Death on the Greasy Grass (31 page)

C
HAPTER
41

Manny fished his key ring from his pocket and grabbed his cuff key. As soon as he freed Wilson's hand, Wilson stumbled around the back of the couch. Manny pocketed his keys and joined him. Wilson sat on the floor between the wall and the couch holding Sam's bloody body, rocking back and forth, tears mixed with his own blood streaming down his cheek. His one good eye focusing, he looked up at Manny, wanting to say something, yet not able to.

Manny turned to the phone and called the Pine Ridge Police Department dispatch. After explaining he had dead men and one with nuts swollen like softballs by now begging to be arrested, he hung up and sat on the floor beside a senatorial candidate all beat to hell.

After what seemed like an hour, Wilson's weeping stopped. Manny stood and rested his hand on Wilson's shoulder. “We can't do anything for him. Come over here. Sit with me. I got the paramedics coming.”

Wilson made no attempt to move, and Manny gently took Sam and lowered him to the floor before he helped Wilson stand. Manny led him around to the front of the couch and they sat. “He remained your buddy, even after returning from 'Nam, didn't he?”

“Sam saved my ass more than once in 'Nam.” Wilson nodded and wiped tears and blood from one eye, the other swollen and stuck shut by sticky, dried blood. “When he came back to the world, he hit the bottle. But we still kept in contact. I owed him.”

Manny turned back to Wilson. “I got to read you your rights,” he said and fished into his notebook for the Miranda warning card he carried.

“No need for that. I'll tell you whatever you need to know.”

Manny nodded and pocketed the card. “You said you owed Sam. Like with the fragging incident? You knew about it.”

Wilson nodded as he rubbed circulation back into his wrists cut by the handcuffs. “Our company CO was an idiot, but a dangerous idiot. He must have found those lieutenant bars in the Dumpster or something, 'cause he sure had no business leading a Marine rifle company.”

Manny nodded. He knew officers in law enforcement who should have been assigned to conduct background investigations, desk assignments, anything other than working violent crime cases that they usually botched.

“The butter bar made some bad calls, and we were shot to hell every mission. We'd lost half the company, and replacements were slow in coming.” Wilson looked over his shoulder as if he expected Sam to rise from the dead. “Sam talked about getting rid of the LT before he got the rest of us killed. I knew what he meant. I just chose not to act on it. That was wrong, wasn't it?”

Manny shrugged. “Legally, yes. Morally, I can't judge you. Or Sam.”

Wilson nodded. “Thanks. There'll be enough judging to do later, won't there?”

“'Fraid so.”

Wilson sat quiet for a moment before continuing. “We'd drawn a mission along the DMZ, five klicks from Con Thien. The CO ordered us along a corridor we knew to be NVA controlled, but he ordered us to go anyway. We had three KIA and three more we had to call in a dustoff for. Medics saved two but another died en route to the base medics.”

“And Sam couldn't take it any longer?”

Wilson nodded. “That night when the rest of us were licking our wounds at base camp, Sam was watching the latrine. When the lieutenant went in, so did a grenade.”

“You covered for him?”

Wilson nodded again, droplets of blood staining his carpeting. “I said we were both playing poker when the LT was fragged.”

Manny folded his bandanna and held it against Wilson's head. “And you got a field promotion to lieutenant?”

“I did.” Wilson held the bandanna tight. “We never lost another man while I was in charge of the company. After the war, I stayed in the Corps. Rose to the rank of major . . .”

“So your military records said.”

Wilson smiled, but he winced in pain against a split lip. “I would have made a career, but Dad died and I got willed the ranches.”

Wilson sat quiet, until he asked: “Where's Degas? Forgot about that bastard.” He looked wildly around to the door and reached for Cubby's gun. “If he comes back . . .”

“He won't,” Manny explained. “Remember that felon you were complaining about?”

“Your brother?”

“He's watching Degas until the police arrive.”

Wilson looked out the door, expecting Degas to come charging in and finish the job. He turned back to Manny. “What do you think this will do to my campaign?”

“I'd worry more about what it'll do to your freedom. Sam murdered a man in '68 and you covered for him. There's no statute of limitations on murder. But,” Manny said, “the man that committed it is dead, and any witnesses are probably not alive. You just might luck out.”

Manny nodded to Cubby. “I'd be more concerned about how it'll look, you killing your lover's husband, and how your horse wrangler ran a major drug operation under your nose. With you transporting the shit to boot.”

