Stalking Susan

by Julie Kramer

  “Thanks, but I don’t care to be included in your story.”

  The gang at 60 Minutes doesn’t go away so easily and neither do I.

  “Oh.” I feigned surprise. “Any particular reason?”

  Long pause. “I’m not terribly photogenic.”

  “Oh, everybody says that. We have special lights that are very flattering.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just a poor public speaker.”

  “Don’t worry. This will be taped, not live. That’s much easier.”

  “No thanks, but maybe I could give you the names of some other veterinarians.”

  We bluffed back and forth before it became clear I needed to show my hand. My lawyer is quite firm on this point: the story can’t air unless the subject gets a chance to respond to the allegations.

  It might seem unequivocal that it must be illegal to jump out from behind a bush and chase someone with a camera, but it’s not, and TV crews actually do it for sound legal reasons. The best way for Channel 3 to prove (in a court of law if I were sued) that Dr. Petit was given the opportunity to respond is to show a videotape of that opportunity to the jurors. If what they end up watching is me pursuing the plaintiff down the street while he covers his face with a magazine, ignoring my questions, whose fault is that?

  “Even though it was inconvenient,” my lawyer would probably argue, “my client went the extra mile to give the plaintiff one last chance to explain why he was cheating people.”

  It might not be Media Law 101, but then I’d never been sued, either.

  PETIT FORMALLY DECLINED an on-camera/sit-down/face-to-face interview to respond to allegations he was running a pet cremation scam.

  “You put that on the air and you’ll hear from my lawyers!” he yelled into the telephone.

  So yes, my conscience was definitely clear about ambushing him. Now it was simply a matter of logistics. Clinic versus home? Clinic was better. Home ambushes make me feel like a jerk; and neighbors sometimes report vehicles that don’t belong on the street. Morning versus evening? Morning was better. The clinic opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 6 p.m. Sunrise came just after seven, sunset just after five. Malik and I needed daylight for our mission.

  We moved the van into position while it was still dark so nobody would notice us climbing in back, out of sight. We waited for Dr. Petit to drive up to work in his white Cadillac. The overcast day meant good light without shadows. At eight-thirty he pulled his vehicle into his usual space, about forty feet from the front door of the veterinary clinic.

  “Patience,” I whispered. Malik kept the van door ajar so he’d be able to move quickly. I wore a wireless microphone to record my voice and Petit’s in case we were out of audio range of the camera mike.

  “I’ll go first and approach him casually,” I said. “He might say something useful if he doesn’t see the camera and freak. You keep inside and shoot through the window.”

  “But if he bolts, I’m after him.” He put a finger to his lips and started rolling.

  Dr. Petit got out of his shiny Caddy and locked the door. Good. Now we had him trapped between two locked doors. Whichever direction he went, clinic or car, he’d have to fumble with a key to get away. He was halfway to the clinic when I reached him.

  “Hello, Dr. Petit, I’m Riley Spartz from Channel 3. We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

  I stood between the veterinarian and the clinic door, careful not to block Malik’s camera angle.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Why are you misrepresenting pet cremations?” Short, precisely phrased questions edit well.

  “You want my response? This is my response!”

  He reached out his hand. In his grip, a small, odd-looking gun.

  It’s funny what things register when you’re paralyzed with pain. In the split second before I crashed to the ground, I noticed Petit was wearing a necktie featuring a coiled snake, fangs ready to strike. The last thing I remember was Malik rushing past me, screaming what was supposed to be my next line, “Why are you cheating people?”

  “SHOCKED IS THE word.” Malik was talking to Noreen on his cell phone. “Can you believe it? The son of a bitch Tasered her.”

  Dr. Petit had delivered at least 50,000 volts of electricity to my body with a Taser stun gun. The impact incapacitated me. I hit the dirt flat, like a brick, with no chance to fling out an arm and break my fall. Out for only five seconds, I still felt dazed moments later. Malik picked gravel from my face and hair and helped me stagger back to the van.

