Buddies

by Kip Cassino

  They spent the night in the truck’s cab, washed up as best they could the next morning, and were among the first to enter Macon’s V.A. clinic when it opened at eight. The men were waiting for their meds in the pharmacy by a little after nine and resupplied for the next three months by ten. Since they had the time, the Captain walked Pauley over to Behavioral Health, to see if anyone there would consider adjusting his dosage of lithium carbonate.

  In the meantime, the Macon Police, the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office, and the Georgia State Patrol had stopped and questioned drivers and helpers of more than a hundred red semi-trailers with out-of-state license plates they found on central Georgia roads. “Fuck all them red trucks!” the driver of one patrol car said to his partner, who nodded listlessly. “I’ve seen enough to last me a while. We got other things we should be doing. That Tasker boy was a useless bag of hair anyhow. The guy who clocked him deserves a medal.” Still, the frustrated cops followed their orders—however reluctantly. They continued to look for big red trucks.

  Pauley and the Captain fared little better, though they languished at the V.A. clinic most of the day. The psychiatrist who finally examined Pauley had nothing substantial to say. “I don’t have enough information to come to any conclusion,” he told them. “Most of Mr. Abbott’s records for the past ten years are lithium levels and refill requests. There’s been no noted change to his condition or his prognosis that I can see. You’ll have to get him to his primary caregiver.”

  “We’re truckers, doc,” the Captain explained. “We’re on the road all the time. That’s the only way you can make a dime in this business. The docs where we come from won’t have any better notion about Pauley’s meds than you do.”

  The V.A. psychiatrist shrugged. “I still can’t give you a decision,” he said. “I’d need time and test results, as well as several sessions with Mr. Abbott. I can take the blood samples and begin the tests now, if you like. Perhaps another V.A. facility up the line can finish the work and give you an answer.”

  It was late in the day before the men returned to their truck. They had only a short drive south to the steel fabrication facility where they’d pick up their load in the morning. They would park in the mill’s lot and spend another night in the truck’s cab.

  “The hell with it,” the Captain said as they drove from the V.A. lot, his voice cracking with frustration. “You seem O.K. to me with the dose you’re on, and I’ve watched you longer and closer than any of those docs. Until somebody says different, we’ll leave things like they are, Pauley.”

  His buddy agreed.

  Chapter 20

  Interstate 520,

  Between Macon and Augusta, Georgia

  December, 2017

  The big flatbed rig lumbered along the interstate, loaded with steel forms needed by a Baltimore factory. Because they had parked nearby, Pauley and the Captain had been able to get an early start securing and tarping their load. They needed the time. Over three hours of heavy work was spent to get the job done. Ten A.M. had passed before they were able to finally get on the road.

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Pauley,” the Captain said with honest gratitude. “Alone, I’d have been crawling around that damn trailer all day.”

  Pauley smiled, with the half of his face that could. “Tarping is … hard work,” he agreed. “It would … be tough … for me … if I … was alone.”

  They were running late. It was close to noon and Augusta was still an hour away. The Captain had no plans to stop for food or fuel until they’d cleared the Georgia state line. He glanced at his buddy as he guided their truck up the interstate. “With everything that’s been going on, I never got the chance to ask you. Did you find that little lot lizard you went looking for back at Kissy’s?”

  Pauley nodded, but said nothing. He continued looking straight ahead.

  “Got your ashes hauled, did you? How was it?” the Captain asked with a grin.

  “I got more … than I paid for,” Pauley said. “Let’s not … talk about … about it more.”

  The Captain wanted to say more anyhow. He was about to tell his buddy how the woman was nothing but a common whore, who put what Pauley paid her up her veins and probably had ten more men in her before she went home that night. He didn’t get the chance. Events intervened: a Georgia State Patrol cruiser appeared behind them, siren blaring, flashing its lights.

