Silencing Sam

by Julie Kramer

  Mitch insisted his buddies had all done worse yet never once landed on TV. Thelma felt the celebrity factor would outweigh any downside of being known as a drunk.

  By then the cameras had left, so I gave up trying to convince them of the dark side of notoriety. Now the discussion turned to the cyber world of Facebook. Both my new pals promised to friend each other, and me, the minute they got home.

  The day grew hot. And we grew sweaty. No different from the rest of our trash brigade. We were all spreading out farther to finish up faster. The novelty of separating glass, plastic, and aluminum recyclables from just plain ordinary garbage grew dull.

  Suddenly Thelma screamed like she was auditioning for a slasher horror film. And had she been, she would have landed the lead.

  I rushed to her side. “What is it?”

  She covered her face but pointed toward something in a lumpy plastic bag just offshore. Pushing at it with my tongs, I saw hair and teeth. And I screamed too.

  CHAPTER 46

  The head was bloated and slimy, the eyes ghoulish. So that grisly find, along with the lights and sirens that followed, put an end to our trash collection. The other miscreants were ordered home, but Thelma and I stayed behind to answer questions.

  She didn’t have much to say that wasn’t a sob. And all her bravado about being a celebrity came to naught because she no longer had any desire to relive her gruesome moment of discovery for the TV cameras. Not even Channel 3’s.

  I’ve smelled the odor of rotting flesh before, the real thing as well as a corpse flower. So I managed to take a closer look at the pale face of the detached head than most people would have under the circumstances. While I couldn’t tell age or gender, I could have sworn the tangled hair was blond.

  Predictably, Burrel thought I was trying to horn in on his story. “I’ve been on the case from the beginning,” he said. “It’s mine.”

  I understood his being irate—good reporters fight for their stories—but heck, I found the head. And when it comes to news, finders keepers.

  “We don’t know for sure that my head is your head,” I said.

  “How many missing heads do you think there are in this metropolitan area?” he asked.

  “He’s got a point.” Noreen sided with Clay, making it seem like I had a conflict of interest—a big journalism no-no. “Riley, you’re actually part of this story, too, so I don’t think we can have you covering it.”

  “But who better to cover it than a person with firsthand knowledge of the event?” I asked. “Isn’t that why sports reporters go to games, court reporters attend trials, and political reporters watch the legislative debates? My being on the scene makes me the best-qualified person for the story. Especially since the cops aren’t talking.”

  Not all murders are created equal. The amount of media attention often comes down to that early journalism lesson of who, what, where, when, why, and how.

  Who might be the most significant. If someone important or interesting is killed, that pushes the crime to the front page and the top of a newscast. If the homicide is just one gang member shooting another, the public won’t much care. But if the victim is an innocent bystander, perhaps a child hit by a stray bullet, that’s a whole different story.

  What is fairly obvious. Murder, what else? Used to be every homicide was assigned a reporter who scrambled to make sure the victim’s name and picture made air. Now, run-of-the-mill murders might get a ten-second mention unless they’re part of a particular trend.

  Where can make a big difference. If someone is killed in a school, church, or courthouse, viewers are curious. If murder happens in an alley in a bad part of town, a blame-the-victim mentality might kick in and affect coverage.

  When only really counts if it’s a holiday. If someone is slain on Christmas, when news is slow, a camera crew will be knocking on the family’s door, wanting to videotape the unopened presents under the tree. Get killed on your birthday or wedding day, and that can be newsworthy, too.

  Why might be the least influential when it comes to weighing how much play to give a murder, at least early in the news cycle, because why goes to motive, and police don’t often discern that until later, when a suspect is in custody. And sometimes not even then. If why is obvious, like in a liquor store robbery, that also lessens the mystique.

  How is the most morbid of the criteria and perhaps the most riveting. That’s why a headless body—or bodiless head—trumps most other news of the day.

  Noreen offered a compromise in which I’d anchor the newscast, toss to Clay for the report, then ask him a question in a tag.

