4 The Marathon Murders

by Chester D. Campbell

  “Looks like a small clearing back through the trees,” Jill said.

  “Yeah. And what appears to be a tow truck backed up to the water.” I checked the ground as we walked past the patrol cars. “I hate to tell you, babe, but this trail looks wet and rough.”

  The rain must have hit this area before we arrived. After some unpleasant experiences traipsing about muddy scenes in dress shoes, Jill had learned to keep a pair of walking shoes in the Jeep. I waited while she changed.

  Fresh tire tracks plowed through the soft ground, leading us past knee-high weeds and an occasional mud puddle. After passing a few towering oaks and sycamores that provided a leafy canopy overhead, we saw two other white police cruisers off to the side.

  A hefty man in a tan uniform and white hat stood near the water, bellowing and waving off a couple of power boats out in the lake. “Get those damn things away from here!”

  A choppy wake washed up near the shore.

  Approaching him, I called, “Sheriff Driscoll?”

  He turned, a frown on his tanned, leathery face. I took him to be late fifties, a muscular man with a fringe of gray peeking out beneath the hat brim.

  “That’s me,” he said. “Who would you be?”

  I introduced Jill and myself and handed him a business card.

  “Got a license?”

  I showed that to him, also. “We’ve been looking for Pierce Bradley the past couple of days. I was told you had a Jeep in the water here, and I just wondered—”

  “It’s Bradley,” he said. “Why were you looking for him?”

  “He had some papers he was supposed to bring to a client of ours.”

  “Well, if he hadn’t driven that fool Jeep into the lake, he might have given them to you.”

  Judging by that description, the sheriff thought Bradley had accidentally blundered into the water. I wasn’t so sure.

  “Sheriff, there’s something you need to know,” I said. “We just came from Bradley’s house. We found the door unlocked. When I looked inside, there appeared to be some blood on the carpet in the living room. I also saw a large walking stick with possible blood stains. The place looked like the scene of a struggle, with furniture knocked around.”

  He gave me a grim look. “Are you an ex-cop?”

  “Retired Special Agent in Charge with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.” I said it casually. Say it in a formal manner and it sounds pretentious, a turnoff.

  He glanced back at the card, eyes widening. “McKenzie. You the guy was involved in that Federal Reserve chairman’s murder case a few months back?”

  I nodded. “That was me. It got sort of hairy there at the end.”

  The sheriff lifted his hat and swiped a hand across his brow. “I read the newspaper reports. A friend in Nashville told me you had a lot more to do with solving the case than the stories told.”

  “Maybe I’d better hire your friend to handle my public relations,” I said, grinning.

  A diver’s head cleared the surface of the lake, his face mask glinting in the sun. “Hey, Sheriff,” he yelled. “I got the chains hooked. She’s ready to go.”

  “Listen up, everybody,” Driscoll called out. “I don’t want anybody touching anything else. We’re treating this as a crime scene. I’ll get on the phone to Wayne Fought. Looks like we got ourselves a TBI case.”

  He spoke on his cell phone for a minute, then sent one deputy to secure Bradley’s house and ordered another out to the road to stop anyone attempting to come in. A third deputy brought out a roll of crime scene tape and began to cordon off the area. When Driscoll appeared satisfied everything was being done to secure the scene, he walked back to where Jill and I stood.

  “Tell me more about your interest in Pierce Bradley,” he said.

  I explained about the papers found at the old Marathon Motors Works and Bradley’s failure to bring them in Monday night.

  “That’s ’cause he probably wound up in the lake here Monday night,” Driscoll said.

  He grinned at the surprised looks Jill and I gave him.

  “Pretty good detective work, huh? Actually, a fisherman reported seeing the vehicle in the water this afternoon. It triggered one of those moments of enlightenment with one of my deputies. His mother lives just up the road. She had told him about hearing cars going in and out of here late Monday night. She thought it sounded like two going in and only one coming out. He figured it was fishermen and the other one didn’t come out until after she’d gone to bed. But looks like she was right in the first place.”

