Un-Connected

by Noah Rea

  We felt they would leave shortly because they were there for a rest stop. They weren’t there to find anyone. We discussed leaving immediately, but were afraid we would get out on the road and they might see us. We discussed staying there, but we didn’t want them to see us sitting in the truck. We decided to get in the bunks and draw the curtains. I took my gun to the top bunk. I could see most everything in front of the truck with our lights out and through a really thin gap between the curtains. I watched for about thirty minutes. Only trucks passed. I suggested we take a nap and leave later, and she agreed. When we woke, the sun was going down, and it would be dark in about thirty minutes.

  We decided to stay there until well after dark. We snacked in the truck, listened to low-volume music, and went to sleep early. We woke up very early the next morning and stayed on the road until after the sun came up. We found what appeared to be a good breakfast restaurant but drove past it in the parking lot all the way to the end. We didn’t want to run into any trouble. We ate breakfast. Just before leaving, we made a thirty-second payphone call to Jim with the license plate number of the SUV. We immediately got in the truck and left. As the restaurant slowly disappeared from sight, we didn’t see anything unusual, so we felt the call was safe.

  We drove much of the morning in silence. I finally asked her if she was OK.

  “It really frightened me to see those guys and then to call Jim.”

  “It scared me too.”

  We turned the music up and shared the driving. The uneventful rest of the day made us happy.

  The next morning Jim called real early. “I have been working with another agent we’ll call Seth. Seth was working the murder scene at Ben and Rebecca’s house.

  “The night of the murder he’d arrived after the police had been there awhile. He’d asked them not to walk anywhere but the sidewalk and not to drive onto the property. They told him what he knew they would say. They “normally didn’t anyway”, but there had been times. Anyway, Seth found a footprint in a flower bed. The area had been mulched, and he couldn’t get much detail. But he was able to gauge the size by the impression and the weight by the depth of indentation. Evidently, someone had looked in a den window, and the person wore about a size 11 shoe and weighed about two hundred pounds.”

  Jim paused. “Also Seth got a really good tire print down the street from the house in the place where Ben had told the desk sergeant the SUV had been. It didn’t mean anything by itself, but he got the same tire print close to another murder scene more than three hundred miles away.”

  In addition, Jim was working with an agent at the Social Security Administration. This agent was sending him the list of people every month who were dropping off SS pay because of death. He also went back a year and would send him an update every month.

  And so far, a curious pattern emerged in three separate cases. Jim’s discovery method was to take a few names in close geographical proximity and go see where the persons lived just before they died. It was minus their last stay at the hospital, of course. He talked to landlords, neighbors, anyone who might know anything. Sometimes nothing unusual came up. But on three occasions, the people had died about six months before their death certificate said they did. Their SS checks continued for the period, and then there was a death certificate signed by some doctor other than the one at the hospital where the deceased was declared dead.

  “And in the six-month period, their home, car, furniture, and all they had was hauled off or sold. And those three people had no relative, which means the government got all their stuff if they didn’t have a will. This is somewhat normal except for the way it was handled. The deaths were a little suspicious but could have been from natural causes. But the wills of these three had included giving their stuff away. By the time the executors had been notified, nothing had been left in the estates.”

  Then Jim, who had been talking so fast he was hardly breathing, stopped to take a breath. We were stunned at all the new developments. Jim apologized for taking so long to get anything done on my case. He said he was scared for me every day that someone somewhere would get my fingerprints and tie me to the murder, and my life would be over. He felt certain in time he could prove I didn’t do it, but it might be a long time.

  I thanked him for all the work he was doing and for believing in me.

  “Do you miss your old life?”

  “I have been so sad and scared for so long I didn’t hope for my life back. The only thing I tried to think about back then was staying alive first and avoiding the police second. But the police were always the second ones to show up, so they weren’t near as scary as the black SUV killers. For several months and especially at night when I felt a little safer, a deep sadness would wash over me like a wave of the ocean. It was sometimes so strong it almost took my breath away. I felt hopeless like my life was really over. And a few times I almost cried.”

  I cleared my throat. “After about six months and the fear subsiding a little more, I wondered if I could possibly get my old life back. I’d enjoyed the work for the most part and had been paid well, but Rebecca was gone. After another six months, I began to feel certain it could never be. Now after more than two years, I’ve started a new life, and my life is finally getting better.”

  “Does the woman driving you around the country and beating away the black SUV have anything to do with it?”

  She leaned over by me and was listening. She blushed slightly, and I knew he had me.

  “What do you know about her and our lives on the road?”

  “I had a picture of her a couple of weeks after you got in her truck. We get surveillance videos about two weeks after you have been somewhere. By pairing that with the few times you used your debit card and video time stamp, the guys working the case guessed it was you but they weren’t sure. The FBI has elected to just watch and not pass on anything to the police just yet. Also it is closely guarded in here because we are not sure who we are dealing with. We are concerned that too many people knowing too much could endanger you and endanger our investigations. Whatever it is we are working on is big. There are differences like people disappearing or dying prematurely. Then there are the death certificates that are clearly wrong. Why are they wrong? There is a lot we don’t know.”

