Stalking Susan (15 page)

CHAPTER 24

M
ayor Skubic pushed open the front door of Mickey’s on West Seventh Street in St. Paul. I hid my face behind a menu, but he had no trouble spotting my big red hairdo and slipped into the booth across from me. The smell of his cologne mixed with the smell of bacon and eggs and coffee.

“Nice wig,” he said.

I set the menu down and he stared quizzically at me, trying to figure out where he had seen me before, besides on his doorstep Halloween night. In his eyes, I saw confusion, not evil.

“Do you like it?” I took the wig off and dropped it on the table. “Trick or treat.”

I thought there might be a chance he’d hit me so I got there early enough to grab a booth by a window facing street side. I also had Malik waiting outside in the van, rolling tape through the glass.

Mayor Skubic stood up to leave. “I don’t have time for practical jokes.”

“I’m not laughing,” I said. “And neither is Susan Redding.”

“I think I might call your boss about this little stunt.”

“I think I might call your wife.”

The mayor clearly didn’t want to call that bluff. He straightened his tie and walked out without looking back. I finished my coffee, left a five on the table, and headed to work.

O
NE WEEK INTO
the November book and Channel 3 led our closest competition by nearly three ratings points, just under five share points. Mathematically we couldn’t lose, or so the bosses kept whispering, because they didn’t want to jinx the numbers.

“I once owned a dog.” Mike Flagg kept coming up with lame reasons why he should help me with follow-ups to my pieces. “Just think how much easier it would be to catch this killer if we worked together.”

His own stories this month—a rehash on auto title fraud and tips on how to clean up your credit report—had received lukewarm numbers. Viewers expect a ratings war between stations, but few realize the level of competition within a newsroom. I viewed Flagg’s phony offers to help as thinly veiled attempts to steal my story and glory. Politely I declined his assistance and tried to get him to leave by slouching over my desk, pretending to review some critical notes.

“There’s enough angles on the
SUSANS
story for both of us,” he continued. “How about if I handle whether the prison guy should get a new trial?”

“How about if you develop some sources and come up with your own ideas. I enterprised
SUSANS
,” I reminded him. “Originality attracts viewers.”

“Well, that dog story came off the tip line,” he said. “You just got lucky there.”

“Yeah, lucky for me you turned your nose up at it.” I hadn’t forgotten Mike Flagg was one of the reasons Noreen had stuck me with Toby Elness. “Anyway,” I told him, “it’s one thing to get an idea from the tip line. It’s another to know what to do with it.”

“Here’s what you can do with your idea.” He made a gesture the FCC wouldn’t approve of and stomped off.

I spent the rest of the morning researching Mayor Skubic’s background, looking for additional Susan links. I looked through an old file of newsmaker newspaper clips the station librarian kept before Channel 3 joined the computer age.

Mayor Skubic grew up the eldest of five children in an abusive family on the Iron Range. His mother escaped by running off when he was ten. His father reportedly took it out on the kids, tangling often with his oldest boy. Life seemed to improve after his dad died in the mines and Skubic’s grandmother stepped in to raise the kids. Karl Skubic became a mediocre student, star hockey athlete, and owner of a local sporting goods store that slowly grew into a statewide chain. Name and face recognition followed when he started filming TV commercials spoofing sports heroes.

His northern Minnesota roots made it inevitable that when he ventured into politics, it was as a DFLer. After two terms, he’d left a secure seat in the Minnesota House representing voters in the Duluth area. His move to the Twin Cities and success there came unexpectedly. Obvious money rolled in from labor unions, but he also became a crossover candidate, able to garner corporate contributions that normally went to Republican coffers. He ran for mayor on a lark.

An old newspaper photo of him being sworn in as Minneapolis mayor while his wife and grandmother watched jogged my memory about an awkward incident involving Grandma during his first year in office. Nanna Zsa Zsa, as he called her, looked old country then; if she was alive today, she’d be damn old.

