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COPS ARE TAUGHT TO use what’s called “the cop voice.” A loud, fearsome tone. Sharp, precise commands. And most of all, an authoritative voice. “Get on the ground!” or “Freeze!” or “Put your hands up!” Any variation of commands like that would work. They were trained to show confidence. They were trained to show power, force, and strength. The one thing they were trained not to do was show fear or hesitation. Signs of fear could get you shot. Signs of fear could get you killed.
The police officer that Widow had just assisted was pointing a gun at him and saying the right words, but not in the right way. She trembled. Widow could see the fear in her eyes and hear it in her voice.
“Get your hands up!” she shouted. “Get them up! Get them up!”
This upset Widow for two reasons. First, he had just helped her out. Clearly, she had needed assistance because she was letting these two guys push her around, and assaulting an officer was a crime everywhere. Widow had no doubt about that. Second, he found himself uncontrollably attracted to her. He had noticed how attractive she was from the first moment he had seen her, but it wasn’t until now that he could see just how incredible she was.
She had beautiful black hair, big brown eyes, and crisp eyebrows on a smooth forehead. Her cheekbones were high and well-defined, and she had long, thin lips. Her nose was thin and bridged her eyes seamlessly. Her skin was the color of a gently worn saddle. The only thing unattractive about her was the fact that she pointed a gun at him. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to be grateful for the help, but it certainly insulted him that now she was trying to detain him after all he’d done to help her. After all, it was the other two guys who had assaulted her, and now she knew they had been carrying concealed weapons, which might’ve been a crime on this reservation. He wasn’t sure.
“Relax. I’m not a threat,” Widow said in a firm voice, trying to hide his annoyance at her reaction.
Not a very good start, he thought.
She shouted, “Get your hands up!”
Widow slowly raised his hands. Over to his right, he noticed the sunlight was almost gone. If he wanted, he could’ve jumped right, scrambled to her, and gotten hold of the Glock. He could’ve pushed it down and to the left and rendered it useless unless she wanted to shoot at the ground. But he discarded this plan because he was a good guy.
No need to assault her, even though she apparently wouldn’t have done anything about it, he thought.
He glanced down at her nameplate. It said: Red Cloud. A look of intrigue splashed across his face, and he thought about Chief Red Cloud, from his conversation with Floyd. She must’ve been related to him, proudly wearing his name as her own.
He glanced a little lower and saw a badge clipped to the front of her belt at the lower right-hand side of her abdomen.
The badge had an Old West design to it. It was natural, unadorned, and simple with a rusty color swirling through it. At the top of the badge was a blackened arrow that faced upward with the name of her tribe plastered across the top in big letters: Lakota. In the middle of the badge, just under the tribal name, was the seal of an Indian head, feathers and all. At the bottom was the word Police.
Officer Red Cloud cocked her head to the left and stared coldly into Widow’s face. She said, “Turn around slowly and keep your hands up till I tell you otherwise.”
Widow didn’t argue. He shrugged and turned slowly, keeping his arms in the air.
“Lower your arms slowly and place them behind your back.”
Not again, Widow thought. He’d been arrested a little more than six months ago for beating up three rednecks who had been picking on a weaker guy, and now he was about to be handcuffed for the same crime. He was starting to think that maybe he wasn’t supposed to help total strangers out anymore. So far, the endeavor had brought him nothing but trouble.
“Are you arresting me?”
“Sir, please comply. Place your arms down behind your back,” Officer Red Cloud said.
Shrugging, Widow closed his eyes tight and placed his arms down behind his back, his wrists pressed together. No tightening of his muscles. No intention of resisting. He kept everything loose.
He heard Officer Red Cloud step closer to him in the snow. Her boots crunched down—soft. She moved in closer behind him. She didn’t lower her gun until she was close enough to grab him. She had dealt with big guys before. It came with the job. She had been trained to do so way back in the Law Enforcement Academy of Wyoming.
The bulk of the school was stationed clear at the opposite corner of the state, in Douglas, Wyoming. But she had attended most of her classes on a university campus in Cody. It was a joint program, a satellite of the academy, but the courses that taught her how to engage a man of Widow’s stature were courses she had to take one semester when she moved down to Douglas.
Even though Officer Red Cloud had been properly trained, this guy was different. This guy had just sneaked up behind two men with special ops backgrounds and taken them down faster than any takedown she had ever seen before. He was serious business.
She waited until she was within reaching-distance of Widow, and then she lowered her gun, held it out one-handed. She reached behind her and took out a pair of handcuffs. Widow heard the clatter of the metal on metal from the chain and the cuffs.
Officer Red Cloud smashed the first cuff on his left wrist and then the second on his right. She jerked on the chain and made sure they were tight enough to hold him. It was an action she had taken hundreds of times before on both practice and real suspects, but this was the first time she had actually been afraid the steel cuffs weren’t going to be enough to restrain her prisoner.
Widow looked back over his shoulder at her and asked, “Is this how you treat every guy who tries to help you?”
“Help me? How the hell are you helping me?”
Widow stayed quiet, afraid of showing his annoyance with her.
She didn’t wait for a response. Instead, she jerked the cuffs and holstered her weapon, but she left the safety snap undone in case she had to draw it again, and Widow noticed.
She tugged on his cuffs like reins on a bridle, and she moved him in a southerly direction, away from the buildings and the two guys.
She stopped ten feet past the guys and commanded Widow, “Stay here. Don’t move.”
