It was an hour after her last live broadcast and nearing midnight when Andrea found him along the dike. She waded through the water in her jeans. Her stylish blue vinyl raincoat wasn’t up to the windy weather. The hood kept blowing off her head. Still, she was the warmest thing Rick had seen in days. She came close but they didn’t embrace. “We miss you in the newsroom,” she said.
“This is one story I couldn’t stand by and watch.” He led her away from the dike, away from the wrathful river. They were standing in two feet of water in the falling rain. His mask was flecked with mud. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was seeing Leanne again, but Rick decided the time was right. It was Easter Sunday. “I was hoping for some place a bit more romantic, but what the hell.” The man without a face pulled the velvet case with the diamond ring from his jacket pocket and gave it to her to open. “I wanted to hate you, but you turned out to be such a gutsy girl. I mean, gutsy woman. I mean, what we have, I never thought we’d have, or I’d ever have. And it was you who made it happen. That took a lot of courage, Andrea, because, well, I’m not exactly the guy next door. Anyway, I’m very proud of you.”
She stared at the small case in her hand. “Rick, what is this?”
“Open it,” he said breathlessly.
Andrea opened the case, turning white with surprise.
Drizzle splashed over the diamond, but still it sparkled in the floodlights.
“It’s an engagement ring,” he said, as if it could be something else. “I never thought I’d be buying one. I love you, Andrea, and I want you to marry me.” He smiled with sincere joy, quite proud of himself, then added: “Please.”
She was shaking; shaking her head. Tears were falling from her beautiful brown eyes and mixing with the raindrops. In his innocence and his love he at first believed she was shaking her head out of disbelief. Crying with joy. But when she finally pulled her watery eyes from the ring and lifted her flawless face to his faceless mask he knew the answer.
“I never expected this, Rick,” she said slowly, almost pleading to be understood. “It’s a shock to me. I’d never dreamed of marriage. The way we have it now is … is so great. You turned out to be such a wonderful man. Rick, you know I’m so fond of you, so admiring of your talents and how you’ve ordered your life. But …” She sobbed again, put her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Rick, listen to me. I may be in love with you. I’m still not sure.” Andrea released him from her grasp and stole another peek at the diamond. “And part of it may be that I don’t think I have the courage to live my life with a man who … well, who’s not exactly the guy next door. I’m so very sorry.” She handed back the ring, still apologizing. “I thought our deep friendship with each other would somehow always be just that. Now I don’t know what to think. At least give me time to figure out my heart. I’m just not ready for this now. I’m sorry, Rick.”
Rick Beanblossom took the ring back and stared over her shoulder at the flooding river, wide and mean and filthy brown. He searched the small town where he was born and raised, as if the answers to all of life’s riddles could still be found there. Water blurred his vision. All of his adult life he had moved through society with a mask to hide his face and his feelings, and as humiliating as that had often been, no incident could compare to the rejection of his marriage proposal. Never in his life had he felt so foolish, so weak, so goddamn small. “It’s … ah
... o-okay.” He was stuttering. “Was … a-a long shot.” He pocketed the ring. “Re-refundable,” he tried to joke.
Andrea wiped the drizzle from her face and gazed across the water. “You are in my heart, I can tell you that now. Maybe we can talk some more after the river goes down. I’m so sorry, Rick. This is all my fault.”
She left it at that and he watched her go, watched her wade through the water beneath the yellow floodlights and up the hill to the news van with the big 7 pasted on the door. He watched them drive away. The taillights disappeared in the rain, just the blinking orange lights of detour signs scattered beneath the bluffs.
The Marine again pulled the velvet case from his fatigue jacket and removed the ring. Every day since Vietnam had been a struggle for survival. His creed was to live one more day and make it a good one. Now he wanted to die. Rick Beanblossom pulled his hand back and flung the diamond engagement ring into the angry waters of the St. Croix River, And the largest flood in Minnesota history began losing its punch.
