The Weatherman (27 page)

Angelbeck tightened the noose in his tie. “Really? What’s his name?”

The lieutenant unfolded the printout. “Bell, Dixon Graham.”

Les Angelbeck went cold. “Dixon Bell?”

Donnell Redmond read the
AFIS
printout again. “Yeah, that’s what it says here. Dixon Graham Bell. Vicksburg, Mississippi.” The lieutenant looked into the horrified eyes of Captain Les Angelbeck. “Ain’t he that TV weatherman?”

“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury; “I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.”

-Lewis Carroll

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

And then the policeman comes and they done take the Weatherman away.”

Les Angelbeck was furious. The arrest was a media circus. They hadn’t even begun to make their case when events spun out of control. At the booking center he pushed and cajoled his way to the front of the pack-a pack of his own kind. His leathery face was almost up against the glass that viewed the garage. The big metal doors at the top of the ramp rolled open. A squad car pulled in, followed by a blue van, then two more squads. The motorcade rolled down the ramp and into the sally port. When the two metal doors dropped closed behind the prisoner’s parade, on popped a red light. A platoon of cops piled out of the vehicles.

“Um, he was at our school talking to us about things we could do to help keep the air clean, ya know, when a bunch of policemen showed up in the doorway… and they wanted to talk to him. Then he never came back,”

More than forty thousand tips. Three hundred investigators. A thousand interviews. Eight thousand written pages of reports. Whole computer programs. And some damn good gumshoeing. No, police didn’t get lucky. They did it the old-fashioned way: they earned it. They were almost sure they had their man.

The infighting began almost immediately. The
BCA
literally had ahold of him. They made the arrest. The governor’s office had a man at the scene. Hennepin County had the most rights to him-four murders. But the Hennepin County jail in Minneapolis was medieval and hopelessly overcrowded. So the decision was made to house him at the Ramsey County jail in downtown St. Paul. The facility was modem, below capacity, and not far from
BCA
offices. Meanwhile, the task force was blaming the governor’s office for alerting the media. And this was no tip; this was an air raid.

“We ran to the windows ‘cause we could see all of your television trucks and stuff outside … and we saw them bring the Weatherman out of the school in handcuffs and put him in the police car. He had his head bent down really far … but you could tell he was crying.”

The detention center fell ghostly quiet as they led the Weatherman through the electronically controlled doors and into the brick booking area. Dixon Bell’s puffy face was ash white. His eyes were bloodshot. His suit coat was off. The tie around his neck was askew. His shirt was coming untucked. The shiny steel handcuffs on his wrists looked like obscene jewelry. Lieutenant Donnell Redmond had him by the arm.

The lieutenant walked Dixon Bell over to a small table. He unlocked the cuffs and turned the prisoner over to the booking officer, a bear of a man in a brown-and-tan deputy sheriff’s uniform. The Weatherman was asked to empty his pockets into a metal box. Each valuable was recorded on paper. Then the deputy led him over to a machine with two video monitors for eyes. It resembled an instant cash machine. The army of cops followed.

“What is this thing?” Dixon Bell asked in a soft, shaky voice everybody could hear.

“It’s a fingerprinter,” the deputy told him. “It’ll record your fingerprints.” “How does it work?”

“I’ll just roll your fingers across the glass plate one at a time, and you can see your print on the TV screen there.”

“You mean there’s no ink?” “No ink. I’ll show you. Give me your hand.” Dixon Bell reluctantly held out his big left hand. The deputy took hold of it, and as the fingers rolled across the lighted glass the black lines of his fingerprints appeared on the monitors, where they were recorded for computer analysis. The Weatherman forced an ironic smile. “I’m glad television is finally being put to some good use.”

The deputy smiled too. His gruff looks were deceiving. “This contraption has made my job a hell of a lot easier.”

Fingerprint expert Glenn Arkwright brushed by Les Angelbeck. He stepped forward and leaned into the deputy. “Do the left index finger again.”

The deputy was mad. “I know my job, thank you!” Dixon Bell was perplexed by the outburst. For the first time since being dragged through the electronic doors he took a slow look around the room at the convention of law-enforcement officials. The place was wall-to-wall cops. “Sure are a lot of people interested in these fingerprints,” he said. Looking up, he found himself staring at Les Angelbeck, who was standing in the front, leaning on his cane, forever clearing his throat. A veil of betrayal fell over the Weatherman’s face, and he turned his back on the old cop.

