“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. “
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: “
In a forty-five zone.
“
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. “
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!”
“Garreth, stop him!” Maggie shouted from the far side of the 150.
First he need to stop the Silverado’s driver, whose intent seemed to be bodily harm. He leaped out of his car into a flood of human and vehicle fluid smells…caught up to the driver and spun him. “Hey. Hey! Look at me! Stop. You need to lie down. Lie…down.”
The driver’s knees buckled.
Garreth eased him to the pavement. “Stay there.”
Then he ran after the 150’s driver…reaching him as the boy round the front of the truck, still yelling the girl’s name. Beyond him, Garreth saw with dismay why Maggie wanted him restrained. A female sprawled on the hood of a Ford Fairlane with her head embedded in the windshield.
Inside the Fairlane a female passenger screamed hysterically, almost drowning the male voice trying to calm her. Maggie straightened beside the driver’s window and headed for the bed of the 150.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
As Garreth dragged the boy back and turned him, to his further dismay he spotted a second motionless figure…this one male, lying on the highway several yards ahead of the Silverado, a dark stain spreading around his head.
Two fatalities? Damn!
He jerked his focus back to the boy whose arms he held and after capturing the boy’s gaze, laid him down on grass beside the highway.
Maggie, having peered into the back of the 150, gave Garreth a thumbs up and ran for the passenger side of the Silverado.
Garreth checked the 150, too. A juvenile male lay curled in the truck bed, motionless but signaling life by whimpering, clutching the Cougar banner, which had torn loose from one pole.
“Passenger’s alive but unconscious!” Maggie called from the Silverado, raising her voice above the nearing sirens.
The sirens announced Fire Rescue’s arrival. Soon they had other assistance, too: two Bellamy SO deputies, one in uniform, the other in a Cougar sweatshirt with his badge pinned on the front, and Duncan in a Timberwolf sweatshirt, face painted blue and yellow. Duncan and a deputy set out flashing cones and diverted traffic from 282 to Kansas via cross streets north and south of accident. Sue Ann reported that Serk had moved from the stadium to handle traffic downtown.
Fire Rescue took the injured victims to St. Francis. The deputies left when the last of the injured victims were on their way to the hospital, the sweatshirted one agreeing to contact the families of the two Bellamy boys. Duncan disappeared about the same time. Leaving Garreth and Maggie photographing the fatalities — named Diane Barnes and Jonah Wiltz — so the wagon from Sterling-Weiss Funeral Home could transport the bodies to the hospital, too.
Looking after the Sterling-Weiss vehicle’s departing tail lights, Maggie visibly braced herself. “I need to go notify our parents.”
The grimmest job of the night. “Would you like me to come with you?” Garreth asked.
She hesitated only a moment before shaking her head. “I know them. You finish up here.”
So he took final photos and measurements of the scene and made a rough sketch, watched while A-1 towed the vehicles, then helped them clean up debris and fluids, so he could finally pick up the cones and re-open the road.
Maggie radioed to join her at the hospital.
Taking the photos and accident scene diagrams from him, she tallied the injuries for him: James Coffey, driver of the Fairlane, broken ankle; Arlene Coffey, his wife, possible whiplash; Matt Schaller, driver of the 150, possible whiplash; Gary Canfield, passenger in the Silverado, concussion and frontal sinus fracture; Kenny Creager,
