Buffalo Lake - A Charlie LeBeau Mystery

Buffalo Lake is the second story in a seven part series set in northeast South Dakota with Bureau of Indian Affairs Police Officer, Charlie LeBeau, and the center of the action on the Sisseton Wahpeton Indian Reservation. The first screenplay, Long Hollow, is now a novel. The third story in the series is Big Coulee, and the screenplay is complete for that installment. The seven stories are named after each district on the reservation. A retired priest is dead, found floating in Buffalo Lake just outside of his small retirement cabin. Charlie LeBeau, Sergeant for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Police Department on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Indian Reservation finds the body on a welfare check. Charlie is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe. With his boss, Captain Kipp, on medical leave, Charlie is as busy as ever with this investigation, as guardian to his nephew, Nat, and sharing his house with his aging father, Claude. The FBI is the lead law enforcement agency for felonies on the reservation and Agent Austin Brown, Charlie's friend, is back in Sisseton, South Dakota to investigate. When a Catholic church is burned to the ground soon after the priest's death, a grisly discovery is made, several bodies of children are found under the cracked foundation of the burned out church. The bodies are identified as missing children from over thirty years ago. Charlie's girlfriend, Veronica Lewis, is the owner-operator of the small town, county newspaper and there is constant, but friendly, tension in the relationship between the police officer and the reporter. Veronica gets help at her newspaper from a former nun, Susan, and Susan and Claude hit it off. The priest's death is ruled a heart attack, but it is still suspicious. When the priest's nephew, Gabe, shows up in Sisseton, he wants answers. Gabe's father is the head of the known organized crime family operating in Minneapolis. The priest was Gabe's favorite uncle, and he wants justice. The underlying and unspoken truth is that the priest was involved in the molestation issues associated with the Catholic Church, although Gabe refuses to believe such a story. Gabe is accompanied by his henchman, Vincent. It is a tense battle as Vince tries to get Gabe back to the Twin Cities, away from his dead, tainted uncle. The investigation continues over the summer as Nat, a high school senior-to-be, plays baseball for the American Legion baseball team and considers his options to play college basketball. Charlie with his dad and nephew fish the Glacial Lakes of Eastern South Dakota in every spare moment in an attempt to relax. The priest's death eats at Gabe, exacerbating his drinking problem. His drunkenness gets the better of him and he murders his friend and associate, Vincent. The case turns its attention to Susan and so does Gabe as the information unfolds. Gabe invades Susan's apartment to exact his justice, not suspecting an elderly lady would or could defend herself. Susan shoots the intruding Gabe dead in her apartment. It is a somewhat unsatisfying end to the case for Charlie and FBI Agent Brown as the former nun is not charged for a self-defense killing nor is she charged for any association with the death of the priest, as the U.S. Attorney is not going to touch a former nun that may or may not have contributed to the death of a child-molesting priest. She leaves town, aware that the gangsters from Minneapolis may want her dead.