I watched as the man’s forehead rebounded off the table, and he fell to the floor in a heap, unconscious.
I looked up at the Bear as he flipped the knife and gestured the business end toward me with a hard look. “Do not say anything.”
I raised my hands but found my mouth opening of its own accord. “You…”
“Do not.”
I glanced down at the captive, a not insubstantial lump on the floor. “You couldn’t have knocked him out a little closer to the truck?”
The only one on duty at Tribal Police Headquarters was the taciturn, unpaid-in-weeks patrolman Charles Last Bull. “How’s it going, Chuck?”
He stared at us and glanced at Artie’s dead weight hanging between the Cheyenne Nation and me.
“You mind if we come in?”
We struggled in the door-I backed my way past the front counter, the bulletproof glass, and continued on toward the closed door that entered the hallway. Charles caught up with us and produced a ring of keys that he used to allow us access to the holding cells. “I thought you were off for the night, Charles.”
He said nothing and, swinging the door wide, unlocked the same cell where his brother had been held, whereupon we deposited Artie Small Song on the steel bunk anchored to the concrete wall. “Thanks.”
We paused there for a moment as Henry produced the knife again and freed the prisoner’s hands from the impromptu packing tape handcuffs, even taking the extra time to pull out the blanket at his feet and cover him up.
I glanced at Charles, who closed the door and returned the keys to his belt.
Henry stepped over to the small fridge in the commissary, stooped, and took a tray of ice cubes from the freezer compartment.
I patted Charles on his shoulder, which felt like a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with concrete. “Where’s the chief?”
He stared at me for a full ten seconds but couldn’t find a way not to respond to my direct question. “Sleep.”
Henry placed the tray on the counter and took a plastic bag from the shelf, filled it with some ice, and came back to the bars where we stood. The Bear gestured toward the door. “Open.”
Charles regarded him through sloped eyelids. “This the man who killed my half-brother?”
The Bear said nothing but just stood there holding the bag of ice.
Charles’s eyes returned to the breathing lump on the bunk and placed a hand on his sidearm. “The hell with him.”
The expression on the Cheyenne Nation’s face never changed, but he leaned a little forward so as to make eye contact with Charles.
I spoke again, if for no other reason than to keep Henry from decapitating Lolo Long’s only staff. “You know, Chuck, he’s already knocked one guy unconscious tonight.”
I snatched the keys from the patrolman’s belt and unlocked the door in one quick move, tossing the ring back to him before he could react badly; the Bear entered and placed the bag of ice under Artie’s head. Charles had advanced and was now standing in the doorway as Henry started out. They stood there like that for a moment, chest to chest, and I was reminded of the bulls that had sometimes locked horns in the pastures on my father’s ranch.
Slowly, the Cheyenne Nation raised a hand and spread his fingers over Charles’s chest, pushing him until the man was forced to step back in an attempt to catch his balance.
I closed the cell and gestured toward Charles to lock it back up.
He did, as Henry and I moved into the hallway. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to leave an unconscious Artie Small Song here with Charles Last Bull.”
He nodded his head. “I will stay.”
“No, I can sleep anywhere. You go on ahead home, and I’ll crash here.”
Charles joined us in the hallway, and I made the pronouncement. “I’m waiting in here till Chief Long checks in.”
The patrolman shrugged and turned between us, facing Henry and looking into his face. Henry followed him toward the door but shot me a look with a dramatically raised eyebrow. “I will see you in the morning.”
“I hope so.”
I made a makeshift bed with a lineup of chairs and a few more blankets from the closet in the hallway. About halfway through the process, Charles came in and studied me as I attempted to get comfortable. “You don’t have any extra pillows, do you?”
He continued to stare.
“Down would be nice-I’m not allergic.”
He stood there for a moment more and then left.
Fighting a yawn, I mumbled mostly to myself, “Could you flip off the lights?”
The disgruntled patrolman did but left the one on in the hallway as I collapsed onto my front-row bed. I’d folded another blanket up for a pillow, scrunched it a little, and tilted my hat up to where I could keep an eye on Artie, who had begun snoring like a water buffalo. Henry must’ve done a job on him, seeing as how to knock somebody out you had to come within an ace of killing them. Whenever I thought of such things, I always remembered the dent in Lucian’s head where his in-laws had tried to beat some sense into him; as far as I could tell, it hadn’t worked-didn’t think it would work in this case, either.
I thought about my transportation needs and figured I could get someone to drive my truck from the airport in Billings so I wouldn’t have to rely on Rezdawg, which was like relying on the wind. Lolo Long probably wouldn’t like the idea of an Absaroka County Sheriff’s vehicle driving around the Rez, but since I’d helped out with the investigation she might be a little more forgiving.
I yawned so deeply that I thought my jaw was going to dislocate and then pulled the grey blanket up to my chin. Maybe I was overtired, but I was having a hard time falling asleep; first I blamed it on the indelicate rhythm of Artie’s snoring and then on the peyote, even though I knew that neither was what was plaguing me.
My mind kept racing through the events of the last few days, and how tidily things had worked out; perhaps too tidily. I thought about the conversation with Artie and how he had seemed genuinely surprised by Clarence Last Bull’s murder. Was it possible that Artie had killed Audrey but not Clarence? But the man’s vehement denial of the contract murder had been convincing, especially at the price of just over a thousand bucks. So in essence, I was lying here for good reason-to protect a man who I didn’t think perpetrated either act.
That was about the size of it.
Maybe Clarence had killed his wife, but he certainly hadn’t killed himself.
Then there was the tape. Why would the man attempt to hire Artie for the job and then turn around and do it himself? With all the bravado that Artie had shown in the phone conversation, it certainly seemed as if he had been ready to perform the deed. Maybe, and then again, maybe it’s one thing to agree to do such a thing but another to look into the eyes of a young woman holding her child and push them off a cliff.
I thought about Clarence, and the response he’d had to Audrey’s death and the attempt on his son, and how I didn’t think he was guilty, either.
So everybody was innocent?
Some detective.
The pivotal point of evidence was the wiretapped conversation between Clarence and Artie, which had been an odd one. Clarence’s voice had seemed normal enough, but Artie’s heightened responses struck me as weird. Maybe he was drunk; maybe he was upset about the twelve hundred dollars.
And the woman in the background; who was she? What was she saying? I’d heard a word or two that I’d maybe understood-dome, dose? Maybe there was more going on between Clarence and Artie than we knew about.
I dozed off for a while and then repositioned my head-I thought I might’ve heard some noise from out in the lobby, but it was hard to tell over Artie’s snoring. I’d just settled back into my folded blanket when I heard the door at the end of the hallway open and the dangling wind-chime noise of Charles’s ring of keys.
I saw his shadow and spoke to him as I removed my hat from my face. “You find that feather pillow?”
The light switch was flipped on, and I have to admit that while I wasn’t surprised to find Charles looking
