Chapter 12

We used some of that "clothed" time to do a couple of loads of wash, so that on Saturday morning, when we left the room, we had clean clothes for our return trip. Bill waited in the lobby while I took a cab back to the truck. A half hour later, I picked him up outside the hotel, and we began our trip back to Phoenix.

The trip west is exactly the same as the trip east, except that the most of the stopping points are different. For the first three days, we drove hard, ate well, and made love as often as we could. We spent the first two nights in the truck. I don't think it's possible to shake a semi; but we really did try.

The third night, I wanted to sleep in a real bed, so we stayed in a Quality Inn Motel in the town of Gallup, New Mexico, about twenty miles from the Arizona border.

We followed our usual routine; I booked the room, Bill went in to shower while I did my workout in the back of the parking lot and then I came in to take my shower. I was just finishing up, getting ready for a wild night with my man, when Bill yelled,

"Oh, shit! Gail you've got to see this. Hurry."

I ran out of the bathroom; there on the TV was a picture of Bill; it looked like a high school yearbook picture. The caption under the picture read "Missing". Bill turned up the volume.

"He was last seen a week ago. Anyone having information about this case should contact the Phoenix police department."

"Gail, now what are we going to do?"

I sat on the bed. I had to think. I had to get him back to Phoenix; back to my house without being seen. Once we got there, we could use this to our advantage. Our normal route home would be, out Interstate 40, through Winslow, to Flagstaff, then to Interstate 17 south to Phoenix. I'd have to stop along that route somewhere to fuel up. There was a chance that since that was the most popular route, the state police would be looking for information at the various stops.

If I fueled up at Holbrook instead, and took the state roads through Payson and the Tonto National Forest, I'd run into much less traffic, and cut off about fifty miles of our trip.

"Bill, we're going to take the back trail into Phoenix, there's less of a chance of running into the police or anyone spotting you. We'll drive back to the company, drop the trailer and you'll come back to my house with me. After that we'll figure out what to do next. Don't worry we'll be fine."

We shut the TV and crawled into bed, holding each other tight. Our love making that night was soft and tender, as if we were reassuring ourselves that everything was going to be all right.

Long after Bill settled into a deep peaceful sleep, I was staring at the ceiling, reviewing in my head the route that we were going to take.

I remembered the first time my Dad took me this way. We were on our normal route when we heard on the CB that Route 17 South between Flagstaff and Phoenix was shut down due to a serious accident. Luckily we were still east of Holbrook at the time. Dad got off the Interstate and headed through town to a two lane state road. A sign ahead read, 'Welcome to the Tonto National Forest'. All around us the area was flat with golden brown grass a couple of feet high and an occasional scrub bush. As we made our way, I'd see small green signs along the road every couple of miles; elev. 6000. We must have passed about five of them before I realized that that were elevation heights; the last one had read 6300 feet. We were climbing.