by Steve Thayer
Dixon Bell sighed in relief.
It was snowing that night as they drove I-94 back to St. Paul. A nuisance storm. One to two inches. Spring would be late. The heater went out in the van. Still, the Weatherman was feeling warmer about the day’s events. Soon he could tell the jury his side of the story, how he was threatened, followed, robbed, framed.
But before that happened, cunning Jim Fury had one more witness up his sleeve.
Jesus Christ ascending into heaven through fluffy cumulus clouds can be seen on the office wall behind her. A physics degree from the University of Chicago hangs behind the desk. It is dark outside, probably after the ten o’clock news. Charleen Barington takes a seat on the couch in front of the console television set. The set is on but can’t be seen. Only the flickering white light spills over her. The sound is down. News director Jack Napoleon comes into view. He pulls up a chair and sits in front of her, pats her knee in a fatherly way.
When it came to gathering the news, Charleen Barington was invisible. She was an anchor. She returned to work after six weeks of maternity leave with the birth of her second child, the tot shamelessly promoted for the evening news. Her beauty-queen looks and hourglass figure returned to work with her, but her red hair seemed a shade duller, her makeup a bit heavier. For weeks upon her return she would come into the newsroom at 9:35 P.M., go straight into makeup, be on the set at 9:55, read the ten o’clock news, and be out the door by 10:35. One hour of work on a six-figure contract. But that contract was up. Where Ron Shea was just coming into his silver-haired fifties, ideal for television news, and paid twice what his female co-anchor was being paid for doing the same job, Charleen Barington was now forty years old—the twilight of her career. She desperately wanted one more contract.
Jack Napoleon begins, his hands folded prayerwise in his lap. “We’ve really never had a chance to get to know each other. Clancy signed you before I got here. This time it’s strictly my decision. I think we should start, Charleen, by laying our cards on the table.” He taps her knee with his finger. “Tell me what you want.”
Charleen nervously slips her hands under her long, gorgeous legs. Sits on them. She is hesitant. “I want another three-year contract. A signing bonus. And I think I’m entitled to more pay to bring me closer in line with Ron. That’s what I want.”
They weren’t news people anymore, if ever they were. Ron Shea and Charleen Barington had been elevated to anchors but reduced to a pair of PR flacks. Their job was to sell Sky High News.
Napoleon rubs his hands together in deep thought. “Charleen, you’re forty years old now. You have a small child and a baby at home. Have you given some thought to part-time reporting with us, and maybe more time at home with your family?”
Charleen clears her throat, obviously disappointed. “I don’t think I’m ready to step down from the anchor desk. Besides, who would replace me? Andrea?”
Napoleon sighs. Troubled. “Andrea wants it, perhaps deserves it. But I don’t think she’s ready yet. Andrea doesn’t put viewers to sleep, but they do slip into a dreamlike trance. And it wouldn’t be a wise move in the middle of the trial.”
Charleen perks up. “Then I’m needed at the anchor desk.”
Napoleon sighs, deeply troubled. “The thing of it is, Charleen, I don’t see a three-year contract. This is a young people’s business. I’d be sticking my neck out with Clancy.” He has his finger on her knee, drawing cute little circles.
Charleen Barington has a pretty face. She won a Texas beauty pageant and she went into television. She was no different than a thousand other pretty people who every year choose a career in broadcasting. She runs a finger over the back of his hairy hand and slips into her most seductive Texas accent. Charleen didn’t get where she is without charm. “I think I’ve earned a new three-year contract and I came to your office tonight to get it. Let me know what I have to do.
There, my cards are on the table.”
The news director now has both his hands on her knees. He is leaning into her. “Your work habits are becoming the butt of newsroom jokes—jokes that are spilling into the gossip columns. It would be hard to justify a three-year contract. I’m reluctant to give it to you. My cards are on the table.”
