We met halfway, well, maybe a little more on my side. “Anything?”
“No, you?”
“A couple lap dancing in a Toyota.”
“I heard somebody pull out and assumed you had it.” He blew into his bare hands in an attempt to warm them. “Did you do your civil duty and tell them to get a room?”
“I did.”
He glanced around in the darkness of the garage. “We could just wait at the exits, but she might freeze to death.”
“I’m ready to just go back to the casino and see if they’ve got an address for Willie or either of them.”
He looked at the ceiling. “In my experience, employees are usually relegated to the most inconvenient parking areas, so if they are friends of his . . .”
“Up?” I joined him in looking at the ceiling, and he nodded. “I’ll double back.”
On the third floor, there were fewer cars, and I was able to make better time but didn’t see Henry as I got toward the middle. I kept going, finally approaching the ramp that he should’ve come up when I heard somebody running on the floor below. “Henry?”
His voice echoed up to me. “They’re in the elevator!”
I ran for the steps at the southeast end of the building. Fortunately, there was no snow in the stairwell, but I could already hear Henry and the couple on the street below. Throwing myself against the walls, I bounced my way down, turned the corner at the ticket booth, and tripped off the curb just enough to send myself slinging onto the snow-covered street outside.
Picking myself up on one elbow, I could see the Bear climbing up the fire escape at the back of a three-story redbrick building to my left, and above him, barely visible in the cascading flakes, two people going onto the roof.
“Damn it.” I grabbed my hat and pushed off, running the length of Wall back down to Main, keeping my eyes on the rooftops, and sliding another ten feet into the main thoroughfare.
Holding my hat in front of my eyes to give me a clearer view, I could see that there was a large turret on the corner building, and I could barely make out the shadow of somebody looking down from the front cornice. I shouted up at her, “Roberta Payne, sheriff’s department—you need to stop!” She looked both ways and then behind her as the man yanked her away. “Whatever your name is, you need to let her go!”
He ignored me, and they both disappeared.
I moved sideways down the street, keeping an eye on the roof and trying to see, even though the falling snow was blinding.
After a moment, Henry appeared at the cornice. “Where did they go?”
“Not this way, they—” It was then that I saw something move on the roof of the next building, a full flight lower than the corner one that Henry was on. I pointed and yelled at the Bear, “They’re down there; they must’ve jumped!”
The Cheyenne Nation flung himself from the taller building, but I couldn’t see if he’d landed well or not.
Running sideways and hoping to spot a taller building that might impede their rooftop progress, I tried to keep up but watched as the couple made an easy traverse onto the next three buildings, with me, sliding along in my boots, desperately trying to keep pace on the ground.
Suddenly, I noticed that a half-ton pickup with its bright lights blasting up Main Street had stopped about fifty yards away. Bringing my hand up to shield my eyes, I peered through the fog freezing in the snow-filled air and finally figured it must be Willie.
I stood there for a few seconds, unsure of his intentions, when he revved the engine, lurched forward, and headed straight for me.
For all Willie knew, he was protecting the couple from a wild cowboy-and-Indian duo who might mean them harm. I would’ve liked to have shown my badge, but there wasn’t time. Carefully, I pulled the Colt from my holster and leveled it at the rapidly approaching vehicle.
The truck stopped when I guess Willie figured out what he was up against.
I took a step forward and raised my sidearm, just to show him I wasn’t intent on putting a bullet into him, and yelled, “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.” Unsure if he’d heard me, I yelled it again.
That’s when he hit the gas and started straight toward me.
Unwilling to be run over, if by mistaken identity or not, but not wanting to hurt the driver, I fired low, figuring I would hit the front of the truck and something that would disable it.
The brakes locked up, and the truck slid at an angle to my right.
Tugging at my hat, I leaned my head to one side and tried to see in the cab to make sure the bullet had not deflected, but the snow and the reflection on the glass made it impossible.
Suddenly, the wheels started spinning and I raised my sidearm again, only then noticing that the truck was retreating, once more at a high rate of speed. He backed the vehicle into a parking lot at the end of the row, and as I ran after him, I saw Roberta and the unknown man leap onto a one-story building, swing around a billboard advertising the newest, biggest, and best of something, and lightly jump to the ground next to the vehicle in waiting.
I was getting closer but watched helplessly as they vaulted into the attacking pickup, which fishtailed out of the parking lot and headed off in the other direction, the billowing tunnel of snow in their wake closing off the air behind them.
Their taillights disappeared as the Bear dropped to the ground, both of us leaning over with our hands on our knees in an attempt to catch our collective breath.
He caught his before I caught mine, of course. “Who. Knew. We. Were. Chasing. Spider-Man . . . And. Spider-Woman.”
I nodded and stooped to see a little antifreeze in the snow—I must’ve dinged the radiator—as another set of lights suddenly appeared from the other direction, along with a spotlight that blinded us. A voice rang through a loudspeaker mounted in the grille of a black-and-white Dodge Charger. Static. “Deadwood Police—don’t move!”
Standing and holding my .45 high and wide so we wouldn’t get shot, I shouted, “Sheriff Walt Longmire, Absaroka County, Wyoming!” I gestured toward Henry with a smile. “C’mon, we’ve got a ride.”
—
“Follow what car?”
I’d gotten to say follow that car only one other time in my life, and the young patrolman was ruining the expectations I had with my second request. “It was a half-ton pickup, blue in color, headed east on Main . . .”
Tavis Bradley, who had turned out to be a part-time patrolman with the Deadwood Police, had cost us more than part time trying to figure out who we were and what we were doing, but had finally fallen in line and started the warm, if not hot, pursuit in his completely useless-in-the-snow Charger. “I called them in, even though you didn’t have a plate number . . .” The car slid sideways as we joined routes 14/85 south, and I wished, once again, that I had been driving. “There can’t be that many vehicles out here tonight.”
“Turn your headlights on low, please?” The Bear, seated in the front seat with Tavis, peered over the hood at the surface of the road. “It is fast disappearing, but there is one, clearly defined set of tracks.”
The young man did as he was told. “He’s headed onto Sherman toward Cliff, but my jurisdiction ends where 385 branches off and goes south to Custer and the state park.”
I leaned over the seat. “We’re going to broaden your horizons tonight.”
“Shouldn’t we call the Highway Patrol? They’ve got a detachment in Custer and in Rapid City and can cut him off.”
“Get ’em on the wire.”
As the kid snatched the mic from his dash and talked to the HPs, Henry and I watched the road and tried to figure out what had happened in Deadwood. “I don’t get it, why split up?”
The Bear pointed, urging the patrolman to go left.
I thought about it. “I can understand if you decided to change your life and hide out . . . Well, in all honesty I can’t, but was she acting as if we were going to kill her or he was?”