Truck Stop

by John Penney

  Roger decided he had to play it off. There was no choice. He had to keep things focused on finding Lilly. “Well, I thought I saw something that looked like…like a person’s shirt or something.”

  “A shirt?” Ben asked, puzzled. This seemed like an unusual detail.

  Ben’s reaction threw Roger. He was distracted and hadn’t thought it through well enough. The shirt was too strange. He had to backpedal. “Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. It looked like something was tangled in there, but it was nothing.”

  Ben considered this for a moment, then moved away, “Stay put,” he told both of them. “I’ll be back.” He zipped up his jacket, pushed out the diner door.

  Roger and Kat watched as he headed over to the tanker truck.

  “Russell Fields,” said a voice.

  Roger and Kat looked up and saw Bart, the cook, who had come out of the kitchen.

  “The guy driving the tanker truck? You know him?” Roger asked.

  Bart nodded and held out his hand to Roger. “Bart Corrigan,” he said, and Roger reciprocated, shaking the man’s hand. “Fields has been coming through here for years,” Bart said.

  “I’ve only seen him a few times heading to the bathroom,” Kat said. “He never told me his name and I sure as shit wasn’t going to ask him. Dude is a fucking troll.”

  “He’s a loner, that’s for sure,” Bart added. “But I never saw him cause no trouble or nothing.”

  Roger looked back out at the tanker truck. His expression grew dark. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t up to it.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ben leaned in the open door of the old tanker truck cab, looking up at Russell Fields, who sat patiently behind the wheel. In the dim yellow cab light, Russell seemed rather ordinary, but at the same time, he was strangely out of place. He wore a plaid work shirt and patched jeans. Ben’s first thought when he saw him was about the patches on his knees. Who patches their jeans anymore? It was something Ben hadn’t seen since he was a little boy. Ben had also carefully searched the truck and hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary, just a lot of empty cups and plastic wrappers. Ben had decided Russell’s gaunt face and rail-thin body were because he lived on a steady stream of beef jerky and coffee, and probably other stimulants that were less than legal.

  But there was also an undeniably strange, timeless quality, about him, like he could have stepped out of the pages of The Grapes of Wrath. An Okie heading from the dust bowl during the Great Depression. If he had been seeing this in a black-and-white movie, Ben thought, it would all make more sense.

  The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, and the Utah night air was becoming bone-numbing cold. Ben’s breath came out in pale puffs of mist as he spoke. “And you hadn’t talked to him or seen him before you found him under your truck?” he asked Fields.

  “No sir. I told you, I was just protecting my rig. My life depends on this thing. I don’t let no one get near it unless I’m right there with them,” Russell answered.

  “I understand.” And Ben did understand. This was the part that seemed so ordinary about Russell. He made sense. He seemed earnest.

  Ben took another glance around the cab, then handed Russell back his driver’s license and his keys. “All right, look,” he said to the driver. “If you’re going to be staying here for the night, keep out of his way. He’s got a missing daughter and he’s upset.”

  “Of course, sir. I sure will.” Russell nodded.

  And that was it. There was nothing else to be done. Ben had found nothing illegal in Russell defending his property; there was nothing suspicious in or around the truck, and no reason to suspect Russell of abducting Lilly.

  Ben closed the rig door and folded his notepad. He looked around at the other nearby trucks, pulled his collar up against the biting cold, and was about to head to the next truck when he hesitated. One more thing.

  He clicked on his flashlight, kneeled and looked under the truck. He moved the beam slowly across the greasy underside of the engine compartment. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Inside the diner, Roger watched intently out the window.

  “What is he doing now?” Kat asked. She was seated on the other side and didn’t have the same view that Roger could.

  “Just looking around underneath the truck,” Roger answered, and kept watching.

  Kat gazed at Roger for a moment in silence. She wanted to say something more to him about everything she was feeling, but it wasn’t the right time. Not now. Not yet. But she would, she promised herself, when the time was right.

