Missing Mark

by Julie Kramer

  Mark Lefevre’s trail was stone cold. No search dog could possibly get a scent after so much time. Or could it?

  “What about dead people?” I asked. “Can these dogs find bodies hidden in clandestine graves?” I wasn’t trying to be negative. I just like being prepared.

  “Those would be cadaver dogs.” Emily explained that they are considered the elite of the K-9 world. Given a whiff from a small bottle containing decomposing human remains, the best can find bodies underwater or underground.

  I asked her about a recent police case in Minneapolis in which a young boy was beaten to death by his aunt. A search dog, brought in to sniff out the house, failed to find his body, hidden in a clothes dryer.

  “What went wrong?” I wondered.

  “That dog probably wasn’t a true cadaver dog. Never exposed to a dead body and didn’t recognize that it and the missing boy were the same thing. Human bodies are hard to come by for K9 training.”

  She told me about recent K-9 success stories in Minnesota that inspire handlers. Last spring one dog discovered the bodies of two young brothers frozen in lake ice on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The boys disappeared four months earlier and had been feared abducted. The year before, authorities in southern Minnesota found a headless body. A police dog later found the severed head in a distant location.

  “I’ve actually started training Shep to be a cadaver dog.” She smiled proudly. “He has enormous potential.” She’d been using a decaying human tooth to teach him the elusive scent of death.

  “Maybe I can help,” I said. “I seem to stumble across more than my share of dead bodies.”

  She laughed, like I was joking. So I didn’t mention I’d actually been up close to three in the last six months, and not by choice, either.

  Maybe I’d confide more after we got to know each other better.

  I promised to bring Shep along on my next visit and instead of looking pleased, Emily looked panicked. “No, Riley, it’s best if you leave Shep home.”

  “Don’t worry, Emily,” I said. “K-9s are allowed in hospitals. Just like service dogs for the blind or handicapped.” I was surprised she didn’t seem to know that. “And just think how excited Shep will be to see you.”

  She closed her eyes momentarily, then glanced back and forth, like she was checking to make sure no nurse was around. “I’m begging you, Riley. Keep him out of sight and keep him away from me.”

  “What’s going on here?” I asked. “Why are you getting all weird on me?”

  Emily paused, as if weighing how far she could trust me. After all, we’d just met. Then she slumped back in her pillow, apparently deciding she had no choice. “Shep was the sniper’s target. I accidentally stepped in the way.”

  That theory made about as much sense to me as roving packs of organized serial killers pushing drunken college men into rivers across the country and leaving smiley-face drawings behind. I wondered if Emily’s pain medication was off.

  “Why would anyone want to shoot Shep?”

  “The usual motive.” I shrugged and she rolled her eyes at me. “Riley, which are you? Ignorant or innocent?”

  “Neither,” I answered. “I’m confused.”

  “Money,” she said. “Money is the usual motive.”

  She explained that Shep was so successful at detecting drugs that Minnesota’s meth confiscation had gone way up and drug dealers were losing big money and doing big time in the big house.

  “And they blame him?” I asked.

  “Sure they do. You’ve heard of the war on drugs? Well, he’s the state’s not-so-secret weapon.”

  I thought of the periodic news briefs showing Shep being honored for this bust or that bust. He always seemed to be smiling when they put a medal around his neck. The police considered it good public relations. But Emily worried that someone, perhaps with the help of a department traitor, had put a contract out on Shep.

  “He’s a dog with a price on his head.”

  ivian Post’s address was only a couple of miles from mine, but millions of dollars separated the property values of our homes. I knew she was loaded, at least on paper, but not until I drove down the narrow curves of Peninsula Road did I grasp the historic cachet that old money can buy.

  “Why don’t you come out to the house for a drink,” she’d said on my voice mail. “I feel like we got off to a bad start.”

  Her tone sounded patrician, implying perhaps it was my fault that she and I failed to hit it off.

