by Dale Mayer
Just then a hard pounding came at the door. She jumped back in shock, and a voice called out, “Stand away from the door.”
Shivering in the cold, with her arms wrapped around her, she stepped back a few feet and waited until the door opened. It was the same man who had delivered the tray of food to her once, but he carried no food, only held a gun this time, which he pointed at her, while another man in a white lab coat stepped inside.
She stared at her boss in shock. “Dr. Hinkleman?”
He gave her a fat smile and nodded. “Glad you’re awake enough to know my name.”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “Why am I here?”
“Because you won’t do what you’re told,” he said in exasperation.
She shook her head. “I’ve been working under you for years. Of course I’m doing what I’m told. What is this all about?” She threw her arms wide open. “Do you have any idea how cold it is in here?” At that, her teeth started to chatter too.
Immediately the doctor frowned, turned, and barked an order in another language to the man behind her. Who barked an order to somebody else, somebody out of her sight and probably standing in the hallway. Of course nobody would leave her alone long enough to retrieve a blanket for her, but her mind spun off in a million directions, trying to figure out what had been said. Why was her boss here? Where was she?
“What is this about?” she asked.
“A couple things,” Hinkleman said smoothly. “Your work, for one. Somebody who doesn’t want you, for another, and somebody who is happy to get back at your father, for a third. I’m basically collecting on two points and getting what I want at the same time. Bonus.”
She took a deep, slow breath, trying hard to calm her pounding heart as she realized just how many people could be involved in this. “Are you saying you coordinated with two groups of people to have me brought here?”
“I coordinated with a lot more than that,” he said. “But it doesn’t really matter because you’re here. I’ve been paid times two and get your research for my own.”
“If you wanted my research, you know it was yours anyway, based upon the employee agreement I signed when I hired on with Scion Labs. They get ownership of any patents or trademarks, etcetera, of my creation while under Scion Labs employ,” she said, struggling to focus on one of these issues. “This doesn’t make any sense. The one who wants to get rid of me would be my ex-husband, but he should have done that before I signed the divorce papers. The one trying to get back at my father …” She turned to the doctor and snapped, “Could be anybody in the world.”
“Keep your temper. But you certainly nailed the people, yes. As for your research, you haven’t been letting me know about all of it, have you?”
She frowned blankly at him but knew he wasn’t fooled. “You know that I’m not supposed to give you anything until we have surety,” she said slowly. “And obviously I haven’t hit that point, or I would have told you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “because somebody else who works with you told me all about it. And I’m very disappointed you didn’t tell me first. Now you’ll be sorry too.”
Kerrick pulled into a large parking lot, past the one he was interested in. He had slowed as he had driven by the first one, but he confirmed it as his destination as he saw a lot of lorries parked outside. He pulled up, parked on the side of the building housing Hope Rims Company, and pretended to walk toward its office.
Instead, he dodged past, as if heading to the loading zone. There, he hopped over the fence into the neighboring property and snuck up against the building for the trucking company. He tried to listen in on any conversations in the parking lot, mostly drivers razzing and joking about how their weekend plans had worked out. That wasn’t exactly what Kerrick cared about.
He studied the vehicles parked in the large lot, waited until the men outside loaded up and pulled out, and then walked among the lorries, looking for one in particular. It was the fourth one from the back along the fence, but it was pulled forward so the back could be accessed. He took several photos, sent them to his contact, and checked that it had the expected license plate number and the right lorry ID number. Then he swung open the large rear door to the storage area and hopped inside.
It was completely empty. Of course it was. Knowing the car was long gone, he checked to see if there was any sign that it had been here. He found a few drops of oil. He stopped, took a picture of it, took a sample of it using a Q-tip in a Ziploc bag, and popped it into his pocket, just in case it might be of need later. Then found more oil at the opposite end of the lorry. Strange. He took samples of it too.
He slipped out, shut the door softly, and walked up to the front of the cab. It was unlocked, so he hopped inside now, quite content that nobody could see him unless they came to move this particular lorry. He checked the logs in the glove box. The insurance was in the name of the company on whose property he sat, which made sense.
Kerrick thought about the traffic feeds and realized he hadn’t checked the side panels of the lorry. It’s quite possible somebody had changed the logo. He took several photographs of the insurance papers and the logbooks, but nothing here noted that this lorry had taken the ferry over from the mainland. Interesting.
Yet an employee of this company was more likely involved in the kidnapping itself, not so much the company. The employee just needed his employer’s lorry. Kerrick made his way back outside and checked the logos on each side of the lorry. And, sure enough, one side had the permanent company logo painted thereon. On the other side? The same logo replication. Whatever had been there before was no longer present. It must have been a large plastic or magnetic sign that the employee could easily put on and take down again. Again, interesting.
Kerrick quickly walked around the parking lot, took several license plates photos from other vehicles, and then stepped up toward the main office. A young woman sat behind the counter, typing. He waited until she was free, then smiled, and told her that he was looking for the driver of lorry 714.
She looked up at him in surprise. “Why?” she asked suspiciously.
