“Now here’s what probably happened. That Chinaman that got himself killed came to a little early. Maybe he didn’t get enough dope in him, or maybe he threw it up. Anyway he wakes up in the back of the truck and it’s pitch black and everywhere he feels around him there’s nothing but inert bodies. So he huddles there and he gets more and more frightened and finally, after hours and hours, the truck pulls over. He stays where he is waiting for something to happen. Then the truck engine starts, and he knows they’re not going to let him out. So he starts screaming and here’s what probably comes out: They’re all dead! Everyone but me! Get me out of here!"
I said: “And just by chance Mrs. Li’s standing right outside.”
“And since she grew up in Taiwan, she understands every word. The truck pulls out. She runs for her car and takes out after it. Probably she wants to get the license-plate number so she can call it in to the police.”
“But there’s a black SUV riding shotgun,” I said.
“Yeah, and I’d guess Maude Blaney was driving it. She’s seen this Chinese woman standing beside the truck, and then the Chinese woman starts running around like she’s nuts and Maude puts two and two together. So she catches up. She sees Mrs. Li has a cell phone in her hand and knows she’s got to stop her right now. Well, this Maude’s probably a pretty slick driver. Anybody that can handle a big truck can sure handle an SUV. So she moves on up and kisses bumpers and then steps on the gas and runs Mrs. Li right into the back of the trailer. Probably she had no intention of killing her. She just wanted to stop her using the cell phone. But she whacked her all right and almost whacked three other people in the bargain.”
“What about the Chinaman? How’d he end up dead?”
“Figure it out, Bill. First chance they get they pull over someplace quiet. Then they climb into the back of the truck with a couple of pistols in their hands and hogtie the Chinaman. Stuff a wadded-up handkerchief in his mouth and slap a piece of duct tape over his lips. No more screams out of that fellow. Then, a couple of hours later, they stop over in Indiana and check on him and find he’s choked to death on the handkerchief. So what do they do? They strip him naked so his clothes won’t be a giveaway, and as soon as the coast is clear they haul his body out in the woods and cover it with leaves.”
I thought about it. “It makes sense, Lew. But it’s a hell of a stretch putting it together like this.”
“I’m not saying it happened exactly the way I described. I could be way out on the details. But I bet something like that happened.”
“So where do we go with this?”
“I want some photographs of that cage you saw.”
I thought about Maude Blaney’s seething eyes. “Fat chance of that.”
“We’ll get them all right. And as soon as we do, we’ll gather up somebody from the insurance company and traipse on over to the State Patrol headquarters in Frankfort and lay it out for them. Then they can sort it out. And as far as how we came by the pictures, you took them this morning when Maude Blaney wasn’t looking.”
“I see where this is going, Lew, and I don’t think I like it.”
“After dark we’re going to drive on down there and climb their fence and get inside that truck.”
“What if they got a dog?”
“You seen one?”
“I saw Maude, and that was enough.”
“We’ll take a pound of hamburger along. I’ll mash up some sleeping pills in it.”
“What about the lock on the back of the truck?”
“We’ll use a pair of bolt cutters on it.”
I hesitated a moment. “Do I get overtime for this?”
“Sure. But not if we get caught and go to jail. Then you’re on your own damned time.”
I swung by the house and had supper and told Sarah that I’d be out on a job that night. Sarah, who works at a school for the deaf, indicated that she’d curl up with a good book and wait for me. I just hoped she wouldn’t have to wait too long.
I drove over to Lew’s place, and we piled in the company Neon and headed for Rollsville.
Lew said: “I wonder what this bunch gets for hauling illegal aliens.”
“We could call up and ask.”
“Somebody’ll ask them, you can bet on that. But they’ll be wearing badges when they do.”
We reached Rollsville on schedule and turned off on the road that ran up to Acme Long Haul Trucking. About halfway along, Lew had me pull off on a gravel-and-dirt lay-by. Probably a road crew had put it there so they’d have someplace to park their equipment.
Lew got out the pound of hamburger and doctored it with mashed-up sleeping pills. He put enough in to cold-cock a horse, let alone a dog.
We got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to Acme. We parked around the next bend, then hoofed it back to the gate. It was padlocked, but we’d expected that. We worked our way around the perimeter of the fence to the rear of the lot. Since the area was choked with brush, I figured I’d end up with six kinds of poison ivy before we were through.
Lew stopped at one point and pounded on the fence. No pit bull came out to challenge us, and we moved on.
Finally Lew began using the bolt cutters on the fence. We bent it back and crawled through, me first, with the pound of hamburger in case the dog had just been playing possum. No flash of pointed teeth, no slop of savage saliva — just a curse from Lew as he ripped his pants leg on the fence.
“Somebody’s going to pay for this,” he muttered.
Probably the insurance company, I thought.
“Where’s this rig of theirs?”
“Right there in the shadow of the building.”
Lew took the lock off the back of the trailer with the bolt cutters, then heaved it over the fence into the woods. We climbed into the trailer. I shined my flashlight around. Everything looked the same as it had earlier that day.
“Look at that vent back there,” Lew said. “That’s probably where the Chinaman did his shouting.”
He pointed out that the shelves had tick marks on them, each about twenty inches apart.
“They had them jammed in here like sardines. Just like on one of those old slave ships.”
I’d toted the camera bag along from the car. I unzipped it and got out the powerful battery-powered lantern we kept there. I set it up so that it would illuminate the cage. Lew got out the camera, and a minute later the flash cubes began going off.
He used up two rolls of film just to be sure. Then we began packing up again. As we did, Lew said: “These people sure goosed the moose, you know it? Murder One for Mrs. Li, Murder Two or Manslaughter for the Chinaman, and who knows what all for all the other stuff they did — conspiracy and transporting illegal aliens and all that stuff. Well, maybe they’ll be able to plea-bargain it all down to a hundred and twelve years.”
I jumped off the back of the trailer with the camera bag and walked right into the twin barrels of the shotgun Maude Blaney was holding in her delicate hands. I let out a gasp that could’ve been heard in Texas. Rufus was there, too, and he had a mean-looking pistol in his hand.
“You can come on down, too,” he said to Lew.
Lew jumped off the truck and stood there.
“See what’s in that bag,” Maude said
Rufus took it from me and unzipped it.
“Camera stuff.”
“Well, we know what to do with that.”