Slow Curve on the Coquihalla

by R. E. Donald

  Murph's warning came to mind. "Then hell, if I can't trust you, who can I trust?" Sorry said. He grinned broadly but Mah didn't look up. He wished the guy would bring up the pills Hunter had talked about. Here he was with a hundred bucks in his jeans, and looking forward to doing business with the guy. A little deal would help break the ice, kind of establish his credentials. He was sure he'd made the hints obvious enough. So what the fuck was wrong with the damn Chinaman? Sorry glanced over towards Murphy. The final skid was being pushed into position on Murphy's trailer. There wasn't much time left. C'mon, Mah, he thought. Fuckin' say something!

  "So, you won't fall asleep with our very important cargo on your trailer, now, will you?" said Mah.

  Finally! "That would be a veritable tragedy. I'll do my veritable best to stay awake."

  "It's not a joking matter." Mah was still fussing with the paperwork, sliding a sheaf of official looking invoices into a big manilla envelope. "I'm sure you're aware that a driver was killed transporting our very important cargo just a few weeks ago." Mah was no longer smiling.

  "Yeah. I heard." Sorry hesitated. Mah had brought the subject up himself. How could he get the guy to say more without tipping his hand? And what about the drugs? He decided to give it another shot. "Sounds like he wasn't doing the right drugs."

  "I guess ..." Mah drew out the s's in a thoughtful hiss, "... he should've stopped for coffee along the way."

  "Yeah," said Sorry, thinking C'mon, c'mon, what about the uppers? "He should've stopped for coffee." He looked intently at Mah, waiting for some kind of a signal. A wink, a nod, a little jerk of the head. He saw nothing except a goddamn Mona Lisa smile. What was that word? Inscrutable. Yeah. Inscrutable Oriental. He couldn't read this guy, and the guy wasn't going to talk. His own trailer was now already loaded almost to the back door.

  "I never met the guy, but I've heard he was a good driver. The accident shook a few people up." Sorry rubbed his chin. He'd just try to keep the subject alive and see where it led. "So, he went off the road with a load out of here, eh? You lose a lot of stuff?"

  Mah shrugged. "Waicom imports computer parts by the thousands. What's one lousy truckload?"

  "Only real loss was the driver then, eh?"

  Mah hammered his fist several times on the head of a big black stapler, attaching bills of lading to each of the manilla envelopes. "Nope. The driver's somebody else's loss."

  Ask stupid questions, Hunter had said. "You didn't like him?"

  Mah flashed a suspicious look. "I didn't say that." The words were clipped.

  Shit! thought Sorry. He's going to clam up.

  Murph walked up to the counter, and Mah handed each of them their paperwork. "Sign here." He slashed a big X on the bill of lading, and Sorry scrawled his name beside it.

  Murph peered over at his signature. "Who's Sorry now?" he asked, grinning as he walked away.

  "You'll be fuckin' sorry," muttered Sorry through clenched teeth. The Newfie was starting to piss him off. The curly headed Chinaman was pissing him off big time. He ripped the top copy off the bill of lading and thrust it at Mah, who was watching the second copy zig-zag slowly to the dusty concrete floor. "Shit!" said Sorry, kicking at it before he bent to pick it up.

  As Sorry straightened up, the copy crumpled in his hand, he saw Mah out of the corner of his eye. The guy was playing with the little diamond stud in his ear, a thoughtful look on his face. Sorry glared at him, then turned on his heel and strode over to his trailer. He checked that the rear doors were secure, then headed towards the warehouse exit.

  "Sorenson!" Sorry paused with his hand on the door, slowly turning to face the shipper. The Chinaman was smiling that irritating smile. "Don't forget to stop for coffee."

  Damn! Sorry fired up the engine of the big Ranverdan Western Star and sat there fuming while the Newfie pulled his rig out of the way. So, Mah talked about drugs to a clean cut guy like Hunter but wouldn't say a word about the pills to a cool brother like himself. Sorry felt as if he'd thrown in his line, seen the fish play with the bait, and suddenly realized that it was the fish who was reeling him in. So much for being a snake charmer. Hunter was full of shit.

  Damn! He sure could've used some good drugs.

