by Julie Kramer
So I kept the conversation work-related, asking, “What happened, Nick?”
“You wouldn’t believe it,” he answered.
As he turned his head to look at me, his shirt collar fell short of covering the still-pink scars on his neck from the dog bites. On the skin of another man, I might have fantasized about undoing a button or two to inspect the marks closer, but on Garnett, guilt outweighed curiosity. That kept any unprofessional yearning under control.
“Couple of crazies came through and hammered the hell out of the glass with baseball bats,” he said. “We’ve been picking up fish for the last half hour.”
“Can I get a camera in here?” I was all business.
“Pool camera only. This is too big and public to let you go exclusive. Besides, Riley, your station wasn’t even the first one here.” He shook his head in admonishment.
Not that I wanted to make excuses, but one of my TV competitors is geographically closer, another is simply better at reacting to breaking news. Pooling tape meant one station, in this case ours, would be allowed to shoot crime-scene video, but was required to share it with everyone else.
“Fine, Nick,” I agreed, “if I can’t have it alone, just make sure no one else does.”
“Deal. The photographers are going through security and getting credentials. They should be down in a couple of minutes. Then you can have your photo op.”
I watched as a middle-aged bald man with a buff body wrapped a wet towel around what looked like a small shark with a long nose and placed it in a cooler of water with a whiskered exotic fish.
“Will they be okay?” I asked.
The man wore an Underwater Adventures name tag that read “Ahab.” If he’d been a mad sea captain in a former life, he hid it well that day. No wasted energy shaking a fist at the sea or sky.
“Some we can put in other tanks,” he said. “These we’ll transport over to the Minnesota Zoo, along with other survivors. The lucky ones.”
He put a cover on the cooler and motioned toward the back of the room at a small pile of glassy-eyed fish that, if they weren’t lying on a cement floor, would clearly be floating belly up.
“We had to prioritize,” Ahab explained. “Luckily, the scoundrels spared the saltwater creatures.”
He and a skinny woman with a Pisces tattoo on one arm loaded the cooler onto a cart and pushed it down the hall. Just before disappearing around a corner, he brushed his hand over his eyes and blinked, as if wiping a tear. I’ve seen people mourn the loss of money, career, spouse, and child. Fish grief, that’s a new one.
“He’s the aquarium director,” Garnett said. “Doesn’t want to do any media interviews right now. You guys can shoot for three minutes behind the crime-scene tape, then I’ll give a brief statement to everyone. After that, we’re kicking you all outside.”
Not a problem, we had just over an hour before the evening news. We’d need to be setting up for our live shots, plus this way I didn’t have to worry about the competition getting better shots than me, since all the stories would use mostly the same video.
“Any surveillance tape?” I asked, searching for some way to make my piece stand out from the pack. The Mall of America has one of the most comprehensive video-camera systems in the retail world. Very little happens on its turf that’s not watched by someone.
Garnett ignored my question.
“Maybe somebody’ll recognize the suspects,” I pressed. “They could call in an ID.”
It happens. Look at America’s Most Wanted. Happens all the time.
“I don’t think anyone will recognize these guys,” Garnett replied cryptically.
“How can you be so sure, Nick? Come on, TV can be a tool for law enforcement. Use us.”
“Television? A tool for law enforcement?” His voice carried more than a hint of incredulity. “Now, Riley, we both know full well… television is … is a godless abomination.”
“And we both know that that must be from Peter Finch, Network, 1976,” I guessed.
Garnett was also a film buff and we enjoyed playing Name That Movie Quote during normal conversation. The tradition dated back ten years to our earliest days as rookie reporter and veteran cop. He didn’t stump me too often. But now, stationed at the Mall of America, with fourteen movie screens within a hundred yards of his security office, he had an advantage. Especially since my rental wasn’t wired for cable TV.
“Actually, I think I made that line up,” he said.
“Really? Television is a godless abomination? It’s very profound. Maybe even catchy enough for T-shirts. You’re sure it’s not from Network?”
