Road Test

by David Wickenhauser

  That’s the version Hugh and Jenny had read, the original version of the article written by Charlie.

  A revised version of the same story that had run in a later edition that same morning, one that Hugh and Jenny hadn’t seen, had a slightly different ending to it.

  It advised readers to watch the newspaper for an announcement of a bigger “hero trucker” story, as the newspaper’s reporter, Charlie Shields, would be riding with the trucker to get a real-world glimpse into the daily life of a truck driver on the road.

  That announcement had come as a surprise to Charlie. She had read the later edition and had seen the changed article first thing when she sat down at her desk in the morning.

  She stormed over to the news editor’s cubicle and threw the newspaper onto his desk.

  “John, what the fuck is this about? I didn’t write this!”

  John half-rose from his seat, and peered up over his cubicle dividers to see if Charlie’s angry tirade had attracted attention. Then he sat back down.

  “Listen, Charlie, this came from upstairs,” John said. He pointed with his chin toward the managing editor’s glass-walled office situated against a wall on the other side of the large open room.

  “He’s furious about the amount of money we spent on that interview with the trucker, and all you came back with was this.” That last part he emphasized with his index finger jabbing the newspaper article against his desk.

  “Don’t you remember my warning about coming back with a big story, and not coming back blank?” John said. “This is pretty close to being blank.”

  Without saying a word, Charlie started walking toward the managing editor’s office.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you,” John said as a warning.

  She was as much angry at herself as she was at the editors for changing her story and making that ridiculous claim she would be embedding with the trucker. She knew she had been wrong to soft-soap the story. It was her fault for letting her sympathies get the better of her instincts, and it infuriated her she was going to have to pay for her mistake.

  But the managing editor was her boss, two levels above, in fact, so she tempered her language as she crossed his threshold.

  “Rick, I can’t do this. That trucker and his little fiancé will never let me interview them again, let alone take me on as a ride-along. I burned that bridge. I could tell I did by the way they left the interview.”

  The managing editor, whom Charlie despised, looked directly at her.

  “You pitched a great story to us. We spent a lot to finance that interview. You brought back nothing,” the managing editor said.

  “Yes, but …” Charlie started to say.

  “Make it happen, little lady. Just make it happen. Or find another newspaper to write for.”

  Angry enough to strangle the old fossil, Charlie walked briskly out of the managing editor’s office and back to her desk. It took several minutes of calming breathing to get to where she could do it, but she eventually began writing the email – the second email that Hugh and Jenny had seen – she hoped would soften Hugh enough to let her meet with him again.

  She had no idea how she was going to get Hugh to invite her to ride with him in his truck. It was a long shot, but she was going to have to think of a way to make it happen.

  Chapter Ten

  As Hugh and Jenny were slowly bearing down on Phoenix from way up north, but still two days away, and Charlie was thinking of a way to hook up with Hugh, Joe Montoya was on the phone with shyster Phoenix-area attorney Bill Fishburn.

  “Have you got a plan to make it happen yet?” Fishburn asked the ring leader of the insurance scam gang. Joe knew the attorney was referring to the nuclear-verdict-level scam action he had been commanded to set into motion.

  “I’m working on it right now, boss” Joe replied. The attorney hung up.

  Joe was at his modest, not-so-upscale tract home. Weeds grew between the cracks of his paved driveway, and sprouted up throughout the rocked front yard that passed for landscaping in Phoenix’s desert climate. Shrubs needed pruning. The palm trees had the shaggy remnants of several years’ worth of dead fronds hanging down like an unkempt homeless person’s long beard. The house was long past the time when it needed a new coat of paint.

  Two adults occupied Joe’s worn couch, and two children played on the dirty, out-of-date shag carpet. They were his four newest soon-to-be crash “victims.” He had scouted them and selected them because of the special qualifications they’d had for this specific one-time mission.

  The adults were sisters, mother and aunt of the two children, two and three-year-old toddlers, who were playing at their feet. They were the ones who were going to help bring the attorney and Joe a mega-million insurance settlement or jury award against a trucking company.

  The mother was married. She had been estranged from her husband since the birth of her second child, but nothing had been put into writing. Their marital strife stemmed from the fact that although the two children were conceived and born during their married time together, neither of the two children were his progeny. She had no other family besides her sister.

  The plan consisted of two contingencies. It could go either way, depending on what happened on the day of the accident.

  On the one hand, if it didn’t come off the way Joe planned, and the crash resulted in only injuries, the mother and sister would receive the settlement or be awarded a jury verdict – granting a generous “off-books” fee to the attorney, of course.

  That would likely not be the giant settlement and nuclear verdict award the attorney and Joe had planned for. More along the lines of their usual. But it would be better than nothing.

  On the other hand, if the crash came off the way that Joe had been diligently planning, he had already arranged with the mother’s husband to be the aggrieved surviving spouse who would be the recipient of a much-larger settlement or nuclear verdict award.

  It would be handled through the attorney’s office of course, so the attorney would get the largest share of the award. The husband would receive a generous share. Joe would make sure the husband understood the consequences of welching on the deal.

