To the Death

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?

“We believe twenty minutes maximum.”

Was she in love with him? You know, were they going out together?

“So far the answer to that is a very definite no. According to his close friends, Mr. Barker had asked her out, but she always refused.”

Where did Carla live? In the hotel?

“Good question. She did not live in the hotel, and it appears that she removed her identity card from the manager’s file. We thus have absolutely no idea where she lived. But it must have been quite near. She came to work every day, right?”

When did she quit her job?

“She never did. She just failed to show up today. She was due to start at 5 P.M. What is it now? Eight o’clock? And she’s never been late before. Don’t hold your breath.”

Pretty suspicious, right?

“Pretty suspicious,” agreed Joe Segel. “But that does not mean she murdered him.”

A lot of people wouldn’t agree with that. This is a murder hunt, sir. You must know that.

“No, it’s not. She may have just fled because of something she saw out there in the parking lot and did not wish to get involved, for whatever reason. And even if she did kill him, it may have been self-defense. We don’t know that he didn’t attack her. He was a big man, and his fly was undone.”

Jesus Christ, Joe. You mean the whole world could see his pecker?

“Well, only the members of the world who happened to be walking past the western end of the Estuary Hotel parking lot, right after first light today.”

You think he had tried to sexually assault Carla?

“Well, I wouldn’t rule it out. But this entire case rests on us finding Carla Martin. And I want you to help us get that done.”

A few members of the press corps nodded their assent and asked for more details about Matt Barker’s home and relatives. A couple of them wanted to know a lot more about the sex side of the case. And Joe told them he would be happy to see members of the media privately in his office any time during the next hour.

He knew the value of the publicity the case would receive from this. And he knew the value of that kind of exposure. Not Matt’s kind. And he was not about to discuss the Barker Pecker again, not in front of a mixed audience.

As it happened, there were enough journalists asking questions to keep Detective Segel busy for another hour and a half, at which point he called an end to the evening’s proceedings. He turned out his office light, locked the door, and walked briskly up the road to the Estuary Hotel for a nightcap, as he often did.

But when he opened the front door, the journalists were packed in there, most of them staying, all of them trying to obtain interviews from locals, as they prepared to hit the world with:

VIRGINIA TOWN IN SHOCK AT COLD-BLOODED MURDER

State Police Launch Dragnet in Hunt for Mystery Woman

Detective Joe Segel retreated toward home. He had answered quite enough questions for one day. And with a major media outburst scheduled in the next few hours, he needed to be up early.

Nonetheless, Joe walked rather disconsolately home, knowing he would be greeted by an equally disconsolate wife, Joanne, who would tell him she could hardly remember what he looked like, the way she always did when he was involved in a major case.

Joe, who was forty-six, had married late in life, and Joanne, who was much younger, in her late twenties, was already showing signs of exasperation as the wife of a police officer. She had given up preparing a late dinner long ago.

And there would be questions about this Mystery Woman, he knew that. Which was why he had stopped off for a drink at the Estuary. To get away from it all, just for an hour. To tell the truth, Joe was pretty fed up with the Mystery Woman himself. Where the hell was she? Still, he had a good chance of some answers tomorrow.

At the time, the Mystery Woman was dead to the world, sound asleep in a luxury room, four thousand miles away, in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. She was beyond the dragnet, perhaps beyond the law, exactly the way she had planned it. The Virginia police did not even know her name.

The late-night news bulletins on American television were full of it. The story had “more legs” than anyone realized, especially the bit about the Barker Pecker. By 10:30 P.M. on the East Coast, Detective Joe Segel’s name was a household word, more or less.

The Fox Channel led with it. The newscaster, filmed standing outside the Estuary Hotel, announced: “This was the sex attack that went violently wrong. Right here in this rather sleepy little town, way down on the Rappahannock River, a highly regarded local businessman was found dead this morning with a jeweled dagger jutting from his chest.

“He was in a state of disarray, and police believe, judging by his condition, he had been involved in some kind of sexual assault on another person.

“He was found in the parking lot of the Estuary Hotel in the town of Brockhurst, Virginia, and police say he was killed around midnight. Right now there is only one suspect, the beautiful barmaid from the hotel, Carla Martin.

“The dead man, Mr. Matt Barker, owner of a local garage, had been drinking there during the evening, and was believed to have asked Miss Martin out, but she refused. The two left the bar twenty minutes apart, and Miss Martin, say police, has vanished, leaving a perfectly ordinary little American country town in a state of shock.”

At this point, the newscast switched to interviews, showing footage of the detective in charge of the crime, Joe Segel, stressing the importance of finding Miss Martin, who, he said, had taken a great deal of trouble in