Road Test

by David Wickenhauser

  Charlie reached across the table and took Jenny’s hand. “Pleased,” she said.

  Jenny nodded.

  The two of them couldn’t have been more different. Jenny would have to stretch to top five-seven, and she’d barely tip one hundred five on the scales. Charlie had long, slightly wavy brunette hair in the latest fashionable style with highlights running through. That kind of job doesn’t come from a do-it-yourself kit off the middle shelf of a grocery store. It’s an expensive trip to the salon. In contrast, Jenny sported a very blonde, very wavy natural mop, cut short.

  Charlie’s mistake could be forgiven, as Jenny could easily pass for an eighteen or nineteen-year-old. Her youthful face, freckles and tan from swimming in the large above-ground pool at the ranch, belied her twenty-three years.

  All were seated by now. Hugh was relieved the awkward part was over.

  “Are we eating?” Charlie asked. “I’m starved. What’s good here?”

  Hugh signaled a waitress.

  Hugh’s first impression of Charlie was of a self-assured and take-charge kind of person. He sensed also she would be good at her job as a reporter. All business.

  He wished he and Jenny had spent time going over how they would answer the reporter’s questions. Neither of them wanted to make publicly known some aspects, actually many aspects, of their past involvement with the hijackers.

  Hugh managed to parry Charlie’s casual inquiries about, “How did you guys meet?” He couldn’t think of a way to get into it that wouldn’t lead to other, more probing, questions.

  Perhaps this interview was a bad idea.

  Hugh filled in the conversational void during breakfast by explaining to Charlie about the company he drove for as an independent contractor.

  “I own my own truck,” he began. “I contract to WestAm Trucking, full name Western America Trucking, Inc., and get all my loads through them. Their load planners and dispatchers handle everything for me, and they pay me a rate per load.”

  Hugh explained he was on the Western fleet, with his home terminal being in Phoenix. WestAm had three fleets. The Pacific fleet ran from Seattle to Los Angeles, with stops in between. Hugh’s carrier “owned” the I-5 corridor, which was the major Interstate freeway connecting the Canadian and Mexican borders through Washington, Oregon and California.

  Drivers on that fleet were primarily on dedicated routes for major clients like Georgia Pacific, Proctor and Gamble, and Color Graphics among others … primarily moving bulk paper rolls out of the Pacific Northwest, and finished paper products out of the California manufacturing plants.

  Home terminal for the Pacific fleet was in Fortuna, California, headquarters or major terminals for many of the country’s largest carriers.

  Hugh’s fleet, the Western fleet, with its home terminal in Phoenix, covered the eleven Western states, the ones considered to be the mountain states, which included the states in the Pacific fleet. Drivers like Hugh who were in the Western fleet did overlap with drivers in the Pacific fleet, but rarely handled the dedicated business the Pacific fleet drivers did. The fleet designation was based more on the type of freight, rather than geography.

  The Inland fleet, with its home terminal in Dallas, Texas, primarily covered states east of the Rockies. States like the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and, of course, Texas. The fleet extended to parts east, but had no presence in the states beyond the Appalachians.

  “You probably would recognize WestAm’s trucks. They’re the beautiful blue newer Freightliner Cascadias. The trailers are distinctive with a large swoosh logo. I pull their trailers, but my truck is white with only a small version of the company’s logo decaled to the doors of my cab, representing my affiliation with the company.”

  Hugh could see Charlie’s eyes had begun to glaze over. Mission accomplished. He was pleased his long explanation going on and on about WestAm had served its purpose of preventing her from asking him or Jenny probing questions during breakfast.

  Breakfast out of the way, Charlie said, “Tell you what. This is going to take awhile. How about if we move this to my hotel suite?”

  Hugh looked at Jenny. She nodded.

  “Which hotel is it?” Hugh asked.

  “It’s hard to explain, I’ll show you.”

  “OK. We’ll follow you.”

