Appalachian Intrigue

by Archie Meyers

  Marie usually went to the gym three times a week, but her confinement kept her from doing any exercise and she felt miserable. She finally discovered she could do sit-ups without hurting her ankle. She stopped counting, but she figured she was doing a thousand a day; it helped to pass the time and hopefully get some health benefit.

  Each day was a repetition of the previous one. There was no relief from the agonizing boredom of her nonexistence. She recited every poem and piece of prose she had ever learned in school. Then she started at her toes and moved up her body trying to remember the name of each bone she had memorized in her nursing school anatomy classes. When she got to the skull, she started back down her body naming muscle groups, veins, and arteries. Then she started all over again. She realized that she had to keep her mind active so that she could quickly react if she ever got the chance to escape.

  Marie continued to worry about Hoagie. She was afraid he might have been seriously injured or worse when she was abducted. She assumed Dex was her only hope for rescue. He wouldn’t let the police rest until they had exhausted every possible effort to locate her. She didn’t doubt that he was thinking as much about her as she was about him and that he would never give up. There was nothing she could do but sit and hope she was found before she was killed by her captor, lost her mind, or died of boredom.

  Chapter 29

  To keep the investigation on the front burner, Dex pestered Morgan relentlessly. His repeated calls were beginning to get under Morgan’s skin. He had told Dex several times that he wasn’t helping by taking up so much of his time, but the calls continued unabated.

  Dex knew his name was still on the suspect list, but he didn’t think Morgan actually though he was involved. He had developed a level of respect and an arm’s-length rapport with the detective. He had discovered that despite his crotchety exterior, Morgan was a very good cop who cared for people and took his work seriously. He pursued leads like a cat stalking a mouse; there just weren’t many leads to follow on this case.

  Morgan would have been furious if he had known that Dex was thinking about starting an investigation of his own, and if he caught him doing it, he would probably arrest him for interfering with an official investigation. He would eventually find out and there would no doubt be hell to pay when he did, but Dex would worry about that later.

  Dex started by talking to every waitress at the restaurant and even some of the customers whom the waitresses remembered were in the restaurant that night. Prior to the abduction, none of the waitresses had known Hoagie, and the only reason they remembered seeing him was because they had wondered how the chubby, red-headed guy had gotten a date with such an attractive woman. No one had seen what had happened in the parking lot.

  Dex’s friend, the restaurant manager, pulled copies of credit card receipts from that night and read off the names. None of them were familiar to Dex, and for legal reasons, the manager would not give him copies of the receipts. He was told that Morgan had also reviewed the receipts, and he assumed that the detective had followed up with all the customers.

  After visiting the restaurant, Dex drove to Atlanta and spent several hours with Marie’s parents. He asked them to walk him through everything they could remember about high-school or nursing-school friends who might have had a disagreement with her. They also talked about the friends and contacts she had made in her business, but Dr. Bishop was the only one they were aware of who had ever had a serious disagreement with her.

  Marie’s mother took Dex up to Marie’s old room. He suggested they look through her high-school annuals to see if it might prompt her mother to remember a long-forgotten instance. They also looked through a large scrapbook Marie had kept during her high-school years. Dex was impressed but not surprised with her prowess on the basketball court. There were also copies of a lot of articles she had written for the school paper, but there was nothing in the room that helped with the investigation.

  After reviewing Marie’s life, from high school up to the present time, they were still able to come up with only one person who might want to harm her. Mrs. Murphy had never met Bishop, but Marie had told her while they were still dating that it wasn’t a serious relationship. She did not tell her mother about Bishop’s threat until much later and then only when she was asked about what had happened to the young doctor.

  Marie’s father called the Atlanta office of RN4U, told them Dex was on his way there, and asked them to cooperate with him. Dex had never met any of the nurses, but they all knew about his relationship with Marie. The head nurse reviewed the firm’s clients with him, and he also talked individually with each nurse, either in person or by phone. There was nothing in the records or the interviews that shed any light on why Marie was abducted.

  The only other person he wanted to interview in Atlanta was Harvey Blake, the trust officer at Proudland. Marie’s father told him Blake had been her connection to the bank in River City. He called Blake and was invited to come to the office. Blake told him the story of how they had decided to utilize RN4U and how he had encouraged Marie to open an office in River City. He also repeated the story about Marie discovering the fraud there and confirmed that both Norton and McPherson were furious with her after her discovery of their fraudulent scheme. He was highly complementary of her and the job she had done. What Blake said matched what Marie had already told him. Dex, after his admittedly amateur investigation, had the same suspects as Morgan with one notable exception: he wasn’t on the list.

  From Morgan’s perspective there were four possible suspects: a bank officer, a nursing home manager, a physician, and a boyfriend. He couldn’t have imagined a more eclectic group of possible felons. Of course, there was always the possibility that the perpetrator was none of the above.

