Missing Mark

by Julie Kramer

  Mrs. Lefevre led us to the garage where she opened a squeaky door, fumbling for the light. Malik and I took a quick peak inside. She showed us a wall of boxes stacked neatly against one end. I opened the closest one labeled “Desk” and struck gold in the form of a laptop computer.

  “Have you looked at this?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “Do you mind if I try?”

  I didn’t mean personally. Until recently I didn’t have even the cyber savvy to know how to put that sideways smiley face on the end of my e-mails like everyone else does. I hoped to hand off Mark’s laptop to Xiong and see what computer secrets he could mine.

  “I never even turned it on.” She explained that it seemed too much like snooping.

  “We’re past snooping,” I said. “If your son cared about his computer, he’d have taken it with him.”

  So Mark’s mother let me take the laptop. I wanted to comb through more boxes then, but she had a church meeting so we made plans to come back another day. And despite how we’d ended her interview, she actually did seem to be looking forward to seeing us again.

  “But we have to schedule it around the Amorphophallus titanum,” she said.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “The corpse flower, it’s on the verge of blooming.”

  I wondered if her son got his sense of humor from his mom, but she picked up on my confusion.

  “It’s a rare jungle plant that smells like rotting flesh when it blooms. It’s expected to unfold sometime this week.”

  She explained that flower aficionados were awaiting the botanical wonder at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in St. Paul’s Como Park. Apparently, only 122 such pungent events have been documented worldwide since the plant was first discovered in the Indonesian rain forests in the 1870s.

  “Minnesota will have a place in floral history.” She clasped her hands together and smiled in anticipation.

  THAT AN OFFICIAL missing person report had been filed by his mother gave me a reason to hound the cops about Mark Lefevre the next day.

  “We got nothing,” said Captain Walt Shuda as he opened Mark’s file. He wouldn’t let me read the reports because the case was still classified as an open investigation, even though months had apparently passed since anyone in law enforcement had peeked inside.

  “Why does TV care?” He seemed more curious about that development than about Mark’s fate.

  “A bit odd is all,” I answered. “He had a lot to walk away from. And he’s been gone a long time.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Captain Shuda said. “Sometimes the longer they’re gone, the harder it is for them to come back.”

  Because Captain Shuda was head of the Minneapolis Missing Persons Unit, I had to put some stock in what he was saying. Even though Mark was last seen in White Bear Lake, and even though the person making the report, his mother, lived in Wisconsin, Minneapolis police actually had jurisdiction. Unless foul play is suspected, like with missing spring-break coed Natalee Holloway in Aruba, law enforcement where the missing person lives typically has charge of the case.

  “I got a stack of missing person cases I can’t get the media interested in.” The captain gestured to a pile of files stacked in the back of his office. The top one looked dusty. “Think it’s because they’re not young, blond, or pretty?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I responded.

  But actually it wasn’t. I knew it. And Captain Shuda knew it. TV gloms on to a few high-profile cases, usually involving attractive women, and the rest are left to sort themselves out. Or not. Without foul play or Mark being a vulnerable adult, his missing person file would sit with the pile unless I stirred something loose.

  But I couldn’t be that candid with Captain Shuda. Instead I expressed regret we couldn’t cover all the missing person cases out there. “Not even John Walsh is that good.”

  It comes down to practicality, I explained. Space is limited in a newscast. So is staff. I stayed away from the specifics of how news-worthiness is determined. Down that path, in debate with non-newsies, lies madness.

  Then the captain reminded me about the time I followed the police chief on a law enforcement conference to Florida and filmed him playing golf while a session on “Keeping Your City Safe from Terrorism” was under way. “You found time to put that in your news.”

  It’s no secret that the chief and I have issues. But that particular incident happened nearly four years ago. And the chief survived the political fallout nicely by explaining that his golfing foursome included a high-ranking official from the Department of Homeland Security who was giving them private tutoring on terror avoidance because so many Fortune 500 companies are located in Minnesota.

