Terrible. Just terrible. Jesse turned off the TV set and continued down the hallway. The old man stopped in front of an open window and leaned his long-handled broom against the wall. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirty red brakeman’s bandanna. It was so quiet he could hear the ripple of the river. He put his face to the bars, hoping for a cool breeze off the water.
The moon high above was like a street lamp that lit up the entire valley, and to the east of this ghostly white moon a star was rising in the sky that shined a little brighter than all the others. This star bothered the old man, because it had an ugly spark to it. Jesse didn’t know much about the night sky. When he was a boy in South Carolina his granddaddy pointed out the southern stars. When he came to Minnesota as a young man to work for the railroad, he learned of the North Star and the Little Dipper. They were easy to spot. But this star shone in the east. Every night it climbed higher and higher in the valley sky, and then every day it would get hotter and hotter. So Old Jesse called it the Electric Star.
He pulled his railroad watch from his pants pocket. Time was getting on. He still had B-West to sweep, and Segregation. Come morning he would take the bus all the way to Edina to visit his granddaughter at the police station. The boys in the prison’s wood shop had carved her a billy club with her initials engraved.
Old Jesse put away his watch and picked up his broom. Like a shepherd watching over his flock, he leaned on the long handle as if it were a staff and stared again at the Electric Star in a summer sky rich with stars. Sure was bothersome. Then he turned his back to the wicked sparkle and pushed dust down the long, empty corridor. He did not know it then, but the old shepherd was being called on to kill again.
Rick Beanblossom saw the star from his balcony that night. He knew little of astronomy. Maybe it was a planet. If he remembered, he’d ask the Weatherman.
The Channel 7 news producer was relaxing in a patio chair, gazing east over Lake Calhoun. The air was stifling. Lovers were necking on the docks. The lonely and the healthy were walking the shoreline. City lights off the still water were intoxicating. Rick stole the last sip of wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon from California. He set the empty glass on the patio table, beside the bronze shaving kit and the lit candle.
The condominium behind him was high in the sky, high in cost, and high in style. A ridiculous lifestyle for a loner. But Rick Beanblossom had money. His guaranteed contract with Clancy Communications was a four-year deal. The Veterans Administration currently valued his charred face at eight hundred dollars a month.
The steambath air felt terrible, but air conditioning gave him a headache. He slid his hands under his mask and wiped away skin flakes the way normal people clean off dandruff. The bartender’s vest hanging from his bare shoulders was wide open. A tattered pair of gym shorts kept him comfortable. Rick still prided himself on his athletic body. His bare feet were propped up on another chair. The rerun of the ten o’clock news was playing to an empty living room, the volume just loud enough to be heard out on the balcony.
“If it can happen at a baseball game, it can happen anywhere. You have this gnawing feeling that you are not safe. Any one of us could be one of those murdered women we see on television.”
Rick Beanblossom had done a story that day about the quick reverse being pulled by city council members. The press had been led to believe that all security measures in the Metrodome ramp had been in working order the night of the murder. Any problems had been caused by the rain. But the Channel 7 newsman learned through police sources that the lights on the roof of the ramp had been turned off. The teenage girl who sold hot dogs at the baseball game was murdered in the dark. The politicians now giving the pretty speeches about increased security measures were the same ones who’d ordered half of the lights turned out on municipal ramps in order to save nickels and dimes. Suddenly, all over town new lights were being discovered in previously dark parking ramps.
“Are all these extra guards and new lights still going to be there six months from now? Yeah, I doubt it.”
Rick also knew that the names of those two women strangled leaving their jobs would one day get lost among a hundred other names whose murders he’d written about, murders he couldn’t keep straight anymore. As the hot summer simmered to a close, the parking ramp murders would be inched out of the newspapers, fade from television screens. Fresh angles would be hard to come by. Women wouldn’t be any safer, they just wouldn’t be reminded of it. That’s the news business. He’d seen it all before. He thought about Harlan Wakefield and of all the hours he put into that story in an attempt to prove that a good journalist could solve a major crime. Now he was convinced the boy was dead and he doubted the body would ever be found. Crime had become a major issue in the governor’s race.
