Part 4 (1/2)
”I know. It wasn't the first political thing I've ever heard her say, but this time she was really hot. She went on a rant about not being truly free and government regulation and stuff like that.”
”Like a conservative?”
”I'm a conservative, but I'd say it was more like a paranoid. Then she started going on about Ayn Rand's books and Atlas Shrugged and that whole Objectivist spiel. I tried to discuss it with her, but she wasn't interested in a debate. She talked right over me. I finally just got up and left.”
Jan didn't know the Objectivist spiel or who Ayn Rand was, but it sounded like something she could look up on the Internet.
”Justin, do you know if your sister was doing drugs or running with a crowd, or anything that could help us track her down?”
”No, she didn't do drugs. At least she didn't the one time I offered to share a joint with her. She called me an idiot and a degenerate.” Jan could hear him taking another drag on his cigarette. ”As you can see, we aren't close.”
”Sounds like Maddy may be hard to be close to.”
”I feel sorry for her in a way. I mean, she's always been so alone that she just doesn't know how to act with people. If she's out there on her own, she could get in trouble pretty quick.”
Jan thought the same thing.
The CarMax manager handed Maddy a cas.h.i.+er's check for $20,000.
”I'd feel better if one of your parents were here,” he said. He was a pudgy, sweaty old man. Maddy couldn't wait to get away from him.
”I owned the car, not them. It doesn't really matter how you feel.”
She tucked the check in a pocket of her backpack, hunched it onto one shoulder, and strapped a heavy computer bag across the other. She left without thanking him or saying good-bye. f.u.c.k him, anyway. He'd made the whole process of selling the car an exercise in patience, and she had little of that to spare.
Once on the Metra train into Chicago, she pulled out a pay-as-you-go cell phone, one of several she'd bought. She planned to use them and toss them, not giving anyone the opportunity to track her down through a signal. She sent a text to David. He was already downtown, waiting for her at the train station. She pulled her ball cap lower over her eyes and relaxed into her seat, watching the familiar suburban landscape flash by. It would be all new scenery after this.
David. She would recognize him, though they'd never met in person. They'd started video chatting a few months ago after discovering each other in the comments section of a conservative political blog. Both were too radical in their ideas for the forum, so they took their conversations private. Now she was running away with him. She wasn't nervous, but she'd be p.i.s.sed off if he turned out to be another All Talk, No Action sort of guy. It was easy for people to talk about going off-grid, but few had the guts to do it.
She found him outside of Union Station, leaning against an old pickup truck parked in a tow away zone. It was early evening and getting dark, the fall air cooler every day. He was dressed in flannel s.h.i.+rt and jeans, no jacket, and she was surprised at how tall and thin he was. She'd only ever seen him from the neck up. He looked more like a boy her age than a man of twenty-five. He stepped toward her and shook her hand.
”You definitely do not look eighteen,” he said. ”Have you been lying to me?”
”I'm eighteen. I can't help it if I look young. Dude, you look about twelve.”
David grinned. ”I'll show you my ID if you show me yours.”
Maddy reached for her backpack and pulled out the check. ”Here's what I'll show you.”
He took the check and looked it over. ”Cool. This is going to help a lot.”
”Do we have to get that cashed here?”
David slipped the check in his s.h.i.+rt pocket. ”Nah. It's made out to cash. They'll take it at my bank in Michigan.”
”We're all set then. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here. Where are we going first?”
David put her bags behind the seats in the truck.
”First we go back up to my house. You can stay in my bas.e.m.e.nt while we're getting all our s.h.i.+t together.”
”When will we leave for Idaho?”
He glanced at her as he entered the ramp to the expressway. ”No cold feet for you, I see.”
”h.e.l.l no. The sooner the better.”
”We still have some things to do here. We'll lay it all out for you, but most of it you already know. We'll close on the land this week and then we're there.”
Maddy sat back and took a deep breath. It was all happening fast, but it felt exactly right. She wanted something real. David thought like she did; tired of all the endless bulls.h.i.+t all around them, in everything they heard on the news or read in the media or listened to spewing out of the mouths of idiotic, corrupt politicians. To live in a meaningful way, they were going to have to leave a meaningless society.
David pulled into traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway for the five-hour drive to southeastern Michigan. ”We'll be out there before you know it.”
”G.o.d, this is so great,” she said. ”I feel free.”
Jan and Peet parked three houses down from where Ron and Paula Wilson lived in the eastern part of Lincoln Park, one of the city's priciest neighborhoods. Jan thought she was spending entirely too much of her s.h.i.+ft in neighborhoods she never had a prayer of living in. The wood cabin she grew up in was smaller than the tree house she'd seen in the backyard of the Harrington house. A nice tree house would suit her just fine. She could hang a ”Keep Out” sign at the entrance, flipping it around on occasion to say ”Girls Only,” then flipping it back again. That would feel about right.
Paula Wilson was a trader, the kind whose income zoomed up and down, but mostly up. Her moods seemed to do the same. The idea that her husband of five years was cheating on her made her especially volatile, and she was determined to catch him out. It was the most common and the most boring work they did as investigators.
Jan sipped her coffee and read from the Wikipedia entry she'd printed out on Objectivism. ”Okay, Ayn Rand wrote some books and people went all cultish about them.”
”What books?”
”Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.”
”Oh, yeah. I think Kevin Junior read The Fountainhead. Why do we care about this?”
”Maddy's brother said she got very excited talking about Rand's philosophy. Objectivism. Maybe it will help explain why she left.”
”You're not around teenagers much,” Peet said. ”They are totally into something one minute, and just as you start understanding what they're talking about, they're on to the next thing.”
”Still.” Jan read on. ”Says here that Rand's philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his n.o.blest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
”It sounds lonely,” Peet said.
Jan thought it sounded like her father. He pursued his own vision and sense of moral purpose. No question about that. And he insisted to all those in his camp that their thinking be in line with his. In fact, he preferred they not do much thinking at all. Those that openly questioned him were punished. He'd built a set of stocks that he rolled out into the center of camp whenever he felt the need to remind people of how things worked.
Jan kept reading. ”'The only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez-faire capitalism.' Now that sounds pretty conservative, if you ask me. Justin said she was ranting about the government.”
Peet touched Jan on her arm. ”Put the philosophy away. Looks like Ron Wilson is in search of earthier pleasures.”
Jan looked up to see Wilson's BMW pull out of his side drive. Peet waited until he got to the end of the street and turned before she put the car in gear and sped up to follow him. They hung well behind as he led them right into Boystown.