Shunning Sarah (4 page)

“Technically,” Malik said, “we haven’t been ordered to leave the premises.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Years working a job together can keep you on the same page whether you’re caught in a moment of drama or comedy. And lately, in the news business, it’s becoming harder to tell the difference.

Each year Malik and I covered thousands of miles of news together. We’d seen each other at our worst, but liked each other anyway. The trendy thing was to call us “work spouses,” and that was definitely an accurate title for us.

So I slipped my Channel 3 business card under the door and we perched on the edge of the white covered porch waiting for Josh’s mother to change her mind and welcome us or direct us off her property pronto.

Apparently used to us by now and unaware we had been spurned, the dog stopped barking and started sniffing us. The animal’s wet nose reminded me that I am also a new dog owner, and Husky was probably out being walked by the neighbor boy.

I was still hoping to get video of Josh and his pet together, but Malik shot some solo dog footage for backup.

The early coating of snow clashed with the brilliant autumn colors still in wide view. A combination of sunny days and unseasonably cool evenings had made this season’s hues the best in years. We appreciated the vivid contrast with a fir tree grove that functioned as a farm windbreak.

Because Malik fancied himself an artist and not merely a photojournalist, I was guiding his gaze to an unusual quilt hanging on a clothesline by the barn when a small piece of paper blew across the porch.

I bent over and picked up a photo of a freckled face with a gap-toothed grin. Josh, perhaps? He was adorable. Viewers would love him. Just then I heard the front door opening again, so I quickly stuck the picture in the pocket of my jacket.

The woman exited cautiously, making it clear that we were not being invited inside. She was unhappy to see we had lingered.
She looked right at me, and read my business card out loud.

“ ‘Riley Spartz. Reporter. Channel 3. Minneapolis.’ Do you have any children, Ms. Spartz?”

That was a sensitive question, and certainly unexpected. Part of me was tempted to point out that my motherhood status had nothing to do with her son’s sinkhole accident, but another part of me sensed that my answer mattered to her and to my chances of landing the interview.

Twice, I’d thought kids were part of my future. Once, with my now-dead husband, Hugh Boyer. He had been anxious to be a dad and even had a baby-name book he kept in his squad car for amusement during speed traps. Later, with my ex-fiancé, Nick Garnett. He had already raised two boys, but would have embraced fatherhood one more time for me. We’d had the talk.

Now, out in the news field, was a bad time to be reminded that I lived alone and would probably die alone, too.

Malik realized I was stumbling for an answer and jumped into the conversation. “I’ve got a little boy and girl and they’re sure a handful.” He pulled out his wallet and was in the process of flashing a proud parent picture from some holiday gathering when she interrupted. “Not you, her.”

My moment to lie had passed. Moms didn’t need a minute to remember if they had children.

“No. I don’t have any children,” I replied.

She nodded like that was what she expected. “Then you’re not going to understand what’s at stake. My priority has to be protecting my son, not going on TV.”

I was more confused than ever. People who have survived a crisis sometimes have reasons to avoid the media. Guilt. Holding out for a book deal. None seemed to apply here.

“But your son is safe.”

Now she was the quiet one, staring into my eyes with a daunting intensity.

“Josh’s accident is now part of your family history,” I continued. “He will always remember what happened underground. Why don’t the two of you sit on the couch together and tell us the story? You can save the video to remember this day years from now.”

“Remember?” she said. “Remember this day? I need Josh to forget what he saw down that hole.”

By the time I’d processed her answer, the door had slammed in our faces again. Her next words came muffled, from inside. “And I need you both to go away.”

And because we’d been ordered to leave, we did. Without interviews of victim or family. Without pictures of the hole. Yet even empty-handed, I was now convinced we had stumbled upon a potentially more interesting story than a trapped boy.

Malik and I headed back to the scene, determined to find out what Josh saw down in that hole.