The flood is the river’s way of cleansing itself. Every two decades or so the river regurgitates and throws back ashore everything man has dumped into it over the years. In Stillwater, no sooner had the flood waters receded to a safe level than the sandbags came down and the cleanup began. Volunteer workers along the banks of the St. Croix River discovered tons of garbage among the stinking mud and goo. They found motor parts, sunken boats, and splintered canoes. They found the rusted body of a Volkswagen Beetle. They came upon a diamond ring. And twenty miles downriver, on a rocky shore just above Prescott, Wisconsin, they found the almost totally decomposed body of Harlan Wakefield.
Rick Beanblossom steered his new Corvette up the clo-verleaf and headed north on Interstate 694. His bronze shaving kit was on the seat beside him. Bright arc lights stretched through eastern suburbs that were overdevelopment nightmares-little boxes made out of ticky-tacky with names like Woodbury and Oakdale and Maplewood. Traffic was light but potholes were many. Winter had taken its toll on the roads. He turned up the heater a notch, searching right up to the end for the perfect temperature.
To the masked newsman it was no longer a question of why; it was a question of why not. He looked down the road and all he saw was more of the same. Faceless grief. Another murder, another kidnapping, another crooked politician. A life alone chasing the miseries and the venalities of others. It was the emptiest of feelings. All bitterness was gone, as was anger, and revenge-the human emotions worth living for. Now he was left truly a shell. Hollow inside. Everybody who talked to him sounded like a distant echo. He heard the words but couldn’t make out the meaning. A cowardly feeling hung over him. Nothing seemed of interest. Not even news. His heart was reading empty.
As he drove the freeway he tried to concentrate on the story that had occupied his mind and his time for so many months. Dixon Bell was the Edina rapist, had to be, but he was not the serial killer. But did Dixon Bell really confess to the Edina rapes? “I never hurt any of them women. And I sure as hell didn ‘t kill anyone.” Dixon Bell was the Edina rapist and unexpectedly ran into Officer Sumter. Killed her.
Beanblossom theory number two: Andy Mack was the serial killer, killing to set up Dixon Bell. He was the one who before each murder threatened the man who took his job, the threats Bell told him about. “I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman.” The same damn threat was found on Andy’s computer after he died. A form of confession? He knew Minnesota’s weather. In the end he was a bitter old drunk.
Theory number three: Jack Napoleon was the serial killer. The murders had begun shortly after he arrived in the Twin Cities. He was from Chicago, had a feel for midwestern weather. He majored in physics, knew meteorology. He knew the weather center operation. He thought women were the ultimate sin. He may have thought Dixon Bell was the devil on earth.
And theory number four: none of them was the serial killer. The killer was still out there. Or the murders were unrelated. Copycat crimes. The killers were running free. Except that the killings had stopped. And what of that fingerprint? No matter how Rick added and subtracted, it kept coming back to the Weatherman. Dixon Bell was the Edina rapist and the serial killer. Dixon Bell did everything but kidnap the Wakefield boy. Hell, maybe he did that too.
The autopsy results on Harlan Wakefield were inconclusive due to the decomposition of the body. Medical examiner’s best guess-the boy genius had died of a gunshot wound to the throat area. In his prime Rick would have been down at the morgue pumping Freddie for every last detail, examining the body himself. As it was, he just made one last phone call to a police source. “Were there any tire tracks found at the kidnap scene?” “Just the bicycles-no sign of a car was ever found.” “Who questioned his twin, Keenan? He never talked to the press?”
“The sheriff took a statement. The
FBI
interviewed him the next day. His parents took over the show after that. Wouldn’t let anybody near him. He was put under the care of a child psychologist.”
His source got Rick the transcripts of the two interviews. But Rick found nothing. The same source refused to part with the dirt he had on the governor. Not without the missing letters.
“Give it up, Masked Man. You ‘ve spent your whole life fighting lost causes.”
As he sped down the freeway that looped the east metro, his blue cotton face kept dropping down over the steering wheel as he tried to shake all the demons out of his head. News, alcohol, drugs, J. C. Peters and his I Witness News team fornicating right before his eyes-none of them worked for him anymore. Highs were a thing of the past. That morning another manuscript had come back in the mail. Another rejection slip. Rick Beanblossom would never be the novelist he dreamed of being, would never solve the Wakefield kidnapping or clear the Weatherman, would never get the girl. He was past forty now. His face was the scum on the rim of a whirlpool bath. His youth was spent. On what he had picked as the last night of his life he accepted all of this. He stepped on the gas.
