Road Test

by David Wickenhauser

  ROAD TEST

  A Hugh Mann Novel

  By David Wickenhauser

  Road Test – A Hugh Mann Novel

  By David Wickenhauser

  Cover art: Sarah Wickenhauser

  Copyright © 2021 by David Wickenhauser

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and paperback.

  Visit the Official Hugh Mann website for updates, the author’s blog and a readers forum at: https://www.officialhughmann.com

  IDAHO STATE POLICE NEWS RELEASE

  District 4 Patrol

  218 West Yakima,

  Jerome, ID 83338-5904

  For Immediate Release:

  #Begin

  --------------------

  Idaho State Police commends truck driver Hugh Mann for helping this department end the activities of a truck hijacking ring that had been operating throughout the Western United States.

  ISP recognizes Mr. Mann especially for his extraordinary efforts in coming to the aid of Trooper Jeffery Donovan as he was attempting to apprehend several members of the hijacking ring.

  Mann received the commendation at his parents’ Northern Idaho ranch where he was recuperating from injuries sustained during the hijackings. Presenting the commendation with Trooper Donovan were Regional Commander Herman Schwartz, and Trooper Joel Benz, Public Relations.

  During the commendation ceremony Trooper Donovan credited Mann with coming to his aid, and for preventing members of the gang from inflicting further serious or fatal injuries upon him while he was attempting to arrest the alleged hijackers near Twin Falls.

  “I was in serious trouble,” Donovan states. “I was down, and about to be completely incapacitated when Mann subdued the attackers. He truly is a hero, and a credit to truck drivers everywhere.”

  It is believed the gang comprised four (4) men, and it is thought they employed an additional inside person, identity unknown at this time. Commander Schwartz noted that no arrests of the hijacking gang members were made, as all the perpetrators who were involved suffered fatal injuries during the course of their several attempted hijackings of the truck driver.

  For further information, contact the Idaho State Police Public Affairs Department.

  Attachments:

  Text of official commendation

  Photos and video of the commendation ceremony

  --------------------

  #End

  Chapter One

  With the Idaho State Police news release in hand, Charlie thumbed a quick flip through her digital Rolodex and found the phone number for their regional office.

  As the Idaho Times’ lead investigative reporter, Charlie’s instinct had told her something wasn’t right about this trucker’s story.

  “Hello, I’m Charlie Shields with the Times,” she said. “May I speak with Trooper Donovan?”

  “Hold please,” the desk sergeant said.

  Charlie tuned out the hold “noise” consisting of boilerplate safety recommendations and directions to departments within the state police.

  After a minute, Charlie heard, “Donovan here. How can I help you?” He was cop-sounding. Efficient.

  “My name is Charlie Shields, with the Idaho Times,” Charlie said.

  “Yes?” It wasn’t a question. Charlie heard it more like, “get on with it.”

  “I’m looking at the news release about that trucker who received the commendation for his involvement in solving the truck hijackings. We ran an article, but I’d like to get more information for a followup story.”

  After what Charlie thought was a slight, but perceptible, second or two of hesitation later, Donovan replied, “It was all in the news release. Nothing more to tell.”

  Charlie pressed on. “Can you tell me more about the circumstances when the trucker saved your life?”

  “Whatever’s in the news release. I have nothing further to say,” Donovan replied. Then he hung up.

  Charlie’s curiosity was officially piqued. Difficult interview subjects were right in her investigative wheelhouse, which only made her want to dig deeper.

  Before she had made that phone call Charlie had read the original state police news release about truck driver Hugh Mann. She had browsed local newspaper articles about the commendation – obviously rewrites from what the state police had provided. She had watched the video the public affairs office had posted of the commendation ceremony at the ranch near Sandpoint.

  She had been about to dismiss this trucker story as routine, and move on to something else she could add to her investigative portfolio, but she had picked up on an interesting detail none of the other newspapers had caught.

  It was in the sixth paragraph of the news release where the ISP commander stated that even though the gang activity had been ended, no arrests were made because all had been killed one by one during their several attempted hijackings of the truck driver.

  Also, an accomplice was still running around somewhere.

  The reporter’s gut instinct had told her there could be more to this story. Maybe something interesting this trucker had been holding back.

  Charlie wanted answers. Why did this truck hijacking gang chase Hugh all over the Western United States? Who was the accomplice? What happened to this person? An accomplice denoted someone known to the trucker. Was he or she still with the trucker?

  She intended to get answers to these questions. That’s what had led to her phone call with the trooper.

  It was time to pitch the story to her editors.

  Charlie picked up the handset of her desk phone and punched the direct number for the news desk.

  All she said was, “Hey John. Meet me in the ME’s office. I want to pitch a story.” She had pulled in some Pulitzer nominations for her investigative articles, and editorial staff had come to trust her instincts. If she said she wanted a meeting she got a meeting.

