Missing Mark

by Julie Kramer

  BETWEEN THE DEAD groom, the missing fish, and my meth neighbor, Channel 3 should have been leading the May ratings book like a ring on the nose of a pig. But the overnight numbers told a different story. There’d been setbacks. Our network’s prime-time shows were still dragging. Television viewers continued to migrate to the Internet for news and information. And our chief rival had gotten just plain lucky.

  A record lottery jackpot was won by the great-aunt of one of Channel 10’s news anchors. She happened to be a nun, took her vow of poverty seriously, and promptly donated her $203 million winnings to the Catholic Church. She was little-old-lady adorable from the hem of her habit to the tip of her veil. She spoke exclusively to Channel 10 and God. There was even talk of making her a saint. Or at least a co-anchor.

  So despite me being shot at and roughed up, Channel 3 remained stuck in second place. A distant second place.

  Still, we were better off than Channel 7, our competitors across town. Their big scoop—two poodles eating the partially decomposed body of their master after he suffered a heart attack at home—backfired as viewers switched channels in revulsion and stayed away.

  I LISTENED TO a message from Detective Bradshaw, telling me I could pick up my cell phone anytime. When I got to the White Bear Lake cop shop, he handed it over like it was nothing special, which reassured me he didn’t realize what a gold mine of data lay inside—sources who wouldn’t want to be outed on my speed dial. He did make me sign a release form verifying I’d received the phone.

  Then it became clear that the detective wasn’t a complete chump and was using the cell as an excuse to chat me up, face-to-face. Just like I did with him the other day.

  “So how long you plan on staying in our town?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” I replied. “I live here.”

  “I realize that. I wonder if you realize trouble seems to have followed you here.”

  “Trouble? Followed me?”

  “Well, White Bear Lake was much quieter before you came along. Suddenly we’re investigating meth dealers and dead bodies.”

  “Let’s keep in mind, Detective, I haven’t caused any trouble. I may have uncovered trouble, but it was here long before I came along.”

  I tried to make it sound like I was joking because I wanted to get the latest on the murder investigation. But suddenly I was glad I was renting, month to month, not paying his salary through property taxes and not tied to this town with a long-term lease.

  Then Detective Bradshaw made sure we were off the record. But it didn’t matter because what he told me, I had no intention of broadcasting.

  “The girlfriend lead isn’t panning out.” He said it like a simple, indisputable fact.

  “What?” That hardly seemed possible. First Chad. Then Sigourney. Soon I wouldn’t have any spokes left on my suspect wheel.

  “Yeah,” he continued, “and she’s pretty sure you sicced us on her and she’s plenty mad.”

  Oh great, I thought.

  He must have been able to read my mind, or my face, because he assured me he had kept our conversation confidential.

  “What do you think about the fact that she spent the night at the same hotel where Mark was last seen?” I asked, once again phrasing the information in the form of a question.

  “Yeah, we liked her for that, too. But she’s got an alibi for the mother murder. And we’re convinced the same perp did both.”

  This was disappointing news. I’d already polished a new script about her arrest so I’d be ready to track my voice on short notice.

  “What’s her alibi for Mrs. Lefevre’s shooting?”

  “She had a prenatal appointment, followed by childbirth classes, then an evening shift at a fast-food joint. All corroborated by medical records, witnesses, and a time card.”

  Chad had an alibi for Mark’s murder and Sigourney had an alibi for Mrs. Lefevre’s. Unless the pair was working together (and I immediately dismissed that conjecture from my mind), they were both in the clear as far as the cops figured. How fortunate for them that they had alibis. Most people can’t reconstruct where they were days, let alone months ago.

  I certainly couldn’t.

  I don’t remember Detective Bradshaw’s next words exactly, but they were something along the line of me seeing suspects around every corner, wasting valuable investigative time and resources, and long ago ceasing to be amusing.

