They heard a powerful motor accelerating, frozen gravel spraying up on the undercarriage. A siren began to wail as the cruiser surged onto the road.
Jason? Could Jason have done this? And now he was at his house?
Johnny felt sick as he gave his address to Barton, who punched it into his phone, then spoke into his handheld radio, explaining the situation.
Johnny stared at his phone as it rang again. He saw Mary’s name on the screen.
“Mary, what’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Well, yeah. Why is Jason here?”
“There’s been an accident at the shop. Pete was hurt. The police are here.”
“Oh! I was worried you were hurt or something. What happened to Pete? He’s the mechanic you’ve been helping out, right?” He could hear her tone changing from surprise to anger to about-to-cry.
“Is Jason there? What is he doing?” Johnny remembered the officer now racing toward his home, “Oh, the RCMP are on the way. We thought, we thought something bad was happening, maybe.”
“Jason was sick, throwing up in the ditch. It scared me, sounded like an animal.”
“Mary, take Jason in the house and calm him down. The police are going to come, and they’ll be asking a lot of questions. We don’t really know what’s going on yet. It looks like someone hit Pete on the head, and one of the trucks is here, parked, when it should be out west.” He stopped. “I will call you when I know more.”
But Mary had something to do and told him she would call later. Before she ended the call, he heard her instructions to Jason to “get his skinny butt up to the house for some breakfast”. Mary was tough He wouldn’t worry about her. He knew she would take care of Jason, too.
His thoughts turned back to the situation at hand. Barton was on the radio, apprising his coworker of the situation.
Why were the clothes on the floor of the truck? Did they belong to Terry? He had never met her, or even heard her name. He was aware several new truckers had been hired over the previous weekend for the busy winter.
Was Terry playing a joke? Had she been assaulted? Were those her clothes? The workwear was smeared with the normal mud and grease accumulated during a day of winter trucking.
Good clothes, but definitely had seen some use before being laid out on the floor of the cab. The boots were a lot smaller than his size thirteens.
Both officers were back up on the truck’s steps, looking through the cab and taking pictures. The one with the camera was now on the driver’s side, and he heard her talking into her radio.
“Yes, I’ll check.”
From the passenger side, Johnny was able to see through the wide-open door as she pulled a pen from her pocket and used it to carefully lift first the waist of the pants, then the waist of the shirt. When she lifted the hoody’s waist band, Johnny recognized the yellow logo on a bunched-up green T-shirt and could see the pink and black lines of underwear.
Slowly returning the pen to her pocket, the police officer said, “Yes, all the clothes are here, underwear, yep,” she listened, “yeah, socks are stuffed in the boots.”
She looked down at the hard hat she had placed on the driver’s seat. “Yes, there’s some hair, blonde, stuck around the head band in the hard hat.”
She climbed down, her conversation muted by the furnace blower.
Constable Barton climbed down, rounding the big rig to stand with Mrs. Banks. Johnny joined them. “John, this looks like a serious problem here. There will be an investigation team here in about an hour, and they are going to need to talk at length with the two of you,” he nodded toward Melissa Banks and Johnny, “as well as Jason, and anyone else who was here at the shop recently.”
The officer sighed. “I sure hope Mr. Macdonald is okay, and when he is able to talk, he may have all the information needed. We will have to wait until the hospital contacts us. We have an officer who should have arrived at the hospital by now.” He glanced at the big clock on the wall and then confirmed by checking his watch.
“Why don’t the two of you go get some breakfast and make a list of your employees and their phone numbers. Keep trying to contact your husband, Ma’am. He may know some details as well.” He nodded toward Johnny. “Your foreman here, well, I’m assuming he’s your foreman, is steady. You’re lucky to have him.”
He handed them each a card, shaking hands with Mrs. Banks, then Johnny. “If you think of anything, call me. I’ll be in touch soon. We will need to take statements, and the interviews with the investigation team may take some time. Get a good breakfast. It’s early. This could be a long day.”