  Back in River City, Dex contacted one of his fellow suspects by showing up unannounced at Norton’s home. He got a terse response to his first question. Norton said, “I’m represented by counsel; any information will have to come from my lawyer.” Dex later got the same response from McPherson.

  Dex knew the lawyers weren’t going to tell him anything, so he didn’t even bother trying to contact them. After his earlier altercation with Bishop, Dex didn’t think it would be a good idea to contact him. He had now reached the same dead ends Morgan had encountered, and he had no idea what to do next.

  Dex wasn’t going to give up, but he needed to sit back and try to make some sense out of what he had learned. One thing he had learned was that it was a lot easier to criticize the police than emulate them. Logic should dictate that he stay out of the way and let Morgan do his job, but the detective’s interest and his were not parallel. Morgan wasn’t in love with Marie.

  Chapter 30

  The arraignment of Norton and McPherson had been a media event in River City. The people were initially shocked and embarrassed that anyone in their town would defraud the area’s sick and elderly; then they got angry. Sordid schemes like this just didn’t happen in their town. When network television picked up the story, the citizens were ready for a public lynching.

  The two men were demonized in the press and on television, and Marie, who had uncovered the elaborate scheme, was portrayed as a hero of the elderly and oppressed. To properly set up the story, the media had to explain why a nurse was doing the audit that uncovered the fraud. This included discussing the relationship between the bank and RN4U. The exposure was extremely beneficial for both organizations. Before her abduction, Marie was busier than she had ever been.

  The criminal trial was not scheduled to begin for several months, and in the interim between the indictments and when Marie was abducted, the national media quickly lost interest and the area newspapers soon relegated the story to the back pages. But when Marie was abducted and her companion was murdered, the story immediately became an intriguing mystery. It was picked up and followed by the wire services and was a topic of conversation around office water fount
ains across the country.

  The story might have been buried or used as back-page filler if it had happened in a large metropolitan area, but since it was taking place deep in the storied mountains of southeast Tennessee, it created a media carnival. Add an all-American quarterback in the mix, and the felons became bit players in a soap opera featuring Marie and Dex.

  Morgan wasn’t really interested in the fraud case; his forte was homicide. After the fraud arraignment, he tried to arrange interviews with Norton and McPherson, but their lawyers immediately shut him down. Both men claimed, through their lawyers, to know nothing about the murder or abduction. The assistant district attorney handling the fraud investigation discussed his case with Morgan, but it didn’t shed any new light on the homicide case.

  Morgan began to develop profiles on Norton and McPherson. If either or both of them were involved in the abduction and murder, Morgan thought there should be something in their background to indicate a tendency for violence. Norton was from Asheville, North Carolina, and McPherson was from Norfolk, Virginia. He wondered how they had come together to plan the fraud scheme and if there might be some connection in their background. His question was answered when he discovered they had been fraternity brothers at North Carolina State in Raleigh.

  Morgan knew that with the tight budget under which his department was working he could never get approval for trips to Asheville and Norfolk. Instead he used the Internet and telephone, as he had with Dr. Bishop, to profile the men. He discovered that although they did not graduate in the same year, they were in school together for three years and in the same fraternity. McPherson graduated first with a degree in sociology. Norton graduated the following year with a finance degree. In River City both men had been working in careers that were related to their degrees.

  Norton’s first job was at a bank in Charlotte, where he worked for a year before accepting the job in River City. McPherson’s first job was in the personnel department of a nursing home management company based in Norfolk. There was no indication that the two men had any contact with each other in the years since leaving college until McPherson turned up in River City two years ago as the manager of Meadowview Nursing Home.

  The past connection between the two men had to somehow be material, and that made Morgan want to explore their backgrounds in more detail. The Raleigh police had no arrest information on either of them while they were at North Carolina State.

  The Asheville police only had Norton on record for a couple of minor traffic violations as a teenager. He spoke to the principal and guidance counselor at Norton’s high school and learned that he had been a good student but prone to mischief. The guidance counselor remembered that Norton had led a gang of pranksters that had used a thirty-foot extension ladder to drop used tires down over the school flagpole. He laughed when he described how the tires were already stacked nine feet high when the prank was discovered by school officials. All of his friends ran, but Norton was trapped at the top of the ladder. The school had agreed not to press charges after his parents paid to have someone use a chain saw to remove the tires.

  There was nothing in the police or school records to indicate any homicidal tendencies. Of course, there was also nothing to indicate that he would later be involved in bank fraud.

  Morgan’s next call was to the Norfolk police station, and this one proved more interesting. McPherson had once been charged with assault, but the charge was later dismissed because the victim wouldn’t press charges. An assault charge was the type of thing that Morgan needed to start his investigative juices flowing.

