Rick Beanblossom slipped his driver’s license under the bulletproof glass and signed his name. The deputy ordered him to wait while he fetched his supervisor. The masked newsman admired the view of the river. The hot summer sun was noon high and sparkled on the water. He was on the sixth floor of the jail. Visitors Center. He showed the supervisor his press credentials and his hospital card. They recognized the name. After satisfying their curiosity, electronic bolts slipped, metal doors opened, and he was escorted down a concrete hallway to a sound booth with no door.
“Just pick up the phone and look right into the television,” he was told. “He’ll be up in a minute.”
Rick placed his notebook and pen in front of him. He held the receiver in his hand and stared into the monitor. It was black-and-white. An empty chair and a bare desk. A brick wall. Five minutes passed. He saw dark shadows behind the chair. Then the Weatherman came into view. He took his seat and picked up the phone. “It’s nice to see you on television again,” Rick joked.
“Yeah, and commercial-free.” For Dixon Bell jail had to be the ultimate humiliation.
Rick glanced over his shoulder, very uncomfortable. Then the Marine noticed the pajama top the former Air Force officer was wearing. “You look like Viet Cong.”
“My first thought, too. How y’all doing at the station?”
“Don’t you watch?”
He shook his head, a tormented man. “I can’t.”
The news producer nodded in sympathy. “Andy Mack is back doing the weather. Charleen’s contract is up soon. They slip Andrea into the anchor chair every chance they get. The only reason you’re not on the air is because you weren’t granted bail. Napoleon was really upset about that. Ratings would have gone through the roof.”
The Weatherman turned a smile at the thought.
They sat staring at each other on television screens. An awkward silence ensued, the silence of two proud and stubborn men. Rick finally broke the spell. “You haven’t given an interview since your arrest. Why me?”
Dixon Bell ran his fingers through his graying hair in the sad realization that he needed all the help he could get. “There’s an old cop who put their whole case together. Les Angelbeck. Do you know him?”
“I’ve talked to him on the phone a few times.”
“That old boy is dead wrong. This is a setup. I’ve been framed.”
“No, Angelbeck was never that kind of cop.”
“I’m not saying he framed me. I’m saying he fell for it, and he’s too old and sick to see that.” His southern accent sounded thicker. He was no longer the poised person who delivered the accurate forecasts.
“What do you want from me?” Rick asked him.
“Clarence Darrow once said criminals shun reporters more than they do cops, because reporters are smarter and less merciful. I want you on my story. You’re better than any detective. I know how bad you wanted to solve the Wakefield kidnapping. This is even bigger than that, and I’ll give you everything. Full access. Those women were murdered to set me up, and if anybody can prove that, you can.”
Rick Beanblossom picked up his pen and doodled in his reporter’s notebook. “Tell me about your diary.”
“The police have it.”
“I know that. Tell me what they have.”
“My thoughts, my memories. Some of it is very intimate. I used the diary to keep from slipping away.”
“Slipping away from what?”
The Weatherman turned away from the monitor. Then he bowed his head, almost in shame. “Reality.”
“Are you insane?”
“No, I am not insane.”
“But you do admit to a degree of mental illness?” Dixon Bell didn’t answer. “Would you consider using insanity as a defense?”
“Never. I’m innocent.”
‘Tell me about the letters in your diary.”
“How did you know about those? There’s been nothing in the news.”
“I am the news. Tell me about them.”
“What’s to tell? Cops keep asking me about them, but my lawyer says not to comment until she’s read them. Cops say the
FBI
has them in Washington doing tests.”
“They’re bluffing,” Rick told him. “The letters are missing. They’ve turned your office upside down trying to find them. They’ve even tried to get a search warrant on the newsroom.”
The Weatherman was stunned. “Missing?”
“Tell me about the letters.”
“There are times we’ll have to talk off the record.”
“Off the record, then, tell me about the letters.”
“Don’t it seem funny to you that something so personal that happened down home so many years ago would interest so many folks up in this neck of the woods?” Dixon Bell wiped his mouth before speaking again. He stared straight forward into the monitor. “That letter from the
killer that appeared in the Star Tribune… some of the lines in it were taken directly from those letters.”
“How is that possible?”