  “Then we began to notice someone was with you a lot, and we got her credit card info and identified her. I understand why it took you some time to sort things out, but you sure knew how to find good help.”

  Jim paused. “What did you mean by “life was finally getting better”?”

  “It will have to wait for another day. I hope there aren’t too many people who can put together what you have.”

  “Only Seth and I know.” He told me. “We’ve been on the phone too long now anyway… Later,” he said and then was gone.

  Chapter 8

  Phone calls

  Just when I was beginning to feel a little safer, Deb got a phone call from Seth. He said he wanted to meet with us. Jim had not met us, and we didn’t want to meet face to face. There was too much risk for us and for Jim as well as Seth.

  Fear swept over her and then me when she told me who was on the line. I shook my head “no” and asked her to hang up. We both turned our cell phones off. We rode in fearful silence for about an hour. Now I realized we were getting sloppy, and somebody was still interested in me. Now they were including Deb.

  She was driving, and I looked at her and saw fear in her eyes. For the first time she looked beat up and helpless. Her face was flushed, and her shoulders were drooping. That made me afraid and sad.

  “I am so, so sorry I have gotten you into this. Why don’t you drop me somewhere? You could call Seth, tell him I wasn’t in the truck, and ask him what he wanted. Then you could get on down the road and more than likely be safe when they know I am not with you.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she said, “Well one thing is for sure. I’m not dropping you somewhere. We are in this together. I don’t know
what to do, but I’m not leaving you no matter what it means.”

  We rode on in silence. Her last statement was strong and determined and opened my eyes to something I had not considered. What a dummy I was. She wouldn’t leave me. We were in this together. Most marriage vows weren’t stated as seriously. However, this was more serious than most people take their vows.

  She had told me she loved me before in the hot tub. Now she reaffirmed she loved me and was with me until the end. Hopefully it would not be soon for either of us. I asked her to pull over because I wanted to talk to her. Tears came into her eyes. “You’re scaring me.” She said with fear in her voice. “What is going on?”

  “You should never be afraid of me.” I said.

  Once she pulled to the shoulder, she turned to me with dread in her eyes and a sigh. “OK, I’m listening.”

  I got on my knees as best I could in the truck floorboard and asked her to stretch her hands over toward me. I took her hands in mine. Looking into her eyes I said, “I love you and want to be with you the rest of my life. Will you marry me? I will love you and be with you and protect you as best I can my whole life. I’d marry you as Ben or Sam or any name you want to call me. And I will never, ever cheat on you.”

  She started bawling. “I love you so much, and I’m so scared. I am so afraid you won’t live or you’ll go to jail, and one way or another I’ll lose you. I have been hurt so bad and I don’t want to go there again.”

  I got into the seat and pulled her over on my lap. We just sat there for a long time without saying a word.

  She finally began to breathe normally and stopped crying. “Yes, I want to get married. I want you so bad but I don’t want to have sex before we get married.”

  I nodded. “OK.”

  Then I began to think of all the practical difficulties. How could we get married? We couldn’t plan a wedding. We couldn’t invite anyone we knew. Seth wanted to meet with us. Jim and Seth knew who she was, which meant they now knew more than they had, and it scared me almost to death. And was Seth who called her really who he said he was? Why did he want to meet us? What were we doing? If I loved her and I really, really did, then I would want her to be safe. Being with me would not be safe.

  I told her we needed to work out a lot of things, but right now I needed to sleep on all this, and I crawled into the bunk. I was so excited and scared I couldn’t sleep but I needed time to think and pray. I needed to know what to do. We wanted to get married but it didn’t look possible or smart for that matter.

  One thing I had noticed over at least the last two months. Her appearance had softened a little. She was doing more with her hair. She wore more attractive clothes to supper, and she was singing more. So at least a part of her life had been better. She was such a good listener. Whenever I talked to her I knew I had her undivided attention.

  “Oh God, help us,” I cried out under my breath.

  I finally went to sleep and don’t know how long I slept, but Deb stayed in the seat the whole time. We covered a lot of ground. When I woke up we got a shower and supper and since I wasn’t sleepy, I volunteered to drive until I was. We were 650 miles from our drop, and I wanted to get it done and change directions. I also felt we needed to change some things by running different routes.

  Maybe I had been too smart cutting those deals on fuel, getting to know the yardmen at the various stores, getting acquainted with the mechanics. Somewhere information got away from us.

  Since it was Seth, it probably was a leak, likely in the Fairfax area. Jim was a career agent. I didn’t believe he would be either ignorant about security or make that kind of mistake. So how could this happen? I was afraid I had done something or someone had recognized me. I drove on into the night with my mind racing. With some serious sleep behind me, I didn’t get sleepy until I was in the yard of the drop.

  When I pulled in just before daylight, Deb woke up. “Boy, you made good time.”

  “You made good time the day before. Maybe we were good together. We are lots of miles from where we had been.”

