Silencing Sam (15 page)

As the line got closer to the door, I rolled up the waistband of my skirt like a parochial school girl and unfastened a few buttons on my blouse like a slut.

The two guards at the door looked at me, looked at each other, shook their heads simultaneously, and motioned for me to step aside.

“What do you mean?” I pressed them.

I'd stood in line for more than twenty minutes and I wanted inside, or an explanation of why not. But it didn't seem like the thugs were going to yield either.

“I deserve to go in just as much as anyone else,” I insisted.

They blocked the door but ignored my questions. The crowd was starting to notice.

A woman in spandex tights looked at me funny, then shouted, “Hey, I've seen her on TV.”

The bouncers looked at me again, but again they shook their heads. “No way. Not her.”

I considered pulling out my media pass to try to bigfoot my way through the door. Especially now that I didn't have to worry about winding up as a headline in the “Piercing Eyes” gossip column.

But suddenly I realized my neckline was open far wider than felt comfortable. As I was adjusting my wardrobe malfunction, the two thugs each grabbed one of my arms and flung me off the curb and out of the way. Off balance, I was facedown in the grime of a Minneapolis street.

The crowd gasped and seemed to take a step backward. Just as I pushed myself to my knees, someone tall hoisted me to my feet.

“What's a nice lady like you doing in the gutter?” he asked.

My head only reached his chest, but I didn't need his jersey number to recognize Buzz Stolee's blue eyes and wavy blond hair.

“A little too much booze, I think, boss,” a sidekick said.

“No.” I shook my head. “Them.” I pointed to the pair of bouncers, who were conspicuously facing the opposite direction. “Those guys didn't want me inside.”

“Well, I've been in plenty of times and you're not missing anything,” Buzz said. “Loud music. Loud people.”

A red-haired woman in tight jeans and an even tighter halter top nudged him suggestively. But he ignored her and bent down to stare at me more closely.

“You look familiar,” he said. “We met before?”

The way he said it made me think he was trying to figure out if we'd ever slept together. I explained that I was a television reporter and people sometimes recognized me from the air. “We might have passed each other in the hall at Channel 3.”

His female companion scoffed at that information and flashed her midriff to possessively show either a tattoo or an autograph of Buzz's signature and jersey number above her navel. That gave me an idea.

“I bet people recognize you all the time from the basketball court,” I said, trying to get the focus off me. “I'd love your autograph.”

I pawed through my purse, pulled out a narrow reporter's notebook, and flipped the cover open to a blank page. Then I fumbled for a pen.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “What's your name?”

“Riley Spartz.” Oops, I hadn't meant to be that specific just yet. Sometimes my name scared people, but usually only if they were guilty of something. “But could you make it out to my dad instead?”

“Now I know who you are,” he said. “You're the chick who threw the drink at that gossip goon.” He started chuckling.

No point in denying the episode, especially since, eventually, that's where I wanted our conversation to go.

“I'm not usually so rude.” I tried to sound apologetic and harmless.

“Hey, no worries.” He leaned close and whispered in my ear. “Far as I'm concerned, the rat deserved it.” Then he gave me a wink.

Now we were getting somewhere.

“That's a relief,” I murmured back.

He smiled at our private joke.

“How about you let me buy you a drink,” I said, “and I'll prove I'm fit for decent company by
not
throwing it in your face.”

It was probably just a habit professional athletes acquire, but his eyes seemed to scan my entire figure, lingering on my still disheveled bust.

“Unless you give me a really good reason.” I gave him a playful punch in the arm and fastened two buttons.

“No way I'm turning down such an interesting offer. This way, boys.” He gestured toward a couple of guys hanging nearby.

“Hey, what about me?” The woman waiting at his side posed with her hands on her hips and a pout on her face.

“Later, honey.”

Then Buzz put his hand against my back and directed me inside the club I'd just been barred from. I flashed a triumphant glare at the bouncers, but instead of looking apologetic, they pretended we'd never met. Buzz and I were shown to a corner booth, and his pals took a table nearby. While we waited for our drinks I wondered if he was packing the gun he was licensed to conceal and carry.