  I suspected the real reason Captain Shuda sought a philosophical discussion on media coverage was to avoid a similar discourse on police handling of missing person cases. He knew victims without vocal families also get less attention from law enforcement.

  “By the time we even got the report,” he said, “there was a foot of snow on the ground.”

  I’d already checked the weather that October weekend with Channel 3’s meteorologist and confirmed an abrupt climate change. A cold front moved in from Canada and the mercury plunged more than 40 degrees in two days. With the sudden drop came twelve inches of snow. So even if police had received a timely missing person call and had mounted an immediate search, Mark’s trail was cold right from the start.

  “So what have you learned in the Mark Lefevre case?” I phrased my question in a nonconfrontational manner because I wanted the information straight and because I might need him to go on camera later.

  “We got no leads.”

  Captain Shuda explained that Mark’s car hadn’t been stopped by any law enforcement officer since his disappearance. He hadn’t been arrested anywhere in the United States. No activity on his bank account, either. Without leads, the cops didn’t have much to investigate. Which left me another day closer to deadline, and still no story.

  SIGOURNEY NELSON ALSO proved a dead end. She’d disconnected her phone. Moved from her apartment. Hadn’t updated her driver’s license address. Owned no property, not even a car. Didn’t appear to have been born in Minnesota. And didn’t have a hunting, fishing, or snowmobiling license, either.

  “That is all the databases we have to check,” Xiong said. “I will work on the laptop now.” Mark’s accounts were password protected, but Xiong thought he might find a way past them.

  Besides having Xiong run a computer background check, I’d door-knocked on Sigourney’s former neighbors who were clueless as to where she’d gone. As for tracking relatives, the name Nelson made that path unpromising. The Minneapolis phone book alone had thirteen pages of Nelsons and I gave up calling after a dozen strikeouts.

  Sigourney had vanished as completely as her old boyfriend.

  n the past months, Nick Garnett must have picked up some technology tips from his teenage son because a text message from him popped on my phone, reading “Somthin fshy re mal atack.”

  “Go jmp lak,” I texted back. I figured he was hoping to get some more crime-stopper tips on the fish frenzy, but truthfully, unless they had an arrest, it was bordering on old news.

  “Whpper fsh tale,” he sent back.

  “Anglng fr pblcty?” I countered.

  “U dont tke bait, yr cmpetiton wil.”

  I couldn’t chance that, and since it would take forever for him to pony up the details texting, I drove over to the Mall of America to tell him—in person, in a nice way—to knock it off.

  There I learned, unofficially not for attribution, that one of the fish from Underwater Adventures was missing.

  A very famous fish: Big Mouth Billy Bass, the Minnesota record largemouth bass.

  “What do you mean Big Mouth Billy is gone?” I asked.

  “You were there that day, Riley” Garnett said. “Rescuing live fish and counting up dead fish. It was very chaotic. Only later did they rea
lize Billy was AWOL.”

  To the Minnesota world of bass anglers, he’s iconic. Even I had heard of Big Mouth Billy and I’d grown up in a family who considered the only good fish to be a fried fish. Sports led the newscast four years ago when Billy was landed. Eight pounds, fifteen ounces of scrappy, fighting bass. The entire struggle recorded on home video. Not giant by Florida or California standards, but mammoth here in the Midwest.

  “Who would kidnap a fish?” I asked. “And why?”

  Garnett shrugged.

  Unlike Minnesota’s state fish, the walleye, lake bass are not particularly good eating. Especially not big ones. They tend to be tough.

  “Do you think someone would stuff Billy and hang him as a trophy?” I pressed.

  Garnett shrugged again. “Seems unsportsmanlike.”

  These days it’s frowned upon to mount exceptional fish as trophies. Catch and release is considered more courteous to other anglers, not to mention the fish. Following numerous photo ops, Billy’s captor donated him to Underwater Adventures so everyone could share the wonder. They even sponsored a public contest to name him and he ended up with the moniker of a robotic singing fish toy.

