Cover Story

By Brenda Buchanan

A Joe Gale Mystery

Maine newspaper reporter Joe Gale is at his best when covering the crime beat for the Portland Daily Chronicle. In the dead of winter he heads Downeast to cover the murder trial of fisherman Danny Boothby, charged with burying a filleting knife in the chest of politically well-connected social worker Frank O’Rourke.

O’Rourke held a thankless job in a hard place. Many locals found him arrogant, but say he didn’t deserve to die. Others whisper that O’Rourke got himself killed through his own rogue behavior.

After Joe’s hard-nosed reporting provokes someone to run him off an isolated road, he realizes his life depends on figuring out not only who committed the murder, but who’s stalking him—O’Rourke’s prominent brother, friends or enemies of the dead social worker or members of Boothby’s family. As he digs deeper, Joe uncovers enough secrets and lies to fill a cemetery. He'll have to solve this one fast…or his next headline may be his own obituary.

82,000 words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carina Press
• Release date: Sep 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781459290143

Brenda Buchanan

Brenda Buchanan is a former newspaper reporter with deep reverence for small town journalism. Her mysteries feature Joe Gale, an old-school reporter with modern media savvy who covers the Maine crime beat for the Portland Daily Chronicle. Brenda holds a journalism degree from Northeastern University in Boston and a law degree from the University of Maine. She writes and practices law in Portland, where she lives with her spouse.

Book preview

Chapter One

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The evergreen boughs glittered in the setting sun, but I couldn’t afford to even flick my eyes at their beauty. A cold front had chased the morning’s freezing rain out to sea, and the following wind was brutal, scouring sand off the icy two-lane highway as fast as the road crews could spread it. Five miles south of Machias an oncoming Jeep slewed sideways through a curve, righting itself an instant before we scraped paint.

Downeast Maine—dazzling and treacherous in equal measure. It would be a fitting slogan for the remote stretch of coastline that winds the hundred miles between Bar Harbor and Canada.

That truth, and the related concept that luck walks hand in hand with trouble, had fled my mind by the time I spotted Eddie O’Rourke, the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, outside the Machias Stop ’N Go. Maneuvering across the tundral parking lot, my right hand extended, I misread the look on his face for a smile. In a blink I was on my butt.

O’Rourke was careful to turn his back the instant before his driver kicked my right leg from under me. By the time I regained my bearings, the security man had scuttled away and O’Rourke had put the door of his Ford Expedition between us.

Don’t you dare spit on my brother’s grave. His hiss was barely audible above the wind.

Apparently the Honorable Edmond J. O’Rourke knew exactly who I was, and had no intention of shaking the hand of the man responsible for the in-depth profile of his brother published in that morning’s Portland Daily Chronicle. We weren’t visible from the convenience store’s plate glass windows, but a cheap shot wouldn’t be cheap without deniability. When the driver of a salt-splattered truck emerged from the store carrying a twelve-pack of Budweiser, O’Rourke covered his ass.

Watch your step. His voice boomed across the parking lot. This guy just fell. It’s like a skating rink out here.

He dropped his voice and looked me in the eye. You’re a hell of a long way from Portland, Mr. Gale.

The smart part of my brain clicked into gear before I committed what O’Rourke surely would have called an unprovoked assault. Maine’s most high-profile politician had his sidekick take a whack at me because I’d written a factual story about his brother. The attack came without warning, when there were two of them and I was alone, which was useful intelligence about Edmond J. O’Rourke.

After brushing damp grit from the seat of my jeans, I nodded at the effective shield of the Expedition’s door.

You’d best be careful yourself, Mr. Speaker. Washington County’s a dangerous place.

I said it with a smile, to make sure O’Rourke knew he was being mocked.

* * *

The Speaker’s youngest brother had been killed on a warm afternoon the previous May. Frank O’Rourke fell in the line of duty, stabbed to death while investigating a child neglect case in East Machias. In the first week of the new year, with winter’s merciless arms clamped around the state of Maine, a jury was about to be selected to sit in judgment of his alleged killer.

