Stalking Susan (23 page)

CHAPTER 34

T
he restaurant owner didn’t give Garnett a second glance, but because she recognized me from TV, she threw in an extra handful of fortune cookies. Usually I decline perks, but today the fuss didn’t seem worth the effort.

Garnett scolded me when we stepped outside. “You were always on my case for mooching free food when I was a cop. What’s the difference here?”

“Oh come on, this can’t be worth a dime. And besides, turning down fortune cookies might bring bad luck.”

“Well, okay, I can’t risk any more bad luck.”

Shep welcomed us when we returned to the car. Or maybe he was welcoming the beef lo mein. Our take-out order tempted him to try climbing into the front seat. The weather was too cold to distract him by opening a rear window.

“Give him a cookie,” I suggested. “I can’t drive with him crawling over the console, and I don’t like dog drool in my hair.”

Garnett unwrapped a cookie, but stopped short of breaking it open. “I don’t know if I can handle hearing my fortune just now.”

“How do you know it won’t be mine? Or how do you know it won’t be good? Maybe something like, ‘A personal wrong will be righted.’”

He considered the possibility, cracked the cookie, and handed the two pieces to Shep, who crunched them enthusiastically. Garnett hit the dashboard in a melodramatic drumroll, unfolded the fortune, and read, “‘A stranger will befriend you.’ It’s for you, Riley. Must be talking about your doctor buddy.”

“Forget him. I certainly have. Try another.”

Garnett obliged. “‘An old acquaintance will reenter your life.’”

“Touché. Probably talking about your ex-wife.”

“Fat chance. If she didn’t call when I retired from the force, she’s not going to call now. Most people shy away from murder suspects.”

Another question had remained on my mind since Garnett’s arrest: If he killed the Susans, could he also have shadowed me in the Mall of America parking ramp or lurked outside my house? My gut said no. But my brain reminded me how quickly he had shown up to play hero in both instances. As I broke down the play-by-play of each night, I acknowledged he had had time for a change of clothes and shoes. Foolish to bring it up now, I stayed on the subject of his ex.

“Do you want her to call?”

“I’m not sure. I’d like her to have regrets. I’d like her to second-guess herself.”

“Yeah, and I’d like a 40 share.”

Shep whined and stretched his big head over the seat again. Garnett opened another fortune. “‘Be careful what you wish for.’”

I laughed as I turned onto my street. “That covers a lot of ground for both of us.”

“We’ll read the rest inside.”

I pulled into the garage, grabbed Shep’s leash, and picked up today’s stack of mail from the box. I dropped a copy of
Car and Driver
straight into the garbage can. A monthly reminder that life is too short to buy a three-year magazine subscription, no matter how good the price. The rest of the mail was mostly junk, but a couple of envelopes held promise.

“What do you think about offering a reward?” I asked.

“The chief will say it’s a waste of money; they already have their man.”

The three of us walked side-by-side, Shep’s nose monitoring the bag of kung pao.

“Well, it’s my money to waste.”

Garnett shook his head. “I just wish I could have seen the crime scene.”

I suddenly remembered the cell phone picture I had taken of Susan Victor’s body. “Maybe you can.” I stopped, opened my phone, and called up the ghoulish image.

The next events seemed simultaneous, but I know fractions of a second actually separated them. The whole conflict takes longer to explain than it played out in real time. The sensation of pounding feet. Panting breath. Garnett knocking me sideways. Mail scattering as I landed facedown in the snow. A growl that didn’t come from Shep. And a cry of terror unlike any I’d ever heard.

The cry came from Garnett.

When I looked up he was twirling like a bloody helicopter, a pit bull attached to his shoulder. A kaleidoscope pattern of red decorating the snow around them.

Shep lunged back and forth slashing at the rust and tan beast. The other dog weighed less but had muscles like a prizefighter and survival scars to prove it. Garnett crashed to the ground and the pit bull seized his neck. Blood seeped from Garnett’s throat. When Shep’s teeth ripped into the pit bull’s back the creature dropped its hold on Garnett and attacked Shep. Both animals clashed together, oozing blood, but my dog was in trouble: the pit bull locked its teeth around Shep’s jaw and held tight. My Shep, pinned to the ground, couldn’t fight back.

I would have given everything I owned if Garnett’s gun could be here right now instead of in the jail property room.