  CHAPTER 19

  – – – – NINETEEN

  He knew it had been too good to be true. The load that Hunter was scheduled to pick up in Tukwila wasn't ready. It's one of those things that truck drivers learn to accept. When possible, they charge for their time, but usually they just grit their teeth, grin, and bear it, rather than risk losing the load, and maybe future loads, to someone else. It's elementary. The law of supply and demand. There are too many truckers fighting over every piece of the cargo pie.

  There'd been a production glitch, said the shipper, but they'd be caught up by the end of the night shift. The warehouse manager himself guaranteed to have Hunter's trailer loaded and ready to go by eight a.m. Hunter groaned inwardly, but agreed to come pick up the trailer at seven thirty Wednesday morning. "Thank you, chief," he said to the warehouse manager as he walked away to unhitch The Blue Knight.

  Bob-tailing away from the yard in his tractor, Hunter felt light and unencumbered, as if he'd just shed gum boots for running shoes. He briefly considered heading back to Vancouver for the night, but decided that spending another five hours and umpteen gallons of fuel on the road just to be able to sleep at home wasn't going to help the situation, so he set off in the direction of the Flying J truck stop in Federal Way. He called El on his cellular to report the delay.

  "Hang on," she said after he'd described his situation. "I've got a message for you."

  "Make it quick, El, I'm on my cell," he managed to say before she punched the hold button, as if she couldn't tell from the speaker box sound.

  "Okay," she said, coming back on within a few seconds. "Suzanne wants you to call her, but I've got to explain something to you first. She's really pissed at me."

  "Why?" He was mired in Seattle's rush hour traffic, inching his way back on to the southbound I-5.

  Big sigh. "Pete and Jason quit on her." A short silence. "Suzanne blames me for it."

  "Well?"

  "All I did was tell him about Gary's brake trouble, but you know how he is, out for himself all the time. He's not prepared to take risks for anybody, not even Randy's kid. It was kind of like the last straw for him anyway, meaning he and Jason had been intending to go out on their own for some time, even had a truck all picked out."

  "So Pete's buying his own truck."

  "Yeah. He and Jason are going to use the one truck between them, some team driving, singles on short runs. Pete figures he's ready to start cutting down his hours. He's closing in on sixty."

  "What kind of work could he have lined up on such short notice? He wouldn't have to leave her in the lurch. He could still haul loads for Ranverdan."

  "Uh ... I said I'd broker for him. Suzanne doesn't seem to want to do much business with me any more, so I got some holes to fill." Sounding defensive, she added, "He came to me."

  "Jesus, El! What're you trying to do to her? I know, business is business, but have a heart. Besides, I thought you found Pete a pain in the ass to work with."

  "Hey! It's not my fault." Her voice got louder. "Like I said, he came to me. I can use another experienced team. What was I supposed to do? Rap his knuckles and send him back to her?" After a pause, her voice dropped a bit. "In this business, them's the breaks. If she can't stand the heat ... the sooner she learns her lessons, the better." When Hunter didn't respond, El added. "Listen, I like the kid, okay? I feel sorry for her, but ... she wants to run a trucking company, then she'd better learn how. Fast."

  Hunter hung up feeling rotten. Poor Suzanne. He was frustrated that he couldn't do more for her, help to ease at least one of the burdens she was now carrying, give her a sense of closure, a sense of justice done. He felt hamstrung trying to investigate Randy's death. As a civilian, he couldn't order forensic tests on Randy's truck, he couldn't assign half a
dozen constables to interview possible witnesses, he couldn't even afford to take The Blue Knight off the road long enough to do a decent job of it himself. What's more, he had no authority behind him to help secure the cooperation of those he might want to question, couldn't threaten them with subpoenas or arrests, or hint at favors and plea bargain deals. He was worried that he was pinning an unreasonable amount of hope on the results of Sorry's encounter with Steve Mah.

  Hunter checked his watch. Sorry was supposed to call Hunter's cellular to confirm they were both on schedule and could meet for lunch the next day at a restaurant on the Yellowhead highway, north of Kamloops. If Sorry phoned from the border after he cleared through customs as planned, he'd be calling in about two hours. Hunter flipped open the phone again and called Suzanne.

