The Weatherman (13 page)

“I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman.” Dixon Bell shivered. He’d called again.

” ‘The National Weather Service,’ ” the girl continued, ” ‘also operates the Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, Missouri, and the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. They’re supposed to warn us about severe weather.’ ” Then Marilyn lowered her paper to ask an interesting question. “Mr. Bell, how come they didn’t warn us about the tornado?”

He was staring out the window, and at first the class thought he wasn’t paying attention. But the Weatherman turned, his back to the church. “The tornado was an act of God. It wasn’t the fault of the National Weather Service.”

“But you predicted it was coming,” argued the girl.

“I don’t predict the weather … I read the weather. I read the signs, that’s all.”

“Shouldn’t the weather service be able to read the signs?”

Dixon Bell’s face turned grim. He chose his words carefully. “Our National Weather Service is in trouble,” he explained. “They’re supposed to be undergoing a major modernization, but it’s ten years behind schedule and a billion dollars over budget. Meanwhile, their forecasters have to rely on radar and computers that are so old some of them are breaking down and falling apart. This is leaving parts of the country with no radar or satellite coverage at all. In the United States last year there were ten thousand severe thunderstorms, five thousand serious floods, and more than one thousand tornadoes-more natural disaster than in any other country on earth. Yet the Europeans are light years ahead of us when it comes to forecasting the weather.”

The kids were frightened. It was perhaps too much for them to understand.

To lighten the mood Sister Theresa asked, “How did you become a weatherman?”

“I became a meteorologist in the Air Force. I received much of my training at the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Then I was sent overseas to Vietnam, where there was a war going on and it was very important to know the weather.”

“How do we become a meteorologist?” a boy wanted to know.

“Study hard, and start today,” Dixon Bell said. “Math and science are the most important subjects, but don’t forget English. Learn how to read well and speak well-you’re going to be in the communications business. Study astronomy. Learn about the stars and the planets. When you get into high school and college, you’ll have to study things like algebra, calculus, and trigonometry. Then you’ll major in meteorology or physics. In fact, the University of Wisconsin right over there in Madison has one of the finest meteorology departments in the country. I lectured there yesterday.”

“Can girls be meteorologists?” Marilyn asked.

“Heavens, yes. We need women badly in meteorology. Who would you rather watch give the weather on TV … a pretty girl-” the Weatherman raised his hands and growled-“or a big, ugly monster like me?”

Rick Beanblossom was watching an afternoon movie on the monitor. John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara were starring in McLintock. The Duke, his old hero, was chasing the fiery redhead, dressed only in her underwear, through a western town; the time had come to teach the bitch a lesson. The newsroom was bustling, most of the reporters having returned from the field. An unfinished story glowed on his computer. A fresh bouquet of flowers glowed next to it. Rick glanced up at the row of clocks on the overhead beam. He had a three o’clock appointment in the news director’s office, God bless. Ideas for investigative stories were on the agenda.

Andy Mack stuck his wrinkled face with the cauliflower ears over the partition. In his day, back when student athletes played three sports, he had been a Big Ten wrestling champion. In the early forties he played Gold Gopher football alongside Heisman Trophy winner Bruce Smith. He could put a shot Olympic-distance. After the war Andy went into radio. One day he walked down the hall to the new TV studio and read the weather because nobody else would do it. Now, two generations later, his son, Chris Mack, was a news producer at the station and his daughter, Jill, worked down the hall in programming. But it hadn’t gone well for Andy. His wife of forty years died a year back; then Dixon Bell took over his on-air job. The old man was now wallowing in alcohol and self-pity, a pioneer in television reduced to a messenger boy.

“Did you see it on the wire?” Andy asked. “A plane crashed and burned near Duluth.”

“Big plane or little plane?”

Andy read the printout. “A Cessna 172.”

“Single engine. Seats four. Fatals?”

“Nothing yet.”

Rick thought about it a second. “Have Gayle call our station in Duluth and see if the N number on the plane is still visible. If you can get me the N number, I can find out who it belonged to and where it was going.”

