Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Editor’s Note: This story has been percolating for over twenty years of road trips.  My wife had found an article in a newspaper or magazine, back when you got information that way.  It seemed across the United States, criminals would spot single traveler’s from out of state.  The out-of-state traveler would be followed to their hotel, killed, and then everything taken: credit cards, car, etc.  She started riding with me so that I would not be alone.  But I started thinking about what if she was no longer there.  She had said that some people went to the trouble of placing a manakin in the passenger seat or a blow-up doll.  That got me to thinking.  A manakin could be posed to sit in the seat, or simply remove the legs and strap the torso into the seat with the seatbelt.  But a manakin would take up a lot of space when not in use.  A blow-up doll could be deflated, but it could not be positioned into a sitting position.  So, I thought about an inflatable doll that could be manipulated like the posable action figures that the boys played with: GI Joe, Star Wars, etc.  There was never any single thought to a blow-up doll for its designed prurient purpose.  In fact, the participants in this drama were extremely averse to such an idea.  If you buy into what happens, thinking of this “doll” as just a life-sized posable action figure, then I hope you enjoy a good story.  Over the past twenty years, I have thought of a multitude of scenarios, really a variety of endings.  The physical attraction aspect was always palpable, but it only brings a touch of tension among the two people travelling around the country.  As I went to Tennessee recently to babysit the grandchildren, God communicated with me, at least I pray it was God.  I came up with a scenario that might lead to another series of articles, Bible studies using fictional characters having a conversation while travelling or in odd situations.  I personally do not think that this story would ever happen (pure fantasy).  Many might argue theological issues with the story.  But in seeing where I think God wanted me to go with the story, I was moved by it, even to tears.  But before we hear about an inflatable, posable action figure, Deviled Yeggs gets a call from a nosey neighbor, one that has video proof that something strange was happening in the house across the street …

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

I had a small man, near retirement age, in my office.  He had been with Jim and Poached in interview rooms all day.  It was nearing the end of our shift and the man was saying something strange that made no sense.  And he was denying anything regarding why we brought him in for questioning.  We had video evidence to contradict him, but he was vehement in his denial.

Was there a woman who was visiting him?  Yes, sort of, but no, she did not exist.  How can you have a woman visit you, but this same woman did not exist?  Jim and Poached were being cagey, avoiding letting him know what we had on the table.  I was going to take the opposite approach.  I was going to lay it out for him.  Maybe with him backed into a corner, he would admit that the beautiful woman simply moved to Florida, leaving during a gap in the neighbor’s security video.

I said, “Mr. Dykstra, please state your full name.  And what your occupation is.”

“I am Harold Dykstra.  I have been laid off from my job as a sales manager for an engineering company.  I am collecting unemployment, but I have had no offers.  I know they cannot state that I am not hired due to my age, but they usually say ‘overqualified’ which means the same thing in most cases.  But Lt. Yeggs, I have no idea why I was arrested and interrogated all day long.  I am trying to cooperate.  I have no idea what crime I am being accused of.  I have a couple of nosey neighbors that might say just about anything to get me out of the neighborhood, but I try to live my life and let them live theirs.  Please, what is going on?”

I replied, “I am lifting the veil of mystery, Sir.  Your neighbor from across the street has watched you return from sales calls ever since your wife died a little over a year ago.  In each case, a beautiful woman has entered your home with you.  Until the last case before you were laid off, she left with you.  This last time, she has not left the house.  Now, that she has been in your home for about three months and never visible from the windows, never checking the mail, your neighbor asked us to check things out.  He thinks you might have killed her and hidden the body somewhere.  I know.  You seem to have started a romance soon after your wife died, and that may not put you in a good light.  I hear you are a regular church goer.  But your neighbor turned a security camera from his home toward yours.  We have video evidence that the woman entered your home.  Your neighbor said he thought the woman to be young, either a stripper or a porn star.  That too might be embarrassing.”  When I mentioned ‘porn star,’ he gasped.  I could work with that if he was not forthcoming.  “But Mr. Dykstra, if this lady left and the nosey neighbor simply missed the frames in the video when she left, then you can tell us where she lives.  Give us a phone number and she can confirm she spent time with you, and she is safe and living elsewhere.  We found no evidence of foul play in your home.  There is no body there.  There is no residual blood.  I am amazed that you have never cut your finger while chopping up food in the kitchen.  We have never seen a home as clean as yours.”

