by Jessie Cooke
“Thank you for your honesty. The roast should be done by now,” she said, grabbing a potholder and going back over to the oven. Wolf had lost his appetite at that point, but she had gone to so much trouble, he couldn’t just walk out on her. She had served the dinner on what looked like her sister’s good china plates and she even offered to open a bottle of wine. Wolf had passed on the wine, but he ate the dinner she’d cooked for him. The food was delicious, but sitting across the table from her and not knowing what to say was hard. He hated that things were uncomfortable between them and he hoped it would only be temporary. He meant what he told her about her being his best friend, and he didn’t want to lose that. He wasn’t sure if he was being selfish or not, expecting her to still be his friend after he told her that there was no hope that he’d ever love her.
After dinner she refused to let him help clean up. She insisted he get in her bed and relax…and stupidly, after everything, he had still expected her to join him. When he woke up to the sound of the alarm on his phone at two-thirty a.m., he was alone in the bed. Once he was dressed, he found her asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep, on the couch. He kissed her on the forehead before he left, and she didn’t stir. He left Fresno, headed for Sacramento, feeling like he’d lost his best friend, and it hurt.
29
Wolf was lost in his own thoughts when he got on the 99 freeway in Fresno to head north toward Sacramento. It was early, or late, however you looked at it, and the traffic was light except for the eighteen-wheelers on their way to deliver their loads, taking advantage of the light traffic at that hour of the day. He was actually looking forward to the drive. It would be three hours there and another three back…six hours of wind therapy was how he looked at it. There was no better way to clear your head than on the back of a Harley, especially in the fall when the air was crisp and cold. It kept him awake and alert and opened up his mind.
He had been driving for almost two hours and was somewhere close to Livingston when the blinding lights of a car racing up behind him became visible in his rearview. He couldn’t see anything except the lights, but he could tell they were coming up on him way too fast. He moved over to the right and as soon as he did, it seemed that the car moved into that lane as well.
“Fuck. What the fuck are you doing?” He moved back over to the center lane and sped up enough that the car was no longer right on his tail. He pulled over again, to the far-left lane, and watched as the big car weaved between the far right and the center lane, coming perilously close to slamming into the guardrail, more than once. Wolf slowed down again, trying to put some distance between himself and what he thought must be a drunk. He was glad there was no one else on this stretch of the highway, but if the car kept going, it would run into a truck or another car soon enough. Wolf wasn’t sure what, if anything, he could do. He kept an eye on the car, both for his own safety and out of some morbid fascination. It was almost like watching a train wreck before it happened. He wondered where all the cops were and thought that if it were him driving that way, they’d surely be on him in a second.
He followed the car for a few miles when suddenly it veered so far into the right lane that it did hit the guardrail. The sparks that the metal created when it scraped into the cement were thrown back onto the highway and they rained down on top of him, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He saw a red flash and realized that the driver had slammed on his brakes. The back of the big car fishtailed, and it spun out of control. Wolf didn’t know if he should speed up or slow down to avoid colliding with it, but in reality he didn’t have time to think about it. The car spun left, and Wolf went right, passing it just as it came to a jolting stop. He could see the car in his rearview as he put distance between himself and it, and it didn’t look good. The front end of the heavy vehicle was hanging freely over the side of the overpass with nothing below it but another part of the freeway. The back half was still on the road, but judging by the way it was rocking, not for long.
“Shit!” Wolf slowed his bike down and wished there were someone else on the road. He didn’t want to go back…but he wasn’t going to be able to keep going forward, knowing that when that car fell, at least one person might die. That wasn’t even considering those that might be passing on the road below it when it fell. He cursed again and making sure that there was still nothing coming, he turned the bike around.
