thought you’d finally killed him because he was a rotten bastard all his life, ever since he hired Billy Two Moons to kill his folks. Then killed Two Moons himself.”

  Reuben looked at his pipe thoughtfully, and tamped the embers against the ground. “You know about that?”