  __________

  Back outside in the cold parking lot, a faint gasp and a low moan drifted from inside the pearly cream-colored rig. Ben was still looking under the tanker truck, and he was too far away to hear it. Too far away to hear what was going on inside the sleeper cab.

  Ida Consiglio calmly took a drag off a filter-less Camel as she gazed into the sleeper side of the cab. Her son’s groans, interspersed with sharp gasps of pain, filled the cab. The windows were steamed up, and the cab was smoky and humid.

  Ida exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Don’t let up on him, honey,” she growled. “Don’t you dare go easy.” She was looking at Lucinda in the bed, dominating Daniel with a strap-on from behind.

  The low-rent prostitute nodded breathlessly to Ida and continued her sodomy. Lucinda had done many things in her short but extensive life as a truck stop hooker, but this had come as a surprise. At first, she thought Ida was engaging her for Daniel as a kinky gift from mother to son. It had happened before to Lucinda, but it was usually a father who bought her for his son. The fathers usually ended up taking her when she had finished with their sons, but usually they were generous with the additional fee.

  But this. This was different. Ida had negotiated the deal for her son, and Lucinda had accepted. When she had climbed into the cab, she had found Daniel already naked in bed waiting. The first clue was his expression. He looked scared. At first, Lucinda thought it was one of those virgin things; Mom had hired her to pop her son’s cherry. Thinking this, Lucinda had then gone out of her way to be nice to Daniel. She smiled seductively and promised to go easy.

  But it all began to turn when Ida told her that Daniel wasn’t a virgin. Lucinda couldn’t figure out why he looked so scared, until Ida took out the strap-on.

  Lucinda hesitated when Ida told her what she wanted her to do to her son. But Ida didn’t back down; she even became a bit intimidating. She insisted that it was what Daniel wanted, even though Daniel remained silent the whole time. And that’s when the rationalizing began—a process familiar to Lucinda.

  A year ago, Lucinda had ended up at a motel between the truck stop and Vegas after her boyfriend drove off without her. He had taken her last few dollars and the rest of their crystal meth. She was flat broke and strung out bad. She had to get right again, and a hand job for the guy at the gas station next door was the solution. Twenty bucks. He took her into the bathroom in back, dropped his pants, and she jerked him off. It was over in about six minutes and she had twenty bucks. Not so bad. Just a hand job.

  But twenty dollars is just twenty dollars. She could get fifty for a blow job. Same six minutes, different deed. Fifty bucks. And so it went. Blow jobs, straight sex, 50-50. Two guys at once. A girl and a guy. And anal. Finally anal. That was three hundred. She had to use amyl-nitrate poppers to relax herself, use lots of lube, and it took longer, but still it was three hundred dollars.

  Now it all seemed the same to Lucinda. Just one more thing to do. One more thing to rationalize. The sex. The money. The meth. The merry-go-round that Lucinda found herself on.

  What she was doing with Daniel Consiglio now was another twist on something she had done a few times before; men liked her strap-on work. She was quite good at it, but she had never done it with the man’s mother watching.

  Daniel grimaced, his eyes watering as he looked over at his mother. The hard rubber dildo burned in his rectum. Like it was on fire. Ida took another drag, flicked her ashes, and
stared.

  A pleading look filled Daniel’s eyes. Was this good enough? Was he doing what she wanted? Was he a good boy now? Daniel always had the same thoughts when he did this for her. He just wanted it to be over so he could go back to being her little boy again.

  Lucinda’s thigh was beginning to cramp up from all the thrusting. She took a deep breath, gave a showy moan like she was enjoying herself, and glanced surreptitiously at the clock. She had agreed on half an hour. It would almost be time to renegotiate. She was about to say something when there was a knock on the cab door. Lucinda stopped cold.

  Ida shot a look at the door, then got up; she placed her finger to her lips. “You make a sound, I’ll beat the both of you.” She yanked the curtains closed to the sleeping area.

