Stalking Susan (13 page)

CHAPTER 21

T
his time I found a bouquet of blooms tucked under the windshield wipers of my car when I left work the next night.

“At least they’re not dead lilies,” Malik said. I called him to videotape the yellow petals before they wilted any further and fell out. “This might not have anything to do with our story. What else have you done to piss anyone off lately?”

“Except they’re black-eyed Susans,” I pointed out. “That’s the name of the flower. Black-eyed Susans.”

“I’m a rose man myself. A nice, safe flower, suitable for all occasions. Nobody resents roses.”

Malik followed me home and walked inside with me to check things out. I scanned a couple shelves in my home library and pulled out a book called
The Meaning of Almost Everything.
It listed supposed meanings of foods, colors, shoes…I flipped to the chapter on flowers.

Lily meant “purity.” Black-eyed Susan meant “justice.”

“Hey, those are good things,” Malik said. “Purity. Justice. It might not mean someone’s out to get you. It might mean someone’s rooting for you. Maybe a behind-the-scenes cheerleader encouraging you to keep on digging in that garden of clues.”

“Except my flowers are always dead,” I reminded him.

“Someone’s out to get you.”

I scanned the list of plants. Could be worse. Begonia meant “beware.” And we all know what hemlock means.

“What kind of plant is that?” Malik pointed to some dried leaves and white berries hanging on the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

“Mistletoe. And don’t ask.” Boyer had insisted on year-round mistletoe, and I couldn’t bring myself to take it down.

Malik left to do errands on his way home. I was in a research mode, so I grabbed the baby name book I’d given Boyer for his birthday. He had wanted a pack of kids, and even if I wasn’t ready to play mom yet, he was plenty ready to pick names. I found the
S
page and learned that Susan was one of the most popular girl names in America during the fifties and sixties.

SUSAN
(HEBREW) “LILY” APOCRYPHAL: AN ACCUSED ADULTERESS SAVED BY THE WISDOM OF DANIEL.
Siusan, Sosanna, Sue, Sukey, Suki, Susana, Susanetta, Susann, Susanna, Susannah, Susanne, Susette, Susi, Susie, Susy, Suzanna, Suzanne, Suzette, Suzi, Suzie, Suzy, Suzzy, Zsa Zsa.

At the mention of adultery I couldn’t help thinking of Susan Redding. Could this be a clue? While the other victims certainly weren’t virgins, I didn’t think they were adulterers. But I remained a little fuzzy on the nuances of adultery. If a married woman slept with a man other than her husband, that was obviously adultery. But what if a single woman had sex with a married man? Was she also an adulteress, or just a slut?

The dictionary was no help, so I dusted off the Bible and skimmed the book of Daniel for such wisdom. His episode in the lion’s den was comforting. His vision of the four beasts was confusing. But I found no mention of any Old Testament character named Susan.

I tore the Susan page from the baby name book and stuffed it in my briefcase.

L
IGHT SHINING THROUGH
stained glass always seems heaven sent. The church across the river in St. Paul was empty the next morning except for a few devout parishioners kneeling in the back pews. I stuck my head into the parish office looking for Father Mountain.

“He’s hearing confession,” a middle-aged lady behind a desk told me.

I took a closer look and realized the kneeling parishioners were actually in line for absolution. I decided to wait for a few minutes of Father Mountain’s undivided attention. I was lucky the whole third grade of the parochial school wasn’t ahead of me.

Father Mountain had been my rural parish priest when I was growing up, overseeing life and death in the Spartz family. He’d baptized me and buried my great-grandpa Riley a couple months later. Over the years he’d been promoted to larger, more urban parishes. We’d become reacquainted several years ago when I was working on a story about charity fraud. As an adult I had fallen away from the Church, partly because of official teachings, partly because of sex scandals. But I still believed in God. That belief took a beating when Boyer died, but Father Mountain was a merry man of the cloth whose company I enjoyed. He’d forgiven me for getting married in Vegas rather than letting him do the honors, and he had repeatedly urged me to forgive myself for the guilt I still carried about my husband’s murder.

When my turn for confession came, I knelt inside the small, curtained booth and put my face next to the divider screen.

“Bless me, Father,” I whispered. “I talked back to my boss and was mean to the mayor.”

“Riley, is that you? What are you doing here?”

“I have a question about adultery.”

“Are you here to make a confession? You’re overdue, but this is not the sort of sin I expected.”

“No, this is work-related, not soul-related. I checked the dictionary. I checked the Bible. I’m a little embarrassed to be talking sex with a man who embraces celibacy, but I figured you’d have the answers.”

“How many people are behind you in line?”

“Just one. A lady with blue hair and a fur-collared coat. She told me to go ahead, she’s still examining her conscience.”

