Appalachian Intrigue

by Archie Meyers

  “Mr. Martin, the preliminary investigation indicates Mr. Hogan died from blunt trauma to the base of his skull. He was probably dead before his body was put in the river.”

  “He was with a woman when he disappeared; was there only one body found in the river?”

  “There was only one body found, and our marine unit searched the river for two miles in each direction after retrieving Mr. Hogan. A fisherman discovered him about two miles downstream from the Canyon Grill. The city police informed us that he and the lady had dinner there the night they disappeared.”

  “What’s your relationship to these two people?”

  “We all grew up together and have been friends since elementary school. Marie Murphy is my girlfriend, and I had asked Hoagie to take her to dinner because I was out of town.”

  “That’s what the city policeman told me; it sounds like an unusual situation. I will need to talk to you later, but I have an appointment now. Here’s my card. Give me a call if you think of anything that will help the investigation. I’ll be in touch.”

  Following the time-honored tradition of “if it bleeds, it leads,” what had previously been downplayed as a missing person incident was now the lead story on the television news that evening. The following morning the front page headline boldly announced, “Local man’s body recovered from river—Female companion still missing.”

  Dex had seen headlines like this countless times, but this was Hoagie and Marie, and he suffered through every word of the accompanying article. He thought it was disgusting that the reporter felt it was necessary to punch up the intrigue by pointing out Hoagie and Marie’s connection to him because of his athletic accomplishments. One line in the article stated, “Hogan was entertaining Martin’s girlfriend while the athlete was out of town on business.” The detail was correct, but the insinuation was purposely used to titillate the readers, and it infuriated him.

  Dex wanted to know more about Detective Morgan since he was going to be handling the investigation. That night he called a former teammate who was on the city police force and asked if he knew him.

  “Dex, I’ve met him a couple of times when our investigations merged, but I know him mostly by reputation.”

  “I’ve heard he’s supposed to be very good.”

  “Everyone thinks he’s the best investigator around here. He started as a rookie and worked his way up to the lead homicide detective on the force. They say he’s an aggressive interviewer with unrelenting tenacity, and if the person he’s interrogating is guilty, he’ll get a confession from him. I’ve also heard that he knows he’s perceived as a mean son-of-a-bitch and he enjoys the reputation. The conviction rates on his cases make him a favorite with the district attorney’s office.”

  “Well, I’m probably going to be in for one of his fierce interrogations. He said he would be back in touch with me.”

  “Before you go let me tell you a funny story I heard about him. He’s about thirty-five years old and has been divorced a couple of times. He has a German shepherd that rides with him all the time. He’s doesn’t have anything to do with the canine unit; he just likes the dog. The story that is told about him is that his last wife said he had to choose between her and the dog, and he chose the dog. He said he wished all of his decisions were that easy because the dog had a better disposition and was more company at the foot of the bed than his wife was in it.”

  “He sounds like a real peach. I’ll look forward to my interrogation.”

  Morgan called the next morning and asked Dex to meet him at the sheriff’s office at eleven o’clock.

  Dex was ushered into an interrogation room where Morgan was sitting at a small table in the center of the room flipping through some notes.

  “Are you going to sit down, or just stand there like an idiot?”

  “This is your meeting and your agenda. I was waiting for you to tell me what you want me to do.”

  “I asked you to come back today because I want to get to the bottom of this cock-and-bull story about you asking your friend Hogan to take your girlfriend to dinner.”

  “It’s not a story; it’s exactly what happened.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that you invite other men to entertain your girlfriend while you’re out of town?”

  “You’re trying to make something dirty out of a simple act of friendship. I told you that we all grew up together and Hoagie was my best friend.”

  “I don’t care if he’s your best friend or your damn cousin, it’s still strange. You’re just going to get into more trouble by lying, so why don’t you just admit that you were jealous about the relationship between them?”

  Dex was now officially pissed, and if Morgan wasn’t a cop, he would have slugged him. But he obviously wasn’t the bumbling cop who had investigated the tire slashing and opossum incidents. Morgan was slick, and he was purposely trying to get Dex riled. So far, he had been pretty successful.

  “Detective, you can believe whatever you want to. I can’t prove a negative, and you can’t prove that fairy tale you’ve made up about a love triangle. Why don’t we stop this stupid interrogation game of yours and concentrate on trying to find Marie and whoever murdered Hoagie?”

  “Martin, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the badge, and you’re a suspect in a murder investigation. You’ll sit there and answer my questions until I’m satisfied with your answers, or we’ll take a little walk back to the cell block.”

  “You can ask me a hundred different ways, but my answers are all going to be the same. I didn’t have anything to do with Hoagie’s murder and whatever has happened to Marie, and I have no earthly idea who’s responsible.’’

