“Because they’re killing us, that’s why. They’re the hottest thing on the video market.”
“What exactly are they?”
“Just what they say … amateur videos.” Peters explained the problem. “These people get a video camera for Christmas and they turn around and start shooting each other fucking. Then they go and sell the tapes to a distributor. It’s usually some guy banging his wife, or the neighbors come over and hump one another. They got no quality. No story. But they’re real, ya know what I mean? What other business could amateurs walk into and take over?”
“Television news,” Rick said. Peters laughed. “Do you ever get your hands on any of these amateur videos?”
“Yeah, people bring ‘em to me all the time. Once in a while when I get a good one I’ll distribute it, but most of ‘em are shit.”
“So the more real they are, the better they sell?”
“Exactly, Rick. Your hidden camera is your best bet. Don’t let the bitch know she’s being taped.”
March came in like a lion. Blowing snow, falling temperatures. There were few signs of spring. City workers were hauling truckloads of snow down to the river and dumping it. Harriet Island across from the Ramsey County jail was growing into a small white mountain.
Most of his days were spent in court, but in the evening Dixon Bell would be transported back to St. Paul and returned to D Pod, Cell 340. He watched some television, mostly mindless game shows and old movies. No more news-not even Andrea. His evenings were spent sitting on his bunk staring out the window. Staring south.
The Mississippi River was frozen, a pristine highway of unbroken snow flowing beneath the bridges and around the bend. Street lamps up and down the bluffs were yellow, like fireflies, and their reflection off the white earth created a candlelight glow. The only bright lights were at the foot of the Wabasha Street Bridge above a billboard advertising Sky High News. Splat Man, where are you? Trains passed beneath him, and almost every hour of every night a siren would wail in the distance and the Weatherman would watch the flashing red lights of an ambulance as it dropped down a steep street and raced across the bridge on its way to the emergency room at the Ramsey Medical Center. These were the sights and sounds of a jail cell in St. Paul, Minnesota, on cold winter evenings. Dixon Bell had been locked up for ten months. If the jury found him not guilty, where might he go to get his ten months back?
During those ten months the meteorologist had been bouncing up and down on a rail bolted to the floor. This was the rail the steel cell door slid over to open and close.
One night while he was tiptoeing up and down on this rail it finally snapped, just where he wanted it to snap. Now he was scared he’d be caught. But he had the deputy’s movements down to a science. The rail was better than a crowbar. He hurried it into his cell and chipped a few tiny pieces of mortar from around the brick in the wall over the river. Then he stepped outside his cell and placed the rail back on the floor. The deputy in the control room walked over and looked up at Cell 340 and saw Dixon Bell sitting on his bunk.
The first night and the next morning he was the most worried. But when the deputy came upstairs to slide the door closed, it worked like a charm. Slid right open the next morning too. From then on it was cat and mouse. The deputy in the control room would disappear from sight for two minutes and Dixon Bell would run out of his cell, pick up the rail, chip some mortar from around the bricks, then run out and place the rail back on the floor. The deputy returned and looked up, saw the Weatherman sitting on his bunk, staring out the window. He taped letters of support on the wall to hide the gashes. He kept the chips of concrete in his pocket until he had to use the toilet; then he’d flush them. By his calculations, with his size and weight, he’d have to get six big bricks out of that wall before he could squeeze through and lower himself down to the tracks with bed sheets. It would take weeks, maybe months. But he was on trial for his life. It wouldn’t hurt to keep chipping away.
Even by Minnesota standards it was a hard winter. Every morning they had to leave St. Paul before dawn in teeth-chattering temperatures just to get to court on time because of poor road conditions. The trial was wearing everybody down. Lines outside the courtroom grew shorter and shorter. Court TV said ratings were falling off. If it had been a network series, it would have been canceled. Everybody was waiting to see if the Weatherman would testify in his own defense.
The state had left no legal path unplowed. Prosecutor Jim Fury turned out to be even more cunning and shrewd than he appeared. Stacy Dvorchak was doing a hell of a job, but after six weeks of negative testimony Dixon Bell couldn’t see a whole lot of sympathy over there in the jury box. Some jurors were avoiding his eyes.
