Lifting the tiny cassette recorder onto the tabletop, Rawlins asked, “Would you mind if I recorded this conversation?”
“No. No… not at all.”
He pushed a couple of buttons, placed the recorder on the table, and speaking into it, said, “This is Sergeant Steve Rawlins and I'm here with Sergeant Neal Foster and Martha Lyman, mother of Andrew Lyman. We're in a conference room at the Criminal Investigation Division in downtown Minneapolis. Is that correct?”
She nodded as she faintly replied, “Yes.”
“And, Mrs. Lyman, you understand English and you're speaking of your own free will?”
“Yes. Yes, that's right.”
Rawlins paused, rubbed his hands together. “I'm sorry to sound so formal, but the procedures for an interview are fairly rigid.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions about your son, Andrew Lyman,” said Foster, his voice buffed to gentle.
A handsome, stoic-looking woman, she nodded.
“How old was he?” continued Foster.
“Seventeen. Andrew turned seventeen just a few months ago.”
“And where was he raised?”
“On our farm a hundred miles east of here.”
“Was he the oldest? Youngest?”
“Oldest. We have two girls, both of them younger.”
“When did you last talk to Andy?”
“This past…” She wiped her eyes. “This past fall. Almost exactly a year ago.”
“Not at all since then?”
“No.”
“Do you remember approximately when and where your last conversation was?”
“Yes.”
“Could you tell us, please?”
“It was last October.” She took a deep breath, then hesitated before continuing. “October the tenth, to be precise. It was at our farm.”
Knowing the vague circumstances but nothing specific, Rawlins cut in, asking, “Can you tell us what that conversation was about?”
She nodded, started to speak, then stopped, and tried again. “We… we found out Andy was…”
When she failed to say anything, Rawlins interjected, “Gay?”
“Yes, exactly. That was when we found out our son was gay.”
“Which was, what, a shock? No surprise?”
“The first. It was a shock. A big shock.” She shook her head slightly and helplessly shrugged her shoulders. “I never even imagined.”
“And what happened?” pressed Rawlins.
“He left.”
“Left?”
“Our farm. Our home. He left that very night.” Taking a deep breath, she let the air come out in one long, pained exhale. “It was very difficult, very awful. Trust me, it's not something any of us is proud of. We all said things we shouldn't have, and… and Andy left.”
There was, Rawlins knew for a fact, far more to it. Over the course of his brief friendship with Andrew, Rawlins had gleaned some of the details, all of them ugly, all of them painful, and he could now see all of that and more etched in the fine lines of Martha Lyman's face. Rawlins couldn't imagine what it must have been like for young Andrew, tumbling out of the closet and landing at his parents’ feet and at their mercy.
“I… I thought they were going to kill me,” Andrew had confided in Rawlins. “I really did. But I guess it's my fault. I guess I deserved it.”
As he told at least part of what happened, Andrew had been close to tears. And Rawlins hadn't doubted him one bit, for sex between boys in rural Minnesota was anathema to farm and family and church.
And now, sitting in the small room in City Hall, Rawlins, Foster, and Martha Lyman were going to have to revisit that night, searching the memory thereof for any details that might be relevant to the present nightmare.
He asked, “What do you mean he left?”
“Andy…” She wiped her eyes. “Andy ran away.”
“Did he go to a friend's? To an aunt's? An uncle's?”
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Andy just walked down the drive and… disappeared.”
“So you had no idea where he went?”
“None. I called everywhere I could think of. And I drove around too. I thought he'd be back the next morning, or even within the next day or two. A few days later he called and apologized, but he didn't come back. Eventually I assumed he came here, to The Cities, but I never knew for sure. I never heard a word. Not until last night when you,” she said, nodding her head slightly to Foster, “called.”
“Not a letter or anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
Foster cut in, asking, “How about the local police—did you contact them?”
“At first no. My husband, John, didn't want me to. He said it was none of their business. He said it was a family thing.” Martha Lyman slowly shook her head. “I don't know. I think we did it all wrong, made every single mistake possible. Actually, I think—no, I know that my husband didn't want to have to tell the police what the fight was about, and—”
“What do you mean he didn't want to have to tell them? Was he embarrassed? Ashamed? Angry?”
“All of that, actually. John just didn't… didn't approve. I mean, he still doesn't.”
“Of what?”
“That life.”
“Homosexuality?”
“Yes, and… and,” she said, as if she were quickly changing the subject, “like I said, I thought Andy would come home in a day or two. When he didn't turn up after a week, I went to the police myself.”
“You mean alone?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't your husband go with you?”
“Because… because…”
At first Rawlins thought she was going to say because he was harvesting the corn. Or tilling the field. Instead she looked right at him and told him what could only be the flat-out truth.
“He didn't come with me then for the same reason he didn't come with me today—he never wanted to see Andy again. And frankly, I'll bet he's—”
She cut herself off, then just sat there in silence. Rawlins studied every little flinch of her face. He's what? Glad that his boy is dead?
Rawlins waited and waited, and when she said nothing, he asked, “So what did the police say when you went to them?”