  “I’m a little uncomfortable how connected you seem to be to this case and all the players,” he said. “First you’re a journalist. Then you’re a witness. Maybe we should be looking at you as a suspect.”

  Nick Garnett and Humphrey Bogart were right. Things are never so bad that they can’t be made worse.

  “I’m wondering”—Detective Bradshaw leaned back in his chair, resting his thumb and forefinger on his chin, as if giving the matter deep thought—“if I ought to be asking you for an alibi?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer him. He couldn’t be serious because he hadn’t read me my rights. Then I recalled that unless a suspect is actually in custody, Mirandizing is unnecessary. In fact, sometimes police chat suspects up while continually assuring them they’re free to leave.

  “Free to leave” sounds comforting but has a specific legal connotation. In reality, the term is cop code for “we think you’re guilty, but have no evidence to actually hold you and want to avoid freaking you into calling an attorney who will shut you down before you say something implicating yourself.” Police routinely assure suspects they’re free to leave to ensure they don’t.

  So as long as the words “free to leave” didn’t leave Detective Bradshaw’s lips, I could relax.

  “So where were you when these homicides took place?” he asked.

  Not expecting him to be quite so direct so soon, I stammered something about not having a clue where I was. “Do I need to check my calendar?”

  I pretended to be quipping; I could tell he was more interested in my reaction to his question than my actual answer. Some cops believe that if a right-handed suspect looks up and to the right during questioning, he’s telling the truth. If he looks up and to the left, he’s lying. Or is it the other way around?

  Since I wasn’t sure, I thought it safest to stare straight ahead. And keep my mouth shut.

  Detective Bradshaw also remained quiet, employing the old interrogation tactic of silence to elicit an answer.

  A long thirty seconds of dead air followed. I was fairly certain of the time because in TV news, thirty seconds is a magic number. The length of a standard television commercial. It’s also an uncomfortable length of time for two people to simply stare each other down.

  I looked away, deciding to go first. “Just to play along with you, Detective, what possible motive would I have to kill this man? I never met him.”

  “Maybe you did it for ratings.” His voice sounded humorless, his eyes held no twinkle, but I remained convinced he was joking. TV stations do a lot of crazy things in the name of ratings, believe me, I know, but murder isn’t one of them.

  Suddenly Detective Bradshaw smiled, like everything was fine and he had been just kidding all along. “You’re free to leave, Ms. Spartz, but first I’m wondering if this belongs to you?”

  Free to leave.

  I didn’t hear what he said afterward. Suddenly he was opening a small, manila envelope and shaking something into his hand. “We found it in the victim’s grave.”

  He held up a piece of jewelry, wrapped in clear plastic, like potential evidence.

  An opal brooch.

  “Is this yours?” Detective Bradshaw repeated the question. His eyes narrowed as he noted my hesitation.

  I reached for the brooch and fingered the smooth October birth-stone. White mixed with flecks of pastel blues and pinks. The contemporary setting showed no sign of tarnish, so I guessed it must be white gold, not sterling silver. Finest quality, to be sure.

  “It’s lovely.” I shook my head, handing the opal back. “But no, it’s not mine
.”

  I realized he only showed it to me so he might eliminate it as evidence. If I claimed the brooch, that lent a reasonable explanation to its presence in Mark’s grave and he could discount its value. If it wasn’t mine, it remained one more mystery.

  Detective Bradshaw never asked me if I had any idea who the shiny bauble might belong to, so I didn’t have to lie.

  I’d already sent the police on one wild-goose chase after Sigourney. And I’d gone on my own with Chad. Neither had accomplished much except to make me look stupid or suspicious in the eyes of the cops. I could argue that the elimination of suspects is an important part of any homicide investigation. But Detective Bradshaw would probably argue that these people were my suspects, not his.

  We could go back and forth that the murder victim’s old girlfriend and workplace rival certainly should have been on the police’s short list. But that wouldn’t change how Detective Bradshaw was staring at me. Like he might be waiting for me to confess, or at least let something damning slip.

