Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (11 page)

“Sure, they get their student loan forgiven and they hightail it off the rez.” Willie grabbed his can of Copenhagen and pinched another lip full. Some spilled on his shirtfront but he ignored it.

“It’s you the doctor will be seeing for lip or throat cancer.”

“Nothing worse than a born-again tobacco addict. But here’s the deal—these guys come here from the trendy parts of the country and the first look they get of Pine Ridge, they figure they’ve been beamed to some third world country. They equate what they’ve studied happens in those places and figure it’s the same here and presto! He’s got him a handy diagnosis. Malnutrition. Poisoning. Something he’s read about in med school, or seen in the Philippines or Kenya and presto! Morissa will be out the door with a brand-new prescription for something else that won’t help her. Presto! Next patient please.”

Manny bumped his hand against the chair and winced in pain. “So you think there’s no chance malnutrition or some type of neglect could be harming those kids? Something else that warrants a police investigation?”

“No way. Adelle runs a few cows, and always plants a big garden every spring. She’s a single mom and takes good enough care of her kids. There’s nothing we need to investigate.”

“Manny Tanno.”

The nurse moved aside to allow Adelle and Morissa to leave while she waited for Manny. Morissa’s sad eyes followed him as she passed, Adelle clutching a new prescription form. Manny held his hand and stumbled toward the exam room, dragging his injured leg like a Lakota Quasimodo. “We’ll see what kind of ER doc this guy is. In the meantime, get hold of Pee Pee. We need to go over those last two autopsies with him.”

Manny limped into the justice building, gauze wrapped tight around his leg, the cat gouges throbbing through the bandages. He thrust his hand inside his trouser pocket to conceal
his wrapped hand, but his pants were too tight and his fingers were the only part hidden from others.
Better hit the road and cut down on sweets or Clara will have my ass.

Willie keyed them through the door and Manny followed him down the hallway to Lumpy’s office.
CHIEF
had been painted in foot-tall letters across the top of the door, and Janet Grass sat close to Uncle Lumpy at the conference table. He ignored Manny, his attention on Pee Pee seated across from him. Pee Pee sported a fringed leather vest with the likeness of Elvis painted on the lapels, and a picture of Graceland embroidered across the back. He leaned backward, his chair legs off the floor as if accentuating the King’s throne.

“That’s some vest,” Manny said, hiding his hand while he stirred the pot. “Where’d you ever find it?”

Pee Pee winked at Manny. “Roadside stand across from Mother Butler’s in Rapid.”

“It original?”

“If it were it’d cost Pee Pee a month’s pay.” Lumpy turned sideways to Pee Pee, but he sneaked a look at the vest out of the corner of his eye.

Manny ran his hand over the vest. It folded under his touch with the supple toughness of elk hide. “Sure it’s not vintage?”

“Hell no,” Lumpy repeated.

“Oh chill out, boss.” Pee Pee lowered his chair. “You’re just mad ’cause they were sold out when you got there.”

“They said they never had any.”

“Well, they had this one. You just had to pour on the old charm, like I did, to get them to sell you one.”

“If I’d have been a little quicker, I’d have got the bid on one that came up on eBay.”

Pee Pee chuckled and popped a PEZ from his plastic Elvis into his mouth. He offered one to Manny. “The chief’s just mad ’cause someone else collects Elvis memorabilia.”

“Uncle Leon just collects the finer things.” Janet scooted
her chair close to Lumpy and draped her arm around his shoulder. “I can understand why he’s mad—everyone on the rez knows he’s a big Elvis fan.”

“Let’s just get on with this.” Lumpy slid a manila folder across the table. With his stubby arms and potbelly, he barely slid it far enough for Manny to grasp, and Willie got to it first. He turned his chair around and leaned across the table as he opened the folder.
Chairs never seem to fit Willie, even as thin as he’s become these last couple of months.

“Looks like that old Buick in the bombing range was owned by an Ellis Lawler. Who’s he?”

Janet smoothed her uniform shirt. “He was a geology professor from the School of Mines. The school had archival files that indicated he might have been cheating on his wife.”

