Emma put down her chopsticks. “So O’Rourke was a predator. You were right, Joe. He was transferred around the state—thanks to his big-shot brother—to offend and offend again.”
“Same old story,” I said. “Don’t protect the kids. Protect the institutional reputation.”
“I hope you’re able to dig out all the revolting details,” Emma said. “Shine a big, bright spotlight not only on Frank, but his brother and that jerky Assistant Commissioner Marengo, too.”
Danny said Dolores told him she and Corrine devised a code phrase—Blueberry Cobbler—for Corrine to use if O’Rourke showed up on the doorstep.
“That was smart,” I said. “It would have been smarter for Dolores to report O’Rourke’s behavior to DHHS, but she must have been afraid no one would believe her. So at least they made a plan.”
“The shame that people feel in that kind of situation—not just the kid, the whole family—keeps them from reporting the abuse,” Emma said. “It is similar in a lot of ways to the abusive priests. The children told their parents, but the parents felt powerless to hold the church accountable. In this situation, imagine how powerless Corrine felt. She’d lost her mom, and O’Rourke was threatening to take her away from the rest of her family.”
Cohen passed a carton of fried rice around the table and picked up the story.
“On May 22, O’Rourke wheeled into the driveway minutes after the school bus dropped her off. Corrine called Dolores on her cell, blurted the code phrase, then hung up and went to the door. She should have stayed on the phone, poor kid, but she was in a panic.
“The barbershop was closed that afternoon, and Claude was off doing errands, meaning Dolores, who’d been in the middle of cleaning fish for dinner, had no car. She set off on foot for the Boothby house. Ran right out the door with her cell phone in one hand and the knife in the other.”
I pictured Dolores loping down the narrow road, hell-bent on protecting her granddaughter.
“By the time Dolores arrived, Frank was inside the front door,” Cohen said. “He had Corrine backed up against the wall, was standing right up against her. I’m guessing he didn’t hear Dolores until she was on the porch.
“Dolores told Danny that when she yanked the door open, O’Rourke swung around and saw the knife in her hand. He karate-chopped her arm, causing it to fall to the floor. They both reached down for it but Dolores scooped it up first. O’Rourke swore and tried to overpower her. He knocked her sideways, and she almost fell off the porch. When she was struggling to right herself, he lunged at her. That’s when she stabbed him, to defend herself and her granddaughter.”
We were silent for a moment, picturing the scene.
“No wonder the poor kid was so hysterical,” I said. “An adult would be a mess after witnessing something like that.”
“Now it makes sense why Corrine was never interviewed,” Cohen said. “Mansfield claimed DHHS said she was too fragile. But I’ll bet it was the Speaker who made that call. He didn’t want anyone asking Corrine anything.”
We all chewed on that for a moment.
“It was no accident Bill Shaw ran the investigation and Geoff Mansfield tried the case,” Cohen said. “Both have long and deep ties to the O’Rourke family. They sure as hell weren’t going to follow any evidentiary trail that led to Frank’s criminal behavior.”
“Speaking of Shaw, can you believe his gall? The man sat on the stand and lied through his teeth about O’Rourke calling for backup,” Emma said.
“I’m guessing Frank’s cell phone showed he’d made a brief call to Dispatch that afternoon, and they couldn’t resist the temptation to twist the fact of the call to their favor,” I said. “With a little creative editing, the transcript produced by the state transformed it from a call looking for a poker buddy into a by-the-book request for backup. I’ll bet they didn’t count on Jed ratting them out.”
“Even though the case against Danny is going to be dismissed, I’m going to make damn sure the discrepancy between the tape and the transcript isn’t lost in the shuffle,” Cohen said. “I don’t know if Shaw engineered it or Mansfield did it on his own, but somebody’s got to be held to account.”
“That call to Dispatch turned out to be the key to the case, but not in the way Mansfield suggested,” Emma said. “Frank seized the opportunity of the bait spill to drop in on Corrine, figuring she’d be home alone. What a pig.”
“Then the Speaker and his brothers made sure the cops didn’t spend any time trying to find suspects other than Danny,” I said.
“Right, but Danny didn’t help his own cause,” Cohen said. “Dolores used her cell phone to call both Danny and Claude right after it happened. Danny was coming home over back roads after helping his friend overhaul a boat engine, and Claude was jawing with someone over at the dump. As it turned out, the traffic tie-up didn’t affect either of them. Danny got there first, but Claude wasn’t far behind. Danny said Claude was screaming at him, saying he should have kept Dolores out of his troubles, and Danny just snapped. He made them leave, said he’d tell the police he did it, in self-defense.”
“I wonder if it even dawned on him that if the jury didn’t buy it, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison,” I said.
“Danny wasn’t thinking straight,” Cohen said. “How could he have been? He gets a frantic call from his mother-in-law. He arrives home to find a very important dead guy lying on his front steps. Then his father-in-law pulls in and starts blaming it on him. And the whole time, his twelve-year-old daughter is in hysterics, saying it was her fault. Would you be able to come up with a good story under those circumstances?”
