Curt Wendelboe - Death Along the Spirit Road

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Table of Contents

HELP FROM A HIGHER POWER

He tried reaching the Glock. Three steps. Closer. Reached again. Steps stopped outside his shattered window. He lay on his arm, trapped, unable to get to the weapon. He willed his labored breathing to stop. He told the rising and falling of his chest to be still. He lay quiet, listening, praying to God he could pull it off. His hand fell automatically onto his medicine bundle.

Someone shined a flashlight into Mannys car. Through his closed eyelids, Manny saw all this as if he were sitting in a theater watching some dark, foreboding movie. Light played across his lids. He wanted to open them, wanted to look at his attacker, but he didnt. The driver squatted inches from him, close enough that Manny felt warm puffs of breath on his neck through the window. He struggled to remain conscious. His cop side took over, and he listened for anything that would later identify the attacker. If he lived through this

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright 2011 by C. M. Wendelboe.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wendelboe, C. M.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-47871-4

1. Dakota IndiansFiction. 2. Indian reservationsSouth DakotaFiction. 3. Real estate developersCrimes againstFiction. I. Title.

PS3623.E53D43 2011

813.6dc22

2010038253

http://us.penguingroup.com

To Milt Wendelboe,
who was a voracious reader until the day he died.

And my Lakota friends,
who kept me on my own Road .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my agent, Bill Contardi, and my editor, Tom Colgan, for having faith to take a chance on a rookie, and Eric Boss and Mike McGroder, for greasing the wheels and to Richard Tuschman, whose beauty with the brush portrayed so precisely the mood and theme of the novel. I thank my mentors Judy and Craig Johnson and my wife, Heather Wendelboe: Without their help, you wouldnt be reading this.

CHAPTER 1

Manny popped another CD into the player in the rental and fiddled with the controls. The Six Fat Dutchmen pounded out the Tick-Tock Polka. He settled back in his seat, tapping the oomp-ba oomp-ba tuba beat on the steering wheel. How long had it been since he danced a polka? Must have been back in Germany in his army days. Oomp-ba-ba. Oomp-ba. He had tried accordion lessons back then, but he couldnt read music any better than he could drive. Oomp-ba. Oomp-ba. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Like the song was ticking away at his life.

He bent forward to adjust the bass to accentuate the heavy tuba and caught movement in his periphery. A teen, wearing a T-shirt missing one sleeve with jeans threatening to fall down his meatless hips, stumbled between two parked cars and started across the road. The gaunt young man looked up. Eyes wide. Mouth open. Manny slammed on the brakes, and the tires of the Taurus bit into the hot asphalt. Things kicked into slow motion, like his academy instructors said happened under great stress.

The car skidded. Tires pleaded and screamed. The boy yelled, his face bombarded with loose gravel from the road. His hands hopelessly covered his face and he tried jumping out of the cars path, but he was too slow. Too drunk. The houses beside the road. Abandoned cars. Trees. All blacked out. Manny focused in front of the car, the kid walking in slow motion on instant replay.

The car rocked to a stop. The seat belt bit into Mannys shoulder and held him inches away from the steering wheel. Burnt tire smoke rose up, dark and dense. It assaulted Mannys nose with its bitter accusation, and he rubbed his eyes. The boy was gone.

Manny opened the door and stepped out as the boy rose from the pavement in front of the car. Eighteen going on forty: his face red, splintery, broken capillaries. He glared at Manny through eyes watery with wine and stinging with indignation. Hate replaced terror. He picked up his hat and slapped it against his ripped jeans. Dust fell off the cap as he jammed it on his head, and he jutted his middle finger high in the air as he scowled at Manny. With that gesture their sole conversation, the kid turned and staggered down the road.

Screw you! Manny said. Watch where the hell youre going.

Mannys heart pounded as forcefully as the beat of the Six Fat Dutchmen still reverberating in the car. He took deep breaths and began to see trees and weeds at the side of the road as his vision returned to normal. He watched the kid stop beside an abandoned pickup by the Pronto Auto Parts store. He climbed in the bed and lay down to start his afternoon pass-out, the top of his ball cap visible above the tailgate.

Damned drunk.

Mannys legs still shook as he sat back in the car. The arteries in his neck pounded oomp-ba, oomp-ba, to the beat of the polka music, and his hand trembled as reached for the player and tapped the power button. The music died, and he closed his eyes and willed his breathing to slow. Damned fool would have deserved it, he said aloud. Walking with his head in his ass.

Manny fingered his medicine bag, held his wopiye to the light. The blue and black beaded deerskin turtle had become faded and tattered around the edges from being carried so long. It was always with him. Unc said his wopiye had powers to help him through life, though he fought hard to believe it even as a boy. When the yuwipi man had given him his inyan , somewhere in the recesses of his Lakota soul Manny wanted to believe that this bundle with the black spirit stone would protect him. As it had now. As it had then.

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