The officer walked back inside and questioned the manager. None of the waitresses there were on duty the previous night, so he said he would be back later to interview the night shift.
The officer led Dex to a table in the back of the restaurant. “Now tell me again exactly what your relationship is with the two people who are missing?”
“The man, Tom ‘Hoagie’ Hogan, is my best friend, and the woman he was with, Marie Murphy, is my girlfriend.”
“And why was your best friend out with your girlfriend?”
“I know how that must sound, but we all grew up together in River City, and there’s no love triangle here. I was out of town on business and was supposed to be back in time to take Marie out to dinner on Friday night. When I realized I couldn’t get back until Saturday, I called Hoagie and asked him to take her to dinner. We’ve all been close friends since we were in elementary school.”
The cop still seemed curious, but he didn’t pursue it. They exchanged business cards and agreed to contact each other if there were any further developments.
Dex checked Marie’s apartment again, but everything was just as he had left it. He left a note asking her to call him at Gigi’s, but he had already decided that it was probably hopeless.
Dex was terrified, but there was nothing else he could do. He went to see Gigi because he knew she would be frantic, and he needed to talk to someone just to get his own mind around what had happened.
“Gigi, I found Hoagie’s car at the restaurant where they went last night, but no one has seen them since they left. I called the police and they’re investigating, but they don’t have a lot to go on.”
“Do you think they’ve been kidnapped? Why would anyone do that? They’re not rich, so they couldn’t be after a reward.”
“I don’t know. It could just be a random act, but what’s worrying me is that it could be linked to whoever slashed my tires and nailed the possum to the tree.”
“But those just seemed like pranks compared to kidnapping.”
“Yeah, but the notes didn’t sound like pranks. They were pretty threatening, and whoever wrote them could be trying to get back at me by hurting Marie and Hoagie.”
“Do you know of anyone who was mad at either of them?”
“Gigi, you know Hoagie. He didn’t have an enemy in the world. Those two guys at the bank and nursing home that Marie exposed probably hate her, but I don’t know if professional people would get involved in something like this. And before we started dating, she dated a doctor in Atlanta who threatened her when she dumped him, but he’s working in Birmingham now.”
“Dex, everybody has their feelings hurt and gets mad when someone breaks up with them. A doctor isn’t going to do anything this dumb.”
“Gigi, I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. I know I ought to be doing something, but I don’t have any idea what to do. I’ve got a million questions but no—” Dex stopped for a minute and then said, “Oh no, Gigi, I forgot to tell the investigating officer about any of these incidents. I was excited at the time, but the officer may not accept that excuse.”
He was right. When Dex called and told him, it was obvious that the officer was upset and didn’t completely buy his story about forgetting to mention any of the incidents. Dex really couldn’t blame him. Excitement or panic was a stupid excuse for omitting what was obviously pertinent information.
Dex dreaded calling Hoagie’s mother, but he knew he had to do it. He would prefer to see her in person, but he was afraid to leave the phone in case Marie or the police called. He hated the feeling of being paralyzed with fear. He had always been proactive and never just waited for things to happen. It was driving him crazy because he couldn’t figure out how to speed up the process.
When she answered the phone, Dex could tell Hoagie’s mother was crying.
“Mrs. Hogan, I don’t have much information, but I found Hoagie’s car at the Canyon Grill. The manager told me that he and Marie were there last night, but no one saw them after they left the restaurant. I called the county police, and they’re investigating.”
“Why would his car still be there, Dex?”
“I don’t know. There may be some logical explanation, but we’ve got to remain positive. I’ll keep you posted on any news I hear.”
“Please pray for them, Dex.”
“I started praying as soon as I found out they were missing.”
He gave her the name and phone number of the officer and tried to reassure her, but Dex knew his words sounded hollow. How could he reassure her when he was so terrified himself?
Chapter 23
During the long, lonely hours in the cabin, Marie became concerned about her mental state. She started talking to herself, and her mind was playing tricks on her. Her paranoia was rampant; she jumped at all the normal forest sounds from outside the cabin. Every time she dozed off, she would have a frightening nightmare that would jolt her awake. She couldn’t sleep because of the stifling heat, humidity, and continuing nightmares. There was no air circulation in the small windowless cabin. Her headache had eased up some, but the iron chain had rubbed her ankle raw, and it was painful when she moved it.
Marie delayed as long as physically possible but was finally forced to start using the makeshift toilet. The experience was disgusting, and only slightly less demeaning than the alternative. Her clothes were filthy and caked with dried blood.
Marie was always personally well groomed, even when she was alone, but the combination of filthy clothes, perspiration, and dried blood created a putrid body odor that thoroughly repulsed her. Trying to bathe using water in the bucket was cumbersome and ineffective. If her personal body odor and the pungent musty odors in the cabin were not enough to disgust her, there were spiders crawling everywhere.
