Slow Curve on the Coquihalla

by R. E. Donald

  She couldn't remember if Murphy had spent the night of May 24th with her or not. "Good heavens! I can barely remember what I do from one day to the next," she'd exclaimed. She did confirm that around that date, one time he'd arrived almost in the middle of the night and was still in bed when she left for work early the following morning. "We barely exchanged half a dozen words. I have no idea whether he came up the Coquihalla or up the Canyon, and we certainly didn't discuss anything he'd seen or done on the way. I was half asleep when he arrived, for goodness sake."

  She balked completely at any implication that Murphy could have been responsible for Randy's death. "You can't seriously think that Stan needs some kind of alibi." Hunter said that he agreed with her, the idea was completely absurd, it was just the habit of covering all the bases that came from his years as a Mountie.

  In spite of her brief sense of outrage, she remained pleasant and cooperative throughout Hunter's visit, and he carried the sensation of being wrapped in the warm mantle of her goodwill when he left. He smiled as he passed the turnoff to Randy's house in Kamloops. So that self-contained, generous lady was Randy's Miss Kitty of Cherry Creek.

  From Kamloops to Revelstoke, he was trapped inside the dark cab. The more he tried to ignore them, the more his darkest thoughts muscled their way into the confined space around him. His meeting with Kitty had aroused a relentless, oppressive meditation on the theme of opportunities not grasped that slipped away and would never come again. "Some time soon." The phrase played over and over in his mind like a broken record, an endless taunting chant. Randy and Kitty, denying themselves the sweet fulfilment of their love, waiting patiently for the time to be right. Ken. Hunter should have seen it coming, he should have been there to help, or did Ken himself even know he was that close to the edge? Suzanne and Randy. What was left forever unsaid between a father and daughter, forever undone? He and his girls, Lesley and Jan.

  There is never enough of tomorrows left, he thought.

  Never enough time.

  Hunter was awakened the next morning in the sleeper by the cellular phone ringing beside his ear. He jerked up to a sitting position and gave his head a few groggy shakes while he wriggled his arm out of the tangled top sheet, then grabbed the phone and flipped it open. "I have a collect call for Hunter Rayne from Cal Burmeister in Nephi, Utah. Will you accept the charges?"

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, I sure will." Hunter swung his bare legs down off the bunk, stretching his legs out and rotating his feet one at a time as he listened.

  Cal Burmeister had what Hunter called a Canadian prairie accent. He not only dropped most of the "g"s that occurred at the end of words, but his "t"s came out sounding like something between a "th" and a "d". Hunter suspected that the accent developed through generations of living in close proximity to the French-speaking Métis. Cal told Hunter that he had been travelling north on the Coquihalla the night of May 24th, and had seen a rig broken down on the side of the road somewhere north of the toll booth. He thought it wasn't far from the junction of the Coquihalla and 97C, the highway that went over the mountains to Kelowna. "What's the name of that town there? Merritt, i'n't it?" The rig was parked on the shoulder, and the driver had set up three emergency reflective triangles at intervals from the rear of the trailer.

  "When I got close, I seen it was a Ranverdan rig, eh? So I slowed right down and hailed him on the CB, eh? Is that you, Randy? That's what you get for drivin' an old clunker like that, I said. Me and Randy, we'd have coffee sometimes when we run into each other somewheres. I'd always give him a hard time about his trucks, eh? I'm a Kenworth man myself. Don't matter that his truck was three years newer than mine, it wasn't a Kenworth, eh? You drive a Kenworth?"

  "I drive a '91 Freightliner."

  Cal Burmeister chuckled. "Say, no offense, eh? Nothin' personal or anything."

  "So did he answer you back? Was it Randy?" Hunter did his best to stretch his arm and shoulder muscles without moving the phone from his ear.

  "Yeah, he comes back at me all right. Says, no problems, Cal. Help's already on the way, or somethin' like that."

  "Did you stop and talk to him?"

  "Nope. Wasn't a good place to stop, unless it was an emergency. Dark, eh? And on an uphill curve."

  "Did you see him? Did he wave or anything?" With his shoulder hiked up to hold the phone, Hunter grabbed his jeans from the floor and worked his way into them.

  "Nope. Like I said, it was dark, he didn't have no light on in the cab, and I couldn't do more'n just sneak a quick look as I went by."