  Outside, Ben waited a moment, then knocked again. The door opened, and Ida looked out. “Yes, Officer?”

  Ben peered carefully into the smoky, steamy cab. “Yeah, we have a missing persons report on a seven-year-old girl here, and I wanted to check….“

  “Oh, I know. Still haven’t found her yet?” Ida asked, trying to sound casual.

  “No. Not yet.” Ben focused on the curtains that were pulled in front of the sleeping area, “Someone in there?”

  Ida glanced over at the curtains, probably a little too quickly, she thought. She looked back at Ben and shrugged it off in her best nonchalant way. “Oh, yeah. My son. He’s asleep. We’re a team. Driving keeps us on different schedules.” Then she painted on a smile, to sell it. “You know. He sleeps, I drive. I sleep he drives. So on and so on. It’s a grind.”

  “Right. Got it.” Ben gave another look around the cab. “What’s your name?”

  “Ida,” the woman answered without hesitation. “Ida Consiglio. My son’s Daniel. If we see anything, we’ll make sure to report it right away,” she offered helpfully.

  “Good.” Ben was about to turn away when someone rippled the curtains from the other side. His eyes snapped back to the cab. Ida fought the urge to look, too.

  “Is he getting up?” Ben asked.

  “I, uh, no, he’s not due to get up for another few hours. He….“ Before Ida could finish, the curtains whipped open.

  “It’s okay, Momma. I’m up, I’m up.”

  Ben looked into the bed area. Lucinda was nowhere to be seen; the only hint to her whereabouts was the back window that was slightly ajar.

  “You looking for that lost little girl, Officer?” Daniel asked. He was surprisingly good at hiding any hint of what had been going on. He didn’t even make eye contact with Ida.

  Ben carefully eyed the empty bed area. “Yes, we are.”

  “Well we ain’t seen nothing,” Daniel said.

  He was starting to sound a bit too smug, Ida thought. Just wait until the goddamn cop was gone and she could lay into him for pulling this bullshit.

  Movement out the back window got Ida’s attention. She could see Lucinda, sneaking around the side of the truck and running away as she buttoned her top. Ida looked back at Ben, expecting the worst. But he was looking at Daniel. From his angle, he couldn’t see what she had just seen.

  Ben eased back out the door “All right, then. You make sure you let us know if you do.”

  Ida leaned forward and grabbed the door. “Yessir, Officer,” she said in her best law-abiding voice. “We will. Definitely.”

  Ben nodded and turned away.

  Ida closed the door tight and looked over at Daniel. He could tell by his mother’s look that this was going to get very ugly very quickly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ben stood for a moment outside the Consiglios’ truck. There was definitely something not right about those two. But then again, there had been no sign of the little girl in their truck, and no other reason to suspect they were up to any kind of kidnapping. Besides, long-distance truckers were always a bit off; it was the kind of job most people couldn’t handle. They spent most of their lives in a small cab, driving from one place to the next. If they stopped anywhere too long, they risked losing money for not making the delivery on time. Time and distance were the constant denominator in their lives—the dragon they had to slay. And it was unending. Once a delivery was made, they had to scramble to get another run. Then downtime was the enemy. Their trucks weren’t making any money if they weren’t delivering something. It was like being in a continual race that you never won. Hurry up and get there. Hurry up and get another job. If they were lucky to have a family somewhere, they couldn’t spend too much time with them or they’d be losing out on the money it took to keep a roof over their head. It was what made arrangements like Ida and her son. Better to take your family with you than not see them for weeks on end.

  Ben started toward the old Mack truck with the Georgia plates.

