“Adam McDonald is your uncle? One of the members of the hijacking gang? He went to prison? Then came out? And that’s when the latest hijackings began? One of the men who were killed by Hugh? That Adam McDonald?”
Charlie felt like a miner whose pickaxe had stabbed deep into rock that had come out glistening with gold. Could Jenny be the missing accomplice?
“Wait a minute!” Hugh said. “I thought this was going to be a friendly interview about me getting the commendation for saving a trooper’s life.”
“We’re certainly going to get to that,” Charlie answered. “But wouldn’t you agree we need some background on how you got to the point where you saved the trooper’s life?”
“Well, to a degree,” Hugh said. “We lived, barely, through some major traumatic events we don’t want to talk about.”
Charlie realized she needed to pull back a little. She could sense Hugh was on the verge of becoming belligerent, and Jenny was all but out the door already.
She was going to have to finesse this interview to get anything at all out of them, especially the gold nugget she had unearthed. Or she would risk losing them.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s talk about the Trooper Donovan episode. Is that OK?”
Hugh and Jenny nodded.
“So, tell me how it began,” Charlie asked.
“It was a fraudulent complaint,” Hugh said. “Someone from the gang called in a complaint I was driving dangerously and threatening them with a gun from my cab.”
“Were you?”
“Of course not. It was all made up.”
“Trooper Donovan had heard the radio call, and had happened to spot my truck on 93 just over the Idaho border south of Twin Falls. The trooper played it by the book, did the right thing. He had me handcuffed in the back of his cruiser, and we were headed to the sheriff’s office in Twin Falls for questioning.”
Hugh told Charlie the trooper didn’t know at first it was a fraudulent complaint, but when Hugh told him about the hijacking gang that had been hounding him, and that Jenny was still in the truck and vulnerable, he turned around and went back to where Hugh had parked his rig.
When they pulled up, the hijackers had already arrived, and they had surrounded Jenny. When they saw the trooper get out of his cruiser one of them held a gun to Jenny’s head.
A couple of the others grabbed Donovan and were beating on him. Hugh saw one of them had the trooper’s gun, and the other was swinging the trooper’s baton.
“That’s when I went a little berserk and broke out of the cruiser to run over to help the trooper and rescue Jenny.”
“Back up a minute,” Charlie said. “You mean you broke out of a locked cruiser? Were you still handcuffed? I’ve done ride-alongs, and I know you can’t open a cruiser from inside the back seat.”
“I was handcuffed, with my hands behind me. As far as I could tell, the only way out of there would be to go over into the front seat, and out the front door from there.”
Charlie was familiar with Idaho State Police cruisers. “Wasn’t there a heavy wire-mesh screen between the front and back seats?”
“Yeah, I had to dislodge it, kick it out of the way, and climb over into the front seat. I ran to where the two guys had Trooper Donovan on the ground. They were about to lay him out for good.”
“Hold on again,” Charlie said, interrupting Hugh. “You went charging after two guys who were armed with a baton and a gun, and you still had your hands handcuffed behind you?”
“Yeah.”
Charlie was stunned, and impressed, by the matter-of-fact way Hugh related his extraordinary heroics.
“Then what happened? Go on.”
“I put down the two guys who were attacking Trooper Donavan and turned to rescue Jenny from the guy who was holding a gun to her head. Before I could get to him I heard a shot, and the guy holding Jenny went down. Turned out it was Jenny’s uncle, but I didn’t realize it at the time. He was wounded, but not fatally, and he managed to get away. ”
“Wait a minute. Back up again. Wasn’t that when one of the other hijackers died?”
“Yeah, I didn’t have many options since my hands were cuffed behind my back. All I had were head butts and leg action. Unfortunately, I lost my balance after head-butting one of the guys and fell with all my weight with my knee jamming right onto the guy’s throat. He couldn’t breathe through his crushed larynx. He died.”
Charlie continued to be amazed at the matter-of-fact way Hugh told this story. What kind of man was this quiet, unassuming truck driver?
“Who fired the shot?”
“That was Trooper Donovan. He had managed in his weakened, beaten condition to grab his backup gun from his ankle holster. He fired the shot lying on his back in the dirt.”
“You know, you should be interviewing Donovan for this. He’s the hero of the story.” Hugh said. “Things would have ended dramatically different if he hadn’t got that shot off.”
“Funny you should mention that. I did try to interview him while I was getting ready to meet you, and he clammed up on me. He didn’t want to talk about it at all. Any idea why? He should have been more than happy to share the story of that event.”
Hugh looked at Jenny, and said nothing.
There it was again. Charlie suspected every angle she tried to approach this interview from was going to end that way.
Charlie wanted to make one more try