“Simple. The killer walked into my office, lifted the letters from my diary, and copied them. The perfect frame-up.”
“Then why didn’t the killer put the letters back so they’d be found?”
“I don’t know. I thought he did-I thought Angelbeck had them. If they find those letters, my ass is cooked.”
“Have you told Stacy Dvorchak about the letters?”
A guilty look spread over his face. “No. I figured she’d see it for herself as soon as she got her hands on them.”
“What else haven’t you told us about?”
“I also got threats.”
“What kind of threats?”
Dixon Bell rubbed his temples trying to remember. “Some lunatic would call me on the phone, or write me notes saying he was going to ice me. He had a really faggy voice, kind of mocking a southern accent. Once the message was on my computer. Another time I found it written on a surface map.”
“Did you report them to anybody?”
“No. They didn’t happen that often. I shrugged them off. It’s television.”
“How often? About once every season?”
Dixon Bell was looking sick. “About the time of the tornado. The ice storm. A couple of rainy nights.”
“Did you save any of the written threats?”
“No. The computer message I erased. The surface maps are thrown away.”
“You may have erased it from the screen, but it could still be in the computer. I’ll see if I can retrieve it.”
“I know computers. That’s not possible.”
Rick Beanblossom flipped a page in his notebook. He stared at Dixon Bell’s weatherbeaten face on the black-and-white monitor. They’d been talking almost an hour, the newsman often playing the devil’s advocate. Their visiting time was almost up. The Weatherman was growing hostile. Bitter. Rick kept at him. “Tell me about Andrea.”
Dixon Bell shrugged his big shoulders. “I guess I was in love with her. What else can I say?”
“That her beauty drove you mad. That your unrequited love drove you to murder.”
“That’s bullshit. My problems started long before I ever laid eyes on Andrea Labore.”
“Yes. Your problems started in high school with Lisa Beauregard.”
Dixon Bell was startled. “You’ve read my diary.”
“I’ve obtained a copy. You just said I could have everything.”
“Then you’ve got the letters.”
“No, I don’t have the letters, nor have I seen them. Tell me about Andrea.”
Dixon Bell leaned into the television screen, his voice changing tone, growing louder and more intense-angry. “Yes, what about Andrea, Beanblossom? How long have you been in love with her?”
He sounded like the old weatherman now, the arrogant TV star Rick Beanblossom always despised. Rick thought hard before commenting. “Good God, what makes you ask something like that?”
Dixon Bell snickered at the question. “You think you can hide everything behind that mask, don’t you?” He laughed, a small mocking laugh. “When I first met you I felt sorry for you. The poor burn victim. Man without a face. But where others came to admire you, even if they didn’t like you, I came to loathe you. You wear that mask like the Lone Ranger. I sometimes wonder how bad your face really is.”
“Get to the point.”
The Weatherman laughed again, louder and more erratic than before. “I see right through you, Beanblossom. That’s why you’ve never cared for me.”
Suddenly, Rick was feeling very uncomfortable. “Cut to the chase.”
“Andrea?” The Weatherman took a deep breath, shaking with fear at his own insights, but seemingly enjoying himself. “Since the day you slipped on that mask you’ve felt the need-no, almost a compulsion-to surround yourself with physical beauty. I’ve heard about your beautiful condo, and the beautiful furniture, and the beautiful art on the walls. You go out and buy a beautiful new car every year. The fresh flowers on your desk. Boy oh boy, when you saw that face of hers, I’ll bet it was love at first sight. And because those big brown eyes were something you couldn’t possess, beauty you couldn’t go out and buy, you openly despised her, ignored her, made sure everybody in the newsroom knew that she was the worst thing to happen to television news in the history of television news. I saw it from the start. It was in your eyes, in your voice-it was written all over your blue cotton face. I’ll bet there were even times when you wanted to strangle her.”
Rick watched the Weatherman laughing crazylike on the television set. “You seem to think you can read people the same way you read the weather.”
“So are you going to tell her? Make your move?”
“I have no moves to make, Weatherman. I accepted that a long time ago. Perhaps that was your mistake.”