He shrugged, “I have been laid off with a lot of time for cleaning.”

I shook my head, “No, unless you are like our crime scene cleaning crews, you would miss the hint of blood here or there.  You would not get everything as clean as your house with nothing like that present.  So, who is this woman?”  I shoved a photo from a video capture.  The woman was almost directly looking into the video camera.  The lighting was perfect.

Mr. Dykstra obviously recognized her.  He burst into tears.  He gasped for air as he made wretched sobs.  He said, “That’s Bountiful Babs.  She no longer exists.  I cannot give you a phone number.  Do you arrest me now for murdering someone that never really existed in the first place?  Oh, except that she was a copy of a porn star who was famous about twenty years ago.”

I was shocked.  He wasn’t admitting he killed her, but he stuck to his story he had told both Jim and Poached.  She existed, but she really did not exist now.  She was there, but now she is not and she was not murdered.  But now, we had a name and him admitting he knew her.

I asked, “Do you have any evidence that she once existed?”

Mr. Dykstra, still sobbing, asked if we had taken the briefcase on the coffee table into evidence.  I admitted that we had.  We sniffed it for explosives.  It was clean, but we had not figured out how to open it.  He said to bring it in, and he would open it.  It would require a USB connection.  Poached brought in the briefcase and offered his laptop as the USB device.

Poached asked, “I have checked this thing from all angles, and I find no cable, opening, just a hinged lid that refuses to budge.  How do you open this stupid thing?”

Harold asked, “There are three of you here.  Are any of you spiritual?”

I said, “I hate the term as it means so many different things.  Jim and I go to church together at the big Metho-Presby church downtown.  I teach three Bible studies each week: one for family, one for a church small group, and one at Lily the Pink.  Poached attends an evangelical non-denomination church on the east side of Tracy.  What do you mean by spiritual?”

“I’m a Christian too.  What I am about to say won’t make sense, maybe totally unbelievable, unless you can wrap your head around angels, demons, and such.  If you cannot believe that Balaam’s ass talked to Balaam, then you won’t understand a thing that I am about to say.  But I can show you Bountiful Babs.  At least what I have to remember her by.”

When Poached heard the name, Bountiful Babs, he gasped.  He started typing.  Harold put his finger against a panel between the hinges on the back of the briefcase.  He explained that it was a fingerprint reader.  The panel slipped to one side and Harold pulled a computer cable from the opening.  He handed the cable to Poached, who plugged it into his USB connection.  Harold explained that what should happen next could not fully happen, but they would get enough evidence to match his story.  But they would never get what a court of law would need.

Within a few seconds, the briefcase opened, and a life-sized inflatable, posable action figure appeared, a very sophisticated one.  Each joint was arranged so that it could be posed in any human configuration.  The doll was wearing the same business formal attire they had seen the woman wearing.  But the doll did not fully inflate.

Harold, still wiping away tears, even more seeing the broken doll in front of him.  “She has a leak somewhere.  This is only the second time that I have seen her since she left this body three months ago, the day before I was laid off.”

Jim said, “Deviled, you have gotten further with him than we have, but we still have nothing.  We may release him since there is no body, but we cannot close the case either.  And what is this about angels and demons?”

