Read Online Chump Change by G. M. Ford - Free Book Online

pigeon.
    I watched as a database of employment departments rolled by. Had he ever worked for anybody? Driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, tax and revenue department rolls, court and law enforcement records, utility records, county assessor’s records, birth certificates, marriage licenses, business licenses, professional licenses, building permits. On and on. If you leave your house, somebody has it on record, and probably on film too.
    Took over an hour before Carl sat back in his chair. “Guy doesn’t exist,” he said.
    “Why would you lie about your name?” I asked myself out loud.
    “Lots of reasons,” Carl growled. “Maybe he was on the run.”
    “He sure didn’t act like a guy on the run,” I said. “This was a guy with a resting pulse rate of about fourteen. He wasn’t jumpy enough for a guy on the run. And I’d bet my ass that Gordy was his real first name. Just the way he answered to it.”
    Carl started typing again. “Just the state of Washington lottery. Let’s just do Gordon,” he said. “First name, last name, we don’t give a shit.”
    I waited until he sat back in the chair again.
    “How many Gordons?”
    “Fourteen, but only two where Gordon is the first name.”
    Another minute passed. Carl leaned forward. “One of the first-name Gordons recently changed his last name.”
    “From?”
    “Gordon Hardvigsen.”
    “To?”
    “Gordon Stanley.”
    “No shit.”
    “Yeah . . . and this Hardvigsen guy took the Washington state lottery for thirteen million six . . . seventeen months back.”
    I must have whistled or something. Carl nodded his head. “Lotta dough,” he said.
    “How do you lose that much money in just over a year?”
    “My first wife,” Carl piped in. “That bitch could vaporize money.”
    “Let’s see what we can get on this Hardvigsen guy,” I said.
    We got everything, from his birth certificate onward. He was the only child of two only children. Sarah Jane Wilder and Robert F. Stanley, who brought forth a son, forty-seven years ago, in Lewiston, Idaho’s Valley Hospital. Robert drops out of the picture almost immediately, never to reappear. Sarah Jane marries the Hardvigsen guy, and the rest is just boilerplate Americana. No death certificate for either parent. Asotin County records say they own a ranch called The Flying H, on the Washington side of the Snake River. Nine hundred acres, with water rights, on which the yearly taxes are thirteen thousand and change.
    Gord was an unspectacular student, graduated just about in the middle of his class . . . all forty of them. Tried Idaho State for one semester, then dropped out and went to work for the Idaho Noxious Weed Abatement Section. Living in one state and working in another was how come he didn’t show on the Washington State employment rolls. That lasted until the week he won all that money, at which point he quit his job, changed his name, and headed for greener pastures. How you gonna keep em down on the farm and all that? Carl tapped the screen.
    “Originally he opted for the annual payout, but changed his mind on the twentieth of May last year, when he ate the thirty percent penalty and took the rest of it up front. The state paid out just over nine million six on the ninth of June.”
    “I need to call Rebecca,” I said as much to myself as to Carl.
    He looked surprised. “You two . . . are you . . .”
    “No,” I said. “ME’s office has Gordon’s body listed as a John Doe. I don’t get ahold of Rebecca, the poor bastard’s gonna end up in potter’s field with the rest of the unfortunates.”
    “She work weekends?”
    I shook my head.
    “And you don’t have her cell number anymore.”
    Another shake.
    Carl pushed a button on his keyboard.
    “You seen this?” he asked.
    I followed his eyes to one of the computer screens. KOMO NEWS SPECIAL .
    Triple homicide on Greenwood Avenue. About three miles from here. LIVE in red letters down in the right-hand corner of the screen.