My piece in that morning’s Chronicle summarized the situation for those just tuning in. Thirty-year-old fisherman Daniel Boothby, accused of killing O’Rourke, had lost his wife to cancer two years earlier, leaving him alone to raise his twelve-year-old daughter, Corrine. O’Rourke had been investigating reports the girl was neglected.

There was nothing remarkable about my pretrial piece save three sentences near the end describing the younger O’Rourke’s history of transfers within the DHHS ranks. It was the only deviation from the media narrative established right after the murder, which was like a pitch for a made-for-TV movie. Handsome social worker—selfless kid brother of prominent politician—stabbed to death while trying to protect adolescent girl from her neglectful father.

The pretrial media narrative made Frank out as a fallen hero and Boothby a booze-addled thug. I knew O’Rourke’s job must have been high on stress and short on thanks, and it was public record that Boothby had tangled with the law. But every crime reporter who’s been around the block more than once knows there is no such thing as an uncomplicated murder. Thanks to my mentor, the late great Paulie Finnegan, I have old-school reporter habits, which was why I’d spent six hours driving on terrible roads in the sparse January daylight in order to get the lay of the land before the trial started. Monday the jury would be chosen, and I’d be sitting on an uncomfortable bench in a drafty courtroom, watching the elaborate dance of direct and cross examination. Before then, I had questions of my own to ask, and the Speaker’s ambush made me as interested in the dead O’Rourke brother as I was in the man about to be tried for his murder.

* * *

In apparent defiance of Chapman Media, the out-of-state holding company that acquired the Chronicle and a bunch of other red-ink-bleeding New England dailies in a corporate asset swap a year or so earlier, my editor had booked me a room at the Easterly Inn, a grand Victorian two blocks beyond the courthouse. In so doing she ignored the incessant memos of our ostensible leader Ronald Chapman—a man who’d owned a chain of convenience stores before his foray into newspapers—stressing the need to cut every conceivable financial corner. I’d probably get a lecture about the extravagance, but on that bitter night I was tickled to be staying at the snug-looking Easterly rather than a thin-walled, space-heated motel room with a door that opened directly to a frigid parking lot.

A bell rang when I bumped my way inside the heavy front door, duffel in one hand, laptop bag in the other. A woman with long dark curls sat with her back to the tall reception desk. I cleared my throat. No response. I coughed once, then again. She spun around in her chair, eyes closed, and held her index finger in the air. Minutes passed, causing me to wonder if the motel might have been a better bet. Eventually the woman sighed, reached under her tangled hair and plucked out ear buds. She smiled but didn’t speak, as though waiting for me to explain myself.

I have a reservation. Joe Gale.

You’re the Portland newspaper guy here to cover Danny’s trial. She stood as though to get a better look at me. I must have appeared to be the chatting sort. Do you think he’s guilty?

Boothby, you mean?

Yeah, do you think Danny murdered Frank O’Rourke in cold blood?

Hard to know before the trial starts.

The phone rang while I was filling in the registration card. She told the caller she was busy and would call back in a few minutes. Then she sauntered back to where I was standing and picked up our conversation as though it hadn’t been interrupted.

Just so’s you know, a lot of people in this town know Danny, and knew his wife Karen, she said. Since she died, we’ve watched him try to hold it together for Corrine. It’s been hard, no two ways about it, and Danny’s gotten into a few scrapes in the past year or two, but nobody’s perfect, you know?

To keep her talking, I nodded in a way that implied agreement.

Of course DHHS expects you to be perfect. Never mind that you nursed your wife through her cancer, and you work every day digging worms or fishing on someone else’s boat because you lost your own, doing whatever you can do to pay off the damn medical bills that no one forgave, to keep a roof over your daughter’s head and food on the table and buy her new boots every winter because she’s growing like a weed.

