Chapter Two
Caitlin
There wasn’t any blood.
Not on the seat, the steering wheel, or in the cupholder, or in white sheets of the bunk in back.
That was good, I had to remind myself even as my heartbeat hammered and my belly sloshed around.
It was a familiar sensation ever since I got that awful call a few weeks ago, telling me that my father’s rig was found empty on the side of the road… and that he was missing.
Missing.
It didn’t even make sense.
How could a six-four, two-hundred-fifty-pound giant of a man just… disappear? How could no one have seen him?
The cops had all kinds of questions for me at the time. About my father’s mental health, about a potential drug problem.
And what could I say other than the fact that he had always been the most even-tempered man I’d ever met?
That he was borderline jolly most of the time?
That he would have the occasional beer, sure, but his only vice was a massive insulated mug he filled with coffee several times a day so he could travel long distances without getting tired.
They asked about the last time I saw him. Which was three weeks ago. But I talked to him nearly every day. On the actual phone. Because my father claimed his “mitts” were “too meaty” to hit the letter keys to text me.
When he didn’t call me the night he went missing, I hadn’t been overly concerned about it. Sometimes, he got really deep in conversations on his CB radio. And I knew he recently discovered someone who spent a few hours every night telling elaborate, creepy stories that he found fascinating.
“This guy should be making millions of dollars writing books,” he’d told me on one of our calls, after breaking down all the major plot points of the previous story.
It didn’t raise a red flag if he missed one call. I only would have noticed if it was two in a row, because that never happened.
“Thick as thieves, that’s what we are.” He said that to me my entire childhood. But especially after my mom passed away in a car wreck when he’d been on the road, and he’d needed to start taking me with him on his trips.
It was about then that he’d bought his own tractor—with the money from the house he’d sold, I imagined—so he didn’t have to make me experience endless fleabag roadside motels all across the country.
“There’s things that go on in them places that a young lady has no business knowing about.”
I didn’t understand at the time. Any more than I understood that the half-naked ladies at the truck stops with the heavy makeup, teetering on their heels, weren’t just pretty ladies who had to stop for fuel or a soda.
So he’d invested in a fancy tractor that had a bed in the bunk area, as well as a bed over top of the cab. That was where I called home for many, many nights for a lot of years. He’d hung up rechargeable twinkle lights and a pretty pink curtain so I “had the privacy a young lady needs.”
I’d always been a daddy’s girl. But from that moment on, we’d been inseparable. I mean, what other choice did we have?
It was in this tractor that I learned CB lingo, that I saw just about every state in the union, where I discovered a love of books—both audio and e-book, since there was nowhere to store physical ones—and where I’d learned to do my online schoolwork that was often supplemented with stories from the men and women truckers who had experience in wars, knew a lot about history, or had a love for literature.
I still kept a CB radio in my apartment to keep in touch with a few very special truckers I’d basically “known” my entire life, though I’d never actually met them face to face.
I knew this place my father still called home like the back of my hand.
I could tell you without looking what was in the mini-fridge in the back: two zero-sugar sodas, an emergency energy drink, a clamshell full of carrots, celery, and peppers with some sort of dip in the center that came from a convenience store—“Because I’m trying to get healthy,”—and a bulk-size plastic jug of chocolate-covered almonds—“Because a man’s gotta live a little too. ”
There was a picture of little me, sun-faded, on the underside of his visor. Next to it was a picture of my mom.
There would be a baseball bat behind his seat (“You gotta be prepared!”) as well as a ball and mitt (“Because you don’t want the law thinking you were being premeditated”).
The gel cushion on his driver’s seat was new, the strange little grid sliding under my butt as I reached over toward the glovebox. He’d complained about his sciatica bothering him on and off. I guess he’d invested in the cushion to try to make it better.
I pulled his little zipper pouch out and opened it up.
Inside, I found all of his receipts. Not the ones for fuel—since he’d been given a fuel card a long time back.
Though I remembered there being receipts overflowing the glovebox when I’d been little.
But these were receipts for food he’d gotten, any clothes or personal car items he’d bought.
He never threw a receipt away until it was too faded to read.
I zipped that back up and shoved it into my bag.
I dug in every cubby, dug under the seats, shook out all the clothes, and even rifled around in his toiletries.
Nothing.
There was nothing.
No signs to point to mental decline or drug use. No evidence of foul play. I mean, I was no detective. But I consumed enough true crime content to make me reasonably sure I would recognize anything that pointed to a struggle.
Everything was just how I remembered it.
The same collection of clothes so faded from use and washing that they were buttery soft.
