Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (12 page)

“High Elk the Supreme Court nominee?”

Willie nodded. “And there’s more. Gunnar and the judge were arrested just a week before Gunnar disappeared.”

“I’ll have someone interview the judge in Washington,” Manny said. “I imagine he’s there preparing for the confirmation hearings.”

“You’re in luck, Hotshot.” Lumpy grinned through a full set of perfect choppers. “He’s taking a leave of absence from the bench in Sioux Falls. He’s in Rapid City today giving a talk to the Rapid City Bar Association. You can catch him there and interview him after the presentation. A high profile case like this might shoot you back to Quantico—leave us yokels without the benefit of the Great Manny Tanno. Somehow, we’d survive. Maybe Janet should interview the judge after all.”

Manny held his hands up and his injured one throbbed in
the movement. “Suit yourself, Lieutenant. But you want your niece eaten alive by some federal judge—or worse, make a mistake in interviewing that will come back to haunt this agency—then be my guest, have Janet talk with the judge. Just let us know what he says when you get through recovering from the ass chewing he’s bound to give you for sending a rookie.”

“Wait a minute you chauvinistic…”

Lumpy stopped her. “This one time, he’s right. Besides, you’re going to be tied up looking into that missing person report between mall shopping. Go right ahead, Hotshot, interview the judge till he makes you bleed.”

Lumpy left Manny gathering the autopsy reports on all three bodies, and he stuffed them in the manila folder. As he started out of Lumpy’s office, the Ten Bears painting drew him close as if it had powers that wouldn’t let him leave. The muted colors shimmered yellows and grays and tans, bouncing off Badlands spires and undercut erosions and Devil’s Corkscrews rising higher than anything else in the picture.

Off to one side, crows fed on a dead and bloated coyote while scraggly cows looked on, their ribs poking through their mangy hides. Manny pinched his nostrils shut, but the stench crept through, the odor overwhelming him, along with the maggots crawling from the coyote’s nostrils, ears, eyes. Amid the sounds of the crows pecking on carrion, and of maggots consuming flesh, the waves of heat put off by the insects rose in rippling waves against the already intense Badlands scorching heat. Manny swayed on precarious legs. His hand shot out to the wall to steady himself. He jammed his hand and the pain brought him back to the land of the living.

He looked around. He was still alone in the room. Sweat dripped from his face and forehead, and he wiped it out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He stared back at the painting, now just a cheap imitation with none of the sounds or smells
or sights he’d just experienced. Had he had a vision of sorts, or was Moses telling him something?
No wonder people didn’t want to keep their paintings.
But somewhere deep in the recesses of Manny’s mind, in that special file reserved for “Things Needing an Explanation,” he knew Moses had had a purpose for such a vision painted on canvas seventy-five years ago.

Manny hobbled to a tree stump opposite Reuben’s lawn chair and dropped onto it. A piece of bark cut into his butt and he picked it away. “I should have let you doctor me. My leg and hand feel like crap.”

Reuben shook his head. “I’m a sacred man—not a medicine man. I can treat Indian sickness, but I can’t doctor this. But that’s all right,
kola
. What’s the worst that can happen—these cat scratches get infected to the point where you get blood poisoning. Or worse.”

“I didn’t come here to be lectured about getting to the hospital sooner.”

“Then why did you come,
misun
? Just to be close to your big brother?”

Manny patted his shirt pocket for cigarettes that would have been there three months ago. Before he quit. Whenever his stress level was under siege, he needed one badly. Like now. His stress level was always under siege whenever he visited with his brother the felon. “I need some information.”

“That’s usually why you come around. What is it this time?”

Manny grabbed a soda from a cooler sitting on the ground between the tree stump and the lawn chair Reuben sat in. Manny handed him a Diet Coke, dripping with water, but Reuben waved him away.

“I don’t want any of that diet stuff.” Reuben’s shorts bound up his crotch and he pulled them down for comfort. “When I journey to the Spirit World, I want the Old Ones to know I went out in style.”