She took a breath. DHHS don’t count any of that. They only count your screwups. It makes no sense that Danny’d kill anyone—even Frank O’Rourke—because that’d leave Corrie an orphan.

I had no wish to break off the flood of insight into the local point of view, but the desk clerk clamped her lips together and offered a rueful grin, as though accustomed to being told she talked too much. My name’s Willow, by the way. I don’t own this place, but pretty much run it in the winter. I put you in Room 14. Fronts on the street, but there’s no noise to speak of this time of year.

She opened a cabinet and removed an old-fashioned key.

Breakfast runs from six thirty to nine, and it’s the real deal, eggs every day and hot cereal, too. The dining room’s down the hall to the right. If you’re hungry for supper, the Old Fort Pub’s down the hill. Good food. Great beer.

She stopped for a breath. Any questions?

Anyone else connected with the trial staying here?

Like who?

Members of the O’Rourke family.

She gave me a long look. You planning to buddy up to them?

Not hardly. Just want to be prepared for who I might bump into at breakfast.

You won’t be fighting them for the last blueberry muffin. She haughtified her voice. Mr. Speaker and the rest of the O’Rourke family have private accommodations in a luxurious oceanfront home in Machiasport. Away from the hustle-bustle of downtown Machias.

Resisting the urge to reciprocate the snark, I gave her a wink, hoisted my bags and headed for the ornate staircase. Willow didn’t need to know I’d already fought a round with Speaker O’Rourke in the ice-covered convenience store parking lot, and that I’d be ready for his next sucker punch.

Chapter Two

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The room was spacious and the bed was comfortable. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, just stretch out for a few minutes and contemplate what might have infuriated Eddie O’Rourke. But the soft clanking of the radiator sent me to dreamland, something my friend Christie Pappas would have called an emotional response to being assaulted, if I were foolish enough to tell her about my late afternoon humiliation.

Any lingering post-nap fuzziness was slapped out of my head the moment I stepped outside to look for supper. Every inch of exposed skin froze on contact with the wind, forcing me to zip my parka to my chin and yank my watch cap down to my eyebrows. Head down, I speed walked down the hill toward the center of town and found the Old Fort Pub in a brick building that might once have been a warehouse. A long bar to the left of the doorway was more than half full. I slid onto a stool at the far end, a comfortable distance from the overhead TV, grateful for the big woodstove in the corner pumping out BTUs. The taps included Coal Porter, brewed down the road in Bar Harbor. My stomach growled when the waiter walked past with two plates laden with fish and chips. Christie had cooked me a giant breakfast that morning at her diner, but lunch had been a stale protein bar and an overripe banana.

I was half watching a basketball game on a muted overhead TV when the bartender slid down to take my order. He asked if I was in town for the trial, as if there was no other conceivable reason a stranger in his early thirties might wander into his pub on a Sunday night in January. When I told him I was a reporter at the Chronicle, he grinned.

Had you pegged, he said. I’d know if you were a local. You’re too young to be one of the O’Rourke boys. Even though they say the prosecutor who’s going after Boothby is a young guy, he’d be on a first name basis with a barber.

Reporters are pretty much free of sartorial standards, but a glance in the mirror behind the bar showed my longish hair had been transformed into a cowlicked mess by the winter scourge known as hat head. Finger-combing it behind my ears, I asked about the upcoming trial, figuring he’d be on top of the local chinwag.

It’s sad, man. Boothby’s a good dude. Had a lot of troubles. Must have snapped, thinking he was going to lose his kid to the state.

Did you know O’Rourke?

Little bit. Seemed like a regular guy, or at least he tried to be. Liked the ladies, and having a good time. He nodded toward the other end of the bar. The big man down over there worked with O’Rourke at the DHHS.

Big man was right. Easily six foot five and three hundred pounds, the guy he nodded at was standing rather than sitting, an inscrutable look on his pockmarked face.

The bartender watched me take his measure. His name’s Little. Roland Little. Keeps to himself, but he might be up for talking to you.

I slid off my stool, grabbed my parka.