He gave her a winning smile and said, “He’s a friend of mine.” It was almost comical how much relief crossed her face when she heard that.
“That’s Jimmy’s lorry,” she said. “He knows everybody.” She waved her hand. “You just missed him.”
“Surely that wasn’t him who just drove out?” he asked with an exaggerated frown.
She nodded. “He’s got a delivery down the road. He should be back in a couple hours.”
He looked outside, checked his watch, and looked outside again. “How late are you open?”
“If you can’t wait, just come back,” she said. “The office closes as six. But Jimmy will return the lorry whenever he’s done, if it’s later than that.”
“Or I could check him out at the job. I was hoping to make plans for the coming weekend.”
“He’s gone to the commercial growers up the road with a big load of fertilizer and chemicals to drop off.”
Kerrick waved his thanks, stepped out of the office, heading for his rental. He drove up the road, looking for the growers, found the location, and plugged it into his GPS. He pulled off to the side in time to witness the men unloading the delivery.
He didn’t know which one was Jimmy or who the other guy was. From his vehicle, he took several photos of their faces and quickly sent them off to his one and only contact on his burner phone, with a note saying he was looking for Jimmy, the regular driver of lorry 714 which had come across the ferry. Just an update for Beta.
Kerrick figured that his people would get to him as soon as they had anything further or something new. At least he hoped so. He wasn’t used to having zero contact with anyone in person and just waiting until things were deep-sixed in the internet, the equivalent of filing things in the circular file. On the other hand, there was a certain amount of freedom without having to check in.
He waited i
n his vehicle until the delivery men were more or less done. Then one of the men walked into the storefront. Kerrick walked in after him and listened as he talked to the women up front. They called the dark-haired man Tom, which meant Jimmy was the one outside and still at the lorry. Kerrick walked toward Jimmy, standing beside the lorry, lighting up a cigarette.
Kerrick gave Jimmy a smile, pointing at his lorry, and said, “Hey, didn’t I just see you on the ferry coming from the mainland yesterday?”
Jimmy ground out the cigarette and gave him a blank stare. “Not me. Not my rig.”
Kerrick backed up, looked at the number on the rig, and said, “Same tag, same type lorry, wrong number though. It was seven-one-four that I saw on the ferry.”
Jimmy shook his graying head. “Well, that’s my rig, but I wasn’t driving it over there, that’s for sure. And not on no Sunday.”
“Well, it was definitely on the ferry. Pretty sure you were the driver.” Kerrick frowned as if he was really confused, reaching up to scratch his temple. “But maybe not. It was definitely your lorry though.” Then he walked to the other side and said, “Part of the reason I noticed was it had two different logos. One on each side of the lorry.”
Jimmy gave him another blank look.
“You don’t know anything about it?” Kerrick asked in surprise.
Jimmy shook his head. “No, not me. You must be talking about somebody else.”
“Maybe not you. But it was your lorry. Maybe I’ll head back to the trucking office and see who that was then.”
“Why do you care?” Jimmy asked.
“Oh, I care,” Kerrick said. “Had a little bit of a confab with that vehicle.”
“What kind of confab?” Jimmy asked, getting upset. “My lorry’s not banged up at all.”
“Didn’t say it was a lorry confab, did I?” Kerrick said.
“Well, if you had a dust-up with a driver, you’d have known it wasn’t me.”
“Good point,” he said. “I think I’ll go find that lorry. Your company’s yard is just a couple miles from here, isn’t it?” Then he pulled up his phone, nodded, and said, “Yep, I’ll find out who that driver was.”
“When was that again?”
Jimmy didn’t appear to understand what was going on, which kind of put him into the might be innocent category. But, at the same time, Kerrick had seen a lot of men who could lie so well that you’d never know. He gave Jimmy the time and date of the ferry crossing per the pictures he had on his phone.
Jimmy shook his head over and over again. “I was home with my wife. My rig was in the yard.”
Just to prove the point, Kerrick brought up the picture of the lorry and the ferry number on his phone, then held it up to Jimmy.
Jimmy was flabbergasted. He just stared, his jaw dropping. “Well,” he roared, “that son of a bitch.”
“You want to clarify?”
“Hell no, I don’t,” Jimmy said. “That suffices to say that somebody I know took that lorry when he shouldn’t have.”
“Well, that might be,” Kerrick said, “but it’s your assigned lorry. Do you want to get in trouble or should your buddy?”
Jimmy glared at him. “Why? Who are you, and why do you care?”
With a hard smile, Kerrick pulled out one of his many IDs and held it up. “Somebody who cares,” he said. His voice went low and hard. “Whoever you lent that lorry to was up to no good. Illegal activities with that lorry have been photographed.”
Jimmy’s face blanched. “I didn’t have nothing to do with that,” he snapped.
“Bullshit,” Kerrick said. “If that’s not you driving that lorry, you obviously know who is.” He pulled his phone down and checked through his photos and then, finding one of the cars ahead, he held it up and said, “And do you recognize that car?”
