Silencing Sam
Page 9
“How can we help you if you won’t tell us what’s going on?” she asked.
“Listen, Mom, Dad. I don’t need your help, and even if I did, there’s nothing you can do.”
Then I insisted Malik and I really needed to hurry. We didn’t do hugs or kisses because we’re not a touchy-feely family, but Mom gave Malik a plate of peanut butter bars with chocolate frosting to eat in the car.
On the drive back, Ozzie, from the assignment desk, called to ask us to detour off our route to shoot a jackknifed semi and the ensuing traffic jam. Malik groaned.
I turned on news radio and heard heavy promotion for what was being billed as Clay Burrel’s exclusive about how—minus her head—authorities were helpless in determining a cause of death in the Wirth Park homicide.
Of course I was ticked; it should have been my story. “Jerk,” I said as I switched channels. Drive-time radio promotion is effective in driving viewers to their TV sets the minute they get home, so I expected Clay’s numbers would be high.
When we reached the station, Noreen was busy and brushed me off when I tried to tell her about the dead bat. So rather than press its leathery wings against the glass walls of her office in a vampirish bid for attention, I wrapped it in a piece of newspaper and stuck it in the station’s freezer.
CHAPTER 17
I fumbled with the trash when I got home. Garbage day always reminded me I was a widow. Some days I could forget my loss, but never on garbage day. The weekly walk to the curb was the antithesis of my walk down the aisle. Instead of carrying a bridal bouquet, I carried smelly rubbish.
Some papers fell out as I dumped one wastebasket into another. One was Garnett’s boarding pass to MSP airport.
How romantic, I thought, pressing it against my heart. The minute Garnett heard Sam Pierce was dead, he sensed my trouble and rushed for a seat on the next plane.
But then I noticed the arrival date was the day before Sam was killed. Why would Garnett have lied? And what reason would he have had to come to town without telling me?
I’m ashamed to say the first thought that came to mind was not that he was cheating on me but that he owned a gun and was in the correct geographic region to have killed Sam.
It would have been a relief to laugh together at the zany idea. Him slaying Sam to protect my reputation. A very outdated motive. Something an obsessed Don Quixote might do for his Lady Dulcinea. But Garnett’s love for me couldn’t have been strong enough to kill in cold blood. Though if it was, would that make me an accomplice?
The truth was, Garnett was one of the good guys in life, so him killing Sam didn’t compute. But what was he doing in town that he needed to keep secret?
Some couples are doomed unless they agree on all the big issues in life, like politics, religion, and where to call home.
Garnett and I clashed in all those areas and more. But even though we had our share of squabbles—many of them my fault—I still believed we had a chance at happy-ever-after because we agreed on something pretty specific: that the film Saving Private Ryan contains the best movie dialogue ever written.
There are lots of lines that stand out, but we give the prize to the scene where Tom Hanks tells his platoon that, in real life, he’s only a small-town English teacher. “I just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.”
Is that enough to build a relationship on?
To prove my confidence in him, I considered crumpling up the boarding pass, throwing it in the trash, and never speaking of it again. Instead, I stuck it in a desk drawer.
The trash can was behind the house, out of view of company. As I went out the back door to wheel it to the front curb, I saw a shadow moving along the side of the garage. I stopped, then heard the crunching of feet on gravel.
Instantly, I remembered that Sam Pierce had been killed in his own backyard. I went back inside, locked the door, and decided to wait until morning to put out the garbage.
I turned on all the lights in the house before finally falling asleep on the couch. In the morning, I didn’t wake up until I heard the garbage truck driving past.
CHAPTER 18
Sam Pierce was buried.
I wasn’t there, but Clay was. I’d been advised by my boss, my attorney, and my own common sense to stay far away from the service. Because killers sometimes attend their victim’s funeral, I figured the cops would use my presence at the ceremony as further evidence of my guilt.
But I remained curious about the service. So I hovered by the edit booth where cameraman Luis Fernandez was loading the funeral scenes into the station server. Videotape is a thing of the past in most newsrooms; now stories are shot on digital cards. Normally photographers screen the best shots and edit out the extraneous. Reporters and producers view the remaining video later on their computers.
“Luis, I’ll babysit the booth if you’ll let everything load,” I said. A shot he considered slop I might consider significant.
“But this isn’t even your story,” he pointed out.
“But I want to watch it anyway.”
He agreed, leaving me and my notebook alone in a room the size of a small closet.
The funeral ceremony took place at a cemetery chapel, not a church, so I figured Sam must not have been the religious type, which probably made it easier for him to commit the sin of gossiping guilt free.
I noted, with some satisfaction, very few flowers and only a dozen or so mourners. None of them seemed teary eyed, either. Then I felt ashamed of myself and wondered if I was really any better than the deceased.
Plenty of folks insist there is only a fine line between news and gossip. Especially since the tanking economy has made all media organizations a bit desperate for audiences. Technically news is supposed to be the truth, while gossip only contains a grain of truth. No doubt, newsrooms will debate the coverage of pop king Michael Jackson’s death for years to come as one of those irresistible overkill situations.
