Letters From the Grave
channels. When Will tried to locate a country station, he stopped on the news, just to reassure himself that he was flying below the radar. He was shocked when “breaking news” interrupted, describing a stolen license plate, taken in Alabama. He wasn’t sure, hadn’t memorized the plate number, but it sounded familiar. Lucky for him, some poor sap was probably spread-eagled on the nose of his truck right now.
He was almost right. The pickup at Motel6 was stopped on a main highway in the center of Houston. Several police cars responded and surrounded the truck. When the driver got frustrated and tried to step out, he was ordered to “stay in the car!” The command was reinforced with several police, aiming guns at him from behind their cars.
It took about an hour to secure the scene, but the man was finally able to convince officers that his plate had been changed. He had driven East from Dallas the night before and arrived late. His wife and boss both confirmed that he had come from the west, not from the east. This led to a new APB (All Points Bulletin) issued for the Dallas truck license: the license clearly displayed on the back of Will’s truck.
He was just past the outskirts of Houston on I-10, heading for San Antonio, enjoying the sunrise in his rear-view mirror and feeling a sense of freedom that only money could bring. He’d never had more than a hundred dollars at one time. Sometimes that was all he had for a month. His camping trailer had been a gift from a local rancher in Tulsa, who let Will keep it on his property for occasional labor. He could use the bath facilities at a local truck stop.
But now, now he was on the other side of poverty. He had money to burn. He figured that he could live well in Mexico for a couple grand a month. He would die an old man, drunk on Tequila and with some Senorita bumping up and down on top of him. Ah, Will my boy, you’re the man!
Then for the second time in three days, flashing colored lights filled his mirrors. This time there was a siren. He looked around to see if someone else was being pulled over, but there weren’t many other cars out this early. When he looked closely in his big side mirror, there were no cars behind. The police had blocked the road behind him. He panicked and pushed his foot to the floor. The State Trooper behind closed the gap between them. He had a faster car. Will tried to think about what to do when he saw a barricade of State Patrol cars ahead. Shit! He jammed on the brakes and spun sideways, unable to control the skidding truck. A fog of blue smoke from his tires momentarily hid the police in pursuit. He wanted to drive across the median, but there was a deep drainage canal separating the lanes. Shit!
The truck stopped sideways on the Interstate, partially blocking three lanes, but it didn’t matter with all the traffic stopped miles behind. The patrol car stopped a hundred feet away, and no one approached. Thinking fast, Will opened the box of forty-five bullets and tried to load the magazine of the gun. It takes a precise dexterity to compress the spring mechanism and insert each bullet. It takes minutes for most people, but he was trembling so bad that nothing was synchronized. The cars from the barricade began closing from the other direction. Two sped past his rear bumper to reinforce the pursuit car. He looked around and saw at least a dozen cars, surrounding him. He continued to struggle with the magazine, finally throwing it on the ground and reaching for the Beretta, which had a full magazine under his seat. He was ready for a fight!
“Open your window and show your hands!” The command was loud, even with his windows closed. He didn’t know what to do. From the corners of his eyes he saw movement behind some of the cars and officers with long guns. For one split second, he reached for the door handle to charge, but then dropped the gun on the seat. “Open your windows and show your hands!”
He was fiery mad. He’d done everything right to evade capture. How did they find him? Maybe he was speeding and just got caught in a trap. No, it seemed like a lot of firepower for a speed trap. He slowly rolled down the driver’s window. “Show your hands!”
He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so was able to twist far out of the opening holding his hands high. “Don’t shoot me!”
“With your left hand, open the door from the outside and step out slowly. Keep your hands in the air!”
In a few seconds, Will was face down on the pavement, being handcuffed. Someone unseen behind him was going through the truck. “Guns!”
Julie Calls
Jake was flying back across the Gulf from a drop off when Will was apprehended. This time when he landed, it was Ross who gave him the message to call the FBI.