The small plane crash story didn’t interest him as much as the movie. John Wayne was chasing Maureen O’Hara across the street, town folks falling in line to cheer him on. The masked producer was grinning. His phone rang.

Rick Beanblossom had two telephone lines-his regular line, and the odd number the newsroom called dateline. Only a select few knew this odd number. He looked over at the phone and saw the blinking red light. It was dateline. Maureen O’Hara was screaming. Rick shut her up faster than John Wayne could and picked up the phone. “Beanblossom.”

“What have you done for me lately?”

“That’s my line,” Rick said. He picked up a sharp pencil. “What can I do you for?”

“Well, you never did give me my Pulitzer Prize.”

“Sorry, I spent it.”

“How much was the actual prize?”

“Two thousand dollars. And they gave me a piece of paper that looks like a high-school diploma. Oh, yeah, and I got a free lunch.”

“For all the hubbub it’s rather a cheap-ass prize, isn’t it?”

“There are so many journalism awards out there they’ve become meaningless. If you’re smart like me, you cash in on it as soon as possible.”

“Are you writing that novel?”

“I’m working on it. But it’s not easy to write news all day and then go home and write a book.”

“I’ll bet. I’ve got something for you, but you can’t use it.”

“Unless?”

“Unless there’s another parking ramp-like murder.”

“That’s a strange twist, excuse the pun.”

“Is it a deal? And I won’t excuse the pun.”

“Okay, it’s a deal. What have you got?”

“The two parking ramp murders and the Hudson murder are all relative.”

“All relative?” Rick laid down his pencil. The news was a kick in the head. He lowered his voice. “What are you saying-same killer?”

“They’re all relative.”

“Don’t play games with me. Minneapolis police are still claiming the ramp murders are separate.”

“The Wisconsin girl was strangled same as the others. Her hair was tied around her neck after she died.”

“Do you know what this means?”

“That’s why you can’t use it. But one more murder and any idiot will be able to see the connection.”

“What kind of man are we looking for?”

“Right now we’re looking for an it.”

“A woman?” asked Rick.

“The no-rape factor bothers me. No mutilation. No calling card. That’s very unmale.”

“Description?”

“First ramp murder, suspect may have been wearing a mask.”

“You mean like mine?”

“Relax. We checked you out. You didn’t do it-goddammit.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. Suspects?”

“We don’t have squat. But I’m going to get the son of a bitch. This one is mine.”

Dateline went dead.

Rick hung up the phone. He punched up
CNN
on the monitor and began thinking. Do as he did with the Wakefield kidnapping. Start a file. Gather all available info on the three murders. Collect all public documents on the victims, especially autopsies. See Freddie, the Ramsey County medical examiner. Hit the library and the bookstores for the latest books on serial killers. Do a computer search for related articles. Research the history of murder in Minnesota. Find experts, preferably some new faces who’d look good on television. Save all tapes from the killings. Do that right now. Videotape is expensive; most of it is erased and used over again.

Rick Beanblossom started down the hall to the resource center. Check all police sources. Cultivate some new ones. Be careful-cops can’t be trusted, with his one exception. Feel out other reporters around town, see what they’ve got. Brief Jack Napoleon, God bless. He swore to himself as he jogged past the edit rooms. Only a fraction of his knowledge would make it onto the air. It was stories like this that made him wish he still worked for the newspaper. Television can tell a story first, but they can never tell it best.

At three o’clock Rick Beanblossom was dutifully seated in Jack Napoleon’s office. The autumn sun was streaming through the windows. He gazed up at the painting of Jesus Christ rising through the clouds. Rick didn’t have a religious bone in his body. He was a pagan, he worshipped the seasons. On the wall behind the news director’s desk was a degree from the University of Chicago. Jack Napoleon was a physics major, an odd degree for television.

Napoleon began candidly. “We’ve had a good working relationship, Rick. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. So far that’s worked out fine. But how did you know I was considering you for a pornography investigation?”

“How do you know I know?”

