Missing Mark (34 page)

Television news is a business of people who live and work on the edge. They can snap at any time. You might think at the point journalists hit large-market or network newsrooms, the snappers would be weeded out. Not true. As audience size increases, so does the pressure. I wondered if Noreen was on the verge of snapping.

This May would be the last traditional sweeps month for the Minneapolis-St. Paul television market. The overnight numbers measure household ratings year-round—how many folks are watching the news. But advertisers are more interested in demographics—which station has the most women viewers or which newscast has the most young men. That helps companies decide where to run beer ads or dishwasher-detergent commercials. Getting that demographic data is difficult. Nielsen Media Research had always tracked individual viewing habits with paper diaries during special ratings months. The downside was viewers often wrote down what they thought they should watch, not what they actually watched, and they often forgot what they actually watched. Now Nielsen was pledging to monitor viewer demos year-round electronically.

Newsroom optimists say this will take the pressure off February, May, and November; newsroom pessimists figure it will just increase the pressure to produce big stories constantly. And increase the likelihood of snappers.

From Noreen’s voice, Miles must have sensed something was off, so he picked up the bulk of the conversation. “Don’t talk to this investigator anymore, Riley. If he wants to talk alibis, tell him to call me.”

“Absolutely.” I had no desire to play déjà detective with the White Bear Lake police. Free to leave or not.

“And meanwhile,” Miles continued, “for the heck of it, even though you think that cop is just playing games… check your calendar and assure me that someone can vouch for your whereabouts when these people died.”

“Y
OU’RE KIDDING ME
, right?” Nick Garnett asked.

I shook my head. We were walking around the lower level of the Mall of America for some exercise, while at the same time I brought him up to speed on my encounter with Detective Bradshaw.

Garnett chuckled at my situation. “The two people who could verify your alibi for the night the groom vanished are dead? Both of them?”

“You know they are. You were there for part of it.”

The first victim was ripped apart by a pit bull down the block from my house. The same dog had taken a bite out of Garnett as well.

About a week later, the second victim blew his brains out twenty yards away from me rather than face charges of being a serial killer.

Last November, both developments were good luck for me because both people wanted me dead. Their deaths were bad luck for me now when I needed their corroboration.

All I had were notes I’d made the previous October and a hidden-camera videotape Malik and I shot on the pet cremation story the same day our groom went missing. Yes, the notes and tape were dated, but I wasn’t sure Detective Bradshaw would buy that as evidence any more than Malik would actually remember us working together that day.

Garnett smiled and took my hand in his as we walked. “Why don’t you just tell them we spent the night together? I’m prepared to testify you never left my bed.” He raised his other hand as if he was taking an actual oath.

I was halfway considering his offer until he suggested we go back to his place and practice my alibi in case the prosecutor questioned him about what I looked like naked.

I snatched my hand away. “What about the L word? I thought you were so big on needing love. Suddenly it sounds like lust is all you need.”

“I’m sorry, Riley,” Garnett said. “For a moment, L stood for Lie. Which was what I thought you were asking me to do and that was sort of a turn-on.”

“Well, turn it off.” So much for fantasizing about him ending my virgin state.

We’d finished one lap around the mall, which meant six-tenths of a mile. I moved to take the escalator upstairs and walked the second level to avoid passing by the cinnamon-roll place again. I can only muster so much willpower.

“How about the mother murder?” Garnett asked. “That happened just a couple of weeks ago. Where were you then?”

I parodied Macaulay Culkin with my mouth wide open and one hand on each side of my face. No sound effects, though.

“Home alone?” Garnett said. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me. That’s the best you can do? Better tell them you were with me that night, too.”

“I’m actually not too worried, Nick.” I tried sounding not too worried while saying that. “Because I know I’m not the killer. And I have no motive.”

He closed his eyes and seemed to be counting to ten. As he opened them, he sighed deeply. “As an experienced homicide investigator, let me be frank, Riley. You knowing you’re not the killer doesn’t count. It’s what the cops know that matters. And if your alibi stinks, they won’t care so much about motive. Lots of psychopaths kill for no rational reason. Maybe the detective’s right. Maybe you did do it for ratings. A prosecutor would love arguing that and a jury would love deliberating that.”

That’s when I explained to him that the best way to prove I wasn’t the killer was to find the real killer. A little extra incentive beyond ratings.

“Doesn’t seem like that technique’s been terribly successful for you,” he observed.

He didn’t name names, but I figured he was referring to the Chad and Sigourney episodes. “As much as you newsies like to talk about solving crimes, that doesn’t happen real often.”

There was some truth in what he said. Channel 3’s career cop reporter has profiled twenty-two cold homicide cases—all still cold. But that doesn’t mean she stops trying. And that doesn’t mean we never succeed.

“If you recall,” I said, referring again to my psychopathic adversary, “last fall I did find the real killer.”

“No.” Garnett shook his head. “Last fall the real killer found you.”

Okay, he had me there. And not a subtle distinction, either. The difference between me finding the killer and the killer finding me could be the difference between life and death. Mine.

So I told him about the brooch.