She had joined a neighborhood card club in northeast Minneapolis after moving down from the Range. Luck stuck to her like glue—okay, she was a card sharp. Things got ugly when other little old ladies started complaining she was cheating them out of their social security. The Minneapolis newspaper ran a photo of the mayor with one arm wrapped protectively around her while his other arm knocked a camera away as they left the courthouse. The headline read “Leave My Nanna Zsa Zsa Alone.”

Conventional political wisdom might predict voters turning against him. But senior citizens appreciated the family values he had demonstrated by sticking up for his shifty grandma, and they had supported him at the polls. The story was largely forgotten by now. Old news.

“What’s the word on him these days?” I asked Channel 3’s political reporter, Cara Madden. She’d covered the beat longer than I’d been at the station, and knew which politicians owed who favors. She was the only newsroom employee Noreen didn’t mess with. Her core competence insulated her from many of the difficulties aging women TV reporters face. It also didn’t hurt that she had married Minnesota’s Supreme Court chief justice. She could stay on the air longer than Willard Scott; Channel 3 couldn’t chance a legal scuffle.

She pondered my question about Mayor Skubic before summing him up. “Slick, but can be shaken.”

“Ambitious?”

“Content to be mayor, so he says. Realistically, he could make a run for governor. He’s got support from the Range, support in Minneapolis, but I don’t think he’s got the support at home.”

“First lady having second thoughts?”

“Every so often we hear stuff about him and other women, but until his wife makes an issue out of it, it’s off-limits unless we catch him with an intern.”

“He ever come on to you?” I asked.

“He likes to let his fingers linger on mine when we shake hands.” We grimaced simultaneously.

“Okay, so he’s disgusting,” I said. “Think he’s violent?”

“Never heard that.”

“Think he’s got secrets?”

“They all do.”

I told her Mayor Skubic was taking the
SUSANS
case personally, for good reason. After I shared his connection to the first victim, she promised to keep her reporter radar pointed in his direction. We bounced around a couple ideas about a good cop/bad cop scenario. I’d already been cast as the bad cop, and Cara was fine being good cop as long as the role didn’t call for letting the mayor brush up close beside her.

The front desk paged me that I had a guest in the lobby. On my way, I passed Mike Flagg coming out of the audio booth. No doubt to annoy me, he softly sang a lesser-known Elvis tune. “I’d trade ’em all for just one hour of Susan when she tried.”

Oh well, better than “Oh, Susanna.”

L
AST TIME
I’
D
done the heavy lifting of Trying to Be Nice. Now it was Dr. Redding’s turn. He’d made reservations at Zelo, a sophisticated Italian restaurant near the station and popular for business lunches. But he seemed reluctant to get down to business. I became suspicious because instead of teasing me, like everybody else, about my “stunning” story last night, he sympathized. He had clearly done some sleuthing and was treating me with deference. I realized this had nothing to do with dead dogs and everything to do with my dead husband. To steer the conversation in the direction I wanted, I mentioned Susan Victor’s upcoming news conference.

He shook his head. “I just got used to your using my wife’s death for ratings; now you’re telling me there’s someone using it for politics?”

“Yeah. But she’s actually more interested in the other Susans than your wife. Minneapolis is her turf.”

“And you’re doing a story for tonight?”

“Kind of have to. If we ignore criticism about our work, we lose credibility. It’s sort of a journalism rule.”

“So if I want to blast you, you’d put that on the air?”

“I’ll call for a camera right now.” I reached for my cell phone, but he waved me off.

“No. I don’t want my name and face all over the news. It was bad enough when Susan died.”

“It was bad when Boyer died, too.”

I hadn’t meant to say that. We both stayed quiet for a minute, each reliving that day. The shock. The despair. The media. We shared a murdered spouse bond, but it still felt uneasy. I wished our food would arrive. All we had was ice water and crunchy bread.

“At least you were never a suspect,” Redding said.

“Did they think you did it?”

“Briefly, but my DNA cleared me and they verified my alibi.”

“At least you got to watch a trial. Got to look the killer in the eye. Got to watch them lead him away. I got one conspiracy theory after another. The blame never ended.”

“But you don’t think my wife’s killer is to blame, so any comfort I might have derived from looking him in the eye is gone.”

