Un-Connected (9 page)

“I meant it very much.” I said.  “I don’t
trust my emotions and I know I feel like I love you and when I get scared I
don’t want to get you hurt.  And just because I owe you so much and I am so
grateful, it doesn’t mean I love you.  Love has to be separate from all of that
and I don’t always know myself these days.”

            “I
know I don’t want to have sex until I get married.” I continued.  “I want you
so bad right now that I can hardly stand it.  But since I am uncertain about us
without sex I know I would be a lost ball in tall weeds with it. 

Sex is so powerful.  It makes people seem
compatible when they aren’t even close.  I saw it so many times when I was in
college.  A guy and girl would start dating and they didn’t get along that well
or enjoy the same things but they would start sleeping together and tell the
whole world they were madly in love.  Usually in about six months or sometimes
more they weren’t seeing each other any longer.  They never loved each other to
begin with.  They loved being in love and they loved sex but not each other.”

            “I
don’t want to have sex before I get married either.” She said.  “It isn’t
because I grew up Catholic either.  It is because that is what the Bible says. 
I was so happy when Larry and I first got married.  I didn’t see it then but he
wasn’t as happy as I was.  I should have seen it.  He wanted to have sex before
we got married and he pushed me really hard a number of times but I held my
ground.  I hoped that him being able to wait to have me would mean he really
loved me.  What it probably means is that he went to someone who would give him
what he wanted to help him get through until the marriage.  We did have a great
honeymoon though.  He was happy that week.”

            “Were
you afraid to tell me you loved me?” I asked.

            “I
was but I wanted to at least a month before I did.  I didn’t want to say it
first and I didn’t want to say it if you didn’t love me.  But after awhile I
didn’t care as much about those things and I wanted to tell you how I felt.  I
planned for over two weeks to have the right time and have the courage to tell
you.”

            “Why
were you so afraid?”

            She
didn’t answer quickly.  “I guess our life is so uncertain.  The black SUV
people scare me.  And it scares me that you could get arrested for something
you didn’t do but be put in jail for years.  But as scary as those are, they
are not what scares me the most.  I’m afraid you will miss all the money you
made before we met.  I’m afraid you will want to be an accountant in a big
office driving a Porsche and living large and you won’t want to be with me any
longer. 

Or if you do want to then I would be driving
a truck or something and you would be going to the office everyday and I
wouldn’t be with you much.  That would break my heart.  I don’t want to lose
spending time with you.  I don’t need to drive a truck but I do need you or I
need to get over you somehow.  I can’t do that easily and so I’m afraid of
being hurt again.  It will break my heart to lose you now.  If I do it will
make me wish I had never met you or picked you up.”

            “I
can’t promise anything right now but I love you and I only know how to live one
day at a time.”

            “That
is fine.  That is about all I can do as well.” She said.

            We
went to the room intending to relax for the evening.  We had an early pick up
the next morning so we needed to get to sleep early.  When we were in the room
I pulled her to me and turned us around so her back was to the wall.  I pressed
up against her and gave her a slow kiss.  She was really sweet in return.  I
put my hand on her breast and rubbed it gently.  She paused seeming a little
puzzled.

            “How
far do you want to go with this?”

            “This
is as far as I will go.”

            She
paused a second looking me in the eye and then smiled.  She put her hand on the
back of my neck and pulled me closer to her.  She kissed me sweet and slow and
pushed herself into my hand.

            …

            After
a few minutes I pulled away and one more time I told her I loved her.  She
gently swatted me on the bottom and said she love me too.  That and one kiss
before we went to sleep and our day was done.

Chapter 7

Connections

Deb and I were an item after that. We’d been
together for months, covering each other’s back and looking out for the black
SUV, but now we were inseparable. Life was getting better.

Then one day, about the time we thought life
was getting back to normal, we saw a black SUV. Not just any black SUV but one
with really dark windows. The fear sapped the energy right out of me and sent
shock waves down my spine.

We were inside a truck stop paying for fuel
and getting snacks. We froze. I nearly wanted to scream. We were somewhat
hidden.

”Let’s just stay right here for a few minutes
and see what is going to happen,” I said.