  How could a thief display the real legendary lunker without arousing suspicion? Maybe pure possession, not bragging rights, was the motive. Illicit art collectors hoard stolen masterpieces that can never be shown outside their ultra-private galleries. Perhaps Billy was destined to become a shrine in some fish fanatic’s secluded northern Minnesota cabin.

  “Even if we had any leads, he’d be hard to ID,” Garnett said.

  “You mean because all fish look alike?”

  “Well, that, and he was last weighed two years ago. Ten pounds, nine ounces. No telling what he’s at now. How could we even prove it was Billy if we found him?”

  I pondered that dilemma as I headed back to the station to pull file tape from our news archives for what I expected to be the lead story, and also to check if there might be any identifying marks on the missing fish.

  Channel 3 had two pieces of tape: home video of the record fish being reeled in and Billy first being displayed at Underwater Adventures. Forty-seven seconds total. I slowed it down, frame by frame, but all I could see was fins, scales, and a tail.

  Over the years, Tom McHale, our lead anchor, had turned his private bass-fishing hobby into a public obsession that viewers found endearing and oh so very Minnesotan. When Tom heard the news about Big Mouth Billy he pushed the producer to play the story straight off the top and promo the hell out of it during Wheel of Fortune and beyond.

  ((TEASE/SOT))

  TUNE IN AT TEN FOR A

  CHANNEL 3 EXCLUSIVE …

  HOW DID MINNESOTA’S

  MOST FAMOUS FISH

  BECOME THE ONE THAT

  GOT AWAY?

  I should have seen it coming.

  Noreen, an animal lover, was also hooked on the Billy mystery and was convinced that viewers would be, too. After all, they love animal stories. The research proves it.

  So the next morning, after drooling over the overnights, then reviewing a note from Tom about how important this theft case is to all Minnesotans, Noreen wrote BIG MOUTH BILLY and drew a fish-shaped outline around the words on the second Sunday in May, where she had declined to slot my missing-groom story.

  Trust her to care more about a missing fish than a missing person.

  “There’s plenty of foul play in the fish case.” She defended her decision. “You have yet to bring me any proof your guy didn’t simply take off for places unknown.”

  I hated to concede that she could be right. I needed to keep in mind, contrary to what viewers see on the news, most of the missing adult cases tracked by the FBI are actually men. And plenty of those missing show up later with a rueful explanation that they just had to get away for a while. But I didn’t think Mark Lefevre was going to waltz through the door all sheepish and apologetic.

  “And the leads are much fresher in the fish case,” Noreen continued. “So we need to put our resources where they have the best chance of success. Rent a boat. Buy some hip waders. Do whatever it takes.”

  Noreen seemed to be giving me a blank check—unheard of in a television news investigation these days. Especially since she’d just nixed my meth surveillance story because of cost.

  “You don’t actually expect me to find this missing fish?” Better I know the stakes now than on the air date.

  “Not right away. But I want a follow-up story that shows Minnesota how much we care.”

  “And how much is that?” I was almost afraid to hear her answer.

  Just then Noreen and I heard applause and noticed the general manager of the station standing outside her door, clapping vigorously.

  “We care plenty,” he announced. And because he said it, that made it so.

  I’ve learned not to get too attached to GMs. Our network owners constantly rotate them in and out of the front office searching for a magic formula to hit that elusive profit margin.

  The only time GMs usually want to sit in on a story meeting is if the news department is preparing to hose a car dealer. Car dealers are among a station’s most lucrative advertisers; car dealers are also the most complained-about businesses on the Channel 3 viewer tip line. Dealers like to flex their money muscles so the station sales department will lean on the GM to lean on the news department to kill such investigations.

  “Recovering the state’s most beloved bass will build viewer loyalty for generations,” the GM stressed.

  His eyes got bright and shiny as he imagined all the viewers demonstrating their gratitude by reaching for their television remotes and switching news channels. And just like that, despite Channel 3’s tight finances, he announced that the station would offer a $10,000 reward for the safe return of Big Mouth Billy.