  John was close to her age. He had come up through the same Obama-era “school of journalism” as she had. She was friendly with John on a professional, at-work level.

  Not so much with Rick the managing editor. Professional or otherwise. He was a close-to-retirement, conservative, old-school newspaper man who the current journalism culture no longer had any use for. In other words, he was an old fossil collecting dust until he could be boxed up and moved out.

  She joined John as she passed his news desk cubicle, and they walked together into the managing editor’s glass-partitioned office space.

  Two against one.

  Rick leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his portly belly. He ignored Charlie, and looked at John. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” the news desk editor said. “This is Charlie’s meeting.”

  At this cue, Charlie told the men of her curiosity about the circumstances behind the truck hijacking hero story.

  “Yeah, we got the state police news release about it,” John said. “We ran that in Region this morning, a few graphs on B-10, I believe.”

  “I think there’s a lot more to it than what we’re being told,” she said. “I called the trooper who was involved. He didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “You’d think because the trucker saved his life, and got a commendation for it, he’d be open to telling us more. So he’s holding back,” John said. “Could be he’s having a bad day, or it could be something interesting.”

  “I’m convinced it has something to do with the accomplice mentioned in the news release. Probably someone known to the trucker. Maybe the trucker was even involved in the hijackings in some way, either directly
or indirectly,” Charlie said.

  She looked at the managing editor whose demeanor revealed nothing about what he was thinking. Maybe the old fossil had fallen asleep during her pitch.

  With Charlie’s and John’s attention on him, looking to him for a response to her pitch, Rick finally spoke. “OK. John, if you agree, I say let’s go with it. You take care of the details. Give Charlie whatever she wants.”

  At no point in the conversation did the managing editor address Charlie, or even look at her.

  When the pair left Rick’s office and were out of earshot, Charlie whispered to John, “The old fart must be having a good day today. That was easy.”

  “Yeah, but make sure this turns out to be a good one. Try not to come up blank,” John said.

  The assignment approved, Charlie got to work.

  It took a few minutes longer than usual to locate contact information for the trucker. He appeared to have an aversion to social media, along with having a more-highly-developed desire for privacy than most people. As a veteran investigative reporter, however, she had an enormous repertoire of resources for locating the curriculum vitae and contact information for the subjects of her investigative stories.

  She couldn’t find a phone number for the trucker, but she remembered from the news release he was staying at his parents’ ranch in Northern Idaho. It was only a matter of a search on the Internet to locate a ranch called the Mann Ranch, owners Hugh and Martha Mann.

  However, phoning there proved fruitless, as it would ring until the call dropped off. Nobody would pick up, and no answering machine responded.

  She continued to search.

  “Got it,” she said when she located an email address for a Hugh Mann. Few could evade her once she had started probing into their lives.

  She composed an email to Hugh, explaining the newspaper was interested in doing a feature story about him. She wrote she would like to meet him, and asked for an exclusive. But she omitted any reference to the investigative angle of the story.

  Charlie clicked on “Send,” and the email went off into the cybersphere.

  She hoped the truck driver would get back to her quickly with a reply email, and that he would agree to the meeting.

  Before leaving the office for the day, Charlie made several phone calls, and built up a thick folder of printouts from emails of police reports and other information about the hijacking incidences Hugh had been involved in. She learned the names of the hijack gang members. She also had a good timeline of all of their suspected hijackings, even those not involving Hugh.

  That information wasn’t hard to get from the Idaho State Police, despite Trooper Donovan’s reticence in talking to her. She had long ago cultivated relationships among Idaho state police officials, and they had cooperated with her requests for digital copies of the police reports. She couldn’t help it if they got the impression her article would be a positive one about their commendation of Hugh as a life-saving hero.

  The reports on the California and Nevada incidences took a little more schmoozing of the “she knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy” chain of relationships that leaped over regular channels to get the reports she needed.

  It was the Idaho State Police news release that had started it all.

  Truck driver Hugh Mann had endured the handshakes, the “congratulations,” the picture taking and the video recording when several Idaho State Police representatives had arrived at his parents’ remote Northern Idaho ranch.

  He had still been recuperating from a concussion and other injuries when the state police had driven up to commend him for helping take down a truck hijacking ring, and for saving the life of one of their troopers.

  Hugh was a reluctant awardee at best, but he was willing to give them what they wanted. The brief celebrity status he had endured was for them. They got their photos, they got their video. Then Hugh was happy to be done with it.

  They weren’t. They wanted to tell the world about Hugh Mann, hero trucker.

  The news release and the newspaper articles it generated were like a constant pain in the side during his recuperation. The ranch phone rang continuously. Everyone in the family knew not to answer if the caller ID displayed it was a media call.

  Hugh didn’t have a social media presence, and kept online activity to a minimum. But he did need to occasionally boot up his laptop to check his email. When he did that the other day, there it was. An email from some guy named Charlie, a reporter at the Idaho Times.