Harold corrected him.  “I said if you did not believe in that kind of thing, you would not believe my story, but this may take some time.”  I nodded and waved for him to start.  “This doll was given to me by my son, Morrie, soon after my wife’s funeral.  My wife and I had two children, Morris and Wilhelmina.  We call them Morrie and Villie.  I even spell it Villie, so people that do not know the Dutch language will know that Willi is pronounced Villie.  Anyway, Morrie had talked to Villie.  They bought this top of the line doll so that I would not be seen driving on sales calls by myself.  My job was usually two and a half months on the road followed by a couple of weeks in the office.  From Tracy I had sales routes that went north, south, east and west each year.  I was gone ten months of the year.  My wife had always been by my side after the children started college.  She had a long illness, and we had to stop in at odd times for her to get infusions at one hospital or another, but we managed.  Then she died.  Morrie and Villie had heard that it was not safe to be alone driving out of state.  I could be victimized.  They bought this doll.  Morrie winked at me that it was anatomically correct in every way, just in case I needed ‘companionship.’  I refused to use it.  If I was targeted as a solo traveler, that would simply be God’s way of reuniting me with the only woman I had ever loved.”

Harold sank in his chair.  It looked like he might collapse.  The tears were still flowing.  “You gentlemen do not understand. I loved my wife, and I felt the part of ‘til death do we part’ meant until we both died.  I did not need ‘companionship,’ and how could a doll made of plastic and latex be a companion?”

Poached was about to say something, but he saw the frowns from Jim and me.  By this time, the doll had inflated enough to see the face.  Poached took photos and he worked on wirelessly transferring the photos to his laptop.

Harold continued, “But Morrie showed up when I was about to drive out on my first sales call after my bereavement leave was finished.  He placed the briefcase in the passenger seat and plugged it in.  She inflated.  I saw that he and Villie had purchased clothing to cover the doll in a fashion that looked like she was my assistant.  Morris explained that the doll originally came with some naughty lingerie, and to be a road companion, she had to dress the part.  He told me that all I had to do was to unplug the USB from the dash and she would quickly deflate below the window level.  She would continue to deflate and fold into the briefcase, and she would be ready to reinflate the next morning.  I could take the briefcase in or leave it on the seat.  I growled at Morrie, but I left the doll inflated.  Her head was turned toward me slightly.  Her arms were folded in her lap.  And she wore her seat belt.  I thought, ‘Why not?’  I thought I might even talk to her, as if she was real.”

He continued, “This first sales trip was to the east.  As we were approaching St. Louis, I looked at her and she seemed to smile at me, but I thought that was my mind playing tricks on me.  Then a few miles down the road, a big truck, one of those two-trailer jobs that some truckers call wibble-wobbles came into my lane.  I slammed on the brakes and went for the ditch.  I had no idea how I avoided the collision.  I was still on a razor’s edge with my emotions.  My wife had just died.  This was my first trip alone in a couple of decades.  I placed my head on the steering wheel, and I started to cry.

“That is when she said, ‘Did you see what he just did?  He could have killed us!’

Harold shook his head.  “I looked over and she blinked a couple of times.  I asked, ‘Are you some kind of robot?  Morrie said you were just a doll.’

“She replied, ‘No, I am not just a doll.  I am a top of the line doll.  The porn star, Bountiful Babs, was covered head to toe in latex and they made a lot of dolls like me.  We are all just like her body.  This was one of the few left in stock, and the original Babs retired a long time ago.  I am anatomically correct in every way.  I have been designed to provide you pleasure in any way you desire, but please, I just want to talk.  I want to be your friend and your travel buddy.  I don’t take up much room, but over time, I think I might need more clothing.  My unfortunate underwear is not very comfortable, and it is far too revealing. …’

“She acted like she would continue so I interrupted, “But you are only a doll, so why are you talking to me?  Somebody pinch me.  I need to know this is not a dream.”  Then she pinched me.  It didn’t hurt, like a balloon pressing against my arm, but the pinch squeaked.  ’What was that for?’  I asked.