It only took him seconds to get back to where the car was still dangling. He parked his bike far enough away from it that if it moved, his bike wouldn’t be in the way. Taking a flashlight out of his saddlebag, he jogged across the road and cautiously approached the passenger side of the car. He shone the light into the window and saw the driver, slumped over the wheel. The car was old and obviously didn’t have airbags. The windshield was shattered where the man’s head must have slammed into it. He was wearing a lap belt, which Wolf assumed had kept him from going completely through the windshield. Wolf tapped on the window and waited for a second, but the man didn’t move. “Fuck.” He slid his cell phone out of his pocket and called 911.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“I’m on Freeway 99 just south of Livingston, I think, and I just witnessed an accident. The car is hanging off the side of the freeway and the driver is unconscious.”
“Are you in a safe place, sir?”
“I’m next to the car, but the driver isn’t in a safe place. You need to send someone, now.”
“Okay, sir, we will. I need you to get off the freeway and away from the car…”
“I’m fine. Send someone!”
“They’re on their way, sir. What’s your name?”
Wolf slammed the flip-phone closed. Someone was on their way. He couldn’t be there when the police came. He had a brick of cocaine on him, and a gun that wasn’t registered to anyone. He turned and started toward his bike when he heard the moan of creaking metal. The sound sent a feeling through him, almost reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. Against the voice in his head that told him to keep going, he turned back toward the car and grimaced as he saw it lurch forward slightly and realized that the person behind the wheel was moving inside. Cursing, he aimed the flashlight back on the window and realized immediately that was a mistake. The sudden light seemed to frighten the elderly man behind the wheel. He jerked his head around and all Wolf could see was white hair, wide, brown eyes, and blood covering the rest of the man’s face. “Don’t move!” Wolf yelled at him. “Help is on the way.”
Wolf could see headlights approaching and he hoped it was that “help.” It turned out to be just another car, and not one who was interested in getting involved, obviously. It kept going. The car had stopped moving again and once more, Wolf considered leaving. He almost made it to his bike that time before the car moved again, this time lurching so far forward that the nose of it was actually facing down. He thought about the old man again. It looked like he was wearing a robe. He wondered if someone, somewhere, was sitting at home, waiting for him to get there. He thought about the call that person was going to get that day, either telling them the old man was in the hospital…or dead. “Fuck.” With a strong feeling of déjà vu, he jogged back across the road. He didn’t hesitate because he knew if he thought about what he was going to do, he wouldn’t do it. He grabbed the handle of the back door on the driver’s side and pulled it open. The car moved as he climbed inside, but as he sat on the seat, his weight seemed to even things out.
“John?” The old man sounded terrified and confused. Wolf didn’t have time for introductions or explanations so he said:
“Yeah, it’s me. I need you to listen to me, very carefully, okay? I need you to unbuckle your seatbelt and then I need you to climb over the seat and come back here with me. Can you do that?”
“My face hurts, John.”
“I know. It’s going to be okay, though. Help is on the way. But we need to get you out of this car, and we need to do that right now, okay? So please unbuckle that belt and come back here with me. You trus
t me, right?”
“Of course, Johnny. Of course I trust you. You’re my boy.”
“That’s right, it’s Johnny. I wouldn’t steer you wrong. Come on back here with me. We’ll get you all taken care of.” Wolf held his breath as the man unbuckled his seatbelt and thanked God the man was thin when he slid to the center of the bench seat and pulled himself up over it. Wolf didn’t wait to see if the old man had the strength to get over it by himself. He grabbed the man underneath his bony arms and pulled. The momentum sent them both flying backward out of the car and onto the pavement. As Wolf’s head hit the asphalt he heard the sound of the car going further over the edge and the sounds of sirens in the background.
“We okay, Johnny?” The old man’s skinny body was shaking hard. Wolf wrapped his arms around him more tightly and said:
“We’re okay, Dad.”
“Well, I guess this is my reward for doing a good deed, huh?”
“Heel to toe,” the officer said.