Several years ago pit bull panic swept Minnesota after two of the brutes killed a teenage boy delivering newspapers. An animal control expert I had interviewed about dangerous dogs explained that a pit bull’s jaws exert more pressure than a lion’s, and that the best way to get one to release its prey is to grab the back legs, push like a wheelbarrow, and hope it doesn’t turn its jaws of death on you.

Adrenaline took over. And I don’t remember much except that somehow I managed to fling the dog and then force myself to stand very still. Instead of charging back at me, it raced halfway down the block to an SUV with the back hatch open. I hadn’t noticed the vehicle before.

Garnett had been mauled badly. I crawled to his side and pressed my hands against his wounds, trying to slow the bleeding while I fumbled for my cell phone on the ground. My bloody fingers kept slipping from the key pad as I tried to dial 911. A tortured wail came from the direction of the SUV.

“Officer down.” No two words bring police force faster. Garnett wasn’t a cop anymore, but I didn’t hesitate to use them anyway.

“Officer down!” I screamed into my cell phone. “Officer down! We need an ambulance!”

Panicked, I was losing my grip faster than Garnett was losing consciousness. 911 calls from landlines give emergency dispatchers an address, even if the caller can’t. Not so with most cell phones, and mine was an older model that still allowed me to pick up an analog signal in rural areas, but didn’t display my position.

“What is your location?” the dispatcher asked.

I couldn’t remember where I lived. Garnett’s life depended on me reciting my address and I couldn’t spit out the magic words needed to make help appear.

“Where are you?” she shouted. I couldn’t make out her words because snarling and screaming continued to come from the SUV.

“Tell them I’m sorry,” Garnett said, coughing. His skin turned gray; his breathing turned shallow.

“What? What?” I asked him. “Who?” Sorry he was an indifferent husband? Sorry he was a forgetful son? Or sorry he was a monstrous serial killer? His mouth moved but Shep’s painful whimper drowned out the words. That’s when I realized the other screams had stopped.

“I need your location,” the dispatcher reminded me. “All units prepare to respond to a 10–108.”

The mail. I left Garnett to grab an envelope from the snow.

It read “Occupant.”

I snatched another letter, recognized my mom’s handwriting, and slowly read my address out loud.

“Got it,” said the dispatcher. She read it over the air. “All units respond to a 10–108.” She repeated my address. “That’s a 10–108. Officer down.

“Please stay on the line,” she instructed me. I heard sirens approach from different directions. Faster, I prayed. I looked over at Shep. The tip of his ear was missing. He had a jagged rip on the side of his face. He tried getting up, but his knees buckled.

I held Garnett in my arms, cradling his head. The snow around us turned crimson.

“Stop it. Stop dying,” I pleaded. He tried to speak and I put my ear to his lips.

“Houston, we got a problem.” He stared into my eyes for a couple seconds before his own fell shut.

By then I was sobbing too hard to say, “Tom Hanks,
Apollo 13,
1995.”

“W
HAT HAPPENED?”
T
HE
first officer on the scene was assessing the carnage.

“A pit bull,” I told him.

He looked at me skeptically, then knelt by Garnett, checked his condition, and shook his head. “He’s shutting down.” He started CPR.

An ambulance siren grew closer. Ten seconds later, paramedics pulled up. Another ten seconds and they were wheeling Garnett in the back. I watched as the crew stuck tubes in his arm and started wrapping his injuries.

I begged them to take Shep, too. “He’s a police dog,” I lied. “He saved our lives.” That part wasn’t a lie. “You can’t let him die!” But the ambulance peeled away like it was racing death.

“Put him in the back of my squad.” A paunchy, middle-aged cop motioned to his unit parked across the street. “He deserves a chance.”

He helped me carry Shep over, and I tried to climb in with them, but another officer insisted I stay for questioning. “I’ll take care of him,” the first cop assured me. Every second counted for my dog, so I didn’t argue. The cop made good with a wicked U-turn, lights and siren blaring.

I telephoned Toby, screaming for him to head to the U of M Vet Hospital and meet Shep. I know I sounded hysterical.

I overheard another officer on his radio talking about Garnett; he seemed to be saying “likely to die.”

Other squads arrived and moved toward the mysterious SUV. One cop turned on a flashlight. Raspy snarls grew louder, warning us to keep back. An officer reached for his semiautomatic. A large metal cage fit snugly in the back of the vehicle. Outside the SUV the pit bull stood his ground over the curled body of a man dressed in black—who looked a lot like my Mall of America parking ramp shadow. The dog’s face and chest gleamed with blood. Some his. Mostly his victim’s. Gaping flesh wounds showed through the shadow’s torn clothing. A mask obscured his face.