“It wasn’t that long ago that this was just a big farm town with agrarian values where everybody thought they knew everybody else. The sun has set on that city.”
Back in the summer of 1973 Time magazine did a cover story on “The Good Life in Minnesota.” If the American good life has survived anywhere in some intelligent equilibrium, it said, it may be in Minnesota. Minnesota’s citizens are well educated, the article went on to tell the world. The high-school dropout rate is the nation’s lowest. The crime rate is the third-lowest in America. After that fluff piece was published, the words “quality of life” became a part of the Minnesota vocabulary-the state’s clarion call.
Rick Beanblossom believed that article was the worst thing that ever happened to his state. It was all downhill after that. He could hear Andrea Labore speaking in his living room: “With the primary only three weeks away businessman Per Ellefson is campaigning hard as the pragmatic moderate who can best maintain Minnesota’s quality of life. Unlike his opponents, he has resisted calling for a new death penalty law in the wake of the recent murders.”
Rick had some reading to do, but he put it off. He had a novel to work on. He put that off as well. He remembered long talks with Kitt Karson, the only man who’d ever come to visit him.
“I think she is the most beautiful American woman I have ever seen,” the young Vietnamese photographer had told Rick.
“She’s everything that’s wrong with television news.”
“No, Rick, I think she is everything that is right. I think maybe in your heart you like her too.”
Rick Beanblossom was feeling his age. He had now lived longer without a face than he had with one. But it was another face he found himself dreaming of.
“With the Ellefson campaign, this is Andrea Labore for Sky High News, in Rochester.”
Too much wine and too many memories. Time to send in the Marines. The veteran of the Vietnam War lifted the bronze shaving kit from the patio table. He set it on his lap and flipped open the lid. Shiny slivers of silver twinkled in the moonlight, reminding him of that Phantom jet flashing in the sun, racing towards him. He cleaned his muscular arm with alcohol and cotton from the kit. Then he tied off the veins with a rubber hose. He scooped the white powder out of the baggie with a teaspoon. He added water from an eyedropper, then held it over the candle flame. When it liquefied, he stuck a syringe into the solution and carefully filled the vial.
Rick Beanblossom raised the hypodermic needle to the Electric Star rising in the sky, forcing out the bubbles while holding it there like an offering. Its milky purity sparkled. He looked out over the prismatic waters of Lake Calhoun and began to sing. “From the halls of Montezuma …” His soft but bitter voice melted into the city noise and the city heat of the vanishing summer.
Admiration of the nation, We ‘re the finest ever seen. And we glory in the title Of United States Marines.
The masked Marine popped the needle under his skin and shot the heroin into his arm.
The heat disappeared with the Labor Day weekend. The rains of September arrived. So did the primary election. He’d made it a close race, but Per Ellefson, whose campaign Andrea Labore had been assigned to cover, lost his bid for the Republican nomination for the office of governor. The party instead nominated a relatively unknown legislator who mouthed their right-wing ideology. In an eloquent concession speech the handsome Norwegian held his Viking chin high and thanked his supporters. Then he bowed out of politics, saying he was returning to the business of business.
The Democrats nominated their relatively unknown lieutenant governor. Polls taken after the election showed that despite the unpopularity of the Democrats, who had been soiled by a Pulitzer-Prize-winning scandal, Minnesota voters were not going to have anything to do with right-wing politics. The North Star State was likely to continue its long tradition of liberal politicians. By October the only things changing in Minnesota were the leaves.
Captain Les Angelbeck left the Twin Cities behind him. He cruised east on Interstate 94, past the corn fields and the wheat fields that led to St. Paul. Then the interstate dropped into the St. Croix Valley. He changed lanes and steered for the bridge to Wisconsin.