The parade of quacks had begun. Much to his credit Judge Lutoslawski limited the state and the defense to two psychiatrists apiece. They pretty much said what they were paid to say. Like the state’s shrink from New York, a self-proclaimed expert on serial killers. Dr. Harcourt Joffre was a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, which was affiliated with Bellevue Hospital. He had built a career studying the darker side of human behavior. He interviewed a very uncooperative Dixon Bell for all of two hours. He examined the diary. Then he raised his hand in a court of law and swore to tell the truth. He was a young, slender man, late thirties, with one of those finely trimmed beards popular in the psychiatric community. Slight New York accent. Answering Prosecutor Fury’s questions: “There’s no way these women can live up to what he’s made them out to be in his mind. He fell in love with women that don’t exist.”
“You mean Lisa and Andrea?”
“Yes.”
“And if one of these women had given herself to him?”
“They would have shattered the illusion. He would then go off and find another woman to say no to him. A woman he knows in his heart he can never have.”
“So by saying no to him, these obsessive loves of his only increased his obsession with them?”
“Precisely.”
“To the point of murder?”
Stacy objected to the question.
The judge agreed with her. “Sustained.”
“Let me rephrase that, Doctor. Can obsessive love lead a man to murder?”
“Yes. All too often in our society. There have been several cases in the past few years of men murdering women they fell in love with on television or in the movies. Until they killed them, they had never even met them.”
Jim Fury glanced over at Dixon Bell, then turned his attention toward the jury. “But could it drive them to kill someone other than their obsessive love?”
“Sure,” said the doctor. “The most famous case being that of John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate President Reagan back in 1981 to impress a movie star.”
To Dixon Bell this line of reasoning was bullshit, pure and simple-that he fell in love with Andrea Labore and then went out murdering women because of her. Yes, he fell in love with Andrea Labore, but he worked with her. He didn’t fall in love with a two-dimensional image on his TV screen like those couch potatoes who go to bed at night and jack off after watching their favorite anchorwoman read them the news. And what about Lisa? If he killed out of obsessive love, why didn’t he wipe out half of Vicksburg, Mississippi? Answer that, you quack!
Fortunately Stacy Dvorchak had a more intelligent and professional approach. She picked up a psychology book so that the jury could read the big fat words
SERIAL
KILLER
. She wheeled over to the good doctor and held the book up to his face. It was like threatening a Southern Baptist with a Bible. “Who wrote this book, Dr. Joffre?”
“I did.”
Stacy fumbled through the book until she found the page she’d marked. “Clinical portrait of a serial killer,” she read. “Abused as a child. Broken home. History of petty crimes and bizarre behavior. Is that correct, Doctor?”
“That is the clinical portrait, yes.”
“In your clinical portrait of Dixon Bell, did you find any evidence that he was sexually or physically abused as a child?”
“No, that was not the case.”
“Were his parents divorced?”
“No. I believe his mother was widowed.”
“Does Dixon Bell have a criminal record of any kind?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
“Any history of bizarre behavior?”
“Other than a lifelong obsession with the weather, none that I could find.”
Stacy was amazed. “Doctor, if obsession with the weather were considered bizarre behavior, nine out of ten Minnesotans would be put into straitjackets.” The courtroom burst into laughter. Even the judge smiled at that one. Stacy continued. “Doctor, have you ever heard of a serial killer who killed out of this obsessive love?”
“I’m not familiar with any particular case.”
“Isn’t it an accepted fact in your profession that the average American male will fall in love three times during his lifetime?”
“Yes, I accept that.”
Stacy shrugged her shoulders. “So what’s so unusual about Dixon Bell having been in love twice-my God, once in high school?”
“But he had no relationship with these women.” “No relationship? He talked with them, worked with them, laughed with them, shared sorrow and pain with them day in and day out for years at a time. How else do you fall in love?”