He got ahold of Jeremy Wallace. “Jake. They got him! The Texas State Troopers got him west of Houston. Looks like he’s got the coin collection with him, but you’ll need to verify it.”
Jake couldn’t believe that it had all happened so fast. “Jeremy. This is unbelievable. When will I get my collection back?”
“Well, right now, Jake, it’s in the chain of evidence in the case we’re developing. It will be in custody with the Texas authorities until we extradite back here. It could take a while ‘cuz there’s some investigations in Texas open also. Your perp might have been involved in some murders or disappearance in Abilene. That takes precedence. He’ll go there, then the Lafayette Department can request extradition, but I don’t know how soon that will happen.”
“Who’ll protect my coins? I’m not in a hurry to get them back. Their value goes up or down no matter where they are. I just want to be sure they won’t disappear before then.”
“We’ve got some pull there, Jake. I’ll request that the coins be placed under federal jurisdiction. They don’t have relevance to anything in Texas anyway. But, you’ll need to go to Houston to verify them, unless Ryan confesses, which I don’t expect.”
“Great. How soon can I go to Houston?”
Reflection
In Mineral Wells, Julie LaRue was also waiting for her treasured letters to be returned. They were somewhere in transit between Georgia and Texas. She hadn’t thought about them for years until that young woman visited and stole them. She’d had a good life with Paul LaRue. He’d died too young from an aneurism. They’d been active hikers and campers. They played golf and did most things together since there were never any kids in the mix. It wasn’t that they didn’t want kids, but something in their chemistry didn’t work out. He didn’t want to go through fertility testing, and she never pushed it. Neither felt strongly enough to go the artificial or surrogate route, so they enjoyed themselves for twenty-five years.
They had both gone to Texas Southern University, graduating at the same time with teaching credentials. His major was biology, whereas she’d majored in primary education. They’d taught at the same elementary school for twenty-five years. They had married immediately after graduation and settled back in Mineral Wells, where her parents had enough room for them to live for a few months before getting settled. They never left Mineral Wells. They bought the house she still lived in less than a year after moving in with her parents. Sadly, Paul was mowing the back yard a year ago when he felt ill, sat on the lawn and collapsed in seconds. It hadn’t been a bad or painful death, but it was unexpected for a man not quite fifty years old. Her parents had both died within months of each other three years earlier, so she was very lonely. She had her friends and a few close neighbors, but it was hard living without any family of her own.
She’d stopped thinking about Bobby years before Paul died. There had been a few melancholy moments when she’d pass some place where they had been together when he was stationed at Ft. Wolters, but it was increasingly rare since the Army moved out of Mineral Wells. Then the girl came with her story about being Jake’s daughter and her thoughts of Bobby rekindled. She didn’t read any of the old letters when Callie visited and regretted it now. Somehow, the girl knew that Julie would recognize Jake’s name, which would remain a mystery since the girl had died.
The whole experience reopened the past. She now felt conflicted between the husband she’d loved for all those yea
rs and the memory of a dead boy she’d met briefly before going to college. She felt a kind of disloyalty to Paul, yet she had never been unfaithful or even thought seriously about Bobby or any man while Paul was alive. Now, she thought about Bobby every day. He was her first love, which would always be true. They’d been virgins together. She wondered how life would be different if he had lived, and they’d married as planned.
The girl said she was Jake’s daughter. Callie knew about Jake and Bobby and knew Julie would connect if she pretended to be Jake’s daughter. After all these years, she couldn’t remember Jake’s last name, if Bobby ever wrote it, and she didn’t remember if the girl used it. He was just “Jake” from Bobby’s letters. It bothered her that she was thinking about a third person she’d never met except on the phone after all these years, and who had never tried to meet her before now. There were so many questions, and she just couldn’t stop thinking about that time in her life. When she received the letters, she would re-read them for any clues about who Jake really was. Maybe the girl had known him and learned about Bobby and Julie that way. It was all a mystery.
Houston
Jake took more time off and drove to Houston. The