Stalking Susan (7 page)

Malik brought his camera inside with him and set it on a chair at our table. Channel 3 had recently reverted to unmarked vehicles after a string of break-ins and equipment thefts. The head of the promotion department bemoaned the loss of station logos displayed as our vehicles traveled around the state, but our photo chief insisted that the only thing marked vehicles advertised was that expensive camera equipment was kept inside.

I ordered a glass of white wine from the Rhine Valley and Malik called for a St. Pauli Girl Beer. We discussed how best to visualize the Susan story, and we agreed he would swing by both grave sites the next day and shoot the names and dates on the markers. Thirty seconds of b-roll was better than nothing, and I knew he’d come back with creative and artsy shots we could dissolve-edit between to create mystery.

“It’s good to be working together again.” Malik raised his glass. “I heard you were off writing a book.”

That was a rumor I had started to explain my absence from Channel 3, and to keep other rumors from spreading. I’d been in a physical tailspin. Anyone with eyes could have seen that. What I wanted to keep under wraps was the psychological effect of the Iron Range firebomb. “Nope, just chilling.”

“Cut the shit, Riley. So you needed some time to sort things out. You’re back now. You’re among friends. Lean on us if you need to.”

I regretted not having returned his calls while I was off. Malik Rahman was an all-American nice guy who, during recent years, had been frequently mistaken for a terrorist—especially when he was videotaping exteriors of federal buildings, like the FBI office in downtown Minneapolis. His mother had never traveled outside the state, but had married a man from Pakistan while they were students at the University of Minnesota.

“Missy wants you to come over for dinner some night.”

Malik had married his high school sweetheart after serving a short stint as a video photographer in the U.S. Army shooting propaganda films for the military. His wife and their two kids waited for him each night after the news. Suppertime. Bath time. Bedtime. Ratings months played havoc with their suburban bliss, but Missy swapped whatever overtime he racked up for a new household appliance. This month, he explained, she had her eye on a new clothes dryer. Let the long hours begin.

“Hey, I ran into Noreen after our shoot yesterday,” he told me. “She wanted to know what I was out on. Hope that didn’t create trouble.”

“No more than I should have expected. My contract’s coming up and she’s playing wicked witch.”

“She’ll fold once she gets a chance to see you in action. Unfortunately, she came on board the station just before you were going under. But I have a feeling about this story. Let’s not settle for the hack version. Let’s break some real news.”

So that’s what we toasted to. Breaking news.

M
ALIK PULLED INTO
the driveway next to my house, a small English tudor in the Tangletown neighborhood of south Minneapolis. Stately, well-maintained houses set on curvy streets lined with mature oak trees. A harvest moon shone overhead. A perfect autumn night.

“Ever think of selling?” he asked. Mine was the smallest house on the block, one street over from a bus stop, and would likely net multiple offers the first day of listing. I bought it four years ago when I signed my last contract. Since then the housing market had skyrocketed, and I already had six figures of equity. Cashing out would be simple, and starting fresh might be smart.

“Can’t leave. Too many memories.”

“Must be bad memories. Keeping you up at night. You look like crap.”

“The good ones make the bad ones worth it.”

As Malik drove off I allowed myself the indulgence of reliving a good one as I walked toward the door, fallen leaves crunching under my feet. I’d always considered carrying the bride over the threshold a corny tradition. “The neighbors will laugh,” I had told Boyer. I pivoted away, keeping the pile of suitcases on the sidewalk between us. “Just carry the luggage.”

“Why? You afraid they might think we’re married?”

A fairly traditional guy, Boyer didn’t realize he was marrying a fairly untraditional gal, until moments before we said “I do.”

“What do you mean there’s not going to be any Mrs. Boyer?” He had noticed me writing “Riley Spartz” on the marriage license. “It’s who I am.” I gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “It doesn’t mean I won’t love, honor, and cherish you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to obey me?”

“That’s not part of the vows anymore.”

“Well, I better never catch you using the name Mrs. Hugh Boyer undercover to sting anyone.”

Definitely a marriage mismatch, so why did we do it? How does that song go? Something about getting married in a fever…

“Maybe I can’t make you call yourself Mrs. Boyer, but you’re not going over that threshold without me.”

