by Glenn Ickler
“It is actually a pleasure to get back to a simple homicide investigation after chasing Mr. Jones up one tree and down a silo,” Holmberg said with a smile. The smile vanished when he followed with, “If only it was a simple homicide investigation.”
He paused for a breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is anything but a simple investigation. All I can tell you is that my interviews with all the people who were present when Mr. Gordon was apparently hit on the head and thrown out of his boat have yielded very little information. I’ve had some thoughts about a couple of people, but we haven’t gathered anywhere near enough evidence to arrive at a probable suspect. I am going to interview one person further but at this time I’m not even classifying that individual as a person of interest. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all I can tell you today, but I will answer any questions that I can.”
“Is this person a man or a woman?” asked good old Trish Valentine.
Holmberg took a moment to study Trish’s V-necked blouse, which featured three unfastened buttons at the top, before he said, “Yes.”
“Yes, what?” I asked.
“Yes, the person is a man or a woman,” Holmberg said.
“Well, which one?” said Barry Ziebart.
“I’m not saying at this time,” the sheriff said.
“Is the person a state official?” a Duluth newspaper reporter asked.
“I’m not saying at this time,” Holmberg said. “There’s no use asking me for details about the person because I’m not giving out any details at this time.”
“Well, what kind of questions are you answering?” Trish asked.
“I guess maybe no kind,” he said. “Have a good day, everyone. I’ll be in touch with Ms. Rogers if anything develops.” With that he put on his Smokey Bear hat and stalked out of the room.
“Now what?” Al said. “Are we going home?”
“Maybe later,” I said. “Right now we’re staking out Joe Weber’s cabin to see if he’s the sheriff’s anonymous second-time interviewee.”
“What are we going to do? Hide behind a tree?”
“Two trees. One for me and one for you.”
“Aren’t we kind of going out on a limb?”
“Leaf the details to me.”
“I’m rooting for you. Let’s go.”
We took an oblique route to the rear of Weber’s cabin, staying well off the blacktop path and watching in all directions for the sheriff or any of his deputies. We were not followed by any of the other news gatherers and I suspected they would all be packing up to leave Gull Lake. Much as I wanted to do the same thing, I couldn’t walk away without knowing whether or not Joe Weber was the person of near interest.
We each selected a tree from behind which we could see anyone approaching Weber’s cabin. The minutes ticked by with my chosen tree seeming to get harder and the bark rougher the longer I leaned against the trunk. At last a man approached on the path, looked around as if to see if anyone was watching, climbed the steps to Weber’s cabin and went in. It was Weber.
A second after Weber’s door banged shut I heard a slap. I looked at Al. He mouthed the word “mosquito.” I put a finger to my lips to signal silence. Another man was walking along the path toward Weber’s cabin. This one wore a light blue uniform with dark blue shirt pockets and a big shiny badge. Al and I watched as Deputy Leo LeBlanc went up to Weber’s door and knocked. The door opened and LeBlanc went in. A few minutes later Weber emerged with LeBlanc a step behind him. They walked up the path to the parking lot.
When Weber and LeBlanc were out of sight, Al and I left our hiding places and followed in the direction they had gone. “I’m glad to finally get away from that tree,” Al said. “It felt like I was getting Dutch elm disease.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” I said. “That was an oak you were leaning against, not an elm.”
“Is there such a thing as Dutch oak disease?”
“The only thing in an oak that you have to worry about is a squirrel that might take you for a nut.”
A hundred feet ahead of us we watched Joe Weber and Deputy Leo LeBlanc get into a black SUV with a sheriff’s department logo on the door and drive away.
“Weber’s our man,” I said. “Now we have to find a way to keep the story alive until we can identify him.”
“Don’t keep it so alive that it kills our chances of getting out of here today.”
“I’ll send Don a teaser about the sheriff questioning a political opponent who admittedly hated Alex Rogers, after which I’ll say we can follow up with the sheriff by phone from the newsroom of the St. Paul Daily Dispatch.”
“I hope Don doesn’t tell us to follow up with the sheriff in person in, uh, wherever the hell the sheriff’s office is.”
“It’s in Brainerd. Don’t worry, I know how to handle Don on this one. Trust me. Have I ever let you down?”
“Dozens of times, but go ahead and try to get us a ticket home. I’ll pack my stuff while you’re writing your story.”
“Oh, no, don’t do that,” I said. “It’s bad luck. Like packing up your bats before the last out of a baseball game.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Let’s sit in the lodge and I’ll read a six-month-old fishing and hunting magazine from the rack in the lounge while you knock out your story.”
Into the lodge we went, and Al sifted through a stack of year-old outdoors magazines while I wrote and e-mailed my story. Next I crafted a carefully worded note making it clear that the sheriff would be holding no more briefings for the press until he had a suspect in custody.
Don’s reply was a shocker. “What is this crap? Trish Valentine is reporting live that the sheriff has a woman in custody in Brainerd.”
I blinked and read Don’s e-mail a second time. “Al, we got a problem,” I said. I showed him the e-mail and he agreed.