“You underestimate yourself, Kemo Sabay. I’m just a fat, middle-aged TV weatherman whose goose is probably cooked. But you … you’ll never grow old. You’ll just go out and buy a new mask every year. Go for her.”
“Why? So you can see me fail, like you?”
“Yes. Fall flat on your face.”
One day after Rick Beanblossom’s visit to the Ramsey County jail defense attorney Anastasia Dvorchak, the quadriplegic everybody knew as Stacy, sat at a table face-to-face with the Weatherman. Interview Room 2 West was a plain brick room. Lawyers and cops only. Total privacy. There was a distress alarm on the wall, just in case. Stacy had been working on his defense for a month. She began with the good news. “Edina police held a press conference. They say you’re no longer a suspect in the string of rape cases out there.”
Dixon Bell yawned. “Well, hell, they tried their best.”
“What does that mean?”
The Weatherman remembered seeing her on television during the death penalty hearings, swimming against the tide of popular opinion. Andrea Labore had done a story on her, about how Stacy Dvorchak boldly ventured into the South, driving herself thousands of miles in a specially equipped Ford van she called St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes-all to save death row inmates from the electric chair, or the gas chamber, or lethal injection. Though appeals were her area of expertise, she welcomed the opportunity to defend a man she felt she knew through television.
“Remember I told you every once in a while they toss a bum into my cell? Well, a couple of weeks after I’m in here they assign this hustler to my cell. He was a real New York street type … tells you his whole life story and everything that’s wrong with the world at machine-gun pace, and you nod your head a lot. He was a healthy, good-looking guy, and one night he starts talking to me about women.”
“If ya see a woman ya want, Dixon, ya just take her. ”
“What do you mean, take her?”
“Take her.”
“You’re talking about rape, aren’t you?”
“I ain ‘t whistlin’ Dixie.”
“He starts laughing. Then he jumps down from his bunk and sits next to me, all buddy-like.”
“Dixon, I’m what cops call a tree jumper. Let me explain. The average shmuck on the street sees a beautiful woman he’s never laid eyes on before and says to himself, ‘I could never have one that pretty.’ I see a beautiful woman on the street, I say to myself, ‘That’s the one I’m having tonight.’ You know all that crapola the shrinks put out, that rape is an act of violence, not sex. It’s friggin’ bullshit. Forced sex is the best sex. You don’t hurt ‘em, ya fuck ‘em! Never carry a weapon. If you get caught, it hurts your case. A big guy like you could take any woman he wanted.”
“How many women have you taken?”
“Fuck, who counts? I’ve been at it since junior high school. Nine out of ten of them don’t even report it, and the ones that do usually can’t prove jack shit. I’ve had some beautiful women, Dixon.”
“So how did you get caught?”
“I didn’t. I’m not in here for tree jumpin’. I sold some crack to a narc. I’ll get a year in the workhouse. With overcrowding, I’ll be out in ninety days.”
“He waited for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. Finally he pats me on the leg before he climbs back into his bunk.”
“Dixon, after you beat this rap, look me up. We ‘II get together for some drinks. ”
“And did you report him?” Stacy asked.
Dixon Bell shook his head, amused. “Wake up, Dvorchak-he was a cop. A plant. I’d been expecting him.”
Stacy Dvorchak was momentarily stunned by her own naivete. This would be her first jury trial. To what lengths would the state go to convict this man? She adjusted the pen holder on her hand brace and checked off the points as she talked. “You’ve been indicted on seven counts of first-degree intentional homicide. Counts one through six, the maximum penalty: ‘Upon conviction of this charge, a
Class A Felony, the penalty shall be life imprisonment.’ The maximum penalty for count seven: ‘Upon conviction of this charge, a Class A Felony, the penalty shall be death by electrocution.’ They’re really only after count seven-the murder of Officer Sumter. The capital offense. In order to prove you killed her, they’re going to try to prove you killed six women before her. It’s a bold but risky strategy. And if we beat those seven counts … Wisconsin will be waiting in the wings to try you for the Hudson murder.”
“I’m up the Yazoo,” muttered Dixon Bell.
“What’s that?”
“The River of Death,” he told her. “I believe the term used in this neck of the woods is Shit Creek. It means they’re all determined they’re going to sit my ass in the electric chair.”