Davey was waiting for her in his pickup at the front of the parking lot, his head resting against the back of the driver’s seat. Talk radio leaked from the cab, and Casey wondered which annoying host he was listening to, and if he agreed with anything that was being said.
The parking lot was well-lit, and Davey’s truck was the only vehicle in sight. The closest neighboring business was on the other side of a chain link fence, with a parking lot that was just as deserted. On the other side of the building sat a thick grove of trees. Casey waited, listening, but could hear nothing other than Davey’s radio, distant traffic, and the quiet hum of the building’s air conditioner.
She walked in the gate and up to Davey’s truck, tapping on the driver’s side window. He jumped and put a hand to his chest.
“Sorry,” Casey said as he climbed down from the cab. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“S’okay.” He looked her up and down. “You’re looking better, I gotta say. You do something to your hair?”
Casey looked around, but Death was not there to smirk. “Just washed up. You ready?”
“Sure. Tom’s entrance is over here. He’s expecting us.”
An old but clean white Silverado was parked in the spot next to Tom’s door, on the same side as the grove of trees. Davey knocked, and the door was opened by a man about Casey’s age. He wore wrinkled khakis and a light-blue button-down shirt with the collar open, and his hair had lost whatever neat part it might’ve once had. His brown loafers were scuffed, but serviceable, and his glasses sat slightly crooked on his Roman nose. He shook Casey’s hand. “Tom Haab. Nice to meet you.”
Casey liked his handshake, and immediately felt more confident about talking with him. “Casey Jones. Thanks for coming out again after supper.”
“Glad to help. Better make it quick, though. Davey’s daughter needs help with the kids at bedtime.”
Davey grunted.
Tom led Casey to an empty table. “So what do we have?”
She pulled the papers from her bag and set them down in chronological order. “I’ve also got a journal that Evan—the trucker who died—was keeping, and this stack of papers. Can you take a look and see if any of this makes sense to you?”
Tom pulled up a chair and scanned the top papers. “These are truck manifests from a company called Class A Trucking. You can see the logo here.” He pointed to one of the photos, where Casey could just make out the edge of something that looked like a tire on the cab’s door. “It matches some of the paperwork.”
Of course. Casey hadn’t thought twice about the “Class A” on the papers, because she figured it was a rating of the trucks, or the load, or something. And the sketch of the tire was so generic-looking she’d thought it was standard on this kind of form. Exactly why she needed an expert.
“But some of these manifests are different. They don’t have a company logo. These trucks are driven by independent operators.” He squinted at the photos, holding some of them next to each other. “But look—this is the same truck, only on this photo it’s got the Class A logo, and this one it doesn’t. Must be a magnet, or a vinyl patch.”
“Why would they do that?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. But it doesn’t make much sense. Either you’re an indie, or you drive for a company. But see, some of these manifests have Class A listed, and some don’t. It’s strange.”
“Do you know Class A Trucking?”
“Heard of them. They’re relatively new, starting in the last couple of years. I don’t deal with them directly, because they’re in the same business as me, but I’ve known some folks who have.”
“And what is your job, exactly?”
“I’m a broker.”
“Which means…”
“I assign drivers to take loads from here to there.”
“How, exactly?”
“Okay.” He leaned his chair back on two legs. “Say there’s a company in, oh, Colorado, all right? They have a truckload of frozen broccoli that needs to get to Texas by Friday. The guy there knows me, so he calls and asks if I’ve got anybody who can pick it up. I check my truckers, find somebody who’s going to be in that area on Wednesday, and assign them to pick it up.”
“So you’re not driving trucks yourself?”
He laughed. “Heck, no. I could, I’ve got my CDL—”
“Commercial Driver’s License,” Davey said.
“—but I don’t drive unless I absolutely have to. I’m in the business of giving other truckers work. I like to stay home.”
“So the truckers work for Southwest Trucking?”
“Not exclusively. They’re mostly independent contractors. A few work almost entirely for me, but they’ll take the odd job here and there from another broker when it works.”
“And you pay them per trip?”
“Yup. Let’s say you’re a trucker, and I contact you to pick up the load in Colorado. I’ll calculate how much fuel it’s going to take to drive that load all the way to Texas. Around a thousand dollars, maybe.”
“Wow.”
“I know. Anyhow, we’ve also got to calculate payment for the truckers. So we’ll say the whole trip is two thousand. The truckers have a grand for fuel, which leaves the other thousand. I’ll take ten percent. So I get a hundred dollars, and the truckers get nine. Make sense?”
“I guess. Doesn’t seem like anybody makes much.”
“It’s not a big money maker. But it’s a huge risk for me.”
“How so?”
He dropped his chair legs to the ground. “I’m like a bank. I pay the truckers their money up front so they can buy the fuel and make their mortgage or their insurance payment, or whatever, then I wait to get paid by the company in Colorado. Sometimes it takes a month or so for the money to come in.”
“So how do you stay afloat? Make a living?”
“Lots of trucks.” He grinned. “There’s one and a half million on the road at any given time. A portion are doing jobs for me.”
“How many?”