“That’s Mrs. Tate,” he told me. “Comes twice a week. Doesn’t mind waiting ’cause she likes to visit afterward. We trade church jokes. By the way, did you hear the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the minister in a fishing boat?”

“No, but I’m kind of on deadline now.”

“All right, so what’s your question?”

“If an unmarried woman sleeps with a married man, is she an adulteress?”

“No. Technically, she’s a fornicator. Adultery is complicated. The biblical concept had less to do with the sin of sex than the sin of ‘trespassing’ on another man’s property. It created a double standard because for the act to be adultery, the woman had to be married. So if a married man had relations with another man’s wife, the Bible calls them both adulterers. But if he sleeps with an unmarried woman, he’s in the clear.”

“That is so unfair!”

“Keep your voice down or Mrs. Tate will think I’m doling out heavy penance today. Absolutely it’s unfair, which is why Church tradition, to preserve the sanctity of marriage, considers an affair adulterous if either party is married.”

“I was researching the name Susan.”

“I watch the news. What did you find?”

“An accused adulteress saved by the wisdom of Daniel. But I don’t know what that means. I read Daniel but couldn’t find any Susan.”

“Actually, it’s Susanna. And the questions you’re raising deal with some of the Church’s most intricate theology. You shouldn’t pop into a confessional looking for quick answers. You should join a Bible study group.”

“I don’t have the time or the heart for that level of research right now, Father. It’s a long shot that this is even related to what I’m working on. How about you just give me the basics? Who’s Susanna?”

“All right, but I want you back here for a real confession when this is over.”

“Deal. Susanna?”

“She was a beautiful, pious wife who was lusted after by two Jewish elders who schemed to blackmail her. They threatened to accuse her of having a lover unless she slept with them. She refused, choosing to fall into their power and face death rather than sin before the Lord.”

“This story is in the Bible?”

“Daniel, chapter thirteen.”

“I didn’t see it, and I just looked this morning.”

“What kind of Bible?”

“I don’t know. Probably one I took from a hotel room. Is that a sin?”

“Different faiths use different Bibles. Each believes theirs to be the true interpretation. The Roman Catholic version has more books than the Protestant one, including two extra chapters of Daniel. Stop by my office on your way out and tell my secretary I said to give you a real Bible.”

“So about Susanna? Saved not stoned?”

“That’s where the wisdom of Daniel comes in. Read it for yourself. It’s time for Mrs. Tate now. In the meantime, give me ten Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Marys.”

CHAPTER 22

M
y conscience was clear.

Plenty of reporters simply rush up to the target of an investigation, stick a camera in their face, and yell, “Why are you cheating people?”

That’s called an ambush interview.

The ensuing chaos often results in good TV—it can certainly help the pacing of a slow story otherwise cluttered with documents and talking heads. But it seldom results in a substantive answer to the question of why people are being cheated. There’s also something unsportsmanlike about playing the championship match with an opponent who doesn’t realize the game is under way.

I prefer landing an on-camera/sit-down/face-to-face interview because…well…sometimes crooks say the darnedest things. Like the time I confronted a shady car dealer about lease improprieties and he blurted out, “We’re not intentionally scamming them.”

Why would any adversary agree to such a showdown? For some, their ego can’t fathom that their trickery has been discovered. Others, deep down, think they can explain it all away with fancy words or complicated math.

On my end, it’s important not to let on that the jig is up. So when I first called Dr. Petit, I didn’t say, “The Texas lab just confirmed Lucky’s ashes are a fraud and I’m doing a story on what a horrible excuse you are for a vet.”

What I said was: “I’d like to interview you for a consumer story on pet grief and cremation.”

I hoped the hunger for hoopla might make him bite. After all, free publicity could bring a fresh menu of gullible victims. Dr. Petit, however, seemed to sense this television opportunity was too good to be true.

“Thanks, but I don’t care to be included in your story.”

The gang at
60 Minutes
doesn’t go away so easily and neither do I.

“Oh.” I feigned surprise. “Any particular reason?”

Long pause. “I’m not terribly photogenic.”

“Oh, everybody says that. We have special lights that are very flattering.”

“I’m sorry, I’m just a poor public speaker.”

“Don’t worry. This will be taped, not live. That’s much easier.”

“No thanks, but maybe I could give you the names of some other veterinarians.”

We bluffed back and forth before it became clear I needed to show my hand. My lawyer is quite firm on this point: the story can’t air unless the subject gets a chance to respond to the allegations.

It might seem unequivocal that it must be illegal to jump out from behind a bush and chase someone with a camera, but it’s not, and TV crews actually do it for sound legal reasons. The best way for Channel 3 to prove (in a court of law if I were sued) that Dr. Petit was given the opportunity to respond is to show a videotape of that opportunity to the jurors. If what they end up watching is me pursuing the plaintiff down the street while he covers his face with a magazine, ignoring my questions, whose fault is that?

