"Mr. Vance, don't make this a platform incident," Miller said, his voice flat and practiced. "The state dispatch code attached to your manifest means if you walk back through that gate, depot security detains you until county sheriff units arrive. The carrier is legally obligated to take custody once you present your boarding slip."
"I presented a passenger ticket, not an arrest warrant," I said. My voice shook, but only with the thin rasp of cold air hitting my throat. "I own my house on Tenth Avenue free and clear. I don't have a guardian. Marcus doesn't have power of attorney over my morning toast, let alone my person."
"Take it up with the county clerk in Klamath Falls when you disembark," Miller replied, stepping back just enough to indicate the steel steps of Car Seven. "The transport escort is already signed into compartment four. If you refuse boarding, they will escort you mechanically. You don't want these people watching that."
Behind me, the young mother pulled her toddler against her hip, steering the child two steps backward toward the station doors. The elderly woman in the beige coat stared at the pavement, suddenly fascinated by the rain pooling in the asphalt seams. Nobody intervened. To an outsider standing beneath the mercury-vapor depot lamps, I was simply an agitated senior citizen causing a delay in the morning departure schedule, escorted by a patient transit employee doing his job.
I picked up my leather overnight grip with my left hand, kept Marcus’s manila folder wedged under my ribs, and mounted the ridged steel steps into the vestibule.
The heat inside the sleeper car smelled of burnt drip coffee, damp wool, and industrial floor wax. Compartment four sat three doors down the narrow corridor. The door was pinned open with a rubber wedge. Inside, sitting on the narrow pull-out banquette beneath the double-pane window, was a man in his late thirties wearing a dark navy soft-shell jacket with no municipal patch, only a stitched nylon badge reading Cascadia Patient Logistics. He was thick through the neck and shoulders, reading an auto-trader magazine with the calm, detached boredom of an off-duty security guard working a double shift.
"Arthur," the man said, looking up without dropping the magazine entirely. "I'm Dennis. Put your bag under the berth and take the window seat. We're wheels-up in three minutes."
"I am not a patient," I told him, standing squarely in the frame of the doorway. "My son booked this ticket under false pretenses. I want the station supervisor down here before this train releases its air brakes."
Dennis reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a laminated clip-board, and laid it face-up on the small laminate folding table between the bench seats. "Spokane County Superior Court, Emergency Ex Parte Order for Evaluation. Signed by Commissioner Albright at four-fifteen yesterday afternoon. Cause number twenty-six dash four. Marcus Vance appointed temporary special fiduciary pending thirty-day psychiatric review. You're flagged as an elopement risk, Arthur. That means the doors stay latched until we hit the Klamath Falls junction."
"Albright?" My chest tightened until I could hear my pulse thumping against my eardrums. "I've never stood before a judge in my life. I haven't seen a doctor since my knee replacement three years ago at Sacred Heart."
"Then Marcus did the paperwork for you," Dennis said. He tapped a finger against a line near the bottom of the order. "Affidavit of acute cognitive decline, memory impairment, and reckless divestment of capital assets. Says here you gave twenty thousand dollars in cash to an unlicensed roofing contractor last month."
A cold, bitter clarity washed straight through my ribs. Last month, Marcus had come to my kitchen table with a contractor named Howell, begging me to cosign a short-term materials loan for a spec duplex Marcus was flipping on the north side. I had refused. Marcus had slammed his coffee mug against the linoleum, called me a stubborn old relic who would rather rot on top of his savings than help his own blood, and stormed out through the mudroom. Two days later, he had returned with a bakery box of crullers, apologizing profusely, telling me he was stressed about interest rates and wanted to send me on an all-expenses-paid coastal train trip to make amends.
He hadn't been apologizing. He had been building a paper file.
"Sit down, Arthur," Dennis repeated, softer this time, but with an underlying edge that left no room for negotiation. "The conductor is high-balling the platform."
The floor beneath us shuddered. A heavy metallic clunk traveled through the chassis as the diesel engine took up the slack in the couplers. Outside the scratched glass, the corrugated zinc awning of the Spokane depot began to slide backward, slick with rain, followed by the gravel embankment and the wet cedar utility poles lining the yard.
I sat on the vinyl seat opposite Dennis, setting my overnight bag between my boots. I did not touch the folder on the table. Instead, I reached slowly into my wool overcoat, pulled out my reading glasses, and took out the blue envelope Marcus had handed me in my driveway.
Marcus had told me it contained my meal chits and lodging vouchers for the Santa Barbara layover. I broke the adhesive seal with my thumbnail.