  Thinking to get it over with, planning to turn the reporter down, he had answered the email. But when Charlie had replied offering an exclusive, Hugh figured if he did it this one time it would keep the others from hounding him. Keep everyone else off his back. After those initial emails, all of his correspondence with Charlie had been via email as well.

  Chapter Two

  As far as Hugh was concerned the clock should have run out on his “Fifteen minutes of fame” a long time ago. He was hoping today’s interview with the big-city reporter guy would be the end of it.

  That’s why he and his fiancé Jenny were sitting in a corner booth of a Sandpoint restaurant waiting for the reporter to show up. Charlie had to drive up from Boise, about an eight-hour drive, but Sandpoint was only a twenty-minute drive from the ranch for Hugh and Jenny.

  Hugh figured Charlie had to have stayed in a hotel overnight to make their 9 a.m. breakfast meeting.

  The restaurant overlooked Lake Pend Oreille. “Pon-do-ray,” the locals pronounce it. They’re possessive about the name, and sensitive to tourists showing up calling it “Pen-doh-ree-al.”

  As restaurants go, it was OK – better than a breakfast joint, but not one you’d take someone to impress on a first date. Something in between.

  Hugh and Jenny people-watched while waiting for the reporter from Boise to arrive at the restaurant.

  As a truck driver for the past fifteen years, Hugh’s main form of entertainment has been watching others in restaurants, rest areas and at truck stops. He was in the truck twenty-four/seven for months at a time, only visiting his parents a couple of times a year. He had no permanent residence. Until he had met Jenny, it was also a lone and lonely existence.

  This period of non-driving, non-activity was the longest he’d been off the road, and it was only because he’d needed extra time to recuperate.

  “How about him?” Hugh asked Jenny as a youngish, single guy entered the restaurant carrying a briefcase. They were playing a game, trying to guess which new restaurant customer would be the reporter.

  “I don’t know. Not what I think of as a reporter type,” Jenny answered. “Too clean cut, hair combed. Stylish clothes.”

  The guy walked straight over to a young woman sitting alone at a table, kissed her, then sat down.

  “Nope, definitely not him,” Jenny said.

  Next, an older, heavyset guy entered. Partly balding, with the remaining fringe of hair slicked back. Rumpled gray suit. He was wheezing and out of breath from only walking in from the parking lot. Opening the heavy glass door and crossing the threshold looked like it took a lot out of him. Hugh and Jenny saw he had extinguished a cigarette in the receptacle outside the door.

  “Hey fifties, you lost your reporter,” Hugh said.

  “Nah. Close, but not him.”

  Jenny was right. The guy launched himself onto a counter stool, his girth apparently prevented him from sitting comfortably in a booth.

  Next through the door, right when 9 a.m. was straight up making a perfect backward L on the big wall clock, was a tall, attractive brunette. She looked about Hugh’s age, maybe a year or two younger than his thirty-six years. In even moderately tall high heels, she’d be pushing close to Hugh’s height. That’s saying a lot. Hugh is six-two.

  But that’s where the comparison would have to end. Hugh scaled out at about two-twenty on a good day. Maybe a tad more these days since he’s been doing nothing but lying around his parents’ home for several weeks, and eating his mom’s coo
king. The only way this gal could weigh that much was if she took on a whole lot of extra freight.

  She was worth looking at, but she wouldn’t be Charlie the reporter.

  “Maybe he’s already here, but hasn’t seen us yet,” Hugh said. He and Jenny scanned again the singles sitting at the counter, at tables or at booths by themselves.

  In his peripheral vision, he noticed the dark-haired woman making a beeline straight for them. In a few long strides, she was standing at their table holding out her hand and announcing, “Charlie Shields. Idaho Times. You’re Hugh Mann if I’m guessing right.”

  Momentarily stunned, Hugh took a few seconds to remember to rise and take her hand. He found himself looking directly into her eyes. Not over the top of her head, as he would have been with most women. Her handshake was firm, dry and confident.

  “Charlie?” Hugh said.

  “Yes. Were you expecting somebody else?”

  “No. No. You’re fine. So, you’re Charlie. Happy to meet you.”

  “Same,” Charlie said.

  “I’m sorry,” Hugh said. “It’s a surprise. All along we’ve been thinking Charlie the reporter would be a man.”

  “Do you have a problem that I’m not?”

  “What?”

  “A man.”

  “No. Just surprised,” Hugh hoped this would be the end of this awkward part of their conversation together.

  Jenny cleared her throat loud enough to get everyone’s attention. Even diners in the next booth noticed.

  “And you are … Hugh’s daughter?” Charlie asked. It was less of a question looking for an answer as it was a gesture to put Jenny at ease after Hugh’s failure to introduce her.

  “Oh, sorry again. Charlie, I’d like you to meet my fiancé, Jenny.”