On her back she was as sensuous, almost greedy, as she was lovely. She helped him off with his clothes. By the time the only piece of cloth he was wearing was over his head they had become inseparable-more than sex, a uniting of spirits the burn victim had known only once in his life. An eternity later he collapsed on top of her and the love he had bundled up inside of him for so many years spilled down her creamy soft legs and onto the golden sheets.
There seemed nothing to prove to Andrea, nothing to hide. So comfortable was he with this woman that it was she who held him in her arms as they listened to night sounds filter up from the lake below, ducks and geese and waves lapping at the shore.
They had barely recovered from the first union when they made love a second time. They were both perspiring, her sweat as intoxicating as her perfume.
In the wee hours of the morning, when they were too tired to make love, but too excited to sleep, they talked. Talked shop. Talked about the Weatherman. He shared with her more of what he knew.
“It’s so hard to believe,” said Andrea. “Can it be true?”
“All I know is that I interviewed two different men. Schizophrenic, perhaps. Multiple personalities, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just a freak of nature. But a murderer? I still don’t buy it.”
“Because?”
“I showed you the diary. The murders aren’t mentioned even in passing.”
“Rick, that diary was very disturbing. He may have been substituting those women for me and that Lisa girl. That’s what the state is going to try to prove.”
“Even in a television newsroom I don’t think we could have been that blind. They have a lot of circumstantial evidence, the diary of a very disturbed man, and a partial fingerprint they’re not sure about. I don’t think that’s enough for a conviction, much less seven convictions and a death sentence. I say we continue this investigation with the assumption they’ve got the wrong man. Let’s find out who had access to his office, to his computer, to his private phone numbers. Who has been in the newsroom that doesn’t belong there?”
“It’s a newsroom, it’s not a fort. Strangers run in and out of there every day.”
“Are you afraid the killer might be somebody at the station?”
Andrea crawled into his arms and rested her face on his chest. “No, I’m afraid the killer might be Dixon Bell.”
Rick Beanblossom ran his fingers through her wet hair and kissed the top of her head. “The murder of Mary Rogers,” he suggested.
“I don’t remember a Mary Rogers. Which one was she?”
“Different city, different time.” Andrea was feeling sleepy. “Tell me about her.” “Well, it was in the summer of 1841, and the body of young and beautiful Mary Rogers was found floating in the Hudson River off the shores of New York City. She’d been strangled by a piece of lace tied so tightly around her neck it was hidden from sight.”
“New York hasn’t changed much, has it?” “Just like television news of today, the city’s newspapers back then were recklessly sensational with their reporting. Not only did they detail and print every piece of evidence, but the newspapers drew their own conclusions about that evidence, going so far as to name their own suspects. But for more than a year the mystery remained unsolved.”
“And then what happened?”
“Then in November 1842 a brilliant young writer gathered together every published inch of newsprint on the murder of Mary Rogers. Get this … he never visited the scene of the crime. He didn’t interview any police officials or suspects, nor did he examine any of the physical evidence. All he worked with was the published stories before him. He picked up his quill pen, he dipped it into a bottle of ink, and he methodically tore into shreds each newspaper’s theory about the murder. He concluded by naming two new suspects who had been ignored by the police and the press.”
“Let me guess,” said Andrea. “The writer was Great-Grandpa Beanblossom?”
“No,” Rick told her, laughing, “but you’re close. The writer then penned his theories and conclusion about the murder into a thinly disguised detective story and had the story published in a New York magazine. At the time of publication he said if he had misinterpreted just one of the many details about the crime, then his conclusion would be equally suspect. And guess what happened?”
“Tell me,” said Andrea, fascinated by the story.
“Police went out and made two arrests, and their confessions confirmed in full not only the conclusion of Edgar Allan Poe, but of each detail that led him to that conclusion. The first great detective’s mind did not belong to a cop. It belonged to a writer.”
“And that’s what we’re going to do?”
“The same thing I’ve been doing with the Wakefield kidnapping. We go back over every story of every killing, each piece of evidence. The answer may be in there somewhere. Did we misinterpret something? Did we overlook something? Did somebody lie to us, including Dixon Bell?”
