by Glenn Ickler
“Don’t tell me you’ve got another dead body,” Don said by way of a greeting.
“Nothing that exciting,” I said. “This involves live bodies.” I floated the idea of a reaction roundup story and he liked it. This was good. It meant we would be talking to more than just our suspects, which would make the suspects less suspicious of our motives.
“Who’s up first?” Al said.
“I’m glad you didn’t ask who’s on first,” I said. “To answer your question, I see Channel Five’s editorial maven at a table by the door. I suggest we start with him.”
“Okay, Dexter Rice it is. I’ll let you do the bit about the roundup story.”
Dexter Rice, a paunchy, balding man in his late fifties, was in a discussion with two other men, neither of whom looked familiar. We walked up to their table and waited until all three looked our way before saying good morning. I told Rice that we were fishing for comments about the weird events during this Governor’s Fishing Opener and asked if he’d like us to wait until his conversation with the other two gentlemen was finished. The three of them agreed that they were finished and the other two left without an introduction or a handshake.
“Couple of network guys from New York,” Rice said as we sat down. “They’re tired of waiting for the Hicksville sheriff and are flying off to fry some bigger fish today.”
“We haven’t provided enough bait with a murder and a kidnapping with sexual overtones?” I said. “What are they looking for, a sex-addicted gunman to shoot up a convent full of nuns?”
“They’re used to dealing with high speed New York cops. Our sheriff moves way too slow for them. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard that this is his first homicide case ever.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “I think he’s doing fairly well, considering the major distraction thrown in by Ronald Jones kidnapping and beating up a woman.”
“I can’t picture Jones going off like that,” Rice said. “Not that I know him all that well, but he seemed like the quiet type.”
“It’s always the quiet man who surprises you with a criminal act,” Al said. “How many times have you heard a killer’s neighbor tell a reporter, ‘he was a quiet man’?”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about me then, do you?” Rice said. “People are always telling me to shut up.”
“Good point,” I said. “But we’re here to let you talk. What do you want to say about this weekend’s activities?”
Rice sat back, removed his wire-rimmed glasses and thought for a moment. “If I had to describe them in one word I guess that word would be ‘bizarre,’” he said. “I’ve been to quite a few fishing openers and never imagined anything like this could happen.”
“That’s right, you were the governor’s press secretary for a couple of terms,” I said. “You had Alex’s job with Governor Patterson, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I was Governor Patterson’s press secretary for eight years, so I prefer to think of it as Alex having my job with Governor Anderson.”
“I’ll be careful how I phrase it.”
“I wish you would,” Rice said.
“Were you surprised that Governor Anderson, being another Republican, didn’t keep you on as press secretary when he took over from Patterson?”
“Nothing surprises me in politics. But it would have made sense to keep me.”
“Did Anderson tell you why he was making the switch?”
“Not really. He gave me the old crap about wanting to bring his own team on board but I don’t think that’s the whole reason.”
I liked the way this was going. “What else might it be?” I asked.
Apparently Rice did not like the way this was going. “I’d rather not say any more about it,” he said. “It was the governor’s prerogative to hire whomever he wanted to; let’s leave it at that. I thought you wanted to ask me about this weekend, not ancient history.”
Damn, I thought. “Right,” I said. “What else would you like to say about the weekend?”
“How about this: Instead of the weekend of the walleye it was the weekend of the weird. First you had a killer bungling his attempt to make a murder look like an accident and then you had a sex pervert screwing up . . . no, better make that botching up . . . a night with a prostitute. And did the idiot really climb up a tree?”
“Al got pictures of him thirty feet off the ground,” I said. “What are your feelings about Alex’s murder?”
“Tragic. He was a hard worker and a fine press secretary and I’m sure we’ll all miss him.” Rice put his glasses back on. “Now, if that gives you enough, I’ve got to see a man about a horse. Morning coffee is hitting bottom.”
“That’s fine,” I said. I made a show of turning off my tape recorder and said, “Do you mind telling me off the record what you really thought of Alex Gordon?”
Rice frowned. “You guarantee it’s off the record?”
“Swear it on a stack of stylebooks.”
“That’s your bible?”
“That’s my bible.”
“Good enough. Off the record, Alex Gordon was an ass-kissing, self-serving little prick with a put-on Harvard accent. Have a good day, gentlemen.”
“No tears shed over Alex by that one,” Al said as Rice strode off.
“He’s more likely to wet Alex’s grave with what he’s putting in the urinal,” I said.
“Well, he certainly had both motive and motivation to murder.”
“And if he came up Thursday like the rest of us he had the opportunity Friday morning. Who knows, he might have started the morning as Alex’s fishing partner.”
“Possible. But how would he get to shore after dumping the body out of the boat? He doesn’t look like he could swim that distance in lukewarm bath water, much less ice-cold lake water.”
“That whole scenario has puzzled me from the start. If the killer dumped the body out of the boat and left the boat circling, how did he get to the island to bury the lifejacket and how did he get back to Madrigal’s?”