He chased me around the yard, scooped me up in his arms, and proceeded up the porch steps in triumph. He planted a deep kiss on my mouth before waving to Mrs. Fredericks who was watching from her window.

CHAPTER 11

“
L
ast night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Just kidding, but I did dream incredibly vivid dreams of my years with Boyer, complete with color, touch, and sound. When my alarm woke me at seven, I opened my eyes and thought, “What would Daphne du Maurier do?”

If she had written
Susan
instead of
Rebecca,
the tale would hinge on a terrible secret.

If Agatha Christie had told the story, red herrings would distract the reader from the truth.

As I lay in bed I fantasized being Sherlock Holmes in a silk smoking jacket, without the silly pipe. Whether I possessed the intellectual heft and deductive reasoning of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective remained questionable, but a girl can dream.

“Elementary, my dear Noreen.” My accent needed work. Most people don’t realize Holmes’s creator never wrote his trademark quip. That dialogue actually came from an old movie.

Then, in an unwelcome twist, E. C. Bentley’s hapless gentleman sleuth came to mind so I prayed, “Just don’t let me end up like Philip Trent and get it all wrong.”

Scholars consider
Trent’s Last Case,
written in 1913, the first modern mystery novel. A wealthy financier is murdered at his country estate and Philip Trent, a bungling newspaper reporter, cracks the case…or so he thinks, until the final pages when the perpetrator sets him straight over dinner.

I sympathized with Trent. As a journalist, I lacked a novelist’s freedom. I was bound by facts. “Just the facts, ma’am,” as Garnett would say, quoting Dan Aykroyd in
Dragnet,
1987. The movie, not the old TV series. Me, I’m more of a bookworm, but since so much of what the studios put on the big screen springs from the pages of best sellers, I’m an ample match for his challenges.

I’d converted one of my guest rooms into a library with walls of fiction and nonfiction. My favorite shelves housed what I called my “dusty books,” best sellers from yesteryear. None is a first edition, but each is a first in its own way, a pioneer in a specific genre or storytelling technique. Published in 1841, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is literature’s first locked-room mystery.
The Moonstone,
written by Wilkie Collins in 1868, takes its place as the first detective novel. Agatha Christie’s
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
was significant in 1926 as the first murder mystery in which the narrator “did it.”

My literary interests are wider than crime; I admire the imagination and influence of any breakthrough author. My collection includes the first science fiction novel,
From the Earth to the Moon,
written by Jules Verne in 1865; as well as the first western,
The Virginian,
written by Owen Wister in 1902. I glanced over to my bed stand and saw my current read,
The Castle of Otranto,
by Horace Walpole. Published in 1764, it’s the world’s first gothic novel. If nightmares find me, look no further.

I showered, dressed, and brought the
Star Tribune
inside. I skimmed the headlines on the front page and Metro section, but didn’t see much that wasn’t on the budget yesterday for our late news.

I poured a cup of black coffee, put a bagel in the toaster, and logged on to my computer to check my e-mail before leaving for work. I opened a message from my computer guy, Lee Xiong, downloaded the attachment, and found a death certificate, dated the year before my first dead Susan.

Susan Redding. November 19, 1990. Duluth, Minnesota. Homicide. Strangled.

D
ULUTH IS A
couple hours north of the Twin Cities if you drive fast. And because it was all freeway, I drove fast. Very fast.

I called the Duluth Police from my cell phone. Bingo. The case investigator still worked there. “Why are you calling about Susan Redding?” he asked. “That’s a long time back.”

“Long story. And it’s going to take more time to explain than I’m comfortable going into while driving and talking on a cell phone. Can I fill you in when I get there?” That explanation, plus my bad connection, with the added bonus that I was buying lunch, satisfied him for the moment.

Malik sprawled out in the backseat asleep for the last forty minutes. He had learned to nap on demand in the military, a skill I envied. During sweeps, he liked to bank sleep when he could because he knew of the toll the edit booth would take on him later in the month.