Wolf was pissed. He’d still been holding on to the old man when the fire trucks got there. When they tried to take him away from Wolf he freaked out. Wolf told them that the old man seemed to think he was his son and they let Wolf sit with him in the ambulance when it finally arrived, while he got checked out. As soon as the police showed up and saw his vest however, things changed rapidly. The cop wanted him to step out of the ambulance, but Wolf refused to leave the old man. Even with the old man screaming and the firefighter/EMTs asking the cops to wait, they physically removed him from the old man, cuffed him, and made him sit in the backseat of a police car for twenty minutes. He could still hear the poor old man sobbing from where he sat, and each sob tore at his guts. The first officers on scene had been Highway Patrol but Wolf soon realized what they had been waiting for where he was concerned.
The next police car that rolled up said “K-9 Vehicle” and the one after that said “Gang Task Force.” They were both County Sheriff vehicles. The CHP had called them as soon as they realized who he was, and now the one with the dog was searching his bike while the other one gave him a sobriety test. Fuckers. Wolf was sweating as he went through the motions of the test, not because he was afraid he wouldn’t pass it, but because he knew what they were going to find on his bike. He had never been arrested, but he knew enough from what he’d absorbed over the years to know the search they were doing was probably illegal. He’d been the witness to an accident and had stopped to help. There were no grounds for them to search his bike. Of course, that might mean he wouldn’t go to prison in the end…but it didn’t mean they weren’t confiscating the cocaine right then…the brick that the dealer in Sacramento was waiting for, and the twenty-five thousand dollars he was supposed to take back to his father. Fuck.
They had taken him behind one of the large fire trucks so that he couldn’t see anything that was going on. He heard the ambulance leave and he could hear them working on getting the car off the overpass…but he couldn’t see anything that was going on. His heart was racing and he could feel the sweat rolling down the sides of his face as he finished going through the motions of the sobriety test. He got the feeling they were hoping he wouldn’t pass and that way their search of his bike might hold up in court later on. The officer giving him the test dragged it out until the one with the dog came over and took him aside. The dog stared Wolf down while the two men spoke, but didn’t come near him until his master told Wolf to stand still and hold out his arms. Once Wolf was in position, the dog sniffed around him, almost passively, and then returned to sit at the officer’s feet.
When that was done, the officer with the Gang Task Force jacket told him to put his hands behind his back again. “Why?”
“Because I’m placing you under arrest.”
“For?”
“Drug trafficking, and probably more as soon as we run the serial numbers on that gun we found in your bag.”
“I didn’t give anyone permission to search my stuff.”
“We didn’t need permission. Put your hands behind your back, now.” Wolf put his hands together behind his back and let the cop slide the cuffs on his wrists. It wasn’t like they were going to just let him walk away if he refused. Once they had him cuffed, he was finally led around the truck, where he could see what was going on. The ambulance with the old man was gone and the car was being cranked onto a tow truck. There were four or five uniformed officers around his bike and two more in the Gang Task Force jackets. A gold Ford that looked to Wolf like it might be an unmarked police car sat right behind his bike and he recognized the man standing in front of it, talking to the fire chief. It was Detective Meeks, the young detective that had been out to the clubhouse to interview everyone after Mouse was arrested. Wolf was confused. Meeks was Fresno County Gang Task Force. If Wolf had his calculations right, he was in Merced County, so what was this guy doing here? Meeks looked up at him as he was led past and put into the back of one of the cars again. “You have the right to remain silent…” The officer that cuffed him began reading him his rights. He was only about halfway through it when Wolf saw Meeks walk up behind him.
“Grady,” Meeks said to the officer. “I need to talk to him, alone.”
Grady looked annoyed. “I haven’t finished reading him his rights.” Meeks didn’t say anything else to the officer, but the officer looked over toward the group still positioned near Wolf’s bike and he must have seen something that persuaded him to not argue. Grady looked at Wolf and said, “I’ll be back.”
“Can’t wait,” Wolf mumbled as the young officer left him alone with the detective. When he was gone Meeks said:
“You’re Coyote’s kid.”
It wasn’t a question, but Wolf answered him anyway. “Yeah.”
“I’m Detective Meeks of the…”
“I know who you are,” Wolf said. “Confused about why you’re here. This isn’t your county. Do you just get to chase us up and down the state now?”
Meeks smiled. “If only,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll tell you why I’m here, but first I’d like you to tell me what happened tonight.”