“A second boat?”
“Possibly,” I said. “If so, was it provided by a second person?”
“You think we might be looking for two killers?” Al asked.
“Maybe. Or at least an accomplice after the fact.”
“This could get complicated.”
“It already is complicated.”
“So what we do now?”
“Now we look up our other prospect, Mr. Joe Weber of the secretary of state’s office,” I said.
“Didn’t Mari say she wasn’t sure if he was here?”
“If he is here, we can get his cabin number from Ann Rogers and go knock on his door.”
“And you’re hoping we’ll find a killer behind that door?”
“I’m hoping to at least find a clue behind that door.” Al looked at me with a question in his eyes. “What?” I asked.
“Mr. Obsessive Grammarian, didn’t you just split an infinitive?” he said.
“Damn, you’re right. Cracked it wide open. Whatever you do, don’t tell Don.”
Twenty-Three
All About Alex
Not only was Joe Weber at the resort, he was inside the cabin that Ann Rogers pointed to on Madrigal’s map. He answered our knock with a “who’s there?” and opened the door wearing only tight white undershorts when our response indicated that his visitors were both male.
He was a tall, wiry man with a long face, a nose like a hawk’s bill and dark circles under his pale blue eyes. His brown hair was disheveled, as if it had been recently slept on. He confirmed this by saying he had been trying to catch a few winks after lunch so he’d be fresh for the drive home.
“Has the sheriff talked to you?” I asked.
“Not yet, but I’m near the
top of his crazy, bass-ackwards list,” Weber said. “What do you guys want?”
I explained our reaction story mission and asked if he would comment on the weekend. He thought a moment and decided to invite us in. Once inside we saw that his luggage was packed and sitting near the door, ready to be moved to his car.
Weber waved us toward a couple of chairs and he sat on the end of the bed facing us. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his straggly hair and asked, “Is there any particular thing you want me to comment on?”
“Not really,” I said. “Just give us your feelings about the weekend in general compared to what you expected, and that might lead me into asking a question or two.” I took the tape recorder out of my pocket and turned it on.
“Well, what can I say? I mean, we all came up here expecting to have a lot of fun fishing and drinking and shooting the shit . . . uh, I mean, bull . . . with our buddies. And what did we get instead? One crazy thing after another. A drowning that turned out to be a murder and a kidnapping of a hooker who turns up naked the next night. We could have stayed home and had all that.”
“Surely not in St. Paul,” I said.
“Well, you might have had to go to Minneapolis for the naked hooker but there have been a few murders in St. Paul. I read the Daily Dispatch every day and I think I recognize your name from stories about the guy who got poisoned at the state fair last summer. Am I right?”
“You are. And I’m flattered that you remembered my byline.”
“I’m a detail oriented person,” Weber said. “I have to be in my job.”
“That’s my next question. What is your job?”
“I’m the assistant to the secretary of state. That means I keep things in order and make sure the office staffers do their jobs.”
“Your boss is a Democrat, isn’t he?” I asked.
“He is. One of the blessed few left in state office right now.”
“So do you have much contact with the Republican side? Did you know Alex Gordon very well?”
Weber’s face went grim. “Too damn well,” he said. “Please don’t put that remark in your story.”
“Sounds like you weren’t very fond of Mr. Gordon.”
“I have no comment on Mr. Gordon.”
I shut off the tape recorder and stowed it in my pocket. “How about off the record? Did you have a problem with Alex?”
“Everyone who wasn’t a rightwing Republican had a problem with Alex,” Weber said. “You’re in the news business, you should know that.”
“I know he was very one-sided when he talked politics with reporters but I didn’t know it affected the work of people in other offices,” I said.
“In my case the problem wasn’t the job. It was the election that got us into that office. Do you remember how nasty the campaign was two years ago when my boss won in a recount?”
“I remember a lot of attack ads, mostly from the Republican side.”
“Right. And the most dishonest, biggest-lie attack ads were written by none other than Mr. Alex Gordon.”
“Some of them were really vicious,” Al said.
“Those were the ones written by Alex,” Weber said. “I called the son of a bitch up a few times and offered to break his goddamn nose. He laughed about it and went right on lying and slinging mud. It turned out okay in the end. I actually think my boss won because Alex’s ads turned off so many independent voters.”
“That was two years ago,” I said. “Have you or your boss had any problems with Alex since then?”
“The governor has been totally unresponsive to our office and I think it’s because of Alex. He and I have e-mailed back and forth and some of them have been pretty nasty. I guess I started it by rubbing his nose in the election results but he was as vicious with his e-mails as he was with his ads. It started with our political differences but it got really personal. He even slandered my husband.”
After a moment of surprised silence, I said, “Your husband?”
“I’m married to a man,” Weber said. “We were one of the first couples in line when gay marriage became legal in Minnesota.”
“And Alex made that an issue?”
