Shallow Grave-J Collins 3 (10 page)

Chills went up my spine. “Did these hunters tell you right away what they’d found?”

“Yeah. Couldn’t believe a buncha rednecks who loved killin’ stuff would go ballistic ’bout an old pile of bones. Me and Lang rode up there on the four-wheelers.

Sure enough. Weren’t animal bones, but human bones.”

June shivered. “Weirded me out, if you wanna know the truth.”

“How long do you think the bones have been there?”

She signaled for me to toss over her pack of men-thol GPC smokes. “Couldn’t tell. Might’ve been a year, might’ve been a hunnerd.” She lit up. “We didn’t know what to do. While we was arguing, Uncle Charlie, Willie, Lindy, and Jeannie showed up to put their two cents in.

“Jeannie, Willie, Lindy, me, and Uncle Charlie 101

wanted to rebury them bones and forget we ever saw them. Don’t need no cops snoopin’ around on our land.

Plus, the bones was found in a section that we all but abandoned the last six years during the drought.”

I frowned. “What about Lang?”

“He was stubborn as a mule ’bout us callin’ the cops.” She fl icked an ash in a crumpled beer can. “His brother Clint went missing in Vietnam. Never found no trace of him. Lang thought he’d be easin’ some family’s mind, but we convinced him it’d be best to rebury them.

So that’s what we did.”

“If that’s the case, then how did the hole get there?”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “Th

at’s what I want to

know. At fi rst it hadn’t been dug very deep. Not like it was when Lang hit it.”

“Didn’t Lang help fi ll it in?”

She shook her head. “He couldn’t because of his back injury.”

What was the point of continuing the charade about Lang’s bogus workman’s comp claim? I glanced at Kevin.

He was frowning too.

A gust of wind rattled the windows so hard it stirred my hair. I shivered.

June disposed of the two empty beer cans next to the others. “Sure you don’t want one?”

I stubbed out my cigarette. “I’m good.”

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“Why didn’t you tell the sheriff about the bones when he was at the scene?” Kevin asked.

“I needed to get it straight in my head.” She wouldn’t look at either of us. Th

en she sighed wearily. “Th

at ain’t

true. Might sound stupid, but it pissed me off that Lang was dead. I told him not to get on that four-wheeler in his condition. Dumb son of a bitch wasn’t wearing his glasses, either.”

Th

at explained his erratic driving that day, and why he hadn’t seen us. “Where was Lang going?”

“Beer run over to my uncle’s place.”

“How far is that on the four-wheeler?”

“About twenty minutes. Less time to get to my brother’s place, but Jeff ’s wife don’t let Jeff drink with our family very much. Jeannie don’t let him do nothin’.”

“How far to your cousin’s place?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Do you know if Lang had been out there sometime in the last few weeks after the bones had been reburied?”

“No. He’d’ve told me.” Her chin wavered. “And he sure as hell would’ve avoided that hole if he’d known about it.”

I looked longingly at the beer.

“Do you know if anyone else—your family members—went back?”

She shrugged. “If they did they didn’t tell me.”

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Kevin said, “What about the hunters? You think they could’ve brought some buddies out to the site to show off their gruesome fi nd? Dug it up again to prove it?”

Evidently that scenario hadn’t occurred to her. “No, they packed up their guns and shit and lit out during our family argument. Don’t know what you’d fi nd out from them anyways. Damn out-of-staters probably didn’t even give us their real names. And they paid in cash so there ain’t no way to track ’em down.”

My patience was wearing as thin as her robe. “Somebody went back there, June. Who?”

Silence.

Kevin’s cell phone chirped. “Excuse me, I need to take this call.” He practically sprinted from the house.

Way to leave me with the surly widow, Kev.

June snagged another beer, hunched into the chair, and deeper into herself. She closed her eyes.

Great. Be just my luck if she passed out. “June?”

“I keep thinkin’ I’ll wake up and he’ll be layin’ beside me, fartin’ and snorin’ like usual.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “I’ll wake up soon and realize these last coupla days have just a bad dream.”

It’d take weeks for that surreal feeling to lessen.

Maybe months. But sharing my grief experiences wouldn’t help her, so I said nothing.

