After the Rain

“Inshallah,” Joe said, with a twist of irony in his torn smile.

“But you don’t believe in God,” Dale said, and they all laughed.

Joe got in the van, pulled out on the road, and turned north. George immediately handed Dale two maps: North Dakota and Minnesota. He’d written his cell-phone number prominently on them and traced a route in orange Magic Marker.

“We’ll keep in contact by cell. I’ll lead, you follow, but not too close. Halfway, we’ll stop. I have something to show you.”

“The pictures?” Dale asked, smiling.

George nodded, pointed to a circled town on the Minnesota map. He was bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, fingering the medallion around his neck. “Here, in Fergus Falls.”

“What if I gotta stop to take a leak?”

“Signal with your lights for the next rest stop. But we gotta hurry, get back on the road. Okay.”

“Hey, calm down, George. We got time. I told Irv I’d be there by five P.M.”

George didn’t calm down. He talked faster. “We drop down to Highway 2, take it to Grand Forks, then drop south on 29, pick up 94…”

Dale grinned, “I got it. C’mon. Let’s go.”

Solemnly, George shook Dale’s hand and stared into his eyes. Dale figured George was in danger of trading his dope-smuggler cool for a bunch of holy-warrior bullshit. Whatever. Then George turned and got into his Lexus. Dale shut the door, got in the Roadtrek, checked Nina in the back. She was still in the K-hole. He pulled the big camper outside, went back, shut the garage door, got back in, and put it in gear. As he pulled on the road, he watched the sun glint on the back of George’s silver Lexus.

Imagine that, cool old George getting flustered, and me getting cooler and cooler. Like now…

Dale grabbed his cell phone off the passenger seat. First he held his breath, then he started panting as fast as he could until he was gasping. When he sounded like he was hyperventilating, he punched in 911. Funny about numbers, wasn’t it? Nine-one-one. Nine-eleven.

Dale thought for a moment. Okay…Karen Fremuth would be on duty at the SO. Dale had gone to school with her older sister. Hopefully she would recognize his voice.

“Nine-one-one.”

He held the phone close to his chest, rasping in a loud whisper. “Help. Oh shit it hurts. He shot Ace. You gotta help. And this girl…”

“Calm down who is this where are you who was shot!!!”

Dale grinned. Karen’s starting to sound like old George. Now she’s the one who had to calm down. “It’s me, Dale. Dale Shuster. Joe Reed, that fucking Indian went crazy, he shot Ace…at the bar.”

“Dale? Your brother Ace? You have to talk louder, I can’t hear you.”

“I can’t. I’m in the back of his van on a cell, me and that women Ace was with. Shit, he’s taking us…going north on Richmond…”

“You mean Pinto Joe?”

“Pinto Joe, a brown GM van. Oh shit, no, no…”

Dale ended the call. That’d teach Joe to point guns at him. They knew Joe’s van at the sheriff’s office.

All hell was about to break loose!

Chapter Thirty-four

Barry Sauer was sitting three miles east of Langdon, parked on the side of Highway 5 watching the cherry-red ’Cuda grumble off the shoulder. He glanced at the file on his MDT screen. He’d just tagged Kyle Shriver doing seventy-five in a fifty-five. Fifteen years ago he’d given Kyle’s old man about the same ticket for about the same margin over the…

“Jimmy, Barry, Lyle: Dale Shuster just called.” Dispatch at the SO came on the radio yelling, so blown-away excited she skipped the ten codes, “…and was he freaked. Said Joe Reed shot his brother Ace and maybe some woman at the Missile Park and sounds like Joe kidnaped Dale…maybe shot him, too. EMT is started…”

The voice on the radio changed. Norm Wales had taken over the mike. “Where is everybody?”

“Yeager. Two north.”

“Lyle. On Main. Headed for the bar.”

“Sauer. Three east,” Sauer croaked as the adrenaline thickened his throat. He whipped the cruiser around, tires fliging gravel, then hammered the gas as he headed into town. Pins and needles played hopscotch up and down his spine-the deja vu running with the acceleration.

Last week. Really cranking, lights and sirens to an accident, and this deer…

Doing sixty now, sixty-five…

His skid marks were still carved into the road surface headed toward the Pembina Gorge, panic hieroglyphics about what happens when an 02 Crown Victoria with a Interceptor package and a 351 Cleveland engine with high- performance fuel injection and two-hundred-dollar Eagle GT tires doing 120 miles an hour…

…mature running whitetail, weighing 200 pounds…

The nylon air bag was in his face like an air fist. Everything went steam white from the hot blast of nitrogen that powered the inflation; add the cornstarch coating from the bag, which wound up in his teeth. Damn deer drove in the grill and the radiator and pushed them back into the engine. Crammed the bumper back into the left front wheel…

Coming up on town…driving his sergeant’s car today. Shit!

Gotta make a decision here. In his trunk, tucked in with his emergency gear, he carried an M-14 semiautomatic rifle with a twenty-round magazine. If he stopped to take it out, how much time would he lose? He glanced at his speedometer. Already going seventy.

No M-14, he decided. He loosed the safety strap on the holster that held his.45. The radio squawked:

“Joe driving that brown metallic van?”

“Where is he?”

“Bet he’s headed for the rez.”

“Don’t figure. He can’t outrun us on the flat.”

“If he just shot Ace, he’s probably not thinking real clear.”

Then they got a break from a local game warden.

“Norm, this is Phil Lutes. Monitored your traffic. I’m out on Richmond just off 5 and the sumbitch just turned off the highway, heading north…I got him. I got him. Just turn onto Richmond Road going north. That’s him, brown GM van, kinda metal-flake brown.”

“Hey, people, you got that? He’s heading for the border. I’m calling customs to get the Canadians up. But remember-no pursuit into Canada.”

“We got it.”

Then a transmission stepped on the others, persisting through the static. “Norm, it’s Lyle.” Lyle was out of breath, shouting. “I’m at the bar. Ace and a woman are down, shot.”

“Lyle. Secure the scene for EMT.”

“They don’t need no ambulance. They’re dead, Norm.”

“You monitor out there?”

Sauer put his foot on the floor, picked up his radio mike, called it in to the state net. “Milton Tower, two-five-nine. Langdon nine-one-one has a double shooting, two confirmed dead, suspect running north on Richmond Road in a brown Chevy van. Am in pursuit. Request backup.”

“Milton ten-four.”

Sauer switched to his shoulder mike. And I got the fastest car.