  The sister would be collateral damage, but the husband had no more love for her than he did for his cheating wife. She was instrumental in turning his wife against him, badgering her sister until she had finally kicked her husband out of the house.

  The mother wanted the sister to come along, or she wouldn’t do the deed for Joe, so he’d had to agree.

  Joe had no idea what the attorney needed the money for or what he was going to do with it. He didn’t care. What he wanted to do with his large share of this jackpot was to get out of the fake-crash insurance scam business and disappear from Phoenix. Joe knew it would be too hot for him after successfully pulling that one off. He didn’t trust the attorney not to try to tie up loose ends.

  “OK, here’s the plan. You know the general idea of what we are doing. Now we are here to talk about how it’s going to work. A lot of money could be involved. You know you’re going to be very comfortable after this is over,” Joe told them, keeping as neutral an expression as he could in the face of his lie.

  The sisters nodded their understanding and approval. Joe had told them this would be an easy gig. He’d done it many times before. It involved a little crash with a truck. Very minor injuries. But the payoff would be worth it.

  “Normally, we would use only one car. The driver looks for a truck, drives alongside, edges over into the truck’s lane, and gets tapped by the truck. Fender damage and minor injuries, mostly,” Joe explained.

  “Truck and car pull over to the shoulder. Insurance information is exchanged, the truck’s company offers an insurance settlement to keep it simple, the car driver pays the attorney for his services from the settlement, and everybody goes home happy.”

  The attorney’s portion of the settlement, as agreed to beforehand with the victims, was sizable. Off the books, of course, and much hig
her than the percentage found in the usual schedule of allowable attorney fees.

  The fake-crash accomplices were thrilled with their share of the payout, as it usually represented a year’s worth of easy living for them.

  The sisters nodded OK. They had already heard this part of Joe’s spiel when he had recruited them.

  “We’ll be using I-10 this time, during rush hour. Some parts are five lanes across, and we want to make sure the truck gets hemmed in and has nowhere to go when we stage this accident.”

  “This time we’ll be using two cars. I’ll be driving the lead car. You two gals with the kids will be in the second car.” He rarely participated in the fake crash incidences themselves, but he didn’t trust anyone else to drive the lead car, and to do what had to be done. He also did not want to have another person involved who could cause trouble for Joe – blackmail came to mind.

  “Any questions?”

  The mother raised her hand.

  “Yes?” Joe said.

  “Why is it different this time?”

  “Trucking lawyers are getting better at proving their clients’ drivers were not driving unsafely. More drivers are using dashcams. We’ve had settlement claims denied. So, this time we want to set it up to make it look like there is no doubt it had to be the truck driver’s fault.”

  The sisters looked at each other and nodded. Joe was satisfied it made sense to them.

  “We’ll do it in the afternoon, going westbound. Two reasons. One is we’ll catch heavy commuter traffic with folks coming off of work heading to the suburbs west of the city. The other reason is it will be going directly into the setting sun, which will be right in our trucker’s eyes.”

  Joe’s plan was to use a “burner” car – literally, a car that would be taken out into the desert right after Joe had used it to cause the accident, doused liberally with gasoline and set afire.

  The car would not be involved in the actual accident, just used to help the accident happen. But someone might have a dashcam or be on their phone and catch the part his car will be playing in staging the crash. That’s why its license plate would be stolen from a car parked at a strip mall on the other side of town. Joe knew most people wouldn’t notice a missing license plate for quite a while, sometimes even days, and he only needed it a few hours.

  The mother would use her own car, but that detail was irrelevant. Any car would do, as it was going to be totaled anyway. Best case would be the car catching on fire and being fully engulfed in flame, incinerating it and everyone on board. Joe had a plan to make that happen.

  All Joe needed was a few minutes in the mother’s car before leaving for the staged accident so he could disable the seat belt mechanisms that secured the sisters’ seat belts and the kids’ car seats. A piece of stiff tape across the indent for the latch mechanisms preventing them from clicking solidly but that would allow them to hold enough to not be noticed would do the trick. Under the extra strain of a crash, the seat belts would easily fail. Joe planned to be helpful to the sisters by placing the kids himself in their seats.

  “OK. If you all agree. Let’s get in our cars and do a dry run. No accident this time, but we need to practice to get it right when the time comes.”

  Joe and the women with their children were in their separate cars driving the short distance to the I-10 Freeway. He had them on his phone’s speakerphone setting, and had told them to do the same. He was using a burner phone that would be destroyed in the fire he would set to burn up his car in the desert. A forensic examination of the women’s phones after the crash, if their phones survived the crash intact, would reveal only phone calls to an out-of-service phone number that would not lead back to Joe.

  He had already told them the general plan. Truckers, especially in heavy traffic, leave a large following distance gap between their trucks and the cars ahead of them in their lane.