“I miss him. I’m sure you probably don’t under-104

stand why after seein’ him slap me. But it’s not what you think.”

My well of empathy was only so deep—and she’d run it bone dry. “No? Explain why it was any diff erent from all the other fucked up situations just like it, where a woman stays with a man who beats her?”

Her eyes fl ew open.

“Lang hit you. Wasn’t the fi rst time, wouldn’t have been the last.” No point in masking my frustration.

“Have you convinced yourself you deserved it? He’d been under stress. None of it was his fault, right?”

She didn’t interject objections. Fat tears dripped down her nose, reddened from booze and bawling.

I felt like a total shithead for berating a grieving woman. “Sorry. Look, Lang isn’t calling the shots any more. You are. You’re doing the right thing by going to the sheriff ’s offi

ce today.”

June looked away quickly.

What was she hiding? I counted to ten. “Isn’t that the reason I’m here? To hold your hand when you talk to the sheriff ? Or is there something else you aren’t telling me?”

“No. It’s jus’ . . . I been thinking. I was shitfaced and kinda jumped the gun when I called you.”

“How so?”

“It might be better to wait until after Lang’s funer-105

al before we go traipsing into the sheriff ’s department.

Th

at’s only two days. Havin’ all sorts of strangers out there diggin’ around for them missing bones . . . that ain’t what I want people gossiping about on a day I’m buryin’ my husband. Be an insult to Lang’s memory, that some old bones were more important than givin’

him a proper send off .”

For once, she made sense. And honestly, I’d agree to anything just to get the hell out of there. My senses were overloaded with too many hideous colors, too many rank odors, too many stacks of junk, too much misery. “Fine.

But if I fi nd out you’re putting off this trip for another reason, you’re on your own. I won’t help you where the sheriff ’s concerned.”

Her lower lip stuck out in a childish pout. “You ain’t as nice as I thought you were.”

“And I’m not as stupid either. Keep in touch.”

Kevin slouched against the truckbox on the passenger side. He wasn’t even pretending to talk on the phone. “Sorry.

I’d had enough. What are we even doing out here?”

“Hell if I know. Let’s go.”

We hit the Westside McDonald’s drive-thru when we returned to Rapid City, and congregated in the conference room with our double cheeseburger specials.

Kevin said, “What is your reaction about the bones the Everetts found?”

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“Gut feeling? Th

ose bones are part of an Indian

burial ground.”

“Why?”

“Because someone came back and dug a bigger hole.

I’m betting they uncovered more than just bones. Maybe Sioux funeral objects. Th

ose kind of artifacts bring huge

cash on the black market.” And were illegal for anyone besides museums and tribes to possess.

Artifact.

Crap. “Hang on a second.” I chewed a fry as I rummaged in the right pocket of my jacket and unwound the braided rope I’d stumbled over the day Lang had died.

I set in on the table. “With everything else that’s happened, I totally forgotten I found this.”

Kevin’s index fi nger traced the rope, down to the beads. “What do you think it is?”

“Not sure. But it’s not faded, so it was buried with whatever else was in that hole.”

“We have to turn this and the information about those bones into the sheriff ’s department.” He looked at me sternly. “You know that, right?”

I nodded.

In the last case I’d worked on, I’d made a judgment call Kevin hadn’t agreed with. Since my involvement with Martinez, Kevin erred on the side of vigilance when it came to trusting me.

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Did it piss me off ? A little. But his suspicions were entirely justifi ed, especially when that line between right and wrong wasn’t so obvious to me.

“Can we wait, though?”

Th

ere was that suspicious look again. “Why?”

“Lang’s funeral will be over soon. It’s traumatic enough for June that she’s burying him, without the added stress of having people digging around where he died.”

“Okay. But we don’t wait beyond that.”

“I agree. But, thanks.” I fi ngered the rope. “Besides, another day or so will give me time to contact a guy I know who works for an agency affi

liated with the

Native American Grave Reparation Act. I’ll call him and see if he can tell me anything about this.”

Kevin frowned. “Who’s your contact?”

“Ben’s friend, Darrell Pretty Horses. Remember him?”

“Vaguely. Where does he live?”

