“He’s got that right,” Hugh agreed. “Those guys who do that are scum, and don’t deserve to be truck drivers. It gives all of us a bad reputation.”
“Did James tell you about the first time I had to use a jug in his truck?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“We need to continue talking about our situation with the attorney,” Hugh said.
“James and I talked about that a little bit last night too,” Charlie said.
“Really? Did you guys come up with something?”
“Just a suggestion.”
“What’s that?”
“We were thinking I might transfer over to James’ truck.”
“Wow! Where did that come from?”
Hugh expressed surprise. But he was actually feeling relief. That thought had already occurred to him, but probably for a different motivation than what Charlie was thinking.
“Think about it. It’s a win-win.”
“How so?”
“My phone, with its tracking app, would come with me, meaning the guys with Rico Investigations would think I am still on your truck, even though I would be on James’ truck. It would throw them off your trail for sure.”
“OK. I can see that.”
“It would also free you up to get Jenny back on your truck.”
“She had to get off because of insurance purposes,” Hugh reminded her.
“That was then. But it’s now moving to a different stage because of the lawsuit,” she replied.
“That’s true.” Hugh would definitely prefer seeing Jenny rather than Charlie sitting in the passenger seat. “What else?”
“Well, you’d have Jenny with you in case they try to do something like kidnap her.”
“All that makes sense. Let me think about it.”
“It’s just a suggestion, but I like the idea,” Charlie said.
“But wait a minute,” Hugh said. “Why would you do that? Why continue to play this out? You could get off in Portland, fly home, and be done with all this.”
“Don’t forget, Hugh, if I show up at my condo without delivering the goods they will carry out their threat to me. I’m perfectly comfortable with James being able to take care of anybody who tries to harm me.”
“That’s true. I did forget that. OK. So, what’s the plan?”
“In a nutshell, we find out which WestAm dispatcher gave them your load information. Then we work our way up the chain, very likely leading to the attorney who’s filing the lawsuit. When we have some provable evidence, we alert the authorities, and their whole scheme comes crashing down.”
“Yeah,” Hugh said. “The attorney, along with everybody who had a part in their plot, goes to prison for murder. The lawsuit, and all our problems go away.”
“James is going to work on his contacts with WestAm Trucking to get information about the dispatcher, and then we’ll go from there,” Charlie said.
“Hugh, I could stand to take a jug break.”
They were still some distance from Susanville.
“Unfortunately, we’re on a two-lane highway here, in some rough country with no good place to pull over. You’ll have to slip into the back and do your business while I keep the truck moving.”
“No problem. I’ll give it a try.”
Hugh was pleasantly surprised at how easily Charlie had relaxed into the trucker way of doing things.
Charlie unhooked her seat belt, moved back to the sleeper, pulled the curtain divider closed and took her jug out of the cabinet.
“I should be OK with the truck engine and road noise giving me some privacy,” she told Hugh through the closed curtain.
“Good. Let me know when you are ready, and I’ll try to keep the truck steady.”
“OK. I’m set up now,” she said.
Hugh gave Charlie ten seconds to get started, and then gently tapped his brakes.
Charlie screamed. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Sorry,” Hugh said. “A coyote crossed in front of us. Go ahead.”
He gave it another fifteen seconds, then tapped his brakes again.
Charlie screamed again.
“Oops, there goes the coyote again,” Hugh said.
“You better knock it off, mister, or I’m going to dump this jug over your head.”
“I promise I won’t do it again.”
Charlie finished using the jug, opened the curtain, and sat back in her seat.
“You’ve completed your trucker jug initiation,” Hugh said. “Congratulations.”
“James?” was all Charlie said.
“Yup. All James. Now, don’t let him try to pull that on you if you do end up riding with him.”
Chapter Thirty
“Fifty million. That’s the biggest one yet.”
Deborah, a paralegal at The Fishburn Law Firm, PLC, in Scottsdale, Arizona, was the attorney’s chief paralegal for handling his truck crash litigation work. She had drafted many personal injury complaints for the attorney, but this was the first wrongful death lawsuit she had drafted in regard to a truck crash.
This complaint was a ninety-eight-page document, containing forty-five allegations and seven counts against the defendants – of whom there were many.
Because of the severity of the crash, the usual boilerplate language she used in a personal injury lawsuit wouldn't have worked.
She was in Fishburn’s office, and had handed him the finished draft to review. The attorney was hoping to file it in Maricopa Superior Court later that day, and he was wanting to give it one more look before affixing his signature to it.
“It’s too bad the husband waited so long to contact us,” Fishburn said. “We missed out on being able to send a letter of spoliation, and to examine the truck and other evidence ourselves before the truck was removed from the scene and repaired.”
Fishburn said this for Deborah’s benefit. He knew full well why he couldn’t have done those things. It was because even though the parties involved in creating the fiery fake crash knew the identity of the victims, it took some time for the official forensic identification to be made. It would have been untimely for the husband to have contacted the attorney to get the settlement process started before