“Well, we have access to lots of independent contractors—folks with their own rigs. Sixty to seventy of them, maybe. And a few trucking companies. They’ll have thirty to forty drivers we can use. Not all at the same time, of course, but whenever we’ve got work.”
“You said they work for other brokers, too.”
“Sure. We have to share drivers sometimes.”
“So you’re competing with other brokers?”
“I guess. But competing for truckers isn’t the problem. It’s the customers that could be the sticky part.”
“How do you work that out?”
He shrugged. “Sort of an unspoken agreement. You stay away from my customers, I’ll stay away from yours.”
“And your customers—how do you get them? Advertising? Connections?” Casey waved her hand over Evan’s photos. “These trucks are carrying all kinds of stuff—not any one particular thing.”
“Customers come from word of mouth, mostly. I just had a guy call me today, said his buddy used Southwest Trucking, and recommended us. It’s all about trust, really. A guy in Idaho calls me, I can’t exactly see his eyes and shake his hand. Sometimes we use a signed contract, but most of the time…” He held out his hands. “We take people at their word that we’ll do the job and they’ll pay us.”
“Seems…old-fashioned.”
He grinned. “You don’t trust people?”
Casey looked away. “So what do these pictures show? What do you see?”
“If you don’t trust people, how come you’re here with Davey? You didn’t know him before yesterday. And you met me fifteen minutes ago.”
“I know. I guess sometimes you just…” She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out.
Davey tapped one of the photos. “So what do you see, Tom?”
Tom hesitated, but turned to his father-in-law. “Can’t tell you right off. Nothing here looks wrong, except maybe this one picture showing this guy handing a package to the other guy. Nothing illegal about that, though, unless whatever’s in the package is illegal.”
Casey looked at the photo, with Owen Dixon handing Hank Nance an envelope. “What could they be doing?”
“That’s crooked?” Tom gave a short laugh. “Any number of things. I haven’t heard anything about these folks, so I don’t have anything to go on.”
“Examples?”
“Smuggling. Stolen goods. Drugs. Illegal Immigrants. Who knows? Unless you can get something on these guys there’s no telling what they’re doing.”
Casey went quiet, staring down at the photos. “Do you know any of these truckers?”
Tom scanned their faces. “With all of those one and a half million trucks it would be…wait. This guy.” He pointed at the one Bailey’s dad had roomed with. “He looks familiar.”
“Pat Parnell. He’s from around here. Wichita.”
“Well, that’s probably it, then. More than likely I’ve dealt with him at some point, but not recently. Just a sec.” He went to his desk and typed something into his computer. “Yup. Did some jobs for me several years ago, but dropped off my radar after that.”
“What about this guy?” She showed him another one of the pictures. “Name’s Mick Halveston. Had a bad accident a while back. Killed a family when his truck flipped under an overpass.”
Tom winced. “I remember that. Never worked with him, though. I knew a broker that did.”
“He say anything about him?”
“Just that he was glad Halveston wasn’t driving for him when the accident happened.”
“And the rest of these?”
He punched in Hank Nance, John Simones, and Sandy Greene. Greene had driven for Tom several years ago, but he’d never dealt with either of the other two.
“What about the names on these manifests? We don’t have photos of these guys. Any of them sound familiar?”
He glanced over them, but shook his head. “Don’t know any. Now, that doesn’t mean they’ve never driven for me, because I can’t remember everybody, but I really don’t think so.” He keyed in their names, just in case, but none of them showed up in his driver history.
“Another question.” Casey tapped the paper. “Can you think of any reason a trucker would drive under a different name?”
He grinned. “Legally?”
“Let’s say not.”
“Then there would be lots of reasons.”
“Like?”
“If under your real name your license was suspended, you have a medical condition that prevents you from driving, you’ve had a DUI, you’re wanted by the cops…what kind of thing are you looking for?”
“Reasons these guys,” she tapped the photos, “would actually be these guys.” She tapped the stack of manifests.
“Any of those things I mentioned.” He shrugged. “Fake IDs are easy to get. You can buy a license over the Internet these days.”
“Really?”
“Might not be the greatest fakes, but they’d get past most people.”
Casey wondered how much they cost. A fake license could solve her own problems. She’d no longer have to worry about the cops or Pegasus or even her brother tracking her down. How could she get one without anyone knowing where the money from her account ended up?
Tom was still talking. “Wish I could help more.”
She shook herself. “Maybe you can. Do you have a database on your computer where you could look up any trucker you want?”
“Nope. There is such a thing, but you have to purchase it.”
“You know anybody who has one?”
“I could ask around.”
“That would be great. But…can you do it without giving too many details?”
“I can try.” He studied her face. “You look scared, Casey. What do you think is going on?”
Casey shook her head. “I don’t know. But it’s something bad. Something worth killing for. And I really don’t want you to get in these guys’ sightlines.”
He swallowed, and glanced at Davey. “Thanks a lot, Dad.”
Davey shrugged. “When you know something’s the right thing to do, Tom, you gotta do it. You know that.”
Tom nodded, and stood up, extending his hand once again to Casey. “Here’s to doing the right thing.”
Casey clasped his hand, praying with all her might she hadn’t just brought Tom Haab an early visit from Death.