The bartender crowed like a successful matchmaker. I’ll bring your fish and chips over there.

When I said hello, Roland Little grunted without looking away from the TV.

Bartender says you knew Frank O’Rourke.

He took his time looking over at me, his balding head bobbing like an enormous turtle.

Yup. His attention returned to the screen.

Trial starts tomorrow.

No shit.

I sipped my beer, turned my own eyes to the screen and pretended to lose myself in the game. After a few minutes the bartender showed up and slid an overflowing plate of fish and chips in front of me. Little pulled his eyes away from the tube long enough to order his own supper, nodding at my plate and holding up two fingers the size of stogies.

Make mine a double, he said.

He didn’t object when I offered to buy him another beer, but I knew better than to take that as agreement to be interviewed. I took my time eating, savoring the crunchy, salty hand-cut fries. When Little finally spoke, it was in a quiet voice with a pronounced Downeast accent.

Why do you care what I think about the trial?

"I write for the Portland Chronicle. I’m trying to learn what I can about O’Rourke."

More silence. I ate a few more chips.

How do you know I won’t peddle you a line of bull?

I don’t.

He took a long swig of beer. Frank didn’t work here long. Year and a half maybe. I didn’t know him well, but guess it got to him pretty quick.

The workload?

The whole fucking job. Little looked sideways at me, emotion flashing across his moonlike face. You can’t imagine the hellish things you see every day when you’re trying to protect kids from their own families.

The bartender appeared with a platter piled high with fish and chips. Before digging in, Little swiveled his big body sideways and faced me head-on.

You fucking better not quote anything I say.

Why not?

Because I don’t want to be in your goddamn newspaper. Not by name, not by description. I spend my days trying to make people give a shit about the stuff you’re supposed to give a shit about when you bring a child into the world. It’s a grinding job, and nobody who does it deserves to die. His flat gray eyes were defiant, as if he expected me to challenge him.

Got it, I said.

Good, he said.

We ate in silence for a while.

If I promise not to quote you, will you tell me how you think it happened?

You mean Frank getting murdered?

I nodded.

It happened because some people are animals. You cross ’em and they go for your throat. I don’t know this Boothby asshole but if he’s like most parents who are in danger of losing their kids, he thinks protecting them means keeping the DHHS worker far from their door, when we’re probably the best chance the kid has at a normal life.

I thought about his answer for a minute, realized it didn’t match the question I asked.

"That may be why it happened, but how did it happen? How did a social worker end up being stabbed to death when making a house call? Did he have a bad history with Boothby?"

Little’s eyes receded into narrow slits in his ham-like cheeks. Are you fucking kidding me? His booming voice silenced the room. You want to blame it on Frank, you little... He shoved his enormous frame away from the bar and put his face way too close to mine. His breath was sour and his clothes reeked of woodsmoke.

Don’t cross me, you weasel. He addressed himself to the rapt crowd. This guy’s come to town to do a hatchet job on Frank O’Rourke. Do not fucking talk to him.

The bartender had come around to our side of the bar by then. Brave or foolish, he had a restraining arm on Little when he pointed to the door.

Time to go, he said, but he was talking to me.

* * *

Two-for-two, I thought while I tried to outrace the blasted wind back up the hill. Or oh-for-two, depending how you looked at it. Eddie O’Rourke wanted me to write only laudatory things about his kid brother. Big Roland Little decided on the basis of three questions that I was out to vilify his coworker. In this insular town near the Canadian border, objective questions about Frank O’Rourke’s death apparently were considered attacks on his character.

It was going to be a long damn week.

Though the friendly voice of my editor, Leah Levin, would have been welcome, I texted her instead of calling, letting her know I was settled in. Six months earlier, I would have told her of the Speaker’s parking lot antics and Roland Little’s furious eruption in what probably was the town’s only bar, embellishing the stories to make her laugh. But the previous summer I’d become caught up in a story that forced us onto a different footing.

