Dash Andrews

*"Sometimes I get an attack of conscience, but nothing drowns it more than a glass of Scotch." - Dash Andrews*

**Dash Andrews** is a private investigator based in Winchester and Ashford Falls, New York, best known for doing undercover work for Carter Hedison.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Andrews was the descendant of several generations of police officers and law officers. His great-grandfather encountered Jesse James and he had a relative that took part in the arrest of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. After working several years in the Chicago Police Department, he took a job as a police detective in the Albany Police Department in New York.

Through his career, Andrews made a name on the Albany Narcotics Squad with the help of an informant named Bud Mason, but he felt he was being wasted in the role and meant for much more. With Mason's help, Andrews entered the murder investigation of businessman Hugh Martindale, which was believed to be an inside job. Andrews used his detective skills to follow Martindale's wife, and discovered she had a lover. Believing they had plotted the murder, Andrews placed phony evidence in her car to implicate her in the murder, but the case later took a turn when it turned out Martindale was murdered by a jealous business rival. Andrews was fired from the force as a result, and he started drinking heavily. He had once dated an actress Jessica English, but she left him, later giving birth to William Samuelson, Andrew's son.

At some point, Andrews encountered businessman Carter Hedison from Ashford Falls in Albany. After Hedison's limousine was rear-ended by a con-artist named Steven Hadley, Carter was sued by Hadley for three million dollars to cover his medical and living finances. Andrews, however, researched Hadley and discovered he was a career con-artist who regularly sued the unwitting participants in his phony crash scenes. Carter was so indebted to Andrews for his involvement that he set him up with a private detective office in Ashford Falls, employing him regularly to research the history of investors and business clients.

Working from his office on Main Street, Andrews was often hired to follow around and gather intelligence on prospective businessmen as Philip Martin, Nathan Featherstone, Jack Gates and J. Peter Reason. Of these business rivals, Reason's life and career profoundly pertubed Andrews for being inexplicable and contradictory.

During his marriage to Monica Winchester, Carter frequently had Andrews following her around after suspecting her to be unfaithful. None of these claims were credible as Monica was entirely faithful but continually depressed as Carter restricted her activities to home and their children. Despite the unlikelihood of Monica being unfaithful, Andrews became attracted to her but kept his feelings for her to himself. Meanwhile, after Carter sent her son Tyler Malloy off to boarding school, she abandoned Carter and left Ashford Falls, flying to England where she had relatives with their other children. Unwillingly to lose his only son, Carter had Andrews secretly spirit away his son, Blake Hedison, and raised him on his own.

For several years, Andrews worked personally with Carter Hedison, helping him to amass a personal fortune based on blackmail and subterfuge. Although he had had once been an ethical cop, he started descending into illegitimate activities such as planting illegal narcotics on rivals to Carter's power, such as Attorney Carl Switzer, and illegally obtaining information on patents to rivals, like BioMart Medical Company in Albany run by Phillip Martin. After Monica returned to Ashford Falls, Martin started getting romantically involved with her, and Carter became jealous over their relationship. At the same time, Martin realized Carter was planning a hostile takeover of his company, and Carter requested Andrews to get rid of him to end his ensuing investigation. Unfortunately, he was unaware that Martin was dating Monica, and he murdered her in Martin's room at the Ashford Arms Hotel then getting into a scuffle with Martin and shooting him as well. Subsequently staging it as a murder-suicide, Andrews fled Ashford Falls for his cabin in Maine where he wrote about his life and the work he did for Carter Hedison in great detail in a diary. The incident greatly shocked Carter Hedison who avoided contact with Andrews for over a year. As a result of these events, Carter sold off his BioMart stocks to distance himself from the murder investigation.

In the Spring of 1989, Andrews started to have health problems and learned he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He contacted Carter for one last job to get the money for his treatment, but Carter kept him at distance until he was ready. Carter's daughter, Rachel Hedison, however, hired Andrews to travel to London and keep tabs on Helen Caldwell, her rival for the attention of Dr. Paul Kirkwood. Andrews also hired an actor named Loren Rhodes for Rachel to date Helen, but the subterfuge ended after Rhodes had an attack of conscience and confessed his reasons for dating her.

On returning to Ashford Falls, Andrews tried to start his cancer treatments only to discover from Dr. Elizabeth Freeling that his cancer was further along than was expected and he had less than a year to live. Hearing the news, he declined Carter's call for work and instead drove deep into Haverstraw Canyon to disappear with dignity. His car was found on an old mining road two months later near the Warren and Essex County Line by Janet DuBois while horseback riding. No trace of him has ever been found.