“Even though it was inconvenient,” my lawyer would probably argue, “my client went the extra mile to give the plaintiff one last chance to explain why he was cheating people.”

It might not be Media Law 101, but then I’d never been sued, either.

P
ETIT FORMALLY DECLINED
an on-camera/sit-down/face-to-face interview to respond to allegations he was running a pet cremation scam.

“You put that on the air and you’ll hear from my lawyers!” he yelled into the telephone.

So yes, my conscience was definitely clear about ambushing him. Now it was simply a matter of logistics. Clinic versus home? Clinic was better. Home ambushes make me feel like a jerk; and neighbors sometimes report vehicles that don’t belong on the street. Morning versus evening? Morning was better. The clinic opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 6 p.m. Sunrise came just after seven, sunset just after five. Malik and I needed daylight for our mission.

We moved the van into position while it was still dark so nobody would notice us climbing in back, out of sight. We waited for Dr. Petit to drive up to work in his white Cadillac. The overcast day meant good light without shadows. At eight-thirty he pulled his vehicle into his usual space, about forty feet from the front door of the veterinary clinic.

“Patience,” I whispered. Malik kept the van door ajar so he’d be able to move quickly. I wore a wireless microphone to record my voice and Petit’s in case we were out of audio range of the camera mike.

“I’ll go first and approach him casually,” I said. “He might say something useful if he doesn’t see the camera and freak. You keep inside and shoot through the window.”

“But if he bolts, I’m after him.” He put a finger to his lips and started rolling.

Dr. Petit got out of his shiny Caddy and locked the door. Good. Now we had him trapped between two locked doors. Whichever direction he went, clinic or car, he’d have to fumble with a key to get away. He was halfway to the clinic when I reached him.

“Hello, Dr. Petit, I’m Riley Spartz from Channel 3. We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

I stood between the veterinarian and the clinic door, careful not to block Malik’s camera angle.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Why are you misrepresenting pet cremations?” Short, precisely phrased questions edit well.

“You want my response? This is my response!”

He reached out his hand. In his grip, a small, odd-looking gun.

It’s funny what things register when you’re paralyzed with pain. In the split second before I crashed to the ground, I noticed Petit was wearing a necktie featuring a coiled snake, fangs ready to strike. The last thing I remember was Malik rushing past me, screaming what was supposed to be my next line, “Why are you cheating people?”

“S
HOCKED IS THE
word.” Malik was talking to Noreen on his cell phone. “Can you believe it? The son of a bitch Tasered her.”

Dr. Petit had delivered at least 50,000 volts of electricity to my body with a Taser stun gun. The impact incapacitated me. I hit the dirt flat, like a brick, with no chance to fling out an arm and break my fall. Out for only five seconds, I still felt dazed moments later. Malik picked gravel from my face and hair and helped me stagger back to the van.

“She’ll be okay,” he assured Noreen, before answering the question foremost on her mind. “Absolutely I was rolling.”

T
HE ESSENCE OF
vertigo still clung to me as I hobbled into the newsroom. Word of my ambush-gone-amok had spread throughout the building.

The station suits waited in Noreen’s fishbowl office to watch the electrifying tape of my mouth open wide in pain like a largemouth bass.

I’d already eyeballed the encounter through the camera viewfinder on the way back and had no interest in seeing it on a big screen. But the general manager, station lawyer, promotion director, and Noreen would have paid per view if necessary. I closed my eyes when Malik pressed
play
. I wish I’d closed my ears instead: the audio of my harrowing wail was terse, but torturous. Especially since the bosses kept rewinding the tape.

Over and over I heard: “You want my response? This is my response!”…“Aghhh!”…“Why are you cheating people?”

The fourth time through, I snapped at Malik, “Why are you asking him about cheating people? How come you didn’t ask him about zapping people?”

“I apologize. I am ashamed. All I could think about was where the interview was heading next. When you went down, I didn’t have a plan.”

“You did great, Malik.” Noreen piled on the praise. “Lots of photographers would have dropped the camera and run to help her. You kept taping, and that’s what counts. If you hadn’t, Riley would have been stunned for nothing.”

“During sweeps, this tape is priceless,” added the promotion director. “It might be worth five share points alone. How soon can we get it on the air?”

We’d finished shooting the bulk of the story and just needed stand-ups, reaction from our tipster Toby Elness, and a few fill-in shots. Write. Lawyer. Rewrite. Edit. Air.

“Three days,” I answered.