“I guess that’s why it turned out to be riddled with contradictions,” Emma said. “When you were appointed to represent Danny, what self-defense story did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything. When I asked him where the knife came from, what the fight was about, Danny shut his mouth. He refused to explain how it happened. He wasn’t about to point the finger at his mother-in-law, both because he gave her his word and because he thought Corrine would be better off being raised by Dolores if one of them had to go to prison.”
Cohen pushed his empty plate aside and leaned back in his chair.
“I also think Danny was trying to prove something to Claude. That he was a good man, you know, a mensch. Not the loser Claude always believed him to be.”
“Unlike Claude’s own son,” I said. “Talk about trouble.”
Cohen had the scoop on Mick as well. He’d stopped to see Rose MacVane at the Machias PD after leaving Danny, and she told him as soon as they got Mick to the police station he waived his right to counsel and confessed all of his sins. In addition to jumping me the previous night, Mick admitted chasing me down the Black Woods Road, trashing my room at the inn, stealing my laptop and making threatening calls to my house and the Chronicle newsroom.
“I’ll bet if he’s asked about it, he’ll also admit having thrown that dead fish on your lawn,” I said.
“What was Mick trying to accomplish?” Emma asked.
“Trying to protect his parents,” Cohen said. “Apparently Claude was obsessed with worry that someone would discover that Dolores was at Danny’s house the day O’Rourke died, because that’d lead to questions about whether she witnessed the killing or was the killer herself. Mick didn’t want his mother’s role known and was afraid his dad was going to blow a gasket from the stress. So, being a small-town hood, Mick tried to intimidate you so you’d stop asking questions.”
“In an odd sort of way, Mick also must have been trying to prove himself worthy to his father,” Emma said.
Cohen walked over to the sink and drew himself a glass of water.
“By the way, Joe, you were right when you guessed that Dolores’s docility was due to medication. Mick told Detective MacVane that his father—using euphemi
sms, no doubt—asked him to get out there on the mean streets of Machias to score some kind of drug that would chill Dolores out. So he was feeding her some kind of downer, which Mick passed off on his mother as ‘herbal nerve pills.’ Until Claude and Mick got her on the drugs she was all wound up, and Claude was afraid she was going to walk into the police station and confess.”
“It was Mick’s clumsiness that blew it all sky high,” Emma said. “He was too naive to realize that if you want to get a reporter to stop doing his job, the last thing you should do is make him feel like digging for the truth will put him in danger.”
“I thrive on danger,” I said. “You don’t know the peril of covering a planning board meeting, how hot the debates get at the conservation commission.”
“Here’s to good instincts,” Emma said.
“Who had those?” I asked.
“You did, except when you had Jackson Harrison in your sights,” she said.
“Oh, right. I was pretty convinced about him.”
“Lucky for him he drives a Chevy,” Cohen said.
* * *
When the morning’s drama ended I assumed I’d drive back to Portland that night, but as the day stretched on, I realized that wasn’t a realistic plan. Everything had taken longer than anticipated, and even before our Chinese food celebration, the day’s light had been fading from the sky. I called home, meaning Christie’s house, and told her answering machine that my spirit was willing but my body was exhausted, so I’d be spending one more night in Machias.
Part of me was disappointed. Though our interaction had been confined to phone calls, I knew as well as I know my own name that something had shifted since Christie’s breakup with Arn. Part of me was excited by that idea. The other part wanted to run in another direction.
On our walk back to the inn, Emma and I stopped to admire a moon that would be full in a couple more days. When she turned to face me, smiling her heartbreakingly beautiful smile, a rush of desire nearly knocked me down.
“You okay?”
I took her mittened hands in mine. “Would it be forward for me to suggest we spend the night together again?”
Emma blinked, but didn’t let go. “You mean, romantically?”
“Exactly.”
The moonlight wasn’t quite bright enough for me to read her features.
“Did you interpret something I said or did as a signal that I was interested?”
“I’d say you’ve let the professional standoffishness slip a little in the past couple of days.”
She sighed. “I think you’re a great guy, Joe. I hope we can stay in each other’s life. I want to come to Riverside, to meet Christie and the rest of your friends. But you need to know, I’m not interested in sleeping with you, or actually any man.”
My mouth dropped open. “You’re a lesbian?”
“Yeah. I figured you picked up on that.”
I could not think of a thing to say.
“I’ve been out so long, it never occurs to me anymore to announce to new people in my life that I’m gay. I assume they know.”
I laughed. “I bet this happens to you a lot.”
“Nope,” she said. “Not really.”
We started walking again.
“The larger point here is that even if I was interested, I’d only be a fling,” Emma said. “It’s pretty clear the real deal’s waiting for you at home.”
There was enough moonlight to see her knowing smile.
“That’s complicated.”
“Everything worthwhile is complicated,” she said.
* * * * *
Available Now from Carina Press and Brenda Buchanan
QUICK PIVOT, the first Joe Gale Mystery
1968
A cunning thief skimmed a half a million dollars from the textile mill that was the beating heart of Riverside, Maine. Sharp-eyed accountant George Desmond discovered the discrepancy, but was killed before he could report it. After stashing the body, the thief-turned-killer manipulated evidence to make it appear Desmond skipped town with the stolen money, ruining his good name forever.
