Stalking Susan (28 page)

CHAPTER 41

I
heard a soft bark and opened my eyes. Shep stuck his big head into my hospital room. Bandages covered his jaw and left ear. But the big mutt was smiling anyway. Toby was right behind him.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” I called over to my roommate and fellow patient. “We have company.”

Garnett had been drifting off from the meds last night when I was admitted for overnight observation. We both wore hospital gowns, but he had an IV bag full of antibiotics and painkillers attached to his wrist. Numerous black stitches tattooed his shoulder, neck, and ear. I filled him in on the latest
SUSANS
developments but wasn’t sure how much he remembered. When he started to snore, I’d helped myself to a cup of red Jell-O sitting on his tray table since I couldn’t remember my last meal and since he hadn’t mentioned anything about being hungry.

He couldn’t speak yet, but he gave a brief wave to our canine visitor.

“I’m so sorry,” Toby told me. “I shouldn’t have said those things I did. Shep’s going to be fine. He’s got the heart of Rin Tin Tin. It wasn’t your fault. I’m the one who got you started with Dr. Petit. If I hadn’t called your tip line, none of this would have happened.”

“That’s nonsense, Toby. It’s Petit’s fault. Put the blame where it belongs.”

Garnett motioned for a dry-erase board on the counter. “Petit?” he wrote.

“Dead,” I answered.

He kept writing. “Redding?”

“Dead, too. You weren’t dreaming. Or high on your morphine drip.”

He shook his head and leaned back on his pillows. Shep climbed onto the foot of my bed and I wrapped my arms around his furry back, being careful not to squeeze too hard.

“How did you get him in?” I asked Toby. “Hennepin County Medical doesn’t allow dogs.”

Toby tapped a finger against his sunglasses. “My trusty Seeing Eye dog and I have busted through tighter security than this place. Nobody wants to risk discriminating against the disabled.”

Unfortunately a nurse chose just that moment to check Garnett’s vitals so she overheard enough to evict the trespassers. But she also brought more Jell-O, and this time Garnett finished his.

Then he reached for his board and started writing. When he held it up it read
ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON.

I smiled and answered, “Basil Rathbone,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,
1939.”

EPILOGUE

((ANCHOR, TEASE))

PSYCHIATRIST SERIAL

KILLER STALKS SUSANS

FOR MORE THAN

A DECADE…

TONIGHT AT TEN.

I
had no regrets that I never saw what Dr. Brent Redding had wanted to show me. Chances are, it would have been my last memory.

His final words are nightmare aplenty. The police tagged the audiocassette from my tape recorder as evidence. When Chief Capacasa returned my wedding ring, he let me listen…Redding’s voice was barely recognizable after my escape from the car. I expected harsh words directed at me; instead he spent the last thirty seconds of his life blaming the mess he had created on Susan—his murdered wife—whom he castigated for his degeneration into evil. His ranting also gave some insight into their marriage vows.

“I warned you, Susan, what would happen if you ever cheated. That I’d kill you. So I did.” Not exactly, but in his mind, close enough. He sounded haughty, his narcissism overpowering his logic.

He called her a bunch of names like “whore” and “bitch” and vowed to see her in hell. Then he released a wail of “Suuussann!” and pulled the trigger.

The tape continued to roll, silent, then sirens, faint at first, growing louder. I hit
stop
when I heard the cops approach the vehicle and open the door. I didn’t care to hear their description of the physical scene.

Redding’s pledge of where he would meet his wife in the afterlife seemed overconfident. While the Bible condemns both adulterers and murderers, there was no doubt in my mind who was more worthy of Satan’s company.

When police searched Redding’s Duluth town house, they found neatly organized folders of newspaper articles documenting the Susan murders, plus the cases of four other missing women named Susan whose bodies have never been recovered. The most recent: a punk chick with a dragon tattoo on her hip. The most heartbreaking: an eleven-year-old Nebraska girl who had disappeared after soccer practice. She was last seen walking home on November 19, 2003, wearing a red team uniform with the name
SUSAN
printed across the back.

