Free Chump Change by G. M. Ford Page B

said.

     
    Took me the better part of the afternoon to put things together. By the time I’d packed a few clothes, a couple of sleeping bags and stashed some serious weaponry back where the spare tire used to be, daylight had packed his lunchbox and was heading for home. Rachel had gotten the message I’d left on her answering machine and called me back.
    “Any idea how long you’ll be gone?” she asked.
    “Not long,” I hedged.
    “You be careful.”
    “Always.”
    “Did Keith get off okay?”
    “I’m taking him with me.”
    “Why?” she asked. “You hate working with other people.”
    “Just seemed like the right thing to do.”
    She thought it over. “Maybe if you guys get some answers, he’ll feel like he’s back in control of his life.”
    “I hope so,” I said. “Even if it is an illusion.”
    “It’s a good illusion,” she said.
    The rest of it was just bye-bye, miss you too, kissy-face kind of stuff.
    He was already in my car, waiting, when I turned on the house security system and locked the front door.
    After years of squeezing myself into cars that were never intended for a guy my size, I’d moved up to a full-sized Chevy Blazer with all the bells and whistles. First one I bought got shot to pieces down in Tacoma.
    Although my insurance company had been less than amused by the sixty-eight bullet holes, they’d been considerably more chagrined about the two direct hits it took from a rocket launcher. They’d ponied up for the price of a replacement, and dropped me like a bad habit. These days, I’m in the Preferred Risk Pool.
    I buckled up and started the car. I asked the GPS how far it was from here to Clarkston. The cheerful female voice said: “Three hundred and eighteen miles.”
    “Easy for you to say,” I mumbled.

 
    I watched the sun crack an eyelid over Clarkston, Washington. The digital thermometer in the Blazer’s dash read forty-one degrees Fahrenheit. We’d rolled into town just after two A.M. and followed the GPS up into the hills overlooking town. I found an empty cul-de-sac awaiting tract homes and shut the car down for the night.
    Over in the passenger seat, the kid was beginning to stir. The heater was blowing cold air, so I turned it off and started the engine. Took a full five minutes on high for the fan to chase the frost from the windshield.
    The Lewiston Valley rolled out before us like a frozen quilt. I’d looked up Clarkston on the Internet, before we left Seattle last night. Strange kinda place. Sits in one state, but really belongs to another. Clarkston was really just a suburb of Lewiston, Idaho. Lewiston, which bills itself as Idaho’s Only Port, provided all of what would generally be considered Clarkston’s “city services.” Clarkston, however, maintained both a vestige of independence and a slice of Washington state’s considerably more lucrative tax pie, by maintaining its own independent school district and a substation of the Asotin County Sheriff’s Department.
    The kid buzzed the power seat up into the sitting position and stared out through the windshield. He ran a hand over his face and said, “At least you can see why people stopped here.”
    “Huh,” I said.
    “What rivers are those?” he asked.
    “The Snake and the Clearwater,” I told him.
    “That’s why there’s people living here,” he announced.
    “I suspect that’s true,” I said.
    “That’s what always bothered me about Harriman.”
    “What’s Harriman?”
    “The town I come from in Nebraska.” He yawned and then gestured over the wide valley with his hand. “Here . . . you can see what the attraction was, but Harriman . . . you know, I could never figure out why anybody stopped there in the first place. It’s nothing but a big, wide-open space. The North Platte’s forty miles off. I mean . . . why there? . . . why not ten miles up the road? Or twenty.” He shook his head. “All I could ever think of was that somebody must have busted an axle,