After another clumsy attempt to bathe herself, Marie dragged her chain back across the floor and stretched out on the cot. The excessive blood loss from her head injury made her weak, and the effort of dragging the heavy chain back and forth from the cot to the toilet or washbasin completely exhausted her.
She continually looked for ways to free herself, but without tools she had no options. The chain was too thick to be broken by being stressed or twisted. Her ankle had started oozing blood. It was so sore that she started bending at her waist when she moved so she could pull the chain with her hand.
Marie was dozing on the cot when she heard someone walking outside the cabin.
“Hey, out there. Can you help me? I need help to get out of here.”
She called out repeatedly but got no response even though she could still hear movement. Then she heard metal being rattled near the small pet door. When it was pushed open, a shaft of daylight poured through the small opening, but whoever was out there still wouldn’t respond to her pleas for help. Marie got down on her knees to peer out the opening but couldn’t see anyone. Whoever was there was apparently standing close to the wall to prevent being seen.
A can of lantern fuel and matches was pushed through the opening. That was followed by a gallon jug of water and a sack with the ubiquitous McDonald’s golden arches on it.
“What do you expect to accomplish with this silly game? Where am I? What have you done with Hoagie?”
Marie still received no response and finally lost her patience. Although she was not a profane person, she certainly sounded like one when she screamed at her abductor.
“You gutless bastard, if I could get my hands on you I’d show you what it’s like to be hit in the head and locked up in this hellhole.” She continued her tirade. “If you’ll open the door, you damn coward, I’ll claw your eyes out.”
Marie was mad enough to kill, and she would have if she had had the means with which to accomplish it. She was suffering pain and humiliation, and the lack of a response was infuriating. The small door closed, she heard the lock being
rattled, and she heard footsteps fading away. She continued yelling long after there was any sound of movement outside the cabin.
Marie was once again alone with only the dim light from the flickering oil lantern. The bold anger that had allowed her to scream at her abductor soon gave way to fear and desperation. Although she was starving, she ignored the McDonald’s sack and lay back on the cot. The realization that her abductor intended to keep her in the cabin indefinitely finally summoned the tears, and she cried herself to sleep.
Marie didn’t know how long she slept. She had no way to keep time. The only way she could tell the difference between night and day was by a little light seeping through a couple of cracks in the chinking between the logs.
She racked her brain trying to remember exactly what had happened at the restaurant. She remembered everything about her dinner with Hoagie and being surprised when they realized that all the other customers were gone. She also remembered starting to walk across the restaurant parking lot. But from then until she woke up in the cabin, her memory was blank, except for some slight recollection of being carried over someone’s shoulder.
Marie was worried about Hoagie. He wasn’t a fighter, but he would have never let anyone take her without doing everything he could to prevent it. If Hoagie had also been abducted, why wasn’t he in the cabin with her? She was trying to avoid thinking about her greatest fear. He was a big teddy bear who never hurt anyone, and she couldn’t bear the thought of him being seriously injured.
Dex was also never far from her mind. He would be home from his trip by now and would have called her. What would he do when he couldn’t find her? She didn’t doubt that once he realized something was wrong he would do everything possible to locate her, but what could he do?
He had a key to her apartment, but there wasn’t anything there to let him know what had happened. She hadn’t talked to him after Hoagie called to invite her to dinner, so he wouldn’t know that she had been with Hoagie.
Marie’s family was in Atlanta, so no one but Dex would miss her until she didn’t show up at the office on Monday morning. Dex was her only hope, but what could he do? He would surely go to the police, but without any information they wouldn’t be able to do anything. They probably wouldn’t even start an investigation for several days.
Marie ran all of these details over and over in her mind, but she couldn’t come up with anything that was reassuring. She was at the mercy of her abductor, and her only hope was to figure out some way to escape. And escape didn’t seem possible since she was chained inside a windowless cabin, didn’t know where she was, and had no tools or weapons with which to aid her escape.
Every time Marie drifted off to sleep, the dreadful heat and humidity forced her awake. She couldn’t understand why she was perspiring so much, because so far she had not forced herself to drink water from the bucket. She was afraid of becoming dehydrated, but the thought of drinking from the bucket was gross and disgusting. She had no idea where her abductor had gotten the water. She decided to continue to wait until she had no choice before she held her nose and drank from the bucket.
Time was crawling, and the silence inside the cabin was deafening. She thought about the old philosophical question of whether or not a tree falling in the woods would make a noise even if no one was there to hear it. She would love to hear a tree fall; she would love to hear any type of identifiable noise.
Marie was finally so ravenously hungry that she opened the McDonald’s sack and found three cold burgers. She reluctantly unwrapped one of them and bit into it. It was awful, but since she needed the sustenance, she forced herself to eat the entire sandwich. Trying to choke down the dry hamburger finally forced Marie to put her face in the water bucket and drink. She gagged and almost lost what she had just eaten.
