“Why?”
“So I won’t be seen while I take photos of the padlock.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“God, you’re worse than your brother.”
“What a terrible thing to say.”
“Do me a favor. Before you walk into the shack, undo a couple of buttons on your sweater.”
“I most certainly will not.”
“Just a thought.”
I slipped out of the Taurus and walked casually down the county road. Josie drove her car out of the roadhouse parking lot to the nearest intersection, flipped a U-turn, and came back, pulling up in front of the shack. As soon as she disappeared inside, I jogged across the blacktop and followed the short driveway to the gate. The padlock was made by Abus, a company I had never heard of. I took photos of each side, plus the top and the bottom. Less than a minute later, I was back on the blacktop and walking away from the terminal. Six minutes after that, the Taurus pulled up, and I jumped into the passenger seat.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
“The attendant wanted to chitchat.”
I glanced at Josie’s chest. She had undone the top three buttons of her sweater.
“I don’t blame him,” I said.
Josie knew exactly what I was talking about. She tried to rebutton her sweater with one hand while driving with the other. The car swerved over the centerline.
“Want me to do that?” I asked.
“I hate you, Dyson. Honest to God I do.”
SEVEN
Grand Rapids was a real city with a population of about eleven thousand built on the Mississippi River where it was still narrow enough that you could pass a football from one side to the other. That put it in the heart of Minnesota’s northern resort and recreation area, making it a prime retail center. The stores there sold everything I needed, including an Abus Solid Steel Chrome Plated 83/80 RK padlock. It had taken me about five minutes using Josie’s office computer to identify it from the photographs and another three to locate the nearest store that sold it.
Josie was skeptical when I announced we were taking a road trip. “G. R. is in Itasca County,” she reminded me.
“Yes.”
“Itasca County Sheriff’s Department—you escaped from them the day before yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t you worried that they’re looking for you, that they might find you?”
“Nah.”
Famous last words.
It took us nearly ninety minutes to get there with Josie driving. Along the way I kept fiddling with the buttons, searching the available radio stations for something worth listening to.
“What are you looking for?” Josie asked.
“Jazz.”
Josie slapped my hand and punched the button for KGPZ, the FM station out of Coleraine. The announcer referred to it as a “real country” station and proceeded to play Taylor Swift.
“Where I come from, the person driving the car gets to pick the radio station,” she said.
“Country-western, though?”
“It’s the voice of the people.”
“It’s pop music. It stopped being the voice of the people when Johnny Cash died.”
“Take that back.” Josie’s jaw was set, and her hands clenched the steering wheel with anger.
Is she really going to fight over this? my inner voice asked.
“I mean it,” she added.
Yes, she is.
“I apologize,” I said.
Josie knew I was less than sincere, yet she said, “That’s better,” just the same.
“You’re nuts,” I told her. “You know that, right?”
“Do you want to drive, Dyson?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Well, you can’t.”
I only knew Grand Rapids well enough to drive through it, so it took a while before we found the locksmith that stocked the Abus padlock. I matched it against the photos I took on Josie’s cell phone and paid the man in cash. He asked if I needed a receipt. When I answered no, he put the bills in his pocket instead of the cash register and thanked me for my business. I found myself nodding as I left the store. Even when I wasn’t pretending to be a hardened criminal, I appreciated any effort that kept taxable income out of the hands of the government.
Afterward, we headed for an electronics megastore off of Highway 169 where a fetching young lass with eyes that matched the color of her shirt gave me a quick tutorial on the pros and cons of a variety of GPS transmitters. We settled on a passive GPS logger that recorded locations, speed, and time and, when plugged into a computer’s USB port, displayed the data it collected on an interface powered by Google Maps.
“It has a motion sensor,” the tech told me with a pretty smile. “When the vehicle isn’t moving, the device will go into sleep mode to conserve battery power.”
I bought three, plus magnetic boxes to put them in.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Josie told me when we entered the checkout line.
“Now what did I do?”
“Flirting with that salesgirl. She’s young enough to be your daughter.”