An Obvious Fact

by Craig Johnson

  He thought about it but changed the subject. “I’m going to turn the red and blues on. You know, to let ’em know we’re cops.” He reached overhead and flipped another toggle. “I know where that is, because I was the one who had ’em installed.” He held out a piece of paper with a diagram. “Shows the lights right here. There’s also a PA system if you want to announce our presence with a sense of authority.”

  Having successfully backed the MRAP, I was looking point-blank at the quarter mile of Hulett’s main and only thoroughfare, the direction we would be heading before taking a left and pulling into the Dakota Gas Company like happy motorists. “I don’t suppose there’s a siren, just to let people know that this thing actually moves, is there?”

  “There could’a been, but I didn’t order that.”

  I nodded, straightened my hat, and pressed the D button. Hitting the gas, I was appalled at how fast the gigantic vehicle moved and immediately adjusted the weight of my foot on the accelerator. “Wow.”

  “Dual turbos and an overdrive.” He giggled. “I opted for those, too.”

  We went down the hill at a reasonable speed, and it was interesting to see the crowd’s reaction to the bright white colossus, most just standing with their mouths agape, figuring they were being invaded.

  I paused at the only intersection in town, but I needn’t have bothered since the Gape and Awe portion of the exercise appeared to be holding sway. There were about eight bikers on one side and a pickup truck, sedan, and a few more bikes on the other, but they were all stopped, probably afraid that we were going to open fire. I glanced around, half expecting to see a turret and .50. “Is this thing armed?”

  Bill had broken out what I assumed were the copious manuals for the vehicle and was now studying the door in search of a window crank. “How do you think the windows work?”

  “They probably don’t; that would compromise the Ambush Protected part of the MRAP title.”

  “How the hell are you supposed to yell at everybody?”

  I pulled forward through the intersection. “That’s what the PA system would be for.”

  “Oh, we gotta find that—”

  “Oh, no we don’t.”

  He studied the manual some more. “In answer to your question, no it doesn’t have any guns on it. Hell, it’s just a big truck that’s hard to blow up, but you’d think we were trying to bring a tank in here when I was fighting with the county commissioners about the thing. There’s this one old hippie on the board from Sundance, and she’s sure we’re trying to militarize the police department. Hell, there’s only two of us, so I’m not so sure how much militarization we could summon up.”

  “What was the name of the guy that underwrote this thing for you?”

  “Bob Nance—one of those computer whizzes from out of California—a specialist in acoustic something or other. He’s got a place up at the golf course. Comes out here in the summers to play and pretend he’s a cowboy. ’Course, I never met a cowboy with a log mansion on the ninth green.”

  Traveling at a majestic five miles an hour, we were approaching the Ponderosa Café at midtown, where I could see Corbin Dougherty leaning on his vehicle as he talked to a group of bikers, all of them pausing in their conversation to watch the rolling fortress pass by. “Hell, there’s Deputy Dog. You wanna stop, and I’ll figure out how to open the door?”

  I kept moving. “Why don’t we spare ourselves the embarrassment? I’ll get the information I need from him on the walk back.”

  Bill looked a little unnerved. “You’re not going to drive it back for me?”

  “Wasn’t planning on it. Anyway, you’re going to need the practice.”

  “What if I run over somebody?”

  “You’ll hardly feel it.” I made the left, careful to avoid Lola’s Cadillac parked next to the sidewalk adjacent to the motel, where I’d left it earlier, the keys in the ignition as she’d requested. We crossed the Belle Fourche bridge, and I was just glad the thing held. Amazingly enough, the MRAP had turn signals, and I clicked the stem down, indicating an impending left. The oncoming bikers had already stopped, never having encountered a great white whale like this one.

  I spun the wheel, goosed the accelerator, and the big truck leapt across the lanes and roared into the Dakota Gas Company lot, where I figured out pretty quick that it wasn’t going to fit under the awning. “Oh, ye whale, now what?”

  “There’s a big-rig island in the back; just circle around there.”

  I did as instructed and pulled up to the diesel pump with the green handle, then hit the N button and subsequently the P. “There you are, Captain my Captain—she’s yours from here on out.”

  He reached around behind him, then began patting all his pockets with his hands. “Um, I appear to have left my wallet back at the office. You wouldn’t happen to have some cash on you, would you?”

  • • •

  “How’s the bike?” We were sitting in the Ponderosa Bar behind the Ponderosa Café. Actually, we were sitting at a picnic table in the alley behind the Ponderosa Bar behind the Ponderosa Café, because it was the only place where there were a couple of seats together, and we were soon to have guests. “Irreparable, I hope?”

  The Bear rewrapped the gauze and Ace bandage around his hand after readjusting the nonstick pad that covered the burn he’d received from the KTM as it had attempted to squash him like a bug. “I bent a few things, but we’ll be ready for tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  Exasperated, which I could tell only from a slight change in the angle of his head, he turned and looked at me. “You act as if I am the only one who does crazy things.”

  “Name one crazy thing I do.”

  “It is pinned to your shirt.”

