Death Along the Spirit Road

by C. M. Wendelboe

“You said you shot Two Moons six times. But that gun had only five spent cases. Jason didn’t know guns like you did. He would have heard the stories of old-timers accidentally shooting themselves because they loaded six in the old Colts. But you confessed to the murder. Was it because of Erica?”

  Reuben nodded. “I was fingered for a dozen homicides in and around the rez back then. I was top suspect in that Oglala bombing that knocked out the justice building and took out the power station, and it was rumored I had a hand in Anna Mae’s murder. And others. Your FBI was closing in on me, and they were going to have my ass, guilty or not—which I was not in any of those.”

  He continued: “Jason came to me the morning after he killed Billy Two Moons. He told me Two Moons had murdered his parents by cutting their brake lines. He said he found Two Moons outside Hill City and had killed him in a fit of rage, and he felt his parents’ accident would eventually be ruled a homicide. As sole heir, he was certain they would look to him first for a motive for the murder. He knew I was suspected in some killings myself, and it was just a matter of time before I was railroaded. Jason agreed to give Erica the best education possible, one I could never afford, in exchange for taking the rap for him. Lizzy didn’t like it, and she has despised Jason ever since. We agreed the best thing for Erica was me going away, so I confessed, and copped a plea to second-degree.”

  “When did you find out Jason paid Two Moons to rig the accident, and didn’t kill him in a fit of rage as he stated?”

  “In prison. Alex Jumping Bull ran right after Jason killed Two Moons, and kept low for the first year. He finally contacted Lizzy and told her about the deal between Jason and Two Moons. By then, I’d made my plea and started my sentence. It was too late for me.”

  Manny looked at his brother, convinced he had changed in prison. He now believed he was looking at a genuine sacred man, but Manny was still perplexed how a holy man could murder someone. “You didn’t intend to kill Jason that night?”

  “No.” Reuben pressed harder on the gauze to stop the bleeding. “I told Jason if he didn’t meet me there to talk I would go to the law, tell them about the embezzlement and about my false confession. Jason wasn’t a brave man, but he didn’t want to end up being someone’s wife or girlfriend in the slammer. So we met at Wounded Knee. I wanted him to return the tribe’s money, but he’d squandered it already. I told him nobody squanders thirty million bucks in such a short time, but he just laughed at me, said he did and there was absolutely nothing I could do to him. He said no one would believe an ex-con about the money or about Billy Two Moons’s murder.”

  “And when he turned to leave, you killed him?”

  “He made it to his truck. When he came out, he had a gun. Not a very big gun, but enough that he could have done me some damage. He said Alex Jumping Bull had threatened to expose him, and he had taken care of him, and I was the last witness to be silenced. He should have opened fire instead of opening his mouth, ’cause that gave me a chance to rush him. I slapped the gun away just as he got a round off.”

  Reuben kicked the dirt with his toe. “It fell to the ground. He lunged for it and I grabbed the first thing that was handy—the war club that was sitting on the seat of his truck. But he got off one shot that caught me in the leg.” Reuben pulled up his shorts. A fresh gash had become infected around the makeshift stitches. “Ben Horsecreek helped me pry the slug out and dress the wound.”

  “But the only identifiable prints on the club belonged to Ricky Bell.”

  “Occupational bonus,” Reuben smiled, rubbing his calloused hands.

  Manny nodded. “After wracking my brain, I finally found out why you wouldn’t be worried about your prints being matched up. I called the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls when I couldn’t locate a set of your prints to match with the war club. The latents lifted from Crazy George’s car were unidentifiable. The ID techs said there wasn’t enough identification points on either hand to type.”

  Reuben rubbed his hands together. “I got hooked on pottery in stir. I always hoped that would help these hands heal some, but I guess a lifetime of working with brick and mortar keeps things like fingerprints rubbed away permanently. You know they even had me working stone in lockup.”

  Manny nodded. “So the warden told me, until they ran out of projects and transferred you to the laundry room. That was another thing that took a while to sink in. He confirmed they have a distinct way of folding sheets and towels, a specific way that tucks the ends into the middle, just like that towel you handed me after the sweat. I didn’t recall much about that particular day, but I did remember that odd way you had folded your towel. The same way the star quilt was folded when it was returned to the Prairie Edge the morning after Jason’s murder.”