  Charlie dug inside her large bag Hugh assumed held all her interview materials and equipment. It was an expensive-looking pebbled leather bag, with snakeskin details. Not fake snakeskin. It looked like a real deal genuine snake’s skin. She pulled out a corporate credit card, and signaled the waitress to bring the check.

  While Charlie was distracted taking care of the bill, Jenny tapped Hugh on the leg. “That’s a Coach bag,” she said leaning in close to Hugh so she could whisper. “It’s got to be up in the thirteen hundred dollar range.” Hugh saw her making the gesture under the table of rubbing her thumb and forefinger together.

  The first thing Hugh said when he and Jenny were in their car following Charlie out of the restaurant parking lot was, “Sandpoint has hotel suites?”

  “Got me. I’ve never been here before I met you.”

  As they headed south on Highway 95 they passed several of the middle range kind of hotels, the kind with Quality and Western in their names. But that was it for Sandpoint. By the time they hit the approach to The Long Bridge, which took them over the lake heading south, they realized they must be leaving town.

  If Hugh still had his cell phone he might have called Charlie to ask her where they were going. But he had lost it in the last hijacking episode. So, all they could do was continue to follow her.

  “How do you feel about Charlie so far?” Hugh asked.

  “She gives me the creeps, too beautiful by far, and I don’t trust her one bit.”

  “No. Tell me how you really feel.” Hugh was making a joke.

  “But yeah, I know what you mean. I have a feeling we’d better be careful what we say to her.”

  “Why are we going through with this? Can’t we turn around and go back?”

  “That wouldn’t be right. She’s gone through a lot of trouble to set this up, and we agreed to it. Besides, if we get this over with now, and it’s exclusive to the Times, the others will quit hounding us.”

  As they continued south on 95 all the roadside hotels had dropped out of sight in Hugh’s rear view. They were clearly driving toward the next city, Coeur d’Alene.

  Hugh and Jenny took the time while he was following Charlie to discuss how to word some of the more-sensitive aspects of events that had transpired since they had first met. It was a tightrope act. One misstep could lead to disaster if the reporter began probing too deeply.

  About thirty minutes into the drive they entered Coeur d’Alene from the north, and drove through town. As Hugh was beginning to think they were going to leave out the other end of the city and keep on going south, Charlie pulled off of the divided highway at the extreme southern reaches of the city. As Hugh followed, she hung a left onto a major boulevard, then made a right turn into the parking area of a large mansion with a sign in the front announcing it as the Bucks Spring Hotel.

  They saw Charlie waiting outside her car for Hugh to finish parking. They followed her on a tree-lined sidewalk along the right side of the mansion. When they broke out into the open they saw another sidewalk that led to a separate cottage on one side of a large grassy area. Charlie took the sidewalk, and opened the door to the cottage. It had a name carved into a wooden plaque attached to the wall next to the door: “Carriage House.”

  Charlie dropped her bag onto a large easy chair in the main room and spread out her arms in a “Here we are” gesture. “Home.”

  Hugh looked at Jenny. Jenny looked at Hugh.

  “How did you get this room on such short notice?” Hugh asked. He knew enough about Coeur d’Alene to know rooms like this in converted mansions were booked months, if not years, in advance.

  “No problem. The newspaper owns it,” Charlie replied.
r />   “This carriage house?”

  “This whole hotel, Hugh,” Charlie said. “Newspaper executives come up to Coeur d’Alene for cultural events. They put up important clients here, and want to have someplace without the hassle of booking hotels and such. Real paying guests the rest of the time defray the costs.”

  Hugh wondered what was special about Charlie that she had enjoyed an executive’s privilege.

  “The mansion has seven bedrooms, some even nicer than this. I like the Carriage House because it has larger rooms, a separate bedroom, and is quiet and private,” she said.

  The main room was large – scoot the easy chairs and plush couch against the walls and have a dance party kind of large. Hugh peeked into the next room and saw a huge sleigh-style bed. Against one end of the main room was an efficiently appointed kitchenette. The bathroom, from what Hugh could see through a partially open door, featured a double vanity and a huge tiled, walk-in shower.