Sirens neared, their whelp-whelp-whelping rising and falling in the still night air. Wilson dried his eye and blew his nose before handing the bloody bandanna back to Manny.

Manny stood and went to the windows, pulling the curtains back. Red and blue lights filtered through the shelter belt lining the long drive. Manny turned back to Wilson and sat on the sofa beside him. “Sam was your passenger two nights ago?”

Wilson dropped his head between his knees. “Harlan had let Sam read the journal. Joked how it contained things Chenoa would like kept quiet. Harlan figured he could squeeze her to keep quiet. And me. Sam wanted to buy the journal outright . . .”

“Where would he get the kind of money it would bring at auction?”

“That monthly pittance Sam got from Chenoa—plus disability from the VA—mostly went into savings. Sam saved his money, buying up artifacts he thought might have been detrimental to his kid sister. He spent very little on beer. Harlan was generous in that regard, at least.” Wilson laughed. “Sam said Harlan hated to drink alone.” He looked to the couch. “Sam figured Chenoa didn't deserve a scandal because some French trapper drifted through the Valley of the Giveaway in 1876. And he wanted to protect me.”

Emergency lights flickered off the windows as Manny helped Wilson stand. “It wasn't the historic contents of the journal that Degas was after. Degas said Harlan had written down everything he knew about their drug dealing. Just in case.”

Wilson held his head, the gash in his forehead bleeding anew. “Degas figured Harlan kept the journal in his safe.” Manny handed Wilson his bandanna again, and he held it against blood leaking from the head wound. “But the only way to get to it was with Harlan out of the way. So Degas had to set up Harlan to get shot.”

“That's the way I figured it.” Manny leaned Wilson against the doorjamb on the front door. “But Sam must have gotten to it before Degas?”

Wilson held the bandanna to his head but it had little effect. Blood seeped down and stained his shirtfront, his trousers. “Sam knew the items would go on auction once Harlan's estate was probated. Sam knew the journal held damaging evidence on both our families. What he didn't know is that Harlan's notes were stuck inside. Once Sam read them, he knew his life was in danger and he went underground. Even I didn't know where he was until he called me two nights ago and needed off Crow Agency pronto.”

“Why didn't you tell me all this before?”

Wilson closed his eye. When he opened it, tears had once again mixed with dried blood. “I only knew about all this the night Sam called and wanted me to find him a safe place. Once Sam told me what he knew, I figured there'd be a way of clearing this up before the election.”

“Hard to clear things up when Degas left bodies behind.”

“I know. I was a damned fool.”

“Can't argue there.” Manny smiled. “So who was in Sam's house when it burnt?”

Wilson shrugged, bringing another wince of pain to his swollen face. “Sam had no clue. Sam had an open invite for anyone to crash at his place if they needed it. That fire just drove him deeper. Sam planned to hide out in the basement here until he could figure out what to do with Harlan's notes. Guess he ran out of time.”

“You have Harlan's notes?”

Wilson nodded. “They're stashed in the basement. We'll get them as soon as I get patched up.”

Officer Jumping Bull was the first through the door, and he holstered his gun when he saw Manny. “Secure the house,” Manny instructed. “And the bunkhouse. We got a croaker there, too. We'll get Pee Pee Pourier in here to start working this crime scene.”

Jumping Bull looked at Cubby's faceup death stare and the blood soaking the carpeting beside the sofa before turning and stopping paramedics from entering.

Manny slipped his arm through Wilson's and helped him onto the porch. He handed him off to paramedics and grabbed a lady EMT with the name tag A
.
S
.
S
HOLE
.

“Shole, we got . . .”

“Adriane Shole. Adriane Susan.”

“Okay. Adriane, grab your jump bag. We got another man wounded in the bunkhouse.”

Degas's screams reached them even before they burst through the bunkhouse door. He still lay handcuffed around the base of the potbellied stove, blood caked on the floor from where Sam had sliced his shoulder. “That son of a bitch left me like this. Get me loose.”

Manny looked around for that son of a bitch, but he was gone. Reuben never was one to stick around and chat with the law. “I don't see anyone.”

“That big bastard that came after me when I should have killed your ass.”

Manny shrugged as he exaggerated looking around.

“Well at least get me some ice on my nuts.”

Manny grinned and turned to the paramedic. “You want to handle his nuts, Adriane?”

C
HAPTER
42

Stumper stood beside Manny, both men holding their hats, as Sam was lowered into the same hole Little Dave Night Tail had occupied the week before. Chenoa had insisted Dave be removed from the Star Dancer cemetery as he didn't possess the purity of Crow heritage. As the Star Dancers did. The American flag draped over the casket fluttered, revealing the eagle, globe, and anchor adorning the finest casket that Wilson could buy.

