// Chapter 1 East Coast Murder; Present Day
On a Tuesday September morning in north Baltimore, Favor Bosworth drove her three year old Buick SUV over the steel bridge spanning a cove within the Loch Raven Reservoir. She parked behind several police cars that were stopped on the side of the road. She got out of her car, slung her camera across her 5’9” frame, walked across Warren Road, and entered a trail overgrown with weeds. A slight wind blew Favor’s naturally red hair over her face which she quickly tied back in a ponytail. She was glad she wore a pants suite and walking shoes.
On her way along the trail, she passed a partially collapsed white stone wall, slightly caved in.
“I wonder why there’s a wall here with nothing else around,” she thought.
Pushing on through the brush, she eventually came upon a yellow and black police tape strung across the trail between two trees. Several police were stooped around a woman with a butcher knife stuck in her chest. It was a pretty gruesome sight. Favor stared at the woman and was thankful she hadn’t known her, although when given this assignment she was afraid she might have. The woman had probably been dead for a while.
As Favor paused and snapped a few pictures with her camera, one of the policeman around the body stood up and began walking toward her. When he got closer, she recognized Harvey Metzer from high school.
“Favor Bosworth, it’s good to see you. What are you doing here?” asked Harvey.
Favor remembered dating Harvey in school. She believed he had narcissistic tendencies.
“I’m an investigative reporter for the Baltimore Sun Newspaper,” explained Favor. “My boss sent me out here to investigate a possible murder.”
“How could the newspaper have found out so quickly? We just located the body floating in the small cove of the Loch Raven reservoir. There is so much silt in the cove that the body was floating on the surface.”
“What do the police know about the murder? Do you have any suspects?”
“We are not allowed to give the media information about the murder because it could affect a later trial.”
Favor noticed that the woman still had a diamond neckless around her neck and her pocketbook was still wrapped around her shoulder.
“Robbery was obviously not a motive for the murder,” she thought.
“How did you know to look in this spot?” asked Favor.
“We were told by an anonymous source that there was a murder near the town of Warren.”
“What do you mean? I don’t know of any town called Warren in this area.”
“If you glance near the cove, the remains of Warren are under approximately 40 feet of water.”
“I never heard of that town. What happened to it?”
“In the early 1900s, the Loch Raven Dam was raised to a height of 240 feet to provide a reservoir of water for the city of Baltimore. This caused many areas to be flooded. The town of Warren was one of those areas. It was eventually demolished and is now under 20 billion gallons of water.”
“How do you know about this?”
“I wrote an essay on Loch Raven history in High School.”
Favor said goodbye to Harvey and turned around to leave.
“Wait a minute,” said Harvey. “How about having dinner with me sometime, away from police work?”
Favor liked Harvey, but not as someone to date. She did, however, agree to have dinner with him in a few weeks hopefully to get a little more information. Favor thanked Harvey for his help and began walking back up the trail. She came out at Warren Road, walked across and got in her car. She drove back through Cockeysville, got on the 83 and took the 695 around Baltimore to the Sun’s newspaper office at Port Covington near the harbor.
Favor parked outside the Sun building in the late afternoon on Tuesday. She reached in the back of her car and brought out her laptop. She wrote a report describing what she had learned about the Loch Raven murder. If her boss approved it, the report would be sent out to several news agencies, like Reuters and the Associated Press. The Sun pays to have news sent to other papers. Favor turned in her report, checked her messages, and asked her boss if there was anything else she needed to do.
The Journalist is R.N. Crane’s third novel. You can see his other work at https://www.amazon.com/R-N-Crane/e/B006VE6TL8.
R.N. CRANE lives in Orange, California. He is a retired engineering consultant writing romantic suspense and detective crime novels. The Journalist is his newest novel. He is a member of Orange County Writers, Romance Writers of America, and Mystery Writers of America. ww.RNCranebooks.com.
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