  “Why should I ask him a question?” I said. “What does he know? I’m the one who was there.”

  So we struck a deal: Clay would do a live shot from as close to the river scene as the police would allow. He would give the main summary; I would be next to him in the field, where he would interview me as a witness about the gruesome find.

  ((TWOSHOT/CLAY))

  RILEY, DO YOU THINK THE

  HEAD FOUND THIS

  AFTERNOON MIGHT BE FROM

  THE DECAPITATED WOMAN IN

  THE WIRTH PARK MURDER?

  ((TWOSHOT/RILEY))

  TOO SOON TO TELL, CLAY.

  POLICE WILL HAVE TO WAIT

  FOR DNA TESTS. BUT I CAN

  TELL YOU THAT TODAY’S

  REMAINS DEFINITELY HAD

  TEETH. SO THAT MEANS

  DENTAL RECORDS WILL BE

  AN IMPORTANT CLUE FOR

  IDENTIFICATION.

  Clay and I went back and forth a few times about missing people in the area and our interview was replayed coast to coast. I found myself hoping a 24/7 cable network might hire him. I wondered if he had any outs in his contract that would allow him to leave Channel 3 without much notice. Maybe if I made him look good during this coverage, I could get him out of this market.

  But then I remembered that I had a much more serious problem than scooping competitors.

  For the last twenty-four hours, distracted by an unidentified head, I had been able to forget the murder of Sam Pierce.

  CHAPTER 47

  Another message from my Texas Facebook friend Sally Oaks greeted me at my desk. By her current book cover posted, I could see she was reading an adventure story about an iceberg.

  “I have tried contacting Clay, but he has not responded to my messages. I am worried about Jolene. I am their former neighbor and would appreciate any information you could share.”

  Nosy neighbor. Clearly Clay was humiliated over the whole matter and didn’t care to discuss his marriage with her. Clay’s wife might even feel some shame over her behavior and not want to defend it to their friends.

  Again, I replied that I was uncomfortable discussing Clay’s personal life with her.

  If she continued to pursue the issue, I would have to take the drastic step of unfriending her from my page. It wouldn’t bother me a bit. I now had more than three thousand Facebook friends—plenty to spare.

  I scrolled past the latest news my social-network buddies had posted. One had the flu. Another was celebrating an anniversary. Sophie had recently updated her profile picture with a photo of her in the Mexican jungle, sipping what looked like a piña colada. I love piña coladas.

  CHAPTER 48

  During the afternoon news meeting, Ozzie called over from the assignment desk that Minneapolis police were holding a news conference in an hour about the headless homicide.

  “I’ll go.” Clay and I both spoke up at the same time.

  “We’ll send Clay,” Noreen said. “And cover the news conference live. Riley, you toss to him. Clay, you fill until the police start talking.”

  I didn’t argue, which seemed to relieve Noreen. I actually had a plan to try to shake out some of the death details early and didn’t want to waste minutes quibbling.

  We speculated about the announcement. Normally it can take weeks, months, even years for a DNA test because of backlogs at state crime labs. But Minnesota has
one of the major labs in the country and can push to get faster results in high-profile cases.

  “The DNA matches, or it doesn’t,” I said. “But in an hour we should know whether the head goes with the body.”

  “Either way, it’s a lead story,” Noreen said. “If they don’t match, we have two murders.”

  As soon as I got to my desk, I called Della, the medical examiner, who had been handling the case.

  “Don’t bother pressing me for the DNA results, Riley. The cops are breaking that news and don’t want it leaked.”

  I hid my disappointment but quizzed her on whether she was able to determine the cause of death, now that she had the head. “Remember, I was the first reporter to ask you about that.”

  “Nothing is ever simple.”

  I waited for her to continue.

  “First, let’s get this straight,” she said. “I’m not confirming whether the head and body match. I’m merely commenting on cause of death for the head that was discovered by the river.”

  “Understood,” I replied.

