Murder at Thompson Bog

Episode 2

Beneath the dark, slimy water, Ed Riggs struggled to free himself of the bog's grasp. He was pulled down by his own weight, by his own weakness, by his age. He was no longer a young man, like Frank Morton, thin and strong. No, he was overweight and over the hill. Perhaps it was fitting that he die this way, Ed thought, it would be a good lesson that one should keep in shape.

He was held down by his overcoat, by his suit jacket, by his gun that caught on the twining roots of the Cypress and kept him from escaping to the air above. He kicked his feet, but his pants seemed to fight against his legs and his shoes stuck in the muddy bottom.

A million thoughts raced through the Detective Sergeant's mind: “Damn Frank Morton! I made him! This can't be how it ends for me! I have to find a way out! There's so many things I still have to do!”

Lifting his leg through great effort, he felt his shoe come off. His leg brushed something sharp and the pain shot through his calf. He put his leg down hoping to gain some leverage. His lungs felt like they would burst.

He touched something solid with his foot, kicked against it and felt his overcoat slip away. He thought he was rising toward the surface, freed of the overcoat. He kicked with his feet a second time. He felt a tearing at his belt and kicked again.

“Air! Air!” screamed the voice inside his head as he broke through the surface and spat out a mouth full of gunk, gasping for enough air to keep a grip on life.

Ed Riggs held on to a Cypress root, chest deep in Thompson Bog, struggling for his breath. Through the Cypress roots, across the muddy Miller yard, tail lights were disappearing down the dirt road.


“It's black as pitch out there,” said Detective Frank Morton. “All I saw by the glow of his flashlight was his hand sinking below the mud. I'm afraid he's gone.”

“We should call in the uniformed officers, maybe get out the Fire Department and some of the fellas and go search for him, maybe there's still hope.”

Martha Sawyer was pale and shaking. The station had been her first job out of school and after 13 years she could not see herself working anywhere else. Ed was a fixture there; she admired him. What would it be like without him? What would they do without him? What would she do?

“Martha, I'm tellin' ya, it ain't no use. The man's gone,” Frank yelled. “He's slipped into that bog out there and there's no way to find him and if we do, he can't breathe under mud and water. He's dead. The best we can hope for is to pull his body out when it gets light, if we can find it.”

Martha sank with despair. She looked sadly at Ed's desk, the Miller file still open. Who would solve that case now? What did it matter when Landon County's best detective was dead in the attempt?

Frank walked over to the desk, turned the file to him, then turned it back, sat down at Ed's desk and began to look at the file.

“I'll take up the case. I worked with him, I know how he operated. I can pick up where he left off.” Frank said, and began by taking over the larger desk of the dead detective.

“A little early to start dividing up his property, isn't it?” Martha said with narrowed eyes. “The man's not even pronounced and you are sitting in his chair. Why don't you show a little respect?”

Frank leaped from the chair, pulling his suit-coat around behind him, letting his gun holster show, “Because there's a murderer out there and I'm the only one left to stop him, that's why. Because I'm the detective and you're the damned secretary, that's why.”

Martha turned back to her desk. There was no arguing with him when he was like this. Only Ed could calm him and put him back on the track of rational thought, and Ed was not here. No, Ed was in Thompson Bog, suffocated to death. Martha shook with the thought, then hung her head and cried for Ed.

At Ed's desk, Frank thumbed through a short stack of folders. “Soon as it's light, I'll start again. But there's more here than just that missing girl to deal with. For a man who was so well thought of,” Frank said with a familiar attitude, “he had a lot of unsolved cases.”

Martha looked up with a new distaste for the man with no respect for his partner. Ed had reduced the stack of unsolved crimes from more than two hundred to an impressive twelve. The dozen that were left were dead ends that no one could figure out, but he hadn't stopped trying. Martha wanted to shout the man down, but knew that it would mean her job, the job that suddenly didn't seem all that desirable.

She began to formulate a response, one that would surely get her fired, but might also get her physically hurt. Frank could be mean and violent. She wanted to say something, but then Frank stood up.

“I'll get a fresh start in the morning,” Frank said. “I'll call the coroner and get him to pronounce on Ed and then we'll figure out what to do for a funeral. See you in the morning, Martha.”

Frank sauntered out a bit too jauntily for Martha's taste, but there was no one to tell about it. She knew that the Landon County hierarchy was too busy with their own amusements to bother about her suspicions. To them it would be an open-and-shut case; a detective goes out to investigate a missing girl, falls into the swamp and gets pulled down. He drowns and his partner takes over the case. It was the natural order of things, so why bother them about it?