He adjusted his equipment belt, his short frame looking as trim as was possible in the bulky vest. “I just hope your driver is okay, and this is some sort of joke. Okay, I expect to be calling you fairly soon.”
“My house is the first one further down the road, the first left.” Mrs. Banks was calm. “We will be there.”
With a curt nod, Barton rejoined his fellow officer who was still on the phone.
Chapter 7
Johnny followed Mrs. Banks to her large house and parked beside her Escalade. In the house, she poured him a cup of coffee, and handed him a list of employees with their phone numbers.
“You start with everyone on the North Road where you’re working, and I’ll take the ones on the Francis.” She was already making a racket in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, leaving cupboard doors wide open. “I don’t think everyone will answer their cell phones, but the ones who do can get on the radio and contact whoever is close to them.” She turned, “And get Chet to call me. He needs to be here for this.”
The Banks worked together running their business, and Chet was usually the human relations half of the team. Melissa Banks got things done, making sure safety practices were followed with all the necessary training, and that everyone was paid on time. Her husband was the “good cop” in the partnership.
“Hello, Jim? Yeah, were you at the shop yesterday? Did you see Pete?” Her voice was forceful, getting quieter as she went into another room. Johnny couldn’t think, so he picked up one of the safety folders, a pad of paper from a stack of several on the desk, and a pen, and went into the living room, sitting in a leather chair with wide arms. He turned on the table lamp and wrote a few questions on the pad of paper. He wanted to ask the same questions to each of the people he called, all men on his route.
Were you at the shop yesterday? Did you see Pete yesterday or last night? Do you know Terry?
He opened the safety folder to the employee list and noticed two names written in blue ink below the printed list of names.
Terry Mason. Caleb Gray.
He finished writing her name and thought of what else to ask. He was shocked by the suddenness of the events. One minute he was getting ready for work; half an hour later there were all these new problems to sort and process. Inwardly he swore, thinking of Pete. Would he be okay?
The guy’s name wasn’t even Pete, Johnny had found out several years ago. His last name was Macdonald, and for many years had answered to “Mac”. He had driven a Mack truck years ago, and when he upgraded to a long-nosed Peterbilt, everyone started calling him “Pete”. He had laughingly told Johnny that when he got tired of his current name, all he had to do was buy a Kenworth, and he could be “Ken” for the rest of his life! Johnny hadn’t thought to ask what his real name was.
Isaac La Crosse, the other full-time mechanic, spent much of his time servicing the logging equipment and trucks out in the bush. He had a well-equipped service truck, and according to Mrs. Banks had been several hours north replacing broken hydraulic lines on a feller-buncher, a large, tracked machine with boom-mounted grapples and saw head. This configuration allowed the operator to hold the tree while cutting it low to the ground, and then place the tree with others in a ‘bunch’. The skidder operator would then drag the trees to the roadside where the processor operator would cut the logs to length and deck them for loading.
Johnny guessed Isaa
c was due back later today. There was a sleeper cab on the service truck, and often Isaac chose to spend the night in the bush, saving hours of driving on rough and busy roads. Like Pete, Isaac was resourceful and savvy, able to troubleshoot problems, and willing to work outdoors in the miserably cold winter conditions, the mud and mosquitos of spring, and the dust, heat and blackflies of summer.
Isaac answered on the second ring. “Hello, Clown 15, this is not the Complaint Department, but the Department of What’s-Your-Problem-Now?” Normally, Johnny enjoyed Isaac’s sarcastic wit on the phone, but not today.
“Isaac, when did you leave the shop yesterday?”
“Yesterday? I wish! I passed you on your last trip Tuesday. You may remember my courteous gesture of greeting?”
“Oh, yeah. Hey, Isaac, we’ve got a real problem here. We need to talk for a few minutes, so cut the crap.”
Isaac went quiet, there was the muffled sound of a door slamming, then, “Okay, I’m in the buncher cab, up on a ridge. Good reception. Go ahead.”