I don’t mind driving the station’s minivan. I enjoy sitting up high on the road and I’m not bothered that my wheels look like a mom mobile. It’s roomy, anonymous, and good for surveillance. A woman in a minivan parked in a residential neighborhood attracts less suspicion than a man, particularly if the vehicle has dark glass. Sometimes I even put cleats and shin guards in the front and a car seat in the back to complete the soccer mom ruse. And I’m not above borrowing a niece or nephew if I need a child prop.

“Are we almost there yet?” a groggy voice called from behind.

“Twenty minutes,” I assured Malik. “We’re closing in on lunch.”

“I want walleye.”

“Then you shall have it.”

Walleye is Minnesota’s official state fish, but ironically most of the walleye consumed in Minnesota is actually shipped in from Canada. A while back I’d done a Channel 3 investigation that found that much of what restaurants bill as walleye is really zander, a less desirable fillet. The outcome didn’t matter much to me, since I don’t like fish. But viewers apparently do, because the story got great numbers and even a mention on the front page of the Minneapolis newspaper.

I told Malik we’d be dining with one of Duluth’s finest in the hope of getting some inside info on their Susan investigation. We needed to build a relationship with him, because cops typically distrust outsiders, and the media even more so. While we were in town, we also needed to shoot cover.

“Better to overshoot than undershoot.” I passed a road sign reading
DULUTH 19 MILES.
“Especially since we’re not sure where this fits in.”

He nodded. “Nice daylight. Let’s tape the cop interview outside, if he’ll do it. I hope he’s wearing his uniform.”

“Viva Las Vegas” played on the radio and I flashed back to my honeymoon road trip three years earlier.

“Bright light city gonna set my soul…Gonna set my soul on fire.” To my delight, Boyer did a fairly good imitation of the King.

Seventeen hundred miles with a man you’ve really known only a couple days is usually a bad idea. I’d won the skirmish over luggage because I needed clothes for work and play. After all, I reminded him, this was a business trip.

He won the next round at the car rental counter. Since I still had a deer-shaped dent on the hood of my Jetta, I’d rented a vehicle with unlimited mileage.

“What kind of car?” Boyer asked.

“Midsized,” I answered.

“You don’t even know what kind of car? Hell, it’s probably your father’s Oldsmobile.”

“The problem being?” I asked. Yes, my tone was huffy.

“The problem being I’m not driving a Ford Taurus to Vegas.”

The car rental agent intuitively understood the needs of a man who puts fifty thousand miles on a Crown Vic each year in the line of duty. They discussed Land Rovers versus Jaguars before settling on a Ford Mustang convertible. After all, Boyer reminded me, this was a vacation.

A global positioning system was mounted under the dash. Neither of us had used a GPS before. I typed in the conference hotel address.

“Right turn in one quarter of a mile,” the car told us in a monotone computer chick voice. About fifteen seconds later, it continued, “Right turn approaching.”

“Don’t need that,” Boyer said.

“Turn now,” the car demanded, as we prepared to turn south onto Interstate 35.

“Shut up,” he told the car. “All I need to know is we drive south for a few hours, then west for a whole lot more.”

“Hey, check this out,” I said. The GPS had computerized yellow pages for all major cities. Hotels. Restaurants. Gas stations. We could even store and recall previous addresses and routes. “This way we can find our way home again.”

“Sure thing, Gretel. GPS is the new breadcrumbs.”

Suddenly Malik and I were in Duluth and I left visions of Vegas behind.

From the south, our first glimpse of Duluth was a magnificent aerial view after the road climbs onto a hill overlooking the port city. Duluth, the largest inland seaport in the world, used to be the shipping gateway for the iron ore industry. Now grain has replaced iron as the primary export. Our next impression was an unsightly maze of freeway overpasses as we drove into town. But whenever I reach the shore of Lake Superior, I’m always dazzled. Looking over the greatest of the Great Lakes is like looking over an ocean. No wonder Superior is immortalized in poems like
The Song of Hiawatha
and songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

I turned the van into Canal Park, the city’s showcase waterfront designed with walking and bike paths, a small lighthouse, Lake Superior Marine Museum, and an aerial lift bridge to let large ships and barges pass. I parked in front of Grandma’s Saloon & Grill. Great food, but the restaurant is best known for sponsoring a scenic North Shore marathon that delivers nine thousand hungry and thirsty runners to its door fifty yards from the finish line each June.