“I already told about five people and look where that got me,” Wolf said. His head was pounding and all he could focus on was how pissed Coyote was going to be. “Maybe I should take him up on that right to remain silent thing.”
“I’m not asking about what they found on your bike, or why they’re arresting you,” Meeks said. “I want to know about the accident. Mostly, I want to know why you stayed.”
Wolf frowned. “Why I stayed? There was an old man in that car that was about to be roadkill. What was I supposed to do?”
Meeks leaned his back up against the car and took out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, took a drag, and offered it to Wolf. Wolf shook his head and waited. Finally, Meeks said, “You could have kept going. You had to know if you stopped and waited, the risk of your being caught with those drugs and the gun was astronomical. So, I’m asking again, why did you stay?”
“And I’m telling you again, to get that old man out of the car.”
“Once he was out, how long did it take EMS to get here?”
Wolf didn’t know where this conversation was going, but he was starting to regret turning the cigarette down. “I don’t know…another ten minutes, maybe.”
“So, you got him out of the car and he was safe…but you waited another ten minutes for EMS to get here?” Wolf shrugged.
“I don’t know how long it took.”
“There was a big accident about ten miles from here involving a semi,” Meeks said, confusing Wolf further. The ambulance got here late because they had to send one from up north and the highway patrol were tied up at that accident too when this first happened. The fire chief tells me that the cops didn’t arrive for fifteen minutes after they got here and that was ten minutes after you called 911.”
“Okay,” Wolf said, sarcastically. “We’ve established a timeline. Are we done?”
“You still didn’t leave,” Meeks said.
/> Wolf groaned. Those were the exact questions his president/father was going to ask him. He didn’t know why Meeks cared…it wasn’t even his fucking county. But Coyote was sure as hell going to want to know why he hadn’t gotten his ass out of there when he had the chance. Frustrated, Wolf said, “I don’t know, man, okay? The old man was hurt and he was freaked out…he kept calling me Johnny. He thought I was his son or something.”
“Johnny is his grandson,” Meeks said.
“Okay, whatever. Fuck. Can y’all just finish arresting me so I can call my lawyer?” It didn’t dawn on Wolf how Meeks knew that until he started talking again.
“Johnny is my brother. That old man is Byron Meeks. He’s my grandfather. He has Alzheimer’s and he lives with my brother and his wife. He has wandered off before, but this is the first time he’s ever taken the car. My brother called me tonight in a panic. He was scared to death that Grandpa was going to hurt someone else, or himself. They live in Livingston and I drove like hell to get here as fast as I could. I was almost to my brother’s house when I got another call. The fire chief had already called my brother and told him Grandpa was on the way to the hospital. I was on my way there too, when I saw all this mess and stopped. The fire chief turned out to be an old friend of mine. He was pretty impressed with you.” Wolf didn’t say anything, but he had at least a tickle of hope in his gut that those facts might just help him out with this situation. He didn’t know how they would help, but it was hope, at least. Meeks went on, “From what he told me, you had numerous opportunities to leave, and you didn’t. You kept Grandpa calm for as long as they would let you, and you let him think you were Johnny. He told me most of that before I knew who you were. I have to say, I was surprised when I found out it was Wolf Lee he was talking about.”
“Why? Because a guy that grew up in an MC couldn’t possibly be human?”
Meeks smiled and said, “I’ve found out both in my job and with what our family has been through with Grandpa that ‘human’ is not always a requirement where people are concerned. Thank you, Mr. Lee. If not for you, my family would be burying him next week instead of celebrating his ninetieth birthday. I know a lot of people might think that he’s outlived his usefulness, especially thanks to the Alzheimer’s, but we love him and I’m so damned grateful to you. And just so we’re clear, most ‘humans’ would have saved their own ass in a situation like this.” Meeks stood and left Wolf in the back of the car, still in the cuffs to ponder that. It was over half an hour later when Grady came back and told him to stand up. He had Wolf face the car and he unlocked the handcuffs.