  “She’ll be okay,” he assured Noreen, before answering the question foremost on her mind. “Absolutely I was rolling.”

  THE ESSENCE OF vertigo still clung to me as I hobbled into the newsroom. Word of my ambush-gone-amok had spread throughout the building.

  The station suits waited in Noreen’s fishbowl office to watch the electrifying tape of my mouth open wide in pain like a largemouth bass.

  I’d already eyeballed the encounter through the camera viewfinder on the way back and had no interest in seeing it on a big screen. But the general manager, station lawyer, promotion director, and Noreen would have paid per view if necessary. I closed my eyes when Malik pressed play. I wish I’d closed my ears instead: the audio of my harrowing wail was terse, but torturous. Especially since the bosses kept rewinding the tape.

  Over and over I heard: “You want my response? This is my response!”…“Aghhh!”…“Why are you cheating people?”

  The fourth time through, I snapped at Malik, “Why are you asking him about cheating people? How come you didn’t ask him about zapping people?”

  “I apologize. I am ashamed. All I could think about was where the interview was heading next. When you went down, I didn’t have a plan.”

  “You did great, Malik.” Noreen piled on the praise. “Lots of photographers would have dropped the camera and run to help her. You kept taping, and that’s what counts. If you hadn’t, Riley would have been stunned for nothing.”

  “During sweeps, this tape is priceless,” added the promotion director. “It might be worth five share points alone. How soon can we get it on the air?”

  We’d finished shooting the bulk of the story and just needed stand-ups, reaction from our tipster Toby Elness, and a few fill-in shots. Write. Lawyer. Rewrite. Edit. Air.

  “Three days,” I answered.

  “Make it four. That will give us more time to promote the hell out of this,” the promotion guy said. The other suits nodded. He headed out the door, leaving the news to us while he concentrated on the marketing.

  The rest of the meeting dealt with what kind of legal action, if any, the station should take against Dr. Petit.

  “What do you mean, ‘if any’?” I asked. “The guy shot me.”

  “But technically you’re not hurt.” Easy for Miles Lewis to say. His most physical activity is sitting behind a lawyer’s desk, crossing his fingers that none of us libels anyone.

  “You’d prefer if I were hurt?” I said.

  “Absolutely not,” Noreen said. “We need you to write the story.”

  “If this had happened in Wisconsin, it would be a slam dunk,” Miles said. “There it’s a felony to even possess a Taser gun, much less use one.”

  While Tasers are banned in seven states, it’s perfectly legal for Minnesotans to possess one. Except in St. Paul, which joined Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York in the last couple years to pass special anti-Taser laws. There, cops are the only folks allowed to carry.

  Ironically, the only known stun gun deaths nationally have occurred after cops subdued suspects. Whether the perps had bad hearts to begin with, died of a drug overdose, or whether Tasers are actually lethal weapons is debatable, depending on which side of the trigger you’re on. The folks at Taser headquarters are quick to point out that no coroner has ever listed their weapon as a sole cause of death.

  “I’m talking about assault charges, not conceal and carry,” I said.

  “Yes,” Miles nodded
, “but he’ll probably claim he felt threatened. Juries hate the media, they might buy that.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, shaking my head. “Not after my story airs, they won’t.”

  “No talk like that,” Miles insisted. “We don’t want to give the impression that you’re doing the story for revenge. The story is the story. If you can’t remain objective, someone else has to take over.”

  That got my attention. “I’m not giving up this story, too.”

  Miles spoke slowly, deliberately using simple language instead of legalese. “I’m only pointing out that if the station runs the tape ad nauseam but complains it was a crime, then it looks like we’re trying to have it both ways, that we’re also benefiting from the crime.”

  “I’m worried pressing charges makes us look whiny,” Noreen said.

  Miles disagreed. “I’m actually more worried about looking like losers if he gets acquitted. Then Petit goes from villain to victim.”

