Missing Mark

by Julie Kramer

  ome people never forget a face. Not Madeline Post. As soon as she looks away, the image is gone.

  Face blindness sounds bizarre, but a search of the Internet later that night assured me that Madeline was not nuts. And I didn’t have to comb obscure medical journals to learn that what most of us take for granted—the ability to recognize our friends and family—is a foreign language to the face blind. Mainstream media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and even People magazine were giving big play to fascinating research being done at Harvard University.

  That’s where Madeline was first diagnosed with the developmental disorder. She was attending a college near Boston where her roommate knew somebody who knew somebody in the Prosopagnosia Research Center looking for subjects for a facial recognition study.

  “She thought I was stuck up because I couldn’t be bothered to say hello to her outside our dorm room,” Madeline said. “I kept telling her I just didn’t see her.”

  All her life people had teased Madeline about being a rich snob because she ignored them on the street. But her eyesight always tested 20/20. She thought she was just bad with names. A ditzy blonde. Or an absentminded-professor type.

  So for Madeline—when she couldn’t even recognize pictures of Elvis or Abraham Lincoln in the experiment—the word prosopagnosia spelled relief. And during a follow-up interview—when she talked about how she and her mother became separated at an Easter egg hunt when she was a little girl, and how they both became hysterical, and had to be reunited by the event organizers because neither could recognize the other—the researcher saw himself moving one step closer to proving that face blindness is inherited.

  But according to Madeline, Mrs. Post refused to participate in the study. She didn’t dispute her daughter’s diagnosis or that she herself suffered from the same affliction. She just didn’t see any point in dwelling on what couldn’t be changed. So unless Harvard found a cure, she saw no need to get involved.

  No matter that researchers speculated that prosopagnosia could solve some of the remaining mysteries of the brain. It was enough for her that face blindness explained some family mysteries, like why Madeline never knew who to throw the basketball to during games. And why Roderick enjoyed watching movies while neither his mother nor sister did. After all, who could keep a plot straight when all the actors looked like Matt Damon?

  Vivian had found ways to compensate for her condition and so did her daughter. Soon after that Easter egg hunt episode, Vivian had two sets of trademark birthstone brooches designed. Mother and daughter always wore matching ones in public to identify each other. She encouraged her daughter to wear her hair long and distinctive. For casual charity events, she insisted the attendees wear name tags.

  Madeline explained to me that whenever she’s meeting someone somewhere she suggests a small, intimate place and gets there first and grabs a table so they come to her. Like with me at Ursula’s.

  And when she’s in front of a mirror in a crowded bathroom, she makes a face to see which reflection is hers.

  She told me that once she’d even left her dinner date to go to the restroom and when she came back she sat down at the wrong table with the wrong man, picking up the conversation right where she’d left off. Until her real date objected. And walked out. And never called her again.

  So finding love was hard for Madeline. Since everyone looked the same, it was hard to connect emotionally.

  Then she saw Mark.

  And experienced what she imagined must be that love-at-first-sight phenomenon she’d always heard so much about.

  “I could see him,” she said. “Riley, it was amazing.”

  I’d already heard how they met. She’d watched his comedy act, then recognized him later that night at a bar. Only now did I grasp the significance of the word “recognized.”

  “I’d never remembered anyone’s face before,” she said.

  His hair, eyebrows, mustache, scar. To the rest of us, the combination came across as a bit much. But to Madeline, it set him apart from the pack. And made him irresistible.

  More than being her soul mate, Mark was her face mate.

  he next morning I came to work early and tossed twelve yards of billowy white fabric at my boss in the middle of an empty newsroom. Flustered, she caught it. She opened her mouth to chastise me, but I spoke first.

  “Yes, Noreen, this is the dress. The NEVER WORN gown from the newspaper ad. Just imagine how the hearts of key women demos ages 18 to 49 will beat a little faster when we flash it on the set during the preshow tease?”

  She closed her mouth and eyes to live that fantasy and started fingering the satin.

  “Why do you hate the wedding-dress story so much?” I whispered the question, not expecting an answer.

  “Because it reminds me that I’m married to my job and at the end of the day only my dog is glad to see me and that’s probably never going to change.”

  Those words were as introspective as I’d ever heard from my news director. And she seemed uncharacteristically sincere and somber. Then she posed a similar question back at me.

  “Why do you hate the fish story so much, Riley?”

  “Because I was married to a man who liked to fish and all I did was complain like a harpy. And fish remind me that he’s gone.”

  My words were unexpected. A revelation, even. Society isn’t sure how to treat young widows. People are uncomfortable discussing death. And frankly, I’m uncomfortable listening.

  That moment made me question my own motivation for the wedding-dress story and why I was drawn to the want ad. My marriage ended too early. And here I was, fascinated by a marriage that never started. I had no satisfying answer for my own personal experience of love and loss. Maybe that’s why it was so important that I find one for Madeline.

  Noreen might have been undergoing the same self-examination because, without saying a word, she carried the gown to her office, laid it on her desk, and wrote NEVER WORN on the storyboard. Then she turned and hugged me.

  Even though I know Noreen, I still didn’t like her touching me.

