Death Along the Spirit Road (43 page)

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Authors: C. M. Wendelboe

BOOK: Death Along the Spirit Road
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“Jack’s on the run. Armed himself last night.”
“There you have it.”
“But he didn’t kill Jason. Elizabeth did.”
Reuben sat slowly back on his stump and rubbed his leg. His limp arm hung by his side as his T-shirt continued to soak up blood. “How the hell could she kill him?”
“The same way she killed LaVonne for that finance officer position. Jason represented a major threat for her. He intended to embezzle the tribe’s money and go on the run, leave Erica to take the rap for it. I always thought that Jason had figured it out about Elizabeth setting up that car accident that killed LaVonne. That’s why Elizabeth couldn’t go to the police with the embezzlement information.”
“But she’ll be evaluated at the state hospital,” Reuben said. “You said they’ll find her incompetent when she attacked you both times.”
“Those times,” Manny answered. “And probably for LaVonne’s death as well.” As he looked at the gun, he wondered if his brother really was a sacred man now. Manny weighed his odds of solving Jason’s homicide while saving his, and Clara’s, life. “She won’t be held accountable for those times. But for Jason’s murder—that’s another story altogether. I’m certain I can find enough people she works with every day to testify that she was in a proper state of mind two weeks ago. I’m sure I can find enough people who will say she was quite sane at the time of Jason’s murder.”
“Then what?”
“Then the federal government will prosecute her to the fullest extent of their resources.”
“Hard time, like I did?”
“Harder time. Federal time.”
Reuben shook his head as he aimed the gun at Manny’s chest.
Then the
wicasa wakan
emerged, and the sacred man lowered the gun and handed it to Manny, butt first. “I can’t let you do this. Lizzy didn’t kill Jason. I did it.”
“I know.” Manny tucked the gun in his waistband. “Now we can jaw a little, while I look at that shoulder.” Manny cut Reuben’s shirt with his pocketknife and tore the fabric away from where the bullet had entered. “Hurt?”
“Naw,” Reuben flinched. “It feels just wonderful. I think the bullet broke the collarbone.”
The bullet had entered just below the clavicle and angled up. There was no exit wound, but heavy bleeding had saturated his shirt. Manny looked around for the roll of gauze Elizabeth had dropped earlier.
“When did you first suspect me?”
“When you stole Crazy George’s Buick.”
“Anyone could have stolen it.”
“But you live close, and we found cut-grass and sweetgrass in the car.”
“A lot of folks hereabouts use sweetgrass in their ceremonies.”
Manny started wrapping Reuben’s shoulder to stop the blood. “But cut-grass grows close to water. There’s a drought going on, in case you didn’t notice. Not much water in these parts, but you happen to have a little running creek in back of your place, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Then Lenny Little Boy told me that the morning after the murder you dragged onto the jobsite looking like hell—said you hadn’t slept all night.”
“You can’t convict me on coincidences.”
“No, I can’t.” Manny patted his pocket for his beloved smokes. “But I finally recognized the faint footprints we saw at the murder scene, footprints that looked like someone checked all around for witnesses. But you weren’t checking for witnesses. You were praying to the four directions just like the last time I stopped by. Your foot patterns were just like those at the murder scene, prints made by moccasins. Ones needing new leather ties, like you were making that first time Willie and I came to your house. Like maybe one got caught in Crazy George’s brake pedal and it broke off.”
Reuben sighed. He held his head in his hand before looking up at Manny. “Jason wasn’t one of us.” Reuben’s voice was calm now, grateful to get things off his chest. “But he was Lakota. He deserved whatever I could do for him. After I killed him, I performed a Sending Away ceremony. He’s wandering the Spirit Road now.”
“I know.” Manny thought of Jason’s
wanagi
visiting him in his vision. “Was it just the fact that he intended sacking the tribe’s funds that led you to kill him?”