Widow stayed quiet and complied. He felt her let go of the cuffs. He thought, I could run. I could make it into those trees. Maybe she’d get one good shot off, but she wouldn’t hit him unless she was a crack shot. No way. The light was almost nonexistent, and Widow was fast—not the fastest runner in the world, but fast enough. He knew he could’ve been behind the bunch of trees only thirty yards away from him in no time, but he didn’t run. He’d done nothing wrong. She was the one in the wrong.
Then he heard Officer Red Cloud speak to the guy with the crooked collar and the broken nose. She said, “That nose is bad. You should tape it up and head back to Tower Junction. Go to the emergency room there.” She paused a beat and said, “I’d call you an ambulance, but we don’t have one here. Your friend doesn’t look so good. I’d take him to a doctor as well. Like I told you, we don’t know a Jacobs here. Tell your bosses that, and don’t come back. We have rights here, gentlemen.”
The guy with the broken nose muttered something back to her. Widow couldn’t make it out. And if he had broken the law by helping her out, then he was about to break it again by not obeying her. He turned and faced them. He didn’t want his back to two guys he had just laid out. He knew they had been armed. Why she wasn’t doing anything about it, he had no idea.
As it turned out, there was no need for Widow to worry because one guy was still unconscious, and the other guy was cupping his nose. He wouldn’t be able to do anything because he was using both of his hands just to keep his nose from bleeding out. Can a guy die from a nosebleed? Widow wasn’t sure, but he knew if it was possible, it’d be this guy. The snow around him was colored crimson red from his blood loss so far.
First time for everything, Widow thought.
The cop turned to Widow and walked back to him. The fear had left her face, replaced by a confidence Widow expected from cops.
She approached him and said, “Face the other way and walk.”
Widow obeyed.
They stayed quiet for the next minute as they walked south, and then she pulled him to turn east toward a second road that connected to the other side of the row of buildings. It was a road Widow hadn’t walked on, but he recalled it from the map he had memorized. The road snaked north and zigzagged west, eventually connecting to another branch of the tree of roads that ran into the mountains.
They walked some more and then looped around a corner, and Widow saw their destination. It was a parked police cruiser in an empty lot to the southeast. The only way Widow could find the entrance into the lot was by following the tire tracks from the cruiser that led back out. The cop must’ve just parked there since the time he had arrived on the reservation because it hadn’t snowed since he’d been there, and the car didn’t have a flake of snow anywhere on it.
They reached the car, and Officer Red Cloud said, “Stop” and “Lean down, face on the car.”
She used her small hand to push Widow gently forward against the passenger door of the car. She moved left and opened the door then stepped back and said, “Get in.”
Widow ducked down and got into the rear of the car. She was supposed to push his head down so that he wouldn’t hit it getting into the car—a pretty standard universal cop move, like Cop 101—but she didn’t do it, and Widow knew why. It was because she couldn’t reach his head.
Officer Red Cloud was about 5’8”, which was tall for a woman. Most of the women Widow had ever met were shorter, but she was still far shorter than he. Eight inches at least.
Widow sat back on his hands in the backseat and got as comfortable as he could get. He stared forward in a kind of trance. He wasn’t really angry or annoyed anymore, but the experience had moved far beyond being funny at this point. Now it was real. He was going to the station, and he was probably going to spend the night behind bars.
Widow always tried to find the good in any situation. Even though he may have looked menacing on the outside, on the inside, he was smiling because he realized that at least now he’d have a room for the night, and he didn’t have to pay for it. Probably get a free meal or two out of it. A free room and free food was always a welcome prospect for him. In addition, this was the second night in a row he’d had a free room for the night, and both had been because of beautiful women—Farrah from Utah and now Officer Red Cloud from Red Rain Reservation although he’d rather be with Farrah at this point.
Ironic, he thought, and then he thought about that old Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump. “Life is like a box of chocolates.” In Widow’s case, life was like a box of chocolates—he never knew what he was going to get.
Officer Red Cloud opened the driver door and plopped down in the seat. She strapped her seatbelt on. She inserted the keys in the ignition, fired up the engine, revved it up, glanced back at Widow in the rearview, then looked forward again.
Cold air blasted through the vents, and she shivered. She let the car run for a while so the heater would have a chance to warm up.
Widow leaned forward and asked, “Are you going to tell me why I’m being detained?”
She looked in the rearview mirror. Widow could see her forehead. For her to see his eyes, she had to reach up and adjust the mirror, which she did. She said, “Interfering with police work. Obstruction of justice. Assault on an officer of the law. Take your pick, sir.”
“Assault on an officer?”
She said, “Yes.”
“What officer? You were the one being assaulted. I helped you.”
She turned back in her seat and faced him. Her smooth forehead crinkled violently. She said, “Sir, I’m not the officer you assaulted. Those guys are.”
Suddenly and violently and involuntarily, Widow swallowed hard. The two guys poking and prodding and accosting her like that in public hadn’t been criminals. They were cops. That’s why she hadn’t drawn her service weapon.
She must’ve seen the realization in his eyes because she started nodding and then she said, “Yeah, that’s right. You assaulted two federal agents, and now you’re going to jail.”
She said nothing else but turned around in her seat, popped the gear into reverse, and hit the gas, accelerating backward. Then she shuffled the lever to drive and hit the accelerator, and the tires peeled out in the snow, spraying a trail of white haze behind the car.
Seconds later, they were driving over the rugged, snow-covered roads back to the police station, and for the first time in months, Widow was worried.