Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) by Debra Gaskill

and failed to turn the creek now named for him into a canal connecting it to the Ohio River, giving merchants and farmers in Jubilant Falls a way to get their goods to market.
    I jumped into a pair of jeans, slipped on a shirt and put on a sturdy pair of boots, grabbing my camera as I ran out the door.
    Driving toward the park, I called Addison to let her know what was up, and that I’d get photos.
    “Thanks, Graham. I appreciate it. I’ve actually got company this afternoon,” she said.
    Once at the park, I parked among the gaggle of fire trucks and ambulances. Volunteer firefighters, light bars atop their pick-up trucks, filled about half the parking spaces. I grabbed my press pass from its weekend post, hanging from my Toyota’s rearview mirror. It was more a precaution than anything else; I’d been here at the J-G long enough that most everybody knew who I was, but it never hurt to have it with me.
    I smacked the glove box door with the base of my fist to pop open the broken lock. The door swung down, revealing the stack of reporter’s notebooks and the ring box I’d left there Friday. Gently, I picked up the box and held it in the palm of my hand.
    Elizabeth.
    After she felt better on Friday, she went home to Shaker Heights for the weekend to celebrate her mother’s birthday. She was due back home this evening and was supposed to stop by.
    Maybe her mother would talk her into seeing a doctor. I know they didn’t have a lot of secrets between them. They did things together—lunches, shopping, weekend girls’ trips where they got their fingernails and toenails painted. Surely she had told her mother what was going on. And what else could it be except pregnancy?
    If it was, I had to make it right. I would ask her to marry me tonight. I was not going to be the kind of father Benjamin Kinnon had been to me. My child was going to grow up with a mother and a father, knowing what it was to be loved.
    The story was waiting; I stuffed the ring back in the glove box and slammed it shut.
    I walked down the path near the gorge to get as close as I could to the scene, snapping photos whenever I could get a decent shot. Within an hour, a team of paramedics had rigged a system of pulleys and ropes around the trees and lowered a paramedic in a harness, along with a stretcher, down the side of the gorge.
    Within another half an hour, as I shot video with my smart phone for the website, the victim, strapped into the stretcher with his left leg in a splint, was raised up the side of the gorge with the same ropes and pulleys. With my SLR camera, I got another shot of the victim being loaded into the medical helicopter and another as it took off from the wide field next to the parking lot.
    Provided my photos were OK, this would likely be our main art for Monday’s paper, unless someone else covered something I hadn’t heard about.
    I got a quick interview with the incident commander, who explained the finer points of gorge rescue techniques to me. I also spoke to the victim’s friends, who were crying happy tears that he had gotten out alive. Before I left the scene, I made sure of the details. Names spelled right? Check. Age? Check. Victim’s hometown? Check. Transported to what hospital? Got it. Were the injuries life-threatening or not? Got that too.
    Shortly thereafter, I was walking into the newsroom to write up the story and upload my photos.
    Assistant editor Dennis Herrick was already there. A Reds baseball game was blaring on the newsroom television. A half-eaten burger and a paper cup sweating with condensation sat at sports writer Chris Royal’s desk, which meant he was probably out back in the employee lot, talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend and smoking a cigarette.
    It wasn’t unusual for any of the newsroom staff to wander in and out over the weekend. It was easier to get things done without the pressure of Addison breathing down our necks about a ten-thirty deadline and the phone ringing