The same brand of toothpaste. He had a used copy of some noir novel—the cover featuring a woman spilling out of a yellow dress and a man in the glow of an open door with the shadow of a gun in his hand.
My father had never been a big reader, but he did like his old-school detective novels. I found them dry and more than a little misogynistic. But I took the book and tucked it into my bag as well.
I would have to come back and box up all his things eventually.
But I wasn’t quite ready to accept that it was time for me to do that.
I just wanted to grab some things that I could pore over to look for any kind of clues.
Which was why I also grabbed his phone, even though I doubted he knew how to use anything on it aside from the call button.
He wasn’t someone who had a tablet or a laptop.
I was just about to climb back out of the bunk to the cab when something shiny caught my eye.
It wasn’t something that had fallen behind the seat or fell into a door pocket.
No.
It was carefully stashed down the side of the bed. So deep in there that it had to be deliberate.
I reached for it, feeling my pulse skip as my hand closed around a very familiar shape.
A cell phone.
My father had a second cell phone hidden in his bunk.
“How’s it going in there?” Ira, my dad’s boss, called from the driver’s side door.
I panicked, shoving the phone in my bag then climbing out between the seats.
“You were right,” I told him as I fell into my dad’s seat, then climbed out of the truck. “There’s really nothing here.”
“I wish you found something,” Ira said, reaching up to grab the brim of his hat, adjusting it on his head. “This is just so bizarre.”
“I know. I don’t know what to think. Nothing makes sense. Thanks for letting me come here.”
“It’s Daniel’s truck,” Ira said, shrugging. “It belongs to you now.”
My stomach hurt at that.
I didn’t want his truck.
I wanted him.
“Is it okay if I leave it parked here for just a little bit still? I really hope we can find him and he can come get it himself.”
“Of course, Nugget.” Nugget. That was what my father called me, what all the truckers called me. Mostly because I went through a whole year-long period where I barely ate anything but nuggets. “Daniel was family. Is. He is family. We’re all saying prayers that he comes home safe.”
“Thanks, Ira.”
“Do you need something? Can I do anything for you?”
I needed a hug.
A shoulder to cry on.
My father back.
“I can’t think of anything right now. But if I do, you’ll be the first person I call.”
Ira was the closest thing I had to family with my father gone.
He’d been an ever-present part of my childhood.
Each time my father finished a job or started one, we spent time with Ira.
Once, when my father got really sick, we crashed at Ira’s place so he didn’t have to tough it out in the bunk or a motel room.
“Good. Do that. And call just to call, okay? I’m here.”
Ira, like a lot of my father’s trucking buddies, was not a super affectionate guy. So the shoulder squeeze he gave me was as close to a hug as I was going to get.
I made my way out of the office, walking down the yard, trying to act like nothing was going on. Meanwhile, my mind was short-circuiting.
Why was there a second phone?
What was on it?
I tried to latch onto the most reasonable explanations. It was an old phone; he got a new model. A friend left it there. Maybe a girlfriend did.
I wasn’t naive enough to think there was never a woman in my father’s life after my mom’s death. I mean, he’d avoided it while I’d been living with him. But it seemed impossible that he didn’t date once I moved on to my own adult life.
I refused to let myself reach for the phone. Not until I was in privacy. Not until I could focus.
Never drive distracted, Nugget. Promise me.
The bag felt ten times heavier than it had when I left my car. I set it on the backseat so I wasn’t tempted to reach for it on the long drive back to my place.
There was no stopping the distraction, though. My mind spun in endless circles until I felt sick.
I pulled into a parking spot and sat there, heart racing, as I realized I couldn’t remember stopping at a single light or abiding by any street sign.
“Okay. Alright. Relax,” I reminded myself, but I took a turn around my car to make sure there was no damage before grabbing the bag and making my way into my place.
I barely managed to close and lock the door before I was rooting around for the cell phone.
It took two seconds to go to the call log, finding a lot of incoming and outgoing calls to the same number.
There were texts from the same person as well. But all that seemed to be exchanged were dates and locations.
Hookups?
Was this the mystery woman?
I scrolled and scrolled, going back two years. But not a single text included anything but times and dates.
I closed out of that, opening each social media app. But they must have come downloaded on the phone because he wasn’t signed into anything. Not even an email account.
I was about to give up on it when one final app caught my eye.
A notepad.
I was so low on hope of finding anything—unless I called the anonymous number—that all I felt as I brought it up was a sinking feeling.
But then, a note.
Not much of one.
Not even a note, really.
Just a name.
Gavino Costa.
Well, I guess I knew who I needed to talk to.
I just had to track him down and ask him to sit down and talk to me.
Easy peasy.