Clouded Rainbow (11 page)

“Um. Well…” Roger muttered as he perked up. He realized his search for a ride presented itself in an unusual way, but he was glad the trucker offered.

“Come on,” Jack said.

Jack took the lead and walked toward his truck. He strolled with a limp on his right leg and moved slowly because of it, which was just the right speed for Roger.

“We got the ol’ war wagon here. I’m heading into the city. Got to drop it back off and get my check. I’m just finishing up from a week’s trip,” Jack explained.

The venerable truck presented itself on the side of the gas station. It was dark, dirty, and meaty as Jack waved his hand presenting it like a model on a game show. Roger neared the grill and immediately took in the word “Mack” and the famous Bulldog emblem proudly plastered on the front. Jack banged on the hood as he smiled with pride. This was the trucker’s job, his home, and his life, and he was anxious to share it with a weary, fellow traveler.

As Roger approached the grill, he noticed remnants of dried blood and fur stuck in the truck’s teeth.

“Damn varmints. They don’t stand a chance against this here beast. Hah!” Jack added with zest. Then he yelled, “Hop in.”

Jack walked around to the captain’s chair as Roger moved to the passenger’s side. He noticed a confederate flag proudly flapping in the night air, which seemed fitting for the against-the-grain truck driver.

Roger hopped up into the truck’s cabin. The throbbing pain in his leg and arm, which had driven him to the gas station, was suddenly alleviated. He didn’t need aspirin or even more alcohol to cure his aches; he simply needed the companionship of someone on his level. While Roger didn’t exactly know this trucker’s true identity, he was glad that Jack’s helping hand seemed to block the pain.

The cabin was cool with a slight smell of some sort of masculine stench. Roger glanced behind him and saw a single bed with adult magazines scattered on top. He realized this was really the man’s home on the road, which explained the foul smell only produced from the griminess of an unkempt male’s room.

“Let’s blow this joint,” Jack yelled as he started the semi.

The powerful twelve-cylinder diesel roared to life. It rocked the cabin with its idle as Jack gave the animal a few revs to clear its throat. Roger watched as Jack smiled with each push of the throttle. As the monster howled, the trucker looked at Roger and nodded his head in acceptance.

“Feel that power. Succumb to it. Make love to it.”

Jack maneuvered the gears and took charge of the truck. As he pulled out, a sudden motion in the side view mirror caught Roger’s attention. He saw Raj, the Middle-Eastern clerk, flailing his arms with a look of rage consuming his face.

“Did you pay for the gas?” Roger asked.

“Screw this place! I’ll never come back here. That guy can shove it.”

With those words, Roger shook his head. He knew that Jack really was going against-the-grain with his actions. However, his actions at least proved that Jack was a man with principles. Roger was glad the trucker was on his side.

Jack power-shifted the truck with elegant grace, like a perfectly choreographed ballroom dance. He was the lead and the steering wheel, shifter, clutch, and gas pedal were collectively his eager partner.

The storeowner ran with all of his energy but saw the powerful machine had a clear advantage, the advantage of horsepower. He had one of the bottled waters from Roger’s bout with the display. Realizing he had lost the battle, the clerk threw the bottle in desperation. It bounced off the semi’s armor, and then burst on the ground, covering the macadam with water.

The truck plowed forward on the night road. Off in the distance, a faint glow from the city lights radiated in the sky. With danger behind them, Roger glanced around the cabin and analyzed the trucker’s home. Suggestive pictures of naked women, the scruffy man’s female companions, were plastered within his immediate view. Junk food wrappers and crumpled newspapers covered the floor like the bleachers following a sold-out baseball game. Roger could understand the pornographic images and refuse, but the item that was stuck to the dashboard seemed bizarrely out of place. An alligator bobble head doll, staring at the duo, chattered with each jostle of the truck.

“Where did you get that?” Roger asked.

“On the road, when I was passing through Florida. I hit a rest stop off the ninety-five. It was dark and late and I remember hopping down from the truck, and there he was.”

“Who?” Roger asked as he squinted his eyes, intrigued beyond his wits like a kid in the middle of his grandfather’s war story.

“A gator. He had to be twelve feet long lurking there in the darkness. He lunged at me but I wrestled him down. I had his head around my arm in the Anaconda Vice.” Jack curled his arm simulating the move.

“You wrestled in high school?” Roger asked.

“No. I like to watch women’s wrastlin’ on TV,” Jack replied with a smile.

Roger chuckled. He was holding the barbaric man on too high of a pedestal, as he only knew the road and had unique street smarts that were beyond Roger.

“Anyway, he was a fighter. I could see it in his eyes. He had those crazy eyes,” Jack added.

“Crazy eyes?” Roger muttered. He realized the trucker’s dictionary consisted of bizarre sayings and obscure definitions.

“He was a powerful bugger. We flipped around on the ground. I stunned him and went for the pile driver, but he took a chunk out of me,” Jack continued.

Roger’s mouth dropped, but he couldn’t have predicted what the trucker was going to do next. Jack reached down, grabbed his pants leg, and lifted it to reveal a prosthetic foot attached to his ankle.

“After that, he took off like he was the winner in the Belt Match…and that’s why I got that bobble head. Kind of a parting gift from Florida.”

