Read Death Along the Spirit Road Online
Authors: C. M. Wendelboe
Death Along the Spirit Road (30 page)
There was no convincing Niles that he wasn’t womanizing, so Manny promised to be at the academy when the next session began. When Manny hung up, he wasn’t so sure he would. And Niles never even asked him how he was doing after being attacked. He had little time to be pissed at the Pile when his phone rang again.
“The auditor finished and I need to go through Jason’s things,” Clara said. “Would you like to meet me here and we can go over his report?”
Did Manny detect something more than business in her voice? “Sure.” At least he hoped he did. “I’m doing no good here today. I’ll meet you there in two hours.”
Manny bounded up the stairs at the Red Cloud Development Building. At the first landing, he doubled over from the pain in his ribs. When he caught his wind, he continued up as he held his side.
“Ms. Downing is expecting you. Please go in.” Manny detected some hostility in Emily’s tone, probably because Clara had chewed her out for not relaying his messages all week. She put her headset on and resumed typing without looking up.
Manny reached for his comb as he walked to Clara’s office, formerly Jason’s, then realized he didn’t have enough hair to comb and left it in his pants pocket. He paused at the door long enough to pop a piece of gum in his mouth before he swung the huge old door open.
Clara sat in Jason’s chair pouring over papers scattered across the desktop. She smiled and dropped her glasses. They dangled from a silver chain around her neck, and rested in brimming cleavage. Manny averted his eyes and concentrated on the green business suit and black pumps that illustrated her professionalism.
“I’m glad you could make it.”
“How could I refuse?” They fidgeted as they eyed each other. “You said you had something to show me.”
“Of course.” She shuffled through papers on a corner of the desk. “I found where Jason has been mailing checks to a Clifford Coyote at a Pine Ridge post office box.”
“How much?”
“Two thousand dollars. Every month since 1976.”
Manny couldn’t recall Clifford Coyote ever coming up during the investigation or in his memory, and few people on the reservation actually had post office boxes. Most received their mail General Delivery. “Who’s Clifford Coyote, and why the monthly checks?”
Clara shrugged. “Don’t know. Jason didn’t confide in me where he spent his money. With him, it could have been anything.” Manny made a mental note to call Willie and have him check on that post office box, and to see if the post office had a residential address for Coyote.
“You said there was more.”
“There is.” She put her glasses on and walked around to the back of the desk. She shuffled through papers and snatched one from the pile. She handed it to him and leaned closer, and her perfume distracted him. The receipt marked BUSINESS VOYAGES showed that two weekends before Jason died he had booked a round-trip flight to Minneapolis on the charter service based in Rapid City.
“But you said he often traveled on business.”
“He did.” She walked around to sit on the edge of the desk next to Manny. “But he never flew. This trip must have been so important he sucked it up—or it wasn’t Jason who flew that day. I also found this.” She handed Manny a note ripped from a spiral notebook. It was written in clear, neat letters, threatening to expose Jason if he didn’t resume payments. The note was signed “Alex.”
“Tell me you know something about this Alex.”
“I wish I could, but I don’t know any more about him than I do any of Jason’s associates.”
Chief Horn was adamant that Alex Jumping Bull and Billy Two Moons were inseparable. Was Alex Jumping Bull still alive all these years, as the chief suspected? If he was, what did Alex have on Jason? And why send Clifford Coyote a check every month?
“Do you think this Alex may have known Jason intended embezzling the tribe’s money?”
Clara shook her head. “I don’t know. Jason had a lot of contacts, knew everyone, and he could have told this Alex. Maybe Alex was in with Jason on the scheme.”
“That’s a thought. Do you have a paper sack I could have?”
Clara nodded and stepped out of the room. She returned with a brown paper Albertson’s grocery bag. Manny placed both the envelope and letter from Alex inside, and sealed it with tape from a dispenser on the desk. “I’ll overnight this to Quantico to get the letter and envelope fumed for prints.”
“They can do that on paper?”
Manny smiled. “Ve have our vays,” he said. It came out as a silly impression of Colonel Klink of Stalag 13. “There’s a lot of prints on the envelope by now, but maybe I’ll luck out. Because you handled the letter, you’ll have to go down to the police department here and have a set of elimination prints taken.”
Clara nodded and her face lit up as she looked at the clock over her desk. “Speaking of lucking out, it’s quitting time and I’m famished. We have a great Olive Garden by the mall. Be my treat.”
Before Manny could stammer his way out of the offer, she had threaded her arm through his and started for the door. As they left, even Emily wore an approving smile.
CHAPTER 17
Manny drove across the reservation boundary along Highway 41, past Red Shirt Table and later Cuny Table, though he didn’t notice the scenery as his mind relived the night’s dinner conversation with Clara. They stayed until the restaurant closed, drawing out their time together, until Clara drove him back to his car parked at her office. As he climbed out of her car, she pulled him back in and kissed him full on the lips. A good-night kiss, nothing more. But her lips had lingered there longer than they should have. Manny didn’t object and kissed her back.
