by Julie Kramer
She was pissed on a couple of matters. First, that Chuck was behind bars and couldn’t turn his people meter remote to Channel 3 for the news. Second, that Benny knew about the ratings device from me.
“Riley, you’ve put us in quite a quandary.”
I disagreed. “Nielsen will never know we knew about it first. We’re merely reporting the news via his lawyer. And privately, as journalists, we’ll know we did the right thing to get the truth out. If the ratings data clears him, fair’s fair.”
That interpretation did not reassure her. “It’s entirely possible he’s lying about being home and was actually out committing murder.”
That was true. When it comes to homicide, more often than not, the suspect is the killer. “If that’s how this plays out,” I acknowledged, “we’ll report it.”
Then Noreen warned me in her familiar boss voice that I’d be held accountable if this predicament got messy for the station.
“Being held accountable” was a businesslike way of saying being punished. I tried looking somber as I left her office so she’d know I took her rebuke seriously.
Then I went to work on the arrest story. This wouldn’t be any exclusive. Because of the erotica author angle the other media now wanted a piece of Kate’s death.
((ANCHOR CU))
A BREAK IN THE MURDER CASE OF
THE EROTICA AUTHOR . . . RILEY
SPARTZ JOINS US LIVE OUTSIDE
HENNEPIN COUNTY JAIL WITH THE NEWS.
((RILEY LIVE))
MINNEAPOLIS POLICE MADE AN
ARREST IN THE KILLING OF KATE
WARNER, ALSO KNOWN BY HER
PEN NAME OF DESIREE FLEUR.
THEY HAVE A FRIEND OF THE
VICTIM IN CUSTODY BUT SO FAR
HAVE NOT CHARGED HIM WITH
THE CRIME.
I deliberately left Chuck’s name out of the script because our broadcast policy was not to name suspects unless charged. The exceptions were public figures such as politicians or celebrities or suspects who were an immediate threat to society. Chuck didn’t fit either criteria.
Benny spent an hour in jail with Chuck and came out representing the guy. He even called to thank me for the referral. I didn’t bother quizzing him about whether he thought his client was guilty, because I knew Benny didn’t care. More important to him was whether he’d make air that night on the news.
I saw a way to make my story different from the competition. So I asked whether he had confirmed the stuff about the people meter.
“Yeah, Riley, the guy says he was home watching TV. Alone. Took a bit of pulling to get him to explain how he’s one of those ratings households you were talking about. But then even he could see this might firm up his alibi.”
“So you calling Nielsen for the data?”
“Absolutely.”
“They won’t hand it over,” I warned. “They’ll consider it proprietary—trade secrets.”
“I’ll get a court order. A man’s freedom is at stake.”
Benny swung by the station to do a quick on-camera interview with me. “It’ll rattle the cops because it’s something they won’t have expected. They might even kick my guy loose to avoid looking like idiots.”
I started reworking the story.
((ANCHOR BOX))
CHANNEL 3 HAS LEARNED THAT
THE SUSPECT BEING HELD IN THE
EROTICA AUTHOR MURDER MAY
HAVE AN UNUSUAL ALIBI. RILEY
SPARTZ JOINS US LIVE FROM THE
HENNEPIN COUNTY JAIL.
((RILEY LIVE))
THE HOMICIDE SUSPECT CLAIMS HE WAS HOME ALONE WATCHING TELEVISION . . . AND BECAUSE
OF A NEW FORM OF RATINGS
TECHNOLOGY, HIS ATTORNEY SAYS
HE JUST MIGHT BE ABLE TO PROVE IT.
((BENNY SOT))
IN A FIRST OF ITS KIND
SUBPOENA . . . I’LL BE CHECKING
HIS ALIBI AGAINST COMPUTERIZED
RECORDS OF HIS TELEVISION
VIEWING . . . IT’LL BE LIKE RATINGS FORENSICS.
I explained to viewers how Nielsen measures audience size with people meters and that the suspect’s TV viewing habits were monitored by the ratings company.
Noreen grimaced as she read the news script.
I tried reassuring her. “Now that he’s under arrest, the fact that he’s a Nielsen household is going to come out as part of his defense. So we might as well be the ones breaking it.”
“Don’t you forget.” She waved her finger at me. “This goes bad, I’m holding you accountable.”
Just then, neither of us had any idea how bad it could go.
CHAPTER 21
This time, watching the news on television upset him.
He could live without glory. He had proved that over the last several months. What he couldn’t bear was seeing fame go to someone else. That needed to stop. He realized his reaction sounded vain and knew he should make his dissatisfaction about maintaining accuracy, not taking credit.
That was more admirable than egotistic.
Errors must be corrected.
He wrote down the reporter’s name. Riley Spartz.
CHAPTER 22
I didn’t feel his eyes watching me the next morning when I walked to the station after parking my car. My mind was on Garnett flying home and his arms around my body. I didn’t know anything was amiss until the blow to the back of my head.
My bag fell to the sidewalk. My knees buckled and my hands reached upward; my hair wet and sticky. But when I held my fingers to my face, instead of seeing red, they looked . . . yellowish.
