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WIDOW SAT IN A JAIL CELL in the freezing temperatures of northern Wyoming and wondered when the hell he was going to learn his lesson. Most people just minded their own business. But he was always getting into trouble.
Is this what it’s like trying to do the right thing? he thought.
The station was completely empty. He could hear the wind howl and the office machines humming and the low, ambient sounds of hibernating computer systems. A fax came in and broke the silence. It was an old dinosaur of a machine. He heard it rev up like a 1970s truck coming back to life. Then he heard a whirring sound and the rolling of paper on an internal track and then the sound of printing.
Officer Red Cloud had been nice enough to leave the lights on for him, another silver lining he added to his list of positives about her.
She must like me, he joked to himself.
Widow had spent the last hour or so lying back on the cot in his cell and staring at the ceiling. He let his mind drift in thought. At one point, he analyzed the different routes he could take once he got out of this cell. He had thought of five different routes, all of which branched off from a long stint on Interstate 212 and headed east. East was the heading he had come to Wyoming from, and he didn’t plan on changing his course just because of a police officer and her inability to stand up to some federal agents, although he did think that the best thing to do was to take off the first chance he got. Then he started to think about how he was going to get out of his current situation. If the cops pressed charges, he’d have to do something he’d really rather not do, which was to skip town. Skipping town on misdemeanors wasn’t really a big deal, but skipping out on charges of assaulting a cop—and two federal agents at that—wouldn’t be easy because then Widow would be a fugitive. The agency in question wouldn’t just let that go. Even worse was the fact that the two agents probably wouldn’t let it go. He was sure they’d take it personally.
Every cop he’d ever known always had.
In fact, he expected a visit from them as soon as they were out of the hospital. Widow hoped they’d accept his apology and thought perhaps he could persuade them to give him a beating instead of charging him with assault. A quid pro quo. He didn’t really want to be beaten up by a couple of big ex-military guys with a grudge, but it sounded better than the serious jail time he’d be facing otherwise.
Suddenly, Widow heard a noise from down the corridor beyond the small bullpen, and he sat up on his cot and faced forward. He’d had an experience once before while in jail that had made him suspicious of unusual sounds coming from hallways.
It sounded like a man making the usual huffing and grunting sounds that men make, someone who thought he was alone. The sounds of a man walking into his own home, tossing his shoes off, and laying his jacket over the back of a sofa. Then he saw a man walking out of the shadows.
The guy who came down the hall was another police officer. If Widow had to guess, it was the chief. He carried himself with the confidence only a veteran officer had.
The guy had sandpapery red skin and thick white hair that was growing out of a buzz cut. In the military, they would have reminded him that it was time for a trim because his hair was touching his ears. The sides and the top were of equal length. Widow made special note of how thick it was because usually in a man his age, there was visible scalp, but this guy’s head was covered in white hair. He had high cheekbones and deep-set eyes that seemed almost hidden because of how brown they were and how deep they were on his face.
The guy stopped at the center of the bullpen and looked over at Widow. He held a cup of coffee or maybe hot tea in one hand. It was in a medium-sized, paper to-go cup like from a coffee shop. Maybe he had gotten it from the general store. Maybe it had been brewed from the coffee beans Widow had ridden in with.
The guy halted where he was and then said with a deep, crisp voice, “Who are you?”
Widow said, “I’m nobody. Just a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now I’m sitting in your jail.”
The cop breathed in heavily and walked over to a desk past the bullpen in the corner, into an office space with no door. Widow couldn’t read the name on the door because of the distance, but he guessed that this guy was definitely the police chief. Why else would he have his own office space?
The chief set his coffee down on the desk and then took off his heavy, cropped jacket. It had the same symbols on the sleeves as that of the Lakota police badge on Officer Red Cloud’s shield. Then the guy walked out of his office, past the bullpen, and over to Widow’s cell. He stopped three feet away and looked Widow up and down.
The guy was tall, about 5’10” or maybe 6’0”, and he had a powerful stare—a cop stare plus a strong Native American stare as if he was a descendant of warriors of the old world. Widow noticed the name on his nameplate that was set just above a pocket on his left breast, and he sighed. He felt he might be in more trouble than he wanted to be in because the nameplate said: Red Cloud.
The guy was Officer Red Cloud’s father—Chief Red Cloud.