Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (43 page)

“Put it on,” she ordered.

The nurse and attending physician left, and came back in a few moments. Manny could never figure out why they left the room if they were going to see you naked eventually anyway. The old nurse had it right after all.

The doctor motioned for Manny to sit on a butt-cold steel examination table that sent goose bumps up his leg and into the cat scratches. The doctor pulled up Manny’s gown and peeled away the bandage. He handed Manny a prescription, one for the antibiotics, and one for balm to apply to his split lips. “I’ll have the nurse clean up and dress the wound. Again. And that shoulder.” He started out the door when Manny stopped him.

“How many cases of radiation poisoning have you seen here this last year?”

The doctor stopped, and Manny was unsure if he’d heard him. “What makes you think there are more than Frederick and Adelle Friend of All’s kids?” he said over his shoulder.

“The cattle in that part of the reservation have always
been sickly. But more so. Their hide is pale, and blotchy from losing their hair. Like Morissa’s that falls out in clumps. Like Frederick’s did by just lying on his bed. And the cows abort their calves far more than healthy ones do. All the symptoms of radiation poisoning.”

“You’ve had experience with radiation?”

“In the army. Required study in the European theater when I was in Germany. How many cases?” Manny pressed. “Surely you care enough about the number of cases, even if you’re not from here. How long you got before your obligation’s met?”

“Next week.”

“Then where to? Beverly Hills? Upstate New York? Atlanta? Maybe the Mayo Clinic? Someplace far enough away from the reservation that you’ll forget?”

The physician turned and walked back to the examination table. “What do you want me to do, violate my oath?”

“I want you to be a healer. I want you to care, and oath be dammed. There’s problems here with radiation sickness, and I need your honest assessment.”

The doctor rolled a chair beside the examination table and sat in front of Manny. “Look, Agent Tanno, this is none of my business…”

“How many?”

He sighed in resignation. “Far too many to be a coincidence. I suspect there’s radiation poisoning coming from the Cheyenne River.”

“Will you tell that to the EPA?”

The doctor hesitated and broke eye contact. “Only if it doesn’t delay leaving Pine Ridge.”

Willie sat across the conference room table and shook his head. “The hospital will let us know when Marshal’s able to talk.” He sat in a clean shirt and pressed jeans for the first time in months. A piece of tissue clung to his cheek from a recent shaving cut.

“Then we’ll have to do old-fashioned police work, Hotshot.” Lumpy fingered the Cuban with the pink and white Elvis cigar band. Pee Pee leaned over with his lighter, but Lumpy jerked it away. “This is the only one I got, you know that. I’m not going to let it go up in smoke.”

“If you look hard enough you might find some more for sale. Sometime.” Pee Pee lit his cigar and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling fan, swirling the smoke around as if to taunt Lumpy. “Now I see why the King loved these.”

“Damn it, Pee Pee! How the hell did you outbid me? I assigned you to give Manny a lift home at the time the auction closed.”

Pee Pee flashed a single-toothy smile, giving appropriate
meaning to the term
toothbrush
. “Wi-Fi. I made a winning bid on these cigars while we were on the road to Rapid. And a good price, too, or I wouldn’t have been able to give you one out of the pure goodness of my old heart.”

Lumpy swiveled his seat and faced Manny. “Let’s get back to this cockamamie theory you have about Marshal and Joe Dozi and Micah all being connected to the bombing range skeletons.”

Manny motioned to the Ten Bears print hanging on the wall. “I think that’s Moses’s vision of where the bad rocks live.”

Lumpy laughed. “And did you find that place while you were doing your camping excursion?”

“Not even close,” Janet volunteered. She scooted close to Lumpy.

Manny ignored her. “I think Moses knew that place was dangerous. And it had everything to do with the legend. I think he knew those rocks were radioactive.”

“Uranium?”

Willie leaned across the table. “Not so far-fetched. There’s been uranium mining around Edgemont for decades. And the northern Black Hills have uranium mining up the wazoo. Along with the medical problems that accompany it.”

Manny walked to the picture and tapped the painting. “Look at these cattle—scraggly bleached hides. Sickly. Like we saw at that watering hole. I think we were close to finding that place. And the judge.”

Lumpy joined Manny in front of the wall. “I’m not ruling him out, but you got to convince me better than that. We country Indians are real simple, so overwhelm me with your proof.”

“Start with Moses Ten Bears, whom we now know was in that car with Ellis Lawler, geology professor at the School of Mines. Finding a uranium deposit in the Badlands could have meant millions, even back then.”

Lumpy let Elvis’s arm wrap around him as he dropped into the chair. “You figure they went there to verify their findings, and just happened to be killed in a practice bombing run? And twenty-five years later Gunnar Janssen just happened to get shot in that same car?”

“Or killed and stuffed in that old Buick.”

“That’d be a coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“I don’t either.”

“Then what the hell are you saying?” Lumpy rolled the cigar between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to smash Elvis’s picture.

“Judge High Elk ruled against mining in that part of the Badlands six times during his tenure as federal judge,” Willie volunteered. He slid an open file folder across the table. Janet reached for the folder, and her hand brushed Willie’s. He jerked it back. “Now either he ruled that way because it was in the best interest of the tribe, or else he knows there’s uranium there. And plans to cash in on it himself.”

Lumpy scanned the file and closed it. “That still doesn’t prove he’s anything but a person of interest.”