  “I wasn’t counting on Jason having stolen artifacts. I had to return them. If I learned one thing studying with Ben, it’s that sacred things remain sacred, so I took them back and left them on the sidewalk in front of the Prairie Edge. That may have helped you catch me.”

  Manny smiled. “I would have figured things out eventually,” he said. “It may have taken me longer, being boneheaded like I am, but I would have muddled through it.” He paused, the faint sound of sirens growing louder, and then walked back around the house. Three marked OST police cars came fast down Ben’s driveway. Willie’s turtle car was in the lead.

  “Guess you have to take me in now,” Reuben said.

  Manny stepped close and looked at Reuben closer than he had ever done before, seeing the man he once looked up to, now a holy man, a man who had killed in self-defense. And to save his daughter, his wife, and the tribe’s money. A man who had killed for honor.

  Honor. Honor had forced Willie to keep Elizabeth from killing again. Honor set aside his feelings for his aunt and reinterviewed her. Honor forced Willie to do things that would keep Elizabeth locked away for life. Honor would get Willie through this. Honor would justify his betrayal of Elizabeth.

  But what honor did Manny have after turning his back on his people, turning from the old ways, turning from being a Lakota to being just another city Sioux working for the wasicu? What honor would there be in becoming what he had always considered the enemy? Reuben was his kola, and Manny had sworn loyalty to his brother when he was still a child, had sworn to never betray Reuben. In that, there was honor left. And there was honor in seeing justice done.

  “You’d get manslaughter, about twenty years for killing Jason. Not if you’d come clean right off, but now after you’ve covered things up. You’ve already spent twenty years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. Maybe we can both forget what you just told me.”

  “But you’re an FBI. How can you forget it?”

  “It won’t be easy. But it will be justice. I can’t say it was right to kill Jason, but it was self-defense. Nevertheless, a jury would hang you in a heartbeat with your record—and justice wouldn’t be done.”

  The sirens grew louder. Police cars slid up to the cabin. “Besides, what’s a kola for, if not to protect?” Manny picked up his Glock from the ground and holstered it just as Willie ran around the corner of the house, his own gun drawn. “Wasn’t sure you’d still be kicking. We picked up Jack Little Boy about a mile from here.”

  “He didn’t put up a fight?”

  Willie smiled. “He tried shooting it out with that old Marlin that didn’t work. And he managed to fall down a couple times before Hollow Thunder led him to the pokey.”

  “And your aunt Elizabeth?”

  Willie dropped his eyes. “She’s being cuffed now. How about him?” He pointed to Reuben. “Do we take him in?”

  Manny shook his head and gestured to Reuben. “He helped talk her down. This is one sacred man who is clear of everything.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Workmen off-loaded metal chairs, snapping them open and arranging them in a semicircular pattern in front of the makeshift stage. The front two rows were to be reserved for dignitaries and the press covering the ground breaking of the Red C
loud Resort. Manny stood between Willie and Clara in the rear. They’d arrived early and stood waiting for the chairs, and the festivities, to begin in an hour.

  “I still think you should have stood up there with Erica,” Manny said. “It’s as much your show as hers.”

  Clara smiled and chin-pointed to the stage. “This is her baby. Let her have her day. I’ll have enough time for the spotlight once the resort is underway.”

  Erica wore a gray herringbone suit and stood beside the lectern, tapping the microphone. Feedback sent waves of highpitched squealing from the speakers arranged around the field marked for the resort, and she adjusted the volume control. On the other side of the lectern was a raised relief mock-up of the resort. She fidgeted with it, scooting it closer to the podium, nervously eying the lieutenant governor shaking hands with tribal council members on the stage with him.

  Willie nudged Manny and pointed to the parking lot filling up slowly with attendees. Reuben got out of Crazy George’s Buick and walked toward them. He wore a sharply pressed white shirt closed with bolo tie, and his long ponytail was tied neatly with a new deer-hide thong that draped down his back. He cradled his injured arm in a sling as he stopped in front of Manny and held out his hand. Manny shook it, and Reuben offered his hand to Willie. Willie hesitated a moment before he accepted it.

  “Thought you couldn’t drive?”

  Reuben smiled at Willie. “Didn’t say I couldn’t. Just don’t like to. But this is special. Not every day your only kid invites you to rub shoulders with the neat and elite.” Erica had insisted that her father have one of the reserved front seats. “Lumpy will have a cow when he sees me. Better grab a chair.”

