He followed the dusty crowd past hot cars and hotter women. Shiftless men sat drinking on the hoods of their sparkling machines, giving the war cry of the Zoo: “Show us your tits, bitch! Show us your tits, bitch!” Dixon Bell couldn’t believe it when a young girl hiked up her T-shirt and flashed her nipples. Judging from the whistles, the incident was routine and her tits were average.
The contest stage was makeshift-scaffolding and ropes, somewhat of a cross between a boxing ring and a gallows. A sign strung across the top read,
WELCOME
TO
THE
LAND
OF
SKY
BLUE
WATERS
. The crowd pushed right up against the ropes. Dixon Bell guessed there were as many as five thousand drunk and rowdy spectators. He was able to worm his way to the front, where he enjoyed a good view, but it was like standing in a steambath. He gulped his beer. Lighting over the stage was poor, creating harsh glares. The Weatherman was thankful for his sunglasses.
The master of ceremonies bounded on stage, a healthy, good-looking guy with a scratchy microphone. He was surrounded by five bouncers, large, burly men with beer froth spilling out their lips.
Next, big old Harleys roared onto the stage and unloaded six girls. Flashbulbs began popping. The judge introduced the contestants by their hometowns only. No names. Two brunettes hailed from Minneapolis and St. Paul. Lake Country was represented in blonde. Duluth was a redhead. Thief River Falls looked almost like a boy. And the oldest girl, from Crystal, looked to be a frightened twenty-one, whereas the others appeared to be nothing but slutty teenagers. They were all sipping beer, but three of the teen contestants had a spacey demeanor Dixon Bell recognized from Vietnam. They were drugged-maybe marijuana, probably cocaine.
The fun began for the crowd even before the last T-shirt was doused. St. Paul stepped out of her shorts and showed off her skimpy panties.
“Show us your tits, bitch! Show us your tits, bitch!”
Not to be outdone by St. Paul, Minneapolis peeled off her wet T-shirt and bravely displayed her bare breasts to
the throng. The crowd roared its approval. The young man standing next to Dixon Bell had his girlfriend on his shoulders. She was aiming a video camera at the stage. Other video cameras were hoisted into the air. Then came an even bigger thrill. Fireworks exploded overhead. The night sky was dazzling. The crowd was ecstatic.
Within minutes the wet-T-shirt contest degenerated into a striptease show. Duluth and Thief River Falls left the stage without competing. The four girls left behind had stripped naked but for their shoes.
“How are we going to judge this?” the announcer asked his frenzied audience.
The crowd surged toward the stage, drunk and delirious with delight. Spectacular fireworks lit up the sky. Two of the girls climbed onto the ropes and made sexy gestures to the fans below. Another naked teen flirted with a bouncer. But the naked girl from Crystal stood frozen at center stage, like a deer caught in city traffic. This was the girl Dixon Bell fixed on. In the glare of the lights it was hard to see her face, but her diminutive body was starkly white for the middle of summer. A tragic figure. Soon the girls on the ropes were flirting with the bouncers on stage, and the fawn from Crystal decided it was time to leave. The Weatherman watched her gather up her clothes and clumsily step back into her panties as she quit the contest. The crowd booed Crystal’s ungainly exit. Dixon Bell finished his beer and dropped the cup.
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.
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 super-heated 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 women-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
DBA
, 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-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 to 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 supposed 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 with 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 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.