  That dove-tailed with Jill’s speculation on a murderer and an accomplice. Could it have had anything to do with the Marathon papers? I decided to press for the sheriff’s take on possible explanations.

  “If it turns out to be something other than an accident, do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”

  “Oh, yeah. I could probably come up with several. I’d hate to think any of them really did it, but I wouldn’t rule anybody out.”

  Jill broke her silence. “Would his sister, Mrs. Cook, be one of them?”

  Driscoll frowned, his eyes alert beneath the brim of his white Stetson. “What do you know about her?”

  “Greg talked to her earlier today. She indicated they’d been having some trouble. She said the last she saw of him was when he stormed out of her house Monday afternoon.”

  “Interesting.” He turned to me. “How much do you know about Bradley?”

  “Very little,” I said. “Just that he was a supervisor for Allied Construction.” I watched him ease his holster.

  “No use standing around here,” he said. “Come on over and sit in my car while we wait for the TBI agent and his crew. They should be on the way.”

  As we walked over to his car, he told us about Bradley’s service as an A-10 pilot in Desert Storm. I’d had a little contact with Warthog crews during my OSI career. They were a daring lot, flying low level close air support of ground forces.

  I let Jill take the passenger seat next to the sheriff, while I lounged on the prisoner side of the divide.

  “When did he get out of the Air Force?” I asked.

  “Around ninety-two. His father had a large farm west of Hartsville. Had a big tobacco allotment, plus a sizeable herd of Black Angus. Pierce came back home and helped his dad for a few years. He bought a Piper Apache and put in a landing strip on the farm. He’s helped me out several times when we needed some air surveillance.”

  “How long has he been in the construction business?” Jill asked.

  Driscoll listened to a burst of radio traffic squawking over his portable. “I think he went with Allied Construction in the late nineties,” he said after a moment. “Pierce was planning to buy into ownership of the company. He got that double-wide in 2000 and moved off the farm.”

  I squirmed closer to the window and tugged at my collar. The sheriff had left the windows open, but despite the shade of the forest I’d have sworn a layer of hot coals had been dumped on the roof. “Any idea what the trouble was between Pierce and his sister?”

  “Their mother died shortly after he moved out. Mr. Bradley passed on earlier this year. The old man left the two kids equal shares. Pat wanted to sell the place and get the money. Her husband’s a banker. But Pierce didn’t want to sell. I don’t think he wanted to give up that airstrip. She said he could buy her out, but all his money was committed to getting a chunk of Allied Construction. I understand she threatened to go to court and force the sale.”

  “That’s probably what the argument was about at Mrs. Cook’s place Monday afternoon,” Jill said.

  The sheriff spread his hands. “Could be. Pierce was a personable guy, but he’s always had a hot temper. I had to save his ass, pardon the expression, when he got in a fight with the manager at Cumberland Farm Supplies. The man got a little too aggressive over money he claimed Pierce’s father owed. On another occasion, Pierce got in a scuffle and broke a guy’s arm after he caught him messing around his airpla
ne.”

  “Sounds like any number of people could have harbored a grudge against him,” I said.

  “Right. And there’s another possibility I hadn’t thought of until now. I can’t tell you anything about it because it concerns an ongoing investigation that involves other agencies. Could have been retaliation for some of that aerial spying I told you about.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Too many complicating factors could make it difficult to get the sheriff or the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to give much thought to our problem. Particularly since we only had a strong hunch, no solid evidence, that could tie the missing Marathon papers into Bradley’s death.

  Driscoll was a likeable guy, bordering on garrulous, as were most politically-minded sheriffs. He regaled us with several of his escapades and was well into a tale about how he’d busted a family with a meth lab in their barn when my peripheral vision caught a man walking down the trail. I saw him heading for our car. Jill and I followed Driscoll as he climbed out to greet the new arrival, a man about my height, five-ten, with a bit less around the middle than me.