“See if Trish is saying who it is.”
I asked Don that question and he replied that the sheriff had not identified the woman. “Get your butts into Brainerd and check it out,” he added.
“On our way,” I replied.
“I guess it was bad luck to even think about packing before the last out,” Al said.
“Let’s check with Ann Rogers before we drive to Brainerd,” I said. “Maybe she knows who the woman is.”
We went to the registration desk and asked the woman on duty there to call Ann Rogers’s room for us.
“No point in that,” the woman said. “Ms. Rogers left here with the sheriff about half an hour ago.”
Thirty-One
Tomorrow, Tomorrow
Al and I asked each other the same question as we hurried toward our car: Was Ann Rogers in custody or had Trish Valentine made a mistake? It was possible that Ann had gone with the sheriff either to give him information about Joe Weber or to gather information about Weber’s interrogation for dispersal to the press.
“I can’t imagine Ann killing Alex Gordon,” Al said.
“She did inherit his job,” I said.
“Flacking for a lame duck governor is not the kind of job anybody kills for. And it’s going to be very short term if she’s serious about not working for Smokey Ross, assuming he’s elected.”
“Could be something personal between Ann and Alex. Maybe they were having an affair. Maybe one or the other of them broke it off and they had a fight. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors?”
We wandered around Brainerd a bit before we found the Crow Wing County Sheriff’s office. We parked beside a panel truck from Channel Four, went in the front door and were met in the small lobby by Trish Valentine, who looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary and washed it down with the cream. She was even wearing boots.
“About time you guys got here,” Trish said. “I thought a crack news team like you two would h
ave been right behind us.”
“We were ahead of you in a different place,” I said. “What’s going on here?”
“The sheriff is questioning Ann Rogers. Apparently she’s the prime nonperson of interest he was talking about. She followed him out of the meeting room and he turned around and took her by the arm, said a few words and away they went. Tony and I followed them here but we haven’t been allowed to talk to anyone beyond the woman at the desk. All she’ll tell us is that the sheriff is interrogating an adult female. She won’t even say why.”
“Hard to picture Ann killing anybody,” I said.
“You never know,” Trish said. “She is kind of a hard-assed bitch, if you ask me.”
“What about Joe Weber?” I asked.
“Who?”
“A deputy picked up Joe Weber back at Madrigal’s and put him into an SUV. Didn’t he bring him here?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I wouldn’t know your Joe Weber from Joe Sixpack. Who is he?”
Realizing I’d already told Trish more than I wanted to, I said, “He’s a state employee who didn’t like Alex Gordon.”
“There was a long line of people who fit that description,” Trish said. “Why would the sheriff pick this guy out?”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said, hoping my nose wouldn’t grow from the lie.
There was nothing to do but stand around in the lobby and wait. I e-mailed Don O’Rourke and informed him of the situation. He replied with instructions to sit it out and talk to the sheriff ASAP. Hard to sit it out without a chair, I thought. I called Martha Todd’s cell phone and left a message on her voicemail. Al called Carol’s cell and did the same.
After thirty minutes of watching the four of us pacing and leaning against the wall in the small foyer, the woman at the desk, whom I’d learned was the Shirley I’d talked with on Sunday, made a phone call. Minutes later a deputy brought out four folding chairs and we all sat down. After another thirty minutes the front door opened and we were joined by the tired-looking crew from Channel Five.
“We were halfway home when they called us and said Trish was here and we should get our butts back to Brainerd,” Barry Ziebart said. None of us offered the new arrivals a chair.
A few minutes later Roy Winston, a reporter for the Minneapolis paper, and a photographer I didn’t recognize joined our bevy of slack-faced, droopy-eyed sentinels. The crowded space looked like a hospital waiting room filled with next-of-kin expecting the worst results from a loved one’s heart transplant surgery.
Al’s phone chirped and he went outside to answer the call. “Carol is taking it like a trooper,” he said when he returned. “But she says there will be payback later this summer.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m guessing that I’ll be left to feed and manage the kids while Carol and her sister go somewhere fun for a week.”
“If Martha still wants to marry me, I’ll probably be left to feed and manage Sherlock Holmes while she and her friend Lisa Maseratti go away for a month,” I said.
The hands on the clock above Shirley’s head crept onward. Those of us seated offered to give those standing a turn in the chairs. Those standing said thanks but they were doing okay. When the clock’s little hand arrived at three, we offered our seats again and this time received unanimous acceptance.
Everybody switched again at 3:30 and again at 4:00. I’d had an e-mail from Don saying he was done for the day, and an e-mail from Fred Donlin, the night city editor, saying he was waiting for my story. Al had e-mailed a couple shots of Ann Rogers taken on Friday when she was telling us that Alex Gordon was missing.
Neither Martha Todd nor Grace Wong had called me by 4:22 p.m. when a door on our left opened and Sheriff Val Holmberg stepped through.
“Jesus Christ, they told me there were reporters here but I didn’t expect a mob scene,” Holmberg said.
“There are more on the way,” Trish said. “By now everybody has seen my live report.”