  Morgan wasn’t accustomed to having a suspect challenge him like Dex was. His size and menacing personality usually overpowered suspects and earned him a degree of reluctant respect. He was well over six feet tall, weighed over two hundred pounds, and had a close-cropped black beard that gave him an ominous appearance. His facial expressions suggested perpetual rage. Most suspects thought he would explode if they crossed him. It wasn’t working out that way with Dex, so Morgan changed his tactics.

  “Okay, Martin, why don’t you tell me again where you were when Hogan and Ms. Murphy disappeared?”

  “I was on a business trip. My last appointment on Friday was in Greenville, South Carolina, at four o’clock, and it was over at about five. My next appointment wasn’t until eight o’clock the next morning in Atlanta. I stopped for the night at a small motel outside Greenville and checked in at about six.”

  “What did you do from then until the next morning?”

  “I ate dinner at a small country restaurant near the motel and then caught up on some paperwork. I had paid in advance for the motel because the clerk said the office wouldn’t open until six on Saturday morning, and I planned to leave at about five-thirty.”

  “How long does it take to drive from Greenville to River City?”

  “It would probably take about four hours if I drove straight through, but I drove into downtown Atlanta for a meeting.”

  “Okay, tell me about Saturday morning.”

  “I left the motel at about five-thirty and ate breakfast somewhere on the interstate at a Waffle House. I don’t remember the name of the small town, but it was the next one after the motel. I met with the manager of Cross Town Pharmacy in Atlanta at about 8:15 a.m. and left for River City at about 9:30 a.m.”

  Morgan had been taking notes during Dex’s recounting of his activities. He looked up and stared at him for a moment.

  “Let me make sure I got this story straight. From six o’clock on Friday afternoon until your eight o’clock meeting in Atlanta on Saturday morning, you saw or talked to no one who can verify where you were. Is that correct?”

  “I guess that’s correct, but why would you think it’s unusual? I
doubt if many people can account for their time if they are asleep in a motel.”

  “Whether it’s unusual or not isn’t for you to decide. What is important is that I have investigated several homicides where the husband or boyfriend comes home unexpectedly, finds the love of his life making whoopee with his best friend, and takes matters into his own hands.”

  “That is not what happened here, and when you quit wasting time accusing me and start an actual investigation, you just might find out what really happened.”

  “I’m conducting the investigation, and I don’t need suggestions on how to do it from a suspect. By tomorrow morning I want you to bring me a complete itinerary of your week’s activities, with the names of people who can verify where you were during the week.”

  Dex was relieved when he walked out of the station. He had been subjected to the full force of one of Morgan’s fabled interrogations, and he was pleased that he had held his temper fairly well. Despite Morgan’s unpleasant disposition and what he had said, Dex was pretty sure that the detective believed him. But he couldn’t resist the temptation to let Morgan know that his intimidation tactics hadn’t scared him. Dex called him the next day.

  “Detective, this is Dex Martin. I wanted to check and see if your investigation has turned up any new leads yet?”

  “No, and we haven’t found your girlfriend. You’ll know if and when we come up with something; you don’t need to call unless you have some information.”

  Chapter 25

  Marie’s parents had come to River City as soon as they were notified of her disappearance and had been there ever since. Dex kept them updated on information he was able to get from the police. He had nothing else to do, and since he had to keep his composure around them, it helped him maintain his own sanity.

  Morgan’s personality was so screwed up it was difficult to read anything into what he said or how he acted, but Dex thought he had been more amiable since the interrogation. He was at least sharing some information from his investigation. He told him that blood found in the parking lot was matched to Hoagie during the autopsy and that there was no water in his lungs. That confirmed he was already dead when his body was dumped in the river. He said fibers found on the body were sent to the crime lab in Nashville for analysis, but they would probably not help unless a suspect was captured and they had something to which the fibers could be matched. He also told him Hoagie’s wallet still contained money and credit cards, which would seem to rule out robbery as a motive. Unfortunately none of these details really moved the investigation forward. They didn’t even suggest additional avenues of investigation.

  Morgan kept poring over the information he had, but all known facts could be summed up in a several short sentences: Hoagie and Marie had eaten dinner together at the Canyon Restaurant. Hoagie’s car was discovered the next day in the restaurant parking lot. Blood found in the parking lot matched Hoagie’s. His body had been recovered from the river a few miles from the restaurant. Death was not due to drowning but rather to a blunt-object blow to his head. Robbery was unlikely as a motive since his wallet was found intact. Marie’s whereabouts were still unknown. That was it, the sum total of their investigation. There were no other clues.

  The moment Dex dreaded finally arrived. With more self-control than he thought he possessed, he helped Hoagie’s mother plan the funeral. So far he had struggled through the gut-wrenching, emotional pain, but he knew the worst was yet to come. He had almost lost it when he had to help select a casket. If he hadn’t had to help Mrs. Hogan deal with her grief, he would not have been able to bear his own.

  Dex and several of his high-school classmates were asked to serve as pallbearers. He loved Mrs. Hogan, but she finally asked him to do something that he refused to do.

