Truth Beat

by Brenda Buchanan

  “So where do you talk online?”

  “Other places. Snapchat and WhatsApp, mostly.”

  “Okay. So what are people saying?”

  “The rumor today was that it was either some football jocks or some Portland kids trying to amp up the tension in Riverside.” He yawned again. “Are we almost ready to eat? Me and Ryan and Eli need to work on our joint presentation for history class. I told them I’d be at the library by seven.”

  I tried to keep the conversation going while we ate, but Theo retreated to monosyllables until he took off, promising to be home by ten. I needed to go back to the Chronicle to read all the stories ever written about Patrick, but Christie and I snuck in a half-hour canoodle on the couch. We’d become adept at snagging little bits of sweet time in between the demands of her work, my work and her son. When I forced myself to leave she walked with me to the kitchen door and laid a kiss on me that would carry me through the evening and then some.

  “I’m sorry Patrick is dead, and sorrier still that you have to go back to work. The last thing you need is another all-consuming story.”

  “I’d prefer to be wrapped up in you.”

  “I’d like that too,” she said.

  * * *

  Roz was still in the newsroom when I got there, but she only stayed long enough to assure me Al Lombard had left for the night.

  “You going morgue diving?”

  “Yep.”

  “Get yourself a couple of large coffees,” she said. “You’re going to be here a while. I checked the indexes. There must be a couple hundred stories that at least mention Patrick.”

  “I wrote a lot of them,” I said. “I’m looking tonight for stuff I don’t know already.”

  “Looking for clues about why he might have killed himself?”

  “Something like that. Who was the real Patrick Doherty, you know?”

  “I hope there’s no ugliness in his background.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I thought about Roz’s comment as I devised a plan to systematically work my way through all the articles that mentioned the dead priest. The thought had flit through my mind that digging into Patrick’s life—using the newspaper archives to find a jumping-off point to learn what I could about the man behind the Roman collar—might lead to some painful truths. Time would tell if Rufe knew his buddy as well as he thought, or if Patrick had been a troubled soul hiding behind a smile.

  Before settling, I picked up the phone. The names of Patrick’s family members had been provided by the funeral home, but the only fruit provided by the internet was that his sister, Kathleen Doherty Hazelwood, lived in Bangor. When I called the number I plucked out of an online database, a woman who identified herself as a neighbor said Mrs. Hazelwood was unavailable. Hoping that would not remain the case—it’s difficult to write a story about the death of a prominent person when his or her loved ones clam up—I took a big gulp of coffee and started reading.

  Three hours later, the night editor hollered across the newsroom, asking if I planned to bunk there for the night. I waved my thanks for pulling me out of the reverie into which I’d fallen. There was no hint in any of the stories I’d read that Patrick Doherty was anything other than what he appeared to be—a self-confident, straightforward man who choked on his bishop’s lawyer-vetted statements that obfuscated the truth about several area priests. I made a list of the national figures who’d applauded Patrick when he publicly resigned his post as Church spokesman, and another of the local families for whom he’d advocated. I’d need to call all of them after my background reading percolated inside my brain overnight, and make an all-out effort to track down his family members.

  I’d written so many profiles of big shots whose sudden, shocking deaths demanded a page-one story that the task had become routine. This felt different. Even if Patrick had died by his own hand, the last major article that would be written about him needed to capture all of who he was.

  I’d be damned if I let him down.

  Chapter Five

  The delay in scheduling Patrick’s wake and funeral was a surprise.

  It was the talk of the newsroom Wednesday morning. Al Lombard—authority on all things traditional and Catholic—had predicted that the dead priest’s prominence would mean calling hours Thursday afternoon and evening, and the funeral at 10:00 a.m. on Friday. Lombard sputtered when Leah told him to draft a blurb after the diocese emailed around a brief press notice to announce arrangements weren’t yet final. There was no explanation and it didn’t make sense. None of Patrick’s family members were from outside the country, so it wasn’t like someone had to make their way home from halfway across the world.

  The penny dropped when Stella Rinaldi called to report the Riverside PD’s crime scene van was tucked behind the rectory.

  My day-to-day cop sources—the records room guy to whom I always brought coffee, the dispatcher whose father had worked in the press room at the Chronicle—claimed to have no idea what evidence was being gathered, much less if it was an ongoing police investigation that caused the funeral’s delay. The medical examiner had sufficient blood and tissue samples to establish the level of drugs in Patrick’s system. Detectives wouldn’t need the priest’s body to search his office and bedroom for a note or other evidence of his mindset. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but a still-active death scene and holding off on a funeral—especially the funeral of a prominent person who the community was geared up to mourn—implied something criminal.

  Determined not to get scooped in my own backyard, I marched over to the Riverside PD to see Barb Wyatt. Despite a shared history working cooperatively on tricky cases, the chief had a hard time shaking her distrust of the press. Every time I’m coming out of the gate on a Riverside cop beat story, we do a little dance. She puts on her stoniest stone face and says she’ll notify me when there’s something to report. I say I’ll find the facts with or without her, that she’ll be happier if it’s the former. After fifteen minutes of back and forth, during which I hint at what I already know, we begin to bargain. She always wants to know who my sources are, and of course I can’t tell her. I ask for details she is not free to divulge. We ultimately strike an information-sharing deal in the crevices between can’t and shouldn’t.