  "If Pete knows, they're all going to know," she said after they'd discussed it. "I don't know what to say to them. How can I ask them to put themselves in danger?"

  "We don't know that anybody's really at risk," he countered.

  "But we don't know that they're not."

  "Of course, you're right." Hunter sighed. "So, if everybody already knows, we might as well ask outright for their help, get them to put the word out on the grapevine."

  "What do you mean?"

  It was something Hunter had thought about already. He had even borrowed the camera El kept in her warehouse to record freight damage, and used it to take half a dozen Polaroid snap shots of a Ranverdan tractor in order to have something to show drivers to jog their memories. The truckers' grapevine could be devilishly efficient at times. He told Suzanne that if they put the word out that they were looking for witnesses who might have seen Randy's truck that night anywhere from Hope, where he was supposed to have dropped off Chuck Wahl, to the site of the accident on the Coquihalla, they might be lucky and turn up some valuable information. "We've got nothing to lose," he reasoned, "now that the cat's already out of the bag. Do you think anyone else might quit?"

  "I sure hope not," she said. "I'll do my best not to let them."

  Her voice was less discouraged than Hunter had expected, even verging on steely. Randy would be proud, he thought.

  "I wanted to ask you," she continued, "Have you been in touch with John Semeniuk yet to see if he's the John who wrote that note?"

  "Not yet, but I've tried. The note said don't call at work, which must mean he didn't want someone where he works knowing he was talking to Randy about it, so I'm not even sure that he'll be willing to talk to me over the phone. He wasn't very forthcoming the time I met him."

  "He might talk to me. I could just say I came across this note in Dad's desk, and ask him if it was something I should know about."

  Hunter paused, debating whether it would put her at risk, and decided it couldn't hurt. "Sure. Give it a try. Don't push him too hard, but see if he's willing to explain the note. I'll try to stop in to see you tomorrow on my way through."

  After he hung up, he abandoned his plan to park at the Federal Way truck stop and instead took Exit 149 and looped over to the northbound 405. At least he would feel like he was doing something useful tonight, canvassing drivers to see if they could remember seeing Randy on the Coquihalla, and the truck stops to do that at were north of Seattle, where he'd have a better chance of finding drivers enroute to the border.

  When he pulled into the first rest area, a few miles south of Everett, there were two rigs stopped. A tall young man wearing a Seattle Mariners baseball cap and low-heeled cowboy boots was standing beside the restroom reading the glassed in notice board and finishing up a cigarette. Hunter approached him and said, "Howdy."

  The man turned and nodded.

  "Is that your rig?" Hunter pointed to a royal purple Kenworth hitched to a plain aluminum trailer.

  "Sure is." The man flicked ash off the end of his cigarette and grinned. "Or maybe I should say, it belongs to my bank."

  Hunter returned the grin and pointed at The Blue Knight. "Ditto." He cleared his throat. "I'm looking for somebody who might have witnessed an accident a few weeks back. You ever been up the Coquihalla Highway northeast of Vancouver?"

  "Coquihalla? Is that the one with the toll booth way up in the mountains?"

  "Yeah, that's the one. Any chance you might've been there three weeks ago. That'd be Tuesday, May 24th."

  The man shook his head. "I normally just run as far as Vancouver. Only time I was on that toll highway was on summer vacation about four years ago." He dropped his cigarette butt and squashed it with his heel. "Can't help ya."

  Hunter thanked him, and looked over to see the other rig just pulling out. He hung around for another fifteen minutes and talked to four more drivers, two of whom had never even been to Canada. He decided to try his luck further north.

  He drove through a few restaurant parking lots just off the highway in Everett. There were a couple of rigs parked in the vicinity of each, but the drivers weren't in them and he didn't want to go table to table in a restaurant trying to distinguish the drivers of big trucks from the drivers of little trucks. In one parking lot, he pulled up beside a driver who was just stepping out of his cab. The man said that he had driven the Coquihalla many times, and might've been on it three weeks ago. He'd have to check his log.

  "What time are we talking about?" he asked.

  "Sometime around midnight, I guess." That is, Hunter thought, if Chuck Wahl had been right about Randy leaving Hope around eleven o'clock.