  Della explained that she was able to rule out traumatic beating or gunshot wounds but couldn’t determine if the victim had been strangled or had her throat slashed. “Bones in the neck were damaged, and while that could have happened from choking, it could also have been caused by a tool when the head was removed from the body.”

  I wrote fast to get all the details.

  “Best we can do,” she said.

  I thanked her for the scoop and rushed back to the newsroom. “Noreen, I just talked to a source and have inside info in the headless homicide.”

  I proposed we cut into programming early and I fill until the news conference started, then toss directly to the police. I handed her a script.

  ((RILEY, CU))

  CHANNEL 3 HAS LEARNED

  EXCLUSIVE DETAILS ABOUT HOW

  THE WOMAN WHOSE HEAD

  WAS PULLED FROM THE

  RIVER DIED …

  AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN

  ABLE TO RULE OUT

  TRAUMATIC INJURY OR

  GUNSHOTS … AND ARE NOW

  CONCENTRATING ON

  STRANGULATION OR

  INCISION WOUNDS.

  WE NOW JOIN A POLICE

  NEWS CONFERENCE TO LEARN

  MORE … PERHAPS WHETHER

  THE DNA FOR THE HEAD

  MATCHES THE BODY

  DISCOVERED IN WIRTH

  PARK.

  “Clay can recap the highlights after the cops are finished,” I suggested. I could tell by the way his eyes narrowed that he didn’t like my plan, but I figured there wasn’t anything he could do about it. I figured wrong.

  “Except I also have an exclusive that I believe trumps yours,” he said. “My source tells me that the head and body match.”

  I was furious that the chief had given Clay that gem. He was taking this make-Riley-look-bad thing a little too far.

  Noreen was thrilled with his news. She told me to cut into programming with a “Channel 3 has learned” line and toss to Clay Burrel, promoting him as “standing by live with a big exclusive.”

  “He’ll fill with the DNA match until the news conference starts,” she added. “Then you and he can discuss your cause-of-death details and he can package it for the newscasts.”

  She smiled because she knew we had the competition beat.

  Clay smiled because he knew he had me beat.

  CHAPTER 49

  Please don’t hang up,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. When she identified herself as Sally Oaks, my Texas Facebook friend, I’d just about had it with manners. Besides, it wasn’t like she lived in my viewing area and could threaten to switch channels.

  “I’m worried Clay’s isolating Jolene from her friends,” she said.

  I decided to tell Sally the truth and end all this back-and-forth. “I realize you mean well. But you’re obviously not as close to Jolene as you think. If she wanted to talk to you, she’d get in touch.”

  I explained that Clay’s wife decided against moving to Minnesota and stayed behind in Corpus Christi, in hopes of one day becoming Mrs. Texas.

  “That’s not true,” she insisted. “Did she tell you that? Or did he?”

  “None of us here at the station have ever met her. She never came to Minnesota.”

  Sally told me how she watched the two drive north together in a moving van. “I haven’t heard from her since. Besides, she’d given up that beauty-queen nonsense years ago.”

  “So she didn’t leave him?” If Clay made up the whole story of a marriage in shambles, it was a Texas whopper.

  “Believe me, I suggested she leave him more than once, but each time she insisted she loved him and he loved her.”

  Then Sally described frequent bruises that her friend had always attributed to household accidents. And a black eye she refused to discuss. I knew from covering domestic violence stories that women often love their abusers until the very end. But Sally wasn’t hinting at anything that dark. She felt certain Clay was keeping Jolene cooped up at home, under orders not to answer the phone or the door.

  “He never wanted her to work. He wanted her totally dependent on him. I think she sits in that house alone until he comes home and snaps his fingers for attention.”

  She told me she reached Clay at the station once. “I told him I was trying to reach Jolene. He told me she had new friends, then hung up.”

  I didn’t know how to gauge Sally’s information. She could have been a kook. Lots of online folks are. So are lots of people who call TV stations.

  “Do you have a photo of Jolene Burrel?” I asked. “One that looks like her?”