Manny nodded to Reuben’s shorts. “Some style.” He kept the Diet Coke for himself and handed Reuben a full lead version. He shook off the water and popped the top. It fizzed over onto his hand and he flicked the cola droplets into the dirt where they made tiny mud balls when they hit.

“Must be something important for you to come limping way out here.”

Manny rubbed his leg, feeling the itch, and he struggled to ignore it. “We found three bodies in the Stronghold District where the Air Corps had their bombing range during World War II.”

Reuben laughed. “I’m surprised that you found only three. That’s some rugged terrain up thataway. More than a few corpses have been tossed over the edge or left to the mercy of the coyotes and mountain lions.”

“Personal knowledge?”

Reuben’s face reddened. “You know better than that shit.”

Manny nodded. “I do. Old habits die hard, or some philosophical crap like that. Sorry.”

“None taken,” he replied, though Manny knew Reuben had taken offense. When Manny was working the Jason Red Cloud homicide on Pine Ridge two months ago, he’d accused Reuben of knowing where so many dead and missing bodies could be found on the reservation.

“You were an AIM enforcer back then,” Manny had blurted out one day when the investigation had stalled.

“I never killed anyone like your FBI said I did.”

“Bullshit. The kids in school had you pegged…”

“The kids you went to school with got their rumors from their parents, who got them from Wilson’s goons. I never murdered anyone.”

“You murdered one.”

Reuben had turned away then, but Manny pressed his point. “You confessed to killing Billy Two Moons. Shot him to death in his car outside Hill City. Spent twenty-five years in the state pen for it. Don’t tell me you never murdered anyone.”

“I tell you, I never murdered anyone!”

And before Manny’s assignment was finished, he learned he’d been wrong about Reuben in so many ways. Manny dropped his head.” I didn’t mean…”

“Of course not.” Reuben waved the comment away as he eased back in the lawn chair, his butt poking through missing plastic slats, sipping his soda. Reuben—with his love for Manny—had a way of deepening the guilt Manny had felt for so long, making it harder to deal with his feelings. For most of his life, Manny had fought against having any kind of relationship with his brother. And it had been an easy fight, with Manny representing every federal lawman and Reuben representing what every AIM member could achieve if they committed the right crimes. Now as Manny feebly played catch-up, he knew he’d missed Reuben’s love for these many years. And that had hurt them both.

Reuben licked the side of the soda can. “These bodies—anyone we know?”

Manny shrugged. “We think one is a Spearfish college student who went missing in 1969.”

Reuben whistled between teeth that shone bright and unblemished,
remarkable considering what he had been through in life. “How you going to solve a case that old?”

“Oh, it gets better. There were two others that we unearthed buried in dirt underneath the student. We think they died in that car during a bombing practice run as most of the windows were blown out, and it appears as if one of the victims died by a piece of windshield sticking into his chest. He may have been Moses Ten Bears.”

Reuben became silent and his head dropped onto his chest. Manny remained quiet, unsure if Reuben prayed to God of the Christians or to
Wakan Tanka
of the Lakota. “That would shoot down that old theory of Moses falling off some steep cliff as he prayed,” Reuben said at last. “You certain it was Moses Ten Bears?”

“Reasonably.” Manny wiped the sweat from his face and neck and pocketed his handkerchief. “We’ll know for certain when we get a DNA sample from his grandson.”

“If that was Moses Ten Bears in that car, I’ve got to send him off to the Spirit World properly.”

“Willie already did that.”

Reuben nodded his approval. “I appreciate you coming here to tell me. Being a
wicasa wakan
I’ve always felt a strong connection to other sacred men, particularly Moses.”

“That’s why I came here, to ask your help.”

Reuben smiled. “I knew it, little brother. But shoot—what you need help with?”

Manny stood and stretched his leg, as he massaged his hand. “That part of the bombing range they were found at is pretty inaccessible. It takes a four-wheel drive or a car a person doesn’t care if they beat to hell to get down there, but a person can get there. Is there another way down to the Stronghold?”

