Free Chump Change by G. M. Ford

must be very difficult on you,” she said to him.
    The kid took a pull on the Coke. “This sure isn’t how I planned it,” he allowed.
    I busied myself with making a pot of coffee while Rachel went about the business of helping him get in touch with how he was feeling. Same thing she did for a living with unhappy couples. She was good at it. Not leading, but guiding him along his own pathways, until he finally said, “I’ll get over it, I guess. It’s just that I never really failed at anything before.” He wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe I wasn’t top of the class, or first team . . . but I was always more than . . . you know . . . more than respectable.”
    I had a homily on my lips—something to the effect that the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass every day—but mercifully, I had a sudden spasm of lucidity and swallowed it. Way I saw it, we were already way over our trite but true limit; no sense getting things further out of balance.
    He looked at me. “You were right,” he said, dejectedly. “I’ve got no future in law enforcement. The whole hearing thing is just for show. They’re throwing me under the bus.” His voice was heavy, like he was talking about somebody who’d died.
    “Everything I own is in the car,” the kid said.
    “Speaking of which . . . if you want to find your ride in the morning, you probably want to park it in the driveway.”
    Didn’t have to ask him twice, or go through the whole I couldn’t possibly impose on you again thing. I liked that about him. I hit the gate switch and watched him walk toward the street. Rachel was suddenly leaning against my arm. Lucky arm.
    “Poor guy,” she said softly.
    “He’s about to reinvent himself,” I opined, sagely.
    “Always a painful experience,” she said.
    I’m not much of an absolutist. “Always?” I asked.
    “Only fakirs volunteer for transformation, Leo. Real people . . . they’re forced into it. A spouse dies. They get divorced. They lose all their money in the stock market.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Stuff like that.”
    “We can finish the movie in bed,” I said.
    “I’ll go warm er up,” she said with a salacious grin.
    “The VCR?” I asked.
    “No,” she said with a leer.
    She kissed my cheek and wandered back into the house.
    The sweep of headlights pulled my attention out toward the gate. The kid wheeled the Prelude up next to the house and got out. He held a small gym bag in his right hand. I flipped the switch. The gates began to swing together.
    “The guest room’s like you left it,” I said with a shrug. “The maids don’t come till Tuesday.”

     
    Eight-fifteen on a rainy Sunday morning. Two floors below ground at the medical examiner’s office. Me, Rebecca, and two fresh-faced cops from the Techno-Crimes Section are staring at a bank of four computer monitors. How she came up with two city employees and all that equipment on a Sunday was testament to how little she appreciated being scammed out of a body.
    We’d spent the past half hour studying the security tape of Gordon’s remains being picked up yesterday morning. As expected, the Idaho plate on the Dodge pickup turned out to be bogus. “Plate comes back to an ’83 Dodge Astro van from Spokane. According to DMV records, the van was scrapped in late 2004,” one of the nerds said.
    Not to be outdone, the other guy announced, “Telemetry’s back on the woman.”
    The screens rolled to Rebecca and another woman coming out of her office. I’d never really thought about what a great disguise being in mourning was. The ebony-clad figure, strangling a white lace hankie with a black-gloved hand, striding along next to Rebecca. Black maxi dress and boots, black head scarf the size of a tarp, and a pair of off-the-rack sunglasses big enough to hide her from the lips up. Coulda been anyone from Mahatma Gandhi to Marilyn Manson.
    “Caucasian female,” the cop intoned. “Five