3

“THANKS FOR TAGGING ALONG,” ARN said. “I know it’s your off-day.”

“I needed out of the newsroom for a while anyway,” Ana Maria said. She rummaged through Arn’s aging selection of eight-tracks in his tape box. “Yanni. Are you serious?”

“Give me a break—it’s hard to find eight tracks no matter how many garage sales I go to.”

She selected Johnny Cash taped at Folsom Prison. “We are not listening to Yanni.” She slid the tape into the player mounted under the dash of the old Oldsmobile. “As for being my day off, I wouldn’t miss the chance to see a lot of cool bikes.”

Arn chuckled. “You just want to see the hot bikers riding them.”

They pulled off Interstate 90 and Arn had to slow. Motorcycles cluttered the road four abreast, riding overly slow, wearing the colors of the Devil’s Jokers. One biker glanced behind at the traffic backed up by the bike and turned back, undeterred. He said something to the others, and they chuckled. “This is my first time here in Sturgis during Bike Week,” AnaMaria said, staring wide-eyed out the window. “My God, there are bikes everywhere.”

“Last year Sturgis had an estimated six-hundred-thousand attending the rally,” Arn said, down shifting into second as the bikers slowed even more.

Ana Maria rolled the window up to shut out the fumes. “Wish you’d get air conditioning for this beast. It’s damn near a hundred degrees.”

Arn grinned. “You could keep your window rolled down.”

“Not on your life.” Ana Maria coughed as she stared at motorcycles headed both ways, most ridden by frightening-looking bikers even Arn wouldn’t want to meet in a lit alley, let alone a dark one.

The four bikers turned off into a convenience store, and Arn passed two others, a man wearing a mohawk, and a woman in tube top and assless-chaps. The woman stuck out her tongue at Ana Maria in a crude gesture, and her face turned crimson. “You got your gun I hope?” Ana Maria asked.

“I do,” he said, “and—unless you sold the one I loaned you couple months ago—you should have yours with you as well.” He laughed nervously. “Not that our two little guns would keep this swarm back for any amount of time.”

“Oh, God— “.

“Relax,” Arn said. “It’s not as bad as it seems. Most bikers who come to Sturgis every year are decent folks just having fun and acting stupid before returning to their ordinary lives.” He drove around two others gawking at his car like they never saw a classic Olds before. “It’s those one-percenters like those boobs we just passed that give the others a bad name.”

At Lazelle Street, they had to wait until an ambulance and two police cars sped by. “Accident?” she asked.

“More like somebody got stupid at the Buffalo Chip.”

They headed east and Ana Maria rolled the window down again when the riders had petered out.

“When were you here last?” Arn asked.

“Last year,” Ana Maria answered. “I had to pick up a steering column for that ’55 Merc I restored. Found one from Jim’s Salvage—neat place situated towards the airport. I could hang out there all week they have so many cool parts. But I’ve never been here during Bike Week.”

“And you were never tempted to come here during the rally and get wild and crazy?”

She shook her head. “I was tempted once when I met a dude online who claimed to be a doctor. Said he attended the rally every year— .”

“You’re not still on those dating sites,” Arn said, “’cause you could probably find a man with the way you look.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

“And the last time you answered a profile ad on a dating site it damn near got you killed. You forgetting that?”

“How could I,” she answered.

When she worked at the television station in Denver, Ana Maria answered an online dating profile. The man sounded ideal—a man Ana Maria’s age. Wanting children. A real hunk by his picture. A doctor he said. When she finally met him, he wasn’t Ana Maria’s age but much older. He didn’t want children—it would interfere with his life’s work of abducting unsuspecting women. His picture was nothing like he’d posted, nothing that might identify him. And the only thing about Ana Maria’s online love that was professional was that he was professional killer, intent on making her his next victim. As for a doctor, he called himself one—Doc Henry. He’d kept her prisoner in his ratty, run-down brownstone until Arn rescued her. The dating site was merely how the sociopath had lured Ana Maria and many others. “Thought you would have learned your lesson.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder. “Relax. I did. I thoroughly checked this last guy out—he was a groundskeeper at the college and was even older than you, if you can believe that. Besides, I haven’t logged onto one of those sites for some time.”

They passed the sign announcing they were entering Ft. Meade VA Center, and Arn recalled what he had read about it when he was a youngster in school. The Army had established Ft. Meade in 1876 to protect miners and settlers in the Black Hills from Lakota and Cheyenne Indians bent on driving the white man from their sacred grounds. As they followed the signs to the Administrating Building, Arn thought how they could use the cavalry right about now. A crowd of forty-odd men and women blocked the road, anti-government chants echoing off the buildings, waving signs attacking the VA.

One man—slightly built with the distinct odor of marijuana reeking from his tattered clothing—banged on the front fender and looked in the window when Arn stopped. His greasy and stained arm band matched the logo on the sign he carried—Righteous Sword of the Lord. Arn slipped his revolver from his pocket and placed it under his leg. “You here for medical attention?” the man asked. He started leaning into the window when Arn pushed him away. “What the hell’s it to you?”

The man fidgeted with dirty silver colonel wings on his lapels as he looked about for backup, but the others were too absorbed in their chants and the waving of their silly signs to pay them any attention. “If you’re a veteran, you’re part of the problem.”

“What problem?”

“The U. S. military, of course,” the man said.

“I’ve never been in the military.”

“Then you can drive on through.” He circled his hand overhead and the crowd parted to let the Olds through.

Ana Maria turned in her seat and watched the crowd through the back window. “What was that all about?”

“Who the hell knows. Protesting something. None of our business, though.”

They drove another two blocks to the admin building and climbed out, the chanting still audible two blocks over here. “You really think these government people will tell us anything about Steve Urchek’s death?” Ana Maria asked, as she had several times since they left Cheyenne.

“Bureaucrats are too damned worried about their pensions,” Arn answered as he locked the car. “Wouldn’t tell me squat on the phone, but I’m hoping you can persuade them.”

“It’s not like they’re going to pity us after a five-hour drive. What makes you think they’ll tell us anything about Helen’s brother now?”

“By talking to another brother.”

“How’s that?”

“By talking to a brother in blue—I’m going to talk with the head of their VA police. If he’s like other cops, he and I will have solidarity, me being retired law enforcement and all. He’ll sneak me the information we’re looking for.”