The composite sketch of a stranger seen near the field earlier in the day strongly resembled Dr. Redding.

Our computer search hadn’t popped these cases because, since no bodies were found, no death certificates were ever issued.

Authorities also found lilies, black-eyed Susans, and other flowers growing in a small greenhouse porch attached to Redding’s home.

The calendar in Redding’s kitchen had a thick red circle drawn around November 19.

Experts on Court TV declared the killings classic revenge/fantasy homicides. They speculated that Redding had transferred the anger against his wife to the other Susans and derived sexual satisfaction from killing them.

Funny how I had once thought Redding and I shared a bond of spousal grief. Grief almost drove me to suicide. Grief drove him to murder. Possibly his problem wasn’t grief, but a lack of grief. He never mourned his wife’s death; he only mourned her infidelity.

T
HOUGH HE CERTAINLY
had earned the right, Nick Garnett never once said, “I told you so.”

He fully recovered from his dog attack injuries but would sport some wild scars for the rest of his life. Authorities dropped the homicide charges against him and awarded him a civilian medal of valor. He boycotted the ceremony, so they mailed it to him. He uses it as a coaster on his desk.

Garnett predicted the
SUSANS
case would be featured in homicide textbooks as an example of the symbolic value of victims to serial killers. Researchers have long speculated that Ted Bundy murdered college-age women with long brown hair parted in the middle as revenge against the upper-class fiancée who had rejected him. Bundy always discounted this theory and insisted he killed simply because he enjoyed it.

My whole experience with the Susans soured me on Hollywood thrillers. I refused to go to the movies with Garnett unless we watched musicals. We hit a stalemate because the only musical he wanted to see was
Chicago,
and I couldn’t bear to sit through “We Both Reached for the Gun.”

S
HEP JOINED THE
St. Paul Police Canine Unit where he became Minnesota’s top drug-sniffing dog.

D
USTY
F
OSTER’S MOTHER
stopped visiting him in prison because she couldn’t bear to look at his face anymore, though she continued to send him birthday cards. That didn’t bother Dusty much; he married a woman named Susan he met online who didn’t seem to mind having an incarcerated husband.

P
RURIENT CURIOSITY ABOUT
the psychiatrist serial killer caused a ratings rebound, so Channel 3 won the November sweeps by nearly three points, becoming the top news station in the Minneapolis–St. Paul market for the first time in more than twenty years. In recognition for her leadership in turning the newsroom around, the big bosses gave Noreen Banks a nice fat bonus.

M
IKE
F
LAGG DUBBED
the
SUSANS
story onto his résumé tape, bragged about the numbers in a cover letter, exercised an out in his Channel 3 contract, and landed a national correspondent job with FOX News. He died while doing a live shot during a hurricane when the street sign he was clutching to demonstrate the gale force winds blew loose. The clip went viral on YouTube. Bill O’Reilly delivered his eulogy.

E
VEN THOUGH MY
sins didn’t violate the traditional Ten Commandments, I confessed to Father Mountain anyway. After all, a deal is a deal.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I almost freed a guilty man. I almost ruined an innocent one. And I almost helped a serial killer escape.”

Just like my inept literary detective role model Philip Trent, I’d gotten it all wrong. If I were writing my memoir, I’d have to call my adventure
Riley’s Last Case.

Sorry, Sherlock.

I understand now that not all crimes can be understood. Life would be easier if murderers resembled monsters, as in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein.
Then we’d know who to fear and who to suspect when bodies started piling up in the morgue. Instead most killers are normal people living secret lives. Clearly I had obsessed on the wrong crime classics. The answer to the Susan murders sat within reach on my bookshelf:
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s examination of the dual nature of man—good and evil fighting for control—summed up Dr. Redding as neatly as any of the FBI profilers at Quantico could.