B
ack at the site, one of the state’s crime labs on wheels was parked near the backhoe. High tech and low tech side by side. Several technicians stared down at the ground. The presence of the van told me complicated evidence collection and analysis was taking place while we watched.

Deputies had strung yellow-and-black Police Line Do Not Cross plastic tape to keep people back in case any showed up. The hole was no longer the backdrop of an unfortunate accident, but the scene of a possible crime.

The county’s top cop stepped into view from behind the cluster of trees, but ignored my wave. “Sheriff Eide,” I called out. “What’s going on?”

Malik nudged me and pointed toward the lens of his camera. I put my eye to the viewfinder and noticed a taut rope hanging from the backhoe scoop down into the hole.

While we watched, a white horizontal object was hoisted up and swung over to the side where two people teetered while reaching for a grip. As they loaded it on a gurney, a corner of fabric fluttered in the wind like a sheet covering …

“A body?” I asked.

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Malik answered.

“Now we know what Josh needs to forget.”

•   •   •

Eventually, Sheriff Eide confirmed that authorities had recovered the body of an unidentified woman from the bottom of the sinkhole.

“Do you believe she also fell in?” I asked. “Or do you suspect foul play?”

“We have reason to believe the woman’s death is suspicious and we are investigating it as a homicide.”

“Cause of death?” I asked.

“We’ll leave that for the medical examiner.”

That didn’t surprise me. Unless a cop actually sees a perpetrator pull out a gun and shoot a victim, or finds a knife sticking out of the chest of a body, they don’t like speculating on cause of death. “What’s the closest town?”

“Harmony.”

A small town with a mellow name. “Have you had any reports of missing women in the area recently?”

He shook his head, unwilling to disclose other details. But that moment gave me the opportunity to show him the photograph we found outside Josh’s house. I didn’t ask him if the boy was Josh. I pretended I knew it was.

“I bet he looks better here than when you pulled him out of that hole.” That’s a little reporter trick to confirm things we suspect without sources realizing their information is crucial.

Beside verifying Josh’s identity, Sheriff Eide assumed because we had the photo, we had the cooperation of Josh’s mother.

“She thought it best he not go on camera just now,” I said.

The sheriff agreed, explaining they needed to interview him again, once he calmed down. “What a mess for the kid. Spending the night with a corpse.”

That was a keeper of a sound bite. “How was Josh found?”

“His dog got him in trouble and his dog got him out. The animal led his mother to the sinkhole. She went straight home to get the backhoe.”

Then the sheriff started warming up to me and digressed from
the case at hand to tell me about a backhoe theft he investigated a few years earlier. He solved the crime in a matter of days when the culprit parked the stolen vehicle in his front yard with a For Sale sign.

“Wish they could all go that easy,” he concluded.

Haunted by some cold cases myself, I knew just what he meant. But I also knew that violent crime—particularly homicide—seldom happened in places like Fillmore County. Residents might be uneasy once word spread and that was probably why the sheriff was nervous when I first arrived. I assured him media coverage often brought tips from the public.

“When was the last time a murder happened in your county?” I asked.

“Not in my lifetime.” He had to be nearly fifty. A long time for an area to be homicide free.

I knew that first cops on the scene to rural murders seldom had homicide training. They spend much of their shift writing speeding tickets, giving drunks Breathalyzer tests, and investigating drug sales. I hoped they hadn’t done anything to mess up the evidence before the forensics team arrived.

“So Sheriff, how long have you been in office?”

“First term.”

I tried to be positive. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and solve this killing fast. Then you can count on smooth reelection for the rest of your law-enforcement career.”

“Somehow I don’t think so.” He glanced back to the commotion going on at the crime scene van. “We’re missing an important clue.”

“What’s that?”

“Her face.”

D
own in the pit and down on his prospects, Josh Kueppers had blasted the dead woman’s face away with his shotgun. The sheriff hadn’t gotten a conclusive answer whether the boy’s finger slipped on the trigger or whether Josh simply wanted to end his stare down with death.