  “Could somebody please worry for maybe ten seconds about sending a message not to mess with reporters?” I asked.

  They looked at me like I was daft.

  BACK AT MY desk three messages flashed. I listened to a voice mail from Susan Redding’s best friend, Laura Robins. Since my lunch with Dr. Redding, I’d left several messages for her, but until now she seemed to be ducking me.

  “Hi, Riley,” the message went, “I’m down in the Cities today and hoped we might get together privately. Call me on my cell.”

  Her wanting to meet was good news. Her using the word “privately” was bad news. That suggested no camera. But anxious to learn more about Mayor Skubic’s early years and needing a breather before writing the pet cremation story, I set up a late-afternoon appointment with Laura.

  Dusty Foster’s mother had left the next message. So grateful for all I was doing to help her son. “I always knew he didn’t kill that woman. I just knew it. Mothers can always tell.”

  My own mom also had called. She and my dad live in rural southern Minnesota, far outside Channel 3’s viewing area. She read something in the newspaper about my SUSANS story and wanted me to know that they almost named one of my sisters Susan. And could I please send them a dub to watch.

  First, sleep. Since I had a couple hours to kill, I sacked out on a sofa in the greenroom. That’s the traditional name for the cubbyhole where guests wait to be interviewed on live shows, and where TV reporters and anchors get fluffed and buffed prior to airtime. “Greenroom” first appeared in the sixteenth century as theatrical vernacular for a behind-the-scenes place for actors to relax before stepping on stage. Why that particular color remains obscure, but Channel 3’s greenroom, like most, is painted green.

  Hollywood lights and a makeup counter take up much of the space. Head shots of station reporters and anchors hang on one wall. Celebrity autographs decorate another. President Jimmy Carter. Movie star Dennis Hopper. Tenor Luciano Pavarotti. These names are mingled with a national spelling bee champion, the head of the local Vice Lords gang, and a winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off. But because Minnesota is a huge pro sports market—football, baseball, basketball, and hockey—many of the John Hancocks belong to athletes. Alan Page. Randy Moss. Kirby Puckett. The autograph wall, a faded green compared to the rest of the room, is never painted over.

  The greenroom is also a popular crashing place for staff between shifts. I never reached REM sleep because a certain floor director kept opening the door to check if the couch was clear. Just as well, any dreams that afternoon would probably have been haunted by the electrifying sound from the Taser. Eventually Malik shook me awake. Right on time. I’d asked him to play alarm clock while he loaded video clips into the edit cube down the hall. I scrolled through the shots before heading out. By the time I had script approval, he’d be ready to record my voice track and start editing.

  LAURA ALREADY HAD a table at a college snack bar a few blocks from Channel 3. From my perspective, it’s an ideal place to meet a source: close and cheap, no waitresses to interrupt, students seldom notice outsiders, and there’s usually plenty of room to spread out papers.

  “This takes me back in time,” Laura said.

  “You didn’t sound like you wanted to be wined and dined, and we can hang here without attracting attention. Kids aren’t big news viewers, so no one’s going to recognize me and wonder what we’re up to.”

  Curious about why she wanted this meeting, I brought up Dr. Redding, just to get her talking. “He seems to have a high opinion of himself.”

  She laughed. “Oh, did he talk down to you? Don’t take it personally. That’s just his nature.”

  “He must be more approachable with patients.”

  “As long as infidelity isn’t an issue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A friend of mine was a patient of his. She was married and having an affair with a colleague. When she confided that during therapy, he dropped her.”

  “Sounds rather judgmental for his line of work.”

  “His ego took a bruising after Susan was killed. Not so much that she died, but the public spectacle of murder and the shame of her doing it with the gardener. Let’s just say I think he has trust issues with women.”

  “So he never remarried?”

  “No. If a public function requires he attend in the company of a woman, he shows up with someone suitable. But they are pretty interchangeable, and I don’t get the impression he considers any of them special.”

