The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  The last three contestants, naked and stoned, were now pretending to dance with the burly bouncers on the rickety stage beneath the fireworks beneath the stars. The master of ceremonies laid down his microphone, threw up his hands in mock disgust, and walked away. The contest was totally out of control. The crowd was shaking the scaffolding. “Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!”

  The girls looked like stick people in the arms of the big burly men. At stage left bouncer number one hoisted Minneapolis high into the air. She spread her legs over his face and came down on top of him.

  Off to the right, bouncer number three dropped to the rear of a Harley, and St. Paul dropped to her knees between his legs. The ovation was deafening.

  But the main event was at center stage. The biggest and baddest of the bouncers did a slow striptease of his own, letting it all hang out, and he was hung like a stick of dynamite. He lifted Lake Country into the air. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he dropped her down over his great big firecracker and pumped her up and down as if he were pumping iron from the standing position. The sky exploded in multiple fireworks. Five thousand motorheads had a collective orgasm.

  It was not a proud night for the Land of Sky Blue Waters. For a share of one thousand dollars women paid one hell of a price. Of the final four girls in the Fourth of July wet-T-shirt contest, the third-place winner had her dignity eaten in public; the second-place finisher gagged down on her knees; first place would deliver a cocaine baby nine months later—and the Crystal girl who came to her senses and left the stage, finishing out of the money, had her neck snapped in two.

  The Morgue

  When the elevator door slid open Andrea Labore found herself for the first time in a morgue. It was freezing, but it was a refreshing respite from the killer heat wave. A bubble of superheated air was still camped over the Midwest.

  “I usually don’t let reporters down here. Just Rick.”They were in the examination room—Andrea and the chief medical examiner, Dr. Freda Wilhelm. The doctor was wearing her snazzy uniform, a startling contrast to Andrea’s expensive blue pantsuit and ivory silk blouse.

  Andrea winced at the formaldehyde fumes. “I understand that, Doctor,” she said, “and I appreciate your seeing me. Rick was going to come, but I thought it might be a good idea for me to see what goes on in a morgue. Besides, I’ve always wanted to meet you.”

  Freddie smiled but remained on guard. “Rick said that you could charm the socks off a serial killer.” She pulled the white sheet from the body on the table. “Well, this is her, Andrea. Victim number six.” She read from her clipboard. “Case number 91-1903 . . . Homicide . . . Petrie, Ali . . . female . . . twenty-one . . . single . . . Crystal, Minnesota . . . last seen July four, Lake Country, Minnesota . . . found July five, floating in a beer puddle behind a Winnebago, Lake Country Raceway.”

  Andrea Labore had not been on the police force long enough to see the bodies of murder victims, not even the body she had pumped a bullet into. She took a deep breath. Ali Petrie’s skin was snow white. The bruising and swelling that circled her neck made it appear as if the head had been reattached to the torso. Other than to the neck, no physical harm seemed to have been done to the body—the same pattern as the other killings. “Have you ever seen anything like this before—I mean, one victim after another?”

  Freddie shrugged, almost indifferent. “In every city in this country, violent woman-hating is a daily truth. When a man in a rage goes hunting for a victim, nine times out of ten he hunts for a woman—any woman. The news is that terrorism against women is not news.”

  “I agree, but still . . .” Andrea moved closer to examine the girl’s broken neck. She tried in vain to imagine the arm that could do such a thing. “What can you tell me about that fingerprint they found at the first murder scene?”

  “Just what I told Rick.”

  “Tell me.”

  Freddie hesitated. Andrea waited. The county’s chief gossip hound couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it. “So far it’s a bust. It’s only a partial print and a lousy one. The state’s new fingerprint computer spit out fifty-nine names to work with and all of them have a low probability rating. None of the names are from Minnesota or Wisconsin. The BCA is petitioning the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, and each branch of military intelligence for access to their classified prints. Good luck, huh? They’re crazy if they think the name of this killer is going to pop out of a computer.”

  Through her reading Andrea learned that the world’s first known serial killer was probably Jack the Ripper, who stalked London’s East End in 1888. He killed five times for sure—all women. The case was never solved.

  The medical examiner told her even more as she meticulously arranged surgical instruments on a cart beside the corpse. “You know, Andrea, in the early sixties the Boston Strangler killed thirteen women. A suspect was arrested and confined to a state hospital, but he never stood trial for the murders. That could happen here.” Freddie picked up a scalpel, so razor sharp it glistened under the lights. “And the Green River killer in King County, Washington, has been on the prowl for more than twelve years. He’s racked up forty-nine murders—all of them women. Those murders remain unsolved. That could happen here.”

  “So I’ve learned.” To get at the heart of the story the up-and-coming Channel 7 reporter had driven four hours into Wisconsin to talk to a serial killer locked up in the Columbia Correctional Institution. In her research Andrea learned serial killers often had a history of abuse or serious head injuries in childhood, or a combination of the two. They were loners with military service, or men who were denied military service for asocial reasons. They were extremely manipulative, very good at telling people what they wanted to hear. Almost charming. Serial killers often kept diaries in which it was hard to tell how much was fantasy and how much was truth. She was surprised to learn how many of them were locked up in America’s prisons, how few of them had been executed. They seldom committed suicide. Even more disturbing to Andrea—law-enforcement authorities claim there are at least thirty-five serial killers roaming the country and killing at random.