  Our negotiation about the investigation into Patrick’s death followed the predictable script. I warmed her up by making it clear I knew her detectives were investigating the possibility of suicide, and asked if the tox tests had come back.

  “The ME’s office drives me crazy.” Barb was sitting behind her desk in the old-fashioned power chair she’d inherited from her father, a well-respected former deputy chief at the Portland PD. “They whine about budget cuts and being short-staffed. Maybe that really is what’s slowing them up, but this community really needs to get on with the grieving process.”

  I’d dropped the notion of suicide on the chief’s neat desk, and if I didn’t know her so well, I’d assume she was answering my question. But Barb was clever at phrasing statements to suggest something that was not technically true, a tactic she attempted even when she knew I could smell deception from fifty paces.

  “The fact your crime scene van is sitting in the churchyard implies the delay has less to do with the understaffed ME’s office and more to do with your department’s belief there’s a possibility Patrick’s death also might have been caused by someone else.”

  “Christ, Gale. Don’t we have enough to worry about without you hinting in print that Patrick was murdered?”

  “You know I can’t print that until someone confirms that possibility is being investigated, which is why I’m here.”

  “I can’t confirm anything unless facts emerge that cause me to open an official investigation.”

  “You mean unless facts emerge that force you to call the staties.”

  Ch
ief Wyatt frowned at my mention of the state police, who investigate homicides and deaths suspected to be homicides everywhere but Portland and Bangor, the only two cities in Maine deemed to have the capacity to do so. When a long-dead body was found in the Saccarappa Mill the previous summer, Barb had won a pitched turf battle with State Police Lieutenant Antonio “Wrecker” Rigoletti, who no doubt was counting the days until the next murder in Riverside, when he could put her in her small-town chief place.

  “Is your grapevine telling you such facts exist?”

  “I have sources. Gossips have grapevines.”

  She waved a hand as if to dismiss me. “Stella Rinaldi is a Class A gossip, and whispering in your ear doesn’t transform natter into news.”

  “Stella didn’t tip me about a nearly empty vial of sleeping pills in Patrick’s pocket, but she is dying to know what your detectives and evidence techs are doing over at the rectory.”

  “Routine follow-up.”

  “That’s bull and you know it. I’m not sure if it will be worse if it turns out Patrick killed himself or someone killed him. I’m not going to stop asking questions.”

  “I hope you know by now I’m not going to bury anything,” she said. “Even if it’s ugly.”

  “And I hope you know I’m not looking for a cheap scoop.”

  The chief spun her chair sideways, looked at the framed photograph of her father on the wall. “Off the record—and that means you can’t even hint in print that I’m your source—there are reasons to believe the suicidal evidence was staged.”

  “Someone else put that bottle in his pocket?”

  Her nod was almost imperceptible. “Could be.”

  “What killed him?”

  “Not drugs.”

  “So the tox screen is back?”

  She nodded.

  “If the bottle was nearly empty, which I have on solid authority, he didn’t swallow the rest?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Testing for drugs is easy.”

  “What’s less easy?”

  She glanced again at the picture of her father, then closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Figuring out what caused a head injury.”

  I flashed to the scene in the garden the previous morning. Assuming heart attack, I assumed the blood on his shirt collar was the result of his head colliding with the stone wall that surrounded the flowerbed. I hadn’t looked too closely at the garden itself. Had there been more blood on the asters? Maybe a shovel or other tool on the ground?

  “What part of his head showed trauma?”

  “Can’t go there,” she said. “The staties indeed are taking over later today, with our friend Lt. Rigoletti leading the charge. He’ll be livid if you immediately start asking questions about details you shouldn’t know.”

  I sat forward in my chair. “Patrick wasn’t just anybody. He was critically important to this community. He was a leader—especially for Catholics, but for non-Catholics, too. To cover this story right, I need a back-channel partner. Can I count on you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Joe. I can’t this time. If Patrick was murdered—and I’m not saying he was, only that there are some details that require a close look—there will be a complete investigation. There’s nothing more I can say.”

  “Afraid of Wrecker, are you?”

  She offered me her hand across the desk. “You know better than that, but unlike newspapers, law enforcement has a chain of command. I need to respect that.”

  “I’m going to keep calling you.”

  “I would expect no less.”

  “Any update on the high-school bomber?”

  “There’s a chain of command on that, too.”

  “Right. The fire marshal’s office. They’re as tight-lipped as the state police.”

  “You need to learn patience, Joe. When there’s something to say, I will make sure you know.”

  “First?”

  “If you don’t leave me to my work, I’ll put your number of the bottom of my list.”