  Charlie noticed Hugh and Jenny taking all this in.

  “This is the deluxe suite. A king suite is at the other end of the Carriage House that is similar, but slightly smaller.”

  Jenny finally spoke. “I had no idea,” she said. “Definitely worth the long drive up from Boise.”

  “Oh, I didn’t drive,” Charlie said. “We fly a private jet into Coeur d’Alene Airport. The car I drove up to Sandpoint is a company car we keep at the airport.”

  Chapter Three

  “We should get started,” Charlie said. “But first, does anybody want coffee or tea? Or need to freshen up?”

  Never one to turn down an offer of coffee, Hugh headed over to the kitchenette. Jenny made for the bathroom.

  On the counter of the kitchenette was the latest model automatic coffee-maker. A cabinet next to it had three drawers. Hugh tried one of the drawers and saw lines of pods neatly organized by flavors. He pulled all three drawers until he was satisfied with his choice of a dark, French roast. He used two pods to make two six-ounce coffees into one large mug. He was familiar with these machines, and the only way to get a decent cup of coffee was to double up the dose.

  Coffee in hand, Hugh walked over to a round dining table. He, Jenny and Charlie sat around the table like the points of a triangle.

  From within her bag, Charlie pulled out a tablet in a case. She flipped the case open to reveal an attached keyboard. It looked like a miniature laptop, and Hugh assumed that’s what its purpose was. Small and portable with a real keyboard, but without all the touch-screen nonsense of a tablet.

  She also took out a small digital recorder, and pushed the button for record.

  As a backup, she had a yellow pad and pen at hand.

  Serious business.

  “OK. Let’s do this.”

  Charlie’s first impression about this couple who she was about to interview was that they were nervous. Understandable. She brought that out in a lot of the subjects of her interviews. On a deeper level, however, she thought they looked like desperate people who were treading carefully in dangerous waters swarming with sharks. Charlie figured she was the shark they were most worried about right now. She had a feeling they wouldn’t be open about the events in the past that had brought them to the attention of authorities.

  Easy questions first.

  “For the record, what are your full names?”

  “Hugh Mann.”

  “Jennifer McDonald.”

  “So, tell me how you two met.”

  She caught the look Hugh gave Jenny. Jenny looked down at her hands folded together on the tabletop.

  “Well,” Hugh answered. “I was driving my truck on a highway in Nevada and I saw Jenny hitchhiking.”

  Long pause.

  Charlie looked at Jenny, who she thought looked like she’d rather be anywhere else but here. “What were you doing hitchhiking all by yourself in the middle of the Nevada desert?”

  Jenny looked at Hugh, who nodded to her.

  “I was trying to get away from my uncle.”

  “What’s his name? For the record.”

  “Adam McDonald. But I don’t see how it matters.”

  Charlie held up a finger, like “hold that thought,” and rummaged through folders in her bag. When she found the one she was looking for she flipped it open and thumbed through several pages of photocopies of official police records. She gave her attention to one in particular.

  “Adam McDonald is your uncle? One of the members of the hijacking gang? He went to prison? Then came out? And that’s when the latest hijackings began? One of the men who were killed by Hugh? That Adam McDonald?”

  Charlie felt like a miner whose pickaxe had stabbed deep into rock that had come out glistening with gold. Could Jenny be the missing accomplice?

  “Wait a minute!” Hugh said. “I thought this was going to be a friendly interview about me getting the commendation for saving a trooper’s life.”

  “We’re certainly going to get to that,” Charlie answered. “But wouldn’t you agree we need some background on how you got to the point where you saved the trooper’s life?”

  “Well, to a degree,” Hugh said. “We lived, barely, through some major traumatic events we don’t want to talk about.”

  Charlie realized she needed to pull back a little. She could sense Hugh was on the verge of becoming belligerent, and Jenny was all but out the door already.

  She was going to have to finesse this interview to get anything at all out of them, especially the gold nugget she had unearthed. Or she would risk losing them.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s talk about the Trooper Donovan episode. Is that OK?”

