Missing Mark (2 page)

In May, Minnesota ladies also control the TV remote, because fishing season opens and their menfolk flock to boats like ducks to water.

Noreen might certainly seize this wedding-dress opportunity to throw the big bosses upstairs a bouquet… I mean a bone.

So I reached for the phone to dial the number in the “Never Worn” newspaper ad to find out who dumped who.

“Y
OU LOOK BEAUTIFUL,”
Madeline Post said as I twirled this way and that in front of a full-length mirror in her little-girl-pink bedroom.

I hadn’t intended to try on the gown. But when she insisted, it did occur to me that it would be harder for Madeline to kick me out the door when she learned I was a reporter if the garment was literally on my back.

The dress looked even better up close than on the e-mail fashion photo she’d sent me the previous night. The kind of dress a fairy-tale princess might wear. Satin. White. Strapless. Fitted at the waist with a ball gown skirt that flared at my hips. Interesting sparkles around the bustline. The dress accentuated my figure, decent but not voluptuous. And it contrasted nicely with my brown shoulder-skimming hair. I’d checked the designer’s reputation online and knew this almost bride had spent nearly fifteen grand on her dream dress.

Not exactly. Her mother had actually written the check. Because, according to Madeline, it was her mother’s dream dress.

“She wanted me to look like Cinderella,” Madeline explained. “But I wanted an outdoor wedding and would have been happy wearing a sundress or even jeans.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“The big wedding meant the world to her. Because she compromised on having the ceremony outside, I compromised on the dress. And she’s done so much to raise me and my brother after our dad died.”

Because I was trying to pose as someone other than a reporter—a self-absorbed bride, in fact—I didn’t follow up on that nugget, though I was quite curious to learn more about her father’s death.

Besides checking out Madeline’s dress, I’d also checked out Madeline and her fiancé, Mark Lefevre. Or rather, I had Lee Xiong, our newsroom computer geek, check them out with a crime database he’d assembled from several law enforcement and court agencies. Xiong came to the United States as a toddler refugee from Laos. He flourished in Minnesota, despite his parents’ poverty and the state’s winters, and became a respected producer at Channel 3.

His cyber report showed the bride had a clean record here in the state, while the groom had been picked up on a minor marijuana possession charge a decade earlier that netted nothing more serious than a small fine and the requirement that he attend drug-education classes.

Madeline’s place was not far from mine. I’d left her name, phone number, and address with Xiong along with instructions for him to call the cops if he didn’t hear from me in three hours.

Normally I wouldn’t have hesitated answering her ad alone, but the recent Craigslist nanny murder—in which a disturbed young man posed as a local mother in need of child care before killing the coed who answered the ad—did cross my mind and made me more cautious than usual about meeting strangers in nonpublic places.

Those precautions might not save my life, but they’d make it easier to find my body if things got ugly. And this way my parents could console themselves with the knowledge that at least they were able to give me a Decent Christian Burial. And I could console myself that at least my murder would lead the late news although I wouldn’t put it past Channel 3 to bump me down to the second section just so the station had something lurid to tease at the top of the show and again at the first break to hold viewers into the second quarter hour of the newscast.

I’d found Madeline and Mark’s engagement announcement and photo online. At twenty-four, she was ten years younger than her fiancé. Her face pretty, not stunning. Her most noticeable feature, her splendid golden hair, long and flowing.

The first thing I observed about Mark was an odd, diagonal scar across his forehead. Not a lightning bolt like Harry Potter’s, yet still mysterious in this age in which plastic surgery can fix most facial flaws. Mark’s hair was dark, frizzy, and shoulder-length, and he had black Groucho Marx eyebrows and mustache.

She was beauty to his beast.

I read that he was a comedian and I wondered if that was supposed to be a joke or a euphemism for unemployed. Especially when I saw that Madeline came from MONEY Big money. Old money. Trust-fund money. Her great-great-grandfather on her mother’s side had been a founding partner of one of Minnesota’s Fortune 500 companies—a maker of countless useful office products and industrial items most folks take for granted. Her mother was sitting on an impressive pile of family money and company stock. So when Madeline spoke of all her mother had done to raise her, well, she wasn’t describing working a shift job and stretching a baked chicken over an extra meal.

Which made me mildly curious just why she was selling her never-worn wedding gown. And extremely curious why it was never worn to begin with.

“So what do you think?” Madeline asked, startling me out of my internal dialogue. “How about two thousand dollars?”

It was a steal at that price. But my bridal days were over and it was time to level with her.

“You see, Madeline,” I began.

“Okay, fifteen hundred.”

While she came from money, it was quite possible the young Miss Post might not have actual access to it yet, or might even have run through her share already. But she clearly wanted the dress gone. And a minute later, after I explained who I was, she wanted me gone, too.

I’m generally considered among the best-known TV reporters in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, so I was surprised, yet pleased, when Madeline didn’t recognize me right away at the door. Not everyone watches the news, I reminded myself, as she now fumed visibly.

“You’re a reporter?” Madeline’s voice trembled with outrage and her wide blue eyes got wider. “I thought you were interested in the dress.”