  __________

  Country music played on the stereo in the dark cab. Inside, the heavyset driver took a sip from a bottle of Old Crow as he stared sadly at a photograph of a nine-year-old girl clipped to the underside of his visor. She was so fresh and open. Her eyes were bright and without any of the suffering he endured. That youth. That energy. He wished there was a way to capture it all somehow. To hold onto it and never let it go. To hold onto her and never let her go. It was a deep, primal desire. Not a sexual one. Sex had done nothing but destroy things in his life. It had made him fall into another woman’s arms years ago when he was married. Sex had also destroyed the little girl he had loved so much, when she had to go and become a woman.

  A beam of light scanned across his pasty face. His watery eyes shifted from the visor to Ben, whom he could see out the window, coming straight for him. He snapped the visor up and stashed his bottle. He struggled as he scooted his big body across the cab and opened the passenger door so he was waiting when Ben approached. “Yes, Officer?” he wheezed.

  Ben shone his flashlight into the dark cab. “We’re looking for a little girl.”

  But the driver knew that. How could he forget the slimy young man who had lost sight of his precious daughter? “Yeah,” he said. “Her daddy come by earlier lookin’ for her.”

  “Well, we’re still looking.” Ben’s eyes stopped on the full gun rack behind the seats. “Can I see your permits for those?”

  The driver looked at the gun rack, then back to Ben “Sure, no problem.” He shifted his weight forward, grunted as he leaned over, and opened the glove box. He hated to lean forward like this. It was fucking uncomfortable, and it usually gave him heartburn. “Can’t believe he’d leave her alone in a car like that. Oughta have his head examined,” he growled, barely able to get the words out. His thick fingers scraped up the permits; he leaned back, caught his breath, and handed them to Ben.

  “Thanks,” Ben said as he took the permits. “What’s your name?”

  “Frank Rucka,” the big man said.

  “You staying here the night?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah, figured so, what with the grade closing and all.”

  Ben perused the permits. A breeze shifted slightly, and he could smell a thick, rancid odor. Ben hesitated and looked up. “What’re you hauling back there, Frank?”

  Shit. He could smell it. For the first time, Frank seemed anxious. “It’s a shipment for Costco.”

  “Where’s your manifest?”

  Frank hesitated.

  Ben looked more closely at the corpulent, asthmatic man; his intuition kicked in. There was something more going on here. “You have a manifest?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course.” Frank reached down between the cab’s seats and pulled up a clipboard.

  He passed it to Ben, who glanced it over until he found the description of the cargo. “Meat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Deli meat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a little overdue, isn’t it? You were supposed to have it in Phoenix last week.”

  “Yeah, I was. I just…I had a little trouble.”

  Ben looked back at Frank, studied him for a moment more, then said, “Show me.”

 
Moments later, Frank unlatched the back door to his truck and pushed it open. The smell hit Ben hard. It cut through even the cold and wet of the Utah night. “Jesus,” Ben coughed. “You have a light back here? Turn on the light.”

  Frank reached over and snapped a switch. A dim overhead light illuminated the large space. Several pallets of packaged deli meats were stacked in the center. Thick brown puddles of rancid juice surrounded them.

  “This is a health hazard, Frank.” Ben said. “You know that?”

  Frank did know it. He took a moment before answering quietly. “Yeah. I got stuck down south for a few days, and the refrigerator unit burned out.”

  “And you just left it back there?” Ben said. “What the hell are you planning to do with it?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” Frank confessed. “I had a similar problem last month. They said if it happened again, I’d lose my job.”

  Ben looked over at the depressed, heavyset man and felt sorry for him. He had been right. There was a lot more going on. He handed the manifest back to Frank “Well, my advice is to dump it and let them know. You’re putting off the inevitable. If they’re going to fire you, they’re going to fire you. You’re only making things worse for yourself by avoiding it.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re right. As soon as I can get out of here, I’m gonna bring it on in and face the music.”

  Ben thought about saying something more, but realized he had probably said enough already. The strangeness out here tonight seemed to be getting stranger. Instead, Ben got back to his business. “If you see anything tonight, you let me know, all right?”

  “Of course.”