The SUV pulled to a fuel pump. Two guys
jumped out. They were dressed in what looked like SWAT uniforms, except their
heads were uncovered.  They almost looked Ninja, but they had the knee pads,
boots, and belts of a Special Ops team. One swiped a card and began pumping
gas. Another one stepped out the side door and headed toward us with the
driver.

”They probably have never seen you and have only
seen pictures of me, which are old. I still need to stay out of their sight if
I can.”

I really didn’t need to say it because she
was ready to run. We eased our way over toward the truckers lounge. We were
kind of behind them when they came through the door. I wanted to make sure I
didn’t make eye contact with any of them, so I kept my gaze down.

The guy pumping the gas finished and headed
into the store. They milled around without hurrying and gathered drinks and
snacks.  Two more followed them in.

We could hardly breathe.

I suggested she walk out past the SUV and
using her cell camera held real low, take a picture of the license plate. “I
will watch the guys inside the store and come outside making some kind of real
loud noise if anything looks menacing and you need to change course. I told her
if she could walk around the back, out toward the street, back around to the
left, and back into the truck parking lot, then I would meet her at the truck.
I didn’t want us to be separated but couldn’t think of anything better, and she
was nearly frozen with fear. I surely knew how that felt and wasn’t far from it
then.

I didn’t want to scare her any more than she
already was, but we didn’t know for sure if they left someone in the SUV for
security and surveillance. If there was, they might be watching her. I hoped
there wasn’t another one in there. I decided it would be safer for her to pass
by the SUV and for me to be her lookout and have a precise location on the four
inside. They weren’t looking around anyway so they had no idea anyone was
watching them. Though there were people there of all ages and genders checking
them out because of their military garb, they must have long since gotten to
the place they didn’t notice.

I had my back to them, and they mostly had
their backs toward me. I headed out after Deb with my head down, watching my
shoes carrying me along. I went more to the left than she did so I would not be
going behind the SUV. About the time she got to the back of the SUV, another
man stepped out the side door. My heart nearly stopped. He was older than the
rest, and he was stretching and watching Deb. I hoped he didn’t see her cell,
but I was afraid he did. Since he quit watching her and finally turned toward
the store, I started to breathe again. I kept my face down with the hat brim
covering most of it. He didn’t seem to notice me. I occasionally glanced over
one shoulder or the other to see if anything was developing behind me. The men
in the store hadn’t come out yet. I kept Deb in sight more or less as she
walked behind the trucks and made her way to her truck. She was pretty shaken
when I got there.

We felt they would leave shortly because they
were there for a rest stop. They weren’t there to find anyone. We discussed
leaving immediately, but were afraid we would get out on the road and they
might see us. We discussed staying there, but we didn’t want them to see us
sitting in the truck. We decided to get in the bunks and draw the curtains. I
took my gun to the top bunk. I could see most everything in front of the truck
with our lights out and through a really thin gap between the curtains. I
watched for about thirty minutes. Only trucks passed. I suggested we take a nap
and leave later, and she agreed. When we woke, the sun was going down, and it
would be dark in about thirty minutes.

We decided to stay there until well after
dark. We snacked in the truck, listened to low-volume music, and went to sleep
early. We woke up very early the next morning and stayed on the road until
after the sun came up. We found what appeared to be a good breakfast restaurant
but drove past it in the parking lot all the way to the end. We didn’t want to
run into any trouble. We ate breakfast. Just before leaving, we made a
thirty-second payphone call to Jim with the license plate number of the SUV. We
immediately got in the truck and left. As the restaurant slowly disappeared
from sight, we didn’t see anything unusual, so we felt the call was safe.

We drove much of the morning in silence. I
finally asked her if she was OK.

“It really frightened me to see those guys
and then to call Jim.”

“It scared me too.”

 We turned the music up and shared the
driving. The uneventful rest of the day made us happy.

The next morning Jim called real early. “I
have been working with another agent we’ll call Seth. Seth was working the
murder scene at Ben and Rebecca’s house.

