The Weatherman (41 page)

“You people are supposed to leave me alone.”

The masked gunman picked the boy up by the shirt and dragged him into the woods. He threw him down on the forest floor. “Do you know how reporters used to get stories in the old days? When somebody wouldn’t talk they’d send some boys from the dock over to slap him around. My kind of journalism.” He wound up and kicked the boy in the ass. “Where did you go that morning?”

Keenan began crying. “We were delivering papers.”

“No-the morning after that.”

“I went to look for Harlan.”

“Why didn’t you go look where he was taken? You were a mile away, down by the river. Why?”

“I thought the kidnapper might have driven him to the river.” The boy kept trying to get to his feet, but the man in the mask kept kicking him down.

“I looked at the tape of you coming out of the woods that morning. There’s no road to the river anyway near that spot.”

“Yes there is.”

“I grew up here, kid. I had a bicycle too. I know every

street, every path, and where every dirt road goes. So don’t bullshit me, you lying little son of a bitch! Where did you get the gun?”

Keenan wrapped his arms around a tree trunk for protection. “What gun?”

The madman in the mask was kicking at the tree, as if he could fell it with his feet. He shoved the rusty pistol into the boy’s face. “This gun! The gun a scuba diver my station hired pulled out of the river yesterday. The gun you and your brother were playing with that morning. The gun that went off and killed Harlan. The gun you threw into the river along with your twin brother.”

The boy stopped his struggling and collapsed on the ground. He covered his face with his hands and cried like a baby. “We stole it from a car on a farm.”

Rick Beanblossom stood over the broken boy with the freakish intellect. The Marine was physically and mentally exhausted, still weak from the overdose. But, boy, did he feel alive. Sunshine filtered through the trees and the golden light fell across his wide shoulders. He wrestled his temper under control, now sure of the truth that eluded him for four years. “So you carried your brother’s body halfway to the river and hid him in the woods, and the next morning you got up early and dragged him the rest of the way before search teams could find him?”

Keenan Wakefield was blubbering between the sobs. “Are you going to put this on television and tell everybody?”

“If it was an accident, why didn’t you just tell? Or did you really think you were that smart?”

“It was your fault. You guys wouldn’t let me. You made such a big deal out of it, I couldn’t tell.”

The last angry journalist remembered all of the hype, the endless media coverage, the countless Harlan Wakefield publicity spectacles, stories he himself had written and produced. A file three inches thick. On a slow news day they could always revisit the Wakefield case. A body would be mourned. Buried and forgotten. But as long as he was missing, it was news. And the checks and the sympathy kept on coming.

“Tell me this, college boy-did Mommy and Daddy know?”

Andrea Labore moved with grace briskly through the crowded atrium of the Hennepin County Government Center, thick with media people. The bright morning sun ! was streaming through the tall, glassy design. News pho- ; tographers were not allowed up into the courts, so they j had to stake out the lobby area, watch the elevators, the f entrance, and the exits. One of the photogs shouted after her, “Good story, Andrea. Way to go.”

The two banks of elevators were jammed with a waiting throng of county workers, lawyers, cops, and reporters. Just when Andrea thought she’d have to wait for the next lift to the sixth floor she was recognized. A couple of male lawyers gladly held the elevator door for her, and nobody objected to riding up to court with the newly crowned queen of the evening news.

The hallways on the sixth floor were as overloaded as the elevators. Even those who knew that the chances of getting a seat were hopeless wanted to be there. Andrea pushed through the rabble, and those big brown recognizable eyes did as much to clear the way as did her press pass.

“You did a wonderful job on that Wakefield piece, Andrea.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I just voiced it.”

At the door to Courtroom 659 a male deputy, who of course knew that face, still checked her pass. A female deputy searched her purse. Then she passed through a metal detector and into the courtroom.

Folding chairs had been added along with extra deputies. A cameraman and sound man were double-checking the television equipment. Reporters were leaning over the front railing as eager as children at a circus. But Andrea knew the man she was searching for wouldn’t be up front, he’d be in the back. And that’s where she found him-in the corner chair leaning against the wall. The seat next to him was one of the few still unoccupied. Her colleagues stood and smiled as she apologetically slid past each one of them.