  * * *

  Because she was being nicer to me than she’d ever been, I invited Roz to join me at Leah’s desk to hear about my conversation with Barb Wyatt. They were stunned when I told them that what looked like a heart attack, and then a suicide, might have been a murder. “I’m quite sure no other press has this, but it’s off the record, and it’ll be hell to get someone to verify it for attribution.”

  “You’ve done it plenty of times before,” Leah said. “Bug your sources in the ME’s office. Call Patrick’s family. Make an appointment to see the other priest, what’s his name, DiAngelo? Find out whether Patrick had friends outside the rectory. None of those people need permission to talk with the press.”

  “This is an emotional story. People are going to talk, even if the cops tell ’em to zip it, Roz said. “And don’t overlook the press liaison for the state police. Put her on the spot. If she acknowledges the staties are getting involved, that means it’s a homicide investigation and you’ll be off and running.”

  Al Lombard had crept up behind our conclave, probably tiptoeing to keep us from being aware of his approach. “Any new developments?”

  “Joe’s sources say Father Doherty may in fact have been murdered.”

  Roz and I exchanged a look. Leah still hadn’t grasped Al’s agenda.

  “I hope to God you are not planning to print that,” he said. “You said Father may have been murdered. Unless you have rock-solid attribution it was a homicide, it would be unethical to publish one word.”

  “No worries, Al. We’re not printing anything yet. We were just brainstorming Joe’s next steps.”

  “The bishop will talk to me, and Father DiAngelo will, too,” Lombard said.

  “Whoa.” I held up a hand. With Al, you had to be blunt as a hammer. “I’m the lead on this story. If I need your help I’ll ask.”

  “That’ll be the day. I don’t take orders from kids who weren’t even born when I cut my teeth in this business. The bishop and Father DiAngelo are personal friends. If Father Doherty’s death is at all suspicious, they will never talk with you, but they may talk with me.”

  Roz stood up. “Joe’s right. Back off, Al.”

  “Who asked your opinion?”

  Leah rapped a pencil on her desk. “I did. Al, I’m not asking you to take orders from Joe, but you damn well better not step on his toes. It’ll take time to verify the key facts. When and if the time comes, we’ll figure out how to get a statement from the diocese, and who’s best suited to interview Father Patrick’s closest colleague. Until then, this is not your story.”

  I made a few calls while I pondered the tightrope I was walking. I had to keep calling Patrick’s family, even if those I managed to reach likely would change their mind about talking to the press if it turned out he’d been murdered. But it felt kind of sleazy, like I was taking advantage. Not wanting the ever-confident Roz to hear my misgivings, I waited until she left for lunch to kick around my dilemma with Leah.

  “Don’t wander too far down the guilt road,” my editor said. “We don’t know Patrick was murdered. We only know the ME saw something that raised her eyebrows. With someone this well-known, they’re going to look at every angle three times. Go ahead and call his family. If the cops haven’t said boo to them, that’ll tell us there probably isn’t a solid basis to suspect homicide.”

  “Maybe what Barb was hinting about isn’t a murder investigation, per se, more of an attempt to definitively rule out that possibility. The cops found evidence on Patrick’s body that suggested suicide, then the toxicology screen negated that idea. Now they have to be damn sure there was an innocent reason he had a nearly empty pill bottle in his pocket when he’d just filled a prescription. Maybe he’d transferred the res
t into another bottle he kept in his bathroom. Maybe he gave the lion’s share of the prescription to someone else, someone who couldn’t afford their own sleeping medication.”

  “Could be,” Leah said. “Keep digging.”

  “The cops think they’re working in a closed loop, that we have no idea about any of this. They aren’t going to talk to the family until they’re sure there’s a reason to do so.”

  “If that happens, interviews will be hard to come by,” Leah said. “So keep pushing now, while the pushing is good. And don’t forget Paulie’s old saying.”

  “Which one?”

  “Push friend and foe to talk. Your job’s the truth beat.”

  * * *

  A day had passed since I’d been brushed aside by the call screener at the Bangor home of Patrick’s sister, so I tried the number again. Leah’s theory that the state police hadn’t talked with Patrick’s family about the possibility he’d been murdered was borne out when Kathleen Doherty Hazelwood herself picked up. When I told her who I was, she was quick to thank me for writing such a nice obituary.

  That particular phenomenon of newspaper work never failed to amaze me—the sincere happiness of bereaved people about a well-written obituary. When I was a green reporter I never knew what to say when family members expressed effusive gratitude. “You’re welcome” didn’t seem the right thing to say, and “It was an honor” sounded pompous. I eventually settled on “I wish I’d known him/her (better) in life.” It seemed to satisfy people, including Kathleen Hazelwood.

  “He was a wonderful brother, such a smart man,” she said, her voice blurry with tears or perhaps medication. “Book smart, and also people smart. Our parents were so proud when he joined the priesthood, but they would have been uncomfortable with all that’s transpired.”

  “You mean within the Church?”

  “Yes, and that Pat wound up having to talk about it on TV and in the newspapers all the time. It would have embarrassed them.”

  “Why? He was one of the good guys.”