It really didn’t matter. Either way, the investigation was stalled because the victim is the starting point for most homicide cases. The face, the chief means of identification in most murders. So who was she?

All this rich debate over identity would enhance my story. Might even make it a two-day story.

So I was surprised when the news desk ordered us to drive back and package the piece for ten. I’d expected them to send the satellite truck and have me broadcast live from the scene for that feeling of immediacy that producers relish in newscasts.

That would also have allowed me more time to try to land an interview with Josh. Instead, I’d have to settle for neighbors with no real firsthand information.

I tried arguing, but Ozzie, the assignment editor, told me not to bother. Then he confided in me the real reason for pulling back on my story. “The new boss is mad at you.”

“But I haven’t done anything wrong yet,” I insisted. “I’ve actually done something right. Landed an exclusive.”

“It’s not what you’ve done or not done, Riley, it’s where you’ve done it.”

“You lost me.”

Ozzie explained that Bryce had seen a state map showing Harmony, Minnesota, built by the graphics department for my story, and concluded the murder was outside Channel 3’s primary viewing area. “He seemed upset that you had not been clearer about the location when you pitched the idea, and that you might have been taking advantage of him being new to the area.”

“But we’re a major-market station,” I said. “We report news around the state, not just in our viewing area. Otherwise we’d never cover medical breakthroughs at the Mayo Clinic, or the record forest fire up in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.”

“I’ll let you explain that to him when you return,” Ozzie said.

I told him we’d head back, and hung up just as my parents arrived with beef sandwiches and snickerdoodle cookies, hoping to turn the crime scene into a picnic zone. They were disappointed when they heard we were leaving and their plan for an impromptu reunion was a bust.

“We don’t get to see you often enough,” my mother said.

She had a point, and I could tell she put some effort into this impulsive get-together, even packing a plastic checkered tablecloth to drape over the tailgate of their pickup.

My mother complimented me on my hair. “I like that you’re letting it grow out.”

My locks hung just past my shoulders. “I just haven’t had time to have it cut.”

All day my parents had been phoning with rumors. Luckily the sporadic cell service kept them from being in constant touch with me. Their neighbors had already locked into a theory that the killer must be an outsider because no one in these pleasant parts would ever commit such a horrific crime.

“Probably one of those truckers,” my mother said. She disliked
their large rigs passing her on the road because they made the car shake. She also blamed them for potholes. And now apparently homicide.

“That makes the most sense,” my father said, agreeing because that was easier than disagreeing.

I didn’t question her theory, but I was betting that the murderer would turn out to be local.

While the sinkhole was actually not that far from the road, I couldn’t see a stranger stumbling on the pit just when he needed a place to stash a body. And my guess was, the criminal investigation would take that direction and the killer would turn out to be a registered voter in Fillmore County.

In the meantime, Malik and I took our sandwiches to the van and headed back to Channel 3 with video of a body being recovered, a picture of a boy, his dog, and a look down the hole.

In a relief reversal, Sheriff Eide had let Malik come close enough to get a decent shot of the hollow. So Channel 3 had distinctive elements for the story.

Later, I would realize that the sinkhole was like Alice’s venture down her rabbit hole into a world of symbolism and danger.

M
alik climbed behind the wheel so I could concentrate on writing my story. The downside was that driving always put him in a grumpy mood. But brilliant writing might help Bryce see the merit in covering this particular story even if the crime fell outside the Channel 3 viewing area.

“Do you have a pen?” I usually kept a couple in my purse, but couldn’t find any just then.

“You’re asking me for a pen?” Malik said. “A pen? Out in the field, I’m responsible for camera, tripod, microphone, lights, and video discs. All you have to remember to bring is a pen and notebook. You have it so easy. Do your job and don’t ever ask me for a pen again.”

So much for our contemporary working-spouse relationship. Now we were bickering like an old married couple. I tuned him out and dug around in the glove compartment until I found a chewed-up pencil.