  Joe said he would drive alongside the truck on the left side, and the gals would drive alongside the truck on its right side. He would pull ahead and veer into the truck’s lane, closing the gap. At the same time, the mother driving the other car would hear Joe on her phone saying it was time to make her move, and she would pull ahead, change lanes into the truck’s lane and jam her car between Joe’s car and the truck, severely reducing the truck’s following distance.

  The mother would apply her brakes, slowing just enough that the trucker would have no choice but to crunch her rear fender. Joe would drive on, the mother and trucker would pull over, insurance would be exchanged, etc.

  The law would see it as the trucker at fault for following too closely. No way the truck driver could get out of that one. Slam dunk. Easy peasy.

  That was the official version Joe had explained for the benefit of the mother and sister to get their cooperation.

  The unofficial version, the real version, involved Joe being much more aggressive as the lead vehicle and causing what he hoped would be the fatal accident that would be his and the attorney’s ticket to a mega-million settlement or nuclear verdict jury award.

  If it played out the way Joe had planned, the headlines would read, “Mother, sister and two children die in fiery I-10 crash. Trucker faces manslaughter charges.”

  “We’ve got a likely truck here now,” Joe said. They were cruising westbound on the 10. Traffic was heavy. Joe had spotted a truck driving along safely in the middle lane keeping a good following distance from the car in front of him.

  “OK. Let’s practice,” he said over the phone. “Remember, do everything I told you. But DO NOT tap your brakes this time. We are not ready to do this for real.”

  The reason is that Joe hadn’t acquired the stolen license plate yet, nor informed the husband and attorney it was a go.

  Joe pulled ahead as planned, changed into the same lane as the truck and drove ahead far enough to give the gals a chance to do the same thing from the lane on the other side of the truck.

  Joe was impressed. It actually worked. They had successfully closed the gap to less than a car length, causing the truck to do a hard brake to keep from rear-ending the gals’ car. If the mother had tapped her brakes, the truck certainly would not have been able to avoid rear-ending her. Joe looked in his rear views and could see the trucker gesturing his anger.

  “Perfect,” Joe said on the phone, ignoring the trucker’s single-finger salute. “We’ll practice one more time tomorrow, and go for it the day after. You gals go home. You did great.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Hugh and Jenny had plenty of time on the road before their next overnight at a Twin Falls truck stop.

  He told Jenny what route they would be on.

  Hugh figured at least a nine-hour drive if he chose the easy route that had Interstate and major highways the whole way, about five hundred fifty miles.

  Right now they were on I-90/395 after leaving the truck stop outside of Spokane, Washington. After a series of highway changes, they would end up on Interstate 84 through Boise, and on to Twin Falls.

  He told Jenny he could take an alternate route going south from Spokane that could get them to Twin Falls in a fewer number of miles. But the highways went through less-trucker-friendly terrain, so the time on the road would have been greater. Plus, more strain on the truck and trailer.

  “How do you know which route to take?” Jenny asked.

  “It’s actually easy. It’s in the pre-load information I get from dispatch. It’s figured out ahead of time by the load planner.”

  “But you said you could take an alternate route.”

  “Yeah, I could. I’m an owner-operator, so the load planner’s suggestion is just that, a suggestion. Company drivers have no choice but to stay within the proscribed route. Their timing to pickups and deliveries is determined by the top speed of their trucks for the most part, but also traffic conditions, so it is critical they stay on route.”

  “Top speed? Don’t all trucks go the speed limit?”

  “No, most company trucks’ top speeds are governed by a sp
eed-limiter that regulates their top speed. Sometimes as low as sixty miles per hour. That’s why you see trucks getting involved in what are called elephant races.”

  “OK. I’ll bite. Elephant races?”

  “You’ve seen it, I’m sure. And probably done some major cussing about it. That’s when one truck going sixty miles per hour is trying to pass another truck doing fifty-nine-and-a-half miles per hour. It goes on for miles creating something called a rolling blockade. Traffic can back up for miles while the drivers sort out who will get ahead.”

  “Whoo boy, yes. Highway 99 north out of Bakersfield, which I used to drive a lot, must be elephant-race country. I know exactly what you mean. I’ve always wondered why truckers do that.”

  “It’s usually a problem of speed-limiters. Truckers get paid by the mile. To get more miles, they need to keep getting loads. The faster they can deliver a load, the quicker they can get the next load. Speed-limiters slow them down. So they try to pass other trucks every chance they get. See what I’m getting at?”

  “I think so. They want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and they can’t stand getting behind a slower truck that eats up their time on the road.”

  Jenny thought about it for a minute.

  “Then why have these speed-limiters?” she asked.

  “That’s a good question. Major carriers, like the one I drive for, calculate and keep track of their drivers’ use of fuel to the hundredths of a gallon per mile. Every gallon of diesel saved is several dollars more profit. They simply don’t want their drivers going seventy-five miles per hour and sucking up all that extra diesel to do it. So they place limiters on their trucks to keep drivers at a better fuel-efficient speed.”

  “But not you?”

  “No. Since I own my truck and pay for my own fuel it’s up to me whether I decide to lose a little bit more in miles per gallon to get somewhere faster or to pass a truck I really want to pass.”