Shunning Sarah (2 page)

J
osh’s mother got home just after midnight. She smiled, pleased to see the mail on the table—even though it was mostly junk and bills. Her son was becoming responsible in his father’s absence.

Brian Kueppers was overseas, on active duty with his national guard troop, and wouldn’t be home for about six months. He’d been gone about a week. Eight days to be exact. Every morning she said the new number out loud as she brushed her teeth. Sometimes, if the mirror was steamed up, she traced it with her finger.

Brian’s absence was hitting his young son hard. At ten years old, this was the first season Josh could legally hunt. He’d even received a special slug shotgun on his birthday. Now there was no dad to take him scouting for deer or pheasants.

Even before the actual deployment, Brian was off training with his military unit, so they had little family time. Once, Michelle caught him lecturing their son on acting like a man while he was away. She stayed out of the conversation to avoid a fight. She’d prefer Josh remain a little boy.

Later that night, when she’d brought up not putting so much pressure on Josh, Brian scowled. She’d backed down quickly, not wanting to provoke him. He left the house for a few hours that night, as was their protocol when he became angry. But when
he returned, he was calm and gentle. And when they said their goodbyes Michelle felt that she would miss him and that when he came back they would have a fresh beginning. All three of them.

Brian had developed a temper over the last couple of years. Sometimes he blamed Michelle. Sometimes Josh. She had struggled with doubt concerning their future, but their last months together had been much better. Yet she realized this separation was a crucial test for their marriage. She wanted them both to pass.

Michelle had a hard time falling asleep after her shift because the dog kept barking outside. Once she even got up to check for signs of trouble, but the yard was empty except for Bowser.

The telephone woke her the next morning. On the other end of the line was the school attendance office.

“Hello, Mrs. Kueppers. Just calling to confirm your son’s absence. Is Josh sick today?”

“What do you mean? Josh isn’t home, he’s in class.”

But the professional voice on the other end insisted Josh was not present. “If he’s playing hooky, he will be disciplined.”

That put his mom in a panic. “I need to call you back.”

She scrambled out of bed and rushed down the hall. Josh’s bed hadn’t been slept in, but his backpack lay on top of the covers. Downstairs, his coat hung in the closet. She dashed out the front door, calling his name wildly. The dog was barking and chasing after her. She looked in the shed. Josh’s bike was parked inside. She ran to the barn, the garage, and two other outbuildings. By this time she was screaming for her son.

She knew that kids in the country were vulnerable to perils ranging from rusty nails and grain bins to strange cars along open roads. Not a mother in Minnesota didn’t know that Jacob Wetterling was still missing more than two decades after being kidnapped while biking home from a convenience store with friends.

She rushed back in the house and grabbed the phone. First
she misdialed and got a wrong number. Finally, she reached the grocery store where the neighbor who had agreed to watch Josh worked.

“Did Josh go to school?”

The other mother seemed puzzled. “We didn’t see Josh last night. He never showed up. We thought your shift must be tonight.”

Michelle slumped against the wall as the strength left her legs. She slid to the floor in a crouch.

“Are you there? Michelle, are you there?”

“Josh is missing.”

She said the last word softly. Because “missing” is such an urgent word. And saying it with a lack of urgency makes it less likely to be true.

Her friend couldn’t understand her. “What did you just say?”

Michelle breathed deep and spoke fast. “Josh is gone. I need to call the police.” Then she hung up, dialed 911, and forced herself to pretend she was on duty at the hospital, calmly discussing a patient’s prognosis and not the fate of her only child.

“Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office,” the voice said. “What is your emergency?”

“My son is missing. He didn’t go to school and appears to have been gone all night.”

“How old is the child?”

“Ten.”

“Do you think he might have run away?”

“No.” Her attempt to stay professional failed. “I know something bad has happened to him. Please find him. Now.”

She told them when she had seen him last, what he was wearing, and answered all their other questions.

“No, he doesn’t have a cell phone. He’s only ten.”

“No, he hasn’t been upset about anything.”

The dispatcher on the other end persisted. “Have there been any recent changes in his life? A divorce, perhaps?”

“No, nothing like that.” Michelle paused for a few seconds.
“His father left for Afghanistan a week ago. But Josh understands that he’s coming back.”

Then she remembered one other thing worth checking and opened the door to a back hallway closet. Josh’s coat, bike, and backpack were all in their usual places. But his gun was gone.

She almost dropped the phone as heartbreaking theories flooded her mind, but she briefed the dispatcher about the missing weapon and was assured that someone from law enforcement was on their way.

“Please locate a recent picture of your son.”

Michelle glanced at the kitchen clock. She hadn’t seen Josh in more than twenty-four hours.

T
he house was full of photographs of Josh. School. Sports. Holidays. Some clipped under refrigerator magnets. Others mounted in frames hanging on the entry wall. Several buttons pinned to a kitchen bulletin board featured Josh wearing basketball, baseball, and soccer uniforms, holding each matching ball. Michelle also had a stack of scrapbooks starring the blond, freckled boy. She grabbed a current school picture and stuck it in the front door in case the cops got there before she got back.

The dog kept barking and getting in her way while she tried to concentrate on where best to search for her missing son. And suddenly Michelle realized she’d been stupid all morning.

“Come on, Bowser. Where is he? Where’s Josh?”

The dog let out a howl and started running toward the farm fields, eager for her to follow.

“Good boy. Take me to him.”

She vowed that if Josh had run off, she would hug and not yell. “Just let him be safe,” she prayed. She said “safe” louder than the other words. Because “safe” is such a comforting word. And saying it with a ring of confidence made it more likely to be true.

Soon, she noticed a trail of footsteps on the ground—mostly beast, but definitely some boy feet had passed this way, too. She was relieved the dog stuck to the path of tracks in the snow.