  Quickly downshifting, the Captain flashed his signals, slowed the big rig, and glided to a stop on the highway shoulder. The cops stopped about thirty feet behind him, climbed out of their car and approached the SHF rig from both sides. No weapons were drawn, but each cop kept a hand near his holster.

  “Here we go,” the Captain murmured through gritted teeth. He heard a tapping noise and turned his head left. A uniformed trooper in reflective sunglasses was standing on the truck’s running board, signaling him to roll down his window, which he immediately did. “What can I do for you, officer?” he asked. “I’m sure we weren’t over the speed limit.”

  “I’m going to need you to step out for me, sir,” said the cop, whose nametag read “Neeley.” He looked through the cab. “Your helper can stay where he is, for now anyway. Take your keys out of the ignition. When you come down, bring your paperwork with you.”

  The Captain nodded and complied. In a couple of minutes he was standing with the Georgia Trooper by his truck, handing him a clipboard of paperwork. “Got any idea why we stopped you today, sir?” the cop asked, removing his sunglasses.

  The Captain shook his head. “Couldn’t be speeding. I know we weren’t. I checked all the lights and signals before we hit the road today, and they’re all working. Really, I have no idea.”

  The trooper flipped through the forms on the clipboard he’d been handed. “Down from Delaware, it says here … Mr. Captain, is it? Picked up a load of steel in Macon, headed back north. That right?”

  The Captain nodded. “That’s right, officer. What’s the trouble?”

  “How long was you and your friend in Macon, Mr. Captain? You there for a while?”

  Knowing he had to tell the truth if he could, the Captain nodded again. “Yeah, we had to lay over until the steel forms we’re carrying were ready. We stayed in the truck, spent the night parked outside the mill. What’s this all about, officer? We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

  “Truck like yours, red with out-of-state plates, was reported leaving the scene of a crime last Tuesday—at a truck stop north of Macon. You ever been to Kissy’s Love Your Truck Stop, Mr. Captain?”

  Now he would have to lie. “Can’t say as I have, officer,” the Captain said blandly. “I stay away from those places unless I need fuel or service. We’re on a tight schedule, like I say, and I hate to spend the money. Most of the time, we camp out in the cab—especially in towns we don’t know very well. It’s too easy to get into trouble.”

  “You sure about Kissy’s?” the trooper persisted. “It’s north of town, up 41.”

  The Captain grinned, shaking his head. “That really leaves us out,” he said. “All our business was further south—down Fulton Mill Road near Eisenhower Parkway. Look at the paperwork. It’s all there.”

  “Well, here’s the thing. A man fitting your description was seen at Kissy’s last Tuesday having supper,” the trooper said. “We think he got in a fight with a local boy, damn near killed him. What do you say to that?”

  “I’d say I look a lot like a bunch of other people, including the guy you’re talking about,” the Captain said. “I wasn’t there, and this truck wasn’t there, either. Have your dispatcher look up my record. You won’t find anything on it, not even a traffic ticket. You take me in, that will be the first entry. See that ring on my finger? I got a family, just like you. I’d sure like to see them this weekend. I can’t help it if my truck’s red. I didn’t pick out the color. There must be hundreds of big red trucks on the road
around here … look, there goes one right now!”

  Both men turned to watch a semi with a bright red cab hauling earth-moving equipment pass them by on the interstate. The trooper snorted in disgust, then handed the Captain back his clipboard. Both men were silent for a while. The trooper seemed conflicted—as though he was struggling with himself.

  Finally, he turned and began to walk back to his patrol car. “Get back in your truck,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re free to go. Come on, Sammy,” he yelled to his partner on the other side of the cab, “we’re done here.”

  Displaying nonchalance he did not feel, the Captain nodded, climbed back into his cab, and started the truck.

  Pauley’s good eye seemed as big as a saucer. “What did you tell him, Captain?” he asked.