Napoleon smiled at the little game. “It’s not the first time your leather nose has sniffed confidential information out of this office. Be careful, Rick. Clancy promised you a free hand when you came over here, and I’ve honored that. You can moan and groan all you want about fluff news, but your stories get on the air-even the ones I don’t especially care for.”

It is an inexorable fact in the television business-hang around too long and you’ll end up taking orders from college graduates years younger than yourself. For Rick Beanblossom this age difference wasn’t easy to accept. Jack Napoleon was a member of the first generation in American history that didn’t have a war to call their own. Rick’s resentment of this baby-faced sycophant and his whole draft-free generation ran deep.

What happened in television news, at least at the local level, was that an entire generation of leadership was skipped. The veterans of World War II, television’s pioneers, hung on until the end. But their children, the baby boomers, got their news credentials and then got out, most of them ending up in corporate America. When the old GIs retired, the newsrooms were passed on to this baby-faced generation, a generation trained in demographics, market share, and high technology. They couldn’t carry on the news tradition because they didn’t know what it was.

About once a month Jack Napoleon’s ego would get the best of him and he’d videotape sanctimonious editorials to be aired at the end of the news show. They were usually safe subjects-drug abuse, improved education, family values. The news director called these little chats “Time to Care.” The news producers called them “Time to Puke.”

There were few people the man in the mask couldn’t intimidate, so Jack Napoleon wisely dropped the confrontation and asked for investigative ideas. Rick Beanblossom briefed the news director on the new information his source had given him, including the fact they could not yet use it.

Jack Napoleon was ecstatic. He thought it could be the story of the year-perhaps the story of the decade. “I want you working with a reporter on this from the beginning.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“I’m thinking Andrea Labore.”

“That’s it-I’m out of here.” Rick Beanblossom jumped from the chair and started for the door.

“Sit down, Rick!”

He turned. “She does puppy-dog stories.”

“Sit down and relax.”

Rick dropped back into the chair.

“The soft news was my doing,” Napoleon told him. “She came here right out of grad school. No small-market experience. She had to learn the ropes. We’re moving her to harder news, starting with the election. You’ve seen her Ellefson stuff.”

“It’ll never work.”

“You’re an investigative journalist. She was a cop. Sounds like a perfect team to me.”

“She blew away a burglar one night, then quit. Hardly qualifies her as the next Sherlock Holmes.”

“She’s the brightest, most attractive woman in news. If we couple that face of hers with-”

Rick interrupted. “You mean a pretty face with a no face is the perfect combination.”

“Don’t get smart with me. I mean with her face and your research and your writing, we’re going to end up with an award-winning story.”

“Is that what you’re after? An award? Some promotion material?”

“Oh, come on, Rick, did you have these ethical qualms when the Star Tribune hyped your Pulitzer Prize to high heaven?”

There was a sharp rap on the door. Gayle the Ghoul burst into the office. From the smile on her face it looked as if she’d just won the Minnesota lottery. “Get this-what a great story! That plane that crashed in Duluth, it was carrying the Republican nominee for governor, what’s-his-name?”

“Is he dead?” Rick wanted to know.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Fried to a crisp.”

“Did we get tape?”

The day before Christmas was a slow news day, and at the Channel 7 assignment desk Gayle the Ghoul was desperate for stories. She tore through the daybook. “It’s tough when we get all our stories from press releases. We should go back to using the newspaper. Who’s on call tonight?” she shouted.

“Andrea,” yelled producer Chris Mack from his desk.

Gayle stuck her head into the dispatch shack behind her and briefed the new kid. “I want you to listen extra close for house fires. Find me one of those fires where all of their Christmas presents get burned up, and the kids are standing outside crying, and they set up a special fund for them-that kind of shit. We do a story like that every year.” The phone was ringing. Gayle grabbed it. “Assignment desk,” she barked.

“Um, my name is Princess Afton. I’m fourteen years old and I live in Afton.”

The girl sounded retarded. Gayle rolled her eyes.

“I watch Dixon Bell every night. And, um, I know that man on your TV show killed those ladies.”