“I am interested,” I assured her. “I think the dress might make a great story.”

“A
story?”
She threw open the door and waved me out of her condo with all the gusto I had anticipated. I turned and asked if she minded unzipping me first.

“Think of it as a free television ad,” I said. “Soon as we get that dress on the late news, you’ll have a bidding war.”

That image stopped her. She shut the door.

“Do you think I care about the money?”

Madeline buried her face in her hands and started to cry. Tears made her engagement ring sparkle like the diamond it was—a real big one, at least two carats. Between sobs, she grabbed me like the sister I wasn’t and dripped wet splotches all over the expensive satin dress that still clung to my figure.

I generally don’t like people I don’t know touching me. But I didn’t say anything because I sensed Madeline’s embrace meant she would soon share her deepest secret.

  was meandering my car through a spaghetti of freeway construction on my way back to the station when the assignment desk called to direct me toward University Avenue near the state Capitol. Just a mile away I got the word, “Officer down, shots fired.”

Officer down
.

I pushed a flashback from my mind of a cop and husband—mine— who didn’t get out alive when a building exploded. I no longer wore Hugh Boyer’s ring on my finger, but he remained in my heart and on my mind, especially when I heard news of any cop in danger on the job.

I wasn’t the first reporter at this crime scene, but I also wasn’t the last. A middle-aged gawker across the street from the yellow police tape told me an ambulance had left less than ten minutes ago.

“Lights? Siren?” I asked.

“Full speed,” he said. “Flashing and screaming.”

That was good news. If no ambulance was called, that was a bad sign. If the ambulance left the scene with no commotion, that was also a bad sign. Both scenarios would suggest that the victim was already dead and everyone was waiting for the medical examiner. That the ambulance seemed to be racing death suggested the officer was still alive, the race still winnable.

Three television cameras were on sticks, photographers shooting the aftermath of the crime. Luckily, one of the cameras was ours. At least I’d have video to go with my live shot. Now I needed facts.

I hadn’t worked with this particular cameraman before. Adam Treguboff had joined the Channel 3 news team a couple of months ago, just before I rejoined the newsroom. I’d been fired for insubordination last fall (according to my personnel file) but then wooed back (according to my paycheck). He once offered to buy me a drink, just because we were both new. I knew a line when I heard one, so I corrected him on two levels: I wasn’t new and I wasn’t interested, even though he had nice shoulders—a physical trait mandatory for hoisting a broadcast camera to eye level at short notice.

According to the calendar, as well as my body clock, I’d slept alone 674 nights. Yes, I wanted to end my no-sex dry spell, but when I did, it wasn’t going to be with a source or a news colleague. I knew better.

Tonight, at the scene of breaking news, Treguboff helpfully pointed to a St. Paul K9 vehicle surrounded by other cop cars.

“Probably trying to pick up a suspect trail,” I said.

“I don’t think so, Riley,” he answered. “Most of the action seemed to center on the K-9 car. And I have yet to see any dog.”

The St. Paul police media guy indicated he’d make a statement in twenty minutes—a gift to the TV crews so we could take him live at the top of our newscast. The live trucks had their microwave dishes in the air, searching for a signal in the sky. I ducked inside the front seat to check my hair and makeup in the rearview mirror. Blush, powder, lipstick. Not perfect, but a good enough touch-up until the station switches to high-definition next year, revealing every facial flaw.

A second Channel 3 crew had been dispatched to Regions Medical Center for updates on the officer’s condition. But so far the doctors weren’t talking, and the victim’s family was sheltered in a back waiting room off-limits to the public and the media.

Our police reporter had just learned the identity of the injured officer even though the name had not been officially released. Cop buzz described the victim as a female K9 officer who’d been honored recently for a major drug bust. That crew headed for her home to interview neighbors and try to obtain a photograph.

Because of intense public interest, cop shootings automatically become team reports for news organizations. The rest of the newscast is typically abandoned. Weather and sports cut short. That day’s timeless feature story held for a weekend newscast.

Through my earpiece I heard our lead anchor, Tom McHale, setting up the news of the day. I picked up his toss, and from the field I filled time with details about tension in the neighborhood as we waited for the St. Paul police public information officer to step to the microphone.

((RILEY/LIVE))
A ST. PAUL POLICE OFFICER
WAS SHOT ABOUT AN HOUR
AGO … FOUR BLOCKS FROM
THE STATE CAPITOL.
NO SUSPECTS ARE IN
CUSTODY … NO MOTIVE
HAS BEEN DETERMINED …
WE JOIN POLICE AT A LIVE
BRIEFING FOR THE
LATEST…

The cop explained that officer Emily Flying Cloud was currently undergoing surgery. She’d apparently been leaving a restaurant with her K9 partner when she was shot from a distance. A bystander dialed 911 from his cell phone. According to a witness, her dog had snarled around the officer’s fallen body and kept everyone else back until the first squad arrived.

A newspaper reporter inquired whether her dog’s actions might have delayed medical attention. The public information officer dismissed that by saying first responders were on the scene in just over a minute and none of the gathering crowd was trained to render assistance anyway.