Rollie scowled. “Old fool. Between him and Verline, I can’t get a moment’s peace with all that claptrap. It’s driving me to drink.”
“You don’t believe in that woo-woo Lakota stuff?”
Absentmindedly he fingered the stone hanging from his necklace. “Be easier if I didn’t.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t matter. Ask your questions. I ain’t got all day.”
“Fine. What do you know about Judd Moser and Donald Little Bear?”
“Why you interested in them?”
Rollie had the uncanny ability to smell a lie, so I didn’t bother concocting one. “Initially, Estelle Yellow Boy asked me to poke around to see if Albert’s friends would talk to me about why someone might’ve killed him.”
“But now?”
“Now? It’s personal. Those two names I gave you keep popping up. Those boys started some kind of an Indian Warrior club. Albert was a member; Levi wasn’t.”
Rollie measured me. “Seems strange that Estelle would ask you to help her. You hiding investigating experience I don’t know about?”
“No. And don’t get pissy. I’m not looking to hang out my PI shingle. This is strictly a one-shot deal.” South Dakota was one of the few states where private investigators didn’t have to be formally licensed by the state. I could call myself a PI if I wanted, and Rollie or Dawson couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Which, near as I could tell, allowed me lots of leeway.
Ironically, Rollie considered himself a PI above all else, touting his “modern-day Indian tracking” skills. He’d work for anyone who could pay his hefty fees. As a council member of the tribe, he had access to people and information white people didn’t.
No matter how many times Rollie turned in his brethren, those Indians still confided in him. Some folks claimed he maintained files on every tribal member and their families, dating back decades. Others claimed he had spies everywhere on the rez and knew everything about everyone. So though he was generally reviled, no one dared cross him. Even my father had had to play ball with Rollie a couple of times.
“So you know anything about this group calling themselves the Warrior Society?”
He looked at me consideringly. “Not much. An elder heard a rumor some young punks were doing their own version of the Seven Sacred Rites. According to one of the kids who was there, they did ’em wrong, not in harmony with traditional at all.”
Even among Lakota people discrepancies abounded about which ceremonies were “traditional” to Native religion, and which ones were transformed after Christianity gained a foothold on the reservation. I knew a few, simply because Jake and John-John participated in the common ceremonies: the sweat lodge, vision quest, making of relatives, and the Sun Dance. The other rites, preparing a girl for womanhood, spirit keeping, and the throwing of the ball, weren’t as prevalent. And contrary to popular belief, the Ghost Dance, which played a part in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, wasn’t part of Lakota ritual at all.
“Who’s leading them?”
“I don’t know. I just know them rituals weren’t about dancing for healing or a prayer offered to the Great Spirit for guidance, it was more like a… sacrifice.”
“What kind of sacrifice?”
“Blood. Flesh. Tears.” His troubled gaze connected with mine.
I played devil’s advocate. “But isn’t that what the Sun Dance is all about? Men piercing their flesh? Crying to the Great Spirit as they dance in the sun? Then blood flows from the wounds after they’ve ripped away the sticks attaching them to the sacred pole?”
“That’s the simplified version, yes. But what I’m talking about is blood, flesh, and tears from unwilling participants.”
Chills tracked down my spine. “Like Levi?”
“I ain’t sure.” Again, Rollie touched the teeth and stones on his choker like it was a talisman. “You been to the rez and talked to them boys?”
“Not yet.”
An engine revved down the street. A woman’s screech was lost in spewing gravel and the thump of rap music.
“Lemme offer you a piece of advice before you go charging in. The only thing those punks understand is fear. Don’t think of them as kids; think of them as animals. Get the upper hand right away.” He chuckled. “But you don’t have no problem invoking fear in people, do you?”
I shrugged.
“I recognize the hardness in your eyes, Mercy.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. I saw it in the mirror when I came back from Vietnam. That look will fade in time.”
“And if I don’t want it to fade?”
“Then your past deeds will eat you from the inside out until there’s nothing left but a bitter black hole where your soul used to be.”
Rollie summed it up better than the army shrink. But he was just as wrong. The hardness in me was the truest part of me. I’d accepted it long ago. Why couldn’t everyone else? I didn’t answer, merely stared at him.
“What’re you gonna do when you find whoever killed your tunska?”
“If you have to ask, Rollie, I haven’t made myself clear.”
He nodded. No judgment.
I released a pent-up sigh. “Is there anything else you know about the Warrior Society?”
“For whatever reason, there’s at least one adult tribal member helping them with these so-called rituals. Which is why it’s so disturbing that he’s teaching them wrong.”
“Any whispers on who the elder might be?”
“A couple. Paul Yellow Boy, for one, which was why I was surprised when you said Estelle asked for your help.”
No wonder Estelle wanted Paul kept out of it. But surely she didn’t suspect he had something to do with Albert’s death?
“You’ll let me know what you find out, Mercy girl?”
“Is that the price of the information you gave me? I share mine?”
Rollie harrumphed. “You ain’t getting off that easy.”
“I figured as much.”
“Tell you what. Feel free to use my name whenever you’re in Eagle River. It’ll probably open a few more doors for you. Anyone gets nasty, tell ’em you’re working for me.”
“Do I need an official business card, boss man?”
“Smarty-pants. No. If anyone calls me to double-check your credentials”-he smiled broadly-“I’ll set ’em straight. Of course, that means as my employee all information you uncover pertaining to this case or any other belongs to me. Along with any monetary compensation you might be receiving. You getting paid?”
“No. Doing it out of the unkindness of my black heart, Rollie.”
“Then I rescind my offer of employment.”
“Indian giver.”
He laughed. “My advice is never do no work for free. People don’t appreciate it. Charge the heck outta them and they think it’s worth something.”
An interesting philosophy I’d have to remember.
“Long as you’re here, did your dad ever find out who was causing all them problems for the Lohstrohs?”
I frowned. “What problems?”
“Some outfit from out of state offered them big money for their ranch. They said no, and some weird things started happening.”
“Was their ranch for sale?”
“No, that’s why it struck Wyatt as odd.”
The Lohstrohs were one of our neighbors to the north. Because our ranch was so big and an oddly jagged shape, it was bordered by three other ranches on the north side: Lohstrohs’, Mattsons’, and TJ and Luke Red Leaf’s small family operation. On the east side, our neighbors were the Newsomes and the Quinns. I wasn’t sure about our west-side neighbors because the land that’d been known as the old Jackson place had been sold twice in the last twenty years. Our border to the south was the Eagle River National Grasslands. “When was this?”
He scratched his chin. “Wyatt called me from the ranch a coupla days before he took sick the last time. He didn’t sound too good. Asked me to dig around and see what I could find. I said I would but…”