The deep blue sky was cloudless. The afternoon sun was bright and warm. He had his window open, and the clean, refreshing breeze carried the aroma of autumn-of football, pumpkins, and McIntosh apples. Looking at the hills around him, the police captain couldn’t see the forest for the leaves. Wine-colored leaves. Fire-colored leaves. The Crayola-colored north country. Spectacular. He’d heard New England was achingly beautiful like this, but he wondered if even the fabled New England autumns could match the magnificent valley God had carved with the blade of the St. Croix River. The river had a clay bottom that made the water appear brownish. On bright sunny days it appeared gold. Les Angelbeck crossed over this golden border into Wisconsin and took the Hudson exit.
With western Wisconsin slowly becoming a part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, whether they liked it or not, it was a courtesy for the Minnesota
BCA
to lend assistance to the small towns over there. Small towns with big-city problems. A fading billboard just off the exit advertised greyhound racing, only minutes from the Twin Cities. Where was Splat Man when he was really needed?
The Minnesota cop started down Hudson’s main street. At the corner Dairy Queen he hung a sharp right onto Coulee Road and climbed the steep street into Birkmose Park. The view over the river valley was breathtaking. He coughed over his coat sleeve. Police and sheriff’s cars lined the parking lot. The ubiquitous yellow tape strung from tree to tree was fluttering in the breeze, blending nicely with the autumn colors. Angelbeck climbed out of the state’s car. He spat out a hacking cough, then reached for his Marlboros. He showed his badge to the nearest officer. “I’m Captain Angelbeck.”
“The chief is down by the body, Captain. Just follow the path into the woods. Be careful, it’s pretty steep.”
The park was once a graveyard. When ancient Indians died, they were buried in huge mounds of dirt along with valuable gifts, like jewelry, tools, and weapons. Then the wild grass was left to grow over their final resting place. But they didn’t rest long. When the white man came to the valley, most of the mounds were destroyed for their artifacts. Years later, the few Indian mounds that had survived were made into public parks. Still the desecration continued. In the summertime people could be seen grilling their burgers and brats atop the graves. They were also ideal for sunbathing and dirt bikes. Captain
Angelbeck passed by these Indian graves and started down a steep path that melted into die fabulous colors. He pushed tree branches away from his face.
The man the captain had been asked to help was dressed in a plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans over hiking boots. He wore no gun, no badge. He looked more like a retired lumberjack than a police chief. But gray-haired Talbert Haag was the kind of cop Les Angelbeck liked-quiet, competent, and unpretentious. “It’s a pretty gruesome sight, Captain. I know you’ve probably seen it all before, but I grew up in Hudson. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a homicide.”
“Who found her?”
“A jogger. Works at 3M.” He pointed into the trees. “Looks like whoever killed her was going to hide the body, then just gave up and walked away. Or got scared away. Her jacket got tossed into the woods. We found some ID in it.”
“Any witnesses?”
“We’re talking to the jogger back in the parking lot. He lives up the street. Said he saw her walking this direction with a man early this morning. He says it was just after dawn.”
“And a beautiful dawn it was, too. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and watched it.”
“Yeah, terrible thing to happen on such a gorgeous day. Take a look.”
She was lying flat on her stomach, half off the path, her hands out before her as if in worship. Her head was twisted an odd way. Her ankles were in the woods, gold and russet leaves falling over them. Besides the twisted head, the first thing the police captain noticed was her hair. Even in this hideous state of death he could see that it was long and black with a natural sheen to it. But something was wrong. The hair was bunched up around her neck. Les Angelbeck knelt down and looked into her face.
It was Police Chief Haag who gave a moral voice to her death. “It’s not bad enough he murders her, for God’s sake, he strangles her with her own hair.”
“Is she Oriental or something?” Angelbeck asked.
“American Indian, I think. She was going to college down in Madison.”
The sunshine reflecting on the girl’s hair gave her tortured face a noble melancholy. Les Angelbeck stared into that face, his cigarette burning down to his fingertips. It was the same way he had stared at that girl that night in the rain, as if his staring long and hard enough would make her talk to him.
“The ME in St. Paul is sending someone over for her,” the chief told him. “We don’t have the forensic facilities to handle something like this. Maybe you want to talk to the jogger.”