“She said, ‘You said for someone to pinch you.  So, I did.  I am someone.  This is not a dream, Harold, and if you do not get moving, we will be late for your sales meeting.’  So, I got back on the road.  All the way to the mill where I had my first appointment, she talked about the weather, the traffic, everything.  I got cut off by a car and I did not cuss, but I called the guy an idiot.  She said that the guy was just dumped by his girlfriend, and he was late to work because the nurse who sits with his grandmother was late getting there.  Every driver that did something stupid, she had a reason to show mercy instead of anger.  I thought she was just making the stories up, but she wasn’t.  She said ‘I don’t know’ often, but she knew things that no human could know.  But she was excited every time she saw something new, as if she had never seen that thing before.  But every time I asked about where she came from, she would read the information off the label that had been inside the briefcase or she would simply say, ‘I don’t know.’

I went to my sales call, and when I got back to the car, she said, ‘I stayed busy.  I read the entire owner’s manual.’  I did not believe her since it was several hundred pages long, but she continued, “How was your sales call?  Did you hit pay dirt?”

“Actually, my sales call was to one of my toughest customers, but they were desperate for a major spare parts order.  I had the purchase order in hand for about $200,000 worth of customized spare parts, and they wanted me to call back, over the phone, in another week.  They might add installation of some of the spare parts by our field crew, and they wanted to talk to the training manager about a two-year old proposal for some training.  They hoped the price was still the same.  Of course, once I told the training manager of their interest, he guaranteed the old price, the training manager always had the best profit margin of any group, in that he could control contingencies better.  I told her all that and she beamed.  She was so proud of me, but something told me that she already knew about the sales call.

When we arrived at the hotel, she got out of the car and went in with me as if she was my wife and the hotel staff did not even blink.  Over time, a few whispered about how beautiful she was, and I was an old coot.  Some guessed that she was my daughter.

That night at the hotel, she took off her shoes and climbed into the extra bed.  I always had a room with two beds, throwing my stuff on one bed, and my wife and I sleeping in the other.  As my wife’s health got worse, she would occasionally sleep in the other bed.

“But that first night, when I awoke in the morning, she was at the chair in the corner of the room, fully ready for the day.  She smiled and said, “I found out that I do not need to sleep after all.  I read that book in the nightstand with the picture of a jug on it.’  I suggested that it was called a Gideon Bible.  I dared not question her veracity again.  All the way to the hotel after the first sales call, she kept quoting from the owner’s manual.  Like then, all the way to the next town, she was quoting the Bible: book, chapter, and verse.  She asked me what one passage meant and then another.  We had a glorious time in philosophical and theological discussions, but she definitely put me to the test.  Sometimes, I had no clue, and then she guessed an answer.  Her answers were always plausible, and I never found any biblical inconsistencies with her guessed answers.”

The interview looked like it might last all night, so we took a break to call our wives and say we would be late, maybe not home at all.  Harold was right.  This story was absolutely unbelievable.  And he had not gotten to anything relating to angels and demons.  But something was tugging at my heart, telling me he was telling the truth.  I have seen liars tell stories in the past, but somehow, something felt false.  This story was too absurd to be believed, but I believed it.  Harold, if he was lying, was the most accomplished liar, with no tells, that I had ever seen.  But this report is only half written.

Credits

As I mentioned up front in the Editor’s Note, this story was generated over multiple iterations after my wife talked about learning of criminal activity involving business travelers from out of state.  These travelers would even use manikins or blow-up dolls to make it look like they were not alone while traveling.  But I have no articles to reference, just what my wife had told me.  I enjoyed her concern, travelling with me whenever possible.  Then again, she would do just about anything to leave the state we were living in at the time.  She suffered from extreme wanderlust.

It is getting rare when hotels have Gideon Bibles in the hotel rooms, but the Gideons are still printing and distributing the Bibles.  I think some of the big hotel chains have gone woke and refuse to have them in the rooms.  Maybe with those chains, they work like the hospital Bibles in many hospitals, available upon request.  So, if you are at a hospital and you want a Bible to read, there will probably be a few Gideon Bibles at the nursing station.  But in a couple of foreign countries, I have seen two books in the night stand, a Gideon Bible and a book explaining Buddhism.