  “Hi, Wayne,” the sheriff said. “You made good time.”

  “I was just finishing up some paper work in Lebanon when you called. I headed right up 231. Didn’t take long. Say you have a body in the water?”

  This was obviously Wayne Fought, the TBI agent. He looked around forty, dressed in a short sleeve sport shirt and khaki pants, a Glock 40 holstered at his belt. He had the blunted nose of a boxer and almost black eyes that showed no emotion as he gave Jill and me the once-over.

  “It’s a fellow named Pierce Bradley,” said Driscoll. “He’s pretty well known around Hartsville. The diver says he’s still in his Jeep where it landed.”

  “You said it looks like murder. What makes you think that?”

  The sheriff turned toward us. “You need to meet the McKenzies.”

  He made the introductions and I shook the agent’s hand, getting a firm grip and a wary eye in the process.

  “They’re private investigators out of Nashville,” the sheriff said. “I’ll let Mr. McKenzie tell you what they saw.”

  I briefly related our interest in Bradley and told Agent Fought what we found at the house on Carey Lane.

  His forehead furrowed as he asked in a voice that snapped, “Did you touch anything inside the house?”

  “No. I used a handkerchief on the door knob. I moved carefully across the living room and only looked at the blood stains. I’m a retired Special Agent in Charge with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. I was likely handling crime scenes while you were still in diapers.” No way to win friends, but his patronizing tone had grated.

  The look I got said it all. Of course, I could have smudged any fingerprints on the doorknob, but the chances of lifting usable prints in a situation like that are slim.

  If Fought was impressed by my professional credits, he did a good job of hiding it. He looked around the area and turned back to Sheriff Driscoll. “I knew your boys had already beaten a path down here. I hope they left us some undamaged tire tracks.”

  “I’d have secured the area from the start,” Driscoll said, “but I thought we were dealing with a simple accident.”

  Fought glanced at his watch. “Our investigators are on the way from Nashville. Probably be close to five o’clock before they get here.” He turned to Jill and me. “It’s our version of CSI. We call it a Violent Crime Response Team.”

  “You have a great crime lab,” I said. “I visited your headquarters when I did a stint as an investigator for the DA in Nashville after I retired.”

  A little flattery never hurt. This small foray seemed to put me in a little better graces. Though it warmed him up a bit, we were still far from getting admission to the inner circle.

  “I’m sure you folks have other business to attend to,” he said. “I’ll need to get a detailed statement from you, but we can do that later. You have a card?”

  I gave it to him. “We can be available whenever you need us. Look, we’ll stay out of your way, but I’d like to be here to see the man we’ve been searching for when you pull him out of the water.”

  Agent Fought leaned back against his car, folded his arms, looked me in the eye. “Okay, but it’s going to be a while. I need to get with the sheriff and his men and see what’s happened up to this point.”

  I motioned to Jill. “We’ll head on up the road and be back in a bit.”

  We walked up the trail in silence until we were out of earshot. “Where to now?” Jill asked.

  “Let’s head back up to Bradley’s house and see if any of the neighbors are at home. Somebody needs to look after that coon dog, and I’d like to know if they heard anything around there Monday evening.”

  Chapter 9

  We drove back to Carey Lane and pulled into the driveway with the fancy brick entrance. Two doors down, a sheriff’s car sat beside Bradley’s house, which had been decorated with yellow and black garlands of crime scene tape.

  “Somebody has a nice SUV up here,” Jill said.

  I swung onto the circular drive that ran in front of a large two-story brick home with white shutters. Despite being out in the boonies, some of the newer homes in the area rivaled those in Nashville’s affluent suburbs. I parked behind a Cadillac Escalade. We walked up to the front door past an artful array of pink, white and purple blossoms and rang the bell.

