Free An Obvious Fact by Craig Johnson Page A

email so I can look at them on my computer?”
    The Cheyenne Nation tipped his wine. “Feel free. I just own the thing.”
    Mike smiled and began pushing buttons. “By the way, Walt, you described the bike magnificently—it almost sounded like you knew what you were talking about.”
    â€œThanks.” As the investigator worked, I glanced at the Bear. “Why would Lola hit her own kid?”
    Henry shrugged. “You have a child; you know how it is.” His face tightened in a slight smile, and I looked past him where I could see a table of women who were openly staring at him. I sometimes forgot the effect that the Bear had on the opposite sex, but then, when I saw any of them around him, I remembered.
    â€œSeriously.”
    â€œWalt, you have to remember that my interaction with this woman is almost thirty years old; I have no idea what her relationship with her son is like, and with someone like Lola, I am not remotely willing to guess.”
    Novo handed Henry his phone and then turned back to me as the Cheyenne Nation checked for messages.
    â€œYou said there were three specific types of gyroscopic instability on a motorcycle.”
    Mike smiled. “I did, and though the third usually doesn’t leave marks on the pavement, we were lucky that the kid was riding in the emergency lane, and the pavement was remarkably fresh.”
    â€œWait—he was riding on the edge of the road?”
    He nodded. “Just on the other side of the rumble strip.”
    â€œWhere he ran off the road.”
    â€œNo, he was riding there for quite a ways, and here’s the thing: there was an instability, but it was a low-speed phenomenon called flutter, which is when the front tire and steering assembly experience rapid oscillation—think of an unsupported castor on a shopping cart. It happens only one way, when the rider’s hands are not on the handlebars.”
    Henry and I looked at each other and then back to Mike. “So, you’re saying that he was riding on the edge of the road with his hands doing something other than steering?”
    Mike nodded again. “Yes, and if flutter is the case, then that means there must’ve been something on the rear of that bike.”
    â€œLike the heavy saddlebags you mentioned?”
    â€œOr . . .”
    â€œOr what?”
    â€œFrom the photos you took, I could see that there was a seat pad on the Harley.”
    The Cheyenne Nation carefully set his wineglass on the uneven surface of the old picnic table, his voice rumbling in his chest. “Then someone was on the back of the motorcycle.”

4
    The Bear decided to stay at the Pondo, as the locals called the bar, and talk with Jamey and some of the other hill climbers who had arrived as our little party was breaking up, but I was worried about Dog back at the motel cabin. I thought the quiet by the river might be a chance for him to get out, and evidently he thought so, too.
    I walked along after him in the thin fog that rolled off the water as he sniffed at the high stalks of grass and the cattails that had sprung up near the edge. “Don’t get any wise ideas—I’m not sharing my bed with a wet dog.”
    He ignored me and trotted on along the bank to where I could see someone in the mist. I was about to call Dog off, but he seemed to know who it was. After another step, I recognized her profile, and I joined them. “Hello, Lola.”
    She didn’t look at me but petted Dog’s wide head. “Hi, Sheriff.”
    â€œDid you get your keys?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI put them under the floor mat on the driver’s side.”
    â€œYou don’t have to do that; nobody outside of the Tre Tre Nomads would touch that car.”
    I stopped and turned to look at the river, the fog rolling tendrils from the surface, the water reflecting the high clouds just starting to disappear in the dusk. “I guess it’s the