Is Slummings the Link Between Dole Disappearance and Goode Murder?

[Arroyos]

Is Slummings the Link Between Dole Disappearance and Goode Murder?

December 15, 2033: Yuma, AZ—Yuma County Sheriff Leon X. Wilmar today revealed that the Sheriff’s Office has been investigating Arroyo’s owner Taffy Slummings since Arroyo manager David Goode’s body was found in an arroyo outside Yuma city limits back in 2029. Slummings was arrested but eventually cleared. Yet, as Sheriff Wilmar revealed, the Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with the Yuma City Police have kept an eye on Mr. Slummings. “We cleared him for the murder,” Wilmar said, “but there was always something just a little fishy about the guy.”

For several years prior to 2029, Slummings was a recognizable figure living on the streets of Yuma. Police records show him being picked up several times for vagrancy and harassment of local residents and tourists. He was outspoken in his opinions of the owners of the Yuma baseball club, which back in 2029 was still known as the Bulldozers. When David Goode was hired as the team’s manager, Slummings led a one-man campaign to get him fired. He shouted from street corners and solicited signatures for a petition. Finally, the police removed him from downtown because he was frightening tourists away from local business.

At that point, police surveillance of Slummings began and continued until last month, when he disappeared from police radar. “He left town on the LA train one day, switched trains along the way, and we lost him,” Wilmar admitted. Arroyo office manager Roberta Tipitina told police Slummings was visiting the Yuma GM in the Camarillo State Hospital, north of Los Angeles, but police have been unable to confirm Slummings’ whereabouts. “If he’s visiting a patient at the hospital,” Wilmar said, “you’d think they’d have a record of it. But they don’t. So we’re still looking.”

When asked why the police continue to be interested in Slummings, Wilmar would only say, “No comment. He’s a person of interest, that’s all.” But sources within the Sheriff’s Office indicated that Slummings’ connections to Vegas mobsters are currently being investigated.

David Goode, former player and manager for the Yuma ball club, was murdered in the fall of 2029 and his body abandoned in an arroyo several miles south of the Yuma airport. No charges have been filed in that murder, and Slummings was eventually cleared. Forensic evidence led the police to assume the murder was the work of a mob hit man, perhaps the same individual responsible for the disappearance of David Goode’s father, several years before. Persons responsible for the murders of both Goodes are still being sought by city, county and state police investigators.

Police are treating the recent disappearance of Crystal Lake ice magnet Charles Dole IV as a separate case, unrelated to the Goode murder or disappearance, but associates of Mr. Dole are speculating publicly about possible links between the cases. “It just makes sense, doesn’t it?” said Dole’s former chauffeur Michael Cuno. “The mob’s behind it all, you can bet on that. What pie don’t they have their dirty fingers in?”