  Hugh and Jenny nodded.

  “So, tell me how it began,” Charlie asked.

  “It was a fraudulent complaint,” Hugh said. “Someone from the gang called in a complaint I was driving dangerously and threatening them with a gun from my cab.”

  “Were you?”

  “Of course not. It was all made up.”

  “Trooper Donovan had heard the radio call, and had happened to spot my truck on 93 just over the Idaho border south of Twin Falls. The trooper played it by the book, did the right thing. He had me handcuffed in the back of his cruiser, and we were headed to the sheriff’s office in Twin Falls for questioning.”

  Hugh told Charlie the trooper didn’t know at first it was a fraudulent complaint, but when Hugh told him about the hijacking gang that had been hounding him, and that Jenny was still in the truck and vulnerable, he turned around and went back to where Hugh had parked his rig.

  When they pulled up, the hijackers had already arrived, and they had surrounded Jenny. When they saw the trooper get out of his cruiser one of them held a gun to Jenny’s head.

  A couple of the others grabbed Donovan and were beating on him. Hugh saw one of them had the trooper’s gun, and the other was swinging the trooper’s baton.

  “That’s when I went a little berserk and broke out of the cruiser to run over to help the trooper and rescue Jenny.”

  “Back up a minute,” Charlie said. “You mean you broke out of a locked cruiser? Were you still handcuffed? I’ve done ride-alongs, and I know you can’t open a cruiser from inside the back seat.”

  “I was handcuffed, with my hands behind me. As far as I could tell, the only way out of there would be to go over into the front seat, and out the front door from there.”

  Charlie was familiar with Idaho State Police cruisers. “Wasn’t there a heavy wire-mesh screen between the front and back seats?”

  “Yeah, I had to dislodge it, kick it out of the way, and climb over into the front seat. I ran to where the two guys had Trooper Donovan on the ground. They were about to lay him out for good.”

  “Hold on again,” Charlie said, interrupting Hugh. “You went charging after two guys who were armed with a baton and a gun, and you still had your hands handcuffed behind you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Charlie was stunned, and impressed, by the matter-of-fact way Hugh related his extraordina
ry heroics.

  “Then what happened? Go on.”

  “I put down the two guys who were attacking Trooper Donavan and turned to rescue Jenny from the guy who was holding a gun to her head. Before I could get to him I heard a shot, and the guy holding Jenny went down. Turned out it was Jenny’s uncle, but I didn’t realize it at the time. He was wounded, but not fatally, and he managed to get away. ”

  “Wait a minute. Back up again. Wasn’t that when one of the other hijackers died?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t have many options since my hands were cuffed behind my back. All I had were head butts and leg action. Unfortunately, I lost my balance after head-butting one of the guys and fell with all my weight with my knee jamming right onto the guy’s throat. He couldn’t breathe through his crushed larynx. He died.”

  Charlie continued to be amazed at the matter-of-fact way Hugh told this story. What kind of man was this quiet, unassuming truck driver?

  “Who fired the shot?”

  “That was Trooper Donovan. He had managed in his weakened, beaten condition to grab his backup gun from his ankle holster. He fired the shot lying on his back in the dirt.”

  “You know, you should be interviewing Donovan for this. He’s the hero of the story.” Hugh said. “Things would have ended dramatically different if he hadn’t got that shot off.”

  “Funny you should mention that. I did try to interview him while I was getting ready to meet you, and he clammed up on me. He didn’t want to talk about it at all. Any idea why? He should have been more than happy to share the story of that event.”

  Hugh looked at Jenny, and said nothing.

  There it was again. Charlie suspected every angle she tried to approach this interview from was going to end that way.

  Charlie wanted to make one more try to steer the interview in the direction she wanted it to go.

  “So, how did the hijackers know where you were at the time? Was Jenny in contact with her uncle?”

  Again, the same non-response from Hugh and Jenny, only more determined.

  “Then why …?” She was going to ask another question