“That is shitty,” I agreed. “Sorry about that.”

“So you think he’s really innocent?”

“I don’t know. Do you think he’s really guilty? Or do you just want him behind bars ’cause she slept with him?”

Lucky for me, our server arrived with plates of pasta. Redding decided to be the professional and ignore my question.

“You would be a terrible therapist,” he observed. “You’re too confrontational. You seem to enjoy making people angry.”

“You should see me when the camera’s rolling.”

So there we sat: two single people, both wearing wedding bands. Pathetic, but he more so than me. After all, his wife had been dead more than a decade and he seemed unable to move forward; I had just over a year of widowhood under my belt. Also, my husband’s death gave me war widow status. Redding’s wife’s death made him a cuckold.

Nervously, I twisted my ring. “I’m not ready to take it off. I will when I’m ready to move on, but I’m not there yet.”

Redding’s reasons were more practical then emotional. “It keeps patients from fixating on me if they think I’m married. It’s not unusual, in therapy, for them to develop an attachment. It’s called transference.”

“Is that what happened with Susan?”

He tried to mask his aggravation, but he set his cup of coffee down harder than necessary and it slopped over the edge, staining the tablecloth, the way my words were staining any chance of friendship.

“Do you have any friends at all?” he said. “You really make it difficult to be around you.”

Now he was touching on a sore point. Truthfully, I didn’t have many friends outside of work. And I wasn’t always sure the work ones counted.

“You want to be friends? I thought this was a business lunch.”

Redding paused, looking me straight in the eye. “I would like to be friends.”

I held his gaze, conflicted because friendship implies trust and I was reluctant to trust anyone directly involved with the murder victims; at the same time I needed him to trust me.

“Then let’s get the business part out of the way,” I said. “Tell me about Mayor Skubic.”

Just then my cell phone rang. It was Malik. Time to head over to city hall. Redding and I both reached for the check. As our hands touched, our rings hit and made a soft metallic clink.

S
USAN
V
ICTOR REPRESENTED
Minneapolis movers and shakers. The bodies of Waitress Susan and Sinner Susan had been found in her district, long before she was sworn in. I recalled lawn signs reading
VICTOR FOR VICTORY
lining the streets of the Thirteenth Ward, where I lived. A lopsided race, not in her favor, until federal agents executed a search warrant for illegal gambling on her opponent’s home and office three weeks before the election. Now she savored her first term as city councilwoman.

My story gave her a chance to accomplish two goals simultaneously: get on TV and ingratiate herself with the mayor. When she introduced herself before the cameras, she placed a heavy emphasis on her first name. “Ssssusan,” reminding me of the hiss of a snake.

“I certainly don’t think there’s a Susan killer loose in our city,” she said. “The media has blown this case completely out of proportion.”

“All media?” asked one of the newspaper guys, going for a suck-up question.

“No, in all fairness, the irresponsibility has come over the airwaves of Channel 3.”

“Do you think they did it for ratings?” the newspaper guy persisted.

“Absolutely. I intend to ask the FCC to pull their license.”

Even the newspaper guy chuckled at the outlandishness of that remark. A broadcast license is essentially a license to print money forever. Yeah, the airwaves belong to the public, but everyone knows aggressive reporting isn’t going to get a license yanked. Indecency, now that’s a different story. Channel 3 would be dandy as long as none of us let the F-word slip during a live shot. Then
F
wouldn’t even begin to describe the resulting trouble.

“We need to protect the public airwaves,” Susan Victor went on to say.

“How about protecting the public?” I countered.

“This is a very safe city,” she answered.

“What do you think of the police investigation?” asked one of my competitors.

“I have every confidence in Chief Capacasa. We just need to let him and his officers do their jobs. We don’t need amateurs jumping to crazy conclusions.”

Deep within me, maybe deep within all of us, is a precarious place I call the abyss. Reporters like to imagine being one story away from awards and glory. I never forget I’m one story away from falling into the abyss. Damned if Susan Victor was going to push me over.

I decided to up the stakes with an old reporter trick: phrasing a provocative question that puts the subject on the defensive.