He pulled away, breathless, and her perfume conjured up images of things forbidden at this point in their relationship. And it conjured up something else: how different it was from the scent he had smelled that night his car was rammed, and later as he lay in his hospital bed. He fought to think where he had smelled it before, but another kiss erased all thoughts of anything except Clara.
“Let’s do this again soon,” she said. “When we have more time.”
Manny thought he had agreed, though he didn’t remember that part very well. He only recalled Clara inviting him for a romantic rematch.
He came to the stop sign at Oglala, and a dark-colored Dodge pulled beside him. He was vaguely aware that the Dodge’s passenger window rolled down. The darkness obscured the driver, but not the passenger who pointed a long-barreled pistol at Manny. The image took a moment to cut through his brain, foggy with thoughts of Clara. Quick movements eluded him as he reached for his gun in the shoulder holster. Was it stuck, or was he just drawing slower than he should?
His firearms instructors at Quantico had talked about the phenomenon that slows a man’s perceptions in a crisis and causes everything to move in slow motion, as it was doing now. The shooter cocked the hammer on a single-action revolver, like in Old West movies. Except it wasn’t the Old West, it was the New West, starring Manny Tanno, who didn’t want his ass ventilated by any gun, let alone a movie hogleg.
He jerked the Glock free and hurled himself across the seat just as the man fired. Muzzle flash bright. Night vision destroyed. Tiny explosions of yellow light popped across his one good eye. Another shot. Glass shards cut his cheek, and one piece tore his ear as the side window shattered.
He looked over the jagged window as the shooter cocked his gun again, and the slow motion faded. Manny was pissed.
He fired through the open window at the driver. He fired again. And again. The Dodge spun gravel. Manny shot twice. Double tapped. Double tapped. A round struck a taillight, and Manny floored the accelerator.
The Dodge swerved across the road and hit a reflector post, the back end breaking away and the driver almost losing control. The car straightened and sped toward Pine Ridge Village, swerving across both lanes. Manny shot. The back window shattered and the car careened off another post, but the driver regained control. Manny gained on the car.
Manny jammed the Glock under his leg and fumbled for his cell phone. He hit speed dial. Tribal Police dispatcher Shannon Horn’s voice calmed him as he screamed that he was in a pursuit. She urged him to breathe slowly, speak slowly, and he sucked in a deep breath, the pain sharp in his ribs. He blurted out he was in pursuit of two men who had shot at him, driving recklessly, wildly, possibly from a bullet that struck the driver.
Before Shannon could confirm his position, the Dodge braked hard and Manny slammed into its trunk. His cell phone flew beneath the seat as his head hit the steering wheel, pain shooting deep into his injured face. Fresh sticky blood ran down his forehead and into his eyes. He brushed it away with his sleeve as he squinted to see the road in front of him.
The Dodge accelerated, dragging the front bumper of Manny’s car with it. He hung the pistol out the window and pulled the trigger, but the slide was locked back: empty. He clawed at the inside of his jacket pocket for the spare magazine.
Manny pressed the magazine release and the empty clip dropped on the floorboard. He squeezed the gun tight between his legs and slapped the magazine into the butt of the weapon. With one hand, he hit the slide release while he wrestled the steering wheel, struggling to control his car. Pieces of his tire flew into the air and a chunk landed on the windshield, obscuring his vision for a moment before flying off.
The Dodge dropped over a hill and Manny came fast on brake lights. Someone rolled into the ditch just before the Dodge accelerated and pulled away from Manny.
On the first hill east of Oglala, three marked patrol cars blocked the road. One blocked the Route 18 and Route 33 intersection, while the other two cars set up a choke point to funnel the Dodge over hollow spike strips laid across the road. It drove over the strips and they flew violently in the air seconds before the two blocking patrol cars squealed tires and pursued. Manny slowed, driving around the spikes still laid across one lane, the thumpa-thump of a flat tire loud in his ears. He cleared the first curve a half mile farther, where the police had apprehended the driver, whose car had three of its four tires flattened.
Manny was careful to stay off the brakes as the steering wheel jerked in his hands to the side of the flat tire, and he stopped just before the police roadblock. He controlled the urge to run up to the shooter and screw the barrel of the Glock in his ear. He stepped out of his car and his legs shook. He leaned against the Taurus for support as he brushed shards of glass from his clothing. Cuts from tiny pieces of glass had peppered his face, and his cheek oozed blood from a dozen slices. A flap of skin hung from his ear like a grotesque earring, and the head wound from the steering wheel caused blood to stream into his eyes.
Shit. More stitches.
Shit. More stitches.
He walked closer to the traffic stop. Over his PA system an officer commanded the shooter to toss his keys out the open window and thrust both hands out and step from the Dodge. Manny strained to see the man’s face but it was covered by a hooded sweatshirt. As he walked to the sound of the officer’s voice, the driver stumbled and fell. A shotgun slide chambered a round somewhere to Manny’s left. Another officer scurried for safety behind his car door. The driver recovered and stood, holding one arm high and the other limp and bloody at his side. At least one of Manny’s rounds had connected.
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