Captain Les Angelbeck had first met meteorologist Dixon Bell in Peavey Plaza, a sunken gathering place of concrete steps and water fountains alongside Orchestra Hall on the Nicollet Walk. It was where the old cop requested they get together and talk. Only two days had passed since his biopsy and he still felt weak, but the cool fragrance of a spring breeze worked wonders on his emphysema. The morning chill had yet to lift. The skies were overcast. Man-eating puddles left over from the snowy winter stretched across the plaza. Along one of the concrete steps someone had spray-painted,
WHY
IS IT
OPEN
SEASON
ON WOMEN? The semiretircd cop gazed up at the sturdy blue
IDS
Tower and wondered which one of the windows below the bramble of TV antennas belonged to the Weatherman.

It was the second time in the investigation that Dixon Bell’s name had come up. Angelbeck remembered victim number seven, the little retarded girl from Afton who had a crush on the Weatherman, and that letter she wrote. I saw u on TV. I no u r the killer. Did she mail him that letter? Then came the fingerprint. The Weatherman also fit the description given by the jogger in Hudson, Wisconsin, on the morning of that murder. But the Hudson description was of a person’s back from a distance. Also, they’d have to conduct a search of Bell’s office and home in hopes of finding the girl’s letter. And that fingerprint was only a controversial partial.
FBI
experts in Washington were saying the print belonged to Dixon Bell. Minnesota’s own expert, Glenn Arkwright, wouldn’t go along with them. He wanted more time. So did Les Angelbeck. But circumstantial evidence was mounting, and the governor’s office wanted an arrest.

Angelbeck saw the tall, husky weatherman loping across the street towards Peavey Plaza. He’d been watching him on television since his arrival at Channel 7. Before that he used to watch the avuncular, and somewhat reliable, Andy Mack. Like most loyal viewers, he was upset about the switch. But also like other viewers, he was won over by Dixon Bell-won over by his knowledge, his accuracy, and good old-fashioned southern charm.

He stood to greet him. “Dixon Bell, I’m Captain Les Angelbeck. I’m with the Calendar Task Force.”

They shook hands. “Hello, Captain. Why did you want to meet down here?”

“Cops and newsrooms don’t go together.” He lifted the pack of Marlboros from his coat pocket. “Mind if I smoke? Nasty habit of mine.”

“Do it while it’s still legal.”

Donnell Redmond had seen a Channel 7 News van leaving Como Park minutes after he’d lost the frosty monster in a foot chase. At the time the lieutenant figured they’d heard the strange call on their police band. Now he was asking Angelbeck why a news crew couldn’t see three cops standing over a body in the middle of a frozen lake on a sunny morning. A source in the Channel 7 newsroom told Angelbeck the take-home policy on news vans was very loose. They needed permission from the assignment desk, but the written records of who took what van when were sloppy at best.

They took seats on the concrete steps. The air grew cool. “You’re a veteran, aren’t you, Dixon?”

“Yes. Air Force. Twenty years and out. And you?”

As they spoke the
BCA
was busy perusing the Weatherman’s military records. Dixon Bell’s blood type was the common O positive, the same blood type Officer Shelly Sumter had drawn from the killer’s hands.

“Army,” Angelbeck told him. “World War II. Not many of us left.” He lit his cigarette and pointed at the Weatherman’s face. “I noticed the scar. Wounded?”

Dixon Bell passed a finger down his cheek. “Saigon. Took a beating over a girl.”

“Vietnam, the television war.”

“Yes, the television war. But I don’t think you called me down here to swap war stories, Captain. What can I do for you?”

Angelbeck turned away and coughed. He wiped his mouth and caught his breath. “I’m sure you’ve heard something about it, media has been drumming it up, about these murders being seasonal and weather-related. Maybe it’s silly, but we check out every angle.”

“Not so silly. We know human behavior is affected by the weather. They’ve been doing some interesting studies on it at the University of Wisconsin.”

Angelbeck nodded. “That’s in Madison, right? Didn’t I read you lectured there a couple of autumns ago?”

“I’ve lectured there several times.”