The aging beauty queen watches as his hands caress her legs. She is firm and direct, but still polite. “My work habits in the newsroom are hampered by the schedule you expect me to keep outside of the newsroom. I have spoken before every insipid civic group I can imagine, and I have joined enough moronic family groups to raise an army of toddlers. All of this for Clancy Communications and Sky High News. Am I expected to break news stories, too?”
He pats her leg, further up the thigh, very understanding. “I know, I know, we ask a lot of our people. But it’s important our anchors be seen out there in the community. That’s why I’m thinking about this part-time reporter position for you.” His hands are approaching her hips now.
Charleen leans into him. Kisses him, just a sweet touch of the lips, then runs her long fingers through his hair. “What do I have to do to get the first year of that contract?”
Napoleon drops to his knees. He caresses her thighs, slowly inching up her dress. “I have needs, Charleen. Lord Jesus, help me, I have needs.”
“Tell me about them, honey.”
The news director reaches up and grabs hold of her throat with his big right hand. He squeezes gently. “Did you ever have sex while being choked?”
She smiles, a nervous laugh. “No, I never have.”
Napoleon, also nervous, laughs along with her. Then he reaches behind her neck and violently jerks her head into his. They are nose to nose. The news director talks in a nasty whisper, difficult to hear. He traces her mouth with his finger. “First year, three-percent raise. You get down on your knees and you pray to me, worship every inch of my manhood.” He passes his hand down her neck and unbuttons her blouse, exposes her black lace brassiere, rubs his hand over her bare belly. She is breathing hard.
There is a pair of scissors on the end table beside the couch. Napoleon reaches for them. He passes the sharp chromium blades up her bare belly to her bra. A frightened look appears in her eyes. He snips the bra in two and her white and freckled breasts spill out. He sucks on them like a man dying of thirst. Then he breaks away and begins slowly snipping her dress between her legs. “Ten thousand is as high as I’ll go on the bonus,” he tells her. But he is already as high as her crotch with the scissors. Her skirt splits in two. “Second year,” he explains, as he pulls her skirt from beneath her, “two percent raise. You spread your legs wider than they’ve ever been spread before and you take in every last inch of me.” He lays the scissors down and jams both his hands beneath her and grabs her ass. She drops her head back. “ Then, to get the elusive third year on that contract,” he instructs her, “you get on your knees, put your face in a pillow, and put this beautiful ass of yours in the air, and pray. I mean it—pray so I can hear you.”
Charleen is nodding, excited, frightened. She understands what has to be done. She strokes the back of his head. “I won’t sign a no compete clause,” she moans.
Napoleon is tearing away her blouse. “If you can suck it out of me, I’ll waive the no compete clause.”
From here the negotiations get better than anything in any video store. Jack Napoleon pushes his female anchor to the couch and literally rips her clothes from her. When he has her down to only her panties he again picks up the shiny scissors. He is on his knees over her shapely body, ghostly white. He slides the scissor blades up the side of her leg, scratching her, drawing blood, up under her black bikini panties. He snips. Snips again. Napoleon leans back and pulls her panties free.
Forty minutes later the tape plays out. Sky High News anchor Charleen Barington, in living color, earns everything but the no compete clause.
The rewind button is beeping.
Rick Beanblossom got up off his couch. He rewound the contract talks, then pushed the eject button. The amateur video pop
ped into his hands. He stuffed the video into a padded mailer. Then he peeled off the address label he’d typed up and attached it to the envelope.
J.C. Peters
HY PETER PRODUCTIONS
466 First Avenue North Minneapolis, MN 55403
The Suspects
The trial was delayed another five days due to the annual tournament blizzard. This late winter storm strikes every year during the state high school hockey tournament, or so says the local weather myth. The storm gave Minnesota over one hundred inches of snow for the season. A flood advisory was issued for parts of the state, a mighty tepid warning for record snowfalls. Dixon Bell, sitting at the defense table reading the morning newspaper while waiting for the jury to be brought in, thought flooding was more a probability than a possibility and should be taken more seriously at this point in the season. He wasn’t buying the ninety-day forecast of below-normal temperatures and a dry spring. Strange winds were blowing. When he’d finished studying the weather page he turned to the metro section. Once again his friends at the newsroom in the sky were making more news than they were reporting.
