12
The questions still churned in his head when Garreth woke. He tried pushing them aside, telling himself just to wait and see what Anna did. Meanwhile, he had a job to do, a job that deserved to be performed to the best of his ability for as long as he could.
Stepping outside and hearing distant yells from the direction of the football stadium reinforced that thought. Oh, yes, the big Homecoming game against Bellamy. Kickoff was supposed to be at, what, seven? That meant light cruise traffic downtown now…turning crazy after the game. Especially if Baumen won. Maggie and Duncan had traded shifts for tonight, Garreth remembered. He looked forward to the contrast of working with Duncan.
An ear-splitting shriek greeted him coming up the hall at the station, Sue Ann, bouncing up and down in her chair, two fists pumping the air. “Yes, yes, yes!”
Garreth stared at her. She wore a Bride of Frankenstein wig and a Timberwolf tattoo on one cheek.
Nat looked up from a typewriter with a laconic smile. “TD by Baumen, answering the one Bellamy made five minutes into the game.”
“How does she know — ” Garreth began.
Breaking off as Ed Duncan’s voice, triumphant, came over the radio. “Extra point. Seven all. One minute to go in the quarter.”
“Ed took a radio to the game with him.”
Sue Ann still danced in her chair. “I told him to, so I’d know what’s happening.”
“KBEL is broadcasting the game,” Nat said.
“KBEL!” Sue Ann blew a raspberry. “They’re all about how wonderful the Cougars are! I don’t give a damn about the Cougars…except whipping their asses! Go Timberwolves!” She threw back her head and howled.
Garreth shook his head. This was worse than home when Shane was playing. “I think you need to calm down, Sue Ann. You’re making your hair go all frizzy.”
She stopped and blinked at him, then patted the wig, giggling. “You like my new look?”
“It’s over a week to Halloween isn’t it?”
“This isn’t a costume. It’s part of my bridesmaid dress I picked up today and I thought I’d try out.”
Now Garreth blinked. “Bridesmaid dress?”
“My cousin Julie is getting married on Monday so it’s a Halloween theme wedding. Doris is switching shifts with me. We women are all Brides of Frankenstein, though Julie has even bigger hair than this, and the men are Draculas and the wedding cake is a Dracula Castle. Guests are invited to wear costumes, too. The wedding’s at seven but Communion and Mass ought to be over by eight-thirty so come by the reception at the high school gym. It’s going to be a blast!”
Nat said. “My wife Charly and I will be there with our dancing shoes on.”
“Is Julie your niece, too?” Garreth asked.
“Jason, the groom, is my nephew.” He cocked his head at Sue Ann. “What do you think…between the two of them, they’re related to a third or better of Baumen?”
She laughed. “Probably.”
A voice of sanity came over the radio. “Six Baumen. Requesting a 10–28 on local K-king, five-five-three.” Maggie, running a car registration.
Before Nat finished going over wants and warrants and the day’s activity with Garreth, the second quarter started. Garreth left with Sue Ann howling behind him as Baumen made a field goal.
He patrolled with Duncan’s game updates coming over the radio, voice grudging when Bellamy scored, exultant when Baumen scored. Radios all over Baumen blasted out KBEL’s broadcast…in the bars, in the Main Street, from cruising cars whose drivers and passengers had not gone to the game.
Despite trying to ignore it, Garreth found himself caught up in the game. Bellamy made its own field goal in the second quarter, so the half ended tied. Bellamy scored in the third quarter, to Duncan’s disgust, but Baumen answered it in the fourth, tying the game and sending it into overtime. Where both teams made field goals. In the second overtime neither team made much progress, each defense digging in and holding ground until the other side had to punt. Then Bellamy managed to fight its way to the fifteen yard line and with one minute thirty seconds left in the game, lined up for a field goal. The excited KBEL announcer reported the kick was aimed straight between the uprights.
Until Baumen’s Darrell Wiltz leaped skyward in a jump that, as Duncan described it later, matched anything by an NBA pro, and intercepted the ball. Darrell landed running, cut through the stunned Bellamy line, and with Duncan screaming into his radio, outran a Bellamy player who had shown phenomenal speed all night to score the TD. And to put a final flourish on the victory, they faked the kick for the extra point and one Benjamin Danzig ran it in for two points.
All along Kansas Avenue, wolf howls erupted from cruising cars. Garreth parked parallel to the tracks across from the Pizza Hut to monitor the traffic soon to be coming out of Poplar. Serk and Chuck George, another of their reserve officers, were directing traffic at the stadium. Maggie radioed that she would monitor 282. None of them needed clairvoyance to foresee a long, busy night.
Within minutes cars began appearing, some peeling off south onto 282 toward Bellamy, a few cutting across onto northbound 282, but most turning up Kansas…horns honking, occupants howling and waving Timberwolf flags out the windows.
About fifteen minutes into the exodus Garreth spotted a Ford F-150 with a Cougar banner stretched across the truck bed, the pole at each end of the banner stuck in the pickup’s front stake pockets. Cougar fans, came his first thought, but two teenage males illegally standing in the back wore Timberwolf sweatshirts. They howled and waved middle fingers at a big Silverado following almost on the 150's trailer hitch. A passenger in the Silverado leaned halfway out the window shouting threats at the 150. In the seconds it took Garreth to guess the situation — Cougar banner stolen and the teenage owners trying to recover it — the two pickups shot across Kansas and gunned up 282…using excessive speed in addition to the other violations.
Garreth hit his mike button and radioed descriptions of the two vehicles to Maggie.
Shortly her voice came back: “I see them. Radar says…fifty-five.”
In a forty-five zone.
“I’m lighting them up.”
He expected her next transmission to be asking Sue Ann for registration and drivers license checks. Instead, Maggie came on with her voice high and urgent. “10–48 times three, at the Co-op! I need Fire Rescue!” He had already flipped on lights and siren and started forcing his way into the traffic when she finished with: “Possible 10–40.”
Three vehicle accident with injuries and a fatality!
Once through the traffic onto 282, Garreth floored the accelerator.
The lights of Maggie’s car flashed up 282 by the Co-op. Approaching, he saw the car parked behind the Silverado, with the F-150 sitting sideways across the southbound lane looking t-boned by a third vehicle. His first thought was to cut in at Gfeller Lumber and drive around the accident to block the southbound lane, but as he arrived the driver’s doors of both pickups opened. The Silverado's driver staggered out and toward the 150, cursing, fists waving.
The 150’s driver almost fell out of his vehicle, but caught the door and stayed upright…then dragged himself around the door to grab the pickup’s hood for support, screaming, “Diane! Diane!”