Lieutenant Dexter Finholt was examining the trademark antique bric-a-brac that decorated the walls of Grandma’s when we entered. He was in uniform and Malik carried a camera, so they sized each other up immediately. I introduced myself.

“That so?” he said. “How’d you get a name like Riley?”

I was used to the question. I explained that my parents had promised my great-grandfather that if I was a boy they’d name me after him. I turned out to be a girl, but they bent the rules because his health had so deteriorated in the months before my birth it became clear I was the only great-grandchild he would ever hold.

“I don’t remember him,” I said. “But there are lots of pictures of us taking naps together.”

Malik and I settled comfortably into a booth with the lieutenant and they ordered the walleye shore lunch while I went for a cajun chicken and wild rice specialty. Then we turned to the subject of Susan.

“Well, Lieutenant Finholt,” I began, “like I said on the phone—”

“Call me Lieutenant Dex,” he said. “Duluth’s a small town compared to where you’re from. We’re a little more laid-back.”

“Sure. Thanks, Lieutenant Dex. The story is a bit convoluted, maybe even crazy.”

“Crazy is what she does best,” Malik interrupted. “Followed by convoluted.” I kicked him under the table even though I knew he was just trying to loosen up our lunch guest.

Lieutenant Dex laughed, but I was about to find out the joke was on me. “We sure don’t get as many murders as you do down in the Cities, that’s for sure. What makes this one so special you’re all the way up here after so long?”

“We’re following a possible pattern. Name, date, mode of death.” I gave him a thumbnail sketch on my two Susans. “We’re here to look at whether your killer might be our killer.”

“Nope. You’ve come a long way for nothing.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“All right, let’s review the facts. The first Minneapolis murder happened the year after ours. The second, two years later. Right?”

I nodded.

“That seals it for me,” he said. “Our killer’s doing life in Oak Park Heights State Prison. Our investigation’s long over.”

My fork froze in midair and my voice cracked in mid-sentence. “Are you sure you got the right man?”

“You betcha,” he laughed. “This was a pretty straightforward case. They can’t all be as complicated as the Congdon murders.”

He was referring to Duluth’s most famous homicide, the death of the elderly Elisabeth Congdon, more than thirty years ago. What initially appeared to be a bungled burglary ended up being a scheme to speed up an inheritance from the wealthiest woman in the state.

While that case possessed so many twists and turns even Court TV couldn’t resist the story, Lieutenant Dex insisted that his Susan murder was open and shut. “Opened a cell and shut the door.”

“Did he confess?” I asked.

“Nope, but they don’t usually. We made a strong circumstantial case.”

I should have known this information before we hit the road. It reminded me that I wasn’t quite at the top of my game. Instead of spending a few hours researching the case, I had assumed it was unsolved. Malik gave me a look. If we’d been alone, he’d have given me the lecture I’d given him many a time, drummed into my head by a University of St. Thomas journalism professor: When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. To get the point, it helps to write it out on a blackboard: ass u me.

“I’ll make it simple, here’s what happened,” Lieutenant Dex continued. “Susan Redding was strangled in her home by her lover. Friends of both told us there had been tension because he wanted her to leave her husband. She apparently enjoyed a little on the side, but also enjoyed the lifestyle that came from being a doctor’s wife. Jury came back the same day. Guilty as charged.”

“Did you check out the husband?”

“You betcha. Airtight. A local psychiatrist, down in Minneapolis doing some consulting work for the county at the time of the murder. Goes down a couple days each month and picks up some of their patient load. His alibi holds. Didn’t even know about the affair till we told him. Pretty devastated. Yep he was.”

We taped a brief interview outside, with Lieutenant Dex standing in front of his squad car with downtown Duluth in the background, but we weren’t sure if it would ever hit air. I rode back to the cop shop with him, while Malik drove around town taping skyline shots, the lift bridge, exteriors of the crime scene, and the cemetery headstone. Since the case was closed, there was no problem getting a copy of the police reports. Next I walked to the St. Louis County courthouse and had the clerk of court copy much of the trial file while I left Garnett a voice message about my wasted day. A few blocks farther along I checked the newspaper microfiche at the Duluth library for stories about Susan Redding’s life and death.