Cover Story

by Brenda Buchanan

  “You have my word. If you had a Bible I’d swear on it.”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment.

  “Shaw—the state police lieutenant who testified the other day—he was flat-out lying about Frank asking for backup before he went to Boothby’s house that day. Frank called, all right, when Jed was busy trying to coordinate the response to the big bait spill. He was looking for his buddy Deputy Viglione, wanted to know who was hosting that weekend’s poker game. Jed told him Viggie was on his way to the accident along with every other deputy on duty. Frank asked where the crash happened, then he laughed and hung up. Didn’t say a word about going to Boothby’s house. Didn’t ask for backup.”

  Her words were tumbling fast, like she needed to spit them out before they made her sick.

  “That’s not what Shaw said on the stand.”

  “I read what you wrote, and Jed did, too. He was so pissed! Shaw made the sheriff’s department in general and him in particular sound incompetent. Last night, on his supper break, Jed pulled the tape for May 22 and listened to the whole thing. It was exactly as he remembered—Frank didn’t say where he was, just asked for Viggie, asked for details about the bait mess, laughed and hung up.”

  “Is it possible Frank called some other number looking for backup?”

  She was shaking her head.

  “It’s SOP to call Dispatch, because the dispatcher can communicate with everyone who’s on duty and find out what who’s available.”

  I replayed Shaw’s testimony in my head. “His testimony was emphatic that Frank did everything right, and but for the bait truck spill, it would have been a routine removal of a child from a dangerous home.”

  The evergreens lining the road whizzed past as I pondered the implications of Shaw’s false testimony.

  “I work within a system that’s rife with lies,” Leslie said after a couple of minutes. “Every day, I deal with people who lie as naturally as they breathe. I’m always thinking, ‘who’s she trying to protect? who’s he covering for?’” She sighed, a long sad exhale. “Cops and caseworkers, we’re the good guys. The system only works if that’s true. But Lieutenant Shaw sat on that witness stand and lied his face off—fabricated an entire conversation with Jed.”

  She directed me to take a left turn, which put us back on the Roque Bluffs Road.

  “Shaw must have lied so Frank’s stupidity wouldn’t embarrass his very important brother,” she said. “But who cares about that now? He’s dead.”

  * * *

  I was thinking through the angles of what Leslie had told me when I reached the inn. Instead of Willow at the front desk I found an older woman with thinning hair and translucent skin. With an economy of words she handed me the key to Room 14.

  I tossed my bags on the bed and dialed Cohen’s office. Leslie had given me permission to tell him what she’d told me, so long as he didn’t know my source. She said Jed wasn’t worried about his job, probably because he’d be a hero inside the sheriff’s department if he could show up the state cop who’d made them look bad. Still, talking with Cohen would be delicate, given our prickly beginning. I decided I’d watch his reaction to my tale of harassment before telling him what I’d heard about Shaw’s possible embellishment of the Dispatch record. He picked up on the first ring, sounding unsurprised to hear my voice.

  “Come on over,” he said. “I was about to hit the wall on trial prep anyway.”

  Five minutes later I climbed the stairs in his barn, which was warm and smelled of lemon wax. The place looked much neater than on my first visit, a remarkable feat considering he was in the midst of a trial. He noticed me noticing.

  “My wife spent half of Friday sorting piles of paper and clearing clutter. She didn’t touch my desk or the boxes related to this case, but made the rest look less chaotic. It’s her way of being supportive when I’m working all the time.”

  He asked if I wanted coffee and I said sure, taking off my parka and claiming the easy chair. He settled on the leather couch and waited for me to speak.

  “I don’t feel very comfortable doing what I’m about to do, but I think it’s important,” I said.

  Cohen raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  “I’m going to tell you some things that have happened to me in the last few days. I’m hoping you may have some insight about why they’re happening, and who’s behind them.”

  Cohen leaned forward and set his mug on the table. “I’m listening.”

  I laid it out—the deputy’s warning after I left the bar, the stomach-churning ride down the Black Woods Road, the phone messages at my home in Riverside and to the City Desk—trying not to sound like a paranoid nut.

  “Given all that, why the hell did you come back? You could have been killed in that blizzard.”

  “Of course I came back. By doing my job, I’m freaking somebody out. I need to know what truth my harasser fears I’ll uncover.”

  “Who do you suspect?”

  “Frank O’Rourke and/or his brothers. The Speaker’s got connections and access to information.” I described his cheap shot in the convenience store parking lot the Sunday I arrived in town. “One of the other brothers got into my face outside the courthouse, all but calling me a media vulture.”

  “Why would they hassle you? You’re only the messenger.”

  “I was making calls asking about Frank before the trial started. I’m guessing in the teeny-tiny world that is Maine state government, it got back to them.”

  “What were you asking?”

  “The usual. What kind of coworker was Frank? Why was he transferred around so much?”

  “And what’d you hear?”

  “That he was lazy and disorganized. He loved to boast about his political connections. No one was ever sorry to see him move on to another post. The rumor was he was being groomed by his big brother to be assistant deputy regional commissioner or something like that, so he could draw a nice state salary for playing poker online all day.”