Reuben forced a smile. “After so many years, the tribe finally had a project that could get them on their feet. Folks have always criticized me and my AIM involvement, but all we wanted was the best for the people. The Red Cloud Resort would have restored Oglala pride, padded their coffers, which they dearly need. Jason’s scheme would have left the tribe broke. Not to mention Erica holding the legal bag.”
“Put pressure on this.”
Reuben pressed the gauze into his shoulder.
“Elizabeth knew about the murder, didn’t she?”
Reuben nodded and looked past Manny as if he could see Elizabeth on the other side of the cabin. “We’ve always told each other everything. We met the evening after I killed Jason, and I told her what I’d done. She understood why I killed him. I should have realized she would have gone to hell and back to protect me, as well as Erica, if anyone figured it out.”
Manny had his murderer. But there was no satisfaction in his victory, no sense that his investigation had brought justice to Jason Red Cloud. All that remained was a hollowness that perhaps one last piece of information could fill. “I always figured there was more to you and Jason these many years. I thought you’d finally killed him because he was a rotten bastard all his life, ever since he hired Billy Two Moons to kill his folks. Then killed Two Moons himself.”
Reuben looked at his pipe thoughtfully, and tamped the embers against the ground. “You know about that?”
“You said you shot Two Moons six times. But that gun had only five spent cases. Jason didn’t know guns like you did. He would have heard the stories of old-timers accidentally shooting themselves because they loaded six in the old Colts. But you confessed to the murder. Was it because of Erica?”
Reuben nodded. “I was fingered for a dozen homicides in and around the rez back then. I was top suspect in that Oglala bombing that knocked out the justice building and took out the power station, and it was rumored I had a hand in Anna Mae’s murder. And others. Your FBI was closing in on me, and they were going to have my ass, guilty or not—which I was not in any of those.”
He continued: “Jason came to me the morning after he killed Billy Two Moons. He told me Two Moons had murdered his parents by cutting their brake lines. He said he found Two Moons outside Hill City and had killed him in a fit of rage, and he felt his parents’ accident would eventually be ruled a homicide. As sole heir, he was certain they would look to him first for a motive for the murder. He knew I was suspected in some killings myself, and it was just a matter of time before I was railroaded. Jason agreed to give Erica the best education possible, one I could never afford, in exchange for taking the rap for him. Lizzy didn’t like it, and she has despised Jason ever since. We agreed the best thing for Erica was me going away, so I confessed, and copped a plea to second-degree.”
“When did you find out Jason paid Two Moons to rig the accident, and didn’t kill him in a fit of rage as he stated?”
“In prison. Alex Jumping Bull ran right after Jason killed Two Moons, and kept low for the first year. He finally contacted Lizzy and told her about the deal between Jason and Two Moons. By then, I’d made my plea and started my sentence. It was too late for me.”
Manny looked at his brother, convinced he had changed in prison. He now believed he was looking at a genuine sacred man, but Manny was still perplexed how a holy man could murder someone. “You didn’t intend to kill Jason that night?”
“No.” Reuben pressed harder on the gauze to stop the bleeding. “I told Jason if he didn’t meet me there to talk I would go to the law, tell them about the embezzlement and about my false confession. Jason wasn’t a brave man, but he didn’t want to end up being someone’s wife or girlfriend in the slammer. So we met at Wounded Knee. I wanted him to return the tribe’s money, but he’d squandered it already. I told him nobody squanders thirty million bucks in such a short time, but he just laughed at me, said he did and there was absolutely nothing I could do to him. He said no one would believe an ex-con about the money or about Billy Two Moons’s murder.”
“And when he turned to leave, you killed him?”
“He made it to his truck. When he came out, he had a gun. Not a very big gun, but enough that he could have done me some damage. He said Alex Jumping Bull had threatened to expose him, and he had taken care of him, and I was the last witness to be silenced. He should have opened fire instead of opening his mouth, ’cause that gave me a chance to rush him. I slapped the gun away just as he got a round off.”