“Make it four. That will give us more time to promote the hell out of this,” the promotion guy said. The other suits nodded. He headed out the door, leaving the news to us while he concentrated on the marketing.

The rest of the meeting dealt with what kind of legal action, if any, the station should take against Dr. Petit.

“What do you mean, ‘if any’?” I asked. “The guy shot me.”

“But technically you’re not hurt.” Easy for Miles Lewis to say. His most physical activity is sitting behind a lawyer’s desk, crossing his fingers that none of us libels anyone.

“You’d prefer if I were hurt?” I said.

“Absolutely not,” Noreen said. “We need you to write the story.”

“If this had happened in Wisconsin, it would be a slam dunk,” Miles said. “There it’s a felony to even possess a Taser gun, much less use one.”

While Tasers are banned in seven states, it’s perfectly legal for Minnesotans to possess one. Except in St. Paul, which joined Chicago, Washington, DC, and New York in the last couple years to pass special anti-Taser laws. There, cops are the only folks allowed to carry.

Ironically, the only known stun gun deaths nationally have occurred after cops subdued suspects. Whether the perps had bad hearts to begin with, died of a drug overdose, or whether Tasers are actually lethal weapons is debatable, depending on which side of the trigger you’re on. The folks at Taser headquarters are quick to point out that no coroner has ever listed their weapon as a sole cause of death.

“I’m talking about assault charges, not conceal and carry,” I said.

“Yes,” Miles nodded, “but he’ll probably claim he felt threatened. Juries hate the media, they might buy that.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, shaking my head. “Not after my story airs, they won’t.”

“No talk like that,” Miles insisted. “We don’t want to give the impression that you’re doing the story for revenge. The story is the story. If you can’t remain objective, someone else has to take over.”

That got my attention. “I’m not giving up this story, too.”

Miles spoke slowly, deliberately using simple language instead of legalese. “I’m only pointing out that if the station runs the tape ad nauseam but complains it was a crime, then it looks like we’re trying to have it both ways, that we’re also benefiting from the crime.”

“I’m worried pressing charges makes us look whiny,” Noreen said.

Miles disagreed. “I’m actually more worried about looking like losers if he gets acquitted. Then Petit goes from villain to victim.”

“Could somebody please worry for maybe ten seconds about sending a message not to mess with reporters?” I asked.

They looked at me like I was daft.

B
ACK AT MY
desk three messages flashed. I listened to a voice mail from Susan Redding’s best friend, Laura Robins. Since my lunch with Dr. Redding, I’d left several messages for her, but until now she seemed to be ducking me.

“Hi, Riley,” the message went, “I’m down in the Cities today and hoped we might get together privately. Call me on my cell.”

Her wanting to meet was good news. Her using the word “privately” was bad news. That suggested no camera. But anxious to learn more about Mayor Skubic’s early years and needing a breather before writing the pet cremation story, I set up a late-afternoon appointment with Laura.

Dusty Foster’s mother had left the next message. So grateful for all I was doing to help her son. “I always knew he didn’t kill that woman. I just knew it. Mothers can always tell.”

My own mom also had called. She and my dad live in rural southern Minnesota, far outside Channel 3’s viewing area. She read something in the newspaper about my
SUSANS
story and wanted me to know that they almost named one of my sisters Susan. And could I please send them a dub to watch.

First, sleep. Since I had a couple hours to kill, I sacked out on a sofa in the greenroom. That’s the traditional name for the cubbyhole where guests wait to be interviewed on live shows, and where TV reporters and anchors get fluffed and buffed prior to airtime. “Greenroom” first appeared in the sixteenth century as theatrical vernacular for a behind-the-scenes place for actors to relax before stepping on stage. Why that particular color remains obscure, but Channel 3’s greenroom, like most, is painted green.

Hollywood lights and a makeup counter take up much of the space. Head shots of station reporters and anchors hang on one wall. Celebrity autographs decorate another. President Jimmy Carter. Movie star Dennis Hopper. Tenor Luciano Pavarotti. These names are mingled with a national spelling bee champion, the head of the local Vice Lords gang, and a winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off. But because Minnesota is a huge pro sports market—football, baseball, basketball, and hockey—many of the John Hancocks belong to athletes. Alan Page. Randy Moss. Kirby Puckett. The autograph wall, a faded green compared to the rest of the room, is never painted over.

The greenroom is also a popular crashing place for staff between shifts. I never reached REM sleep because a certain floor director kept opening the door to check if the couch was clear. Just as well, any dreams that afternoon would probably have been haunted by the electrifying sound from the Taser. Eventually Malik shook me awake. Right on time. I’d asked him to play alarm clock while he loaded video clips into the edit cube down the hall. I scrolled through the shots before heading out. By the time I had script approval, he’d be ready to record my voice track and start editing.