“Andrea, you did a really good stand-up on that Wakefield story.”

“No, it was Rick’s story all the way.”

Andrea Labore slipped into the open seat next to Rick Beanblossom.

His arms were folded. He stared straight ahead, wearing the mask of his usual expression. Then a large woman in a military uniform passed through the metal detector and hunted for a seat. Rick turned and watched her squeeze her fat butt into a chair on the other side of the aisle. It was Dr. Freda Wilhelm, the Ramsey County medical examiner. Andrea remembered her well from her trip to the morgue, had wanted to do a story on her, but Freddie the gossip hound had backed out at the last minute.

The courtroom was packed. The doors were closed. Disappointed moans could be heard from the hallway. Anxiety was high. Andrea leaned just far enough to her right so that her shoulder rubbed up against Rick’s shoulder. She thought he leaned an inch her way. Warring feelings passed through her body, through her mind-warmth, shame, pride, love. In the midst of these feelings she wanted desperately to hold his hand. Then she relaxed a bit, seated beside the familiar and the comfortable. Despite the crowd Andrea Labore had a clear view of the witness stand. She watched with more interest than most when Dixon Bell raised his hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

It was so quiet in the courtroom Dixon Bell could hear people breathing. The ceiling lights seemed brighter from the witness stand. The lone television camera was aimed at his head with the accuracy of a high-powered rifle. The multitude of faces in the gallery seemed a blur, their collective gaze more curious than hostile. He could barely make out the man in the mask in the back of the room, but he couldn’t see who was sitting beside him.

Stacy Dvorchak was dressed in a black suit and a bright pink blouse. She looked as pert as she did professional. She would begin her questioning low-keyed from the defense table. “No theatrics,” she had warned him. “This isn’t television. This is law.”

Prosecutor Jim Fury and his two assistants armed themselves with pens and white legal pads. Judge Lutoslawski folded his hands as if beginning a prayer. The faces in the jury box seemed open and concerned. Whatever he may have said and done earlier, whatever they may have heard, they now seemed genuinely willing to give him his day in court.

Dixon Bell stared at the silver microphone in front of his face. The tired cliche “electricity in the air” never seemed more apt. When he finally opened his mouth to testify, he tried to speak as intimately as was humanly possible. His rich southern tones wafted through the courtroom. The Weatherman spoke for three days.

Day one. Monday, the first day of May. The morning temperature was nearing 70 degrees. Barometric pressure was 30.01 inches and on the rise. The sun was in full force. A soft southerly breeze was up from Missouri-all and all, a great spring day. But Dixon Bell couldn’t see or feel the encouraging weather. Courtroom 659 had no windows. His strength came from the sky. He felt naked and weak without windows.

“What’s it like to work in television news?” Stacy asked him.

“We would go on the air at five o’clock with the evening news and by seven minutes after five the newsroom telephones were ringing with people calling in who didn’t like a story they had just seen. And the phones would go on ringing for an hour. We called it the stupid hour. Seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, viewers called us to complain about what they just saw on the news. No matter what story we did, no matter how we did it. What other business has to put up with that? And on a bad weather day, who do you think took the brunt of the calls? Every year during the first snowfall,

whether it was in October or December, five hundred people would call me on the phone to tell me that it was snowing.”

Jim Fury stood to object. “Your Honor, I fail to see the relevance of this diatribe on television news.”

“I will allow it, Counsel. Overruled.”

Stacy continued from the defense table. “So you often received angry calls?”

“Yes, daily.”

“Threatening calls?”

“Often.”

“Do you remember any threatening calls in particular?”

“Yes, I do. One caller kept at it for nearly two years. He sounded strange, like maybe a feminine man, maybe even a woman, and he kind of tried to make it sound like a southern accent.”

“How often would this person call you?”

“With every change of the seasons.”

Prosecutor Jim Fury was on his feet again. “Your Honor, the state has to object here. The witness is framing his answers in almost poetic fashion.”