  So that’s why I didn’t tell him whose brooch I suspected fell off while she was burying her fiancé in a shallow grave.

  And since I was free to leave, I did.

  he cop shop was just a mile from my house, but instead of heading home, I drove through rush-hour traffic back to the station. I knew I wasn’t the killer, so I didn’t bother checking my calendar for an alibi. My time seemed better spent gathering evidence of the real killer. So I reached into the NEVER WORN raw-tape box, pulled out the dub of the rehearsal-dinner home video, stuck it into a viewing deck, and hit Play.

  The tape was second-generation home video and not shot particularly well. For all the money the Posts threw into the wedding, the rehearsal dinner came without bells and whistles. I wondered if Mark’s mother didn’t want the in-laws paying for everything and insisted on footing that bill herself.

  A young Post cousin trying out a brand-new camcorder shot the tape. A lot of zooming, panning, and focus issues. Fast-forwarding, I stopped the video whenever I saw the bride-to-be. I scanned Madeline in four different places on the tape—greeting a guest, walking through the dinner buffet, kissing Mark, and twirling to some music—before a shot was clear enough to see the brooch pinned to her dress. The video wasn’t perfect, but the stone certainly looked like an opal, surrounded by white gold. I wished I had Detective Bradshaw’s piece of evidence to compare. Vivian Post appeared to be wearing its twin, but the shots of her were too brief or too far away for a definitive answer.

  The next morning Xiong froze the cleanest clip, enlarged it, and printed a copy. He handed it to me without even asking why. I took it to Noreen’s office and handed it to her. She immediately asked why.

  To call the picture a smoking gun would be an exaggeration as well as a cliché. Noreen was enthralled by my premise, but had a practical concern: What if I was right?

  “You tell me,” I replied. “Her family’s rich enough to cause trouble for us and the cops.”

  Miles was out of town, meeting with the network team in New York, but Noreen got him on speakerphone. I explained the situation, including my conversation with Detective Bradshaw.

  “Wait a minute,” Noreen said. “This part is news to me. Now the cops think you’re the killer?”

  “I don’t think he really believes that,” I said. “I think he’s just messing with me to try to scare me off the investigation.”

  “I hardly think that tactic’s likely to be successful,” Miles said.

  “We don’t need any more messes,” Noreen said. “This whole sweeps month has been one big mess.”

  She put her head down on her desk. Then she straightened back up, trying to look alert, but her eyes seemed dull—like she’d forgotten she was boss.

  Television news is a business of people who live and work on the edge. They can snap at any time. You might think at the point journalists hit large-market or network newsrooms, the snappers would be weeded out. Not true. As audience size increases, so does the pressure. I wondered if Noreen was on the verge of snapping.

  This May would be the last traditional sweeps month for the Minneapolis-St. Paul television market. The overnight numbers measure household ratings year-round—how many folks are watching the news. But advertisers are more interested in demographics—which station has the most women viewers or which newscast has the most young men. That helps companies decide where to run beer ads or dishwasher-detergent commercials. Getting that demographic data is difficult. Nielsen Media Research had always tracked individual viewing habits with paper diaries during special ratings months. The downside was viewers often wrote down what they thought they should watch, not what they actually watched, and they often forgot what they actually watched. Now Nielsen was pledging to monitor viewer demos year-round electronically.

  Newsroom optimists say this will take the pressure off February, May, and November; newsroom pessimists figure it will just increase the pressure to produce big stories constantly. And increase the likelihood of snappers.

  From Noreen’s voice, Miles must have sensed something was off, so he picked up the bulk of the conversation. “Don’t talk to this investigator anymore, Riley. If he wants to talk alibis, tell him to call me.”

  “Absolutely.” I had no desire to play déjà detective with the White Bear Lake police. Free to leave or not.

