I knew the moment I saw the news report that it wasn’t as the authorities were reporting. On January 26, 2016, Dr. John Marshall went for a jog along the banks of the Spokane River and seemingly disappeared until a day later when his body was discovered several miles downstream.

Now the Washington Attorney General has stepped in to launch the investigation where there now appears that foul play was involved. I always believed this was more than a mere accidental slip on some ice and fall to his death into the icy waters of the Spokane River.

I also figured there had to been a connection of some sort going on, which was verified in this KREM 2 news investigative report four years later that placed the widow front and center into the investigation.

According to the report, she was impatient to have the cause of death determined so she might get life insurance benefits, and the medical examiner determined the cause of death accidental. Later, though rumors spread about a possible relationship between Dr. Marshall and someone seemingly unrelated, Brenda Thurman, who died weeks earlier when her husband accidentally shot her while cleaning his handgun.

It is quite the mystery that has all the earmarks of a love connection and murder through jealousy. As the news report indicated Dr. Marshall’s did not have the bruising, bumps or lacerations one would expect to have on their bodies after falling over a hundred feet into the river.

It is a truism that facts are stranger than fiction. I couldn’t make this story up. It’s just too juicy to make it any less. I believe it most likely was the jealous husband who discovered this relationship between Dr. Marshall and his wife Brenda. The husband, by the way, was convicted for manslaughter in the death of his wife. The jury didn’t buy his story that it was an accident.

Well there I was sleeping when my wife crawled into bed next to me and asked, “You asleep?”

“No,” I lied, figuring she had something to get off her chest.

“My son got arrested. He’s in jail,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone that told me how upset she was with her son.

I was fully awake now. “What for? DUI?”

“No, driving without a license and no license plates on that car he bought.”

It’s no secret that the police in this town of nearly 500,000 have better things to do with their Friday nights, and going after a car that has no license plate, isn’t high on their priority lists, unless of course, the officer was a rookie on his or hers first ever patrol.

Or, he did something else equally stupid, like drive too fast, weaving between the lines, driving too slow or not using his turn signals. All of which are tell-tale signs of someone under the influence of drugs like marijuana or alcohol.

She rambled off some more before she drifted off to sleep. I stayed awake, not so much because of my stepson, but the stories I’ve worked on. I’m almost done reformatting the third book in the Four Seasons series and was looking at the next three books that will come up hopefully later this year.

This morning I finally remembered the title of the one story I wanted used in book number five. Now that that is squared away, I can start organizing that into a coherent format for both e-book and print versions.

Now it appears we have to drive into Spokane Valley, where he parked his car last night. Hopefully, it wasn’t impounded.