Ruff Rider

Spokane is really not that much to speak of. Look, I'm not denigrating it--Spokanites, put your torches and lynch ropes down. It's just, well... It's just another town.

My first assignment for the little paper on the East Coast had been an article about lost dogs --MISSING dogs. Then months of nothing but basically chronicling the town's library fines. Then I did a freelance expose' on the Conner Underground Conspiracy. I had managed to put together several connections authorities had overlooked for months. I sold the piece to my own employer and gave the investigative credit to the paper. Then more missing dogs.

Thursday, three weeks ago, the editor asks me, "Joey, you got family around here?" (It came out sounding like "djoo got family roundjeer?") I told him I didn't. "Needjoo to go ta Spokane."

"From Staten?! Why on earth do I need to go to the West Coast?!"

The dogs, he said. The missing dogs. Cities above the 40th parallel, all along the northern states, pretty much, had reported way to many missing dogs in the past twelve months. A paper in Billings, Montana, and one in Thompson Falls, Washington-- little tiny papers, but my boss reads every piss-ant pub in the country, I swear!-- found the next couple links in the chain. And it pointed directly to Spokane.

"Dis is your time, Joey. Dis is da one you been waitin for. This'll make ya."

So I said yes; of COURSE I said yes! And now here I am, all the leads burned out. Actually, only one was even a real lead; the rest were ghost farts. No story, no HOPE for a story, and nothing more interesting than another town's catalog of library fines.

Spokane. Man...