It was unexpectedly cold. There hadn’t been an accurate forecast broadcast in Minnesota since Dixon Bell went off to jail. Rick turned up the heater another notch. Headlights sped by in the opposite direction. Red taillights disappeared in his rearview mirror. A firefight where nobody gets hit. Up ahead was a billboard, its blinding lights shining down on him. Ron Shea and Andrea Labore stood ten feet tall, their Chiclet teeth smiling over commuters, their names boldly printed beneath a giant 7.
THE
NEW
SKY
HIGH
NEWS
. The Marine shook his head. If only Splat Man were for hire.
What a fool he had been. What a big, fucking fool! To believe that a woman of her beauty and charm would marry a hideous beast like him, as if there were some magic rose that could break the evil curse and return to him his princely looks. Every woman fantasizes about sex with a stranger in a mask. Perhaps that’s all he was to Andrea Labore. The anonymous fuck. Some sick fantasy come to fruition. When all was dead and done, the Weatherman would have the last laugh.
As Rick passed beneath the bright lights of the billboard, he reached over and flipped open the bronze shaving kit and checked his stash one more time.
Just stop it.
After all those years he could still hear the angel from Corpus Christi trying to pull him through. “Whenever
your hurt and frustration start to get the best of you, you just gotta say, ‘Just stop it.’ ”
Rick Beanblossom left the Channel 7 billboard behind him and caught Highway 36 east out of the Cities, through the woods of Lake Elmo, where Bob Buckridge and Kitt Karson had crashed and died. East towards Stillwater. Towards the river that cut through the valley where his life had begun.
On the night Rick Beanblossom drove past her face on the interstate, Andrea Labore was having the fight of her life in the governor’s office in St. Paul. She stood in front of the bulletproof window, rubbing her arms before the green-tinted glass. Crimson and gold curtains hung to the sides. “It’s freezing in here. I thought winter was over with.”
“Why are women always complaining?” The Viking governor plopped behind his desk between the American flag and the navy blue state of Minnesota. He buried his head in his hands in frustration. “They know!”
The holler startled her. ‘They know what?”
“You were followed or something.”
“What are you talking about?”
Per Ellefson leaned back in his chair and shook his head in resignation. A burden shared. “Smith Jameson and his right-wing gang in the party … they know about the abortion. They’ve got a copy of that check I wrote you, and they’ve got records from the clinic. I told you to go out of state.”
Andrea walked from the window and took a seat in an antique chair, as uncomfortable as a rock. “How long have you known this?”
“From the start.” He choked on his guilt. “Why do you think I signed their precious death penalty bill? They promised me you’d be kept out of it.”
“What if the Democrats find out about it?” The governor tossed off a cold laugh. “Democrats are wimps. They’re the least of my worries. This is a party fight.”
Andrea wasn’t listening. The fatal possibilities were running through her mind. Her career? His career? “And if Dixon Bell is found guilty and sentenced to death?” she asked.
Per Ellefson stared at the electronic weather station on his desk. The temperature was nearing the freezing mark. “That’s not going to happen. Every criminal lawyer I’ve spoken with tells me the same thing … They may have enough for a conviction, but there’s two parts to that trial. They don’t have enough for a death sentence. Not with a Minnesota jury they don’t.”
Andrea laughed bitterly. “I think you’re living in a dream world. The sun set on that state years ago.”
The governor got up from his chair and walked around the desk to Andrea’s side. The abortion revelation had blown the steam out of their fight. “Even if they vote the chair, it’s a couple of years down the road with the appeals. We’re in this together, Andrea. My re-election chances are good, and you’re sitting in the anchor chair.”
“So what are you saying?”
He stroked her hair. “That we stick together. I want to start seeing you again.”
She bolted from the chair, back to the safety of the window and the flags. “No, absolutely not.”
“Are you dating someone? There are rumors.”
“No, I’m not dating someone.” Andrea looked out at the Capitol mall, dark and deserted. Barren sidewalks rolled over lifeless grass thick with thatch. Winter weather. Only the snow was missing.