Barn Burner (Jubilant Falls series Book 1)
Page 16
In a few more steps, she was back at the other side of the newsroom, and with a flip of her wrist, she brought to life the police radio sitting atop the corner supply cabinet, listening briefly as the dispatcher read back a driving record for a beat cop who had a car pulled over on a routine traffic stop on the north side of town.
Within a few moments, the staff would begin to filter in and the morning rush toward deadline would begin. It was the same frantic dance, five days a week, then once again each Friday night to put out Saturday’s morning edition, and Addison reveled in it. The push of the adrenaline, working with Dennis to sculpt the perfect headline or with a young reporter to distill their scrambled notes into the perfect lead. Add that to a photo that stopped readers dead in their tracks when they picked the paper up from the bottom of a driveway or from a vending box on the corner—and all of it before the 10:30 deadline. That was what she lived for.
Other people could be happy working in a cubicle farm, shuffling the same forms around month after month after month, balancing the same accounts, but not Addison McIntyre. This was her purview, her horizon and her world and she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Everything else fell away: Isabella’s illness, Duncan’s resistance to her returning to work, her argument with her father. She was back where she belonged.
Addison grimaced as she sniffed the sour dregs in the bottom of the office coffeepot. In a few steps, she was in the darkroom, where she flipped on the lights and poured the thick black java down the sink Pat used to rinse his film after processing. As she waited for the pot to fill back up, she examined Pat’s negatives from the night before, hanging in celluloid curls by clothespins on a line above the sink.
Summer usually meant a slower pace for photographers, at least until the county fair, when they spent their time working twelve to sixteen hour days, shooting photos of prize steers, hogs and 4H kids. Every summer, during the fair the grand champion calf and steer was the front-page dominant art, despite Pat’s griping that it was as journalistically significant as a toilet flushing. The animals usually sold for outrageous amounts of money at the auction on the last day of the fair. Fair week meant pages and pages of local stories—everything else be damned. Mayor Dwayne Yoder would have to show up at city council in a blue taffeta dress and shoot everyone in the room to get higher up on the front page than a fair story.
But until then, if there were no breaking news, the front page would contain a stand-alone feature photo, the kids at the pool, farmers in their fields, something warm and fuzzy. Today would be no different than those summers past. Front page art would be city workers changing light bulbs in streetlamps or a young mother teaching her little blonde haired girl to roller skate out on the bike path.
She finished making the coffee and once more crossed the newsroom, opened her office door and stepped behind her desk, tossing her purse in the foot well. She sorted through the mail on her desk, much of it press releases or junk. At the bottom of the stack was yesterday’s paper with Marcus’s story across the top in the number one news hole.
She scanned through it again, stopping on a quote from Seaford Thorn: “My experience has taught me that when God wants to get your attention, He does so in a mighty, mighty way. I have made a number of mistakes in my life and I can’t help but feel that my daughter’s disappearance is just one more example that the Lord God is trying to get my attention. I have failed Him on a number of occasions, just as I have failed my wife and my family and now I must pay the price.”
So was He exacting a rough price on Seaford? Addison thought. What were the odds of one of those Charlton Heston movie lightning bolts striking this bastard dead in his tracks today?
“Hello? Hello? Anybody here?” Dennis Herrick’s voice rang through the newsroom, pulling Addison from her thoughts and back toward today’s edition.
“Dennis, in here!” Addison called. “I’m back! Come on in here and tell me what we’ve got for today.”
And so the dance toward deadline began again. Gathering a stack of notes together, Dennis came into Addison’s office with the stories that would in three hours be on the front page.
“For the first time in a week, we don’t have anything on the Thorn case,” Dennis began.
“That’s OK. I’ve got some ideas on that. What’s Marcus done today?”
“He’s got a huge story. The city’s announced plans to sell the old Traeburn Tractor plant to a Japanese auto parts manufacturer.”
“Wow.”
“We need to do more on this, Addie,” Dennis said. “In any other town that didn’t have a six-year-old go missing, this would be huge.”
“Go ahead then. Have Marcus find out more about the company, what it’s going to take to refit the old plant, if they have any other facilities in this country, that kind of stuff. Also have him talk to some of the old union types from Traeburn and see what they think of a Japanese manufacturer coming in here. Japanese companies are pretty anti-union. What about a series? Is that feasible?”
Dennis shrugged. “It might be. We can talk to Marcus after deadline and see what he knows.”
“If we can get a series out of this we need to have the graphics department come up with a logo.” Addison scratched a few notes on her desk blotter. “What else have we got?”
“We’ve got a wire story on a probe that’s supposed to be starting on the state child support agency.”
“Put in inside on the state page. What else?”
“We had another barn catch fire last night.”
Addison raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah. Some young farmer stacked some hay that was still green in his barn and it caught fire. No injuries, no livestock lost.”
“Play it low. Pat get photos?”
“No.”
“Dammit!“
“But I did,” He grinned at her. “I’ve been carrying the police scanner since you’ve been gone.” He reached around and unhooked it from his belt and handed it to her. “Boy am I glad to have you back.”