  “Mostly the truth,” the Captain replied, “but I did lie some. After all, we are the people he’s looking for. He’s disgusted with what his brass are making him do, thinks it’s a wild goose chase. I just helped him make up his mind.” With that, he pointed the truck back toward the highway, shifted his engine to a higher gear —and thanked The Lord for the red semi that had passed them.

  They ran into no further trouble. Two hours later, they stopped for fuel and a quick lunch at a truck-stop outside Florence, South Carolina. They almost got to Columbia before their ELD forced them off the road for the evening. Neither man ever visited central Georgia again.

  Footnote: “Tire Iron” Tasker’s Legacy

  As Pauley and the Captain crossed the North Carolina state line, Jethro Tasker went through the second of what would prove to be more than two dozen separate surgical procedures. Much of the work eventually done would employ ground-breaking micro-neurological, robot-assisted surgical techniques—some of which had never been attempted on a living human being before. The case would make Jethro famous in medical journals around the world. It would alter the course of future neurosurgical procedures everywhere. For her painstaking, brilliantly innovative, intricate work reconstructing the young man’s living skull, Doctor Celeste Nujadi would be nominated for a Nobel Prize for medicine.

  Unfortunately, all of the technology and medical skills employed would not bring about a recovery. Even after his brain was cleared of every sliver of skull fragments, even after the bleeding, the bruising, and the lesions that beset his cerebral cortex had been addressed, even after more than a year of high tech therapy—Jethro would remain unconscious and dependent on a respirator. Four years later, long after the surgeries had ended and the doctors and technicians had walked away, he would be housed in an exclusive private nursing home near Atlanta. Here he would still be visited, from time to time, by medical luminaries intent on studying one or more aspects of his treatment or its outcome. His mother would buy a cottage nearby and sit at his bedside every day, until dying of pneumonia at the age of sixty-eight—outliving her husband, Willy, by four years. Jethro would finally pass away from heart failure, eleven years later.

  The Jethro Tasker case would remain an open, unsolved file at the Macon Police Department, growing colder every year. More than two hundred truckers, waitresses, prostitutes, and others had been questioned by twenty investigators. No suspects were ever named, and no charges were ever brought. The paperwork from the case would sit in a large, dusty file cabinet set in the back of a dark, windowless room, down the hall from the chief of police’s office. The room holds several similar cabinets, all filled with the records of other unsolved cases. There is a light switch in the room, but it is seldom used.

  Kissy’s Love Your Truck Stop would be sold to a national chain but would remain open for business. Lot lizards would still pace in its shadows for decades to come.

  Chapter 21

  Phoenix, Arizona

  March, 2018

  The new year was no longer new. More than three months had passed since Jack Prell had alerted law enforcement to the presence of known serial killers Taws and Abbott somewhere within their jurisdictions. No leads, no sightings, no activity of any kind had followed that announcement. If they were hiding, their camouflage was faultless. Nor had either man made contact with any of the V.A. hospitals and clinics that dotted the tri-state area. If the men were still taking their meds—as they had religiously in the past—they were getting them somewhere else, or in some other way.

  Gradually, as is always the way with law enforcement, the high alert initially in effect had degenerated. Other cases, other needs piled in front of a suspicion that had depended almost entirely on the images of a single grainy video tape. Prell himself was obliged to take on new work on other matters, even though his leadership and management of the Taws/Abbott case won him high marks from those watching and weighing his career. The task force he’d stitched together was moribund. Leo Cardiff hadn’t checked in for weeks. The only bright spot in the investigation Prell had sunk so much time and energy toward solving during the past year was his continuing, deepening relationship with Sarah. These days, he spent every weekend he could with her in Tucson—or at getaways to local resorts like Sedona or Tubac. They seriously discussed a summer marriage, no matter what the state of the investigation that brought them together might be.

  On a warm afternoon, caught up with his other work, Prell decided to call Cardiff to discuss the Taws/Abbott case. The two had become friends during the time they’d spent together. They valued each other’s opinions. The Pima County detective wasn’t in, so Prell left a message asking him to call back. An hour later, they were discussing their options. “There’s really only two possibilities, Jack,” Cardiff told the F.B.I. agent. “Either the guys in the video aren’t them, and they didn’t go east, or it was them, and they’re hunkering down.”