“The thing of it is,” Angelbeck went on, “some of these murders are happening before these big storms. Now is that possible?”

“Sure. There are dramatic changes in the atmosphere ahead of a storm.”

“How much ahead?”

“Usually hours, but in some cases days.”

“If I remember right, you predicted every one of those storms.”

“I don’t predict the weather, Captain. I read the weather.”

The police captain pointed his cane at the low gray ceiling of clouds drifting over the TV antennas atop the
IDS
Tower. “What kind of clouds are those?”

Dixon Bell bent his head skyward. “Those are from the cumulus family. They’re flat, so they’d be stratocumulus. Elevation … about six-thousand feet. Lead gray in color. Unsettled. If they fuse, they’ll bring us some more drizzle tonight.”

“And this wonderful breeze in my face?”

Dixon Bell grinned at the test. “Since it’s in your face, it has to be southeasterly, doesn’t it? And since it’s only rustling that flag in front of Orchestra Hall, you can put the wind speed at four to seven miles per hour.”

Angelbeck blew smoke into the slight wind. “That’s amazing.”

“The weather is so complex and so poorly understood,” Dixon Bell explained. “Most people lack even a basic understanding of how the weather works. It’s a failure of our educational system. We’ll force algebra and book reports down their little throats, but we can’t begin to explain to children where the tornado came from that turned their lives upside down.”

Les Angelbeck shook his head in sad agreement. Then he sighed in frustration. “What kind of man do you think is behind these murders, Dixon?”

“I can’t answer that, Captain. You’re into another science now.”

“But you must have some opinions, with the weather angle and all?”

“No, not really. I’m a meteorologist, not a newsman. We’re a pretty benign group.”

How true, Angelbeck thought, but how cold. And when he reminded the Weatherman that he had boldly predicted the storms preceding the killings, which damn near implicated him in the murders, Bell’s reactions were cool as ice. After years of interviewing murder suspects the cagey cop had his own built-in lie-detector test-a spark of guilt in their eyes, of mendacity in their voice, the nervousness in their hands. But the Weatherman’s hands were as a calm as a summer day. They were also free of scratch marks. From Dixon Bell that day he got nothing-nothing but a meteorologist proud to share his knowledge of the heavens.

Les Angelbeck watched intently as the Weatherman’s big fat fingerprints rolled across the blue TV screen one at a time. The deputy was talking to him. Angelbeck moved a step closer so that he could hear.

“I live in Roseville.” The deputy spoke softly as he rolled the right thumb. “I wasn’t home when the tornado struck, but my wife and kids were. They were watching you and they ran to the basement. We were lucky, I guess. It just blew out the windows, glass everywhere.” The deputy was choking up, trying to say thank you-not easy for a cop booking a murder suspect.

Dixon Bell understood. “This is quite a gadget y’all have here,” he said, changing the subject.

As fantastic as it was to believe, Les Angelbeck felt in his heart that they had the right man. Right under their nose the whole time. Hiding in plain sight. Brilliant. But just because they had the right man didn’t mean they had a good case. Was the
FBI
correct about the fingerprint, or was Glenn Arkwright justified about his doubts? In a jury pool how many, like the teary-eyed deputy, lived in the path of the Eden Prairie tornado? Or like Les Angelbeck, watched Sky High News religiously?

Two days after the Peavey Plaza meeting the police captain paid another visit to Dixon Bell, this time at his town house in Edina. He brought Donnell Redmond with him. Per Ellefson had again been briefed by the two cops. The governor’s office was pressuring them for the arrest.

The Weatherman’s town house was contemporary and suburban. Sparsely furnished. A glorified apartment. The dwelling of a man who cared more for his work than his home. “Am I a suspect?”

“Yes, technically you are a suspect,” Angelbeck informed him.

“Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what this would do to my career? I’m on television!”

Lieutenant Redmond remained sullen as he browsed around the place.

Dixon Bell raged on. “When I took over the weather it was just two minutes of highs and lows and a chance of rain they stuck in between news and sports. They had old men and bimbos with big tits reading it off a TelePrompTer. I made it something. I used it to teach children. I’m negotiating a documentary contract with the station right now. Documentaries are dead. They don’t do them anymore. But they’re going to do them for me.”