by Bill Evans
Jake Thompson and Anne Swanson anchored the morning team. Brian Roberts did the weather. The threesome was tightly-knit and had the number one show for local morning shows. The challenge on day three after the bodies were discovered was to try and keep the “no new news” stories fresh. It was impossible without something to talk about. So the team went live from the Johnson house and showed the burnt mattress in the backyard.
Tami was still sleeping when she heard Barry screaming at the TV set. He couldn’t believe the morning team didn’t know better. Todd, the morning reporter, stood in the backyard and elaborated on the significance of the mattress fire, improvising without a clue.
Two other people were in disbelief as well. Detectives Tracy and Reynolds had started making it a habit to watch the CBS Morning Show to see and hear what they were reporting. Imagine their surprise when they saw a reporter and photographer going live from the backyard of their crime scene.
“Doesn’t anyone pay attention to that yellow tape?” Reynolds blurted.
Within minutes of the live shot, Barry called the assignment desk before realizing John was not there. “One day without an assignment editor and stupid shit like this happens,” Barry huffed.
Barry called the hotline, a special phone that he had installed at the anchor desk. There were only three people in the station that could use that phone. It was never a good sign when it was ringing.
“Pull the team back in. No more shots from the Johnson house. Understood?” Barry yelled. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
***
On Barry’s desk when he arrived at the station were Steve Johnson’s phone records. The IT guy was able to get his emails as well as Jesse’s sent to his computer. Barry would divide the work up. John would get the phone records from the office phones to check out. He would keep the cell phone records for himself. First he had to meet with his morning team and re-emphasize how their actions were wrong on this morning’s live shot. Wink, wink.
Barry was thinking about the November viewership ratings that were only weeks away. He needed to figure out who would replace Steve Johnson. When he checked his phone messages on the office phone the only message recorded was from Jackson, the NBC anchor. The time on the message said 2:14 a.m. That told him that Billie had followed through on their plan to put the word out. Barry only hoped the right person got the message. Jackson wasn’t that person.
John continued working different sources trying to uncover whatever he could find about Steve’s last three hours the night he died. The young reporter wasn’t having much luck. John was having a hard time finding anything out about Steve that was out of character for the anchor known in town as the “nice guy.” No one had anything bad to say about him. There were no skeletons in his closet. Not a traffic ticket. John decided to focus on the real challenge: how Steve spent his last three hours alive.
Jesse was different in that John couldn’t find much of anything about the new girl in town. She seemed to be a loner, although that was hard to confirm because she had only been in town three weeks. Part of his assumption came from the fact that no one at the station knew anything about her. She would work and then apparently disappear. Jesse didn’t seem to interact outside the workplace with anyone. The few that spent any time with her at work thought she might be married or have a live-in and that’s why she didn’t socialize. She was asked to socialize, especially by the guys at the station. But she kept to herself.
An internet geek, John searched different websites, blogs, and water coolers that catered to journalists and couldn’t find anything. Maybe he’d find something from her college days. To find that, though, he would need to know where she went to college. John thought Barry would have that information. If nothing else it should be on her resume. When Barry was free, he’d ask him.
The detectives wanted to follow up with Janet Johnson. They placed a call to her attorney, Byron, and now were waiting to hear from him. They weren’t very happy with Janet’s burning of the bed but there was nothing they could do about that now. The department continued their background checks into the lives of Steve Johnson and Jesse Anderson. They needed to find out everything possible and as quickly as they could. The detectives also wanted to revisit Lisa and Barry to compare notes.
The coroner’s office planned to release the bodies. The toxicology report had been reordered to look for poisons, toxins, or anything that might not show up in a regular autopsy. That report should be back later that day. Hopefully, that would shed some light on their investigation and give the police a direction to go in. At this point they still had nothing.
Lisa got to the station around seven thirty and met with Janet before coming to work. Janet had given the station permission to hold a memorial service for Steve so the community could pay its respects. It would be held tomorrow evening at six. There was some talk about doing it at seven, but Lisa was getting pressure from her sales manager and promotion manager that six was best because it would be during their local newscast. Lisa didn’t disagree with this thought process, but she didn’t want to be the one to bring it up. The public didn’t know that these kinds of things happened all the time in local television. No matter how small the TV station, a ratings advantage was still a ratings advantage.
Lisa would take the plans she discussed with Janet and meet with a couple of her station’s people to help plan the service. They would do everything they could to keep the service to an hour. Steve’s family had arrived the day before from Salt Lake City. His parents were in their seventies and he had two brothers and two sisters that were all married. The station would put together a video of Steve’s body of work spanning his eleven years at the station. Lisa would invite a couple of the charities Steve had worked with to say a few words. Barry would speak on behalf of the news room and Lisa would speak as the general manager of the station. The service would be held at the Santa Barbara Mission, one of Steve’s favorite places. There would not be a public service for Jesse. Her family was in Texas and didn’t seem to want to be too involved with their daughter’s remains. Lisa thought it was very sad that she really didn’t have anyone that seemed to care about her. The general manager scribbled a note on the pad in front of her to call Jesse’s parents to fill them in on the autopsy.