  “I can find one,” Sally said.

  “Email it to me. I want to be able to recognize her if we meet.”

  “Good idea.”

  I didn’t ask if she knew where Jolene went to the dentist. That’s the kind of remark that can mean only one thing.

  So where was Clay’s wife?

  Reporters like to envision the most newsworthy ending to any story. But Clay could have been telling the truth. If Jolene ever had beauty-queen aspirations, she’d have sported a tiara or two down the line. To check his story, I Googled variations of “‘Jolene Burrel,’ ‘Texas,’ ‘beauty.’”

  Nothing. But I realized a loophole. Jolene’s maiden name.

  Xiong had a public-records account that allowed him to search driving, criminal, property, and other public records nationwide, but no way was I going to ask him to find Clay Burrel’s marriage certificate for me. So I logged on to an Internet records company, typed in his name, Texas town, and approximate age. Then I paid $29.95, knowing I’d never be able to expense the cost.

  Seconds later, I learned he’d married Jolene Bailey two years earlier. She was eighteen; he was twenty-three.

  I repeated the Google, this time with her maiden name. She’d appeared in four beauty pageants. The highlight was a win as Miss Teen of Nueces County. The others were runner-up awards. I found a small head-to-toe photo of a pretty girl with a wide smile. She wore a sparkly crown over a big Texas hairdo and a beauty-queen banner over a big bust.

  She definitely would have made a beautiful bride. I wondered how the couple met. Once, they must have been happy; but now, regardless of where Jolene Burrel was, the marriage was doomed.

  Maybe she did leave him. Maybe out of spite, fear, or anger. She might be starting a new life … far from reminders of her old one.

  Or maybe he was cutting her off from the world. A prisoner in a controlling relationship.

  Or maybe she was dead.

  What if he created his own ratings exclusive with the act of murder?

  That might explain why the killer went to the trouble of decapitating his victim. Besides stalling identification, a headless homicide certainly becomes a more newsworthy crime to break your first day on the job. And oh, what chutzpah, to keep track of the criminal investigation by covering it. And that would certainly explain all his insider infor
mation. He may have been his own best source.

  Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.

  • • •

  I had a whole lot more sleuthing to do before I’d have the nerve to ask Benny to approach the police. Right then, they’d simply have laughed at the thought of two murderers working in the same newsroom.

  I decided the best start would be if I could get a second source to confirm marital abuse between the Burrels. I pulled up the State of Texas marriage certificate again and looked at the witness names. Male. Female. Best man. Maid of honor.

  The last maid of honor I interviewed knew plenty of secrets about a wedding gone wrong and a missing groom. For this case, I again needed someone close to the bride. And who more likely to be her best friend than the witness to her marriage vows? I found a phone number for Cindy Bellrichard.

  She hadn’t heard from Jolene Burrel for more than a year. Didn’t know about Clay’s Minnesota TV job. Didn’t feel in a good position to speculate about their marriage.

  I sensed Cindy was about to hang up, so quickly, I started talking to her about my own wedding. In Vegas. Spur of the moment. No friends or family. I explained I was now a widow and how I wished I had someone close to me to relive my wedding day now and then.

  “I’ve never met Jolene. But another friend of hers is worried, and I’m not sure how much stock to give her concern and how deep to stick my nose in someone else’s business.”

  I waited, wishing I’d been able to make the pitch in person. Not too many folks slam a door in my face, but I’ve been hung up on plenty of times. The eye contact certainly makes a difference, but it’s the whole package that lands the interview. A sincere smile. A firm handshake. It’s harder to communicate trust with just voice inflection.

  “I’ll keep your name out of it,” I promised. “She’ll never know we talked.”

  Either Cindy would hang up. Or she wouldn’t.

  She didn’t.

  “He made me uneasy,” she said. “Jolene could never go anywhere unless he came along. After they got hitched, the whole job of being friends fell on me. I decided to stop calling her, just to see if she missed me. Guess she didn’t.”