The animal tensed and growled even more. “Easy boy,” the officer said. The beast stuck its muzzle in the shadow’s back and started chewing. The cop aimed and fired until his weapon was empty.

Another officer removed the shadow’s mask and checked his neck for a pulse. None. They canceled a second ambulance and requested a medical examiner.

Petit lay dead in the trampled, bloody snow, a Taser just out of reach.

N
O ONE KNOWS
what torture Petit had inflicted on the animal to turn it into such a savage. And why the dog turned on its master, instead of me, also remains an enigma. Perhaps, on its blood-inflamed rampage, it merely went for the next moving body it saw. Or perhaps it had been hungering to take a chunk out of its trainer for some time.

CHAPTER 35

F
or the second time in less than a week, Minneapolis police took me into custody.

Fortunately, Channel 3’s assignment editor heard the 10–108 over the police scanners and immediately dispatched all crews to the vicinity. Not until the first photographer arrived did they realize my house was the crime scene. He sprayed the scene for video, got shots of Petit’s covered body and of me being placed in the back of a squad car. He alerted the desk so Miles would be waiting for me at the cop shop when two officers, one short and one tall, escorted me down the hallway.

“Don’t say anything,” Miles warned me. He grabbed my hand with a force that surprised me and led me to the men’s bathroom. I presumed for a private conference on legal strategy, since I didn’t have to go. The women’s room was on the opposite side of the building.

“You can’t go in there,” the tall cop said.

“I need a moment with my client.” Miles pushed me inside. A tubby officer faced one wall, doing what he had come to do. “Can you excuse us?” Miles asked.

“What the hell?” The cop noticed me, zipped his lip and his trousers and left.

Miles took off his suit jacket and tie. He began unbuttoning his shirt. “Take off your sweater.”

I almost echoed the cop’s parting line until I realized Garnett’s blood saturated my clothes. Feeling a wave of nausea, I grabbed onto a urinal to steady myself. The reflection I saw in the bathroom mirrors looked like I’d been cast in a slasher flick. I shifted around, careful to face the stalls, away from the mirrors and Miles, and pulled my formerly white sweater over my head. I unhooked my bra and sponged myself with some scratchy paper towels, which quickly turned pink. Miles handed me his dress shirt and threw my clothes in the bathroom wastebasket.

Not many lawyers will give you the shirt off their back, so I appreciated the gesture. I also borrowed Miles’s jacket because the shirt fit a bit snug and I didn’t want the cops staring at my nipples. When we stepped outside, an officer insisted he needed my bloody clothes as evidence.

“Help yourself,” Miles said, gesturing toward the bathroom.

Great, I thought, now the cops will know my bra size.

“We need to get a statement about the mauling,” the short cop said.

“Fine, but I’m going to stop her if I don’t like the questions,” Miles said.

“Just let us do our job,” the tall one said.

“As long as you let me do mine,” my attorney countered.

All this back and forth wasn’t getting me where I wanted to go: to the hospital to check on Garnett and Shep. “Can we take care of this later?”

Chief Capacasa interrupted our hallway stalemate. He glanced from me to Miles but didn’t ask why my lawyer wore an undershirt and I wore a man’s suit. “I’m all for speeding this up. I’ll concede, she’s a witness, not a suspect. All better? Talk.”

I filled them in on the events leading up to tonight: my strange stalker, the dead flowers, the poisoned steak. Then I explained the pit bull assault.

“I was the target, but Garnett got between me and that creature. Shep fought to save us. Have you heard how they’re doing?” My voice cracked with worry.

The chief ignored my question. Maybe because he didn’t know the answer. Maybe because he did.

“Were you worried this vet might get violent?” he asked. “Was he why you wanted extra patrols?”

“Not exactly. If I imagined Petit seeking revenge, it was by making me bleed in court, not on my front lawn.”

Chief Capacasa ushered us into his office, shut the door, and cut to the chase.

“Did Garnett say anything?” he asked.

“He wasn’t making a lot of sense. Just ‘tell them I’m sorry.’”

“And he was sorry for what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who were you supposed to tell?”

“He didn’t say.”

No one else said anything either. I stared out the window. The weather looked as bleak as Garnett’s prognosis.

“Did he know how bad off he was?”

Chief Capacasa wasn’t asking out of empathy. Dying declarations can be used as evidence in a crime if the injured believes he may not survive.

“H
OW DO YOU
make holy water?”