“Guess Cubby wasn't pure enough to be planted here,” Stumper whispered. “Guess that's why he's fertilizing the Lodge Grass cemetery.”

Manny watched Chenoa dab at her eyes that were as dry as the Badlands. “That, and he had brought shame to the Star Dancer name with his drug operation.”

Stumper fought down a chuckle. “Now if the journal ever went public, Chenoa would have a cow.”

Manny agreed. When Wilson had gone to his basement to gather what few things Sam brought with him when he hid out there, he brought out the journal stashed between two pairs of jeans.

“Believe me,” Stumper said, “I'm tempted to let that information leak to a newspaper.”

“Just be glad Jamie Hawk didn't know anything.”

Jamie stood beside Chenoa, glaring at attendees, daring anyone to bother Chenoa at Sam's funeral. Manny bent and whispered in Stumper's ear: “I'm glad Jamie was as dumb as he seemed to be and didn't know squat about Cubby and Degas's drug operation. I'd have hated to try handcuffing him.”

As if he could hear Manny, Jamie flexed his massive shoulders and stared at him.

Chenoa stood beside a tall man wearing a perfectly cut suit and black armband, his salt-and-pepper hair contrasting with his California tan. Chenoa's eyes darted between the casket and Wilson standing apart from the others as the sacred man completed the service. Chenoa led the attendees past the coffin, each tossing a handful of Star Dancer dirt on the casket. Chenoa's eyes met Manny's, a knowing look for a secret shared between them, and she tossed a worn and cracked brown leather book onto the casket as she passed, a moment of faded blue and yellow beading on the journal's front catching the sun before it disappeared with Sam.

The tall man hooked his arm in Chenoa's and they led the funeral goers to the food tables in front of the house.

Wilson stood staring at the hole in the ground, tears flowing, and he swiped at them with the back of his silk shirt. Manny rested his hand lightly on Wilson's shoulder. “In the end, he was there for you once more.”

Wilson looked to the hills to the west. “I should have insisted he get treatment when he rotated back to the world. If I had of . . .”

“If you had, he probably would have ended up just where he is now. It was his choice to drink.”

“But the things he saw when he entered those tunnels in 'Nam . . . he had no choice—he had to drink to forget.”

“He lived life as he chose,” Stumper added.

“And he chose to live in obscurity, protecting the Star Dancer name.”

Stumper chin-pointed at Chenoa disappearing around the house. “She knows you read the journal. She's waiting to counter the FBI's public statement about the lack of purity in the Star Dancer line leading to Sam's disappearance, and how it connects to Harlan's and Itchy's murders.”

“What journal?” The sound of dirt hitting the metal casket accompanied two men with shovels burying the journal—and the Star Dancer secret. Manny had been tempted to expose Chenoa. He suspected she had told Cubby that Wilson and he were flying to Pine Ridge that night, knowing Cubby was dirty, knowing he would tell Degas and be waiting for them. Manny suspected all these things, yet got only a wry smile when he questioned Chenoa. Now her world was all right, with her husband and brother in the ground along with the journal. Now all that was needed to mend the Star Dancer name was to explain how she knew nothing of the drug operation.

Manny patted Wilson's shoulder. “I take it that guy with Chenoa is her new squeeze?”

Wilson nodded. “Once Cubby was dead and buried, the thrill of the hunt was gone. She gave me the bum's rush.”

“That's Chenoa's style,” Stumper added. “That guy looking like he came out of
GQ
magazine is an assistant attorney general. But she'll dump him once that thrill wears off, too.”

“What's in store for me now?” Wilson asked.

Manny looked out into that pasture that Wilson had taken off and landed in so often. “I've sent my report to the U.S. Attorney, though I suspect he'll figure a murder that happened in 1968, with a suspect dead and buried, won't take up much of his time. I'd be more worried about the publicity.”

“You pulling out of the Senate race?” Stumper asked.

“I thought about it,” Wilson said, standing straight and smoothing his pleated slacks. “But I haven't quit anything yet. I'll tell the truth—that I knew nothing of my horse wrangler and Cubby running drugs. Let the public decide.”

“Well, you can decide on lunch.” Manny slapped Stumper and Wilson on the back. “I'm buying in Crow Agency.”

Wilson looked sideways at Manny. “Just as long as you don't drive us there.”