CHAPTER 16

.....Looking down on the town from a distant bluff, KPAX-AM 610 was a squat stack of cinderblocks with a door.
.....Sprouting from its rear end was a tall, steel tower that reached high up into the cloudless Wyoming night, with guy wires holding it tight so that it didn’t just topple over one windy night. The light atop the tower blinked reassuringly like a Christmas tree ornament flashing from far, far across the room. A room with a really, really tall ceiling.
.....Crickets chirped and unseen things scurried about in the darkness. Wolfe waited, leaning against the front of the Valiant. He wasn’t all that interested in the scurrying things. The cooling engine ticked off the time for him.
.....The station door cracked open and Tanya stepped out, backpack slung over her shoulder. She turned and gasped at the sight of Wolfe.
.....“Sorry,” he offered with a shy grin, pushing himself off from the hood to meet her.
.....“It’s okay.” She recovered with a smile. “I didn’t expect...”
.....“It’s chilly,” he smiled back. “Doc thought that you might need a ride back tonight.”
.....“Well, if it’s doctor’s orders...”
.....They loaded her bike into the trunk and climbed in. As Wolfe fired up the engine, the radio sputtered to life. The aged speakers rattled with the bellowing of a man who insisted that the damned liberals were playing into the hands of the terrorists.
.....“Jesus Christ,” he muttered at the radio in amazement.
.....Tanya glanced at the radio. “No, it’s Michael Savage. We do a satellite link after my...”
.....“I mean, I drove all the way from California and the whole time the damned radio refused to work,” he explained. “Now it finally comes on for this shit. Pardon my French-sounding language.”
.....Wolfe turned it off. “I hope that isn’t what serves as the go-to news source around here.”
.....“I suppose it does. That and Fox News.”
.....“Damn,” he muttered. “Might as well wake up in the morning and get hit in the head with a shit shovel.”
.....Tanya laughed. “That’s why I sprung for satellite at the restaurant. No one likes the smell of shit while they’re eating.”
.....“Except for those that are used to it.”
.....“That’s also why I don’t leave on the news during dining hours.”
.....He turned the wheel and eased the vehicle towards the distant lights of the town. They traveled in the comfortable silence as sagebrush swept by in the night.
.....“So...” Tanya finally asked. “How ‘bout them cheerleaders?”
.....“Oh, gawd...” Wolfe sputtered, darting a glance at her. “You heard about that?”
.....“It’s a fine ol’ Harding tradition.” She laughed. “Every big reunion, for the tenth or twentieth, they drag out the current crop of hardbodies to torture everybody.”
.....She brought her legs up onto the bench seat as she turned towards him. “It’s kind of cruel, you know.”
.....“How so?”
.....“It reminds some folks that those were the best years of their lives, and that everything since has been a downward spiral.”
.....Wolfe nodded. “Sort of like those Olympic gold winners... they win the gold and then, well... that’s the peak of their lives? That nothing will ever top that moment.”
.....“I never really thought of it that way,” she reflected. “Well, not as extreme as that, but... sure.”
.....Wolfe considered the implications. “You think that it’s something that someone planned deliberately?”
.....“I wouldn’t put it past someone. No grudge holds like one held since high school.”
.....“Oh.”
.....“Especially by someone who never did get a shot at their own glory days.” She turned in her seat and eyed him steadily. “What about you?”
.....“Hm?” Wolfe mulled it over. “Oh, I’ve had my moments. High school wasn’t one of them.”
.....“The Lone Wolfe. That nickname wasn’t exactly a compliment, you know.”
.....“I know. I knew it then. I didn’t care... at least I tried not too. Y’know, I think I’ve had my fill of Memory Lane for tonight, already...”
.....She nodded as more sagebrush swept by. There was a lot of sagebrush between the radio station and the town. Finally, she spared him a sidelong glance.
.....“I used to wonder about you. Sometimes.”
.....“Really?” Wolfe was pleased.
.....“Not often, but sometimes.”
.....“Thanks.” Talk about a backhanded compliment... “Wow. I thought I was invisible to you guys.”
.....“No one is invisible in high school,” Tanya retorted. “Besides, it was my job to know exactly what made everyone tick. You never knew when that information might come in handy.”
.....“So what did you think made me tick?”
.....Tanya laughed. “I thought you were gay.”
.....“Great.”
.....“But it was just that you didn’t know it yet...”
.....She paused. Ahead, a flickering glow of red and blue pulsed on the other side of the rise they were mounting.
.....“Huh,” Wolfe observed as he slowed the vehicle. Cresting the rise, the source of the sweep of emergency lights became visible.
.....One of the police Humvees was parked to the side of the road, lights throwing off a wash of red and blue. A black scorch of treadmarks veered off from the direction of town, cutting across the berm and off into the night.
.....Beyond the tracks and bridged by darkness, dying flames illuminated the burned-out shell of a Monte Carlo sedan. The vehicle was crumpled nose-deep in an outcropping of rock. Far off down the road coming from Harding by way of Lumbeck, the red wash of an ambulance approached.
.....Wolfe slowed as he passed the sheriff standing next to the Humvee. He noted abstractly that the officer was their age, and more solidly built than the rest of the town cops.
.....Roy watched as the Valiant passed. As it rolled by, he recognized Tanya in the passenger seat, the cast of red and blue throwing her face into sharp relief. She stared straight ahead and didn’t meet his gaze.
.....Didn’t even acknowledge him.
.....A cop loomed out of the darkness from the wreck.
.....“Sheriff? This is all I could find from the wreckage.”
.....He handed Roy an Air Force officer’s beret. The bronze cluster of a Major’s insignia glinted in the headlights as the Sheriff turned it over in his hands.
.....“Must have been ejected from the trunk,” the cop noted helpfully.
.....Whatever had caused the car to go up had burned hot, burnt fast and left nothing behind but scorched metal and bare seat springs. There wasn’t enough left of the driver to pack into what was left of the glove box.
.....County forensics was going to have one hell of a job on their hands for the next few days, unless they got lazy and put down the registered owner of the car as the deceased, throwing a roll of the dice that the car didn’t come up stolen.
.....A lot of folks in the past had turned up dead that way without having to go through the bother of actually dying. For a lot of insurance companies, most of the time it just didn’t seem worth the energy to send out an investigator to double check on a claim, unless they had an agent on the deck that needed a little disciplining.
.....Roy couldn’t care one way or another. He didn’t say a word as he looked off to watch the taillights of the Valiant fade towards town. His knuckles whitened as he twisted the cloth cap in his hands.

.....The streetlights hummed and crickets chirped as Mike made his way down the empty sidewalk, skateboard under his arm.
.....It was a pleasant night and he was content to walk, to take his time and smell the dew settling on the lawns, to feel the soft summer breeze caress his flesh and to listen to the sounds of Harding settling in for the night.
.....Between the halogen lights that stood sentinel at the end of each block, the streets were dark along the way, lit only by the cathode blue flickers from each window. The tinny sounds of American Idol spilled from each house he passed.
.....His shadow lengthened as a car came up on him from behind, and he looked over and watched as the Valiant neared and passed.
.....He didn’t see the monster truck rolling in behind it, nor the cocked arm that let fly with a missile that homed in on the boy, a comet tail of foam behind it.
.....His vision exploded red and he gasped, his head rocked by the flying beer bottle. He fell to one knee as the glass careened off of his skull to shatter against the pavement. A hoarse voice snarled from the passenger widow as the vehicle passed him:
.....“Faggot!”
.....The truck roared off, laughter barking after it.