Wherein the three musketeers go directly to jail.
We were all arrested for some version of Reckless driving, Attempting to elude, etc., cuffed, and loaded into the sheriff’s cars. It was a long ride back to the county lockup. Ed’s cuffs were pretty tight. He asked to have them loosened, but whatever sympathy the deputy had shown earlier didn’t extend to comfortable handcuffs. None of us had ever been arrested, so being booked was a new experience all around. The guy behind the counter went through all our stuff, including under the padding in my helmet. Mike, unfortunately, hadn’t had a chance to drop the pipe and lump of hash he had in his jacket pocket.
“Why didn’t you dump it, man?” asked the guard. Mike just shook his head.
Ed was a successful enough real-estate broker to have a lawyer on retainer, so we never even made it into jail proper. They put us in a holding cell, and we waited an hour or so for the lawyer to arrive and bail us out. Mike, because of the drugs, had to make other plans, and that was the last we saw of him for a while. Neil was waiting for us at his house. He had gone up a driveway, hidden behind a garage, and after a decent interval, went home by a different route.
The trial was a whole ‘nother story.