Reuben kicked the dirt with his toe. “It fell to the ground. He lunged for it and I grabbed the first thing that was handy—the war club that was sitting on the seat of his truck. But he got off one shot that caught me in the leg.” Reuben pulled up his shorts. A fresh gash had become infected around the makeshift stitches. “Ben Horsecreek helped me pry the slug out and dress the wound.”
“But the only identifiable prints on the club belonged to Ricky Bell.”
“Occupational bonus,” Reuben smiled, rubbing his calloused hands.
Manny nodded. “After wracking my brain, I finally found out why you wouldn’t be worried about your prints being matched up. I called the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls when I couldn’t locate a set of your prints to match with the war club. The latents lifted from Crazy George’s car were unidentifiable. The ID techs said there wasn’t enough identification points on either hand to type.”
Reuben rubbed his hands together. “I got hooked on pottery in stir. I always hoped that would help these hands heal some, but I guess a lifetime of working with brick and mortar keeps things like fingerprints rubbed away permanently. You know they even had me working stone in lockup.”
Manny nodded. “So the warden told me, until they ran out of projects and transferred you to the laundry room. That was another thing that took a while to sink in. He confirmed they have a distinct way of folding sheets and towels, a specific way that tucks the ends into the middle, just like that towel you handed me after the sweat. I didn’t recall much about that particular day, but I did remember that odd way you had folded your towel. The same way the star quilt was folded when it was returned to the Prairie Edge the morning after Jason’s murder.”
“I wasn’t counting on Jason having stolen artifacts. I had to return them. If I learned one thing studying with Ben, it’s that sacred things remain sacred, so I took them back and left them on the sidewalk in front of the Prairie Edge. That may have helped you catch me.”
Manny smiled. “I would have figured things out eventually,” he said. “It may have taken me longer, being boneheaded like I am, but I would have muddled through it.” He paused, the faint sound of sirens growing louder, and then walked back around the house. Three marked OST police cars came fast down Ben’s driveway. Willie’s turtle car was in the lead.
“Guess you have to take me in now,” Reuben said.
Manny stepped close and looked at Reuben closer than he had ever done before, seeing the man he once looked up to, now a holy man, a man who had killed in self-defense. And to save his daughter, his wife, and the tribe’s money. A man who had killed for honor.
Honor. Honor had forced Willie to keep Elizabeth from killing again. Honor set aside his feelings for his aunt and reinterviewed her. Honor forced Willie to do things that would keep Elizabeth locked away for life. Honor would get Willie through this. Honor would justify his betrayal of Elizabeth.
But what honor did Manny have after turning his back on his people, turning from the old ways, turning from being a Lakota to being just another city Sioux working for the
wasicu
? What honor would there be in becoming what he had always considered the enemy? Reuben was his
kola
, and Manny had sworn loyalty to his brother when he was still a child, had sworn to never betray Reuben. In that, there was honor left. And there was honor in seeing justice done.
“You’d get manslaughter, about twenty years for killing Jason. Not if you’d come clean right off, but now after you’ve covered things up. You’ve already spent twenty years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. Maybe we can both forget what you just told me.”
“But you’re an FBI. How can you forget it?”
“It won’t be easy. But it will be justice. I can’t say it was right to kill Jason, but it was self-defense. Nevertheless, a jury would hang you in a heartbeat with your record—and justice wouldn’t be done.”
The sirens grew louder. Police cars slid up to the cabin. “Besides, what’s a
kola
for, if not to protect?” Manny picked up his Glock from the ground and holstered it just as Willie ran around the corner of the house, his own gun drawn. “Wasn’t sure you’d still be kicking. We picked up Jack Little Boy about a mile from here.”
“He didn’t put up a fight?”
Willie smiled. “He tried shooting it out with that old Marlin that didn’t work. And he managed to fall down a couple times before Hollow Thunder led him to the pokey.”

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