  I sipped my Rainier. “Actually, it’s in a natty leather wallet in my pocket.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  It was a velvety evening in the Black Hills, and the slight breeze carried the scent of the pines and the clear high-country air—or maybe it was the lumberyard on the other side of the river. “That’s different; it’s my job.”

  He raised an eyebrow and savored his Snowden cabernet. “Why is that different? I am thinking it might actually be worse.”

  “Why?”

  “Mine is driven by passion, yours by wages.”

  I gave him the eyebrow back. “Civic duty, if you please.”

  “Even worse—insanity as a duty?”

  “The insane part of my work is accidental, an improvisational by-product, whereas you are actually courting crazy.”

  “Not true. I am, like you, participating in actions which may or may not lead to certain results which you deem as crazy.”

  “No, you choose to do these things.”

  He gestured with the wineglass. “And you did not choose to wear that badge in the natty leather wallet?”

  I considered it and then raised my bottle in a toast as he joined me. “Touché.”

  “What are you guys toasting?”

  I looked up at the smiling man with the blue sweatshirt and mop of silver hair. “Well, if it isn’t No Go Novo.” I scooted over and made room for the traffic expert for the Division of Criminal Investigation. He sat, and I noticed that he’d already fortified himself with a beer from the bar, a prudent action seeing as how we hadn’t spotted a waitress in twenty minutes.

  The investigator glanced around, pushing the hair from his face. “Kind of crowded around here.”

  “’Tis the season.”

  Mike nodded to Henry. “You make your time trial over in Sturgis?”

  The Bear smiled. “Nine-tenths of it.”

  “Uh oh.”

  I shrugged. “He’s in the front third.”

  Mike seemed impressed. “Well, that means they think you’ll actually make it; the guys they throw in the back third are doomed
.”

  Henry nodded. “I know, I have been there.”

  “What time is the race tomorrow?”

  “Eight.”

  “In the morning?” He drank from his beer. “I’m not through throwing up by then.”

  Spotting a waitress rounding one of the other tables, I flagged her down and turned back to my comrades. “I’m getting another; you guys want something?” Agreeing that we might not have another opportunity, I ordered a double round and then turned back to Mike. “Did you have a look at Bodaway’s bike?”

  “No, but I saw the incident location.”

  “And?”

  He took a couple of sips of his beer, encouraged by the hope of another. “It rained, of course, and there’s been no end of traffic on that road—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  He smiled. “There are about three different types of gyroscopic instability on a motorcycle. The ones that happen at high speed are weave and wobble, both occurring at more than eighty miles per hour and on dry pavement. Weave is a snakelike oscillation of the motorcycle around its center of mass. Usually confined to the rear of the bike, it doesn’t have much of an effect on the steering but does generally cause the bike to weave from side to side along the path of travel.”

  “And wobble?”

  “Wobble is uncorrected weave, where it begins to affect the frame of the bike and then the steering axis. The transition from weave to wobble is about .02 seconds, and I don’t even think the great Henry Standing Bear has reflexes that quick.” He smiled at the Cheyenne Nation. “Once the wobble sets in, the motion becomes so severe that the rider loses control and the bike is slammed to the pavement, resulting in a totaled bike and a dead rider.”

  “Factors?”

  He palmed a chin and looked at me through the silver curtain, partially hiding eyes that had seen more vehicular mayhem than I would ever want to. “Weight distribution, center of aerodynamic pressure, tire inflation, tire size, tread shape and wear, and rider weight.”

  “He’s not a large man.”

  “And the bike?”

  I paused for a second and then recited what Sheriff Engelhardt had said to me at the impound lot. “’09 Harley Cross Bones, springer front with a softail rear, and I have no idea what I just said.”

  “Big bike.”

  “It looked big to me, but that just makes it a larger death trap. Can’t you just slow down?” I finished my beer as the other drinks arrived. “Um, does anybody have any money?”

  They both looked at me. “The gas station over here doesn’t take credit cards, and I had to use all my walking-around money to fill up Chief Nutter’s MRAP.”

  Mike studied me, pretty sure this was the most elaborate way of getting out of paying a check he’d ever heard. “A what?”

  The Cheyenne Nation handed me a fifty, which I transferred to the waitress. “Keep the tip.”

  Henry shook his head as I handed him his two glasses of wine and Mike his beer backups.

  “So, can’t you just slow down?”

  “It happens too fast, and at that speed most riders make the mistake of slamming on their brakes instead of redistributing their weight by transferring it from the saddle to the pegs. And add-on accessory boxes can change both the weight distribution and the aerodynamics.” Mike glanced at me. “You saw the bike?”

  “I did, and I saw the kid, too.”

  Sticking to the subject at hand, he asked about the motorcycle. “Was it stock?”

  “How the heck should I know?”

  “You say it had the springer forks?” I looked at him blankly. “Did the front have a set of springs, kind of vintage looking?”

  “Yep.”

  “Those models can get out of tune and cause problems.”

  “There’s something else . . .”

  “Were there any saddlebags on it, big ones?”

  “Um, no—but there was gold paint.”

  He looked at me. “What color is the bike?”