The last signs of her son.

J
osh woke cold, scared, and hungry. He had been dreaming of breakfast when he realized he was still trapped in the pit. The thought of another day underground with a dead body was unbearable.

•   •   •

Michelle heard a gunshot.

The noise seemed to come from the direction the dog was headed. Her heart pounded as she moved faster, uncertain what she would find.

A few minutes later, she grabbed Bowser’s collar and pulled him back before either of them slid down the hole where the tracks ended.

So while the dog woofed their arrival, she dropped to her knees hysterically screaming “Josh!” “Hello!” and “Are you down there?”

It wasn’t until her throat grew sore and she grew quiet that she could hear his small voice.

M
y name is Riley Spartz and I’m a television reporter in Minneapolis—one of the most competitive news markets in the country.

The tip about the trapped boy came from my mother.

She was always calling with local gossip she hoped might qualify as news in a bid to get me on the phone for a long chat. I almost ignored her call because most of the time her ideas were more of a nuisance than they were news.

But not this time. This time she had something good. “A kid the next county over fell in a sinkhole.”

A phone call to the Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office confirmed they were trying to rescue a young boy, but provided few other details.

I was supposed to be reporting about why so many Minnesotans—Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Harold Stassen, Tim Pawlenty, and Michele Bachmann—have run for the White House. That idea came from my new boss during the morning news huddle. Even though I thought the assignment lacked originality (every four years the station seems to broadcast a version of it) I had volunteered for the story to try to get off to a good start with him on his second day as news director.

There was still a risk, though, that I could work my butt off
and he might still think my story sucked. A career in news had taught me that bosses never think their ideas suck, just the execution of them. But I had enough confidence in my reporting skills to take the chance. I was supposed to be picking the brains of political analysts from various universities when my mother called about the trapped child.

News value has to be high these days to merit Channel 3 sending a crew more than a hundred miles. Media is in a recession meltdown and cost of coverage is a real factor on what events make the news. I had to sell my boss on a game change. That happens all day long in the news world; better stories come along and push others out of the lineup. But he balked over me hitting the road.

“I’m not convinced yours is the better story.” Bryce Griffin was overseeing the redesign of his news director’s office—making it his own turf. “By the time we get there, the news could be over.”

That was a risk for any story. Talk like his made me miss my first news director. He ran the station under the Child Struck Directive—meaning anytime anyone hears a report of a “child struck,” they run. “I don’t care if you’re interviewing the governor,” he used to say. “Drop the mic and race to the kid.”

“We have a child in jeopardy, Bryce, and if we wait, he’ll be someone else’s lead story. Don’t you remember that little girl who got trapped in that well in Texas?”

Bryce didn’t react. And I realized he was probably no older than “Baby Jessica” herself when the live video coverage of the well that almost became her tomb mesmerized a nation for fifty-eight hours and made CNN a household name.

I tried a more recent example. “Don’t you remember the Chilean miners?”

That example got his attention. Every news manager in the business knew that covering that particular life-and-death story was sixty-nine days of ratings gold.

“Do we have this alone?” he asked.

At least he appreciated the value of an exclusive. “A local
source tipped me. And the sheriff gave no indication that any other media had been in touch.”

Bryce chewed on his lower lip before nodding affirmatively. “Bring me back some news.”

He held his hand up for a high five and even though the gesture seemed cheesy, I obliged. Mostly because no one else could see us and roll their eyes.

Previous news director Noreen Banks had insisted on keeping a close eye on all that happened in the newsroom, so she had her office walls replaced with glass. With such a transparent policy, we could observe her as well, but that often proved demoralizing as we watched her intimidate our colleagues over perceived news-judgment lapses.

Bryce’s first act as boss was to order the office walls boarded up. Clearly he preferred to keep those kind of conversations private. And having been verbally beaten down numerous times in Noreen’s fishbowl, I saw some benefit to this change.

While her departure was most cruel and unfair, Bryce had nothing to do with her being gunned down on the job. So I was willing to give him a chance to repair our battered morale following the recent shooting spree by a wacko pissed over our news coverage.

Bryce was much younger than me. He’d come with a hotshot, whiz-kid reputation for turning around a foundering TV station out west. The network had snatched him up to perform the same magic with us.

I suspected more changes were coming to Channel 3, but I figured he couldn’t be any worse a boss than Noreen. Of course, I’d only worked for him a couple of days. I hoped Bryce would take things slow and get to know the market—and us—before unveiling grand ideas while we were still emotionally walking wounded. But I also knew—and so did he—that the average tenure of a television news director was about eighteen months.

So he was up against a deadline of his own.

M
y photographer, Malik Rahman, slept most of the drive south. I could have woken him to chat, but I had plenty to think about these days and didn’t mind pretending I was alone for a couple hours.

My mind kept flashing back to the newsroom horror. As journalists, we’d all covered breaking news of rampage killers opening fire in schools, post offices, and shopping malls. We just never thought it would happen at Channel 3, but the target of a story made us targets of his rage during a surprise shooting spree. He’d made news after leaving his dog locked in a car on a hot day. It wasn’t my story that made him come after us, but our anchor’s live interview about his dead pet.

I’d urged Noreen not to let the man in the building. Not because I suspected him capable of murder, but because I thought meeting with him would be a waste of time. “Let him sue,” I’d said. “Tell him we’ll see him in court.” Because of my negative attitude, I’d been banned from the meeting. And that decision probably saved my life.

The police labeled the killings as one of those cases in which the perpetrator apparently “snapped.” But I disagreed. Our assailant didn’t surrender to impulse, but came armed and ready for revenge in the guise of threatening legal action over a story
gone wrong. Minutes later, bodies on the floor gave fresh meaning to the TV term “dead air.”