  When she was driving by herself, we would typically cover about 600 miles per day, maybe 700. If we were in the lowlands, we could sometimes do more. Once I started driving we often covered 1100 miles a day. We could do more if we weren’t loading or unloading on any given day. We actually could do more miles on average when we ran coast to coast.

  Occasionally we got a run from somewhere around Seattle to somewhere around Miami. Except for the mountains, we made really good time and could average over 1200 miles per day.

  This was good and bad all at the same time. We didn’t know if anyone but Jim knew we were in a truck. Since Seth had called Deb on her phone, it was now at least a possibility that he knew. With us on the road, we would be several states away from where we were the day before. It should be much harder for anyone to stay up with us. But if they ever figured out we were in a truck and where we were making a drop, then they could be there waiting on us with days to plan.

  I called Jim’s phone and left a message that Seth wanted to meet with us. That scared us and we didn’t want to meet him. I also asked if he or Seth knew what we were driving.

  We had a network through Jim. We were about to lose it and be on our own again. How did Jim get pictures of Deb off surveillance video? Did Jim know we were in a truck? We never told him we were, and we never told him where we were. But the pictures were from truck stops. Maybe from cell tower information he knew, but what did he know? Did the killers know anything Jim didn’t know?

  “Since I don’t know what to do, I feel we should do nothing for now.” I said to Deb. “I think we ought to get off the road for a few days and lay low. We need to see what we can figure out.”

  “I agree.” She said with a lot of feeling. “This is too much.”

  Seth’s call was potentially very dangerous. Since we didn’t know fully what it meant, we needed extreme caution. This delivery was in Phoenix, so we dropped the load and deadheaded out into the middle of nowhere to a little truck stop. We found one with a good shower and good food. During the daytime you could see someone coming for miles in all directions. We got there at lunchtime, and we were famished. The old man at the fuel island was funny and engaging.

  “If you weren’t so old, I would dicker with you about the high price of your fuel,” I told him.

  He laughed and laughed and said he would take off ten cents a gallon because I made his day. With that offer, we filled up. Getting 325 gallons saved us more than enough for lunch. We asked him if he was going to charge us for parking there for a few days. He snorted and laughed. He said we could stay until we had the last parking space and then we would need to move on. I asked him when there’d been a last parking space. He replied they’d opened in 1928, and it hadn’t happened yet.

  I told him we might have another problem.

  “Oh, no! You haven’t been here even an hour, and you’re already making problems. OK, what is it?”

  “We were going to be off the road for three to seven days as best I could tell, and we need to stay in one spot. We wanted to shower every day. What will you charge us?”

  “If that is your biggest problem, you are a lucky man.”

  “It isn’t my biggest problem, but it’s the only one I want to bother you with.”

  “Look young man, you stay as long as you want. You shower as often as you like. Eat some of our food every now and then, and we’ll call it even. We’re glad to have the company.”

  As we started out the door, the old man yelled at us and asked if our AC would work off 110 volts. I looked at Deb and she nodded “yes”. The old man followed us out to the truck. He paced around a little and then spotted the rock he was looking for.

  He turned it over and underneath was a 110 VAC receptacle. “If you will back in there straddling this receptacle, I’ll turn it on and you won’t have to run your engine.”

  The offer was too good to turn down, and we got the truck moved in double time. Our exte
nsion cord was not heavy enough for him. Ours was 16-gauge wire, and he said ours might be OK, but it was a little light.

  He brought one out that was 14-gauge wire. He told us it should be fine even on really hot days, especially if we ran the cord under our trailer and kept it out of the sun. “Heat will ruin any cord.”

  I asked his name.

  “Otis,” he said simply.

  “Thank you so much, Otis. You have been more than kind. This is real generous. My name is Sam Adams, not Samuel, and I don’t make beer.”

  He chuckled. “It’s good to meet you, Sam.”

  I told him my partner was Deb. He shook her hand and told her she was very pretty. She didn’t often blush, being hardened a little by the road and life, but she reddened slightly.

  He chuckled a little and headed to his store.

  We climbed into a cool truck, and it was quieter than we were used to. It was really nice.

  At breakfast on the fourth day, Otis came to our table. He reminded me I’d said I had only one problem I wanted to trouble him with. He wanted to know more about us and our problems, and wanted to invite us to lunch with him and his wife. We accepted, not really sure if we wanted to share much.

  Jim called. “The Seth that called you isn’t the real Seth. Don’t take his calls and give us time to figure out who he is and how he got the information he has.”

  We went to the truck. Now we were really scared and glad we were off the road. This place felt much safer. Each of us found a book to read and settled in until lunch. This was so different from the last three plus years we now had been running together. I thought of Rebecca sometimes and felt a little guilty for moving on. But I knew in my head, but not necessarily in my heart, I needed help to survive. I didn’t know if I had aged or not, but those last thirty-nine months or so had been so stressful it made lying up in this truck stop seem surreal. We went from running as fast and furious as we could some days to a really slow pace here. For now, it felt great, but I was sure in time we would want to be moving again. I wondered about the best thing for us to do. We needed to be off the radar of the killers. And the big unknown was the false Seth.