“Not much. I guess there wasn't much they could do. I told them Andy ran away—I didn't say why—and they filed a report, checked around some, but…”
Rawlins asked, “Has this been a difficult thing for your family, Andy's coming out as gay and then running away? What has the last year been like in your family?”
“You have no idea,” she said, shaking her head as she stared at the plain laminate surface of the table. “It's… it's been awful. Just awful. I haven't stopped thinking of Andy, I haven't stopped worrying about him, not for one single minute. It's… it's…”
“What?”
“Well,” she said, perhaps voicing the truth for the first time, “it has destroyed my family”
Rawlins wanted to come back to that, the night the Lyman family exploded. He wanted to know specifically what had happened. And he wanted to know exactly what had been said. But not yet. He didn't want to seem too antagonistic, too adversarial. In other words, he wanted to postpone her shutting down, which they always did at some point.
Rawlins glanced at Foster and nodded.
“Martha,” said Foster, “could you describe Andrew for us? What kind of young man was he? Was he kind of a happy guy? Sad? Did he have many friends? Was he very social?”
“Andy was… sweet. He was just always kind. And gentle. That's why I can't understand… understand… how…” Her bottom lip started to quiver, and she pressed her right hand to her mouth as if to stuff back the pain. “I don't understand why anyone would have wanted to hurt him.”
“He never got into any fights at school?”
“Andy? Never.”
“So he didn't have any problems with other kids that you
knew of? No, I guess you might say, rivalries? No enemies?”
“Everyone loved Andy. The girls and the boys. I mean, there was always a girl who had a crush on him because… well, he was cute. And he was always popular with the guys because he was the best quarterback at school. You know, on the football team. Frankly the team wasn't any good, but he was their star.”
“How about his grades?” asked Rawlins.
“They were okay B’s and C’s mainly, every now and then an A.”
“What year was he in?”
“Last year he was a junior.” She shook her head. “I wanted so much for him to graduate, to get his high school diploma. I wanted him to be the first of our people to go to college.”
“What about drugs?” asked Foster. “Is there much of that where you come from? Was he ever involved in anything?”
“No, not my Andy. I'm sure of that. Oh, he might have had a few beers with his pals, but no drugs. I know that for a fact.”
Did she? But how could she, Rawlins wondered, be so sure of it? After all, she hadn't suspected her son's sexual orientation.
“What about any kids?” continued Foster. “Did he keep in touch with any of them once he left home?”
She leaned forward, bowing her head into her hands. “Yes. I mean, I don't know for sure, but… but the other boy ran away from home a couple of days after Andy did.”
Rawlins asked, “Other boy?”
She nodded.
“What other boy?”
“The… the Weaver boy. Oh, God, I just wish they'd never met. I don't think any of this would have happened.”
“What are you saying?”
“This boy, the Weaver boy—Jordy Weaver, that's his name. Jordy Weaver. For something like six or seven months before all this happened, you know, before Andy ran away, Jordy was always calling up Andy, always hanging around him. It was like he was obsessed with Andy. He just never left my son alone. And… and…” She wiped her left eye. “And that's who Andy was with that night, with him, with Jordy Weaver.”
Tripping over the name, Rawlins sat there speechless. He'd had no idea, not a clue. They were from the same town in western Minnesota? They hadn't met here in Minneapolis?
“Are you saying that these two boys, Andrew Lyman and Jordy Weaver, ran away together? That they came here to Minneapolis?”
“I never knew for sure because… because I never knew where Andy went, but that's what I always assumed. Like I said, Jordy was obsessed with my boy. He wouldn't let him go.”
17
Todd's day was like a moving sidewalk that he got on and couldn't get off. There was the call he'd received from Tim Chase's publicist to set up this evening's meeting, the numerous developments in the story of Andrew Lyman's murder, and then, of course, there was Rawlins.
Rawlins.
It was the one thing that Todd kept coming back to, compulsively so: was there any truth to what Jordy had said about Andrew and Rawlins being involved? All afternoon as Bradley and he dashed around town putting together tonight's story, Todd silently sorted through the past couple of months trying to ascertain if and when and how the two of them could have been carrying on an affair. A Saturday afternoon? That Monday morning? Wednesday nights? Was it even logistically possible? And if it had really happened, what did it mean, if anything?
No, he now thought, as Bradley and he stood on the shore of Lake Harriet waiting for the six o'clock, that wasn't right. It did mean something. It meant the world about Rawlins. It said everything about his ability to stick to their agreement. And it said everything about his integrity, for Andy was barely seventeen, a kid who by all means was still learning to cope and establish his own boundaries. If Rawlins had taken advantage of his position as a mentor, what in the hell did that say about him?
Oh, shit, Todd thought.
He wore a blue shirt with a blue and yellow tie, black pants, and his black leather jacket. In the field he never wore a coat and tie, especially not a suit, because while he wanted to look professional, he wanted to look like what he was, an active investigative reporter.
They'd arrived a little over an hour ago, with Bradley and he setting up the camera by the water's edge and the ENG truck pulling up on the curb and stretching its microwave mast as high as it would go. For the five o'clock Todd had done a VOSOT, where he'd talked live to the recorded pictures for some thirty-five seconds. As VOSOT’s tended to be, it was also a little rougher, more immediate, and after a sound byte from the police chief, the video had come back out to Todd and he'd done a quick tag.