  “AREN’T WE SUPPOSED to be looking for that fish?” Malik asked on our way back to Mark’s mother’s house.

  “Sure. Look out the window as we drive over the river.”

  I shouldn’t have snapped at Malik. But I hadn’t a clue how to catch any fish, much less Big Mouth Billy, and despite playing nice with Noreen, I was not eager to tackle the project. I tuned out my cameraman while I replayed the latest developments on the fish case.

  Toby Elness had been released from jail because police confirmed his out-of-town alibi. But even if he wasn’t directly involved in the Mall of America attack, the cops made it clear that they suspected he knew more about the missing fish than he was letting on. If he did, he wasn’t sharing his insight with me and continued to claim the Animal Liberation Front had been set up.

  “Somebody is trying to pin the blame on animal activists,” he told the media as cameras surrounded him outside the jail. “But that note didn’t come from any of my people.”

  However, I could see why investigators were sticking to their theory: without it, they lacked an obvious motive. And cases are easier to solve when the motive is obvious. A murder for insurance gain has a small, fixed number of suspects. A random sexual homicide can have a seemingly infinite number.

  Garnett had telephoned me the previous night from Washington, D.C.

  “What are you doing out there?” I had asked.

  “Business.” Since he volunteered nothing further, I didn’t press. The Mall of America, having a braggy name and being a symbol of conspicuous consumption, was on a national terror watch list. But that wasn’t the reason he’d called.

  He’d heard that the Bloomington police had checked out former Underwater Adventures employees as suspects but hadn’t found anyone disgruntled enough to take it out on the fish.

  “Keep me posted if you hear anything else,” I had told Garnett. “Noreen is pushing
me hard to break the Big Mouth Billy Case, but I’ve got nothing.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he’d said. “All you TV chicks generally fish for is compliments.”

  “Do you like my hair?” I’d replied, without missing a beat.

  We had both laughed comfortably and Garnett had also shared that Agent Jax was irritating the local cops who considered him pompous, but couldn’t do much about it because he was a fed.

  My only consolation was that, much to Agent Jax’s ire, none of the media stories—print or broadcast—had used the term Operation Piscis Absenti.

  Garnett and I had chuckled over the government moniker and chatted about getting together when he got back in town.

  Then Malik interrupted my thoughts. “Riley, let’s stop and get gas before we cross the river.”

  The van’s tank was nearly empty and because Wisconsin has a dime per gallon higher gas tax than Minnesota, I got off at the next freeway exit and pulled into the first gas station.

  Since I’d been doing all the driving, I made Malik get out to fill ’er up. He’d only pumped about five gallons, when he stopped and put the nozzle back.

  “Hey,” I banged on the window at him. But he ignored me, raced around to the passenger side of the van, and jumped in.

  “Follow that car!” he shouted.

  “Oh, please.”

  “Hurry, Riley, the gray SUV!” Malik squeezed between the seats and reached for his camera gear in the back.

  Luckily, I’d used a credit card so the station wouldn’t label me a drive-off. I resisted peeling out of the parking lot because to follow a target without being made, you have to be inconspicuous. It also helps to have additional vehicles on your team. Solo is no-go.

  “Want to tell me why we care about this guy?” I asked. I couldn’t see what he looked like because I was trying to keep a couple of cars between our vehicle and his.

  By now Malik had his camera ready. “I recognize him. He came to my parents’ house after my sister died.”

  “So? What did he want?”

  “He wouldn’t say. That’s why they called me. He wanted to check her room. He claimed she had something belonging to him.”

  “That sounds creepy.”

  “I told the man to leave and never come back. I think he was one of the drug people my sister was involved with.”

  “Any particular reason?” I could see the traffic light ahead of our chase car was turning yellow. I sped up and passed another car to avoid being stuck at the intersection.

  “We found cash under her mattress. Nearly five thousand dollars.”

  I gasped at that piece of news—a lot of money for a young woman without a steady job. But I held back on my questions for the moment.

  We followed the gray SUV for another mile. Then it turned down a gravel industrial road lined with heavy equipment and trailer trucks. That’s when we, inexplicably, lost him. Seconds later, we heard a horn honking, slowly and deliberately. Malik spotted the vehicle, parked between two semis. All four doors were open wide and our target leaned against the hood, arms crossed.

  I hit the brakes, skidding dirt and sand, not wanting to get close enough for him to read my license plate. I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but he opened his arms as if in welcome, momentarily freezing in that position.

  “What’s he up to?” Malik asked as he shot the scene from the backseat, through tinted glass, camera perched on his shoulder.

  To me, our target’s body language couldn’t have been clearer. “He’s saying, the door’s open. Let’s talk.”

  “Great. I’ll put a wire on you.”

  He grabbed a wireless microphone from his equipment bag, anxious to clip it under my sweater and tuck the receiver in my pocket. From inside the van, he’d be able to listen to my conversation with the brute.

  Instead, I put the vehicle in reverse, skidding more sand and dirt. Malik scowled, not just because he wasn’t buckled in and smacked his head against the window to protect his camera lens, but because he wanted action. Even closure.

  “That could have been a big break for us,” he said.