John stood at the entrance to his news director’s office waiting for him to look up and acknowledge his presence. “What do you need, John?”
“I’m doing research on Jesse trying to find out everything I can about her. I need to know where she went to college and thought the school might be listed on her resume. Can I look at it? Or can you tell me where she went to school?” John asked his boss.
Barry rolled his chair to his right where there was a set of file drawers. “Here it is. It looks like she got a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Art Institute of Dallas. Make sure you let me know if you turn something up.”
“I will, thanks.” John started to head back to his desk when he remembered one more question. “Hey, boss. Can I get a copy of the autopsy reports? I want to review them for my research.”
Barry was impressed that his rookie reporter was thinking along this line. “I should be able to have a copy for you sometime today.”
***
Down the street at the police station Tracy and Reynolds were preparing for a second interrogation meeting with Janet Johnson and her attorney. They still had some questions that never got addressed before Janet became overwhelmed with the process and left. Once again, the four people found themselves back in the interrogation room with the tape recorder. Richard turned the machine on and began as he did before the first interview took place.
“This is an interview with Janet Johnson. Present in the room is her attorney Byron Culpepper, police Detective Skip Reynolds, and I am Detective Richard Tracy. It is 8:35 a.m. on October 14.
“Janet, let me say for the record that Detective Reynolds and I are both extremely sorry for your loss.” Detective Tracy tried to set a good mood, i
f that was possible, for this very troubling time for Janet. “Do you know what Steve did after the eleven o’clock news was over the night he died?”
Janet seemed more composed. It might be the fact that she’d had a couple of days to deal with the situation. “I assumed he would just go home when the news was over,” she answered the detective.
“Did you talk to him that evening?”
“I talked to Steve around ten o’clock to say good night to him,” Janet remembered.
“Did you call him more than once that night?” asked Detective Tracy.
“No, just that one time. I had put the kids down and was going to bed myself when he called,” Janet said.
It was Reynolds’ turn. “Speaking of your kids, aren’t they in school? How is it you were able to take this time to go up to Oregon?”
Byron Culpepper was beginning to think the detectives thought his client was more than just the spouse of the dead person.
“My dad hasn’t been doing well and I cleared it with the school. There was no way to leave the kids with Steve because of his work schedule.” Janet was starting to get upset again.
“Janet, forgive me for asking some personal questions, but our goal here is to clear you in your husband’s death. Can you describe your marriage?” Detective Reynolds was trying to be as gentle as possible, but he really wanted to hear her answer.
“It was good,” she stated confidently.
“Then how do you explain Jesse Anderson in your bed?” Detective Reynolds pressed.
“I can’t explain it. I don’t even know this person. I don’t know what she was doing in my bed.” Janet was starting to cry. Her attorney reached for the box of Kleenex. “Do you know if my husband had sex with this woman?”
The detectives looked at each other, not sure if they should tell her or not. The attorney asked the question a different way for his client. “Did the autopsy show that the two of them had sex that night?”
“No,” stated Detective Reynolds. “There was nothing in either autopsy report that indicated they had sex that night with each other or anyone else.”
Janet Johnson was relieved. That question had weighed heavily on her.
The attorney asked, “Then what are we doing here? What motive do you think Janet had to kill either of these people?”
“We didn’t say anyone had killed them,” Tracy noted.
“Are you saying they weren’t murdered? What is going on here?” Now the attorney was the one getting agitated.
“We don’t know what happened to Steve Johnson or Jesse Anderson. We don’t know how they died. We don’t know why Steve was found on the news set or why Jesse was found in the Johnson bed. We don’t know.” Reynolds’ frustration was showing as much as the attorney’s.
“We’re here because we are hoping that Mrs. Johnson might be able to tell us something that could help us determine what happened that night,” Detective Tracy added.
8
BARRY MET DETECTIVE TRACY for lunch. The detective filled his friend in on how the interview went with Janet Johnson.
“You get anything from your background checks on their credit cards or bank accounts?”
“Not a thing. Forensics hasn’t turned up anything, either. What do you think the significance of the rope around Steve’s neck was about?” Detective Tracy asked.
“You’re the detective. What do you think?” Barry shot back.
“It might be symbolic seeing as though the rope didn’t have anything to do with his dying. The rope wasn’t even tight enough to leave any bruising on his neck.” Tracy stated.
Barry was feeling the adrenalin. “It’s like none of this makes any sense.”
“Maybe that’s how it was set up. Maybe none of this makes any sense because it really isn’t supposed to.” Detective Tracy loved police work because of the challenge a case like this gave him. “Maybe we are overthinking this. Maybe neither one of these deaths are related.”