Leah hadn’t informed the antacid-popping boys in the front office when I was threatened while covering a long-cold case. They nearly wet their collective pants when a man who’d spent four decades thinking he’d gotten away with murder tried to kill me, too. Had they been newspapermen rather than bean counters, they’d have been proud of my role in solving that notorious case. But the suits Upstairs didn’t know shit about journalism. A half a year later they still were leaning on Leah to make sure I steered clear of anything that smelled like trouble. The result was a tacit don’t ask, don’t tell policy. I knew her job could be on the line if she didn’t report my Machias skirmishes, so I simply wouldn’t tell her about them.

Chapman Media’s lieutenant in charge of local operations—an aging preppie named Jack Salisbury—hadn’t wanted me to leave Portland at all. He convened a sit-down meeting in early December after Leah announced I’d be spending a week or more in Machias covering the Boothby trial. Salisbury thought it would be sufficient for the Chronicle to have a reporter in the courtroom for the opening statements and closing arguments, and use wire service copy for everything in between. Disgusted, I pulled out the Paulie Finnegan would be rolling in his grave argument.

"The Chronicle is the newspaper of record in this state, I said. We can’t abdicate our responsibility to cover an important murder trial in order to save the cost of a few nights in a motel."

The newspaper of record. It sounds so important. And you’re what? A backwoods Bob Woodward? Salisbury had a scar on his lip that made every facial expression look like a sneer. It’s 2015, Joe. We can no longer afford to let our reporters go off on little junkets.

A junket? Have you ever been to Machias in January?

It’s a junket when the assignment’s to cover an open-and-shut case. He pushed his chair back from the conference table. I’ll be reviewing your expense sheet personally to make sure you’re appropriately frugal.

* * *

The clanking, hissing steam radiator in my room was throwing off waves of beautiful heat. My phone said it was eight forty-five so I speed dialed Christie on her cell. Owning a diner requires her to rise at a hellish hour each morning, so nine o’clock was her witching hour. She picked up as soon as my number flashed on her screen.

Say hey, good lookin’. Her tone defeated the lighthearted greeting, but I completed our corny ritual anyway.

Whatcha’ got cookin?

Too damn much tonight.

Theo?

Who else? He ducked out the door as soon as we finished supper. Disappeared before I could ask where he was going and who he’d be with.

A few weeks earlier, Christie’s son had morphed from an easygoing, sweet kid into an uncommunicative stranger. Though she’s not a fretter by nature, Theo’s sudden personality shift startled the mellowness out of Christie.

You need to consider what goes on inside the head of a sixteen-year-old boy, I said. Actually, you don’t want to know. It’s sex. Pretty much 24-7.

I’d be relieved if he had a girlfriend. But he’s not dressing better or showering more often. He slithers around the house with a sneaky look on his face, avoiding eye contact.

Probably because he’s thinking about sex all the time. I asked about my dog, Louisa, who was bunking with Christie while I was away.

She’s such a good girl, Christie said. Greets me with a kiss when I come through the door, wags her tail when she hears my voice. It’s good to have a sweet being in the house now that my son has turned into a sullen stranger.

I’ll try to talk with him if you want, but we might want to hold off for now, see if he works it out on his own.

I hate this. Makes me feel like a failed parent.

I leaned over and untied my boots before hoisting my feet onto the hassock. Stop that crazy talk.

I know. It’s boring. So let’s talk about your day. How was the ride Downeast?

Long. No traffic or even moose to keep it interesting. I stopped for gas as soon as I pulled into Machias and bumped into Eddie O’Rourke, who made it known he disliked this morning’s story.

Because you wrote about how his baby brother washed out in one DHHS office after another?

Mr. Speaker didn’t articulate a precise critique. Just glowered and hissed.

That must have been a treat.

I’d been planning to tell Christie the whole stupid story, and about big Roland, too, but Theo was giving her enough to worry about. A reporter who wants to be popular should find another job, I said.

That’s vintage Paulie Finnegan.