I was curious but not particularly worried. Even if Buzz had shot Sam, I didn't fear a bullet in the chest any more than he seemed to fear a martini in the face.

“So how'd it go down between you and Sam?” he asked. “Did his eyes go all wide and crazy?”

It seemed an odd question. But I thought back to that day at the newspaper bar where the real trouble started. My pinot noir versus Sam Pierce.

“He was definitely surprised,” I said. “But he had been sort
of asking for it.” I was rationalizing my actions by blaming the victim, something I'd noticed suspects often do during camera interviews.

Buzz nodded sympathetically. “Were you glad you did it?”

“No.” That was the truth and I meant it. “It was just one of those times when you snap.”

“Was there much blood?”

“Blood?” I recalled the red stain on Sam's sweater. “There wasn't any blood. It was wine.”

“Wine? I was talking about the shooting,” Buzz said.

“I wasn't.” From the look on his face, I realized that what I viewed as amiable chitchat, he took as a murder confession.

“I didn't kill the guy,” I laughed. “In fact, I was starting to wonder if you might have.”

“Me?” Buzz seemed amused by the idea. “Why me?”

“Well, you own a gun, and I don't.”

He seemed startled that I knew that piece of information. And without saying anything, Buzz patted the outside of his jacket as if reaffirming the presence of a hidden weapon.

“So where were you the night he died?” I asked.

“None of your business,” he answered. “But you're the one everybody thinks did it. You need an alibi more than me.”

“But you hated the guy, too. After what he said in his column about your … you know.” Suspecting Buzz was armed made me cautious about how I phrased the statement.

“Well, he was wrong about that.” Buzz's voice dropped and took on an edgy tone. “And I got plenty of chicks who'll testify for me.”

Seemed kind of early to be talking about testifying, but I wanted to avoid an argument.

“I don't doubt it for a minute, Buzz. Most of Sam's column was a lie—day after day. He lied about me and he lied about you. And he never ran a correction.”

“Yeah.” Buzz calmed down. “Guess the day finally came when he lied about the wrong person.”

“Most likely that's what happened,” I said in agreement. Besides the initial embarrassment, I knew Buzz still got razzed about Sam's article. At away games, it wasn't unusual for fans to yell “Pants! Pants!” at him when he came on the court.

I raised a glass and made a toast to the two of us. Buzz clinked his against mine. We each took a swallow. When I looked up next, he seemed to be gazing straight into my eyes. I blinked. He didn't. Nor did he turn away. I cleared my throat, took another sip, then stared back at him.

“You reporters, you're always after the truth, right?”

Those were the last words I expected to hear from his mouth. And he said it like he was looking for confirmation … not confrontation.

“Certainly, Buzz. Truth is the essence of my profession.”

He stammered a bit, as if working up the courage to tell me something. “Getting back to that ‘Piercing Eyes' column Sam wrote about me …”

“Yes.” I spoke softly, in case he might be poised to confess.

“Gossip columnists aren't the same as regular reporters, right?”

“Absolutely. Our standards are quite different when it comes to truth.”

“I was pretty upset with him.”

“I don't blame you.”

I wish I'd have thought to roll a tape recorder from inside my pocket, but I'd never considered our conversation might go this easily.

“I'm comfortable letting you be the judge,” he said.

Now didn't seem the time to point out that juries, not judges, and certainly not journalists, decide guilt or innocence in murder cases.

“Go on, Buzz.” I smiled to encourage him.

“Not here.” He shook his head. “How about we go to my place, and I'll prove the truth about the size of my … you know.” He patted himself down there to make sure I understood his proposition.

If my glass wasn't empty, I'd probably have flung the contents at his face—or crotch.

But I needed to keep open the possibility of future rapport, so I decided to appear flattered rather than disgusted by his offer. And maybe on one level I was. After all, the room was full of younger women who'd have loved to be sitting across the table from Buzz Stolee and going home with him later. And, I reminded myself, athletes act like all men would act if they could get away with it. So I extracted myself from a delicate situation by explaining that journalists can't have physical relationships with sources.

