Suicide

Mitchell Hoodwink

WOODS 
This entire investigation into the child abuse in the junior high school in Saint George is all messed up!

LINLEY
One finds hardly any news reports about the scandal.

WOODS
People want to forget!

LINLEY
They do, but they even deleted newspaper archives.

WOODS
If they ever had archived any news about the scandal.

LINLEY
A case of that magnitude should have made it into the national news, yet it didn't!

WOODS
What do you make of it?

LINLEY
Someone very powerful controls the valve of information.

WOODS
Someone powerful like President Van Deepriver?

LINLEY
We need more evidence! We don't have anything concrete, but assumptions.
Therefore I talked to Mitchell Hoodwink, the detective who took over the abuse case from Harlod Boltlock.

WOODS
Is Mitchell Hoodwink still with the police?

LINLEY
No, he retired early due to health issues!

WOODS
So, he may have nothing to lose!

LINLEY
I'm not sure about that! Mitchell Hoodwink retired from the police force early in his 50s, still as a detective.
I went to his home and it looked fancy to me as if he and his wife would be living beyond their means.

WOODS
How's that?

LINLEY
Well, the house he lives in, the location, and the two cars that all don't look to me as if one can afford it with the meager pay of a retired detective who retired early from the force.

WOODS
You said that Hoodwink retired due to health issues. What kind of health issues?

LINLEY
I got his medical report and apparently Hoodwink has an innate heart condition.

WOODS
How did he become a police officer and even a detective? Don't they have to be physically fit?

LINLEY
I don't know. But I would have assumed that he would have gone into politics!

WOODS
Maybe his heart condition is real! One never knows.

LINLEY
Maybe, but when I met him he greeted me cheerfully and he didn't seem to be a guy who has been suffering from any heart ailment throughout his whole life.

WOODS
Was Hoodwink willing to talk and cooperate?

LINLEY
I'm not sure whether one can call it cooperation, because he didn't give me much:
- Yes, I was assigned to take over the case of this... you know... it was all a tragedy!

WOODS
Why was he assigned to take off the case?

LINLEY
Hoodwink claimed:
- I'm not sure why they took Harold off the case. I think it had something to do with a disagreement with Captain Lywin. Harold had been out of line a couple of times and had been reprimanded. But for a fact, I've no clue what happened. I had been told to take over the case.

WOODS
In the police report Charles Deepriver is hardly mentioned nor did the police take a DNA sample from him.

LINLEY
Mitchell Hoodwink felt uncomfortable as I mentioned this fact:
- There was no need to investigate any further because Flask confessed. He admitted that he selected those children, who had Type 1 Diabetes. He drugged them and filmed them while abusing them. He did it all by himself!

WOODS
What's with the eighth video?

LINLEY
This was a point of contention since Hoodwink denied that the eighth video had something to do with the case:
- I had to narrow down the scope of the investigation. The video was blurry and one couldn't make out who was in the video.

WOODS
But the backdrop of the eighth video led Detective Boltlock to start the investigation!

LINLEY
Mitchell Hoodwink called it a "lucky hunch" :
- Even the judge dismissed it in court. It wasn't evidenced!

WOODS
Is Mitchell Hoodwink related to the political elite?

LINLEY
He is not related to the political elite, but his wife Gladys Hoodwink, born Gladys Churn. The Churn family is like royalty in the Socialist Party. Lidia Churn a cousin of Gladys is married to a cousin of President Van Deepriver. They are all related.

WOODS
Then it was no coincidence that Mitchell Hoodwink was chosen to take over the investigation. They wanted to cover something up!

LINLEY
I asked Mitchell Hoodwink about Charles Deepriver and he told me:
- Charles wasn't in the least involved in that abuse scandal. The evidence showed it. The reason why then-Senator Deepriver's son was not mentioned in the police report was that this would have given his political opponents ammunition. We knew how these things went. In the past, the police force had been a battlefield of dirty political campaigns. Captain Lywin wanted to leave the Senator's son's name out of the records as long as possible. The police force shouldn't be seen as biased and taking sides. Captain Lywin wanted to avoid political gambles in the local police.

WOODS
This is a political answer! Why didn't Mitchell Hoodwink try politics?

LINLEY
I looked into it and discovered that Mitchell Hoodwink was indeed considered a worthy politician and even to take political office, but he declined due to health reasons.

WOODS
He was willing to take over an abuse case to cover up the tracks of a second perpetrator but later wasn't eager to become a politician? How does that fit? Did he get conscience bites?

LINLEY
I'm not sure. Mitchell Hoodwink was actually very ambitious in his youth and as a detective. He had good grades in high school and went to college. Hoodwink was in socialist organizations, which means that people knew him and trusted him. Then he married into the Socialist Party elite and became one of the youngest detectives who had ever joined the local police force. I think his Curriculum Vitae has a lot of similarities to the CVs of many who want to make themselves a name in politics.

WOODS
Does he have children?

LINLEY
No, but he and his wife had adopted a child once. A little girl. She died in an accident when she was 10 years old. Hoodwink and his wife didn't adopt any children afterwords.

WOODS
We should look into that accident of that little girl!