Three hours later, with a nod of approval, Addison watched as Dennis pushed a button on his computer keyboard to send the front page down to the pressroom.
Dennis’s photo of the barn fire was pretty good, but Pat’s photo of the mother teacher her daughter to skate was the dominant art. Elizabeth didn’t have a story for that day, because she’d been covering for Millie, who’d taken a sick day, no doubt for her arthritis. That put the child support story back onto page one, along with another wire story. Not a bad morning, all in all.
After meeting briefly with Marcus and Elizabeth on the next day’s possible stories, Addison sent them on their way and wandered back to the morgue to begin digging for the original profile on Seaford Thorn. After a few minutes, she found it and carried the big black volume back to the newsroom.
“What are you doing?” Dennis looked up from his computer screen.
With a jerk of her head, Addison indicated he should follow her into the office. “Close the door,” she said, letting the bound volume of newspapers fall on her desk with a thunk.
“What’s up?”
“There’s some stuff going on in the Thorn case we need to talk about.” Quickly, she filled him in on Jaylynn’s visit to the farmhouse, the letter and the contact with the kidnappers.
“So basically, what we need to do is somehow get that story before anyone else does. I want to talk to Watt about doing a special edition if Lyndzee is recovered safely for Sunday morning.”
“The way Watt has been fussing about ad revenues, you may not have much chance of that—about as much chance as the cops letting you go along on that drop,” Dennis said.
“I know it, but you also know I’ve at least got to ask both questions. I’ll talk to Gary McGinnis this morning and see that he released whatever happens to us first, then I’ll go talk to Watt. In the mean time, I want to do a little snooping on our beloved college president.”
“Why? He’s been cleared as a suspect in the kidnapping. The p
olice don’t think he had anything to do with it,” Dennis argued. “I know you’re the boss and all, but really, I think you’re treading on thin ice here.”
“I’m not looking at Seaford Thorn specifically. I’m looking at the women in his office. Suppose his womanizing led to the kidnapping by his latest fling? And don’t you think it’s relevant that the head of a Christian college breaks the seventh commandment on a regular basis?”
Dennis nodded. “Yeah, that one quote in Marcus’ story today, the one where he says God is punishing him? I thought that was really telling.”
Addison leaned back in her chair, drumming her fingers on its cheaply upholstered arms. “Who should we look at first?”
Chapter 21
“Yes, I remember Rachel Wiseman.” The man’s voice on the other end of the phone was slow to answer. His cautious voice, with its dry and clipped New England tones, seemed almost foreign when compared to Addison’s flat Midwestern voice.
“You probably know then that she’s the Golgotha College physician here in Jubilant Falls and we’ve had a very sad event happen. The president’s daughter has disappeared.” Addison doodled on her reporter’s notebook.
“Oh my! I’m sorry to hear that.” Her reporter’s antennae told her this man, Dr. Bertrand Winslow, chief of emergency medicine at Bangor Baptist Hospital, was hiding something.
“Dr. Wiseman has been very instrumental in the search for Dr. Thorn’s daughter and we were going to do a profile—a feature story—on her.” OK, it was a lie, but it might get this guy to open up.
“I can only tell you the basics about Rachel. She received her undergraduate degree in biology and premed from Smith; she went to Harvard Medical School and she was an extremely committed Christian. I met her when she was doing a rotation in the emergency room. She came to us from Indianapolis.”
“Anything else stand out about her? Dedication to the job? Ability to relate to patients?”
“No.”
“Come on. Dr. Winslow,” she wheedled. “We really want the inside track on this woman who is working so hard to find this little girl.” She looked across the desk at Dennis, who stuck his index finger in his mouth and pretended to gag.
Winslow was silent. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember anything. She was here only a very short time.” With a click they were disconnected.
“What happened?” Dennis asked.
“That was weird. He knows something about her, but won’t say.”
You know how it is. Employers can’t tell the truth about previous employees these days without the threat of a lawsuit.”
“Maybe that’s it. Who’s next on the list?” Searching through the clip files at the back of the newsroom, they’d stumbled on an article on Dr. Wiseman when she first came to work at Golgotha. Somehow, a copy of her resume listing her former employers, probably supplied by David Horatio, was stapled to the article.
“Dr. Tom Garnett, director of a missionary outfit, Physicians for Christ in Indianapolis. They go to banana republics, provide free medical care to the locals and preach salvation. She worked there before she went to Bangor Baptist.”
“While I’m talking to this guy, see if you can find anything suspicious in Maine public records with either Winslow’s name or Wiseman’s name attached to it.” Addison dialed the phone number and surprisingly, after a few minutes, found herself talking to Garnett. Quickly she repeated her ruse.
“Oh yes, I remember Rachel. She was such a vital part of our staff,” Garnett answered smoothly. “We hated to lose her to Bangor Baptist, but our work is often very difficult and staff turnover can sometimes be high. I’m glad to hear she’s found a home at Golgotha College.”
“She does so much good here,” cooed Addison. “Tell me, do you know anything about her childhood? We haven’t been able to locate her parents.”