“Last I knew he divided his time between the state tribal offi

ces in White Plain and the national offi

ces in

DC.”

Sadness punched my gut like a steel spike on a railroad tie. I hadn’t spoken to Darrell since Ben’s memorial service, a Lakota tradition that marked a year since a loved one’s passing. At that time, the deceased’s earthly possessions are dispersed.

Th

e ugly incident still made my cheeks burn with 108

shame. Ben’s sister, Leticia, had barred me from the ceremony. Darrell had been the only one to stand up for me.

I hadn’t wanted to make a scene, because the day was supposed to be about Ben. I sure as hell hadn’t wanted one of his high school cross country trophies as a memento of his life. But as I’d huddled alone in the corner of the community center, two things had become abundantly clear. One: the Standing Elk family had no intention of giving me anything. Two: Th e only

tangible remembrance I’d cared about—the necklace I’d given Ben—wasn’t up for grabs. Nor was the other necklace, the old one Ben hadn’t taken off in more than twenty years.

I fi ngered the braided rope and was immediately thrust back in time, to a sweltering summer night as Ben and I stargazed in the back of Ben’s piece of junk pickup, sharing dreams and telling stories. Somehow we’d seg-ued into the subject of inheritances and family heirlooms and I’d asked about his necklace.

Th

e Sioux are incredible oral storytellers. So as Ben detailed how the necklace had ended up in his possession, chills raced up my spine. Th

e story haunts me to

this day.

Ben had befriended a lonely old man, a Lakota elder named Mida, who’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. During Ben’s frequent visits, Mida told Ben stories.

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Some traditional, some personal remembrances of his life. Th

e most fascinating tale involved Mida’s necklace, given to Mida by an old Lakota medicine woman, a sur-vivor of the 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee. She swore wearing the necklace had spared her life, but warned it only wielded power on the living. If the necklace wasn’t handed to a living soul before the wearer passed on, it would lose its protective power. Mida also insisted the necklace had saved his life during World War II.

Sadly, Mida’s condition worsened. Because Mida couldn’t count on his family to visit him before he journeyed to the Great Spirit, Mida had given Ben the necklace.

Ben had been torn: to refuse the gift was an insult; to take it meant denying the eldest male in Mida’s family the right of ownership. But Mida insisted the
necklace
had chosen Ben as the next recipient, not Mida.

At the time, Ben hadn’t believed in the mumbo jumbo about his Lakota Sioux spiritual heritage, but he said the minute the braided leather and horsehair necklace, decorated with ancient bones, beads, and animal teeth had circled his neck, he’d known it contained mystical properties.

Mida died the next day.

Ben had waited for angry family members to demand the valuable family heirloom be returned. But no 110

one even noticed it was gone.

It bothered Ben that Mida’s family had been so self-absorbed they hadn’t realized the talisman, which hadn’t left the old man’s mortal fl esh for seventy-eight years, had disappeared.

Right then Ben had vowed never to take off the necklace until it was his turn to pass it on.

Had history repeated itself with the Standing Elk family? Th

ey’d had no idea what the necklace had meant to Ben? Th

e missing heirloom bothered me too, because I knew Ben hadn’t been buried in it. For the hundredth time, I wondered what’d happened to it.

I hated to imagine the necklace had been cut along with his throat. Were the beads and bones tumbling around in the bottom of Bear Butte Creek? Or had Ben’s killer taken it as some kind of sick trophy?

Kevin interrupted my musings. “Hey, now I remember that name. Isn’t Darrell the guy who popped your cherry?”

I managed a small grin. “One and the same.”

“Didn’t Ben beat the hell out of him when he learned his buddy had defl owered his baby sis?”

“Yeah, but once the blood dried, they got over it.

I’ve been meaning to call him anyway to tell him about Abita and Jericho.”

“Anything new with that situation?”

111

“No. She called last night. When I mentioned contacting Ben’s family, she changed the subject.”

“Why is that?” Kevin asked around a mouthful of apple pie. “Seems weird.”

“Yeah. Part of me wants to keep Jericho a secret from them. Seems I’m well versed in keeping a dirty little secret. Or should I say, in
being
a dirty little secret.”