Drt (10 page)

“Thanks.”

“If you need any help in this, please feel free to call. I want you to know I support you.”
 

We said our goodbyes and hung up.
 

I saved her number in my phone with a feeling somewhat like relief. Then I picked up the rip of scrap paper with her blue ink number on it and held it for a moment. I grabbed my wallet and stuffed it inside. In case I need a backup, I thought.
 

It was a start. There was a one-stop grocery and liquor store down on 55 that might work. It might be the kind of place that has old newspapers, worth a try at least.
 

I drove down to the store, it was a gray building with windows trimmed in darker gray. The door was smeared glass, with several “Legalize It” stickers at various heights. I pushed the door and it opened with the predictable sound of a small bell.
 

The store wasn’t big, just a bunch of aisles lined with groceries in the middle of the room, surrounded by coolers filled with beer and other cold drinks. There were logoed mirrors that covered almost every inch of the walls above the coolers, advertising beer or even more versions of “Legalize It.”

The clerk stood behind the counter, staring at a TV that had to be thirty years old. He was partially obscured by a tall rack of colorful merchandise. Tiny red and blue bottles were stacked high on the counter next to several small shiny pouches and jars filled with powder, all of them emblazoned with varied spellings of “Detox” and “Cleanse.”

The clerk had thick black hair and a beard. He was focused on the TV to the point where I wasn’t sure he heard me come in.

“Excuse me, I’m wondering if you have-“

The clerk extended his index finger and pushed it against my lips. “Shhh,” he said.
 
I couldn’t figure what was on TV but it looked like old news footage narrated by the guy that played the country bartender on Cheers. The clerk stared at the TV, looking like he was just taking in the information yet he mouthed the words along with the narrator.

“Do you have any newspapers from-”

“Shhh, listen, it’s the truth,” he said, motioning at the TV. He hadn’t looked at me yet.
 

I stood there for a second, not sure what to say. The narrator stopped talking and the credits began rolling. The clerk picked up a remote and pushed a few buttons, I heard the sound of a tape rewinding. He turned to me with a satisfied smile, “Okay, can I help you?”

“I’m looking for newspapers.”

“We’ve got today’s paper over there, man.”

“Do you have any papers from the last few days?”

“Of course we do. We recycle, man, nothing to harm my brother the Earth.”

“Great. I am specifically looking for Friday’s paper.”

“Help yourself in the back, man. No charge.”

“Thank you so much.”

The clerk nodded, smiling, “Anytime, friend, anytime. The door is right over there and the newspaper bin is just inside the door.”

I walked to the back and I found the bin he was talking about. I pawed around the loose newspapers until I saw the picture, an alive Jerry Morris with his family. I grabbed the paper and pulled it out of the bin.
 

“…the victim was identified as Jerry Morris, 49, from Haymarket. He was a driver for the InTransition Truck Company at the time of the accident. He is survived by his wife and two children. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, please send…”

I stuffed the newspaper page in my pocket and headed toward the door. The clerk had started the tape over, listening again to the guy from Cheers.
 

“Thanks so much.”
 

The clerk didn’t respond, his attention was locked into the tape again.
 

InTransition Truck Company. I had a lead. I knew what I was going to do tomorrow.
 

13

I got the address for InTransition from 411, woke up at nine and was out the door. Nine is excessively early for a person accustomed to going to bed at five in the morning. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes as I travelled through the neighborhood streets before I jumped on 66, heading for the dreaded I-95.

I-95 was one of the most traveled roads in America. Timing is everything. If you hit it going south at four on a weekday you might as well bring a tent. Snarls of traffic stretch on for miles. It’s possible to get in delays so severe that anyone running on less than a full tank of gas can find themselves hitchhiking on any day of the week. It’s not a question of if you are going to hit traffic on I-95 but when. Luckily, I had to head south to Dumfries in the morning, a relatively easy commute, by I-95 standards.
 