“Well, they were older when they had her and died right after she started working here. It was so sad—her mother died from breast cancer and her father was so distraught he succumbed six months later.”
Addison made a sympathetic sound. “That can be tough. Did she tell you anything about her childhood?”
Garnett was silent for a moment. Addison thought she’d run into another roadblock. Then he began to speak.
“Sometimes when a couple comes to terms with the fact that they’ll never have children, and then they do get pregnant, that child becomes the most precious thing in the world to them.”
“So she was the family princess?”
“Hardly. Her parents were so used to being without children and so used to being, well, free, that when they learned of the pregnancy, Rachel was almost an interloper and an unwanted distraction. In fact, that was her nickname: Lope.”
“How sad,” she said. That would certainly make her throw herself at older men, Addison thought.
“Even sadder, they never went to church, so I thought it was strange that she would apply for a position with us. It was her Harvard medical degree and her excellent references that made me selfishly want to hire her. But she had to really believe in our mission and in our God before I could accept her.”
“And so you led her to Christ?” Addison had heard the phrase slip so easily from David Horatio’s tongue, she was surprised at how easily she used it herself.
“Yes. She accepted Christ like a woman dying of some eternal thirst; it was amazing how Jesus became such an overriding force in her life. We worked very closely together in the Congo and in Nigeria. She was the best that we had on staff.”
“Did she enjoy the work?”
“No one enjoys keeping children from starvation, Mrs. McIntyre, or digging the bullets out of a woman’s legs because she was trying to run away from her rapist who happens to be a rebel soldier trying to overthrow the government. I haven’t touched on the number of people with AIDS Physicians for Christ treats each year. It was a matter of doing the Lord’s work, pure and simple.”
“I see. What stood out then about Rachel Wiseman?”
“She was an exceptional physician… and an exceptional human being.” Garnett’s voice became soft.
“Did you two become… close?”
Once again, the man on the other end of the phone became silent.
“You wouldn’t be the first man to fall for a someone you work with, Dr. Garnett. Dr. Wiseman is an attractive young woman.”
“When two people work very closely in very isolated situations, sometimes things happen,” Garnett began slowly. “What happened between us should not have occurred and I was wrong, extremely wrong, in allowing it to continue for the six months we were in the Congo. I had a wife and two children, Mrs. McIntyre. When we were flying back to Indianapolis, I told her it was over.”
“What was her reaction?”
“What we did was a sin and I told her that we needed to stop this relationship right now and we both needed to ask Jesus for forgiveness before we faced the rest of the staff. We bowed our heads and prayed and by the time we landed, she was crying, but she handled it very admirably.”
“Oh, please!” Addison slapped her pen down on her notebook. “You can’t tell me that a woman spends six months doing the nasty with a man in some hut in the hot jungle and she takes getting dumped like some Christian martyr? I’m sorry Dr. Garnett, I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t want to poison your article. Rachel has obviously gotten back on track and to bring something like her past involvement with a married man would poison that.”
“Did she react badly?” Addison repeated.
Once again, he was silent. “My wife and I endured a very hard time as a result of my poor decisions. I was very lucky she stayed by my side.”
“What does that mean?”
There was a loud click as the connection was severed.
“Hello? Dr. Garnett? Hello?” Addison thoughtfully hung up the phone as Dennis came back into the office.
“Anything interesting?” he asked.
“That depends. What did you
find out?”
“I did a quick search on the Internet for Bangor public records and it turns out they’re not online yet, at least not for free. So I called the AP office and asked if there was anything in their files. They should be calling back within a day or so.”
“Well, I think our little Dr. Wiseman spent her childhood looking for attention from her parents.”
“Didn’t we all? I know, with six brothers and sisters, I sure as hell did.”
“It’s more than that. Because she was basically ignored all her life, she has a tendency to fall for older men in positions of power. Dr. Winslow wouldn’t admit it, but our Physicians for Christ doctor did. He didn’t say it, but I have a feeling she freaked out when he dumped her.”
“I’ll bet when they both dumped her…”
“Wait a minute—let me call Jaylynn Thorn.” Quickly she punched in the phone number; the president’s wife answered on the first ring.
“Jaylynn, what did the police say about the phone call from Lyndzee’s kidnapper? Did he say if it was male or female? Male? Just asking. Have you heard anything more? No? OK, thanks.”
She hung up. “It can’t be Rachel Wiseman, even if she has a tendency to go postal when she gets dumped by married men. The person who called Seaford Thorn claiming to have his daughter was a man.”
“You want me to call of the AP dogs in Maine?”
“Yeah, no sense in sending the guy on a wild goose chase.”
Chapter 22
“I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Gary McGinnis adjusted the black JFPD baseball cap with a sharp jerk and looked at Addison and Jaylynn.
“I needed a friend with me in my time of need and Addison is it.” Jaylynn stuck her small jaw forward. Addison smiled to herself as a brief vision of a Chihuahua threatening to beat a Rottweiler’s ass flitted across her mind’s eye.