  “None of that is terribly damning.”

  “I agree, but they probably want the trial to be a straightforward good-guy-killed-by-bad-guy script, with a nice neat conviction after a minimum of deliberation on the part of the jury.”

  Cohen leaned back into the couch’s leather embrace and sipped his coffee. “That motivation doesn’t jibe with a truck ramming you off the road. But maybe the O’Rourkes had nothing to do with that.”

  “My head hurts when I start wondering about who else might have it in for me. I’m going to have to be on guard around everybody, I guess.”

  “You and me both. Want to hear what happened around here this weekend?”

  I felt blood rush to my face. “What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing you would have observed. No one’s run me off the road, but there were two threatening calls on my office phone yesterday. A man’s voice, muffled, like he was trying to disguise it. The language was ugly but the message was clear: Danny Boothby deserves whatever’s coming to him and if I’m smart I won’t get in the way.”

  “You have it on tape?”

  “Yeah, in case I need it down the road. I’m not sure what to make of it. People—usually clients, but sometimes their friends and family—call me sometimes when they’re drunk or high. It could be that kind of harmless venting.” He ran his finger around the rim of his coffee mug. “Then this morning, I found a dead fish on my doorstep.”

  “A dead fish?”

  “Yup, a big friggin’ monkfish.”

  I laughed. “What is this, The Godfather, Downeast-style? Instead of a horse’s head in your bed, you get a dead monkfish on your porch?”

  “You ever seen a monkfish? It’s an ugly son of a gun. Big wide mouth, little razor-sharp teeth. It was half-frozen to the walkway. I scraped it up with a snow shovel and dumped it in th
e trash before my kids saw it.”

  “Sorry to laugh—it’s so weird.”

  “I laughed too, after I got rid of it.”

  “So what does a dead monkfish signify?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  We sat there for a minute, considering our respective situations. I broke the silence first with potential bombshell number one.

  “I’m tracking down an allegation—and I need to stress that I’ve not corroborated it—that Frank O’Rourke was a child molester who took advantage of young girls on his caseload.”

  Cohen sat forward, as alert as if he’d drank ten cups of coffee. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Anonymous tip, and the person hasn’t surfaced again since making it. There are plenty of reasons to think it’s bullshit, but if it’s true, it could explain why the O’Rourkes are so determined to shut me up.”

  He stood and walked to the window. “In my experience, anonymous tipsters almost always have an ulterior motive.”

  “I agree, but I wondered if you picked up any hint of that during your investigation.”

  “Not involving children. I’ve got some information about a possible history of inappropriate behavior with adults—female coworkers.”

  “My sources tell me similar things. I think it’s worth asking if he had a thing for teenage girls.”

  Cohen leaned against the window frame, his face showing fatigue. “I’m court-appointed, Joe. There was no money to hire a pretrial investigator. I did it myself on the cheap. Called every lawyer I know who handles DHHS cases, focusing on the parts of the state where Frank used to work. Didn’t pick up even a whisper about him being a predator.”

  “Like I said, the tip might be total bullshit. Then I heard another crazy allegation from a different source, this time from someone I believe is reliable.”

  “Crazy how?”

  “I need you to show me something first. Do you have a transcript of the Dispatch traffic on May 22?”

  “Yeah.” Cohen drew the word out, put a question mark at the end.

  “Can you put your hands on it?”

  He jumped to his feet and went to an old library table under the window, yanked open a banker’s box with the number 4 stenciled on the side. After a moment of rapid thumbing he handed me a sheaf of stapled-together pages. I read the back and forth between the county dispatcher and the cops who responded first to the bait spill, then to the call from Danny Boothby’s home. I read the part when Frank O’Rourke called in, then read it again.

  “This transcript echoes almost word for word what Shaw, the state police lieutenant, said during his direct examination.”

  Cohen shrugged. “That’s no surprise. Cops often read over their report before they take the stand, and wind up almost reciting it verbatim.”

  “My source tells me Frank didn’t say any of this. He never requested backup. All he did was ask for a particular deputy named Viggie. He laughed when he was told Viggie and every other available deputy was dealing with bait spread all over the road.”

  “How would your source know that?”

  “Works inside the sheriff’s department.” Cohen wanted more, but that was all I was going to say. “Can you get your hands on the actual tape?”

  “I’d have to make a motion for it, explain why the transcript wasn’t sufficient.”

  “I’m sure you’re capable of making a convincing argument.”

  “What if your source is full of shit?”

  “Won’t be the first time someone lied to me. But my gut tells me there’s something to this. Since his opening statement, Mansfield’s been harping on how Frank did everything right, but bait all over the road put him at Boothby’s without backup. If he didn’t ask for backup before going over there, and he knew every cop in the county was tied up at the big accident on Route One, it becomes important that they’re going to such lengths to make it seem like he did, no?”

  Cohen ran next door to let his wife know a new development would force him to work into the evening. He came back with a couple of aspirin in hand and a new spring in his step.