  Then he winked. “Just think of all the free publicity.”

  Noreen gushed over the brilliance of the plan. “And if the fish is found, the station gets the inside track on the rescue.”

  The GM nodded enthusiastically, then threw his hands in the air and shared the best boon of all. “If the fish is never found, it won’t cost us a thing!”

  I NEEDED SOME air, so I went to the hospital to visit Emily Flying Cloud, the wounded K9 officer, and assure her that Shep was in good hands—mine—while she recovered.

  She thanked me for the flowers, which sat on a corner table by a potted green plant next to a gold-foil box of high-end chocolates. I wondered if any dark-chocolate coconuts remained.

  “So Shep’s staying at your house?” Emily seemed anxious about his whereabouts. I hoped she didn’t have misgivings concerning my ability to care for him.

  I nodded, even smiled to reassure her that he was doing just fine.

  “That’s good.” She seemed relieved. “I’m glad he’s with you. But keep a close eye on him. Police dogs are never off duty.”

  Instead of a badge, a bandage covered Emily’s shoulder. Another wrapped around her midsection. And an IV line ran from her wrist to a plastic bag hanging on a pole near her bed. She also had a hairline skull fracture from where her head hit the concrete. Hospital staff had shaved off part of her long black hair to clean the wound. Her condition had stabilized, but she remained in the hospital for observation because she’d had some minor bleeding on the brain.

  Emily acted grateful for company, even though talking seemed a bit of a strain. Mostly, she wanted to gush about her partner.

  “Shep’s got more raw talent in his nose than I’ve got in my entire body.”

  I laughed. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  But she insisted otherwise. “Seriously, I could be replaced a whole lot easier than he could. Do you know how many police dogs develop bad hips?”

  Her previous shepherd had come from a prized K9 bloodline in Czechoslovakia and Emily had to learn Czech commands before she could teach her dog English. They’d spent eight years fighting crime together before her pooch partner went to that big doghouse in
the sky. When Shep became available, Emily jumped at the chance to partner with him.

  There was some debate whether to change his name. Current K9 policy calls for patrol dogs to respond to formidable names like Nitro. Or Chaos. Or Gunner. All the better to intimidate bad guys into surrendering before the dog is unleashed.

  Shep’s name was tame by those standards. But because his primary duty was drug detection, the K9 officials decided not to go through retraining, which can be time consuming and might not be successful in an emergency situation.

  Emily also explained that law enforcement dogs aren’t always German shepherds, but can be golden retrievers, Labradors, or even your basic humane society mutt. “It all comes down to the nose.”

  I’ve been told more than once that I have a nose for news, but I don’t think that’s what she meant.

  Drug-sniffing dogs, like Shep, are trained to scratch at a suspicious package. Bomb-sniffing dogs, however, are trained to sit down next to a questionable item.

  “Can you guess why?” she asked.

  I was just about to when she feebly pantomimed KABOOM with her fingers. “Two different alerts for two different tasks. That’s why bomb dogs are single purpose.”

  Then she explained how scent lineups are popular in Europe, but have been slower to catch on in United States law enforcement. There, the dog takes a whiff of a sock or a crime scene, then is moved past a group of people, including a suspect. If he alerts at the correct one, that’s considered probable cause.

  “Well, you probably need to get some rest,” I told her as I glanced at my watch and got up to say goodbye.

  But she started quietly reciting all the special skills K-9s can be trained for and it was sort of like that movie scene when Bubba Blue tells Forrest Gump all the ways to prepare shrimp, so I sat back down and zoned out until I heard her mentioning something about dogs who find missing people.

  “Tell me more about those again,” I said.

  “Search-and-rescue dogs,” she explained. “It’s a very broad category. They look for people buried alive after natural disasters or terrorist attacks. They can track people who’ve committed crimes and fled. Children who wander off. Hunters who lose their way.”