Page 20 of Shadows Reel

Tall buildings seemed to move in on him from both sides and press against him as he cruised. It was a canyon of brick, glass, and steel. He was reminded of how long it had been since he’d been in a city—any city—of any size. The Denver metro population was 2.9 million people and growing, nearly five times the entire population of the state of Wyoming.

Hundreds of windows from the floors of hip condos provided snapshots into the lives of the people inside. They flashed by too quickly for him to see any of the tenants in detail, although he got the impression by the glow in the windows that most of the people were simply watching television. The buildings stood where a ramshackle warehouse district had once been, he recalled.

He’d looked up Corona Street on his phone, but he was confused by the blizzard of one-way streets and restricted turning lanes as he neared the glass-and-steel Colorado Convention Center. The wet blacktop reflected overhead lights and business signs and when he looked ahead he saw pedestrians crossing quickly without waiting for green light permissions to do so. The pedestrians looked odd to him. They were furtive in movement and bundled up for much harsher weather than it was tonight. Plus, they were out late. He wondered if a sportingevent had just concluded. Denver wasn’t known as a city that never slept—but perhaps that had changed, too.

Two blocks in front of him on Speer, he saw a fountain of sparks shoot up from the pavement. In the yellow light of the display, he could see more people knotted together in the middle of the street. They, too, were misshapen due to heavy clothing. Fireworks in November? he thought.

Nate hit his brakes when he saw movement through his wet-streaked passenger window just outside his van, and he narrowly missed running into a black-clad man wearing a balaclava and carrying an oversized skateboard. The man whom he’d nearly hit saw Nate at the last second as well and he turned in anger and slammed the skateboard down onto the hood of the vehicle, then darted across the street before Nate could react.

From the direction in which the man had come, a cop in heavy body armor appeared and gestured for Nate to stop. Nate did, and powered the passenger-side window down as the officer approached his vehicle. Nate saw the cop veer to check out his license plate, then he filled the open window and leaned inside. Nate caught a whiff of pepper spray from the cop’s uniform.

“You nearly hit that asshole,” the cop said. “You need to turn your car around and go back where you came from, you hear me? This is not the place for a cowboy from Wyoming.”

“What’s going on, anyway?” Nate said, bristling at the officer’s tone.

“If you can’t tell, we’re having a little disturbance tonight. Now, I need you to turn around and go back.”

The cop, who wore a helmet and a clear plastic face shield, looked not only agitated but aggressive, Nate thought. He could see the man’s wide eyes, flushed face, and bristly ginger mustache through the breath-fog of the plexiglass face shield.

“Or I’ll sure as hell take you in,” the officer continued.

Nate suddenly recalled that his weapon was in plain sight on the passenger seat if the cop decided to look down. Had he covered it with a jacket? He wasn’t sure. Nate kept his hands on the steering wheel and didn’t look down at the gun to give it away.

Although he remained still, Nate wanted to smack himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand for being so stupid as to drive through downtown Denver with a firearm in his car in plain sight. He’d lived too long in rural Wyoming, where firearms were as ubiquitous as ballcaps. They were in every car and truck and backpack and saddlebag. Guns were left in the open in unlocked vehicles on Main Street in Saddlestring. But this wasn’t Saddlestring, and he’d have to realign his thinking.

“Can I make a U-turn right here?” he asked.

“What in the hell do you think?” the cop yelled. “Turn around like I told you.”

“Then please step aside,” Nate said.

As the cop took a few steps back, Nate saw his name badge.collins.

But instead of cranking the wheel and going back toward the overpass, Nate pressed on the accelerator and blasted forward. He glanced at his rearview mirror and saw the officer threatening him and waving his free hand. The other hand was on the grip of his sidearm.

Nate leaned forward as he drove, just in case the officer fired a shot at him through the back window. Stranger things had happened, he knew.

He was in luck that the light turned green on the next block and he didn’t have to blow through a red light on his way into the steel-and-glass guts of downtown Denver.

As he did, he glanced over to see that, yes, he’d concealed his weapon under a down vest. Which was probably a reason to arrest him on its own.

—

There was asmall-scale riot going on. Knots of black-clad people, most wearing helmets or masks, appeared in his headlights at street corners and from the mouths of alleys. Some of them shouted at him as he drove by and Nate heard a rock or other projectile clang against the side of his panel van.

He gritted his teeth and kept going.

Red and blue wigwag lights from a phalanx of law enforcement cruisers lit up the white marble of the Colorado State Capitol Building as he passed it, and he could see tendrils of smoke or tear gas floating under streetlights from the direction he’d seen the fireworks. He caught a glimpse of three or four men smashing the plate-glass window of a darkened cannabis emporium with a fire extinguisher. He drove on by.

Sheets of plywood covered the front of most of the retail businesses, although a few plate-glass windows had been spared. Graffiti was scrawled on the plywood and exteriors. He didn’t read the text and didn’t care to. Every hundred yards or so,someone had spray-painted a capital A with the lines of the letter extending past an encompassing circle.

Antifa.

The Capitol Hill neighborhood was compact, and in just a few minutes he was through it. The residential streets to the east of the dome were stately and Midwestern-looking, made of brick and likely described as “leafy” in the spring and summer.

He took a right on Corona Street, and a little finish-line flag chirped on the map app on his phone. He saw an off-street strip mall with several squat structures on it surrounded by homes. Only one place appeared to be open. It was marked with an ancient red neonpalomino loungesign out front. Five older-model cars were parked in the small lot.

Nate didn’t park in the lot because he didn’t like the look of it. There was one entrance and one egress, and the cars were all nosed against the front of the Palomino itself. There was a series of old-growth cottonwoods near the sidewalk before reaching the street. To make a fast escape, you’d have to reverse from a spot in the lot, do a three-point turn to carefully avoid crashing into one of the trees, and head for the exit. It would make for a messy maneuver.

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