The river was low. The barge was sunk on paper. The telegram went out at 2:35.
Saturday, 12 August 1972. The Mississippi is at its lowest summer stage in years, and the harbor on Lake Ferguson smells of mud. Tad Marlowe, 51, owns Marlowe Fleeting & Towing: four towboats, forty barges and an office on a steel wharf boat moored below the Greenville levee. In July one of his barges, loaded with soybeans for New Orleans, was reported grounded and sunk on a sandbar, and his insurer is about to pay the cargo claim.
On Saturday afternoon Marlowe walks into the Western Union office on Washington Avenue and sends a telegram to New Orleans. At 06:10 on Sunday the harbor night watchman, seeing the office light still burning, goes down the steep gangway and finds him face down between his desk and the filing cabinet. A steel chain load binder lies on the plank floor.
A lockmaster on the Arkansas River, a telegraph clerk, a filling-station attendant, a hospital, a highway patrolman and an airline all wrote something down that night. Six people had a boat, a debt or a reason. Read the records and decide.
Read all 24 documents and name the person who killed Tad Marlowe. One accusation. Right or wrong, the solution file opens and shows every document that convicts. There are no hints and nothing is marked.
Press play and choose Create a room. Up to eight of you read the file on your own phones, see what the others have opened, vote in secret and let the host reveal. Only the host needs to own the case; guests play free.