“Pretty sure,” he nodded. “But we could rent it sometime to double check.”
“Let’s do that. My place. Loser buys the pizza.”
And with that exchange, we both knew we were okay.
Of course, the real reason I wanted the surveillance tape was because this was a slow-news Saturday. If not for this fish shtick, Channel 3 would be leading tonight’s newscast with obvious tips on lawn-mower safety after a south Minneapolis man got his foot caught in one. Actual video of thugs crashing tanks of fish would probably go national.
“So how about it? Release the tape? We both know it exists.”
“Bloomington cops will have to make the call on that,” he said. “They’re handling the investigation. Go bother them.”
Bloomington police have a substation in that corner of the Mall of America, just up the escalator from the aquarium. Most of their mall calls deal with petty crimes like shoplifting or kids violating curfew. When the fish-in-crisis call came, officers responded, but just missed the perpetrators racing out the skyway to the parking garage. It wasn’t the kind of crime they’d ever trained for. Right now they were taking witness statements and dealing with crowd control.
One of Channel 3’s photographers waved at me and Garnett motioned him through the confusion. Luis Fernandez was another fairly new photog, that’s why he worked the weekend late shift. I wished I had one of our veteran shooters. Not that they were more skilled behind a camera, but a couple were fishing fanatics and would have been helpful in identifying the victims.
“Wow.” Luis focused his camera on a pile of carp, still breathing, slow to die. Low priority for rescue. “This is some crazy business.”
Garnett led us down a fake jungle path with artificial tropical plants and trees. Various plastic and stuffed animals decorated the route un-convincingly. We arrived at a glass-walled tunnel, usually the highlight of the aquarium tour. On a good day, visitors were surrounded overhead and on each side with a million gallons of water and an extensive school of fish as well as turtles, sharks, and stingrays.
Today wasn’t a good day.
The power had been turned off to avoid electrocution. The tunnel was dark; the conveyer belt stalled. Aquarium employees waved flashlights. Luis activated his portable camera light and we all gasped at the large hole in one side of the freshwater tunnel. Water above that line, along with many of the inhabitants, had been sucked out onto the floor. Most of the water spread outward so it was now only ankle deep. On both sides of the tunnel, below the damaged tank wall, desperate fish moved slowly in cramped space.
They were the fortunate ones. Others lay on the floor, gasping for air, their gills quivering as staff members worked to rescue them.
I better understood Ahab’s tears. And while fish aren’t among the most huggable or emotional of earth’s creatures, these survivors certainly looked despondent.
“Time’s up,” Garnett said. “You newsies go back upstairs.”
We didn’t argue because I didn’t want him to regret allowing us access. And I hoped he’d share new information as it came in—with me, not the rest of the pack.
“Nick, you’re sure to get tip calls once viewers see this,” I said. “And if we get anything on our end, we’ll let you know.”
Slamming fish tanks was just the kind of prank vandals would brag about over a few beers. Garnett promised to fin
alize reward information before airtime.
Reporters from four TV channels, both daily newspapers, and one radio station all played the Minnesota Nice version of paparazzi and waited patiently outside the Bloomington cop shop until a communications flack stuck his head out to sneer “No comment!” before slamming the door in our faces.
((RILEY/LIVE))
POLICE ARE STUMPED BY A
FISH FRENZY AT THE MALL
OF AMERICA TODAY.
I had just fed the aquarium tape back to the station from Channel 3’s live truck and was scripting my story. For television news each line is typed about two inches wide, making for easy reading, and timing out to about a second a line. This helps the newscast producer estimate the length of any story quickly. Instead of punctuation, I generally put a series of dots to indicate a pause point during my read.