“But he had no intimate relationship.” “Oh, you have to sleep with a woman to fall in love with her?” Stacy went on with her questioning, clutching the doctor’s book to her heart the whole time. “Isn’t it a fact, Doctor, that in our society men and women are breaking each other’s hearts every day? That every hour of every day someone is saying, ‘No, I don’t want to date you,’ ‘No, I don’t love you,’ or ‘No, I can’t marry you’?” “Yes, but you’re missing-”
“And isn’t it possible, Doctor-indeed, probable-that Dixon Bell just isn’t lucky? That two out of the three times he was supposed to fall in love he just plain struck out?”
“I’m not sure that’s the case here.” “But isn’t it possible?” “Well, yes, it’s possible.”
“Thank you, Doctor. No more questions.” Stacy started back to the the defense table; then suddenly she stopped and wheeled. “Oh, one more thing, my good doctor. In your reading of the diary, did you happen to come across a murder?” “No, I didn’t.”
So the state went through seven murders in six weeks, one piece of circumstantial evidence piled atop another, a partial fingerprint that may or may not have belonged to the Weatherman, and two shrinks who said exactly what they were paid to say.
As he neared the end of his case, Prosecutor Fury introduced a surprise witness-too much of a surprise for the defense. He called to the witness stand a young woman named Davi Iverson. She was blond, a bit chunky, a nice complexion with too much eye makeup, heavy on the purple. She was no beauty, nor was she unattractive.
Meanwhile Stacy Dvorchak was searching the witness list for her name. No Davi Iverson was listed. Stacy loudly objected, halting the proceedings. Judge Lutoslawski called the attorneys to the bench, or in this case to the side of the bench opposite the witness stand, where he could walk down and converse with the woman in the wheelchair. Dixon Bell could see them mumbling so nobody could overhear what they were saying. Jim Fury spelled out what he was up to. It almost brought Stacy Dvorchak back to her feet. She could be heard loud and clear. “Outrageous. Mistrial. Miscarriage of justice if this is allowed to continue.”
Dixon Bell along with the jurors sat staring at the young woman on the witness stand, wondering more than ever who she was and what she had to do with the case. The judge got Stacy settled down and they went back to arguing points of law, with Prosecutor Fury shaking his head in disappointment. Finally the attorneys returned to their tables and Judge Lutoslawski instructed a deputy to excuse the jury.
Stacy informed her client that the witness must testify in front of the judge first; then he would decide if the testimony could be heard by the jury. She assured him that would never happen.
Prosecutor Fury: “State your full name.”
“Davi Faye Iverson.” She had a soft voice, very nervous.
“Where do you live, Miss Iverson?”
“I rent a town house in Edina.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes. I’m single.”
“And what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a bank teller at First Edina Savings on France Avenue.”
“Miss Iverson, have you ever been raped?”
Oh, God! Dixon Bell thought he was going to be sick. If this didn’t beat all. He couldn’t hide his disgust. The deputies were glaring down at him. Stacy told him to relax; the jury was out of earshot. The red light atop the TV camera looked like a blazing fire. Everybody in the media section, including the masked asshole, were stretching their necks like giraffes. Nothing like an alleged rape victim to spice up a slow news day. “Yes, I have,” she told Jim Fury. “Tell me about it.”
Davi Iverson poured herself a cup of water, stalling for time. She stared at the floor out in front of her. She spoke in a slow, halting voice that was so soft she could barely be heard. Fury pushed the microphone closer to her mouth. “It was really hot that night and I left the patio window open. I must have forgot to lock the screen door because that’s how he got in. He just walked in. I thought I heard something, but I was too scared to get up and look. Then I saw this big shadow come through the bedroom door, and I was going to scream but he got to the bed really quick and put his hand over my mouth.” “Go on.”
“Well, he talked in a real soft whisper and told me if I didn’t scream I wouldn’t be hurt, and if I did scream, he said he would snap my neck.”
“Those were the words he used, ‘snap your neck’?” “Yes, the first night. He let go of my mouth and I didn’t scream, but I was still scared.” “Go ahead.”
She cleared her throat and drank some more water. “This is hard to explain. He kept petting my hair and talking in a really sweet whisper. He told me we were going to make love and how beautiful it was going to be. He didn’t make it sound dirty or anything. He said I was his fantasy and that in the dark I could be anything he wanted me to be. He said I should do the same … let him be the man I always dreamed of.” “What happened then?”