Present Day
Veteran journalist Joe Gale is covering a story for the Portland Daily Chronicle when a skeleton falls at his feet: Desmond’s bones have been found in a basement crawl space at the long-shuttered mill. For Joe, digging into the past means retracing the steps his mentor Paulie Finnegan had taken years ago, when the case was still open. But the same people who bird-dogged Paulie four decades ago are watching Joe now. As he closes in on the truth, his every move is tracked...and the murderer proves more than willing to kill again.
Read on for the opening scene of QUICK PIVOT.
Chapter One
Friday, July 11, 2014
Riverside, Maine
From my first day at the Portland Daily Chronicle until he dropped dead of a heart attack six years later, Paulie Finnegan held me close under his crusty wing and taught me what was what. Hunched next to the police radio, black-framed glasses pushed up on his forehead, Paulie distilled small-town journalism to its essence.
A lot of time, the story you go looking for isn’t the story you’ll find. It’ll be bigger or smaller than you thought it’d be. A quiet meeting with a short agenda will get raucous. The sure bet for page one will fizzle. You’ve got to master the quick pivot.
My late mentor’s words flashed through my mind the instant I saw a skull tumble out of a collapsing brick wall in the basement of the Saccarappa Mill, freed from its tomb by a sledgehammer-wielding demolition crew. Until that moment, I was a guy writing a feature about a defunct textile factory being turned into condos. Before the skull stopped spinning on the concrete floor, I’d made the quick pivot.
“What the hell?” The goliath who’d knocked the hole in the wall pulled off his sweat-fogged safety glasses and gaped at the disembodied head. Holding up a massive hand, he dropped to one knee and made the sign of the cross. After a silent moment he rose to his feet and scowled at Nate Kimball, the rookie developer planning to rehab the crumbling mill.
“You’re not payin’ me enough to deal with this shit.” He picked up his sledgehammer and lumbered toward the stairs. Neither of his helpers moved an inch, but the younger one, looking shaky, yanked his grimy T-shirt over his nose and mouth.
Nate was gulping air as though he’d been punched in the stomach, his pudgy face as gray as morning fog. The son of a local real estate mogul, he was looking to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. A gruesome discovery in the basement of his first big renovation project was going to strangle the optimistic narrative he’d been spinning for the past hour. But Nate’s PR problems weren’t my concern. Before he could object, I slid my reporter’s notebook out of my back pocket and crouched to inspect the find.
Hollow eye sockets gazed at the ceiling. A leering rictus of intact teeth shone yellow in the dim light. Using my pen, I coaxed the skull onto its left side. The back of the head was caved in, but not by the sledgehammer’s blow. A dark substance stained the cracked bone, insinuating a long-ago assault. My mind raced as I scribbled my observations. How the hell did a skull wind up behind the wall? How many others were back there?
Forcing a couple of deep breaths, I maneuvered the battered skull back to its original spot. Five feet away, Nate was a statue in the swirling masonry dust, eyes riveted on the smashed wall. It was easy to read his mind: a skull on the floor meant the rest of a skeleton must lie nearby. I edged toward the uneven hole.
“Bad idea, Joe.” His voice cracked.
I scrabbled through the smashed bricks, squatted down and poked my hard-hatted head through the two-foot-wide gap in the wall anyway, shaking away a mental image of bony fingers reaching for me. “Long dead,” I told myself. “Longtime dead.”
The stench of mold was overpowering. No light penetrated
the darkness. Water dripped in the distance, but I couldn’t get a fix on where it was coming from. The sensation was like swimming underwater at night, blind and claustrophobic. I was working up the nerve to thrust an arm into the void when Nate shuffled his feet against the gritty floor.
“C’mon Joe. We’ve got to go outside and call the cops,” he said. “There’s no goddamn cell reception down here.”
I pulled my head out of the hole and eased to my feet. Buying time to calm my thudding heart, I did a slow three-sixty in the narrow hallway, then pulled out my phone and shot a half dozen photos while circling the skull.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea to be taking pictures.”
“It’s my job, Nate.”
“Well you’re here because of me, and I want to get the hell out of here.”
Nate’s eagerness to summon the police was understandable. He had a boatload of money tied up in his plan to turn the crumbling Saccarappa Mill into a hipster magnet. He wanted to get the cops in and the bones out, fast. But it likely was my only chance for a good look, because the first lesson they teach in cop school is to keep reporters the hell away from crime scenes.
For ten bucks cash each, the demo guys agreed to stand guard. Nate and I took measured steps until we reached the stairs. Then he sprinted ahead, like a boy convinced the boogieman was on his heels.
Outside, Nate paced the cracked parking lot while stuttering out the story to a 911 dispatcher. I leaned against a graffiti-tattooed wall and wondered how a corpse came to be bricked into a crawlspace in the rundown mill that once was the heartbeat of Riverside, Maine.
Don’t miss QUICK PIVOT by Brenda Buchanan
Available wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
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Copyright © 2015 by Brenda Buchanan
Cover Story Page 27