  "Could it have been someone other than Randy that you talked to?"

  There was a short pause. "Well, I never thought about it. But he called me Cal, I'm sure of it. Well, I think he did. He's the only guy drives a Ranverdan rig that would know my name, eh? From my moniker? Mind you, he had his radio playing pretty loud, I remember that. Damn song stuck in my mind, like it does every time I hear it. You know that song about bein' stuck on the L.A. freeway? Guy's afraid he's gonna die there? I always hear that song in my head when I'm drivin' through the basin there, eh? Smog city, eh?" Cal Burmeister chuckled again. "Just like, every time I'm headin' north on this damn highway, I start hearin' that Ian Tyson song about goin' to Montana, eh? You know? About he's leavin' Ol' Paint in Cheyenne? No matter I'm five hundred miles east of Cheyenne, I just like the song, eh?"

  Cal wasn't able to pinpoint the time, because he'd turned in his toll booth receipt to the Norco office. "Must've been sometime after midnight, I'd guess. Between midnight and one o'clock."

  Hunter asked him if he could check his toll receipt when he got back to Calgary. "Sure thing," he said. "You know, since I heard about Randy gettin' killed like that, I keep thinkin' that maybe if I'da stopped there, he'd still be okay. There's talk that maybe it wasn't any accident, and that just gives me the willies, you know what I mean? You hear about that kinda thing in the States, eh?, so you take precautions. But in Canada now? Cripes! That's real bad news! Must've been somebody comin' along behind me there, eh?, maybe just after I talked to him. Sees him stopped and decides to take advantage. Can't help but think that if it was my truck broke down, it could've been me. I hope you find out who did it, before the bastard does it to somebody else."

  Hunter thanked him and promised to look him up and buy him a beer next time he was in Calgary. "Hell! I prob'ly spend less time in Calgary than I do anywhere else on this damn continent. But our paths'll cross somewheres, sometime, eh?" Cal was chuckling again as he hung up.

  CHAPTER 28

  – – – – TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hunter's delivery in Calgary was routine. He checked in with El, to see if she'd been able to line up a return load for him. So far, no luck. He didn't want to hang around waiting for something to turn up, but running back empty would hurt. Running empty miles didn't cost that much less than full miles, and the dollar a mile he'd made on the run east wasn't going to cover his expenses for the trip home. He asked her to keep trying, but if he hadn't heard from her by six a.m. on Saturday, he'd be starting back empty.

  His next call was to Bill Earl.

  "Hah!" said Bill after Hunter had made it past the detachment switchboard. "I'd begun to think we'd be playing telephone tag for the rest of our lives. I ran that guy Scarfo, like you asked. Even made a few long distance phone calls. He's bad news, man."

  "How bad?" asked Hunter.

  "Attempted murder, for starters. But the victim refused to identify him and there wasn't enough else to prosecute with. Also, suspected murder. Ontario. The OPP say they know he did it, but they had to let him walk for lack of evidence. The body, to be exact. Don't mess with him, Hunter."

  "Don't worry," he said. "I'll make sure we don't get too close."

  "We? Who else you got in on this?"

  "I just meant I wouldn't let anybody at Ranverdan get too friendly with him. The guy works for Ranverdan's biggest customer, remember?" Hunter wasn't about to divulge anything about his confidential informant, even to Bill. He felt a
spasm of guilt for sending Sorry to nose around in a potentially dangerous environment, but reminded himself that he'd already warned Sorry to keep his distance. "What else?" he asked.

  "Frank Scarfo grew up in The Family, if you know what I mean. Crime is a way of life for him, although he hasn't been convicted of anything since he was a juvenile. Fraud, theft, assault, murder, or whatever, he's a good all around suspect from the looks of things. Got anything we can use?"

  "Not yet," said Hunter. "If I get anything solid, you'll be the first to know."

  Just in case there was no backhaul load to cover the cost of his trip home, Hunter decided to spend another night in his sleeper and save the price of a hotel room. He found a place to park the truck near the western outskirts of Calgary and locked up the cab. His cell phone a heavy bulge in his shirt pocket and the Tom Clancy novel tucked under his arm, he set out to find a quiet restaurant where he could nurse a couple of beers and read his book before dinner. He knew he should be doing something physically active, but couldn't summon up enough imagination to figure out what. With any luck, he'd be home in time for a round of golf on Sunday anyway.