“They keep records on stuff like that on professors?”

“Got you stumped there, Hotshot?” Lumpy leaned back and crossed his arms as he grinned at Manny. “We country Indians—mainly Janet—managed to dig that up.”

“His infidelity was only speculation,” Janet volunteered. “He failed to come home to his wife a week before Christmas in 1944. Lawler was a ladies’ man, from what the missing person report says. The investigator thought it too much of a coincidence that he’d leave right before Christmas, especially since he was known to have affairs with students.”

“This Lawler got relatives for DNA testing?”

Janet shrugged. “The Rapid City PD’s missing person report doesn’t list any.”

“But it did say he had a house where Dinosaur Park is now, if that helps.”

Lumpy tipped his head back and laughed. When no one else did, he looked around the room. “Tell me no one else finds this funny—the guy lived at Dinosaur Park and we dug him up in the land of the dinosaurs.”

“A real riot.” Manny took the file from Willie and thumbed
through the forensic autopsy report. “One of those guys found in that car was Indian.”

“And big.” Pee Pee popped a PEZ. “The anthropologist from USD said he was much bigger than the White dude.”

Lumpy snatched the report. “Where’s it say that?”

“Just read it,” Manny smiled. “We city Indians can.”

Lumpy scanned the report and tossed it back onto the table. “Doesn’t mention anything about size differential.”

“Sure it does.” Pee Pee turned slightly so that twin lapel Elvises faced Lumpy, the leather rippling and giving the impression that the King winked at him. Pee Pee spread the report on the table. “Says here, Doc Gruesome had a hard time matching one arm bone. They’d been scattered, but not by predators. Time and wind did their work. The damned Badlands weather. But some critter got inside the car at some point, and Doc said there were two large femurs but only one small leg bone. That critter I mentioned had a snack when he could have had a meal.”

“It’s still just an accidental death case.” Janet dabbed lip gloss on her finger and ran it across her lips as she eyed Willie. “As much as Uncle Leon would like you to be tied up with this, it’s still just a case of two guys driving into the Stronghold and getting knee-walking drunk, probably died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Old car like that was sure to have some exhaust leak.”

“The car was in gear,” Pee Pee added.

“So. That just tells us they were getting ready to pull out,” Lumpy said. “They had one last pull before the exhaust got to them. But we still got to identify the remains. We know Ellis Lawler owned that Buick. That should be easy enough to verify.”

“And the Indian?”

Lumpy shrugged. “If I were White, I’d say he was just another Indian went into the sticks to get loaded and never made
it out. Not much chance that any lawman back then would work very hard locating an Indian.”

“Sometimes, relations aren’t any better now.” Manny recalled Henry Lone Wolf’s scalding burns.

“How’s that?”

“Nothing.” Manny closed the folder. “We still got to try.”

“Janet’s already checked missing persons reports in Rapid,” Lumpy said. “She narrowed the year down to 1944. Ellis Lawler was the only one reported missing that year.”

“Now if we find out just who Lawler’s partner was in the car,” Willie said, “we’ll be a step closer to finding out what happened.”

They all turned to Janet, who continued buffing her nails. “I’m a jump ahead of you. I already poured over files in the tribal office from that time period. There were four Indians missing from the roles in 1945 that were listed in early 1944. Two of the four had been killed in the Pacific with the Third Marines, and another with the army in North Africa.”

“And the last one?”

Janet remained mute as she put her nail kit in her purse.

“Come on,” Lumpy said. “You got an idea who our croaker is, you tell us.”

Janet smiled, playing the room like a comedian about to deliver the much-anticipated punch line. “The only man not accounted for on the books is Moses Ten Bears.”

“Moses Ten Bears the painter?” Lumpy looked with disbelief at his niece.

“Moses Ten Bears the artist and—as Willie will point out—Oglala holy man.” She nodded to an oil painting hanging on Lumpy’s office wall. It was a mass-produced copy in subdued colors, and shared the wall with a copy of a Charles Russell print of a branding. Both looked as if Lumpy had liberated them from the Honeymoon Suite at the Motel 6.

