CHAPTER 22: JED’S FRIEND
DOC’S MANUSCRIPT
Rockburg, December 20, 1987
It was the noon rush, and the parking lot was crowded. Crowded, hell—it was full.
Couldn’t the damned Christmas shoppers eat at home one day of the week?
The morning had been long, and clients with routine calls demanded to be first on
my route: three emergency calls on snow-covered back roads, miles apart from each
other, and farm driveways plugged with snow. Now I had to circle the full parking
lot of a fast-food joint in the town next to Rockburg, searching for a parking place.
The only empty slots were the ones the snowplow used to pile snow when they cleared
the lot that morning. I put my pickup in four-wheel drive and waddled it into one
of the snowbanks.
There, damn it. It was parked. Four-wheel is han