Judge Lutoslawski came as close as he would come to losing his temper during the trial. “Mr. Fury, it is my job to see that this man is given a fair trial. It is not fair if you are constantly interrupting his testimony. I will not allow it. Take it up on cross-examine. Getting me good and mad is not going to help the state’s case. Overruled.” He nodded to Stacy. “I’m sorry, Counselor. Please continue.”

“You said this person called you with every change of the seasons. And what would this person say to you?”

Dixon Bell could see that the long trial was wearing down even Judge Polack. The Weatherman seemed barely to hear Stacy’s question. “Um, he always said, ‘I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman.’ ”

“That’s what he said to you?”

“Yes.”

“And you got one of these warnings about the time of each of the seven murders you are charged with?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Jim Fury was ready to again leap from his chair, but thought better of it. He remained quiet throughout the rest of the morning testimony.

“Dixon, can you tell the jury how being on television affected your personal life?”

The Weatherman shook his head in resignation. He sighed. “Oh, boy, how do I relate it to y’all? You almost have to be in the public eye to know. I’ve been followed down the sidewalk. Chased down the freeway. Jumped in supermarkets. Cornered at ball games. They all want to talk about the weather, like that’s all I think about twenty-four hours a day. Almost like they expect me to do something about it. Even with all that, the good far outweighed the bad, until I was arrested, of course. Then …”

After lunch Dixon Bell changed into a clean shirt. He had sweated through the morning shirt. By noontime he could smell his own perspiration. He was thankful for the dark blue suitcoat that had hidden the nervous stains from the jury. He pulled the tie up around his neck. It was a red tie-bright, confident red. He almost felt as if he were dressing for airtime. The only thing missing was his battery pack and a clip-on mike.

When court resumed the afternoon temperature outside was 74°. The wind had increased slightly with the heat. Inside climate-controlled Courtroom 659 Dixon Bell again took the witness stand and was reminded by the judge that he was still under oath. The courtroom seemed much clearer than in the morning, or maybe he was just a little more relaxed. He could make out faces in the crowd. There was that old black man in a seat reserved for family. News anchors from other stations in town were there-unusual for them to actually be working on a news story. Rick Beanblossom was in the back, his stone face intact, his ass having been saved by an unexpected night of cold weather-unexpected to everybody but Dixon Bell. Just think, if the forecast had been even half-assed accurate, the Marine would have dressed warmer and the son of a bitch would be dead now. As it was, he was alive and well, breaking news stories and once again wooing Andrea Labore. He could see her seated next to him, her doubting brown eyes locked on his face, her skeptical ears tuned to every word he spoke.

“Dixon, how do you explain what Mr. Fury calls this ‘mountain of circumstantial evidence’ against you? Circumstances the state claims places you at or near every murder scene?”

The Weatherman thought long and hard before answering Stacy’s question. He measured his response carefully. “I’m not a detective. I can only offer my theory. I think I was followed. I was followed and set up by one of those obsessive fans, a person like Mr. Fury claims I have become. That’s what I think. Whoever killed those women is someone who wanted to be me. For every person on television, there’s a hundred people who tried to get on television and failed. It wouldn’t have been that difficult to find out my schedule, especially if they worked in the newsroom at one time or another.”

“Dixon, let’s go back … back to the beginning and tell the jury how you came to meteorology, how a man from Vicksburg, Mississippi, ended up a TV weatherman in Minnesota.”

And that’s how the afternoon session was spent, with Dixon Bell talking about the less-traveled roads his life had taken, about his natural curiosity, even as a boy, with the weather that gathered over the swamps of Louisiana and then blew across the river into Mississippi. If there was anybody in the court that day who was bored by the strange life of this strange man, they did a good job of masking it. The same in television land. Court TV said the ratings were phenomenal.

Day two. Tuesday, the second of May. A cool front had moved through overnight, dramatically dropping temperatures. Skies were overcast. The barometer was falling. The morning sun was nowhere to be found. Dixon Bell was back on the stand.