Chapter 16

I decided that I needed publicity in the Atlanta area if I was going to get a range of clients. I knew that the FBI would continue to call on me occasionally for help with cases, but I would need civilian clients if I wanted to keep busy. Therefore, I asked Agent Jones to make sure that my name was mentioned in connection with any publicity on the "moon killer" case. As a result, I got some splash in regional newspapers and the New York Times, as well as mention in a number of radio news programs. I was particularly pleased by a mention from Howard K. Smith, one of my favorite reporters.

This publicity did get me come calls, but they all turned out to be crank calls from nuts who wanted help in finding aliens or Atlantis, etc. Fortunately, Alice was able to screen out all these calls by using her ESP.

Finally, I got a call that looked interesting: a woman called to say that her husband had disappeared three months ago and she was frantically trying to find him. She wanted him back and was willing to pay any reasonable fee to get him. We had nothing else going on and Alice was getting bored with her inactivity, so I agreed to take the case.

Alice made an appointment for her to come into the office the next afternoon and she showed up on time. I knew how the movies and radio dramas have the mysterious young wife desperately searching for her husband be blond, beautiful, and dumb; well scratch that one off your list. Mrs. April Hawthorn was short, skinny as a rail, had black hair, and appeared to have a sky-high IQ.

She had last seen her husband about three months ago as he left to play golf at one of the poshest golf courses in the Atlanta area. He was a real estate developer and was going to play golf with a client. He was due back that evening, scheduled to have dinner and attend a play with some city officials and their wives. He never showed up.

Mrs. Hawthorn had filed a missing-persons report with the police the next day and numerous city officials, including the mayor, had made life a living hell for the police for the next few weeks. But, when nothing was found, despite the best efforts of the police, the search faltered to a halt. She had tried to get the FBI to help, but there were no federal laws violated, so they could do nothing. Finally, in desperation, she had come to me.

She agreed to my fee of $150 per day, plus expenses, so I figured she was sincere. I did a mind search in depth and found that she was telling what she believed to be the absolute truth. I agreed to take the case, but warned her that the trail was so cold that I might not be able to do anything. She nodded agreement, thanked me, and left for home.

Alice had been listening in with mind-speak at my request, and came into my office after Mrs. Hawthorn had left. We talked about the case for a few minutes and she suggested that we bring in Brenda as she might enjoy working on another case with us. I jumped to Brenda and asked if she was interested; she was and joined us in the EU house where we could be more comfortable. We wouldn't miss anything in Atlanta since we would jump back in time to when we left once our meeting was over.

I had Brenda do a mind scan of me to bring her up to date on the case and then we discussed it over coffee. None of us could come up with any brilliant insights—we simply did not have enough information, yet. It looked like we would have to start out slogging our way through possible witnesses until we found somebody who had seen Mr. Hawthorn when he disappeared. This was going to be time consuming and aggravating, but what else could we do?

Then it dawned on me! We didn't have to do all of that! All we had to do was send a POV back to follow Mr. Hawthorn on the day he disappeared. That way, we would have no doubt of the who and how, and maybe the why, of the crime. Furthermore, we could work in relays from the comfort of our living room; what more could a poor, downtrodden group of investigators ask for?

The word we had was that Hawthorn showed up and played his round of golf before he disappeared. To be on the safe side, we decided to follow the four on their round of 18 holes in case something important was said during that time. It turned out to be quite a parade of people in that "foursome;" besides the four players, there were three men who had to be bodyguards, judging from their actions during the round. Interestingly, there were no caddies! This suggested that there was to be some conversation which they wanted to keep private.

There was the usual banter during the first three holes, but then the conversation turned serious. It seemed that Hawthorn planned to build some apartments for low-income (aka colored) renters in a section of Atlanta which was "controlled" by organized crime. The crime lords would allow Hawthorn to build his apartments, but he had to pay a percentage of the gross to them as a "tax" for doing business in their area. Otherwise, the plan was canceled on the order of the national crime syndicate.

Hawthorn appeared to mull over this threat for a couple of holes; we could tell that he had stopped concentrating on golf by the way his score skyrocketed. There was no need to read his mind to see his determination mount to resist the pressure from the criminals. He decided to play along and asked how much this "tax" would be. He nearly fainted when the rate was set at 50%; there was no way he could make operating expenses if he had to pay out that much! He was sure that this was just a starting point for discussion and the criminals didn't really expect him to agree to such a ridiculously exorbitant figure. However, he also knew that, no matter what figure he agreed to, the criminals would drive him out and take over completely, once the apartments were finished and occupied.

By the time the round was finished, Hawthorn had talked the criminals down to 33%, but he didn't really care, since he planned to go to the police and FBI as soon as he could get away from the criminals. However, Hawthorn must have said something, we didn't catch what it was, to let the criminals know that he was just leading them on. They went through the locker room and showered, changed clothes, and went to the parking lot. The group steered Hawthorn to the crooks' car and one of the bodyguards jabbed him in the butt with a hypodermic. Whatever it was, it worked fast, because Hawthorn was dead before he was pushed into the car.

We were caught completely by surprise by this maneuver; none of us had caught any thought of killing Hawthorn at this point. The crooks seemed equally surprised; their intention had been merely to sedate Hawthorn while they took him to a place where he could be "persuaded" to cooperate. Brenda thought that whatever drug the criminals had used had paralyzed Hawthorn's nervous system beyond any hope of recovery and his body had just shut down.

The criminals drove in their cars to a mansion in an Atlanta suburb to decide what to do. They discussed among themselves what their course of action should be and decided that their best plan would be to make Hawthorn's body disappear as if he had vanished into thin air. Therefore, they called in some of their henchmen to take his body out to Riverside State Park and bury him deep enough that he would never be found. So that was what they did. The crooks then returned to their normal activities as if nothing had happened.

We returned to our original time at the Atlanta office and called Mrs. Hawthorn to ask her if we could come see her with some news. She asked us to come by as soon as possible, so we waited an hour and TPed to her house. A servant met us at the door and ushered us into the living room. Over coffee and Coca Cola, I gave Mrs. Hawthorn the story up to her husband's death; I asked Alice to cover that part since I thought the report would be better received coming from an older woman.

Mrs. Hawthorn's reaction was better than I had hoped. She must have resigned herself to her husband being dead, even though she didn't want to say so. There was some crying, but Brenda and Alice helped her to recover. I told her that we would contact the police for her and take care of getting evidence against the murderers; she could relax and let us handle things.

That afternoon, I went to police headquarters and announced that I had found the location of Hawthorn's corpse. I would lead a police team there if they wished. Initially, I was met with skepticism, as expected, but a threat to go to the mayor's office got me the needed cooperation. I led them to the grave site and waited while they dug up the corpse. There was some decomposition, but the body was easily recognized as Hawthorn's. I returned to police headquarters while they did their thing with the body, preserving evidence, etc.

I explained my position to the police: I would cooperate completely with their investigation, but I would not reveal my sources of information. If they wouldn't trust me, I would go elsewhere. They didn't like not being in complete control, but finally agreed that they needed my input to solve the case, so they would accept my terms.

I then told them what I knew, including details of the conversation on the golf course. They were astonished that I had this information and were not inclined to believe me, at first. However, they checked out some of my statements and finally agreed that I knew what I was talking about, so I became a member of the "team" of investigators. Detective Sergeant Robert (Bob) Tomlinson was named as my contact man.