“That’s one of Ten Bears’s paintings?” Pee Pee winked at Lumpy.

“You know it’s a reproduction.”

“I know,” Pee Pee smiled. “If it were an original it’d cost you a month’s pay.”

“More like a year’s.” Manny stood, his leg cramping from the bandages, and walked to the painting, standing in front of it as if it could speak to him. It did. “If my memory serves me, legend claims Moses Ten Bears disappeared someplace between his cabin on Cottonwood Creek and the Stronghold around Christmastime in 1944. Unc told me stories—or rumors of stories—that Moses must have slipped and fell off one of those steep cliffs while he hiked there to pray.”

“Folks figured that was the only explanation,” Willie said, joining Manny at the wall, “that he would ever leave his Victory Garden untended, what was left after the first snow. It’s said he gave away most of his garden to others during those years of World War II. Folks said the water was bad and his garden never produced much, but that he did the best he could to feed the hungry.”

“Was he artist or holy man?” Janet asked.

Willie tapped the picture with his finger. “He was both—he couldn’t have been such a spiritual inspiration without his artistic ability, and he couldn’t have such talent without
Wakan Tanka
guiding him.”

“He painted what he saw in his visions,” Lumpy said. “People would visit him, and he’d tell their future with his paintings.”

Manny eased himself back into the chair, hiding the wince of pain as his hand bumped the table. “Unc said people rarely took their paintings with them, once Moses showed them their vision he’d had of them, so frightening were they.”

“And most of the paintings were never found,” Pee Pee added, smoothing Elvis. “But you know the Badlands—it
would be impossible to find something there unless you got lucky.”

“About as lucky as Moses being in that Buick with Ellis Lawler all these years,” Lumpy said. “Moses got any relatives living around here?”

Willie frowned. “Just his grandson, Marshal Ten Bears.”

“That guy with the firewood business?”

Willie nodded and dropped in a chair across the table from Janet. “And he guides hunters during the season.”

“Then put the habeas grabeas on him.” Lumpy bent and flipped through the autopsy report. “I understand there’s enough DNA in bones to make a comparison. If we could get Marshal to submit a sample…”

“He won’t give us a sample.”

“Why the hell not?”

Willie stuffed Copenhagen in his lip and puffed out his cheek to Janet. “Marshal hates law enforcement.”

“Then why haven’t I heard of him before now?”

“He keeps a low profile. Keeps to himself.”

“And if you’d work the street now and again”—Manny stirred the pot even more—“you’d be able to listen to the moccasin telegraph and know who Marshal is.”

Janet popped her compact from her purse. “Shouldn’t be hard for an FBI agent to get a search warrant for his DNA.”

“You’ve been watching too much
CSI
,” Manny said. “Hard enough to get a judge to sign off on a recent case, let alone one older than most judges.”

Lumpy ignored him and turned to Willie. “Somebody’s got to interview Marshal and get consent for a sample. At least try.”

“Janet.” Willie turned to face her. “You being my gal Friday—or Tuesday morning now—why don’t you hunt up Marshal. Charm him into giving a sample.”

“Not me. I’m going to Rapid City this afternoon to go
over that missing person report on Ellis Lawler. Besides, J. C. Penney in the mall’s got a huge sale going on.”

“Then that leaves you or Hotshot there.” Lumpy smiled and hooked his thumbs somewhere behind his belt, under his overhang.

Willie sighed at Janet. “Then Manny and I draw the assignment. But we’ll miss your company.”

“Will you really?” She smiled at Willie, but Lumpy rescued him.

“You two line up a date later. Right now I want to know what you’ve found out about the first stiff—if you want to keep your investigator position.”

Willie’s face reddened but he kept quiet as he retrieved his notebook from his back pocket and flipped pages. Manny noted Willie didn’t read from his notes, but kept it open as a distraction. The kid was learning after all. “Alexander Hamilton High Elk reported Gunnar Janssen missing in the fall of 1969.”