  “And meanwhile,” Miles continued, “for the heck of it, even though you think that cop is just playing games… check your calendar and assure me that someone can vouch for your whereabouts when these people died.”

  “YOU’RE KIDDING ME, right?” Nick Garnett asked.

  I shook my head. We were walking around the lower level of the Mall of America for some exercise, while at the same time I brought him up to speed on my encounter with Detective Bradshaw.

  Garnett chuckled at my situation. “The two people who could verify your alibi for the night the groom vanished are dead? Both of them?”

  “You know they are. You were there for part of it.”

  The first victim was ripped apart by a pit bull down the block from my house. The same dog had taken a bite out of Garnett as well.

  About a week later, the second victim blew his brains out twenty yards away from me rather than face charges of being a serial killer.

  Last November, both developments were good luck for me because both people wanted me dead. Their deaths were bad luck for me now when I needed their corroboration.

  All I had were notes I’d made the previous October and a hidden-camera videotape Malik and I shot on the pet cremation story the same day our groom went missing. Yes, the notes and tape were dated, but I wasn’t sure Detective Bradshaw would buy that as evidence any more than Malik would actually remember us working together that day.

  Garnett smiled and took my hand in his as we walked. “Why don’t you just tell them we spent the night together? I’m prepared to testify you never left my bed.” He raised his other hand as if he was taking an actual oath.

  I was halfway considering his offer until he suggested we go back to his place and practice my alibi in case the prosecutor questioned him about what I looked like naked.

  I snatched my hand away. “What about the L word? I thought you were so big on needing love. Suddenly it sounds like lust is all you need.”

  “I’m sorry, Riley,” Garnett said. “For a moment, L stood for Lie. Which was what I thought you were asking me to do and that was sort of a turn-on.”

  “Well, turn it off.” So much for fantasizing about him ending my virgin state.

  We’d finished one lap around the mall, which meant six-tenths of a mile. I moved to take the escalator upstairs and walked the second level to avoid passing by the cinnamon-roll place again. I can only muster so much willpower.

  “How about the mother murder?” Garnett asked. “That happened just a couple of weeks ago. Where were you then?”

  I parodied Macaulay Culkin with my mouth wide open and one hand on each side of my face. No sound e
ffects, though.

  “Home alone?” Garnett said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s the best you can do? Better tell them you were with me that night, too.”

  “I’m actually not too worried, Nick.” I tried sounding not too worried while saying that. “Because I know I’m not the killer. And I have no motive.”

  He closed his eyes and seemed to be counting to ten. As he opened them, he sighed deeply. “As an experienced homicide investigator, let me be frank, Riley. You knowing you’re not the killer doesn’t count. It’s what the cops know that matters. And if your alibi stinks, they won’t care so much about motive. Lots of psychopaths kill for no rational reason. Maybe the detective’s right. Maybe you did do it for ratings. A prosecutor would love arguing that and a jury would love deliberating that.”

  That’s when I explained to him that the best way to prove I wasn’t the killer was to find the real killer. A little extra incentive beyond ratings.

  “Doesn’t seem like that technique’s been terribly successful for you,” he observed.

  He didn’t name names, but I figured he was referring to the Chad and Sigourney episodes. “As much as you newsies like to talk about solving crimes, that doesn’t happen real often.”

  There was some truth in what he said. Channel 3’s career cop reporter has profiled twenty-two cold homicide cases—all still cold. But that doesn’t mean she stops trying. And that doesn’t mean we never succeed.

  “If you recall,” I said, referring again to my psychopathic adversary, “last fall I did find the real killer.”

  “No.” Garnett shook his head. “Last fall the real killer found you.”

  Okay, he had me there. And not a subtle distinction, either. The difference between me finding the killer and the killer finding me could be the difference between life and death. Mine.

  So I told him about the brooch.

  And he told me to stay away from Madeline Post and let the cops do their job. Which was excellent advice, except nobody told Madeline Post to stay away from me.