 
Dumfries was a smaller city on the southern outskirts of DC, nestled between Dale City and Quantico. It was populated largely by a series of office parks and fenced industrial complexes, a flat land of chain link fences.
 

InTransition was a large trucking firm that was headquartered off the Jefferson Davis Hwy. It was fairly well known in the DC metro area, if you’ve driven next to an 18 wheeler there, you’ve probably seen the name. I drove south, passing billboards and hotels. For the past few decades DC had spread into Virginia like a cancer that consumed grass and trees. There was a point when the city kept to itself but those days were far gone. Now shopping malls and golf courses erected out of the earth, and the areas of vegetation between them were leveled and birthed houses. Every inch of the earth was scorched with plastic and plumbing systems.
 

I drove past the office parks and restaurants and shopping malls and then past more office parks, restaurants, and shopping malls. The businesses seemed to be created by a copy paste function, with the landscape repeated, over and over. McDonalds Starbucks Taco Bell Furniture Giant Pizza Hut Verizon Best Buy Bloom Starbucks Target Bed Bath and Beyond Wal-Mart Burger King AT&T McDonalds Starbucks. Consume, lay eggs, breed, and repeat. Some of the malls were abandoned for newly constructed malls a block down the street, leaving dinosaurs of stone and glass for archaeologists to study decades from now when they scrutinized the curious case of needless expansionism. Manifest Destiny refocused toward nature in the 21st Century.
 

After passing all this I found myself staring at the chain link fence that surrounded InTransition. The tall white tractor trailer trucks were behind the metal like motionless gigantic livestock, with no discerning characteristic that could identify one from the other much like the structures around them.
 

I went to the end of the fence to find the office. It was a gray building with blue tinted windows. Along the outside walls, stickers pointed the way to the office. The office itself was a glass door with white print that said, “Intransition” but carried no flourish of design.
 

I flicked the door open and heard a ding that announced my arrival. The sound of the door chime echoed off the walls. The room was deathly silent. The only thing I heard was the sound of a small oscillating desk fan. A collection of women in the air conditioned office sat behind wooden desks, they all stared at me without saying a word. I was filled with terror, as every eye was staring at me in this terribly quiet room.
 

A woman with crusty brown hair, a look that was clearly achieved through years of hair-spraying, sat in the middle of the room. All the other desks faced hers, which gave the room an eerie look of a mothership surrounded by its pods. She was a very large, oddly shaped woman. Her hips looked like they had to be crammed into her chair with a great deal of effort. Her face had a smashed quality usually associated with unfortunate dogs. She stared at me, as did everyone else in the room, without saying a word.
 

The women at the desks ranged wildly in age. The older ones were large and their bodies poked out of their chairs like plants that had grown past the trappings of the pots around them. The youngest woman sat next to the woman in the middle. She was blonde with blue eyes. She wore a nice white shirt with a pink scarf tied in a bow. I noticed that all of the women in the office were wearing blue ribbons on their shirts or coats.

The large woman in the middle cleared her throat. “Sit down over there, please.” Her voice echoed off the walls. I nervously looked to the right, where there was a collection of metal folding chairs. I did as I was told.
 

The woman in the center of the room inhaled deeply, and started typing. I had never heard anything like it before. The typing was unbelievably fast and violently hard. In the bare walled room it sounded as loud as a jet engine. Her typing was always fast but at times it somehow sped up, and sounded like a machine gun on an aircraft carrier. The other women sat at their desks, doing nothing. They just stared at their computer screens. None of the screens looked like they were on. I would have thought they were sleeping but their eyes were open. The young blonde woman looked uncomfortable behind her desk. She alternated between scratching her arm and adjusting her pink scarf.
 

It went on like that for a while. I have no idea how long, because time seemed to stand still in that office. There was no sound other than the furious speed of jackhammer typing. No one else moved except the young blond woman, who seemed to be going crazy from the lack of external stimulation. I thought I saw her slap her own hand several times.