NEWS DIRECTOR RESIGNS
Channel 7 news director Jack Napoleon submitted his resignation to the station’s owners, Clancy Communications, in the wake of a Sky High News sex scandal. Anchorwoman Charleen Barington has taken a paid leave, the station said. Reporter and part-time anchor Andrea Labore will take over the anchor duties in the interim.
The scandal broke last week after a local tabloid reported brisk sales of an underground videotape that shows Jack Napoleon engaged in sexual activity while discussing a new contract with an on-air personality. In the video the news director can be seen choking the woman.
Stacy Dvorchak, attorney for former Channel 7 weatherman Dixon Bell, now on trial in Minneapolis charged in the serial killings of seven Minnesota women, says she will try and have the tape shown at the trial. Dvorchak told reporters yesterday, “Police got the right newsroom, but they arrested the wrong man.”
Prosecutor Jim Fury called that accusation “ridiculous” and said the tape was totally irrelevant to the trial. He was confident the judge would not allow it to be admitted.
Jack Napoleon’s reign in the popular newsroom atop the IDS Tower was plagued by a series of bizarre incidents that began almost as soon as he arrived in the Twin Cities. He was only on the job a month when the Sky High News helicopter crashed after . . .
Dixon Bell put down the paper and looked around. The man in the mask was standing in the back, chatting with colleagues, the newspaper in his hands rolled tight as a club. What did he know? If police weren’t investigating Jack Napoleon then surely Rick Beanblossom would be.
Before this welcome bit of news a black cloud of depression had been stalled over the Weatherman’s jail cell. If worse came to worse he had three-square bricks in the wall chipped loose, would slide right out of there. The Order of Masons would be proud of him. Now, as the jury was ushered in and the court was called to order, the meteorologist from Vicksburg, Mississippi, felt a warm ray of hope. But like the winter sunshine, it didn’t last.
“Your Honor, the state calls Lisa Gilbert.”
She was a frumpy woman, fat, unattractive. She was fiftyish-looking, maybe younger. Her dull-brown hair, probably dyed, was tied back in a bun. She wore a frilly black dress skirted over granny shoes.
Stacy Dvorchak muttered a question to Dixon Bell. “Didn’t I once ask you about her?”
“I’ve never seen the woman before.”
The Gilbert woman was sworn in, then took the witness stand. She kept her eyes forward, avoiding the defense table. There was an aristocratic arrogance in her demeanor that Dixon Bell found disturbingly familiar. After the Davi Iverson secret lover testimony he didn’t know what to expect. But nothing could have prepared him for the lightning bolt the prosecutor had aimed at his heart.
Jim Fury doing the questioning. “Where are you from, Mrs. Gilbert?”
“Dallas, Texas.”
“And before that?”
“I was born in Natchez, Mississippi. Daddy moved us up to Vicksburg when I was a little girl. There I was raised.”
“Did you know Dixon Bell when you lived in Vicksburg?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“How did you know him?”
“We went to high school together. He said he was in love with me.”
Dixon Bell froze like an icicle. God almighty, it was Lisa Beauregard! He knew in his heart right then and there it was her, but his mind and his mouth were rejecting it. He was on his feet, talking down to Stacy. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.” Three deputies were coming at him. “Is nothing sacred to these sons of bitches?”
With the braces on her hands Stacy was clawing at his arm, trying to pull him back into his chair. “Sit down, Dixon. Sit down.”
Judge Lutoslawski was pounding his gavel. Two deputies dropped their big paws onto the shoulders of Dixon Bell and pushed him back into the chair.
Stacy Dvorchak was furious. “Your Honor, this is the second time in this trial that Mr. Fury has pulled this stunt.”