((RILEY/NAT))
TWO ARMED INTRUDERS
BROKE INTO UNDERWATER
ADVENTURES AND
SMASHED AQUARIUMS …
LEAVING FISH
FLOUNDERING… NO
MOTIVE HAS YET BEEN DETERMINED …
The weekend news anchor, Erin Jackson, followed up with a planned question about an Underwater Adventure story a few months earlier in which a large tiger shark named Jesse tried to eat a smaller shark. The little shark survived only because a rescue team wrenched it, literally, from the jaws of death. Because a visitor’s cell-phone camera captured the drama, the shark exhibit broke attendance records by using the gripping photo in all their publicity.
Channel 3 was always anxious for any chance to rerun that particular image.
((ANCHOR Q&A))
AND HOW ABOUT THOSE
TWO SHARKS, RILEY …
WERE THEY AMONG
THE SURVIVORS?
((RILEY SOT/FILE TAPE))
YES, ERIN,
THEY’RE JUST FINE … NO
SHARKS OR OTHER
SALTWATER CREATURES
PERISHED IN TODAY’S
ATTACK … BUT MANY
OF THE MORE FRAGILE
FRESHWATER FISH WERE
NOT SO FORTUNATE … AND
THE FINAL DEATH
TALLY HAS YET TO BE
RELEASED.
I did my early newscast as a live shot without a hitch or glitch, filling a solid two and a half minutes about the tragic loss of fish life. But instead of letting me do the late news back on set at the station, like we’d agreed on earlier, the producer insisted I again go live in front of the Mall of America. Even though it was now dark outside. Even though it was now raining. And most insulting, even though the action was long over.
But that’s TV news.
oreen called me into her office the following Monday morning to admire a spike in the Saturday overnights and attribute it to my coverage of the fish story. Saturday usually has fewer news viewers than any other night of the week, but I declined the compliment because my coverage was really no different than my competitors’.
Then her motive became clear.
“You’ve been doing such a great job on spot news lately” she continued, “with the police shooting and the fish attack, I’m wondering if that’s a better place for you this May.”
She smiled like she was offering me a promotion. But her smile was insincere.
In the world of TV news, on-air talent succeeds by projecting warmth. That trait didn’t come naturally to Noreen, which probably explained why, even with her beauteous looks, she gravitated to management instead of anchoring. Viewers can sense a false performer. For bosses, a cool demeanor counts more and what subordinates think counts for nothing.
“No,” I answered, wasting no words on subtlety.
There’s nothing subtle about spot, or breaking, news. It’s News of the Obvious. Fire. Plane crash. Bank robbery. High on adrenaline and low on brains. Reporting live for a minute-thirty on whatever the latest news development is or was hours earlier, often fed to you by the newscast producer off the wire. It’s usually an entry-level job for rookies with lots of energy and little experience.
I’d been there, done that.
“No,” I repeated. “I have a job. I’m an investigative reporter.”
“I see. Well then, Riley, show me your investigation.”
Just then we heard an overhead page calling, “Riley Spartz, you have a guest in the front lobby.”
Normally I’d roll my eyes because I wasn’t expecting anyone and I have a theory, proven numerous times over the course of my career, that nothing good ever walks through the front door. Exclusives don’t come that easily. Mystery guests are usually viewers who are so angry that they’re determined to yell at you in person. Or those who can’t understand why their story idea has been rejected by every news outlet in the market. But instead of rolling my eyes, I decided to embrace this mystery guest as my lucky break.
“Can we please talk later, Noreen? I really need to meet with this source. It’s important.”
She waved me off, but reminded me that we weren’t finished.
VIVIAN POST, THE mother of the almost-bride, declined an offer to come into the Channel 3 newsroom and sit down, preferring to conduct matters in the station lobby where she informed me that she only had a minute to spare because her car was out front waiting to take her shopping.
Her wide blue eyes matched her daughter’s, but Mrs. Post looked young to have a child Madeline’s age. And fit. In a fight she could probably take me. And she had to be mid-forties. At least ten years older than me. Not a sign of gray in her dark hair. She smelled good in an expensive sort of way.