“He might have been the last to see Gunnar alive before he disappeared in his college days.” The tissue paper dropped onto the table and Willie trashed it. “And he was the last to see Marshal.”

“And,” Manny added, “it would take someone like the judge to drop Joe Dozi’s guard. As we figured before, he wouldn’t have been an easy man to kill.”

Lumpy stood, looking down at Willie and shaking his head as a father does as he scolds his errant child. “You got a lot to learn. If you keep your job long enough. We don’t know that Judge High Elk was even in that part of the Stronghold where you found Marshal, let alone know for certain they both set out together.”

“How about Benny Black Fox spotting the judge’s Suburban racing away from the Stronghold yesterday?” Janet said, making eye contact with Willie as if to convey that she agreed with him. “Maybe the judge had planned for Sonja to pick him up at the south end of the Stronghold unit.”

Lumpy laughed. “We know Sophie’s car’s been in repairs in Gordon, just like she said. And we found the judge’s Suburban at her house yesterday, after Benny Black Fox said he spotted it. But the judge didn’t arrive with her. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll interview the judge when we find him, but we’re not actively looking for him. I called the surveillance off Sophie’s house this morning.”

“You did what?” Manny leaned across the table so quickly Lumpy scooted Elvis back. He groaned when he hit the wall. “The judge is missing in action. Even if he’s not a suspect—which I’m still not ruling out—he may know something he’s not telling us. The very least we can do is clear his name if he doesn’t have anything to hide, before the confirmation hearings next week. And”—Manny pointed his finger at Lumpy—“the judge may be the next victim if he’s not the killer.”

Lumpy held his hands up in surrender. “All right. I’ll put the BOLO back out for the judge. But not because he’s a suspect, but just for a welfare check. Make sure he’s all right.”

“We can do better than that, Lumpy.” Lumpy’s face reddened but he remained silent. “I’ve got some more questions for Sonja Myers, like if the judge has met with her since Marshal’s shooting. I’ll send an agent there to talk with her again. We may luck out and find the judge at Sonja’s. A man snuggling next to her in a teddy might not want to leave, huh?”

Lumpy’s face flushed more, the veins throbbing across his forehead. Manny had scored another direct hit with Lumpy, one of many walking wounded left in the wake of the passing Sonja Myers. He changed the subject, turning to Pee Pee sucking
on an Elvis PEZ. “You get ballistics back on Micah Crowder yet?”

“This morning.” Sucking. “FBI made a positive ID on Joe Dozi’s gun.” Sucking. “Guess that leaves the judge off the hook for Micah’s murder.”

“Not yet.” Janet stood, pacing. “He might have borrowed Dozi’s gun. Or, as tight as Dozi and the judge were, the judge might know all about Micah’s murder, right?”

Lumpy turned to Janet. “That bothers me more than a little, and it’s the one thing that would explain why the judge might still be a suspect. A man with a Supreme Court nomination might do most anything to succeed in that appointment. Even covering up a homicide by his best friend.” He leaned across the table at Manny. “All right, we look for the judge as a person of interest, both for knowledge of Micah’s murder and for Marshal’s shooting.”

“And for knowledge he might have about Gunnar’s death?”

“All right. We’ll look for the judge. What else you want from us?”

“I want Willie to camp out in Marshal’s room at Rapid City Regional until he regains consciousness. He’ll tell us if the judge shot him or not.”

“I’ll tag along.” Janet checked her mascara in her compact mirror and dropped it into her purse. “Willie might need help. He’ll need company for sure. Bathroom breaks.”

“You got other things to do”—Manny smiled—“If it’s okay with Uncle Leon.”

Lumpy nodded.

“What other things? Sit in some musty basement reading old newspapers?”

“Close.” Manny forced down a smile. “I need you to go to Ellsworth Air Base. One of the agents in the Rapid City Field Office has contacts there that’ll grease the wheels for you. That and your natural charm.”

Janet shook her head. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I need you to find out everything you can about Senator Clayton Charles’s association with the Air Corps training base during World War II.”

“That’s stretching it a bit, Hotshot.”

Manny shook his head. “Moses and Ellis Lawler just didn’t happen to drive into the bombing range by accident. And if they were passing a jar, they’d have picked a safer place than that. My guess is that Senator Charles knew about the uranium possibilities.”

“What the hell’s that got to do with the judge?”

“If his grandfather knew about uranium there, and arranged for the only two witnesses to be silenced…”

“And if Judge High Elk knew this, he’d know it would come out in the Senate hearings.” Lumpy nodded.

“Those sharks digging up dirt on Judge High Elk would find it out. That’s why it’s important, Janet.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least when I’m done there I could keep Willie company at the hospital.”

“Just keep the romance down,” Manny said.

“And what will you be doing? Romancing your lady?”

“I’ll be romancing some lady.” Manny left out it just wouldn’t be Clara.

Manny adjusted the spotting scope clamped to the driver’s side window of Willie’s truck. He’d parked far enough from Sophie’s house that he was certain he couldn’t be spotted. Willie’s truck had no air-conditioning, and Manny dabbed at the sweat running into his eyes with a bandanna.

But at least the truck had a tape player, and Manny adjusted the volume so the heavy tuba and accordion of the Six Fat Dutchmen sent shudders between his eardrums. It had been two hours since Willie called and said he and Manny’s agent were on their way to talk with Sonja.

“I owe you,” Willie had whispered over the phone, as if Lumpy was there with him in the hospital room. “Don’t know how you pulled it off.”