Prosecutor Fury responded with lawyerly glee. “Your Honor, Mrs. Gilbert’s name has been on the witness list for six months. The attorney for the defense had plenty of time to interview her. She’ll have the chance to cross-examine her today.”
Again the attorneys were called to the bench. They argued in loud, intense whispers while the Weatherman, hotter than the Delta sun, sat glaring at the obese woman who claimed to be Lisa Beauregard. After the war he’d had fantasies about killing the bitch. He’d do it with his bare hands. He’d take that letter she wrote him and stuff it down her throat and up her nose. Then he’d cover her face with his hands so she couldn’t spit it out. Make her eat her own words. Choke her to death on her lousy prose. Three deputies were standing over him. Two more deputies, big suckers, came in from the hallway. The women in the jury box were staring at him. Dixon Bell could sense their fear.
Stacy Dvorchak lost this round. As she so eloquently informed her client, “Judge Polack ruled the fat lady of the circus could testify before the jury.”
Prosecutor Fury continued with his questions. “Do you remember a love letter Dixon Bell wrote to you in the spring of your senior year?”
“Yes, I do. He said that he loved me and that he wanted to take me to the prom.”
“Do you still have that letter?”
“No. I don’t remember what became of it.”
“Do you remember the letter you wrote back to him?”
“Vaguely. I told him I didn’t ever want to date him and I wouldn’t go to the prom with him.”
“Could you be more specific about what you wrote?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry, I can’t. I keep telling your police, I just never thought about it that much. I have children older than I was back then.”
Dixon Bell could see Jim Fury was eating this shit up, as were the smug little lawyerettes he had on his team. “Please tell the court everything you’ve heard about Dixon Bell since high school.”
Lisa Gilbert never looked over at the man she was testifying against, the man who worshiped her in her youth. “That he was in the Air Force. Then somebody at a reunion said he was a television weatherman in Memphis, and then he moved to Milwaukee. I guess they meant here. Then my momma called me last year to say that he was arrested for these murders. It was in the Vicksburg paper.”
“Is it fair to say, Mrs. Gilbert, that you didn’t give Dixon Bell much thought after you graduated from high school?”
“I didn’t think about him hardly at all. Back in those days I was pretty popular and I got asked out by many admirable young men.”
“Were you surprised when the officers from the task force showed you the passages from his diary, the passages that spoke of his never-ending love for you?”
“I was shocked.”
That did it. Dixon Bell was out of his chair. He was standing and screaming until his lungs
hurt. “You’re not Lisa! Lisa was beautiful! You’re just some ugly fat lady trying to hurt me!”
Two deputies had ahold of him. Stacy was reaching for his arm. “Dixon, sit down. This is what they want.”
Judge Polack was pounding on the bench with his hammer. Everybody in the media and ghoul sections was on their feet. Even in his anger Dixon Bell could see the glowing red light atop the television camera. If they wanted good television, by God he was going to give them good television.
“Don’t tell me I ran off to war and risked my life for some fat lady! I loved that girl! You’re just trying to humiliate me like you always did. You tell lies—you pervert my diary! I did nothing to deserve this. I’ll kill you, bitch!”
“Mistrial,” Stacy was screaming. “The prosecution planned this provocation. I move for a mistrial.”
“I’ll kill all you bitches! I did nothing to deserve this!”
The judge ordered the jury to leave the courtroom, and the women jurors gladly complied, but some of the men lingered in the doorway to watch. The deputies, five strong now, were tripping over Stacy’s wheelchair as they tried to wrestle her client under control. They spun him around toward the media section—and there he could see Rick Beanblossom standing against the back wall with a stare colder than ice. He knew. Somehow the bastard knew. The deputies finally handcuffed Dixon Bell and wrestled him from the courtroom. The Weatherman stumbled by the witness stand. He could smell her. She still wore the same enchanting perfume. Ain’t that funny, he thought.