  The driver thumbed through the pages of his log book. "Hmmmm. May 24th. Here it is. I've even got the toll receipt here. I went through the toll booth at nine forty five."

  Hunter winced in disappointment. Close, but no cigar. It was like having only one winning number out of six on a lottery ticket. What were the chances of ever winning the jackpot?

  "Do you remember seeing this rig anywhere that night? Take a look at this." Hunter showed him one of the Polaroids. "Ring any bells for you?"

  The driver shook his head. "Are you kidding?! Three weeks ago? You know how many trucks I've set eyes on in three weeks?"

  "Yes, I know." Hunter sighed. "Believe me, I know."

  But he drove away from that encounter with a new idea. Where was Randy's toll receipt from the night he died? That would virtually pinpoint the time he was on the thirty mile stretch of highway between the toll booth and the curve where his rig left the road. If it wasn't still in the cab, it must be in the possession of the R.C.M.P., along with the log book and paperwork for the Waicom shipment, and perhaps Randy's wallet and valuables as well. He made a mental note to check that out, and reproached himself for not tracking it down sooner.

  He got back on the I-5 and continued north. When he reached Marysville, famous throughout northwest Washington and southwest British Columbia as the home of mouthwatering pies, he couldn't help thinking of Sorry. If the jolly biker had driven straight through, he could expect a call from him at any moment, but it wouldn't surprise Hunter if Sorry had stopped on this side of the border to eat. He pulled into Donna's Travel Plaza, and was just making small talk in the parking lot with a NW Transport driver who'd never driven the Coquihalla when his cell phone rang. It wasn't Sorry calling from the border, it was Bill Earl calling from Kamloops.

  "You'll be pleased to know that I've caught the virus, or whatever it is, that's got you obsessed with this Danyluk accident. I had to make a trip to Merritt on another matter, and managed to convince Garth to spend some time with me going through that trailer before they haul the stuff away. Unofficially, mind you. I'm not convinced enough to want to take this to the brass yet. However ..." He paused briefly. "... I do think you might be interested in taking a look at what we've found."

  "Bill, you're a prince! I needed some kind of good news about now."

  "Wait a minute, Hunter," Bill growled in a deep voice, "I don't think what we've found qualifies as good news. I'd call it interesting stuff, maybe. No, not even that. More likely, just unexplained shit."

  "Okay. Call it whatever you want. What have
you got?"

  "Garth'll show you if you get time to stop in Merritt. The load must've been pretty loose. Most of the cartons are all crushed and dented and look as if they rattled around and bounced off the walls all the way down. Those are mostly the larger cartons – computer monitors, CPU's, and cartons full of smaller boxes of parts. But there were two skids of smaller, flatter cartons, cartons containing keyboards to be exact, that had been shrink wrapped together. They seem to have been the only skids that weren't loose. The skids are a little out of shape, you know, skewed a bit, but that shrink wrap is pretty skookum stuff and managed at least to hold them all together. As far as we can tell, the shrink wrap around those skids didn't break and didn't unravel. We did a piece count, in fact, we did several piece counts – I don't know how you truckers can stand it – and the number of cartons jives with what's on the customs paperwork."

  "Um ... Bill," Hunter ventured, "either I've been retired for too long or you know something I don't know. That doesn't even qualify as unexplained shit, in my book."

  "Hold your horses, Hunter, I haven't finished. The unexplained part is that there was a pile of used shrink wrap lying around with no cartons connected to it. It's in a bunch of pieces, but there's not enough of it to have wrapped a complete skid, and it doesn't seem to be off the existing skids, but it was around something because there are places on it that were obviously stretched by the corners of boxes."

  "I would like to take a look at that. You don't think it was just wrapped around the top of the skids and came loose?"

  "I doubt it. For one thing, the shrink wrap on the top of the skids is intact. I don't see what the point would have been to have another chunk of it wrapped around the top. The other thing is that these pieces were obviously slit with a blade. The original pieces were maybe fifty feet long, now it's in clumps of three layers in lengths of about twelve feet."

  "So maybe it was wrapped around something that somebody removed from the trailer."