Father Mountain waited with me at Hennepin County Medical Center, interceding with the nursing staff for updates on Garnett’s surgery, even though I wasn’t a relative.

Between prayers for the sick and dying, he tried distracting me with church jokes. “Come on, how do you make holy water?” he insisted.

“I give up,” I replied.

“Boil the hell out of it.”

Even though Garnett wasn’t a cop anymore, blue uniforms dominated the hospital corridors. Friends who shied away when he became a murder suspect now gathered as word spread he might become a murder victim. The police administration handled all media inquiries and notified his next of kin.

Garnett’s father had died several years earlier. His mother lived in a senior care center. Garnett’s arrest had hammered her already frail heart and the nursing staff were monitoring her carefully after receiving word of the mauling. His ex-wife, Janie, came to sit in the waiting room with his oldest son, Jack, the one who looked like him. His other boy, Jeff, away at college, was trying to book a flight home.

I offered them my condolences. We had never met, but Garnett had talked plenty about his family. The long hours he spent obstructing evil cost him his marriage. He used to tell Janie, “You can’t control crime; crime controls you.” That premise didn’t soothe her frustration or ease the worry any police spouse faces. Finally she’d had enough.

Janie might even have been bitter that Garnett had waited until after their divorce to retire and take a job with bankers’ hours. I decided to go out on a limb with her.

“Nick’s wounds were meant for me. I held him while we waited for the ambulance. He wanted me to tell you he was sorry.”

“Really?” Her eyes grew moist.

“Really.” If he didn’t make it, it wouldn’t matter. And if he did, they could sort it out later.

T
HE STATUS QUO
prevailed for the next couple hours. In a surgical suite off limits to us, Garnett was fighting for his life. I was fighting to stay awake. It wouldn’t be fair to sleep while he suffered. And every time I closed my eyes I saw the monster.

Toby punished me, too. He called earlier from the vet hospital to tell me to stay away from Shep. “He’s not your dog, he’s mine. If he dies, it’s all your fault.”

Nothing hurts more than the truth.

“W
HY DID THE
Pope cross the road?”

I tuned out Father Mountain.

“Come on, Riley.” He nudged me affectionately. “Think about it. Why did the Pope cross the road?”

“I give up.”

“He crosses everything.”

I couldn’t bring myself to even laugh politely. “Your humor isn’t working for me right now, Father.”

“I can see that.” He nodded sadly. “And since we’re being so honest, I don’t like your outfit.”

His reference to Miles’s suit did make me laugh.

“Maybe you should try confession, Riley. Remember, you owe me one.”

“My sins aren’t the kind you can absolve.” I started crying in front of everybody, but I wasn’t embarrassed; my tears felt more like an accomplishment. A relief. Something normal people did.

Just then a woman in blue scrubs approached us. I wiped my face and braced myself lest her first words be “I’m sorry” or “We did all we could.” Father Mountain squeezed my hand and made the sign of the cross. The surgeon kept a poker face as she asked Garnett’s family to come to a briefing room for patient confidentiality. Good news or bad news, hospitals don’t like breaking either in public settings. Janie motioned for me to come along. I tugged on Father Mountain’s sleeve. A convoy of hope and dread, we followed the woman down the hall to hear the outcome.

Each of us carried some guilt in our relationships with Garnett. But in a contest, I’d win easily. I’m the one who almost got him killed. The key word: “almost.”

Garnett didn’t die.

And neither did Shep.

I
LEFT THE
hospital ahead of the others to draw the news photographers away from Janie and Jack. A reporter shoved a microphone in my face and shouted, “How is he? Is he stable?” I resisted admonishing her that “stable” is not a medical condition. After all, dead is the most stable any of us can be. Garnett remained in critical condition, but they could wring that out of the hospital PR folks. The cameras swarmed me as I raced toward a cab.

I felt some relief because the danger was over; some shame because I hadn’t identified the real threat. My reporter radar had gotten it so damn wrong. The thing I feared most, riling up an unknown slayer of Susans, had nothing to do with my creepy stalker. My old buddy Garnett almost died for a measly consumer investigation.

At home my message machine flashed full. Mike Flagg wanted an interview ASAP. I hit
delete
. Matt Lauer wanted me to be a live guest on the
Today
show. I hit
delete
. I couldn’t listen anymore so I unplugged the phones, climbed upstairs, and cried myself to sleep. Odd how tears that once eluded me now came easily. The only witness to my meltdown: a mounted deer head hanging on the bedroom wall, Boyer’s wedding present to me.