I quickly shifted from philosophical to embarrassed when Clay caught me looking at his funeral video and banged on the edit door window. The video on-screen was a zoom shot of a large photo of a flamboyant Sam on an easel next to a closed casket.
“Hey, you weasel.” He opened the edit room door. “I should have guessed you’d be in here.”
“Can’t we watch together? Please?” I asked. “You got my headless lead.”
He weighed my request. “Okay, little lady, but you owe me like banks owe taxpayers. A debt you’ll probably never repay.”
This time I didn’t object to either the moniker or the metaphor, figuring he was probably right.
“Any good sound?” I asked.
“Not really. Afterward, a newspaper editor gave me a short bite about waiting for justice, but no one else wanted to go on camera.”
Clay leaned against the wall because squeezing a second chair inside was impossible. Another wide shot came up on-screen, and I reflected that for all his bluster, Sam must have led a lonely life to have such a bleak turnout at a highly publicized funeral.
Was he mean because he was lonely? Or was he lonely because he was mean? The “Piercing Eyes” newspaper logo sat propped against another easel on the other side of the casket but gave no clue to the answer.
A minister gave a generic talk about how unfair life and death can be. He didn’t include any personal anecdotes about Sam, probably because they’d never met. But he also didn’t quote any Bible verses about gossips being the root of all evil.
Something caught my eye, and if Clay hadn’t been watching with me just then, I’d have stopped the video, because one of the floral arrangements seemed almost identical to the wildflower bouquet I’d received at the station. Luis had shot a close-up of the sympathy card but didn’t hold still long enough for me to read it.
Then the camera panned across the audience, but the angle was mostly the backs of heads; individual mourners were hard to identify. I recognized a homicide detective off in one corner. Standard procedure.
On one side of him sat the Minneapolis newspaper’s top editor. Next to her, another editor whom I’d met once before, but I couldn’t remember his name. They had come to support the soul of their fallen comrade.
A couple rows behind them, I was surprised to see Rolf Hedberg sitting beside a couple of other print reporters. After his inflammatory remarks about Sam, showing up for his funeral seemed almost hypocritical. But I know from personal experience that it’s much easier to badmouth people when they’re alive than dead. This might have been Rolf’s way of making amends.
On the other side of the good-looking man sat a well-dressed elderly couple. I assumed they were Sam’s parents, until the older gentleman turned his head.
I gasped in recognition, almost hyperventilating. Clay kept asking me what was going on. But I stayed mum because sitting in the front row of Sam Pierce’s funeral were my parents.
“What do you see?” He shook my shoulders. “Tell me.”
I shook my head, pretending to be choking; I might not have been able to keep up the ruse much longer, but a shrill scream came from down the hall toward the newsroom.
We both scrambled to open the door and get there first. After all, a scream can mean news.
Clay beat me by about a second and a half. Not bad considering he was a decade younger.
When I got around the corner to the coffeemaker counter, I saw Sophie, our lead news anchor, standing in front of an open refrigerator … a dead bat by her feet.
CHAPTER 19
A small crowd had gathered, including Noreen. Frankly, I was relieved all the fuss was just about the bat and nobody was actually going postal with a gun.
“Where did it come from?” A photographer nudged it gingerly with his foot.
“Did it bite you?” a newscast producer asked.
Sophie shuddered as she pointed toward the freezer.
“Calm down, everyone.” I stepped forward, picking up the bat. “It’s only a bat. I’m using it for a story. No big deal.”
Everyone drew back like it was a vampire.
“Where did you get it?” Noreen asked. “How can you be sure it doesn’t have rabies?”
Rabies? Visions of Old Yeller’s lunging jaws replaced Dracula’s fangs.
“I found the bat by one of the wind turbines,” I explained. “It was dead. So were a bunch of other bats. I want to investigate what’s killing them.”
“Sophie, did you touch it with your bare hands?” Noreen asked.
“No,” our anchor answered. “I pulled out some frozen leftovers and it fell out and scared me.”
“I don’t see the problem,” I said. “This bat was dead when I found it, and it’s still dead.”
I waved the frozen bat to emphasize my point. The crowd drew back farther, even the men.
“We had a rabies case down in Texas,” Clay said, “where a man contracted the disease from a dead cow’s spit.”
“Exactly,” Noreen said. “Rabies is spread by saliva.”
“Victim died a horrible death,” Clay continued. “Hallucinations. Thirsty, yet terrified by the sight of water. No cure once you’re past the incubation period. I stay as far away from bats as I can.”
I’m sure Clay was trying to be helpful, but I didn’t appreciate that level of detail just then. Especially when he started speculating about a series of painful injections in the stomach.
“Riley, put the bat in here.” Noreen held out a small cardboard box that used to hold copy paper. I dropped the bat inside. She used a paper towel to cover it with ice from the freezer. “Now go wash your hands, Riley. Check them for open sores. Then meet me in my office.”
Noreen turned to our assignment editor and said, “Ozzie, call the Minnesota Health Department and tell them we need a bat tested for rabies ASAP.”