Jimmy sucked in a breath. It seemed he knew a hell of a lot more than he had said so far. Slowly he nodded his head. “I do,” he said, “but I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”
“And why is that?”
“Because the guy who owns that car doesn’t work for the company anymore.”
“But let me guess, he’s friends with the driver who borrowed your lorry?”
Jimmy winced.
“And they paid you to look the other way. Is that it?”
“Yeah,” he said, shamefaced. “But I thought it was just to pick up a few extra moving jobs on the weekend or after hours during the week.”
“Moving, indeed,” Kerrick said starkly. “I wonder if you have any idea what they were moving this time.”
Jimmy shook his head. “No, I don’t think I want to.”
“No, you don’t,” Kerrick said. “But I’ll tell you anyway. We’ve got a missing woman, and she’d been ID’d in the back of this car in front of your lorry, which then picked up the car and hauled it in the back of the lorry, moving this kidnapped woman somewhere else.”
Jimmy stepped back, his face turning beet red, his hand at his chest. For a moment, Kerrick thought Jimmy would have a heart attack, watching him carefully, but eventually Jimmy caught his breath and then in a panic said, “I didn’t have nothing to do with that.”
“And we’re back to the same point where we were earlier,” Kerrick said coolly. “Who was driving the lorry?”
Jimmy worked a hand through the wispy white hairs at the top of his head, obviously not sure what to do.
“That’s fine,” Kerrick said. “I can haul you in and will question you and your family as to what connections you have to this kidnapped woman.”
Immediately Jimmy backed up several paces. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it.” He held up his hands in front of his chest, waving Kerrick back. “Nothing, you hear me?”
“I want a name,” Kerrick said. He pulled up his phone and quickly took a snap of Jimmy’s face. “Just so we can find you whenever we want you,” he said.
At that, Jimmy started to talk. “Stanley. Stanley Warrick,” he said. “The guy used to work at the trucking company.”
“So he’s the one who owns the blue car?”
Jimmy nodded.
“And he’s the one driving the lorry onto the ferry last night?”
Again Jimmy nodded.
“But he’s no longer employed by your company, right?”
“Yeah, he was fired about six months ago.”
“Why?”
Jimmy took several deep long breaths and finally blurted out the truth. “He was taking the rigs, disabling the GPS, and driving them after-hours.”
“Interesting,” Kerrick said. “And, since he got fired, your friend is now getting you to cover for him while he does the same thing. Right?”
“Yeah, but honestly, I didn’t think it was anything like this.”
“Did your employer ever find out what this Stanley guy was doing with the rigs?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Not back then. But it was nothing like this. Stanley didn’t go very far. We figured he was just bringing over and distributing shipments of imported illegal goods.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe some wines that didn’t have the proper papers, maybe some easily sold items …” Jimmy looked at Kerrick, still half panicked, and said, “I didn’t have anything to do with that shit. … I promise.”
“Promises don’t mean anything when a woman’s life is in danger,” Kerrick said. “Who else would be involved from the trucking company?”
At that, Jimmy stopped, looked at Kerrick, looked again at the storefront where his coworker still was, and said, “I don’t think there’s anybody else.”
The way Jimmy was eyeing the storefront meant this had to be about Tom too. “Well, there’s at least two vehicles directly involved,” Kerrick said. “Stanley’s car had to be driven by somebody because you just said Stanley was driving the stolen lorry. So, if two people are driving around, chances are more people are involved.”
Jimmy shook his head, his wispy hair flying around as he said, “I don’t think so.”<
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“Well, somebody’s got to be looking the other way. What about the extra mileage on the rigs?”
Jimmy’s face turned bloodred, and he looked to see if his partner had come out of the store yet. He then faced Kerrick. “Sometimes I change the mileage back a bit.”
“Really? And nobody’s thought to check them? And nobody’s thought to check with your rigs during the weekend or at night?”
Jimmy flushed and looked downward.
Kerrick nodded and said, “You disabled the LoJack, didn’t you?”
“Only a couple times early on. When I was afraid they’d check. But they never did so …”
“And they don’t track the GPS on the lorries and check it against mileage records?”
“Not yet,” he said glumly. “But they probably will now that you’re here.”
“And how long have you been doing this?” Kerrick snapped. “Do you always steal from your employer?”
“I’ve been here forty years,” Jimmy snapped back. “I got another year, and then I’m out. Do you think they’ll give me anything but a handshake and a pat on the back that says thanks?”
“And why do you deserve more?” Kerrick asked. “Did they not give you a paycheck all these years? And I presume a decent one because you stayed.”
Jimmy blinked several times at that. And he shrugged. “But I don’t have enough to live on if I can’t work.”
“So were you involved in Stanley’s smuggling operations too?”
Behind him came a voice, saying, “What are you talking about? Smuggling?”
The voice was young and light. Tom was half whistling as he walked toward them. “Anybody who knows Jimmy would know that in no way would he do anything wrong.” Then the young guy grinned at Kerrick, held out his hand—a hairy hand full of black hair—and said, “Now, me, Tom Paine, well, you know what? I might have been known to nick a few things in my time.”