  Sorry's call came through before Hunter had found a restaurant. After they had set up a rendezvous for dinner Saturday in Kamloops, Hunter asked, "How'd it go this time, Sorry? Find out anything?"

  "As good as can be expected. Uh ... look, boss, I'm using the customer's phone and he's standing here waiting to make a call. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?" Hunter had no choice but to agree.

  Hunter's decision not to get some kind of physical exercise came back to haunt him that night. He'd sat as long as he could in the restaurant, even ordering pie and coffee, then an after dinner beer that he didn't really want, in order to retain possession of a comfortable table in a family restaurant. In the brightly lit booth, he managed to concentrate well enough on his book, but back in the sleeper, his attention continually wandered from the page. Knowing he had to be ready to hit the road before six o'clock, he turned out the light at about ten and lay in the dark. The meal still lay heavy on his stomach, and he couldn't keep his eyes closed. He tossed and turned for almost two hours, his mind buzzing with scraps of recent conversations and a vicious circle of unanswered questions.

  If Randy had broken down and was waiting for assistance that night, who was he expecting when he told Cal Burmeister that ‘help's on the way’? Had he summoned help from another driver by CB or cellular phone? If so, who? And why? Unless he needed a part, Randy was as capable as any driver of doing emergency repairs on his vehicle. And if he had broken down, why didn't the mechanics find anything wrong with his Western Star tractor, except for damage attributed to the crash? Had they missed something? If he hadn't broken down, why would Randy have stopped his rig on that uphill curve? Randy seemed to have been a soft touch where the weaker sex was concerned. Could he have stopped for a woman in distress? A decoy?

  Murphy had been jealous of Randy's unspoken bond with Kitty. Had he been jealous enough to want to hurt his best friend? Or if Hunter's gut instincts about Waicom's involvement in Randy's accident were correct, someone connected with Waicom did the dirty work. Could Mah still have some kind of leverage on Murphy? R.C.M.P. files had revealed a past link between Mah and Chuck Wahl, but what about Bilodeau? Was Hunter being too quick to write him off as a suspect, based simply on the fact that Bilodeau's friend, Rob, didn't seem like the criminal type? If it was someone involved with or hired by the suspects at Waicom, how would they have known Randy was going to stop where he did? And there were still some wild cards, like Pete and his son Jason. Where did they come up with the money to buy a new truck?

  Or was Cal Burmeister right? A crime of opportunity. A passing car, a couple of crack heads or heroin addicts mugging a lone trucker they found stranded on a highway for the contents of his wallet. If so, why did they leave a ten dollar bill and his credit cards?

  Hunter tried to tell himself that Sorry would soon be able to shed some light on the setup at Waicom, perhaps even tomorrow. But something was starting to eat away at his confidence in Sorry. Was Hunter putting too much stake in what he hoped Sorry could find out? By concentrating on Waicom, was he being blinded to other possibilities? He felt like his thoughts were endlessly turning back on themselves, like a snake eating its tail. Let it go. Don't try to force it. Sleep, and let the subconscious take over for a while.

  Think of something relaxing, he told himself. Think of lying in sunshine, imagine a weightless sensation of warmth, imagine the sound of waves lapping on the shore. His mind moved on to the thought of visiting his parents in Hawaii, and that perhaps he would invite the girls to join him. Jan and Lesley. His thoughts again slipped out of his control and he saw Lesley's angry adorable face, heard her say, "Maybe some day you'll start to talk to me like I'm an adult! I mean, really talk to me, Dad!" and he wondered what he was doing wrong. Again. He had tried to reach out to her, but his reach had somehow fallen short. What should he do? He groaned in frustration, then got out of his bunk, pulled on his jeans and sneakers, and stepped out into the cool dark air. Finally, after an hour of walking past hushed warehouses and shadowy vacant lots along the midnight streets, he went back to bed and slept.