I turned toward my attacker and another egg hit me, this time in the chest.
“See how you like it.” The man appeared familiar but it still took me about ten seconds to recognize Keith Avise, Buddy’s owner. “Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”
I dodged the next egg, and the yolk hit the station’s yellow limestone wall, blending nicely. But the succeeding one struck me across the chin. The edges of the shell sharp against my skin.
“Stop it,” I yelled, finally able to speak.
“No,” he said. “You deserve it.”
By now a crowd had gathered, at a safe distance, to watch the confrontation. Some looked puzzled. One sniggered and pointed.
“How’d you like to wake up every morning and find your truck egged?” He pointed to his black pickup, parked illegally, and I saw yolk and eggshell dried on the side. “They keep punishing me for that damn dog. It wasn’t my fault; it was an accident. You made it worse.”
He lifted his arm to throw another one, but a well-dressed young man stepped between us. “Beat it or I will call the cops.” He held up a cell phone to show he’d already punched 911 on the screen. All he had to do was hit Send.
My attacker hesitated.
“Do you want the police?” the man asked me.
As tempting as assault charges sounded, I knew the resulting police report would be emailed immediately to all the other media. I could only imagine the headline: Reporter Gets Egg on Face. The radio talk shows would be even worse, using words like “scrambled,” “cracked,” and “rotten” to describe me. Being called a crybaby after Buddy’s death was starting to look like a compliment.
“No,” I said. “Just let him go.”
Keith looked infuriated at being interrupted. His hand trembled and he seemed to contemplate striking my protector.
“Don’t try it,” the man said. “Or I will call the police.”
The crowd cheered at his bravado and started chanting, “Nine one one . . . Nine one one . . .”
Keith’s fist closed tight upon his fragile weapon. The mood was so quiet we could hear the shell crunch. Disgusting liquid oozed down his arm, dripping onto the sidewalk at his feet.
He shook the goo from his hand and everyone stepped back to avoid being spattered with yolk. Keith swore before driving away in his pickup truck. I noticed the shattered window glass, through which Buddy had been rescued, had been re
placed. Other than the egg scars, the vehicle looked new.
I glanced around, trying to thank the man who aided me, but he was gone. The incident was such a blur, I couldn’t remember what he looked like, other than his face was pallid.
When I entered the sanctuary of Channel 3, the first person to see me was Noreen.
“What happened to you?” she said. “You’re a mess. You’re not thinking of going on the air looking like that?”
CHAPTER 23
On the walk to his office, he played back in his mind the scene of coming to the reporter’s aid. Such a gallant deed was out of character, but he was surprised how bold and strong playing hero made him feel. Where that confidence came from, to speak so cockily in front of onlookers, he didn’t know.
Acting the villain did not make him feel this powerful even when he lorded over their bodies. He attributed the rush of vigor to the witnesses, and pondered whether public credit for the killings would have the same impact.
Her vehicle plate and driver’s license were registered to the station address rather than her home. That’s why Channel 3 was the starting point. He had been waiting on that street corner to observe, not participate. To learn her pattern: when she came to work, where she parked, what door she entered. At the end of the day, he’d reverse the process. Then repeat. Such was research. The easy part about tracking this target was that geography made his time investment minutes, not hours.
All that talk of calling the police on her attacker was a bluff. He didn’t want 911 to have his cell phone number. And he sure didn’t want his name listed as a bystander in any police report tied to the TV reporter.
As it was, if anything happened to her, someone would probably mention the man armed with eggs. And police would waste time investigating that lead. He wasn’t sure about the nature of her attacker’s complaint, but was horrified at how little finesse the man demonstrated.
“Good morning, Mr. Dolezal.”
The receptionist at the law firm greeted him cheerily, but he knew she was just doing her job. If their paths crossed elsewhere, he had no doubt, she would look right past him. Normally he just nodded, but this morning, feeling empowered, he hailed her by name, and asked if she had plans for the weekend.
What Karl Dolezal lacked in morals, he made up for in work ethic. And he had plenty of legal duties ahead today. Certificates to file. Documents to notarize. Clients to reassure. The best part of working in a law firm’s tax and probate division was that his kind were seldom considered suspects in violent crimes. Paperwork malfeasance, sure. But nothing gruesome.
Certainly, his colleagues, if pressed, would concede he had the necessary intellect for murder. Their surprise would be that he had the passion.
The year following his father’s atrocity, he shuffled between a couple of foster homes before a maternal grandmother, long estranged from his family, came forward to raise him to study long and work hard. She told him his surname, Dolezal, was Czech for “lazy man,” and he must constantly fight that label.
Always, she kept him busy. Constantly warning: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
But as he recently discovered, busy hands can also do the devil’s bidding.
Dolezal finished his billing hours. Not wanting to risk another face-to-face encounter with the TV reporter, he avoided tracking her the rest of the day. Only five blocks separated their work-places, so there would be plenty of other opportunities.
Besides, he didn’t have permission to take her. No tortured deadline, yet, to anticipate.
So after work, he drove south . . . for hours . . . without stopping. The familiar road trip comforted him. It didn’t matter that it would be dark before he reached his destination. He preferred the obscurity of nightfall anyway. Just him and the stars before his altar.