“Who have you been questioning?” asked Barry. Other voices echoed him in a cacophony that rattled off the walls of the small room.
“Okay, okay,” the sheriff said, with his arms raised for silence. “Here’s what we have at this time. We have questioned a woman who was seen with the murder victim, Alex Gordon, before dawn on the day the victim was allegedly struck on the head and tossed out of his boat sometime before 6:15 a.m. The witness is a male member of the governor’s fishing party who says he couldn’t sleep Thursday night because he felt sick from drinking too much at the party in the bar that night. He went outside to get some fresh air and to dispose of the remaining booze in his stomach. His cabin is near the marina and the moon was quite bright. He’d been upchucking in the shadows, but he says he saw the victim and the woman walking together toward the boat dock in the moonlight.”
“Is she under arrest?” asked Trish.
“I have not placed the woman under arrest but I am holding her for further questioning. If I decide to proceed with an arrest and a court appearance I will identify her for you.”
“Come on, Sheriff, we all know who she is,” Roy Winston said.
“Regardless of that, your paper will be opening itself to a libel suit if you name her before she’s arrested,” Holmberg said. “It still may turn out that we have no case.”
“What about the witness?” I asked, knowing full well who it was.
“I’m not releasing his identity at this time, either,” the sheriff said.
“Again, we all know who it is,” I said.
“No, we don’t,” Winston said. “Who the hell is it?”
“No comment,” said the sheriff. “You guys can duke that one out between yourselves, but I wouldn’t identify the witness yet if I was you.”
“Does the woman have a lawyer?” Ziebart asked.
“She does. That’s one reason the interrogation has been taking so long.”
“Did the witness see the woman get into the boat with the victim?” I asked.
“The witness saw them walking together toward the dock, but he did not see them together either on the dock or in the boat because his vision of that area was partially blocked and clouds covered the moon just as the couple reached the base of the dock,” Holmberg said.
“So it’s possible the woman never went with him to the boat?” Trish asked.
“That’s the sticky part,” the sheriff said. “The witness cannot place the woman in the boat or even for certain on the dock.”
“How close to the dock were they when he last saw them?” Winston asked.
“They had just reached the base of the dock when the moon was obscured.”
“So they could have parted company there,” I said.
“Like I told you, that’s the sticky part,” Holmberg said. “Now if you would all excuse me, I’m going back to ask some more questions. If you leave a contact number or e-mail address at the desk, I’ll get in touch with you in the morning.”
“In the morning,” Al said after I handed my card to Shirley. “Another night at good old Gull Lake. I hope they haven’t cleaned out our cabin and thrown our dirty clothes into the toxic waste dump.”
“Whatever they’ve done, I’m dead meat,” I said. “Martha will cancel the wedding and I’ll go live with my mother and grandmother and become known as the Hopeless Hermit of Harmony.”
Our cabin was just as we’d left it—in a mess of scattered clothing, books, magazines, newspapers and various articles of trash. I wrote and e-mailed a story that ended with a note begging to be replaced the next morning in Brainerd, and Al sent a couple of photos of the sheriff and the crowd in the police station. Fred Donlin’s reply was: “Hang tight. We’ll see about getting you home.”
My phone played its tune and I saw it was Martha Todd calling. “Missing per
sons,” I said when I answered.
“When will my missing person be found in St. Paul?” Martha said.
“Tomorrow. Fred Donlin promised tomorrow. Like Orphan Annie’s song about tomorrow, it’s only a day away.”
“And the day after tomorrow is only two days away. I have something marked on the calendar for that day but it may have to be cancelled.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” I said. “I’m heading for home tomorrow whether the desk sends up a relief reporter or not. I will be at your Saturday occasion and I will be wearing something better than jeans.”
“In other words, you also struck out with Ms. Wong,” she said. Ooh, I’d forgotten that Martha had said I could wear jeans to the wedding if I rescued Grandma Mendes.
“Not yet. I mean, maybe not. She was sympathetic but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
“Do you think there’s any hope?”
“I’m assuming that the full day’s response time means they haven’t rejected the request and they’re looking for a way to keep Grandma Mendes in America.”
“Speaking of grandmas, yours is arriving with your mother tomorrow. What should I tell them about your arrival time?”
“We’ll be on the road right after talking to the sheriff in the morning. We’ll have dinner with Mom and Grandma Goodie at the restaurant of your choice.”
“Cross your heart?”
“I swear it on a stack of stylebooks,” I said.
“I’ll make a reservation for four and ask them to be flexible on the time,” she said.
* * *
As we entered the dining room for yet another dinner at Gull Lake, we were met by the manager, Martin Johansen. “Back again?” he asked. “Are you guys here for the summer?”
“We’d be long gone if you hadn’t been harboring a murderer,” Al said.
Johansen’s face grew red, his spine stiffened and he said, “That was through no fault of ours. Do you know who it is?”
“Yes, but we can’t tell anybody until the sheriff makes an arrest. Let’s just say that Alex Gordon’s killer has been under one of your many roofs, including this one, ever since the murder,” I said.