“And what do we tell Jack Napoleon?”
“We cut him out. We’re on our own. Stay out of his office,” Rick told her. “Don’t discuss anything of importance in there.”
“Why, he’s our news director, for God’s sake.”
“He wired his own office. Audio and video.”
“You have to be joking! How long have you known about this?”
He evaded the question. “Don’t worry about it. I’m working with Dave Cadieux. When the time comes, we’ll fix his ass.”
Andrea Labore flopped back on the pillow and shook her head in disbelief. She looked out the window and saw the moon sailing slowly out of sight like a ship off the horizon. “Do you think it was fate that threw us all together in that newsroom?”
“I never liked him,” Rick confessed. “Not from the start.”
“Napoleon?” she asked.
“Yeah, him too, but I meant the Weatherman. I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but the first time I saw him do the weather I was here at home watching television. I sensed something wrong with him. When we met, he knew I saw it. He’s still scared of me. He’s like those little kids who taunt me to hide their fear.”
“Then why go out on a limb for him?”
“Because he’s not a murderer. He’s something I haven’t quite figured out yet, but he’s not a murderer.”
Andrea laid a bare leg over his legs and leaned into his shoulder. She yawned, then nibbled at his muscular arm. “I’m tired,” she said.
“Tired?” Rick laughed. “You should be half dead.” But he was tired too. He threw an arm around her. “You know, Puppy Dog, as exhausted as I am, I still want more.”
“Me too,” she whispered. Andrea Labore positioned herself on top and they made love for the third time that night.
She fell asleep in his arms as he lay staring out the window at the predawn sky. There was that star again. He thought of Dixon Bell on the jail monitor with that crazed laugh, as if he were starring in some late-night horror flick. Then his thoughts returned to Andrea, to their night together. Was this just a one-night thing to her? Did she love the man, or did she just like the mask? He wanted her for the rest of his life, but what did she feel? She was hard to read. Rick Beanblossom was still awake and holding Andrea tight when the summer sun began to rise and the sky turned as gold as the gilded room.
The green months of summer surrendered to the orange months of autumn. Leaves exploded in fiery colors, then zigzagged to the ground. The skies outside the windows at Channel 7 were more often gray than blue.
Jack Napoleon was standing over Rick Beanblossom’s desk with a tip sheet. “Do you know they now make X-rated videos right here in Minneapolis?”
Rick choked on the soda he was using to wash down two aspirins. He swallowed hard and wiped his mouth. “I’d heard there was a production studio up in the warehouse district.”
“Are we efforting to get this?” The news director dropped the tip sheet on the producer’s desk and stomped off.
Rick picked up the sheet. It listed the studio’s address and phone number. Maybe he’d drop in one afternoon and watch them efforting. He slammed the information atop his Wakefield file and sent a sheet of paper from the file to the floor. Rick bent down and retrieved it. It was the stolen-gun report from the farmer along the paper route. He read over it quickly, then shoved it back into the file.
The white-hot lights came up on the news set, spilling over Rick Beanblossom, causing him to squint. Andy Mack was at the weather podium, preparing his forecast. Ron Shea and Charleen Barington were strapping on their microphones. And there was Andrea, under the lights.
Across from the anchor desk sat a smaller desk in front of a blank blue screen, onto which the control room could project just about anything they pleased. When a local story broke, they would sit a reporter over there and project on the screen a row of computers and desks and call it the News Center. When an international story broke, they would project a display of clocks and monitors in the background and call it the Satellite Center. It was also the Sports Center, Election Center, and whatever other center they wanted to trick viewers into believing, because management was convinced their viewers were too damn stupid to figure out it was all one desk in front of a blank screen and the reporters were just sliding their asses in and out of the same chair.
Tonight Andrea was doing a story from the News Center-or maybe it was the Satellite Center, Rick wasn’t paying that much attention. They were carrying on as secret lovers, never dating. She confessed she wasn’t totally comfortable with him yet, and, besides, the secrecy made the relationship more exciting. He couldn’t complain. It had been a long time since he’d been happy. Her face was recognized on the street. He was a man in a mask. Could she be blamed? Perhaps he was being foolish, but he was shopping around for a ring. He’d do anything to get her that anchor job.
