The Body in the Truck

Inspired by a true incident: a supposedly empty rental truck is being readied for a customer, and when the back door opens, the funky smell turns out to be a body in a plastic trash bag.

Detective Fred "Tree" Stumpf gets the murder case and begins sleuthing. Something's going on at the U-Drive_Em; mileages are being reassigned, the surveillance cameras develop glitches, and employees are getting conflicting orders.

Soon, Detective Jerry Redding's case starts overlapping, and both detectives in the mid-size Indiana city are working again with each other, sorting out their respective cases and closing in on an interstate smuggling ring, Salvadoran illegals, Cuban green-card holders posing as Mexicans, the truck rental's father-daughter ownership team, and a crook named after a pasta who somehow has made a carpenter, a family man, rich beyond his dreams.

And they close in on all the criminals as they solve all the crimes, and come up with a surprise ending.

If you like twists, dogs, teens and toddlers, money, cigarettes, cops and crime, liars and killers, all in a mental maze that adults will get lost in and even middle-schoolers can read, read this.