  Reuben sauntered up to the front row of chairs and stood a moment to catch Lumpy’s glare before he winked at Lumpy and sat. Lumpy stood apart from the others in his pressed and starched black Oglala Sioux Tribal uniform. “Security,” he had bragged to Manny before the ceremony. “They wanted tribal police for security. Not you feds.” Manny had smiled at that. If the organizers were actually concerned with the dignitaries’ safety, they would have selected someone other than Lumpy Looks Twice to thwart danger. And if they realized how ruthless he could be, they wouldn’t want him near them. In the end, Lumpy would gain the attention he wanted, attention that would be remembered when the tribal council appointed a new police chief.

  Desirée Chasing Hawk’s laugh turned Manny’s attention to the back parking area. She leaned into the lieutenant governor’s aide and threaded her arm through his as they walked from his limo. Her bruises and cuts from Jack Little Boy had either completely healed or she had covered them so expertly that she was back to her luscious self. At least on the outside. Manny wondered how long it would take before she went through the young aide on her way to some other man she could use and discard.

  “You never said how Alex Jumping Bull fit into things,” Clara said.

  “He was witness to Jason killing Billy Two Moons,” Willie said, then turned to Manny. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to steal your thunder.”

  Manny smiled. “Not to worry. The more thunder you steal, the less pressure I’ll have. But Willie’s right. Jumping Bull told Elizabeth that Billy Two Moons brought him along as a witness the night he met Jason by Hill City. Jumping Bull was hiding on the back floorboard of that new Chrysler and saw the entire murder. He fled that night out of abject fear. Then greed got the better of him. He saw a chance to put the bite on Jason for some of that Red Cloud estate money.”

  “He bit into Jason for a long time,” Clara said. “But Jason would have done himself in eventually, anyway. As I said before, he was a lousy businessman.”

  “That he would have,” Manny answered.

  Erica stepped up to the lectern and gently tapped the mike. “I’ll be right back.” Clara walked up to the lectern and began speaking with her.

  “Is it me, or is Clara a little cold today?”

  “I’m afraid it’s me,” Manny answered. “Just when I thought she and I were an item, she said she wants to back off. Said she was just so frightened the last couple weeks that she’s not sure she wants to be involved with a lawman.”

  “So you two are up in the air?”

  “I’m not so sure there’s ever going to be ‘us two.’ ”

  “By the way, my contact at the Rapid City Journal called me,” Willie said. “Ecstatic. Seems like that piece Nathan Yellow Horse put in the Lakota Country Times about Sonja Myers printing confidential information had some interesting effects.”

  “There was no leak,” Manny said. “That was just to get them tied up scooping one another.”

  Willie nodded. “She was exonerated. But it still cast enough aspersions on her journalistic integrity that the networks won’t touch her now. She swears she’ll hurt you professionally for giving Yellow Horse that bogus story.”

  “At least she wasn’t fired like Yellow Horse,” Clara said. She’d returned from the stage to stand beside Manny.

  “By the way,” Willie said, “did you manage to call your supervisor Niles?”

  Manny nodded. “Niles the Pile finally made a decision. One of the few decisions he’s actually made since I’ve known him. Back in the field. He took me off the academy assignment after I told him the case had hit an impenetrable wall. When I reported that the case may never be solved, he told me he’d already filled the instructor’s slot.”

  “So officially, Jason’s murder is still an active case?”

  “It’s still an active case,” Manny lied, and hoped Willie hadn’t picked up too much from him to detect it.

  “So where are you off to now?” Clara asked. “What’s your assignment?”

  “‘A fate worse than Greenland,’ is how the Pile put it.”

  “You’re back on Pine Ridge?” Willie asked excitedly.

  Manny nodded. “At least some of the time. The Pile transferred me to the Rapid City Resident Agency.”

  “Back taking all the reservation cases,” Clara said. “That’s terrible.” She took his hand and squeezed it gently while they waited for the ground breaking to begin.

  “Sure,” Manny said, smiling and squeezing her hand in return. He had never slept better than in these last weeks following his reassignment. The wanagi had not visited him once during the night. He’d started rebuilding his relationship with Reuben, who was helping him sort through his Lakota issues. He’d met a woman he could grow to love if she’d have him, and a friend he had grown to trust. He’d somehow manage to survive the transfer the Pile had given him. “This is just terrible, isn’t it?”