alter my appearance, I grew quite a beard. Deb asked me
if I looked real clean cut when I was wearing a suit and tie everyday and
working as an accountant.
I
told her I had. My hair was short and it was a nice cut with a small part. It
looked very conservative and typical of the industry. She said I should go to
the opposite of that and look hairy. I needed to let my hair grow to at least
my jaw line. I could wear a hat or head band. With a beard, long hair and
dark skin, I would look very different. She helped me with the hair dye as my
hair got longer. The driving all day wasn’t doing anything good for my gut, but
some of the work that went along with the job was helping to build some
upper-body strength I didn’t previously have. When I was pushing a pencil and
pounding a keyboard it didn’t give me much exercise.
Occasionally, when I looked in a mirror, I
didn’t see Ben Raines. I saw a trucker I didn’t know. I had a feeling I wasn’t
the only one beginning to like the new appearance of this trucker. I sometimes
caught Deb looking my way with a small smile, and at times it made me feel
guilty—guilt that I was alive and Rebecca was not. But other times the thought
of Deb smiling my way made me smile a bit, too.
Chapter 5
Networking
Now there were three of us working together,
we thought, and we might be getting some light shed on the situation. Jim was
the assumed name of the FBI agent. He was tracking something down my wife had
been working on. I had no idea what he could be talking about. She wasn’t a spy
or detective or lawyer. She was a court reporter. She heard and saw things lots
of other people saw and heard but nothing private.
“Maybe she got a transcript wrong and someone
was hurt by it or went to jail,” I told them. “But it can’t be that because she
was always so careful. She recorded everything and went over her transcript
while listening to the recording to verify. She also sent copies of the
recordings along with the transcripts so they could verify she had transposed
verbal testimony correctly. That could not be a cause for murder anyway.”
Jim and Deb agreed with me.
One day Jim asked, “Do you recognize the name
Leon Dickenson?”
“Yes. He is an old man in a nursing home Rebecca
helped out from time to time.”
Jim said Rebecca’s and Leon’s names were on a
suspicious encrypted note they found and decoded.
I had begun to like Deb and trust her more
and more. We were really good friends and she and I were sharing more and more
of our life story in little bits as they fit with what we were talking about. It
is amazing how you get to know someone when you are in the cab of a truck with
them twelve hours a day. She was pretty, so part of it was easy, but I felt
guilty when any warm feelings came to me. But they were coming more and more
often. At first I felt I was betraying Rebecca. She had been murdered, and we
had not brought justice to her killer. But she had been gone for over a year
by now so my feelings were torn but I was in transition.
Anyway, Deb was too busy and scared, and I
was too scared to think of much else. My new name was Sam Adams not Samuel, and
I didn’t make beer. I told Deb I believed a prominent name stuck in peoples
mind more than one which was hard to say or spell. Once someone knew me as Sam,
they would be less likely to think I was someone else. I hoped it would make it
less likely they would connect me with the guy from Fairfax.
Lots of truckers remembered my name quickly.
We got to California, and Deb decided we should work our way up the coast to Seattle. That sounded good to me because
she wasn’t talking about putting me out. We had not seen any black SUVs or
black helicopters for several days and were beginning to get into a work
cadence. But we never totally relaxed, and we would talk a lot about being safe
and watching out for the bad guys.
We stayed together walking to and
if I looked real clean cut when I was wearing a suit and tie everyday and
working as an accountant.
I
told her I had. My hair was short and it was a nice cut with a small part. It
looked very conservative and typical of the industry. She said I should go to
the opposite of that and look hairy. I needed to let my hair grow to at least
my jaw line. I could wear a hat or head band. With a beard, long hair and
dark skin, I would look very different. She helped me with the hair dye as my
hair got longer. The driving all day wasn’t doing anything good for my gut, but
some of the work that went along with the job was helping to build some
upper-body strength I didn’t previously have. When I was pushing a pencil and
pounding a keyboard it didn’t give me much exercise.
Occasionally, when I looked in a mirror, I
didn’t see Ben Raines. I saw a trucker I didn’t know. I had a feeling I wasn’t
the only one beginning to like the new appearance of this trucker. I sometimes
caught Deb looking my way with a small smile, and at times it made me feel
guilty—guilt that I was alive and Rebecca was not. But other times the thought
of Deb smiling my way made me smile a bit, too.
Chapter 5
Networking
Now there were three of us working together,
we thought, and we might be getting some light shed on the situation. Jim was
the assumed name of the FBI agent. He was tracking something down my wife had
been working on. I had no idea what he could be talking about. She wasn’t a spy
or detective or lawyer. She was a court reporter. She heard and saw things lots
of other people saw and heard but nothing private.
“Maybe she got a transcript wrong and someone
was hurt by it or went to jail,” I told them. “But it can’t be that because she
was always so careful. She recorded everything and went over her transcript
while listening to the recording to verify. She also sent copies of the
recordings along with the transcripts so they could verify she had transposed
verbal testimony correctly. That could not be a cause for murder anyway.”
Jim and Deb agreed with me.
One day Jim asked, “Do you recognize the name
Leon Dickenson?”
“Yes. He is an old man in a nursing home Rebecca
helped out from time to time.”
Jim said Rebecca’s and Leon’s names were on a
suspicious encrypted note they found and decoded.
I had begun to like Deb and trust her more
and more. We were really good friends and she and I were sharing more and more
of our life story in little bits as they fit with what we were talking about. It
is amazing how you get to know someone when you are in the cab of a truck with
them twelve hours a day. She was pretty, so part of it was easy, but I felt
guilty when any warm feelings came to me. But they were coming more and more
often. At first I felt I was betraying Rebecca. She had been murdered, and we
had not brought justice to her killer. But she had been gone for over a year
by now so my feelings were torn but I was in transition.
Anyway, Deb was too busy and scared, and I
was too scared to think of much else. My new name was Sam Adams not Samuel, and
I didn’t make beer. I told Deb I believed a prominent name stuck in peoples
mind more than one which was hard to say or spell. Once someone knew me as Sam,
they would be less likely to think I was someone else. I hoped it would make it
less likely they would connect me with the guy from Fairfax.
Lots of truckers remembered my name quickly.
We got to California, and Deb decided we should work our way up the coast to Seattle. That sounded good to me because
she wasn’t talking about putting me out. We had not seen any black SUVs or
black helicopters for several days and were beginning to get into a work
cadence. But we never totally relaxed, and we would talk a lot about being safe
and watching out for the bad guys.
We stayed together walking to and
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