  I suspected a call to her family attorney, most likely billed out at around $500 an hour, had advised her of the difficulties in Muzzling the Media and instead suggested a strategy of trying to Shape the Story.

  Influence came naturally to their family. For generations, they’d influenced the arts, education, and politics of Minnesota. Wings of hospitals, university buildings, and museum masterpieces exist for the rest of us because of their altruism.

  The estate stretched over the tip of a peninsula jutting into White Bear Lake. A stone mansion, built by a corporate mover and shaker and later owned by a U.S. ambassador, sat on a cliff commanding views from all directions.

  As I drove up, the windows of the house seemed like eyes watching my arrival. Spring was late coming to the estate compared to the rest of the town. Green flourished on my street; gray still ruled here. A vision of Edgar Allan Poe’s crumbling House of Usher reverberated from my college-lit days and, like the narrator of that particular tale of woe, I, too, felt a brief, irrational fear.

  Mrs. Post herself answered the door, directing me past a suit of armor in the entryway that lessened my angst by reminding me of an old Scooby-Doo cartoon. We entered a large sitting room with one entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and another featuring a stone fireplace. Two bottles of wine—one red, one white—and a few crystal decanters of liquor were spread on a small antique table along with a pot of hot tea and miniature appetizers and desserts. She motioned for me to join her on a weathered leather couch with a scratchy, old polar bear skin draped over it, head, claws, and all.

  People in this town take their burly mascot seriously. Many display statues of white bears in front of their houses or fly flags from their porches. One car dealer even has a giant white bear monument sitting on the roof of the dealership. Each summer, he paints swim trunks on it; each fall he paints over them.

  “I had no idea we were practically neighbors.” Vivian flashed me a professional smile and I saw where Madeline got her dazzling teeth.

  “Me, neither.” I doubted this neighbor ploy would develop into the kind of relationship where we borrowed sugar or brought in each other’s mail, but I smiled back anyway and asked how Madeline was doing.

  “She does seem to have her heart set on this story of yours.” Mrs. Post offered me a drink. I indicated the hot tea. She poured me a cup and herself a glass of white wine.

  “Maybe Madeline needs some answers,” I said.

  “How likely is it your answers will bring her comfort?”

  We both knew no guarantee existed, so I said nothing and instead bit into a small, spicy piece of cheese bread with diced tomatoes.

  “I just see more pain ahead and no mother wants that for her child. I would do anything in my power to spare her grief.”

  Mrs. Post seemed sincere. And I had no doubt she had wielded plenty of power and money in the past to spare Madeline all kinds of grief.

  “But Madeline’s an adult now.” I saw no harm in stating the obvious. “Making adult decisions, like who to marry.”

  “I had no objection to her marriage. One of the advantages of having family money is that we’re free to marry for love. Madeline loved Mark. That’s all she had to say to win my blessing. His paycheck never entered the debate.”

  “That’s very understanding, considering they hadn’t known each other very long and came from very different backgrounds.”

  “That’s what a prenup is for.” Vivian Post smiled graciously and assuredly, as only the truly wealthy can.
“Mark signed willingly, knowing that if the marriage failed, he would get very little. Their engagement was brief, but during that time I grew fond of him.”

  “How come? What did you like about the guy?”

  She paused, pressing a finger to her chin, as if searching for the right word. “I guess you might say he was memorable.”

  Seemed an unusual adjective for a son-in-law “In what way?” I asked.

  “Some people, you meet and never give them a second thought,” she said. “Mark made an impression on me. I understood what my daughter saw in him.”

  “You said Madeline loved Mark. Do you think he loved her?”

  “Last fall I would have said yes without hesitation. Now I don’t know what to think about his motives. My daughter has a kind soul and doesn’t deserve this anguish.”

  Perfect timing to cut to my primary question. “So what’s your theory on where Mark is?”