“He said things about my marriage to Raymond that I won’t even repeat. I cut off all contact with Alex after that. I was just too damn mad to even write an e-mail. If I’d had Alex there I’d have . . . Oh, my god, you promised this is off the record, didn’t you?”
“I did and it is,” I said. “I imagine you weren’t terribly sorry to see them carrying Alex in a body bag the other morning.”
“If they catch whoever killed the little bastard I’ll blow him a kiss at his trial,” Weber said.
I couldn’t resist asking, “What if the sheriff thinks you did it after you tell him all this?”
“No way,” Weber said. “I hated Alex but I’m not smart enough to pull off a stunt like leaving his boat running around in circles, like he fell out and couldn’t get back in.”
“That was pretty creative but the trick didn’t work,” Al said.
“Only because the guy hit him too hard,” Weber said. “If he’d just knocked Alex out instead of killing him he would have drowned.”
I was trying to form my next question when we heard a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Weber yelled.
“It’s me, Ann Rogers,” said a woman’s voice. “The sheriff wants to talk to you in the office. He’s taking people in reverse alphabetical order, you know. You’re right after Gabriel Zymanski.”
“Tell him I’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” Weber said. “I’ve got company and I need to get dressed.”
“That’s more information than I need,” Ann said. “See you in the lodge.”
“Oh, god, that didn’t sound good, did it?” Weber said. “She must think I’ve got that other little whore in here.”
“Not if she knows you’re gay,” Al said.
“I’m not sure about that. Anyhow, I’ll explain it was you guys when I get to the lodge,” Weber said. “And you’ve got me thinking I should be careful what I tell the sheriff about my problems with Alex.”
“I’d recommend telling the truth,” I said. “It has a way of coming back to bite you if you try to hide anything.”
“He might make me a suspect.”
“He might have good reason to make you a suspect.”
He rose from the bed. “What? Do you think I did it?”
I stood up to answer. “To be honest with you, I wouldn’t count you out.”
Weber’s face grew red and he clenched both fists. “Get the hell out of my cabin,” he said. “And don’t you print anything I said or I’ll come after you.”
“Not even what you said on the tape?” I asked.
“Not even that. I don’t want my name in your goddamn rag if you think I killed Alex.”
Al and I stood and went to the door. “Have fun with the sheriff,” I said as we stepped out into the sunshine.
“Kiss my ass,” Weber yelled before slamming the door behind us.
“Could be our man,” I said as we walked toward the lodge.
“Like our other person of interest, he’s got motive and motivation,” Al said.
“And a very quick temper to go with them.”
“The kind of temper that could make him hit a guy too hard.”
We returned to the lounging area in the lodge, looking for other fishing opener weekenders to interview. As luck would have it, the first person we ran into was Joe Weber’s boss, Secretary of State Harold Svendsen. He gave us a couple of quotes that were similar to Rice’s and Weber’s, but added that the diversion, although unfortunate for the individuals involved, was actually in a way welcome because the fishing had been way below par.
“So Alex Gordon’s death relieved your boredom
?” I said.
“Oh, god no, I didn’t mean it to sound like that,” Svendsen said. “Please don’t put it that way in the paper, Mitch. Of course Gordon’s death was a tragedy for his family.”
“How about for the people he worked with? How do you feel about Alex’s murder?”
“I’d rather not comment on my personal feelings about Alex Gordon.”
I turned off the tape recorder and pocketed it. “If we go off the record would you comment just for our enlightenment?”
“It’s better that I don’t. We were miles apart politically and philosophically and I’m going to leave it at that.”
“I understand that Alex wrote some of the most vicious attack ads during your campaign for office.”
“Who told you that?”
“Your assistant, Joe Weber. Don’t worry, his comments on Alex were off the record and won’t be reported.
“Joe was ready to kill Alex over those ads,” Svendsen said. “Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said it that way under the circumstances. I meant ‘kill’ figuratively, not literally.”
“Do you think Joe might be capable of doing it literally?” I asked.
“Oh, Mitch, what a crap question! Of course not. I’m amazed that you’d even ask that. Joe Weber is a level-headed public servant who would never even think of doing such an outrageous thing.”
“Just touching all the bases. Thanks for your comments and your time, Mr. Secretary.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “And please don’t print anything I said in connection with Joe Weber and Alex Rogers. Rogers is gone and there’s no reason to pursue that battle against a dead man.”
As we moved on looking for another interviewee, Al said, “Do we think that the gentleman doth protest too much?”
“Methinks he did sort of go overboard when I asked that, as he called it, crap question,” I said. “He must be aware of Joe Weber’s quick temper and hatred of Alex Rogers.”
Our next catch was State Treasurer Mathew Hardcastle, an old-school conservative whose name fit the tightfisted fiscal policies that he championed. He was tall and thin—almost gaunt—with a long chin and close-cropped snow white hair. His response was a familiar tune until I asked how he viewed the death of Alex Rogers.