  According to the records, Wanda Langley, the woman who had initially made and later dropped the charge, had been eighteen at the time and alleged that McPherson had struck her repeatedly with his fist during an argument. Morgan used a people search site on the Internet and found the telephone number for a W. Langley listed in Norfolk. When he dialed the number, a woman answered.

  “Are you Wanda Langley?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Ms. Langley, my name is Lester Morgan. I’m a detective, and I need to ask you some questions.”

  “What’s he done this time? You know we’re divorced now, and I don’t know anything about him.”

  “I’m not sure I understand who you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about Maynard, my good-for-nothing ex-husband. You people should know all about him; you’ve arrested him enough times.”

  “Ms. Langley, I’m not calling about your ex-husband. Do you know a man named Brian McPherson?”

  “Hey, I told the police years ago that I didn’t want to press charges against him. I haven’t seen him in years, so why are you bringing this up again?”

  “I’m not with the Norfolk police. I’m calling from Tennessee, and I’m investigating a case involving McPherson. Your name has come up in reference to an assault charge you made against him.”

  “I don’t know how I could help you, and I don’t want to get involved in anything to do with him.”

  “Look I can easily get a subpoena, drag you into court, and compel you to testify, but you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you will just cooperate by answering a few questions. All I need to know is exactly what happened between you and McPherson and if there are any similarities between what happened to you and the incident I’m investigating.”

  “I don’t want to go to court. If I talk to you now, will you promise not to make me?”

  “I can’t answer that until I hear what you have to say, but I promise you that if you don’t talk to me now, you will end up in court.”

  Morgan was bluffing, but he doubted that she would think it was a bluff. She only hesitated for a minute before she started to tell the story.

  “I was very poor and extremely shy in school. I never felt like I fit in with the other girls because they had so much more than me. Brian was the first boy who ever took an interest in me. He was a senior and I was a sophomore, and he had a car and money. We dated for several months and became very close.”

  Morgan assumed that “very close” was code for sleeping together, but he didn’t interrupt her.

  “When he graduated that spring, we continued to date until he went away to school in Raleigh and then I didn’t see him again for a whole year. I dropped out of school and married Maynard. He was five years older, and the marriage was crap from the beginning. You sure you want to hear all this?”

  “What I need to know is what happened when you charged McPherson with assault, but you can tell me the story any way you wish.”

  “Well, after we were married, I found out that Maynard was still seeing other girls. I had been thinking about divorcing him, and Brian came home from college and called me. I told him up front that I was married, but he said he just wanted to have lunch and catch up because we hadn’t seen each other in so long.”

  Morgan was getting a little bored with the soap opera and was hoping that she would get to the assault before he had to start prompting her. For a woman who had been reluctant to talk, she sure was wound up now.

  “Although I agreed to meet him for lunch, I was afraid and excited at the same time. Brian was my first love, and compared to Maynard, he seemed so sophisticated after being away at college that it confused me. He asked if he could take me home and then before I knew what was happening he had me in bed.”

  “You mean he raped you?”

  “No, Maynard wasn’t paying any attention to me and I needed someone to love me, so I didn’t tell him to stop. He left about an hour before Maynard came home, but he called again the next day. It went on for two weeks. He told me he loved me and even hinted that we might get married after he graduated.”

  While she was telling her story, Morgan stopped taking notes and was actually feeling sorry for this naïve, love-starved girl that McPherson had so easily seduced.

 
; Langley continued her story. “After Brian said he loved me, I was getting ready to tell Maynard I wanted a divorce, but then Brian went a week without calling me. I needed that week to come to my senses. He was just playing around with me before he went back to school. When he finally called, I told him that our summer fling was over and asked him not to call me again.”

  “Ms. Langley, you haven’t said anything about an assault.”

  “Damn it, I ain’t finished. I’m getting there. An hour later he knocked on my door and forced his way into the apartment. He was boiling mad and screaming at me. I tried to run, but he grabbed my arm and started hitting me with his fist. I finally got a good knee into his crotch, and while he was on the floor moaning and gagging, I ran outside and hid behind a dumpster in the parking lot. A few minutes later he staggered out and drove away. I ain’t seen him since.”

  “So that’s when you reported it to the police, but why did you later refuse to press charges?”

  “I didn’t want the neighbors or Maynard to find out how stupid I had been to get involved in this mess. Maynard was drunk as usual when he came home that night, and I explained the bruises on my face by telling him I had fallen down the steps. We stayed together for several more months before I finally divorced him, and I ain’t wanted a man since.”

  Morgan thanked her for her help and was ready to end the phone call when she asked him about McPherson’s problems in Tennessee. He told her it was an ongoing investigation that he couldn’t discuss. He was now even more concerned about what might have happened to Marie Murphy. McPherson’s former girlfriend had convinced him that he had a volatile temper and would not hesitate to attack a woman.