  “I have no idea. My first thought was he had a car accident on the way to the ceremony. We waited for some word, but heard nothing. By then Madeline was hysterical so I sent the guests home.”

  “Did it occur to you to contact the police?” It seemed only fair I give her the same treatment I gave Mark’s mother. “Do you wish you had?”

  Just then a man walked into the room. For a second I mistook him for my photographer, Malik Rahman. He had the same physical characteristics, height, weight, dark hair, and swarthy complexion. But I’d purposely come alone because I wanted Mrs. Post to relax and feared a camera would make her clam up. She introduced the man as her son, Roderick, who lived in a new wing of the house built over the garage.

  “I asked him to join us,” she explained.

  Mrs. Post and Madeline shared the same facial features and complexion. I remembered Libby, Madeline’s maid of honor, remarking that Roderick took after his father in appearance. Malik’s father was from Pakistan, but I knew very little about Mr. Post’s roots.

  Because Mrs. Post was a widow, I didn’t feel I should pry too deeply into her husband’s background this early in our relationship. I know from personal experience that widows don’t like virtual strangers digging for details about their deceased husbands. As for me, Hugh’s death was Google-able by anyone who cared to learn how the governor’s bodyguard was killed in the line of duty.

  After a closer look, I recognized Roderick as the man driving Mrs. Post’s car outside the station the other day. Roderick appeared to have overheard the last part of our conversation concerning whether the family had or should have contacted the police when Mark vanished.

  “Just tell her the truth, Mother,” he said.

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  The two of them looked at each other. He nodded, seemingly to encourage her, so she began to speak.

  “I thought it best to wait when Mark didn’t show up for the ceremony.” She looked me directly in the eye like she had nothing to hide. “We didn’t know what we were dealing with at first, and I didn’t want to risk complicating matters by involving law enforcement or the media.”

  “How would that complicate matters?”

  Roderick shook his head at my apparent naïveté and Mrs. Post paused before giving me a lesson in the disadvantages of being rich.

  “We had to consider the possibility that Mark might have been kidnapped for ransom.”

  That one, I didn’t see coming.

  Her theory put a whole new spin on his disappearance and the behavior of the Post family. Vivian and Roderick explained how their waiting game unfolded. First they waited for word from Mark. When they heard nothing, they waited for word from kidnappers. When they heard nothing, they just kept waiting.

  Ransom kidnappings are rare in this part of the world, though Minnesota’s had some whoppers with lasting impact.

  Like seventy-five years ago, when the Barker-Karpis Gang snatched the president of Hamm Brewing Company (better known now for its advertising jingle and bear mascot than its foamy refreshment). They held William A. Hamm Jr. prisoner in their gangster hideout until they’d collected a ransom of a cool hundred grand.

  A perfect plan—almost.

  Except the FBI crime lab used a forensic breakthrough to crack the case. Now called “latent fingerprint identification,” scientists painted the ransom notes with a silver nitrate solution to raise the invisible fingerprints and prove the kidnappers’ identity.

  Four decades later, kidnapping was again on the front pages in Minnesota. Virginia Piper was abducted from her home by two masked men. Her housekeeper was taped to a chair. A note demanded one million bucks in twenty-dollars bills—the largest ransom in U.S. history back then. She was discovered two days later, chained to a tree in a state park, after her retired investment-banker husband paid up. The case was never solved and very little of the ransom—just four grand— was recovered.

  Every major anniversary, some journalist or another tries to unlock the mystery. I’d even taken a crack at it myself during a long-ago sweeps month, interviewing a killer behind bars who seemed a reasonable suspect.

  “But clearly Mark wasn’t kidnapped,” I said to the Post family.

  “In retrospect, yes,” Roderick agreed. “But how were we to know? Waiting seemed prudent. Action seemed rash.”

  “Even if he had been taken for ransom, wouldn’t you still want help from the police?”

  He explained, as casually as if discussing health-care coverage or automobile-insurance deductibles, that their family had kidnap insurance on his mother, his younger sister, and himself.