  “They’ve got to be out east, Leo, I’d bet my badge on it,” Prell said. Watching the images in that video from Elkton had been a defining moment for him. He was certain beyond all doubt that the men he sought were somewhere in Delaware, northern Maryland, or southeastern Pennsylvania.

  “If that’s the case, they’re hiding pretty good,” Cardiff said. “Not a peep out of them, and no V.A. use either. Maybe they have found another way to get their meds.”

  “Well, we know they like to nestle in a place—find jobs and lay low,” Prell said. “It’s been four months since they were in Texas. Maybe they got their meds on the way out here, so they still have some.”

  “Even so, they’d be running short right about now,” said Cardiff. “If the timeline we think they’re on still holds up, one of them—the killer—ought to hit a stressor within the next sixty days or so. Then we’ll have another knifing on our hands.”

  “We can’t afford to wait for that,” Prell said. “I’m going to talk to my AIC, and see if we can’t stir something up quicker than that.”

  *****

  Bear, Delaware

  The Captain counted his funds. He’d had four runs for SHF so far, had hauled and delivered eight loads of freight. So far, after expenses, he and Pauley had cleared more than two thousand dollars for their work. Not bad, he thought. He’d pick up another check from old man Staley on Monday, bringing the total to over three. All of the money was in fresh twenties. He was still timid about using a bank—If they had to leave in a hurry, any money deposited might well be lost to them. Still, keeping a large and growing stack of money stashed in a trailer, out in the middle of a corn field, wasn’t such a good idea either. Someone could break in while the men were gone and steal it all. After thinking the problem over, he decided to rent a small storage unit, secure it with a strong lock, and use it to protect the money and any other valuables they might accumulate. It was a blustery but clear Saturday in northern Delaware. He’d take care of that project today. While he was at it, he and Pauley would get some lunch and he’d sign up for a cell-phone plan. Staley had been after him to get a phone, and a comm link with Pauley when they were physically separated wasn’t a bad idea—even though he knew the devices could also be
used to trace them.

  He got the younger man out of bed, laid out his meds, waited for him to wash up and dress. Then the two of them piled into the grey truck, drove to a local hardware store and bought a good lock. He kept one key and gave the other to his buddy. Pauley might have to get into the unit himself someday, under some unknown contingency. The men then looked for a place to get some lunch, choosing a diner off Route 40. They were finishing their meals when they heard the news.

  The television set in the trailer Pauley and the Captain rented couldn’t pick up many stations and was almost never used. Neither man read the local newspaper often. The TV news bulletin they saw from the diner’s booth came as a complete surprise to both of them.

  Pauley heard and saw it first. “… seen these men?” the gravelly-voiced announcer intoned. He yanked the Captain’s lower arm from across the booth and pointed up. “They are wanted in connection with a series of murders in the western part of the nation,” the announcer continued, as the grainy footage from Elkton was shown. “If you see either or both of these men, do not attempt to confront or apprehend them. They are known to be armed and dangerous. Instead, contact your local police department as soon as possible. Remember, do not attempt …”

  “Shit!” whispered the Captain. “We have to get out of here. Pauley, leave right now and stay by the truck. I’ll be with you in a minute.” His buddy stood and walked quickly from the diner, leaving the Captain by himself. He rose as well, after a minute or two—but not too fast, not as though he was in any hurry, and walked to the cash register with his bill. “What do I owe you?” he asked with a smile.

  The reaction of the cashier would now determine his own fate. If his eyes shifted, if he seemed nervous or ill at ease, he would be a dead man. Luckily for both him and the Captain, he was complacent. “Eighteen-fifty,” he said, ringing up the bill. “Thanks for choosing Vico’s.”