“Listen, sometime last night Pete got knocked unconscious in the shop. We don’t know what happened exactly, or who did it, or if he just fell. He’s in the hospital. I haven’t heard how he’s doing. Jason found him early this morning. I guess they were taking the smaller service truck somewhere, I don’t know. Jason called me, I called 911, and they took Pete to the hospital. The cops came out, and then we found something really weird in the shop.”
Isaac was silent, so Johnny went on.
“327 was parked in the shop, looked like it had been there for a while, eh, all dry underneath. That new driver, Terry Mason, had been driving it this week. She was gone, but her clothes were on the floor of the cab. They were set up like” he paused, “well, like she was wearing them, underwear and everything.”
Isaac swore. “Oh, that sounds bad.” He swore again, then said, “I met her at the shop on Sunday and showed her the rig she was starting in, and where things were, made sure she knew how to install chains, all that. She seemed decent, you know, she knew what she was doing, only asked a few questions. Didn’t ask about satellite radio like the rest of you clowns always do first.”
Johnny asked, “Any ideas? You heard of anything like this before?”
“Negative.” Isaac said, “Halloween was only a few weeks ago. Sounds like something out of a horror movie, I don’t know. What are the cops doing?”
“They closed the shop, bringing out a team to investigate. This is going to be a pain this week, no place to service our rigs. Chet is up there somewhere, moving a skidder, I think. Can you get him to call as soon as he can?”
Johnny explained about calling everyone to find out who had been around the shop or had last seen Pete.
Isaac had a better idea. “Listen, Johnny. Let me call the guys on this route. I’ll get a hold of the boss-man, too, eh. He can take the service truck and boogie back down the hill right away. I’ll finish the move and bring the low-bed later. Got a few things to finish, but I won’t need the service truck if I don’t get the parts Pete was bringing up for me. Right now, I was just double-checking this buncher over before Hoser here starts his shift.”
Johnny grinned in the empty room; some things never stopped being funny. Isaac called all the machine operators “Hoser” and the truckers “Clown.” In Isaac’s phone, Johnny knew he showed up as “Clown 15.”
Several years earlier, an equipment operator had complained to Isaac, feeling the younger man should be respectful, and call him by name. Isaac had peered around the hydraulic hose he was wrestling into the bundle on the head of a feller buncher. His acidic reply, overheard by a government safety inspector, had become legendary. “You go the rest of the winter without destroying another hose, and I will never call you “Hoser” again, Hoser.” Isaac’s accent, the whiny nature of the recipient, and the seven uses of the f word in the short sentence combined to make the story a coffee-shop favorite.
Isaac’s continual use of the “f-word” had gotten him in trouble on the radio, and in other situations. At his sister’s church wedding, she finally told him in exasperation, “Just shut up, you dumb cluck!” He analyzed the issue and began to substitute the word “cluck,” although with his accent it came out as “clock.” This provided some head-shaking and many laughs on the open radio channels where coarse language was prohibited.
A pointed memo from the sawmill had targeted “the use of vulgar words on company radio channels, including substitutions for those considered most vulgar …” soon after Isaac’s change of vocabulary. The fact that the memo was issued from a fussy executive, who over the years had irritated many, turned the reproof into an instant sensation, actually lifting morale during the exhausting winter season. Isaac proudly taped a copy of the memo on the ceiling of his service truck and on the lid of his toolbox.
For all his irreverent ways, Isaac was intelligent, and several times had been invited to factories to critique new designs. He had proved to be a diagnostic genius and other mechanics frequently called Isaac for advice. He was also a certified first aid attendant, good in emergencies. Isaac was well liked by many, even if he was quick to call you out if you made a stupid mistake, neglected maintenance, or God forbid, borrowed his tools.
They agreed that Isaac would call back when he had contacted everyone he could, and that Johnny would try to get an update on Pete, so the employees heard straight from their company, rather than a second-hand, embellished account. From previous experience with highway or logging accidents, they knew how quickly information was spread by gossips on social media, bringing confusion to a situation already overloaded with stress.