Noreen pretended my quitting was all a big misunderstanding, so with heavy misgivings I signed a new two-year contract with Channel 3. With no misgivings I sold my house in south Minneapolis because my most vivid memories there were mostly bad. True love can’t trump dual brushes with death.

I packed up my dead husband’s belongings. Some I kept, some I gave away. While cleaning out Boyer’s sock drawer, I found an envelope addressed to me, in his handwriting. Inside I found two letters, each dated the eve of our anniversary, different years. I set them side by side, reading the first one first.

Babe,

You have no business snooping in my sock drawer unless I am dead. So if you are reading this, it’s not a good sign for us. But us is the best part of me. Always know there is nothing you can do that I won’t forgive, and in the course of a marriage, snooping is only a misdemeanor. I will penalize you with long, deep kisses.

Love, Hugh

Darling,

I hope you never read these letters. But if you do, I hope there are dozens to bring you comfort and symbolize our years and years of life together.

By now you probably won’t even remember that night we fought about when to drive to Chicago. Already I’m sorry. But none of our fights are deal breakers. This one barely a blip on the radar. A speeding ticket vs. a DUI. Remember our biggest fight so far? Where to hang the deer head? I guess I lost that one, too. I leave you never regretting a minute of our marriage. The best part of fighting is making up. Good-bye, Riley.

Love, Hugh

“Thank you, darling,” I whispered.

I put his letters back in the envelope, along with my wedding band, sealed it with a kiss, and stuck it in one of the moving boxes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The list of people who made
Stalking Susan
a better book is a long one.

My dear friend and first reader, Michele Cook, was supportive and encouraging.

My fellow author and last reader, Steve Thayer, was critical and discouraging.

Both approaches improved my manuscript.

My readers in between, Kevyn Burger, Caroline Lowe, Alan Cox, and Trish Van Pilsum, kept my story sound, my characters honest, and me sane.

I’m grateful to all the people in television news I’ve worked with or covered these many years, along with my friends and very large extended family spread far and wide. You all inspired me. But keep in mind, this is a work of fiction, and the characters on these pages are not you.

Thanks to Vernon Geberth, the smartest cop I know and master of
Practical Homicide Investigation
.

Garrett Young for his skill behind the camera.

My debut colleagues at International Thriller Writers for their fellowship, as well as the veteran authors there, for their generosity.

I owe enormous gratitude to my agent, Elaine Koster, for taking me on as a client, giving me confidence as a writer, and finding my novel a home with Doubleday. Her associate Stephanie Lehman, an excellent author herself with a genuine fondness for television, worked with me on revisions to improve my plot.

When an editor the caliber of Stacy Creamer wanted my book, I felt like I had won the literary lottery. Special appreciation for Stacy’s patience with a novice and the enthusiasm she expressed toward me, my protagonist, and my novel; assistant editor Laura Swerdloff for her remarkable attention to details; production editor Sean Mills; Jean Traina for cover design; Maggie Carr for copyediting; Rachel Lapal for publicity; Adrienne Sparks for marketing; and the rest of the Doubleday team. As a television news producer I realize much of the work in launching a book involves behind-the-scenes people whose names don’t appear on the cover. The least I can do is mention them in the credits.

Hugs to my sons, Alex and Andrew, for allowing me time on the computer and not laughing when I said I was writing a book.

And deep, personal thanks to my husband, Joe, for his love and understanding. He is indeed my soul mate.

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Julie Kramer

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Doubleday, an imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY
is a registered trademark and the DD colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kramer, Julie.

Stalking Susan / Julie Kramer. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Women television journalists—Fiction. 2. Serial murderers—Minnesota—Minneapolis—Fiction. 3. Minneapolis (Minn.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3611.R355S73 2008

813'.6—dc22

2007034712

eISBN: 978-0-385-52681-4

v3.0