“I’m sorry for your pain—” I started out expressing sorrow for all she and her family had been through these many months, but she dismissed me as one might dismiss a servant, if one had a servant.
“Whatever Madeline’s told you, I’m here to tell you our family doesn’t care to be featured on your program. So thank you for your time and good day.” She turned to leave.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Post.”
Working in television, I’ve developed a high tolerance for bitchiness. Give or take. But her manner was so high and mighty that I made a mental note to tell the security desk to post her picture and not buzz her into the station again without an appointment.
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said. “I don’t need your permission to broadcast this story.”
No need to tell her that NEVER WORN hadn’t even been slated on the May board. But I’d already shot tape, done research, and one way or another, I intended the missing-groom story to see air.
“Well,” she answered, “I’m sure my lawyers won’t have any trouble getting a court order preventing you.”
“I think they just might.”
I tried explaining the concept of the First Amendment. But just as I got to Near vs. Minnesota (1931), the most significant Supreme Court decision involving prior restraint and establishing that the government cannot prohibit publication, Vivian was climbing into a black Mercedes, the door held open by a young man in a dark suit.
“The ruling was upheld again in the Pentagon Papers case!” I yelled as the vehicle pulled away.
So bottom line, we’d win in court. If we got to court. But Noreen would be loath to spend legal fees on a story she didn’t believe in. Especially facing the current newsroom economics. So I needed to make her a believer before she ordained me Channel 3’s spot-news machine.
I walked around the outside of the station and went in the back door by the guard desk so Noreen wouldn’t see me sneaking past her office.
Back at my desk, I started to map out the missing-groom story to see what still needed to be done. I wrote Madeline’s and Mark’s names on a wall board along with data I’d collected. I’d not been able to run their names and dates of birth through the national crime records because I needed a cooperative police source to do that check. Since Nick Garnett had traded his police badge for corporate life, that proved elusive.
WEDDING/October 6 MADELINE POST MARK LE
FEVRE
ENGAGED/1 month No criminal record Minor drug charge
KNOWN EACH OTHER/ $$$$$$$$ comedian
3 months cooperative w/media old girlfriend?
mother from hell
As soon as I wrote “hell,” I felt I probably was a bit harsh regarding Madeline’s mother. Her formidable style might have come more from being a single parent than from being filthy rich. Checking the newspaper archives, I found an obituary and brief story about Madeline’s father’s death. He died on the eleventh hole, seeking shelter under a tree during a sudden thunderstorm.
Mr. Post had owned several car dealerships in the Twin Cities, so his marriage to Vivian blended old money with new.
Examining my lists on the board, I realized I needed to learn more about Mark. He was still a mystery. I pulled his and Madeline’s engagement announcement from my file and noted that his mother lived just outside of Hudson, Wisconsin.
Getting no answer at her home, I checked for florists in the area and soon located her at work. Surprised by my call, she welcomed a visit to discuss her missing son. So twenty minutes later, Malik and I were on our way to the cheesehead state.
By the time we got to the YOU ARE LEAVING MINNESOTA sign, he was dozing in the passenger seat while I drove over the St. Croix River. Malik preferred that division of travel duties—him sleeping, me driving. He claimed it kept him sharp when it came time to shoot video. He’d learned to sleep on command in the army and practiced that skill anytime he could. I didn’t really mind because it gave me time to brainstorm without having to listen to chatter about his home life. And his soft, pleasant snore soothed my racing mind.
The trees along the riverbank were turning green and the wind was brisk enough for whitecaps on the water. No boats in either direction. I turned north just after the WELCOME TO WISCONSIN sign.
I dialed Madeline because I wanted to fill her in on my meeting with her mother before her mother brainwashed her against me.
“I probably shouldn’t have told Mother about the story,” Madeline said. “But we’re very close. In some ways, she’s more like a big sister than a mom. ‘A big, bossy sister,’ I like to tease her. But she feels it’s not healthy for families to keep secrets. They only cause heartache.”