Chapter 8
Johnny had just checked in with Mary but put her on hold when another call came through. It was Constable Barton, who asked Johnny to meet him and the investigation team at the Banks Mountain shop when the team arrived. When he got back on the line with Mary, she told him the police were interviewing Jason. He heard her pouring coffee and taking a cautious sip.
“Before the police came in, Jason told me about finding Pete. He said he was going to meet Pete early, and they were taking the service truck out to fix something and were going to meet Isaac La Crosse somewhere to drop off some parts.” She sipped again. “Jason calmed down after he ate. I made him drink some water, too
“He was so irrational at first. I mean, has he never seen a fight? How bad did Pete look? Was there blood all over?”
“No, there wasn’t that much blood. Maybe just finding Pete lying there, the shop lights were off, he couldn’t see what the deal was. I think the suspense or surprise got to him, it was pretty creepy.”
Johnny explained what he and Melissa Banks were doing, and how Isaac was helping as well.
“I’ll call you later, or better yet, you call me on your break. Maybe we can meet for lunch today.”
Johnny was surprised at how calm he was. Finishing some of the contact work made him feel good. He got up to go to connect with Mrs. Banks, picking up the binder and his scrawled notes.
Phone pressed to her ear, Mrs. Banks pointed Johnny to the table, placing a sizzling pan of scrambled eggs on a metal trivet. She nodded toward the toaster on the counter and then poured a glass of orange juice, putting the pitcher back in the refrigerator. Turning back to the counter, she wrote something on her notepad, and then ended her call.
“Well?”
Johnny cleared his throat, “Isaac is calling the guys on the North Road. He will swap the service truck for the low-bed and haul the skidder across the connector so Chet can come straight back. He will call when he gets through to everybody.”
Johnny’s phone pinged. He looked down, speaking as he read the message. “It’s Isaac. Somebody is driving up to where Chet is going to be unloading. They will let him know what’s going on.”
Mrs. Banks had information of her own. “I was able to reach five of the truckers, and they will pass the info on to the bush crews. Whenever they have cell service, they’ll text, and let me
know if they hear any information we need.”
Melissa, Isaac, and Johnny were serving as the company’s safety team and had made a plan the previous spring that it seemed to be working well. Contacting several dozen workers, most of whom were out of cell range, was not easy but essential. Forest fires were a huge and worrisome issue in the summers, and careful management of hot machines was mandatory.
Mrs. Banks’s phone rang. It was a trucker informing her he would be out of cell range any time but would be contacting the boss in less than fifteen minutes.
Melissa Banks looked at Johnny, seeing him in a different light. He was a tall, bulky young man. When they hired him, he was no great catch, but recently had been really pulling his weight, and both Pete and Isaac had commented that he had been helping in the shop. In Pete’s words, “He’s been a real decent guy to work with lately, real decent.”
She liked Johnny’s wife. Mary looked a little rough around the edges. No, that wasn’t quite fair, Melissa thought. She wouldn’t describe Mary as hard… no, but she didn’t smile as much as a pretty young woman should. She wasn’t afraid to confront a demanding customer at the grocery store. Melissa had heard several times that Mary handled the younger employees well, and despite not putting up with any of their lame excuses, lateness, or substance abuse, had earned their love and respect, and was invited to graduations and sports events of the teens she supervised.
Several years earlier, Melissa had asked her youngest son the required, “So how was school?” and was surprised when he answered with words other than “fine” or “okay”. Mary Amund had been a guest speaker at Career Day, and he had enjoyed the direct and humorous stories from her experience with young workers, laughing as he explained.
As Melissa put the dishes away, she considered the fact that Johnny had been very calm, made good decisions, and had been excellent working with the police officers earlier. She was happy she had insisted Johnny take first aid training and serve on the company’s safety committee. Her gut feeling a year ago was that Johnny was growing up. She felt she had been correct, and she decided to watch him closely as events unfolded.
Always a Brother Page 5