“You wrestled an alligator? You
wrestled
an alligator?” Roger added in awe. He mouthed to himself, “Who the hell is this guy?”

Roger thought that if someone had told him yesterday he would be driving shotgun in a meaty tractor-trailer with a loud, foot-less man, he would have called him crazy. This proved his life was no longer predicable. If that person he would have called crazy had actually predicted this exact situation, Roger would have asked him his most burning question, “Where is she?”

Jack continued to babble about his life on the road as the city lights grew brighter with each passing moment. Roger suddenly felt sleepy, a feeling he experienced only when he had felt safe and in-control of his surroundings. For the first time since he had awoken into this nightmare, he felt a hint of security. Roger wished that if he closed his eyes, he would not fall asleep, but fall awake and turn this bizarre dream into a clear reality.

12

The road ahead was dark. Det. Cleveland was on his way toward the Belkin house hoping to find the clues he needed to answer the question, “Who is Jane Doe?” As the detective drove alone in his sedan, a pair of bright headlights illuminated the oncoming lane. They were higher than a normal car’s lights and were spaced apart a foot or two wider than the average automobile. As the speeding vehicle approached, Det. Cleveland realized it was a tractor-trailer. If he only knew that the man with the answer to his question, and the man who needed the detective to answer his own, was in that powerful vehicle, the story would be over. The vehicles passed each other. For an instant, the two men were side-by-side. Nevertheless, how would they know of this ironic passing? It was nothing more than speeding cars traveling in opposite directions, something all people experienced in their daily lives on the road. If one stops to ponder the existence of the hundreds, even thousands, of passing vehicles encountered in any given day, the answer to many questions could be in one of those passing cars. These ironic situations occurred all of the time, but if one was not aware of their existence, does the irony, in fact, still exist?

Det. Cleveland arrived at the Belkin home. It was larger than he had expected and the affluent neighborhood said a lot about the man he was trying to question. As the detective pulled up alongside the curb, a muffler-less tow truck backed up from the driveway towing Roger’s heisted get-away vehicle. Det. Cleveland noticed two black-and-whites parked in the driveway as a tall, muscular patrolman watched the tow truck drive away. Det. Cleveland stepped out from his handsome sedan and walked toward the muscular patrolman.

“Detective Ray Cleveland from the south precinct…What did you guys find?” the detective asked as he flipped his police badge.

“Well, the guy skipped out. We figured he’d come back here after he stole a car from Saint Peters North Hospital. The owner is pretty pissed off.”

“Did you find anything in the house?” Det. Cleveland asked as he took in the sizable structure.

He felt dwarfed by the immense house, as its spacious two-stories housed a living area easily three times his own.

The muscular patrolman followed the detective’s gaze, and then replied, “I don’t think so. We’re just finishing up our search. Ha! The nerve of this guy. This is a story for the guys back at the office.”

The patrolman turned the conversation from professional to personal. Det. Cleveland knew that, until the case was solved, there was no time for pointless jests or personal opinions.

“Thanks for the update,” he replied.

The patrolman stepped back toward his squad car as Det. Cleveland gravitated toward the front door, which was wide open with the downstairs’ lights on.

Det. Cleveland stepped through the front door. He swept his eyes around the entryway as he always had done when searching for clues. Nothing was insignificant when it came to investigating a case. He remembered the time when the evidence in a narcotics case was hidden on top of a cupboard, and his keen eyes noticed the tail of the string used to pull it down. Finding the location wasn’t a unique accomplishment, but the fact that he found it during his first pass of the apartment was unusual, as it would have puzzled most rookie detectives looking only for the obvious.

His scan of the entryway didn’t answer any questions, but did provide crucial exposition to the man wanted for questioning. The affluence certainly suggested the man didn’t heist due to lack of money and implied he had a much stronger motive, one driven by a deeper human emotion. As Det. Cleveland looked around, he heard the banter of two men. They talked about a fellow officer’s follies on a police chase through the downtown streets. Det. Cleveland walked toward the location of the voices, the kitchen.

The lights brightly burned as Det. Cleveland sneaked up on the two men. One was a skinny, twenty-eight-year-old patrolman whose uniform seemed two sizes too big. He had jet-black hair and a small mustache that looked unnatural on his boyish face. The other patrolman was thirty and had a round belly like Santa Clause. Opposite of St. Nick’s white hair, his head was shaved with a few days’ stubble poking through his scalp, which revealed his receding hairline. Both were inspecting Roger’s liquor cabinet. The sight of the detective widened their eyes, as if they were kids with their hands in a cookie jar.

“Oh. Sorry, sir,” said the husky patrolman as he and his accomplice set down their respective bottles.

“Detective Ray Cleveland,” the detective replied as he flashed his badge. “At ease gentlemen. What do you got?”

“He has a nice collection of rums,” the skinny patrolman blurted.

“No, you ass, he means the house,” rasped the burly man.

Det. Cleveland remained emotionless on the outside, but he was rolling his eyes in his mind.

“Oh. Well, we searched it. It looks like he was either in the house and left, or he was never here in the first place. We gave everything a once-over,” the skinny patrolman explained.

“Any sign of struggle or other anomalies?”