  “If we had received a ransom demand for Mark, our insurance carrier would have first contacted a private security team with experience in such matters. They would have made the decision when to coordinate with local law enforcement.”

  While the Posts didn’t typically reveal that kind of information to strangers, preparation for such financial emergencies wasn’t unusual in their social circle. Roderick’s future brother-in-law would have eventually been added to the family insurance policy. Now that wasn’t necessary.

  Roderick seemed more comfortable socially than the other members of his family, yet he deferred to Vivian several times during my visit. His conversation was more relaxed, but he also had less personal stake in the outcome of my investigation than did his sister. That might make him a better source to cultivate.

  His mother mentioned that he supervised the Family Foundation. I murmured my admiration for the charitable work done by their organization. He was explaining the political challenges of philanthropy when Madeline suddenly entered the room and the conversation.

  “What’s going on?” She clearly wasn’t expecting to find company, particularly not me.

  “You remember Riley Spartz from Channel 3,” Roderick said.

  Of course she does, I almost blurted out. We just met the other day. You don’t have to treat her like a child. But I kept my mouth shut, except for hello, and let Roderick spin our meeting however he wished.

  “Well, Mother and I wanted to discuss Riley’s television story regarding Mark and see if we could lend some assistance.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Madeline,” I said.

  Madeline seemed confused to find me chatting amiably with her mother and brother. Maybe even a touch peeved. Maybe even a bit suspicious. I stood up on the pretense of stretching, but really stepped aside to give them some personal space.

  While Vivian and Roderick, in whispers, assured Madeline they weren’t plotting behind her back and only had her best interests at heart, I admired a wall display of antique photographs of their ancestors. The pictures weren’t the usual boring family head shots but, rather, adventurous poses on moose hunts, African safaris, and deep-sea fishing expeditions.

  A glass case held an odd collection of weapons: old guns that looked like they couldn’t fire anymore, knives with feathers on the handles, and ornately carved mallets. Some of the pieces seemed to be from the Old West, others from more exotic locales. I was curious about their history,
but before I could inquire, Mrs. Post called for us all to sit down and visit.

  It was one of those uncomfortable moments where we all looked at one another but no one said anything. Sort of like a holiday dinner with bothersome in-laws. To help defuse the familial tension, I remarked how nice it was to have both the bride’s and groom’s sides cooperating with my investigation.

  “What do you mean?” Madeline asked.

  So I explained about Mark’s mother also being on board for the story and how she gave me his laptop and was going to let me dig through his belongings for possible leads into why and how her only son vanished. I remember thinking that bit of news should also ensure the Post family’s continued assistance.

  All three Posts smiled. Madeline, gratefully. Vivian, nervously. Roderick, skeptically. For a brief flash, they reminded me of the trio of monkeys who saw, spoke, and heard no evil.

  AT HOME, I refilled Shep’s water dish, gave him a scratch behind the ears and a good-doggy pep talk. Then I walked to the bookshelves which showcased my collection of classical literature. I pulled a slender volume of horror off the top shelf and considered whether Vivian had intentionally named her children after the doomed siblings in “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

  Probably just a crazy coincidence, but I thought it best not to ask. Especially since Poe had hinted at an incest theme in that particular masterpiece.

  I actually felt sorry for Vivian. She seemed like one of those people who are well-meaning but make terrible first impressions. The rich don’t have to work at being cordial the way the rest of us do.

  But when I crawled under the covers that night and opened my Edgar Allan Poe book, I shuddered as I read of the mysterious sensitivity affliction befalling the Ushers until their entire family line was consumed.

  spent most of the next day transcribing tape interviews, so by late afternoon, my mail slot in the newsroom was crammed full of paper. I carried the stack back to my desk without much enthusiasm because nothing good seems to come by mail these days. Not snail mail anyway. All the good news comes by e-mail.