To the Death

That last one elicited a veritable salvo of completely blank stares. No Jean. No Carla. No luck. The young lady had flown the coop. Detective Segel had a photo-artist identity kit prepared by two police artists, who were guided by Jim Caborn and one of Matt Barker’s buddies. And, in truth, they came up with a pretty fair likeness of Shakira Rashood.

Segel ordered hundreds of “wanted” posters to be distributed all over the area. Hell, someone must have seen her. No one can just disappear off the face of the earth. And what I really need to know is where did she live. She must have lived somewhere. And somewhere close. And someone must have seen her.

At 7:30 P.M., he held a press conference at the Brockhurst Police Department, having tempted the broadcasters and journalists by announcing that the police were treating the death of a local man, Mr. Matt Barker, as murder.

This is not absolutely unusual when a body is found with a dagger jutting out of its chest. But the word “murder” has a shock-value ring to it, particularly when the media does not even realize there has been a death, never mind a homicide.

Detective Segel had deliberately withheld the announcement all through the day, since he did not want small afternoon newspapers running away with the story. He wanted blanket coverage, big dailies, network newscasts, wall-to-wall radio bulletins. Lights, cameras, music. Detective Segel wanted The Big Show. Because he believed that was the way to nail Miss Carla Martin. He believed someone would come forward with information about the vanishing Estuary Killer.

His judgment in the first part was excellent. The idea of a middle-class, well-to-do, Porsche-driving proprietor of a garage being stabbed to death in the parking lot of the local hotel was very appealing to those who essentially make a lavish living out of other people’s misfortunes.

And journalists drew a careful bead on the tiny township of Brockhurst. The first to arrive were the camera crews and presenters from the big 24-hour news networks, CNN and Fox. Both of them have running news programs, all day and night; and a story like this, a classic whodunnit, would keep them topical for at least two days, maybe four.

Reporters from the three main Washington newspapers, the Post, the Star, and the Journal, came down in a shared helicopter. CBS thought it worthwhile to send a full camera crew down, plus presenters, in a truck the size of the Pentagon.

NBC thought it was a good story, but was happy to rely on stringers and a local camera crew. ABC sent no one, but E-mailed a local reporter and told him to keep them posted. The newspapers from Richmond and Norfolk, both situated around fifty miles from Brockhurst, sent in reporters and photographers.

And there were about a dozen representatives from local weeklies based around the Rappahannock River and Chesapeake Bay area. And the same number of radio reporters, five of them local and five down from Washington. It was, without doubt, the biggest assembly of media personnel ever seen in Brockhurst. The whole town was talking about it, and, within a couple of hours, the name Matt Barker would be heard more often than that of the President of the United States. There’s one thing about meeting a violent death. It really gets your name out there.

Detective Joe Segel started the proceedings by announcing the fact that Mr. Matthew Barker, a well-known member of the local community for many years, had been found dead outside the Estuary Hotel this morning. He was thirty-four. A jeweled dagger was protruding from his chest. It had been driven into his heart, right up to the hilt, and death had occurred at around midnight.

He added that no one had been arrested, but that a friend of Mr. Barker’s, the barmaid at the Estuary Hotel, Miss Carla Martin, was almost certainly the last person to see him alive, and had mysteriously vanished.

There was available to the media an excellent identity-kit picture, a very close likeness of Carla, which reporters could pick up from the table at the back of the room. Before taking any questions, Detective Joe Segel said, “We are extremely interested in speaking to this lady, because we believe she may be able to assist us with our inquiries.”

Does this mean we got a murder hunt right here?

“Well, not precisely, because we really do not have any evidence whatsoever against Miss Carla Martin. But she was most certainly the last person seen speaking to him before he left the bar. And she may have seen him again in the parking lot of the hotel when she left. Mr. Barker’s body was found at the street end of the parking lot.”

How long after he left did Carla exit the bar?