Dateline was ringing. Rick picked up the phone. “Beanblossom.”
“What have you done for me lately?”
“That’s my line.” Rick grabbed a pen. “What have you got?”
“Against the advice of his attorney Dixon Bell took a polygraph test. He beat the damn thing.”
“You mean he passed?”
“No. You’re going to say he passed. I’m saying he beat it.”
“You believe in the lie-detector test,” Rick reminded him. “I did a story on it for you.”
“A man without a conscience could very easily beat a polygraph test. I’m not fooling around anymore, I need those letters.”
“What letters?”
“Don’t give me that shit. The letters from his high-school sweetheart you pulled out of his diary. The letter from the little Afton girl. ”
The newsman swore, “I don’t know anything about those letters.”
“You listen to me, Jarhead. I want those letters, and I’ll
bring you and that entire newsroom down along with the Weatherman if need be.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means 1 know where you get your heroin.”
Rick Beanblossom froze. His stomach cramped. His head was thundering. He shielded his eyes from lights bright as the sun over the news set. Few men could intimidate him, but this man could. His knowledge of people’s weaknesses and his wealth of secrets was frightening. “All right, listen, I’ve never lied to you. After I heard of the arrest I went over and searched his office. I found the diary. I photocopied it. But the letters were already gone. It was the first thing I noticed.”
“Where did they go?”
“If he’s innocent, he never got a letter from the Afton girl. As for the diary letters, guilty or innocent, if he thought you were closing in on him he’d hide them, or destroy them.”
“No, he wouldn’t destroy them. He’d take them to his grave with him. This is a man who never lets go.” The conversation was interrupted by a wheezing cough attack. Rick waited, surprised the old bastard was still alive. “Tell you what I’ll do, Masked Man. I’ll make you a trade. You find those letters and hand them over to me and I’ll hand you the governor’s head on a silver platter. How many reporters have brought down two governors?”
Rick laid down his pen and rubbed his temple. Per Ellefson, the epitome of Mr. Clean. Andrea’s ex-lover. “What about him?”
“I want those letters.”
Dateline went dead. Rick hung up the phone. His aching head was doing cartwheels. It was bullshit. He was no more addicted to heroin than he was to television. Weeks would go by without even a thought of the junk, even months, then the needs would overtake him. His wounds had made him the strongest person he knew, but not even semper fi could stave off the darkness when it fell. Then he’d send in the Marines. At times he couldn’t help wondering if these were the same ugly needs, perhaps gone mad, that drove another man to murder with every change of the seasons.
He watched Andrea at the desk in front of the phony
blue screen rehearsing her lines. What did his source have on this governor? Would it hurt Andrea? He picked up the aspirin bottle again. It was empty. He threw it into the wastebasket and dug out his prescription pills.
Delayed another week because of a snowstorm, the fourth such storm of the winter season, the trial of Dixon Graham Bell got under way in Minneapolis during the first week of February, Hennepin County Government Center, Courtroom 659, District Court Judge Stephen Z. Lutoslawski presiding.
The meteorologist on trial could have warned them of the coming snow, but nobody in meteorology would touch his forecasts. The storms were Texas hookers. They wound up in the Panhandle gathering Gulf moisture, then hooked north, following the Mississippi River until they met up with the arctic cold around Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Weatherman could see the storms coming from his jail cell over the river. They were not blizzards; there wasn’t a whole lot of wind with them-they just dumped tons of snow. Minnesota typically averages fifty inches of snow a season. By Dixon Bell’s reading, that amount would double during the winter of his trial.
Courtroom 659 was sterile, suburban in design. It had no character. No windows. Low ceiling. Dark paneling with fake marble trim. Tan carpeting. The prosecutor’s table was to the left facing the bench. The defense table was off to the right, but it didn’t face the bench; it had been turned to face the jury box and the lone television camera. The witness stand was to the right of the judge. An American flag stood behind the bench. Above the judge’s head was the state seal.