  “Dex, I want you to deliver a eulogy at the funeral. Hoagie would want you to do it.”

  “Mrs. Hogan, I love you and you know how I felt about Hoagie, but I can’t do it. There’s no way I could get through it without completely breaking down, and Hoagie would understand that.”

  “Okay, I understand, but I need your help with a decision the funeral home is asking me to make. They want to know whether or not I want to have an open-casket viewing and funeral, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I hope you aren’t offended when I tell you what I think, but I would never open the casket if it was left up to me. I think funerals are the most inhumane ceremonies in our culture. No one benefits from them except the funeral homes that prey on grieving relatives and charge outlandish prices for the minimal service they provide. They claim to provide comfort to the family, but I’ve never known anyone who was comforted.”

  “I appreciate your honesty and don’t disagree, but we’ve got to have a funeral. I don’t want to open the casket either. I would like to try to remember Hoagie in happier times, but I felt like the funeral home was pressuring me to do it.”

  “If you want me to tell the funeral home that the casket will not be opened, I’ll be happy to do it.”

  “Thanks, Dex, but I’ll take care of it.”

  The television and newspaper coverage was unrelenting. It was most likely responsible for a lot of the curious onlookers who showed up at the funeral. Dex saw high-school classmates there who wouldn’t have accepted Hoagie into their little cliques, but now they wanted to act as if he had been their friend. Dex greeted his old friends but was not in a mood to socialize. He suggested to those who tried to engage him in a more lengthy conversation that they should get together when times were better.

  The media coverage made Hoagie’s death the “celebrity funeral” of the season. The church was packed. Dex didn’t look around to see who was there. He stared at the closed casket, and a thousand memories ran through his mind. At the end of the service he couldn’t have repeated a single thing the minister had said.

  It was raining at the cemetery, and Dex was thankful that his tears were indistinguishable from the raindrops peppering his face. He knew that gravesite services were supposed to bring closure and a sense of relief, but he felt no such relief or closure. Hoagie would always be a part of his life, and there was no way he could close out all the years they had spent together. But as he walked away from the grave, Dex was thinking of Marie. Finding her was now the single focal point in his life.

  He had mixed emotions when he saw Morgan writing down tag numbers of cars in the funeral procession. It was sad that even this solemn occasion was under police scrutiny, but he was at least glad that Morgan was pursuing the investigation.

  Dex went to the sheriff’s office the next day to see if there was any news about Marie. Intellectually, he knew there was a good possibility that she had also been killed, but in his heart he could not accept that possibility until there was unequivocal physical evidence.

  Morgan had chosen not to tell Dex, but an additional blood scraping from the restaurant parking lot had been typed. It matched traces from a Band-Aid that was found in a waste basket in Marie’s apartment bathroom. He thought it was probably from something like a minor leg shaving incident. The blood match confirmed that she had also been injured in the abduction, but there was no way to determine the extent of her injury. Morgan didn’t know if she was dead or alive, but with each passing day, he knew the possibility of her having survived the attack was lessened.

  The daunting questions were in the forefront of Dex’s mind as he tossed and turned through sleepless nights. Every time he drifted off to sleep, he was abruptly awakened by a recurring nightmare of Marie floating in the river. Was she already dead? Was her body actually floating somewhere in the river? Where else could she be? If someone was holding her captive, was she being abused? And the constant questions underlying all the others were who was responsible and what was their motive?

  Dex had been checking by his office, but there was no way he could concentrate on anything related to his job. Jim Mitchell, hi
s boss and friend, was very understanding. He told him to take as much time as he needed but to check for messages at least once a day.

  Morgan got a list of all Hoagie’s friends from his mother and talked to everyone on the list, but they had not provided any clues. Everyone seemed to have the same opinion: Hoagie didn’t have an enemy in the world.

  Marie’s parents had returned to Atlanta, and Morgan drove there to interview them. They were visibly distraught but wanted to assist him in finding their daughter.

  “Do either of you know of any difficulties or disagreements your daughter was having with anyone? Had she recently been involved in a dispute or argument that you know about?”

  “We talked to her several times a week, but she didn’t mention anything in particular. She had an argument with an old boyfriend some time back, but he moved out of town and she hasn’t mentioned him in a long time.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “His name was Dr. Bill Bishop, and he worked at Munson Hospital. Marie told us that he started acting weird and she told him that she didn’t want to see him again. Apparently he didn’t like the idea of being rejected and caused some more trouble, but she wasn’t specific about what he had done.”

  Dex had already told Morgan about the situation with Dr. Bishop, so he didn’t pursue it with Marie’s parents. Her mother suggested he might want to check with her friends at the hospital and with her employees at the Atlanta office of RN4U. He already had that on his list of things to do while in Atlanta.

  Her father said, “The only other argument or dispute in which Marie was involved, as far as I know, was over a recent business situation in River City.”

  Dex had also told Morgan about that situation, but he wanted to hear it from a different perspective.