Tempted as I was.

“Honest, Buzz, I could get fired.”

He seemed to accept my explanation as the only logical reason a woman would turn down such an invitation—and didn't appear to even consider I might be reluctant to be alone with a man I thought capable of murder.

When I got back to the station, I put a question mark by his name on the “Suspects with Carry Permits” chart. Under my theory, that left just Buzz and Tab Fallon. Both men had guns. Both had strong revenge motives. Whether either had an alibi, I didn't know. But I'd made some progress today.

So I went home—alone as usual.

On the drive, I swung by Wirth Park, where the headless body had been dumped. I'd seen the crime-scene video, but that was shot during the day. I wanted to feel the killer's world by moonlight.

The moon was actually hidden behind the clouds. But there were plenty of streetlights in the parking lot. Woods and tall grass covered the park grounds of more than seven hundred
acres. If the murderer had wanted to hide the body, plenty of places beckoned where it probably wouldn't have been discovered until spring.

Instead, the homicide was a stop and drop. Almost as if the maniac wanted his ghoulish work found. Was he just passing through town? Fantasizing about the discovery of his horror? Or was he a local? Watching the news coverage with satisfaction?

I imagined tires rolling, a door opening, a torso hitting the pavement.

A dead man is more newsworthy than a dead bat.

So when Ozzie interrupted the morning meeting to say someone had been killed at the wind farm, I knew my story was gaining in respect under the TV news code of “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Even Clay looked interested at the mention of death.

I grabbed the phone Ozzie was waving and heard my dad explain how all the neighbors were abuzz about the dead body in the weeds by one of the turbines.

“Did somebody shoot somebody?” Wouldn't have surprised me after all the trigger talk the other day.

“No,” he said. “There was another explosion. Nobody knows anything more. Your mom and I are safe.”

The bombers apparently decided to escalate matters with a human casualty. Chances were, I knew the victim. We could have been related. The bloodlines along that Minnesota-Iowa-state-line neighborhood were intertwined pretty deep. Everybody was a cousin of everybody else. This story had the potential to jerk some tears. Even mine.

“We're on our way, Dad,” I said. “Tell folks not to talk to other media.”

A bad break for me, the weather was clear but the chopper was in for maintenance. That meant it lay in pieces on the floor of the hangar. Sometimes the station rents a small plane for out-of-town shoots, but that only works if there's an airport runway nearby. And the aerials are never any good; the fixed wings get in the way. So once again Malik and I drove south even though news was breaking.

“No comment.”

The county sheriff wouldn't release any details over the phone about the mysterious death. I hoped by the time we arrived, he'd have a statement. But in the meantime, their tight lips might mean the rest of the media pack was unaware of this latest development.

To save gas money, both the St. Paul and Minneapolis newspapers were attempting to conduct poignant telephone interviews about distant tragedies. Our television competitors hadn't been covering the wind explosions much because they happened on the far edge of the viewing area and because, unlike Channel 3, they didn't have dramatic video of a falling turbine.

But a dead body could change everything.

By the time we arrived at the wind farm, we'd missed the critical shot of the corpse being moved. Yellow and black crime-scene tape surrounded about two acres of land. In the distance, Scout and his handler, Larry, were sweeping the field.

My bachelor farmer pal Gil Halvorson had discovered the body. Or parts of it. I wasn't going to risk another live interview with Gil, so Malik rolled tape as we talked.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Still dark this morning. Heard a blast. No huge crash like when the turbines fell. But a big noise.”

Prudently, Gil grabbed a rifle before going outside. “Didn't want to walk into an ambush.”

At first nothing seemed wrong, except for a burning odor.
All the turbines looked fine under the moonlight. And he didn't see any unusual movement. Then his dog started barking. Gil headed over and saw the animal carrying something—a human arm. Ends up the body was in pieces.