  When Hunter pulled up at the Pizza Hut in Kamloops, Sorry was stalking up and down in front of the restaurant, one hand hooked onto a front belt loop, the other ferrying what was left of a cigarette to and from his mouth. Before Hunter had time to get out of the Suburban, Sorry was pulling on the handle of the passenger door and signalling for Hunter to unlock it. "I get enough fucking pizza at home. Let's go to a steak house, eh?" he said as he jumped into the passenger seat. "Besides," he added with his usual booming laugh, "you're buyin'!"

  Hunter winced inwardly as he thought of his empty trailer, but had to admit that a steak house was probably a better place to talk. The Pizza Hut was often crowded with boisterous teenagers, and families with noisy young children. Within ten minutes, they found a place that met with Sorry's approval, and settled into a corner booth in the smoking section. Sorry lit a fresh cigarette as soon as they sat down, and his eyes swept the restaurant's interior, back and forth, back and forth. His body jiggled slightly, and Hunter realized that he was bouncing one knee up and down rapidly underneath the table.

  "OD'd on coffee?" asked Hunter.

  Sorry grinned. "Pepsi. Been mainlining Pepsi. Shows, eh?" He laughed. "Besides, I'm fuckin' starved. Let's get some kind of starter." He pulled a menu out from behind the salt and pepper stand. "Hey, they got wings. How about wings?" He beckoned over a middle aged waitress wearing a shirt and tie and a little brass name tag. "Hey, Eva darlin'," said Sorry, "How about bringing us an order of hot wings and a side of fries for starters? And light a fire under the cook, eh?" he called out as she walked towards the kitchen.

  Sorry babbled on about the day's drive until the appetizers showed up, then limited his conversation to slurps and grunts until there was nothing left but a plate of bones and a wicker basket full of greasy paper and ketchup smears. Hunter asked him what had happened at Waicom.

  "We're gettin' close, boss. I haven't got the story yet, and I know the chink in Seattle still doesn't like me, but I'm getting along okay with this Frank dude in Edmonton. We had lunch again."

  Hunter waited for more details. Sorry needed prodding again. It wasn't just laziness, which was something he expected from Sorry. Sorry seemed to be testing him, trying to see how little he could get away with saying about what had gone on at Waicom.

  He told Hunter that Mah made a snide comment about his haircut, indicating that it was a big improvement but he still had a long way to go. "Said I looked like a bad case of attitude. I don't know whether I'll ever get anything out of him. It's like, there's no rapport between us, if you know what I mean."

  Hunter knew what he meant. He had the same problem with Mah.

  "But this Frank guy, we're almost buds now, boss."

  Eva brought the steaks, chunks of Kamloops beef, thick as baseballs and drip
ping with juice, and they both started in on their meals. Hunter was impatient to hear more, but knew that Sorry would be more amenable when his stomach was full. While they ate, conversation was minimal. Sorry finished first, pushed his plate to the edge of the table, and pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket. Cigarette in one hand, disposable lighter in the other, he looked at Hunter expectantly.

  "Go ahead." Hunter pushed his plate away and leaned his forearms on the table. "Tell me more. What happened in Seattle?"

  "Fuck all, like I told you."

  "Did you see anything out of the ordinary in the warehouse?"

  Sorry thrust out his jaw thoughtfully, then shook his head.

  "Okay, so tell me about Edmonton. You said you and Frank went for lunch again. Whose idea? His?"

  "Yeah, that's what I've been trying to get across. The guy likes me. We went for lunch again, at that little Chinese smorgasbord."

  "In his jeep again?"

  "Nope. We met there. Trailer was empty by then, so I had to pull out of the Waicom yard."

  "You took your rig?"

  "Yeah, but wait. We gotta back up a bit. This time I got there earlier, about ten thirty. First Frank does a number on John, the shipper. Sticks a little blade up his snout, just for respect, you know? Doesn't hurt the guy, just scares the shit out of him. Probably did it for my benefit, to show me he's got things under control. Then Frank comes and looks in my trailer and lets out this big fuckin' sigh. I say, lookin' for something special in there, Frank?, half joking like, giving him an opening, sort of. And he says, wouldn't old garlic breath there just love it if I was?, or something like that. Seems like he might be letting his guard down with me a little, don't you think? The way he said it, the sigh and all, I figure he's under pressure."

  "Could be. Could be their operation's been on hold since Randy's death and they're starting to feel the pinch." Hunter rubbed his jaw. "Did he say anything else while you were in the warehouse?"