“The night of the murder he’d arrived after
the police had been there awhile. He’d asked them not to walk anywhere but the
sidewalk and not to drive onto the property. They told him what he knew they
would say. They “normally didn’t anyway”, but there had been times. Anyway,
Seth found a footprint in a flower bed. The area had been mulched, and he
couldn’t get much detail. But he was able to gauge the size by the impression
and the weight by the depth of indentation. Evidently, someone had looked in a
den window, and the person wore about a size 11 shoe and weighed about two
hundred pounds.”

Jim paused. “Also Seth got a really good tire
print down the street from the house in the place where Ben had told the desk
sergeant the SUV had been. It didn’t mean anything by itself, but he got the
same tire print close to another murder scene more than three hundred miles
away.”

In addition, Jim was working with an agent at
the Social Security Administration. This agent was sending him the list of
people every month who were dropping off SS pay because of death. He also went
back a year and would send him an update every month.

And so far, a curious pattern emerged in
three separate cases. Jim’s discovery method was to take a few names in close
geographical proximity and go see where the persons lived just before they
died. It was minus their last stay at the hospital, of course. He talked to
landlords, neighbors, anyone who might know anything. Sometimes nothing unusual
came up. But on three occasions, the people had died about six months before
their death certificate said they did. Their SS checks continued for the
period, and then there was a death certificate signed by some doctor other than
the one at the hospital where the deceased was declared dead.

“And in the six-month period, their home,
car, furniture, and all they had was hauled off or sold. And those three people
had no relative, which means the government got all their stuff if they didn’t
have a will. This is somewhat normal except for the way it was handled. The
deaths were a little suspicious but could have been from natural causes. But
the wills of these three had included giving their stuff away. By the time the
executors had been notified, nothing had been left in the estates.”

Then Jim, who had been talking so fast he was
hardly breathing, stopped to take a breath. We were stunned at all the new
developments. Jim apologized for taking so long to get anything done on my
case. He said he was scared for me every day that someone somewhere would get
my fingerprints and tie me to the murder, and my life would be over. He felt
certain in time he could prove I didn’t do it, but it might be a long time.

I thanked him for all the work he was doing
and for believing in me.

“Do you miss your old life?”

“I have been so sad and scared for so long I
didn’t hope for my life back. The only thing I tried to think about back then
was staying alive first and avoiding the police second. But the police were
always the second ones to show up, so they weren’t near as scary as the black
SUV killers. For several months and especially at night when I felt a little
safer, a deep sadness would wash over me like a wave of the ocean. It was
sometimes so strong it almost took my breath away. I felt hopeless like my life
was really over.  And a few times I almost cried.”

I cleared my throat. “After about six months
and the fear subsiding a little more, I wondered if I could possibly get my old
life back. I’d enjoyed the work for the most part and had been paid well, but Rebecca
was gone. After another six months, I began to feel certain it could never be.
Now after more than two years, I’ve started a new life, and my life is finally
getting better.”

“Does the woman driving you around the
country and beating away the black SUV have anything to do with it?”

She leaned over by me and was listening. She
blushed slightly, and I knew he had me.

“What do you know about her and our lives on
the road?”

“I had a picture of her a couple of weeks
after you got in her truck. We get surveillance videos about two weeks after
you have been somewhere. By pairing that with the few times you used your debit
card and video time stamp, the guys working the case guessed it was you but
they weren’t sure. The FBI has elected to just watch and not pass on anything
to the police just yet. Also it is closely guarded in here because we are not
sure who we are dealing with.  We are concerned that too many people knowing
too much could endanger you and endanger our investigations.  Whatever it is we
are working on is big.  There are differences like people disappearing or dying
prematurely.  Then there are the death certificates that are clearly wrong. 
Why are they wrong?  There is a lot we don’t know.”

“Then we began to notice someone was with you
a lot, and we got her credit card info and identified her. I understand why it
took you some time to sort things out, but you sure knew how to find good
help.”

Jim paused. “What did you mean by “life was
finally getting better”?”

“It will have to wait for another day. I hope
there aren’t too many people who can put together what you have.”

 “Only Seth and I know.” He told me.  “We’ve
been on the phone too long now anyway… Later,” he said and then was gone.