“What are you talking about? How could they not be related?” Barry asked. “She was found in his bed. Of course they’re related.”
“Forget it. That doesn’t make any sense either. We need to find the link between Steve and Jesse.”
As the two were wrapping up their lunch, Detective Tracy’s cell phone rang. It was his partner calling to tell him that the coroner’s office called and the complete autopsy report was ready. He told Barry, and the two agreed to meet at the coroner’s office. That would give Barry time to get ahold of Lisa.
***
The detectives, Barry, and Lisa arrived at the Chief Medical Examiner’s office. No one knew what to expect from the final autopsy report. The news wasn’t going to make anybody’s day. Tim Samuels was in his fifties and had spent his entire life in Santa Barbara. He became the chief medical examiner seventeen years ago. In all that time he had a total of three unsolved deaths. Once everyone was in the conference room, Samuels handed out copies of the two autopsy reports.
“This is what I will be releasing this afternoon. My findings are inconclusive at this time. I can’t determine the cause of death,” and then after a pause he added, “to either victim.”
“Tim, how can that be?” Barry asked. “No cause of death. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know,” Samuels said.
“What did you find? Anything at all that we can work with?”
“Steve Johnson had a little—and I want to emphasize little—heart damage. There aren’t any signs that point to anything that might have caused this. The girl, Jesse, didn’t have any internal problems that would have killed her. Honest to god, people, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Doc, is it possible that they could have been given something that wouldn’t show up anywhere?” Detective Reynolds said.
“It’s possible but highly unlikely. Most of your poisons are slow acting over time, like rat poison. Rat poison or even anti-freeze have been used in very low doses over a period of time to kill people. Almost always we are able to catch something like that in the blood work-up or on close examination of the body. In this case we didn’t find anything in the blood work-up, and when we opened up the bodies, neither one showed any signs that you would normally see under those circumstances.”
“We’re still at square one on this case.” Detective Tracy always got his man. He always had evidence, though. “So, Doc, what should we be looking for here?”
The coroner thought before he spoke. “If I were you I would try and figure out the connection between Steve Johnson and Jesse Anderson. The biggest question outside of what killed these two is why Jesse Anderson was in the Johnson bed. Why was Steve Johnson dead on the set? Those two questions seem to hold the key to maybe solving your case. We have no evidence pointing to anything or anyone. I can’t even support a suicide theory.”
Reynolds held up his arm as if he was asking permission to ask a question. His other hand held the autopsy report for Steve Johnson. “Looking at the Johnson report, it looks like you identified what Steve had in his stomach. Can you tell us when he ate his last meal?”
“Why do you ask?”
“We’re trying to close the gap in the time line leading up to his death. We know he got off the air at eleven thirty-five. He was found just before three. Can you tell us if he had something to eat after he got off the air?” Detective Tracy asked.
“It appears looking at the stomach contents that he ate around twelve thirty. It was a pretty good-sized meal. Steak, lobster, salad, and a baked potato, and he washed it down with red wine.” The detectives started getting excited. “Alright, now we’re getting somewhere,” Detective Reynolds said. “There’s no way Steve goes home and fixes a dinner like that. We need to find out where he had his last dinner.”
“Did you check his credit card records to see if he spent money anywhere, such as a restaurant that night?” Barry asked.
“That was one of the first things we did. He didn’t show any activity,” Detective Tracy answered.
/> “What about his neighbors? Did they see anything unusual that night? Did anyone see his car returning home around midnight?” Barry was throwing out anything and everything trying to help.
Detective Tracy tried to answer all of the questions everyone was thinking. “The neighbors said they remember Steve’s car pulling in at its normal time. Now, his car was found at the station where his body was found. That means he had to have left his house and gone back to CBS. Nobody remembered seeing him leave, but that would have been probably between one and two in the morning.” Detective Tracy looked at Barry. “What would have made him return to the station?”
“Let me get this straight. Doc, you said Steve had a big dinner of steak, lobster, baked potato. Does anyone think he would drive home and fix a dinner like that at midnight? I don’t think so. By himself? No way.”
“Maybe he left his house to go meet Jesse for dinner,” Lisa said.
Detective Tracy added, “We checked out Jesse’s place and there were no signs of anything like a big meal. If the two of them had this meal they would have gone out somewhere, and so far we’ve been unable to turn up anyone who remembers seeing either one of them that night. And besides, what restaurant open at midnight serves steak and lobster?”
Barry nodded. “Did the neighbors say anything about Steve leaving the house once he got there?”
“No one mentioned it, but I’m not sure they were asked, either,” Detective Reynolds answered. “Where was Jesse’s car found?”
“At the station,” said Tracy. “Let’s think about this. Jesse’s car is found at the station, but she was found in Steve’s bed. Steve was found at the station. Is it possible that Jesse rode with Steve from the station to his house? Something happens between the two of them and Jesse ends up dead. Steve drives back to the station and kills himself realizing what he’s done.”