This felt like a waste of my time. I wanted to say something but there was an air so foreboding about this room that my better senses warned me against it.
 

The blonde woman cleared her throat. I thought it was an amazing act of bravery.

“Um…is…is it okay if I go to the bath…”

The typing stopped with abruptness. All of the women in the room looked at the blonde woman with icy stares.

“…room,” she said. She looked horrified. I was scared too, for both her and me.

The woman in the middle of the room made an exhaling sound. “Kelly, if you want to go to the bathroom, you don’t have to ask me. You can just go.”

“Okay,” said Kelly, in a whisper.

The woman in the middle of the room nodded at her. Kelly nodded back. It was quiet again. “You can go now, Kelly.”

Kelly nodded. “Thank you.”

More nodding, “You’re welcome.”

I noticed all the women in the room were nodding now in unison. The woman in the middle of the room leaned forward, toward Kelly, her considerable heft spilled onto her desk. “Go to the bathroom, Kelly.”

Kelly got out of her chair, using her hands to steady herself. She looked like she had never used her legs before. She walked out of the room.

The woman in the middle of the room shook her head, and looked at me, “New people, pshh.”
 

The typing resumed, louder and more furious than before. The keys clacked with such speed it was like the sound of each blended into the other. As the typing finished some of the keys were slammed so hard the flat sound echoed around the room and hung. It was like a piano concert when the master finishes with a flourish and then lets the sound resonate. She turned her attention to me.
 

“Can I help you?”

“Yes.”
 

“HOW can I help you?”

“I-I am looking for-”

“Honey, please, sit over here.”

I got up and all of the women in the office broke the gaze of their computer screens and stared at me as I moved. Their heads moved in synch with each other as they tracked the twenty paces I took from my seat to the chair in front of the woman. Their eyes followed my movements with the rapt attention of an audience at a tennis match. I sat down and the interest of all the women shifted back to their screens at once. I began to get the impression that their only purpose in the office was to serve as human motion detectors.

“What can I do for you?”

“I am here about Jerry Morris.”
 

“I am so sorry that I made you wait,” she said with feigned sincerity, “We are all very sorry about what happened to Jerry.”

“We’re very sorry,” said all the women in unison.

“We’re wearing blue ribbons to remember him.”

She grabbed the lapel of her jacket and pushed the ribbon at me. I looked around the room and saw all of the women were mimicking her movement. The woman in the center then dropped her lapel, and so did everyone else at the same time.
 

“I was wondering if I could pick up his things. Grab whatever he kept here.”
 

“I’m sorry Mr.-”

“Harris.”

“Mr. Harris, we can only release the belongings to a family member. Besides, Mr. Morris had all of his belongings in a locker.”

The room darkened but the woman didn’t seem to notice. I felt a burning sensation in my throat. A snaky growl was present in my ears and I felt the red beams of light from Jerry’s eyes burning the back of my neck. I smelled slight exhaust. I knew what to say.

“Well, you heard about the problems with the family,” I said. I didn’t know about the problems with the family. This was news to me but it was what I needed to say. “He said he wanted me to have his things if anything, you know, happened.”

“That’s true,” she said, shaking her head and jowls. “A terrible shame, he had such a beautiful family. Are you friends with them?”
 

“I am, er, was.”

“Jerry told us about Leigh Ann’s…problems. He didn’t talk a lot about it but we knew, terrible shame, just terrible. We were surprised that no one came for his things but not all that surprised. Because of...well, you know.”
 

I wanted to know but I didn’t want to press my luck. It sounded like she was going to let me have the stuff in the locker. I didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“Well, Mr. Harris I suppose Phyllis can help you. She has the key.”

A woman seated by the door rose from her chair and stood, as if someone had activated her. She was tall and thin, her hair gathered into a perfect cone stalagmite on the top of her head. She had pursed lips and looked like she was chewing gum.