And he told me to stay away from Madeline Post and let the cops do their job. Which was excellent advice, except nobody told Madeline Post to stay away from me.

  was curled up at home on my couch, reading the melancholy “Fall of the House of Usher,” when Madeline knocked on my door. I was at the part where the narrator begins to feel that he, too, is going mad.

She could see me through the window, so while it was too late for me to pretend not to be home, I was determined not to let her cross my threshold.

I greeted her with some pleasantries about always being delighted to see her. “Let’s go for a walk, Madeline. The weather’s gorgeous.”

Actually the sky was cloudy, the air damp.

“No, I’m cold,” she said. “Let’s stay in.”

“I’ll grab you a coat.” I also grabbed Gracie to join us. By then I’d cleaned off Chad’s blood and hair.

“What’s that?” Madeline pointed to the award clutched in my hand.

“It’s a weight I like to use when I’m out walking. I switch it from hand to hand to build muscle.” I demonstrated for her.

“It’s very unusual. May I see it?” She reached for my Gracie. By then we were on the path by the lake and other people were out and about, raking their yards and clearing the shoreline. With an abundance of witnesses, I handed my trophy over, but made sure not to turn my back on my walking companion.

“How striking,” she said. “It’s shaped in the abstract form of a woman.” She swung it back and forth like I’d shown her. “Where did you get it? I’d like to buy two, one for each arm.”

I mumbled something about it being a gift and switched the topic back to the weather. We walked for about a quarter of a mile before she asked if I thought the police would ever solve Mark’s murder.

“I don’t know, Madeline. Each case is different.”

Before I always figured she was seeking reassurance that her case was important; now I wondered if she was really seeking information that she was reluctant to ask the police herself. I watched her face as I spoke, looking for clues. I couldn’t come right out and ask to borrow her opal brooch, knowing she’d lost it. That would give everything away. Besides, she was still holding Gracie and I was unarmed.

“That the same gun was used in both murders makes some elements simpler and others more complicated,” I said.

“What kinds of steps do you think authorities are taking in the investigation?” she asked. A natural enough question unless what she really meant was, How best can I continue to cover my tracks?

Evasion would only make her suspicious. So I reviewed Detective Bradshaw’s drug money theory with her. I expected Madeline to embrace that idea enthusiastically to divert attention from herself; instead she nixed it.

“But, Madeline, you didn’t know Mark all that long or all that well. There’s lots you might not know about him.”

“I knew him well enough.” Well, maybe she did. Maybe that’s why she killed him. Maybe she knew he was a heel.

“Did you know he had a baby?” I wasn’t going to tell her about baby Sven, but it just sort of slipped out because she sounded so smug about knowing her man.

Madeline stopped walking; Gracie slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground. Her thud left a depression in the dirt. I picked her up and wiped her off, glad to have her back in my hands.

“Tell me about this baby,” Madeline said.

I kept the details sketchy. I didn’t want to put Sigourney or her son in any danger. Jean Lefevre’s murder still bothered me.

Madeline Post was steamed. She didn’t say anything, but her gait was stiff and angry. We continued our walk past some boat slips to an old white gazebo in Matoska Park. She climbed up the steps, I followed, and we sat on a bench looking out over the lake. Madeline reached over, took Gracie from me, fidgeting nervously with her.

I found myself wondering if a sociopath could be created if she couldn’t bond with anyone because everyone looked the same. I reminded myself to check back with Professor Vasilis for his take on that chilling hypothesis. From a layman’s perspective, pulling a trigger might be easier, certainly less personal, if the victim was a blur instead of an individual. But if Mark’s face was so very special to Madeline, that argument might make it even more difficult for her to kill him— unless she feared losing him anyway.

“Riley, do the police know about the child?” She startled me with her question.

“They investigated the mother as a possible suspect and appear to have eliminated her based on an alibi.”

“That comedian had an alibi, too. Didn’t he?”

“Alibis are the cornerstone of a homicide investigation. That and circumstantial evidence. Cops look at alibis for everyone connected to the victims.”

Just then I got an idea of where to take this conversation for answers without making it confrontational.

“They might even ask you for an alibi, Madeline. I remember when we first met we talked about where you were after the rehearsal dinner, but run me through it again. How would you account for your whereabouts that night for the police?”

She paused before answering, as if thinking back to the night before her almost-wedding. “You mean my last normal night.”

Madeline, Mark, her mother, and brother all had separate vehicles at the rehearsal dinner because they were coming from different directions and because three out of the four were too rich to worry about gas pushing four bucks a gallon.

I stopped her just then to clarify that Mark’s car had never been found. Minneapolis police told me there’d been no traffic stops since his disappearance. And I figured Detective Bradshaw would have mentioned if the black Jeep had surfaced.

Madeline practiced her alibi by explaining that Vivian wanted her daughter to spend her last unmarried night back home at the Peninsula House. Her designer wedding gown was already there, waiting for her to slip it on the next morning.

But Madeline didn’t go straight to the Post estate after the rehearsal dinner. She stopped at her condo first to water some plants and pack a few things, before driving out to the Peninsula House an hour or so later.