It was dark outside and eerily quiet when Marie heard the first mournful sound. It sent chills up her back. She was frightened until she recognized the sound she had heard so many times in old Western movies. She assumed she was still in Tennessee, but she had never heard of coyotes in Tennessee. The howling coyotes made her realize once again that she really didn’t know where she was being held captive. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, and therefore, she didn’t know whether she had been moved to some distant state or was still near River City.
Chapter 24
The fisherman had launched his bass boat before sunrise. He was alone and enjoying the early morning calm. Somewhere in the distance a rooster was noisily announcing the beginning of a new day, but as the boat eased along, the only nearby sounds were the soft hum of the trolling motor and the buzzing of insects just wakening to the new day.
As the first light filtered through the trees, a deer bounded unseen up the steep bank from his watering spot, and every so often a squirrel shook the morning dew from a tree as it scrambled for breakfast a hundred feet overhead.
When the fisherman’s line grew taut, he leaned back and jerked to set the hook. The instant exhilaration died when nothing pulled back. He mumbled a curse because he figured his lure was caught on another underwater stump. When he got closer he saw that it was tangled up in a large mass of debris floating on the surface. He leaned over the boat’s gunwale to free the line, and his heart momentarily stopped. This debris had once been alive.
He tried to collect his senses and figure out what to do, but he knew he shouldn’t touch the body. He fumbled for his cell phone and nervously dialed 9-1-1.
“I just discovered a dead body floating in the river. I need to report this to the police.”
“Sir, tell me where you’re located?”
“I’m in a boat on the river about four miles downstream from Running Water Marina.”
“Hold on, sir. I’m going to connect you directly to the county police office.”
The fisherman repeated the information to the dispatcher at the station.
“Sir, do not move the body. Where can you meet one of our deputies?”
“The best place is at Running Water Marina. I can be there in about ten minutes.”
He cranked the bass boat’s powerful outboard motor and got to the marina about fifteen minutes before the sheriff’s deputy arrived.
“Are you the one who discovered the body?”
“Yes, it’s about four miles down the river.”
“Our marine unit will be here in a few minutes, but can we get to the body from the bank?”
“Not without getting wet. It’s floating about twenty yards from the bank.”
When the marine unit arrived and launched their boat, the fisherman led them down the river to the body. They took photos and then pulled the body into their boat. The fisherman followed them back to the marina.
Several emergency vehicles had arrived, and there seemed to be blue lights flashing everywhere. The lights had caused a crowd to congregate in the marina’s parking lot. The county coroner was there, and an ambulance was standing by. The coroner examined the body and made the official death pronouncement. He also preliminarily identified the body by the contents of the wallet.
When Hoagie’s mother saw the two policemen on her front porch, she knew by their sad expressions that Hoagie would not be coming home. She collapsed when the policeman confirmed what she had already surmised. The officer caught her as she fell and carried her into the house, and the second policeman went next door to ask a neighbor to stay with her.
Gigi was concerned about Dex and pleaded with him to come over for lunch. She knew how worried he was even though he was putting up a brave front for her. They were sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich, and the television was playing in the background. Suddenly the notice of a special bulletin caught their attention. The reporter announced that a body had been discovered floating in the river. Before waiting for additional information, Dex jumped up so fast he overturned his chair and was out the front door be
fore Gigi could get up from the table. An ominous sense of doom swept over him.
He didn’t want to think that the body could be Marie’s or Hoagie’s, but he had to find out. Without making a conscious decision to go there, he pulled up in front of the city police station. He double parked, ran up the station steps, and stopped at the window in front of the desk sergeant.
“My best friend and girlfriend are missing, and a special bulletin on television said that a body was found in the river.”
“We had a report about the body being discovered, but it was in the county so it’s not our jurisdiction.”
“Can you get an identity from the county?”
“Not unless the next of kin have already been notified.”
“Please call and see what you can find out. I’m desperate.”
The sergeant hesitated but finally pointed across the lobby and said, “Have a seat over there. I’ll see what I can find out.”
From his seat across the lobby Dex could see the sergeant on the phone, but he could not hear the conversation. When he hung up, the sergeant motioned for Dex to come back to the window.
“Mr. Martin, the preliminary indication is that the body was that of Tom Hogan. Is he the friend you were concerned about?”
Dex couldn’t speak for a moment so he just nodded. When he somewhat regained his composure, he asked, “Was there only one body found?”
“Yes, but you really need to go to the county sheriff’s office to get any further information. Detective Lester Morgan is handling the case. I know Morgan. He’s probably the best detective in the sheriff’s department. Just ask for him when you get there.”
Dex staggered to his car in a daze, but he didn’t get over a block away before he had to pull over to the side of the road because he couldn’t see. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, but he had just lost his best friend and was terrified that Marie might have met the same fate. After a few minutes, he wiped his eyes and started his car again. He drove directly to the sheriff’s office and was directed to Detective Morgan.
Appalachian Intrigue Page 12