Then she instructed the station janitor to clean out the refrigerator and freezer and throw out all food. I expected my news colleagues to grumble over that last order, but no one did.
A few minutes later, Noreen was chewing me out in her office as the rest of the newsroom watched in fascination through the glass walls.
“What were you thinking?” She shook her arms wildly. “Bats are almost synonymous with rabies. How could you even take such a chance? This is really the last thing I need to deal with right now.”
“I’m sorry, Noreen,” I said. “All I thought about was the possibility I might be onto an interesting story about bats and wind turbines. Bats are dying out there, but they don’t seem to be damaged by the blades.”
My boss glanced into the bat box that sat on her desk, next to a wedding photo of her and a local animal rights activist, whose long face resembled that of a basset hound. Long before he became her husband, Toby Elness was a source of mine, and I had a hunch that if Noreen mentioned this bat mystery to him, he’d push her to cover it.
“I brought the bat back so we could have it autopsied, Noreen. I know how much you value animal stories. Honestly, I thought you’d be pleased.”
“You know I care about animals, Riley. But viewers tune in to see likable creatures. Huggable ones that make us smile. I’m not sure they’re going to care if bats are dying. Between rabies and vampires, not too many people are fond of bats.”
“But they kill mosquitoes. And viewers hate them even more.”
Noreen paused as if weighing that fact for promotional value here in mosquito-heavy Minnesota.
Then Ozzie stuck his head in her office. “The health department says they don’t need the whole bat for testing. Just the head will do.”
“Tell them we’re sending the entire bat,” Noreen said.
“Then they want us to take it to the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Diagnostic Lab,” Ozzie said. “They’ll remove the brain and send it to the health department for the rabies test.”
Noreen handed me the box and told me to drive it over to the lab.
“Should I take Malik along to shoot the process? If the bat ends up having rabies, maybe we should do a story about it. We could show promo video of me getting rabies shots.”
Noreen’s eyes got bright and shiny, like they do when she hears a fresh, voyeuristic idea she thinks might draw viewers to our channel.
When we got to the veterinary lab, the receptionist gave me a form to fill out, told me to leave the bat, and said that I’d get a call later that day or early the next regarding the test results.
“Is there someone I could speak with now?” I asked. “I’m from Channel 3 and we’d like to follow the fate of our bat with our camera.” I motioned toward Malik, who was standing off to the side.
After a few minutes, a man in a white lab coat introduced himself as Dr. Howard Stang. I was a little wary of veterinarians after clashing with one in a pet cremation scam a while back.
But I explained the situation, and he led us back through an “Authorized Personnel Only” door, down a long hallway to a room with bright lights and medical equipment.
Malik clipped a wireless microphone on him and Dr. Stang put on rubber gloves and laid the bat on a stainless-steel counter next to a large knife.
“Bats found dead have a higher risk of carrying rabies,” he said. “So you’re wise to get it tested, at the least to eliminate the possibility of the disease, which I’m sure you know is fatal—if left untreated.”
“The bat may have rabies,” I conceded. “But I don’t think that’s what killed it.” I told him about the wind turbines and the dead bat bodies below. “Beyond the rabies question, can you find the cause of death for this bat?”
As a veterinarian, he shared my curiosity and assured me he’d see what he could learn. Malik shot some cover of him handling the bat, but we left when it was time to remove its head.
• • •
When I got home that night, my parents’ pickup truck was parked in
my driveway, and they were sitting—overdressed—on the porch of my house. I didn’t even know my dad owned a black suit, one reason I didn’t recognize him right away on the funeral tape.
“Surprise!” My mom held up a loaf of rhubarb bread covered in plastic wrap that looked like it had been in the backseat too long.
“We came to cheer you up and show family support,” Dad said.
“Well, you two sure look nice for the occasion.” I plopped down across from them on a lawn chair. “I hope you didn’t get gussied up just for me.”
They glanced at each other a bit nervously. Dad, in a wicker chair, started rocking back and forth.
“We thought while we were in the Twin Cities, we should go shopping,” Mom said.
Dad nodded proudly. “How do you like my new tie?”
“Can it.” Clearly, they had each other’s backs. “I know you crashed Sam’s funeral. Just promise me you didn’t kill him.”
“Why would we kill him?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Perhaps some crazy notion of protecting your daughter’s reputation? Why would you go to his funeral?”
“We came to help find his killer,” Dad said.
“Dad, leave it to the cops to do their job. You and Mom are just going to make things worse.”
“But you’re always saying if the cops don’t catch the killer in the first days, forget it,” Mom said.
“And you’re always saying the cops sometimes get tunnel vision on one particular suspect and don’t cast a wide enough net,” Dad added.
So much for my thinking all these years that my parents never heard a word I said. “Yeah, but I’m also always saying investigating is no job for amateurs.”
Then I remembered that small-town folks are keen observers … of their neighbors as well as strangers. Maybe my parents could be sources.
“So did you two learn anything useful at the funeral today?” After all, they did have a front-row seat on the action.
Dad shook his head. “It didn’t really go like we expected.”