  “No,” I answered. “That could have been a big trap.”

  “But you said he wanted to talk.”

  “Then why lead us here? Why not just pull into that strip mall we passed a mile back? Open space. Lots of witnesses. Too isolated here. The advantage all his. No thanks.”

  Malik considered what I said and nodded. We retraced our route back to the gas station and filled up the tank.

  “Did you at least get his license plate?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I zoomed in.” He rewound the tape and watched it through his viewfinder, calling out a combination of letters and numbers.

  I called Xiong back at the station and asked him to run the plate on the gray SUV, but it checked to a vehicle leasing company. A dead end as far as public records go.

  “So what’d you do with it?” I asked.

  “With what?” Malik answered.

  “The money. From under your sister’s mattress.”

  “My parents anonymously left it in various churches and mosques around the cities. A hundred dollars here and there, so as not to draw suspicion. They didn’t want to call the police because Muslims with large amounts of unexplained cash sometimes go on terror lists.”

  He was probably right about that.

  Soon we were back on the freeway heading east to Wisconsin. As we passed over the St. Croix bridge, Malik dutifully glanced out the car window at the river below for Big Mouth Billy. No bass leaping from the water, but we noticed a squad car behind us, gaining. I pulled over because, well, damn it, I had been speeding. While the Minnesota State Patrol cuts me slack for driving offenses in honor of my late State Patrol-officer husband, neighboring states do not.

  But the lights and siren passed us like we were standing still. Which we were. A mile later, the same thing happened all over again.

  When we finally turned onto the road to Mrs. Lefevre’s house and saw all the police vehicles, I feared she’d suffered a heart attack or stroke. As we got closer and spotted crime-scene tape surrounding her home, I feared something much worse.

  I stopped by the front door and Malik jumped out, threw his camera on his shoulder, shooting wildly, while I parked the van down the block. I ran up to a sheriff’s deputy standing watch at the yellow-and-black line. He ignored me when I asked what was going on.

  “We have an appointment with Mrs. Lefevre,” I insisted. “She’s the woman who lives here.”

  “Do you know what she looks like?”

  “Yes.” And I started to describe her.

  “Wait here.” And he went inside.

  Another deputy came out and told me to head back to the station. No story here. “Do you see any other media?” He waved in all directions.

  “I’ll decide what’s a story,” I replied. “Now what happened? Did someone kill Mrs. Lefevre?”

  “You need to listen closer to your scanner. This is a 10-56.”

  A 10-56. That didn’t make any sense: 10-56 was… suicide.

  “She would not have killed herself,” I maintained. “I had a meeting set with her. I saw her earlier in the week.”

  “How did she seem then?”

  “Her son is missing. She was worried. Otherwise she seemed fine.”

  “So you could make a positive ID of the victim?” I nodded. He motioned me to come behind the tape, but for Malik to stay behind. “Don’t touch anything.”

  He led me through her kitchen to the living room. A body lay on the floor with blood congealed around the victim’s head. An old revolver lay nearby. The weapon didn’t have the firepower of its modern successors so there was still enough of her face for me to recognize Mrs. Lefevre.

  “It’s her,” I told the officer.

  My reaction should have been horror. After all, she and I had been chatting amiably in this very room days earlier. And now look at her. But seeing my fourth dead body in six months, all I
could muster was a clinical vein of curiosity.

  “Did she leave a note?” I asked.

  He pointed to a scrap of blue paper in a plastic evidence bag on a coffee table, but wouldn’t let me read it. Then he escorted me back outside. I explained that she had given me permission to look through her son’s boxes in the garage and asked if there was any chance I might carry out her last wish.

  He said they would have to locate next of kin before releasing anything from the scene. Lotsa luck, I thought. But when the officer opened the garage door so I could point out the pile, my question became moot because that corner of the garage was empty.

  The boxes were gone.

  MY EYES HURT. So I ducked in the station’s green room to take out my contact lenses and put on my brainy-girl glasses. I walked into the newsroom just in time to see Noreen erase the NEVER WORN slug from the storyboard.

  “News doesn’t cover suicides,” she said. “Drop the story now and never mention it again. The last thing we need is anyone suggesting that your interview contributed to her death.”

  Malik had told Noreen that I’d made Mrs. Lefevre cry, and she and Miles ordered me to destroy the interview tape.

  “But the missing boxes proves it wasn’t suicide,” I said. “Whoever killed her, took the boxes.”

  Except that wasn’t how the cops saw the situation. They concluded that Jean Lefevre became depressed over her son’s disappearance and gave his belongings away because they were too painful to look at. Then took her own life.

  “But, Noreen, she had things she was looking forward to,” I said. “Like the blooming of the corpse flower. She wouldn’t have killed herself before experiencing that.”

  Noreen gave me the same kind of look I probably gave Mrs. Lefevre when she first mentioned the corpse flower, so I explained what a botanical treasure we had in our viewing area. And Noreen waved her hand and told me to go tell the assignment desk the news.

  Sitting in my office, I called Nick Garnett because I needed someone to talk to who wouldn’t dismiss my homicide theory simply because the local authorities did.