  Meanwhile, the man she loved, the governor of Minnesota, had just announced with much fanfare the formation of the Calendar Task Force. This task force would be spearheaded by his own Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension with assistance from the FBI. Per Ellefson, still resisting calls for a special session of the legislature to reconsider the issue of capital punishment, was putting his own office and his own reputation on the line.

  “When is Charleen’s contract up?” Freddie wanted to know. “You’re next in line for anchor, aren’t you? I can tell by the stories they give you.”

  “Why do you ask? Don’t you like Charleen?”

  “She’s getting too old for television. She looks like her face is going to crack any day now. Do you like working with Rick?”

  The man Andrea worked so well with, the man in the mask, remained cold and aloof on a personal level, often bitter, as much a mystery to her as the murders they were trying to solve. “Not always.”

  “How about Dixon Bell?”

  “He’s a total professional.”

  Freddie seemed to contemplate that answer. “I think he should lighten up. He’s too tense on the air. He takes the weather far too seriously. If it’s going to rain, it’s going to rain.”

  “You seem to know an awful lot about our business.”

  “I’m a news junkie. You people are like family to me.”

  Andrea nodded to the body, guilty about discussing such trivia over the corpse of a murder victim. “You can cover her up now. I’ve seen what I came to see.”

  Freddie glanced down at the body. “No need. I’m going to slice her open. Would you like to watch?”

  Andrea Labore almost smiled. “No, but I’ll tell you what I would like, Doctor. I’d like to do a news story on you. Something a little more in depth, a little more personal than the usual ten-second sound bites we give people. Your expertise is going t
o be critical to solving these murders.”

  “In exchange for?”

  Andrea looked puzzled. “What does that mean?”

  “That means you do a fluff piece on me, and what am I suppose to do for you?”

  This time Andrea smiled full out. “All right. I would appreciate it if you would return my phone calls. If you would give me your home phone number. If you would talk to me off the record when need be.”

  “I talk to Rick.”

  “Yes, that was a very flattering piece he wrote about you. I can understand why you’re so enamored of him. But Rick won’t put that kind of a story on television, where it can be seen by ten times as many people I will.”

  A hint of admiration crept into Freddie’s eyes. She was not dealing with the bimbo she’d been expecting. “I don’t know, Andrea. Let me think about it.”

  The Fall

  The nighttime temperature was 44 degrees Fahrenheit, 7 degrees Celsius. The wind was out of the northwest at 18 mph. The news was delivered. Everybody had gone home. Dixon Bell sat alone in Weather Center 7 with his diary open and a letter before him. He’d read the letter a hundred times. The glow of radar screens and fluorescent digits were reflected in his troubled face. A killer frost had come and gone, as had the Indian summer. A low-pressure system had a stranglehold on the cities. Outside the weather-center window a cold autumn rain was falling with the slow beat of a drum.

  The letter tore his heart out. He swallowed his anger. He thought of Andrea, then of Lisa. The Weatherman put his finger to his face and traced the scar down his cheek. The letter and the rain caused him to remember still another girl he’d fallen head over heels for . . . how many years ago? He picked up a pen.

  In April of 1975, Saigon fell. I was there—chief meteorologist for the United States Air Force assigned to the Defense Attache’s Office at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Because of the sensitivity of my work and my importance to the war machine I was classified “Intelligence.”

  In war hopes of victory rise and fall with the temperature. The general who doesn’t know the weather is a fool. It was Dixon Bell who told the generals when the skies would clear so they could drop their bombs and their napalm. I guessed when the fog would lift so they could drop in their Marines. Every year I accurately predicted the start of the monsoon season. Yes, I made mistakes. And when I was wrong, people got killed. And when I was right, even more people got killed.

  Saigon was hot like Mississippi in the summertime. The monsoon season came early that year, just as I said it would. I’d been forecasting from the air base for five years. On the afternoon of the 29th the city was in chaos. I was hurrying by the evacuation center when the sky opened up and dropped sheet after sheet of cooling rain. I jumped in out of the weather.

  The evacuation center was nothing but a gymnasium inside a ramshackle building on stilts just off the east-west runway. It stank inside. Vietnamese evacuees were packed in there like powder kegs. Thousands of them. All considered at high risk. Good as dead if we left them behind.

  She couldn’t have been more than four years old. I found her wandering around on her own, or more like she found me. She was dark-skinned, more brown than yellow, so I called her Tan Jan. She had perfectly rounded cheeks, a little chunky for a Vietnamese child. I’ll bet she had some French in her. She was wearing white shorts and a red shirt, western in style, with cheap rubber thongs on her stubby brown feet.

  The first time she held up the cup I thought she was just another beggar doing what she’d been taught to do. I ignored her, as I had taught myself to do. I moved along. A storm of anxiety hung over the center but there still seemed some order to the evacuation. C-130 transport planes were landing on the runways, taking on evacuees and then lifting off.