  “Time for you to fill in some pieces of the puzzle,” I said. “In order for me to do my job and to protect myself from whoever almost killed me the other night, I need some information that I’m betting you have—about what the hell happened last May 22.”

  Cohen closed his eyes and shook his head. “The ethics rules don’t allow me to tell you—or anyone else for that matter—about my conversations with Danny.”

  “I understand the rules about client confidentiality, and I’m not trying to push you over that line. But I do think what’s happened to me these past few days—and to you—sure makes it look like your cross-examination and my reporting has somebody on high alert. I’d like to figure out who that is before they take another whack at me and throw something worse than a monkfish on your doorstep.”

  Cohen, hands laced together on top of his head, said nothing.

  “Can I run a hypothetical past you?”

  “Sure.”

  “What if Danny didn’t stab O’Rourke, but he knows who did. Might he be determined to protect whoever that is, to the point of taking the rap himself?”

  Cohen shrugged.

  “I’m thinking the person he’d do that for is Corrine.”

  “It’s the obvious guess,” Cohen said. “I’d do anything to protect my kids, and I’m sure he would, too. But—hypothetically—how could a skinny twelve-year-old girl kill a big athletic guy like Frank?”

  “It’s a bit of a stretch, but adrenaline’s a powerful thing.”

  “Have you ever seen Corrine? She’s tiny. Weighs maybe ninety pounds if she’s carrying a backpack full of books.”

  “What’d she say when the cops interviewed her?”

  He shook his head. “They didn’t.”

  “But she was an eyewitness.”

  “She was, or at least we assume so. The police report said Corrine was so hysterical at the scene she had to be taken away by ambulance. Still, it would have been standard operating procedure to interview her the next day, or at least that first week. According to Mansfield, she was never successfully interviewed by the cops. They tried twice, with her foster parents right there. She cried the whole time, never said a word. Mansfield said Lieutenant Shaw decided further attempts would re-traumatize her, so they gave up trying.”

  “What about you? Have you talked with Corrine?”

  “DHHS wouldn’t permit it. I filed a pretrial motion and argued it hard. But the judge who heard the motion—it wasn’t Herrick—all but kissed Mansfield’s ass, he was so full of deference to the state. Pretrial rulings aren’t appealable until after the trial itself, so while I preserved the issue, I’m stuck with the outcome.”

  “Has Danny told you whether Corrine was there when it happened?”

  “I’m not breaking any confidences to tell you Danny’s not been particularly forthcoming about the details of what happened that day.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that the state police opted not to interview the only person believed to have witnessed the murder.

  “Going back to your theory—that Corrine killed O’Rourke, and her father’s willing to risk being convicted to keep the spotlight off her—it makes sense up to a point,” Cohen said. “It doesn’t explain why someone is so hell-bent on seeing Danny convicted that they’re leaning on me and trying to run you off the road. Corrine sure as hell didn’t leave a monkfish on my doorstep.”

  “Yeah, and it wasn’t Corrine Boothby behind the wheel of that truck last Thursday night, either.” I drained my coffee mug.

  We sat in silence for a few moments. Cohen got up and poured himself a refill. I waved him off when he gestured toward me.

  “Are there any doctors around here
other than Bud Troost who you might talk to about the autopsy report?”

  “Yeah. My older sister,” Cohen said. “She’s an ER doc, which in my mind makes her an expert on many things medical. What are you thinking?”

  “Troost had an explanation for why there wasn’t much blood at the scene, but what if he was wrong about that? What if the cause of death was something else, poisoning or something, and the reason Danny Boothby’s porch wasn’t a bloody mess is that Frank O’Rourke didn’t die there. Maybe someone put him there with a knife sticking out of his chest to make it look like he was murdered by Danny Boothby.”

  Cohen leaped into my brainstorm. “If his heart wasn’t beating when the knife was plunged into his chest, that would cut down on blood loss. With no pump going, there was no pressure to force the blood out of his body.”

  “Where’s the autopsy report?”

  He went back to his boxes and rummaged for a moment, extracted a document, ran it through his copier and handed me a copy. We immersed ourselves in the report, looking for facts to buttress my theory.

  “How do they estimate time of death?”

  “A number of factors. Core body temperature. Muscle rigidity. Lividity. Condition of the corneas.”

  “I can’t figure out from this report which of those Troost evaluated, can you?”

  “There’s some coding on the left margin of his notes. It appears he looked at all of them, at least in a perfunctory way.”

  “Is Troost the kind of guy who would go into an autopsy questioning everything?”

  Cohen laughed. “Not anymore. He may have been a forensic wonder boy at some point in his career, but he’s been phoning it in as long as I’ve known him. If the prosecutor wants him to say X, he says X.”

  “So if the cops were all focusing on the stab wound, is it possible he didn’t run blood tests or look for another cause of death?”

  “Maybe,” Cohen said. “Bud doesn’t set out to do a half-assed job, but I can imagine that scenario. I suspect he focused on the knife sticking out of Frank’s chest, and didn’t look too hard for other possible causes.”