For added company, he conjured up Kate’s face. Still vivid. Because his motivation for her was more personal than the others, her ambush was also more gratifying. He was tempted to close his eyes to savor the experience again, but he needed to watch the pavement before him.
“Taunting Teresa is tempting death.” Weeks earlier, that line had been Kate’s first hint of trouble. Now it was her last memory of life. From her eyes, he discerned that, unlike the others, she knew why he had come and that no escape was possible.
Again he uttered the words, alone on the road, under the moon. “Taunting Teresa is tempting death.”
Keeping both hands fixed on the wheel, he imagined the heft of the club. Then smiled and kept driving as he repeated his anthem over and over.
CHAPTER 24
Vali-Hi was one of the few drive-in theaters left in Minnesota, much less the rest of the country. The screen stood high off the ground on one end. Cars lined up in the dark waiting for the film to roll.
Earlier, the scene was a tailgating party of coolers, grills, and lawn chairs. Nick Garnett and I had missed most of that pre-movie action. I’d picked him up at the airport and we’d made a spontaneous decision to catch a flick outdoors instead of dining fine.
This was our weekend to catch up on each other’s lives. He’d been immersed in government security issues and didn’t know about the egg man humiliating me on a public street.
The van next to us had a couple of kids on a campy air mattress on the roof. The car on the other side had a young couple in the backseat not paying attention to the show.
Their moves reminded me of Desiree Fleur’s narrative. And since the movie wasn’t all that captivating anyway, I started filling Garnett in on my murder victim’s hidden author life.
“So you say her books are R-rated . . . R for erotica?” He made the lingo match our setting.
“X-rated would probably be more accurate,” I conceded.
“Maybe we should explore the difference. Cinematically, I believe they are classified by full-frontal nudity. Wherein lies the literary line between R and X?”
He reached under my sweater, and I squirmed to shrug him away. Even though it was dark, and we had the car doors closed, I didn’t need any eagle-eyed news viewers blogging or tweeting about seeing me making out at the drive-in. Or even worse, nabbing an X-rated cell phone photo to post on my Facebook page.
“I have a morals clause in my television contract,” I reminded my date.
“I’m just trying to help research your story. The more I understand about the victim’s life, the more I can help.”
“Why don’t I just read some of her work to you,” I said. “Then you’ll get the true flavor of her writing.”
I keep a flashlight in the glove compartment for emergencies, and this seemed like one of them. Garnett blinked as the glaring beam caught his face while I scanned Black Angel Lace for an appropriate passage.
In a whisper, I read: “Her lips trembled as his tongue navigated the terrain of her breast and his fingers caressed her thighs. Her entire bosom heaved with desire for his—”
“Does yours?” Garnett interrupted me.
“Does what?” I asked.
“Does your bosom heave with desire?”
“My bosom has nothing to do with this.”
Even in the dim light, his eye held a gleam. “I’m not sure that’s entirely true, Riley.”
I realized he might have a point, but knowing an off-duty cop patrolled the rows of cars at the drive-in made me feel more like discussing the murder investigation than exploring our physical relationship. Feeling that way made me wonder if I was using Garnett for his mind and if he might be using me for my body. And if that were the case, could we find happiness together if our goals were incongruous.
“Maybe reading wasn’t such a good idea.” I shut the book and turned off the flashlight.
“Maybe we could save it for later, for a bedtime story.” He leaned over and kissed my ear. “We could take turns reading to each other under the covers. One of us could narrate; the other, demonstrate. We could have our own private book club.”
To change the mood, I fumbled for my cell phone to distrac
t him with the aftermath of Kate’s crime scene. True, once a detective, always a detective, but I underestimated his interest in the picture.
“Look at this.” I held the screen up to him. Even in the dark, the white outline where her body once lay was vivid. “Surprise . . . a chalk fairy.”
“What?” He reached for my phone and stared at the photo. “How did you get this?” His voice suddenly tense, all romance gone.
“I shot it.”
“That’s not possible.” He shook his head. “Come on, who gave it to you?”
“I shot it a few days ago. It’s the murder scene from the case I’ve been telling you about. Remember, my old roommate’s sister? I asked you for a biohazard company to handle the cleanup.”
“Hold off calling them.”
“It’s too late. They already finished the job.”
Even in the dark, his face looked pale. “Damn.”
“What’s going on, Nick? Was the crime scene contaminated?” If the case against her sister’s murderer was jeopardized because of an amateurish police screwup, Laura would be furious. She might even be willing to go on camera and fume.
Garnett stared at the photo as if he stood over the chalk fairy. Touching the screen, he traced around the shadowy figure.
“Minneapolis homicide processed the scene,” I told him. “They’re sure to have better photos.”
He still didn’t answer.
I tried to understand why he was so intrigued. I didn’t want to sound tacky, but the detective squad wasn’t acting like Kate’s was an especially important murder. Mostly the cops were sniggering about her day job now. Then it occurred to me that if one of their own had endangered the investigation, they might want to purposely downplay the crime and keep it out of the news.
I tried to imagine the headline possibilities if the truth were reported.