  When I stopped again to watch the rain, Tan Jan was right behind me, tugging on my khakis. She held up the cup, a red liquid inside. She wasn’t begging, she was offering it to me. I took the cup from her hands and took a whiff. No smell. I tried a sip. It was strawberry Kool-Aid. No sugar. It tasted terrible, but probably not to her.

  Between my broken Vietnamese and some of the evacuees pigeon English I learned Tan Jan was one of the orphans from Quang Tri. Their plane had left. Nobody wanted anything to do with her. “No papers . . . no papers,” they kept telling me, and dismissed me with a wave of their hands. It was then I realized how desperate these people were to get out of Vietnam.

  I used my status as a big, ugly American to push my way to the front of the exit line. Two American Marines stood behind a folding table examining papers. They appeared to be the only two Americans in the building, besides me. “This little one here missed her plane,” I told them.

  I must’ve sounded like an idiot. The Marines stared at me with their noses bent out of joint, like I was asking them to baby-sit. Marines don’t baby-sit, and by the end of the war my Air Force rank didn’t mean shit to them. “Where’s her papers?” the corporal asked.

  “How can she have papers, she’s an orphan?”

  “No fucking papers, no fucking exit visa.”

  I never liked Marines. These men were new to Vietnam.

  Their lily-white skin had yet to tan. “Where are those planes going?” I

  demanded to know.

  “Those are American planes and oddly enough they’re going to America.” “So y’all put her on a plane and let ’em worry about it at the other end.” “Get her some papers!”

  I walked Tan Jan over to the makeshift lunch counter. We shared a bowl of

  bun bosoup and polished off the Kool-Aid. This chick knew a sucker when she saw one. I fell for her over lunch.

  I was trying to think who on the base could get papers for the little girl when the first mortar round hit the roof. Bits of debris rained down on us. The gym was on fire. Tan Jan jumped into my arms and there she stayed. We weren’t hurt, but others were badly wounded.

  The incoming rounds were deadly accurate. Outside, rockets were hitting one a minute. Artillery fire began. The gymnasium was like a bird cage. The birds on the inside wanted out, and the birds on the outside wanted in. The fire squad arrived and doused the flames. Then the evacuees faced a choice—wait outside in the middle of a rocket attack, or stay inside and miss the planes. A thousand of them poured outside. I held Tan Jan tight as I could and followed.

  It stopped raining. The sun came back. We stood in the welcome coolness and watched the air base shelled. A fully boarded C-130 ran down the runway and lifted into the sky. But another plane that had just landed took a hit to the wing. It spun off the runway and burst into flames. Other planes on the ground were exploding. With Tan Jan in my arms I watched all of this in the middle of a pushing, shoving mob being held back by South Vietnamese soldiers who were using their bayonetted rifles as barricades. I used my bulk and worked my way to the front.

  Just when everybody thought there were no more planes we saw it drop out of the sky like a big green angel. Another C-130. But by then the runway was littered with debris and I thought it might not be able to land. But land it did. It circled over to the taxiway. The door was pushed open by a big, mean American man in a white shirt. He looked like a mechanic. He dropped the ramp. Then all hell broke loose.

  The crowd surged forward. Me and Tan Jan were being shoved from behind by throngs of evacuees. The soldiers with their rifles were pushing us back from the front.

  Further down the line soldiers threw their rifles aside and ran for the plane. The mob of people they’d been holding back broke rank and ran after them. Nobody needed papers anymore. Within seconds the doorway to the plane looked like a rugby scrum, only this mass of bodies was mean and ugly. I could see kicking feet and swinging fists flying out of the doorway. The man in the white shirt was hauling in children and punching back soldiers. The screaming and fighting was almost drowning out the bombs that were still incoming. The pilot must of sensed the danger of being overloaded because he began taxiing away almost immediately.

  Most of the South Vietnames
e soldiers hung on to their dignity and held the rest of the mob at bay, not afraid to use their bayonets. The soldiers in front of me weren’t budging. Shells were exploding around us. The runway was being blown to bits. Several buildings were on fire. The stench of artillery stung my nose. I covered Tan Jan’s face with my hand.

  The C-130 left the taxiway and turned onto the runway, leaving behind it a mob of hangers-on tumbling along the ground. The plane came rolling our way. I saw men fighting to close the door. I knew in my heart no more planes would be taking off from Tan Son Nhut.

  I’d been given my code words the day before. I was assigned my pick-up point that morning. I’d be choppered out later with the last of the Americans. Out in the Gulf the U.S.S. Midwaywas waiting for us. But the final evacuation would be strictly military and intelligence personnel, and when the time came who was to say it would be any more orderly than what I saw before me?

  I was bigger and stronger than anybody else in that desperate mob that desperate day. As the plane lumbered our way they were still pushing and shoving in the doorway, trying to pull the door closed. The plane rolled by us and started down the runway. It was a long shot. An end run. But I decided to go for it. Whole hog.