Public Domain Heroes: The Press Guardian #1

First, the windows of their office were smashed to pieces. Later, some of the paper’s reporters were beaten up. But it wasn’t until their senior editor disappeared that Perry finally acknowledged what was happening. Since his earliest memories, freedom and democracy had been ascendant across the country. Once unleashed, people’s enthusiasm became a tremendous force for change, transforming everything and sweeping away the last vestiges of the dismal dictatorship that preceded it. But the slide backwards was a more subtle process, a slow motion tragedy for the nation. Only much later did Perry realize that this was death by a thousand cuts. First, the legislature succumbed to it, then the courts, and soon the opposition. These all continued to exist, of course, but now as an almost lifeless parody of their former glory, a performance to conceal a democracy dying in plain sight. Every new law after that, Perry thought, would be like a vice tightening around the republic until there would be no republic left at all. From behind his desk at the newspaper, Perry Chase had watched this dark decade play out, culminating in his editor’s kidnapping a week earlier.

“Your boss is dead,” Perry’s police contact told him tersely.

They were in the shadowy corner of a bar, far away from anyone who might be listening.

“Are you sure?” he whispered, taken aback by the news.

“I saw them fish his body out of the river,” Detective Baldwin replied, “He’d been tied up and stabbed.”

“Do you think…” Perry started to ask before Baldwin cut him off.

“You know the answer. He wasn’t even the only one we found like that this month.”

The disheveled detective was visibly exhausted, pretending to be more calm than one look in his eyes would reveal. He smoked and drank and spoke to Perry while football highlights flashed across the TV above the bar.

“Who else?” Perry asked.

“Couple other reporters. I recognized one of them from those talking head shows. Calvert something? Then, there were a few union guys. And a lawyer,” he stopped to finish his beer, “We think the security services are cleaning house. And everyone is ending up in the city morgue. Supposedly, there’s a list.”

“But they can’t…” Again the detective interrupted him.

“They are! I’m telling you that they are.”

There was a long pause. Then, Baldwin broke the silence, “I don’t know how much longer we can meet like this. I don’t think I’d be much help to you now anyway. But I wanted to warn you. Tell your colleagues to watch their backs.”

Perry’s walk home that night was oddly quiet, the streets deserted. It was late by then, after midnight, but he still periodically checked to see if he was being followed. His editor, Richard Dayu, was the person who had hired Perry at the Daily Review-Express fifteen years earlier. He had mentored him. Perry and his colleague, Cynthia, were working late the night Richard left the office, never to be heard from again. Richard deserved more than that, Perry thought as anger boiled inside him.

Perry Chase’s apartment was a sad storage closet for work in progress, piles of half read books, and a bed buried in papers. An investigative reporter whose work was his life, his profession had become a canary in the coalmine for their democracy. Perry felt like he had to do something, take some kind of action, but what? He lingered on that question for hours and couldn’t sleep. He just stared up at the ceiling, knowing that he had to do something.

Obituary for an Editor

By Perry Chase | The Daily Review-Express

Last week, our paper lost more than an editor-in-chief. Richard Dayu was like a father to me. He helped train and shepherd a generation of young journalists who now populate newsrooms across Europe. Under his watchful eye, each of us would learn that our university degrees were really only the start of our education. The lessons he taught me over the years proved to be invaluable, both personally and professionally. Moreover, the stories he told from his long career were legendary. So was his sense of humor. It’s these things that helped many of us through hard times and they’re what I’ll miss the most. When I was eager to prove myself as a reporter, Richard was always there to guide me, displaying a patience and depth of character one rarely encounters in life. That’s why in recent days I’ve tried my best to remember his example, to think back on his words of wisdom. Amid the recent crime wave, his murder went unnoticed by many, but not here in our office. To his colleagues, Richard Dayu was a great man, a role model who deserved a better ending than the one fate dealt him. He will be missed.