Reuben stood and reached inside a leather portfolio. He came out with a Bureau of Land Management map and spread it on the ground, weighting the corners with rocks.

“You always have maps handy.”

Reuben knelt beside the map. “This shows where Old Ones gathered herbs.”

“For what?”

Reuben shook his head. “Maybe if I hadn’t driven you away from tradition you would have remembered.”

“You didn’t drive me away from anything.”

“Didn’t I?” Reuben’s eyes softened as he sat on the ground in front of the map and looked up at Manny. “If I hadn’t been such an outlaw back in the day, you wouldn’t have felt you had to leave. I know you were ashamed of me and…”

“Nonsense.” But Reuben was right. When Manny was growing up on Pine Ridge, the turmoil between the American Indian Movement militants and Chairman Dick Wilson’s Guardians of the Oglala Nation was bolstered by the people’s mistrust of federal law enforcement, particularly the FBI. Reuben had been on the forefront of AIM violence, enforcing their strict code of adhering to traditional ways, of keeping one’s mouth closed to any lawman asking questions.

Uncle Marion had discouraged Manny from idolizing his older brother, discouraged him from even seeing him. But Manny always managed to sneak out and meet with Reuben, sitting for hours outside Billy Mills Hall with other schoolkids, listening to Reuben regale them with AIM’s interpretation of the Good Red Road. The Red Road, where a man took back, with violence if necessary, that which the government has taken. At least that’s what Reuben espoused. And that’s what Manny thought until Reuben was sentenced for the Billy Two Moons murder. Then the Red Road became the Black Road and Manny had to find another way to travel his own Red Road of truth and honesty and courage in his life.

Manny felt his temples pounding and he put the cold can of soda against his head to fight the rising headache. Manny always felt he left the reservation for the FBI in Washington,
D.C., because it offered so many more opportunities for a Lakota. Since he’d returned to working Pine Ridge cases, and talking with the brother who had walked his own Red Road on the other side of the line, doubts had crept into Manny’s logic. He had come to realize those opportunities weren’t for the Lakota but for Manny Tanno himself. “Do we always need to have this conversation every time I come here?”

Reuben held up his hand. “You’re right. Just pointing out that many Lakota gather herbs for ceremonies there. But let’s get back to that other route you wanted to know about.” He pointed to the south end of the Stronghold Unit. “Take Route 2 out of the White River Visitor’s Center about twelve miles, past the Cuny Café about a mile.” Reuben ran his finger over the route. Manny put on his reading glasses and squinted against the bright sun.

“If you park on top of Battle Creek Canyon you can look to the northeast and see the Stronghold Table. Down the south side of the table is a trail that will get you to Cottonwood Creek. It’s easy to find Moses’s cabin from there.”

Manny brought the map closer and studied the route. “Looks like it would be a pretty healthy walk.”

“It is. Believe me.” Reuben patted his stomach, which, Manny noticed, had not grown much over the years, and his brother had remained a trim 240 with just a hint of the Lakota paunch. “It takes a damned mountain goat to get down there even with horses. Why?”

Manny opened a manila envelope and took out a map hand drawn on stained parchment. “On loan from the Heritage Committee. Shows how things looked back during the time the government seized the Stronghold for the bombing range.” Manny laid the map next to Reuben’s. “See how things have changed there since that time. If this were the 1940s, it would be near impossible to get to those cars the way we went.”

Reuben turned the map a quarter turn and nodded. “A person would have had to take the Battle Creek Canyon trail. That’d take someone who knew the area well.”

Manny agreed. “Then it looks like I have to take a hike down that way.” He dreaded the hike ahead. He could still walk down a deer in winter, but Manny knew it would be hard descending that trail. But it might give him a better understanding of who might have trekked into the Stronghold during the time the bombing range was in operation. And right now, he had little else to go on.