  I paused now to let her lead the conversation. She didn’t disappoint me. “Last time we talked, you asked if I had any doubt Dusty Foster killed Susan.”

  “And the last time we talked, you told me you didn’t.”

  “I do now.”

  She’d seen the news coverage of the protesters outside Oak Park Heights Prison the night before. They had chanted for justice and waved signs reading FREE DUSTY FOSTER and HE’S NO SUSAN KILLER. Barely a couple dozen of them, but because the camera crew shot the scene tight, from different angles, on air it looked like a crowd.

  Among them, Dusty’s mom. She spoke convincingly of his innocence in a live interview. “Do you think I’d be able to visit my son and look him in the eye if I thought he was a cold-blooded killer?” Our new nightside reporter covered the story with such enthusiasm it seemed inevitable the metal doors should clank open and Dusty walk free before the newscast ended.

  As I watched the coverage I again recalled Trent’s Last Case, one of my favorite reporter mysteries, and thought about how close an innocent man comes to ruin in that classic tale. Even I found myself asking if perhaps Dusty Foster might have gotten himself in a jam so perilous even the truth could not save him.

  That tableau also shook Laura’s conviction and made her dial my number. Now she pulled a manila envelope from her purse and pushed it across the table. Inside, a faded Polaroid photo of a young Susan Redding with a black eye and bruised face. On the back, a handwritten note read “Karl Skubic did this.” It was signed “Susan O’Keefe” and dated 1985.

  “She gave this to me years ago and told me to hang on to it, just in case.”

  “How come you never gave it to the police?” I asked.

  “At the time of her murder, it seemed clear Foster did it. I had no doubt. The police had no doubt. Why muddy the case? Why muddy Skubic’s future? Susan had expressed no fear of Karl since then. They hardly ever saw each other, but if their paths crossed socially, they were both cordial. The picture was from another lifetime.”

  “But now?”

  “But now I don’t know what to think.” Tears clung to the corners of her eyes. Stubbornly she blinked them back. “Karl Skubic was in Duluth the day of her murder. And these killings have continued while Foster has been locked away. I can’t go to the police now; he’s the mayor of Minneapolis. I know how these things work—he owns the police chief.”

  City politics aren’t as inescapable as all that, but Laura had a point. And it certainly explained why Mayor Skubic mi
ght have wanted to get behind the police tape at the Minneapolis Susan murder scenes. I had written his field trips off as curiosity or ego. Garnett had been concerned the mayor might unintentionally contaminate the crime scene with his DNA, but what if that had been his goal all along? To establish an explanation for why his DNA might turn up?

  “I might need you to do a camera interview,” I told Laura.

  “Sorry. The photo is the best I can do.”

  It was plenty. For now.

  BACK AT THE station I made a color copy of the Polaroid, front and back, on Channel 3 letterhead, scrawled “When do you want to do that interview?” and signed my name. I put the sheet in an envelope, addressed it to Mayor Karl Skubic, wrote PERSONAL on the front, and dropped it in the mail.

  I hid the original under my computer monitor.

  Most likely, Miles would play heavy and nix airing the photo. Decades old, probably unrelated to the murder case, but still it gave me an opportunity to mess with the mayor. That’s worth something in this business.

  Then I dialed the secret cell phone number he had given me Halloween night.

  CHAPTER 23

  Garnett admired my chutzpah with the Polaroid.

  But deep down we doubted Mayor Skubic was the killer. And the station attorney was adamant about not naming the mayor in a suspect context unless we’d already proven the wrong man was convicted. Those types of perfect endings happen in books and movies, but seldom in TV news. Darn the need for facts. That’s also why I had no fear about arranging a breakfast date with the mayor later in the week. The mayor had no fear either; he thought he was meeting a Halloween honey to cure his broken heart.

  “You could be setting up an interesting showdown,” Garnett said. “I’m just not sure if it’s going to be between you and the mayor, the mayor and the first lady, or the mayor and the police chief.”