When you get out of jail you get a bill. That catches a lot of people off guard. I was charged 60 dollars a day for the comforts of the Platte County Detention Center. Which is the same rate that the Super 8 charged in Iowa City.
This became an issue when Lem, the car guy, told me that it was going to cost “at least” 1500 to get the Freestyle running. It wasn’t damaged in the shooting. Instead, before those fuckers ran off, one of them popped the hood to conduct sabotage. According to Lem, whoever did it knew his way around an engine.
Fuckers.
Using my keen business acumen I was able to wheel and deal a swap of the Freestyle for a 2008 Toyota RAV4 with only 143,000 miles on it. I need to watch that Glengarry movie to learn how to bargain. After that display of financial shrewdness, I sat at Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack spending the last of my money and getting myself good and worked up. A sixer of Backwoods Bastard and the couple Cobra Verdes I had sitting in my new POS car helped too.
I cast my finding spell, concentrating on the face of the woman driver I saw. It popped right away. It’s like the universe wanted me to find her. I drove to the Regina Catholic Education Center and then sat in my car stewing.
Once classes were out, she came out and I followed her mustard yellow Pacifica to a couple stores and then to a squat brown ranch house surrounded by woods. I find it unsettling when I’m in town in a wooded area. Doesn’t seem natural. Cities should be cities and woods should be woods. I suppose it could also be because of the TAG incident.
I parked down the street and made my way through the trees to a spot where I could watch the house without being seen. I had no plan. As usual. I should figure out how to make plans. If she hadn’t come outside, eventually I probably would have knocked on the door and said “why did you try to kill me?” That’s gone horribly in the past so why not continue doing it?
But she did come out of the house. She looked like a doughier mom-ish version of Melanie Lynskey.
She came out on the back deck and sat in a chair with a bible in her lap. Just sat there. I watched her for over an hour and she didn’t do anything.
I started to head down and I heard a voice right at my side “It’s a trap you know.”
Rocket Cat 