As they now approached the six o'clock, Todd once again ran the IFB wire up the inside of his jacket, pulled it through the back of his collar, and placed the earpiece snugly in his right ear. Not more than two seconds later, the quiet, distant voice of the news director, speaking from Golden Valley, said, “Voice check, please.”
Todd raised his stick mike, and said, “Good evening, this is Todd Mills reporting live from—”
“That's perfect, Todd.”
The six P.M. line producer cut in, saying, “We're two minutes away.”
In front of him Bradley was peering into his Betacam, which rested on a large aluminum tripod. From the camera a thick snake of a cable stretched across the ground, then awkwardly across the pedestrian and bicycle paths to the ENG truck. Per usual, a crowd had gathered, this group numbering around fifteen and growing.
“Is my tie all the way up, Bradley?”
“Your tie is perfect.”
He turned, glanced briefly over the lake, where a gentle wind was sending an endless army of ripples across the surface. With that, the small hill on the opposite shore, and the sunset, it would be the perfect backdrop. In his mind he reviewed all that he had learned today, from the specifics of Andrew's bloody demise, to a better picture of his home life, to, of course, the most important item, the object the police divers had pulled from this lake. Yes, whatever a reporter learned most recently was always the first information, the thing you gave right off the top. From the inside of his jacket he then pulled his notebook and read through his notes once, twice. The producer, who had these things back-timed to the second, had told Todd that he couldn't afford more than a ten-second intro to precede the one minute fifteen-second package.
“We're ten from the top,” said the line producer as coolly as a flight controller.
Yes, everything was perfectly timed, had to be. A second of dead air on TV was more like an hour, a disaster to be avoided at any cost. And, at least on the computer line up, this was how this thing was scheduled to transpire: anchor toss, Todd intro, package, tag, ad lib.
“Five from the top.”
Todd glanced at the base of the tripod, saw the small monitor aimed up toward him. A second later a color bar appeared. Moments after that, the end of the national news came on. As soon as that concluded, WLAK’s star anchor, Tom Rivers, appeared, always dapper and now in a navy blue suit with an off-white shirt—a truly white one was much too stark, too contrasty under the lights—and a tasteful tie with ribbons of blue and red. That full head of hair, those big white teeth, the perfect cadence of his voice—every time he was on camera it was obvious why he was worth millions, particularly in the Twin Cities, which had one of the three highest production values in the country.
“Good evening, this is the WLAK evening news, and I'm Tom Rivers. Our stories tonight include the latest on the plans to put a freeway bridge over the scenic St. Croix River, the latest on the upcoming gubernatorial race, and our lead story, an important development in the murder of a teenager in south Minneapolis.” He turned to stare into another camera, and, reading the TelePrompTer, said, “As we reported last night, shortly after nine P.M. yesterday evening police were summoned to an apartment building just off Twenty-fifth and Bryant Avenue South, where they discovered the body of a young man, Andrew Lyman, who was—”
A throaty, secret agent—like voice in Todd's earpiece said, “Ten to you.”
“—killed by an app
arent knife wound to the throat. For the very latest developments, we now join our investigative reporter, Todd Mills, at Lake Harriet.”
“Five to you.”
Tossing it to Todd, Tom Rivers said, “Todd, I understand some important evidence has been discovered. What can you tell us about it?”
“Well, Tom,” said Todd, looking straight into the lens because he was full on camera, “following up on a tip, the police came here to Lake Harriet shortly after noon today.” Offering his roll cue, Todd said, “And what they discovered beneath these waters may very well prove to be the weapon used to kill Andrew Lyman.”
Todd held his position as they cut to the package that Bradley and he had earlier put together. They began, of course, with the few shots Bradley had been able to catch of the police boats on the lake, and then the camera panned the crowd of gawkers, men and women, walkers and bikers, kids and dogs. The clip showed two women with a stroller, a couple of women in nylon jogging suits, a few men, including one guy with sunglasses and a shaved head. As the images went by, Todd went into detail how a hunting knife had been found in about twenty feet of water. It was still too early to tell if they could get any fingerprints from the weapon, but early testing by the police indicated that the blade had been recently exposed to blood. At this point the police were not inclined to speculate, but many thought it might in fact be linked to the murder.
His eyes on the monitor beneath Bradley's camera, Todd now loosely watched as the package, with his recorded voice-over married to the tape, played on. There was a bit of last night's real estate and the crowd gathered around the apartment building, as well as the all-but-required shots of the bagged body being carted out. The package continued with some personal information on Andrew Lyman, including his athletic abilities and his popularity, both of which Todd had garnered from one of Andrew's former teachers, then cut briefly to a shot of the Domain of Queers. The piece then wrapped with the shot of the police chief and his sound byte asking anyone with any information to please come forward.
The line producer cued Todd, and then Todd lifted his mike. The package concluded exactly according to schedule, and they came back out to Todd for a live, on-camera tag.
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