  “Black.”

  “You think somebody hit him?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think you’d better take a look at the bike and then the car I’ve got on loan.”

  “Well, when I get down to Rapid, I’ll . . .”

  I pulled the phone from my pocket and handed it to him as he gave me a questioning look. “When did you start carrying a cell phone?”

  I pointed at Henry. “It’s his. I took pictures; well, Irl Engelhardt did.” I gestured toward the device. “I barely know how to take a photo.”

  “It’s pretty easy to operate; you just hit the little icon that looks like a camera. Here, see?” He showed me and began swiping through the photos, finally glancing at the Bear. “You mind if I send these to my email so I can look at them on my computer?”

  The Cheyenne Nation tipped his wine. “Feel free. I just own the thing.”

  Mike smiled and began pushing buttons. “By the way, Walt, you described the bike magnificently—it almost sounded like you knew what you were talking about.”

  “Thanks.” As the investigator worked, I glanced at the Bear. “Why would Lola hit her own kid?”

  Henry shrugged. “You have a child; you know how it is.” His face tightened in a slight smile, and I looked past him where I could see a table of women who were openly staring at him. I sometimes forgot the effect that the Bear had on the opposite sex, but then, when I saw any of them around him, I remembered.

  “Seriously.”

  “Walt, you have to remember that my interaction with this woman is almost thirty years old; I have no idea what her relationship with her son is like, and with someone like Lola, I am not remotely willing to guess.”

  Novo handed Henry his phone and then turned back to me as the Cheyenne Nation checked for messages.

  “You said there were three specific types of gyroscopic instability on a motorcycle.”

  Mike smiled. “I did, and though the third usually doesn’t leave marks on the pavement, we were lucky that the kid was riding in the emergency lane, and the pavement was remarkably fresh.”

  “Wait—he was riding on the edge of the road?”

  He nodded. “Just on the other side of the rumble strip.”

  “Where he ran off the road.”

  “No, he was riding there for quite a ways, and here’s the thing: there was an instability, but it was a low-speed phenomenon called flutter, which is when the front tire and steering assembly experience rapid oscillation—think of an unsupported castor on a shopping cart. It happens only one way, when the rider’s hands are not on the handlebars.”

  Henry and I looked at each other and then back to Mike. “So, you’re saying that he was riding on the edge of the road with his hands doing something other than steering?”

  Mike nodded again. “Yes, and if flutter is the case, then that means there must’ve been something on the rear of that bike.”

  “Like the heavy saddlebags you mentioned?”

  “Or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “From the photos you took, I could see that there was a seat pad on the Harley.”

  The Cheyenne Nation carefully set his wineglass on the uneven surface of the old picnic table, his voice rumbling in his chest. “Then someone was on the back of the motorcycle.”

  4

  The Bear decided to stay at the Pondo, as the locals called the bar, and talk with Jamey and some of the other hill climbers who had arrived as our little party was breaking up, but I was worried about Dog back at the motel cabin. I thought the quiet by the river might be a chance for him to get out, and evidently he thought so, too.

  I walked along after him in the thin fog that rolled off the water as he sniffed at the high stalks of grass and the cattails that had sprung up near the edge. “Don’t get any wise ideas—I’m not sharing my bed with a we
t dog.”

  He ignored me and trotted on along the bank to where I could see someone in the mist. I was about to call Dog off, but he seemed to know who it was. After another step, I recognized her profile, and I joined them. “Hello, Lola.”

  She didn’t look at me but petted Dog’s wide head. “Hi, Sheriff.”

  “Did you get your keys?”

  “No.”

  “I put them under the floor mat on the driver’s side.”

  “You don’t have to do that; nobody outside of the Tre Tre Nomads would touch that car.”

  I stopped and turned to look at the river, the fog rolling tendrils from the surface, the water reflecting the high clouds just starting to disappear in the dusk. “I guess it’s the lawman in me, but I can’t leave the keys in the ignition of a car, especially in a town with thousands of bikers in it.”

  She glanced at me.

  “Although, I am sure ninety-nine percent of them are good, law-abiding citizens.” I looked around. “I’m amazed you found a quiet spot.”

  She took out a cigarette and lit it, taking a deep drag. “Might be the only one.”

  “You mind if I ask you a question?”

  Her voice took on an officious tone. “Where were you on the night of January sixteenth?”

  “Something like that.”

  She stared at me. “You’re serious?”

  “I am. Where were you the night of your son’s accident?”

  She took another drag on her cigarette. “Who wants to know?”

  “You wanted an investigator; this is called investigating.”

  “Me?”

  “Everyone’s a suspect until we find out who did it.”

  “So, you do think somebody did it?”

  Dog was getting too close to the water, so I patted my leg. “You’re not answering my question.”

  She studied me for a moment more. “The Dime Horseshoe Bar in Sundance for the Burnout.”

  “The what?”

  “They put up a big platform on the street, and then guys ride their bikes up onto it and do these epic burnouts—you know, locking up the front brake and spinning the rear? Lots of smoke, lots of beer and leather—an All-American spectacle.”