  A young woman in blue jeans and a tee shirt with an orange basketball and a Lady Vols logo opened the door. She looked tall enough to have been a player at some point in her life. She held the door as though trying to decide whether to invite us in. “Yes?” she said, smiling.

  I handed her a business card. “We’re Greg and Jill McKenzie from Nashville. I presume you’re acquainted with your neighbor, Pierce Bradley?”

  “Yes, of course. Has something happened to him?” Her smile dimmed. “I saw a sheriff’s car pull in over there a little while ago.”

  “We’re not sure what’s happened, but we’ve been looking for him. He has some information we need. Apparently he hasn’t been around his house since Monday night. Did you by chance hear anything going on over there that evening?”

  She shook her head. “We watched a long movie on DVD that night, then went to bed. We wouldn’t have heard anything short of a major riot.”

  “You must sleep like I do,” Jill said. “I think the house could fall around me and I wouldn’t wake up.”

  “That’s me.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “I don’t think I’ve seen Pierce in the past few days. He stopped by Saturday to ask my husband about a new radio. John’s a pilot, too.”

  Jill perked up. “Does he have his own plane?”

  “He’s a part owner with some guys from Nashville. He flies now and then with Pierce.”

  Sounded like another prospect if we needed more background on the late Mr. Bradley.

  “You might try Martha Urey next door. They’re a lot closer than we are. She looks after Pierce’s dog when he’s gone.” She stared off to her left. “The bus is back, so she should be at home. Sorry I can’t help.”

  “No problem,” I said. “But if you think of anything else, we’d appreciate a call.”

  We drove next door and pulled up beside the yellow school bus. I caught the deputy giving us the eye from his car in Bradley’s driveway. This house was a brick and frame ranch, much smaller than the one we had just visited.

  The woman who came to the door wore jeans and a yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A little older and a bit heftier than her neighbor, she had the frazzled look of someone who had just come through a trying experience. She frowned as she studied first Jill, then me.

  “Are you Jackie Varner’s folks?” She spoke in a hesitant voice.

  Thinking of the school bus, I got the picture. I smiled. “No, Mrs. Urey. We’re not related to any of your passengers. We’re private investigators from Nashville.” I handed her a card. “We wanted to ask a few questions ab
out your neighbor, Pierce Bradley.”

  Her faced relaxed, but not into a smile. “What’s going on? I was planning to go talk to that deputy. When I heard Rambo barking this morning, I went over there and he obviously hadn’t been fed. Pierce always tells me when he’s gonna be away.”

  “I think you’d better take care of the dog until it’s clear what’s going on,” I said. “We’ve been looking for Bradley to get some information for a client of ours. It seems he hasn’t been around since Monday night. We’re wondering if you might have heard anything out of the ordinary over there that evening?”

  She rubbed a hand across her cheek. “Monday night? Seems like maybe somebody was visiting Pierce that night. I don’t remember hearing any racket, though. I’m not sure when he left, either.”

  “It was a man?”

  “Sorry. Just an expression. I didn’t see who it was.”

  ‘Did you notice what kind of car they were driving?”

  “Hmm. I really didn’t pay all that much attention to it.”

  Jill nodded sympathetically. “It’s tough to recall things like that. Sometimes I’ll try to picture the scene, like the driveway in this case, and it’ll come back to me.”

  Martha Urey squinted her eyes as she looked over toward Bradley’s house. “Wasn’t a sheriff’s car for sure. Seems maybe it could have been one of them little sports cars. You know, with a rakish sweep to the front end.”

  “Do you remember the color?”

  “It was pretty dark when I saw it.”

  We thanked her for her help. I gave her the usual call us if you think of anything else routine. Occasionally a witness would recall more details later, particularly if they talked to somebody else about what they saw. We headed back to my Jeep.

  “Sounds like a Corvette,” Jill said.

  I opened the door for her and stood there a moment. “Could be, but there are any number of little sports cars with rakish front ends. And don’t forget, eyewitness accounts can be notoriously unreliable.” That was a point most people didn’t understand.