Martha sighed heavily and looked at her desk. The papers that seemed so important minutes ago looked blank to her. There was nothing on them that had the least significance. Martha felt helpless and lost. Outside the station, the road was dark and empty; the night was still; the world had stopped turning.


“No sense in rushing this,” Ed Riggs thought as he began to take stock. There was a sharp pain in his left leg. There were other aches, but they were minor. He was breathing! He was alive! That was something! That was the main thing!

He pulled himself up out of the water enough to grab onto one of the large Cypress legs. He was able to hang on to the root system enough to keep him from sinking again into the murky water. The hollow beneath the tree smelled of musk and decaying leaves.

Something touched his right leg; something moving. Ed pulled his leg up sharply, still clinging to the giant roots. Whatever it was had wrapped itself around his right foot. He lifted his foot up and reached down with his hand, grabbed and pulled up. He half expected to find a snake, one he would have to beat to death with one hand while holding on to the root with the other. What he held was a rope.

Ed pulled on the rope and felt it give on the other end. There had to be another end entangled in something, but not the tree. Slowly, the rope gave out more length. What came up was hard to see in the darkness, but Ed's eyes were growing accustomed to the dark. Two eyes, open and lifeless, looked at nothing. The mouth hung limp. It was the Miller girl.


Edna Eldridge Morton sat in front of the television, glancing out of the window of her ranch style home as the lights of the black Ford pulled into the drive. She sighed, putting out her cigarette. She hated being alone, but now that Frank was home, she hated even more being alone with him. The shine had worn off her marriage; the thrill she had felt when she married a policeman was gone.

“You're home early,” she said as Frank walked into the door, “it's not after midnight yet.”

Frank stopped, sneering at the woman he had been so proud to call his wife a few years before, who now openly berated him at every opportunity. “It's too dark to do anything tonight.” Frank took off is hat and coat, hanging the coat on the end of the hall closet door to dry.

“I thought you did your best work in the dark.” Edna took another cigarette from the pack of Chesterfields and lit it with a small, gold lighter.

Frank turned to regard her, wishing that it had been her that he had hit with the butt of his pistol and dragged into the swamp. He wished he could come home instead to the Miller girl from the trailer park and live here with her. She would appreciate him. She would like living in a nice house with a new car in the driveway and a new television set in the corner. She would meet him at the door with a cold beer and a warm kiss instead of a snide remark and a hateful stare.

“We lost Ed Riggs tonight; he got stuck in the swamp and went down.” Frank went to the sideboard and poured a whiskey into a heavy-bottomed glass.

“Ed? Lost in the swamp?” Edna seemed suddenly concerned. “Did you send in a search party? Have they given up already?”

“I saw him go under. He hit a quick place, it took him before I could get to him. No use searching, he's dead.” Frank drank down the whiskey, winced and poured another.

“What are you going to do now?” Edna had a vacant look, the blood had drained from her face.

“What do you mean, what am I going to do now? The same thing I have been doing, only maybe now I can make it to sergeant without him holding me back.”

Edna was up out of her chair now, her back to the television, ignoring the pop western that was boring her minutes earlier. “Ed Riggs was all that was keeping you in that job,” she flared. “With him gone you might just find yourself replaced with a hat rack. Does the chief know?”

“The chief has other things on his mind than the case we were working on.”

“A murdered girl?” she folder her arms, challenging him.

“A missing girl, there's no evidence she's been murdered. She probably ran off with some traveling salesman.” Frank finished another drink and turned around, reaching for the bottle.

“You think she'd do that, run off in the middle of the night?”

“Riggs said he found blood, but it could be the blood isn't human. There were drag marks, but it could be from some old washing machine she drug off into the bog to get rid of. Ed went looking and see where it got him.”

A thick silence hung in the air between them as she pondered the possibilities. With Ed Riggs gone, her husband had no protector at the station, no one to follow behind. He could be promoted, but then he would fall on his face and that would be an embarrassment. He might be demoted and that would be as bad or worse. He might quit or be fired, but then he would want her father to find him a job. Where would he put her inept husband where he couldn't do any damage?

“I'm going to take a bath and go to bed.” Edna turned and walked down the hall without shutting the television off.

On the screen, a gunfight was brewing outside the saloon. The good guy was clean and well groomed in a new shirt. The bad guy was dressed in black, dirty and with a scar. It was clear who would win. Frank wondered why people watched these things. Then he sat down, pulled a Chesterfield from the pack and lit it with Edna's gold lighter. He took a long, slow sip of his drink and watched as the good guy shot the gun out of the hand of the bad guy without drawing a drop of blood. “Pretty good,” he thought.