You bet. Paulie felt like he was slacking if he didn’t get under the skin of the powers that be. Of course, now that we’re in the infotainment era, it’s all about access to sources and how fast you can tweet, even if they’re peddling bullshit.

Poor Joe. Stressing about the future of journalism again?

You’d be worried too, if people stopped eating bacon and eggs.

Eating bacon and eggs will never go out of style, she said. But if it did, I’d adapt somehow, just like you will.

Right now I need to adapt to the Washington County weather. It’s the damn tundra here.

You know what they say about Downeast Maine, she said. The only thing more rugged than the coastline is the women.

Chapter Three

Monday, January 5, 2015

Frank O’Rourke was a handsome son of a gun. Long-limbed and raven-haired, he didn’t look like a state official in his khaki pants and moccasins. O’Rourke’s long-lashed eyes were closed, his handsome face placid. Had there not been a crimson bloom on the chest of his yellow golf shirt, the images fanned across the prosecutor’s desk could have been a catalog model feigning a nap on the front porch of a fishing camp.

Damn shame, isn’t it? Geoff Mansfield leaned back in an old-style wooden chair, studying me as I worked my way through digital crime scene photographs so vivid the metallic scent of blood seemed to hang in the air. No prosecutor in Portland or even Bangor had ever invited me to sit down to chat an hour before jury selection, much less let me see actual evidence, which brought to mind Paulie Finnegan’s saying about unexpected kindness bestowed by lawyers and cops.

When you smell a rat, watch your step.

When I’d called around to my courthouse sources to ask about Mansfield, I’d gotten an earful. Experienced prosecutors from the AG’s criminal division try all murder cases in Maine, but Mansfield was nobody’s idea of a high-level trial guy. The consistent gripe was that he routinely blew off the tedious work of evaluating evidence and weaving it into a coherent narrative, relying instead on his good looks and a charming manner.

A bit more digging revealed that Geoff Mansfield had something his colleagues inside the AG’s office didn’t have—political connections with family roots. His uncle had been a legendary Attorney General who held office through both Democratic and Republican administrations, and his mother was a second cousin to the O’Rourke clan. When the powers-that-be were deciding who would prosecute the man accused of murdering Frank O’Rourke, those two facts must have catapulted Geoff to the head of the line.

His pale blue eyes studied me across the boxes of files crowding the conference table as he tried to rope me in to his theory of the case. It’s so damn tragic. Dedicated civil servant, murdered doing what’s got to be one of the most important and most dangerous jobs in the state of Maine.

Sad story for all concerned, I said.

"If you mean

Reviews for Cover Story

[gpangel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cover Story by Brenda Buchanan is a 2015 Carina Press Publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This is my first Joe Gale Mystery so I didn't know what to expect going in, but I soon found myself immersed in this compelling mystery that centers around a small Maine community and the murder of a prominently connected social worker. Joe is an investigative reporter from Portland on assignment covering the Frank O'Roarke murder trial, although at first glance it appears to be an open and shut case. However, once Joe begins chatting with the locals, he quickly learns the situation isn't so cut and dried after all, and someone is sending him no so subtle messages that he should leave well enough alone. Will Joe get to the truth before it's too late? I found this mystery intriguing and absorbing, with well drawn characters, vivid detailing of the Maine landscape, and a compelling and thought provoking storyline. If I had a complaint, it would be that at times the story was a little dry, and although Joe is a very interesting guy, with some messy and complicated personal issues, especially in the romance department, perhaps an infusion of humor here and there would liven up the dialogue a little. Other than that, the author did a great job of depicting the old school investigative tactics once employed by journalist, but mostly tossed out the window these days. Joe is a dying breed, I'm afraid, a lone hold out, still doing face to face interviews, knocking on doors, and writing the truth without any sort spin or hidden agenda. I wish there were more like him. This is a straightforward mystery, a quick and easy to read, and quite enjoyable. I'm looking forward to the next Joe Gale Mystery. 4 stars