The Weatherman Page 7
Twelve-year-old Harlan Wakefield and his identical twin brother, Keenan, were popular town boys with a paper route. Much of their popularity stemmed from their freakish intellect. Driven to academic perfection by forceful parents, they were already testing out of high school and preparing for college. Their remarkable talents had been displayed on local TV news and talk shows. The last leg of their paper route was on a road that took them a mile out of town, north into the country. Even in the winter, despite the weather, they rode their mountain bikes. They loved their paper route. These were the only hours of the day when they were freed from learning, freed from mother and father and allowed to be normal boys.
One morning in late spring Keenan Wakefield rode home from the paper route alone. He was scratched and filthy. He was in shock. Through fright and tears he told his mother and father a tale as frightening as any story coming out of the worst cities.
They were heading home after delivering their last paper. A big man, as Keenan described him, stepped out of the woods with a handgun. He was wearing a ski mask. He ordered Harlan off his bike and took him by the arm. He ordered Keenan to go. The boy started to ride away, but he looked back at his brother. The man saw him and fired a shot into the air. Keenan rode home for help.
The sheriff ’s department found Harlan’s bicycle on the side of the road. They also found a spent bullet casing that had recently been fired. A farmer along the route reported a gun stolen from his car. Within hours a massive search was launched. The FBI was called in. Helicopters were put into the air. An all-points bulletin was issued for a “big man with a ski mask.” In the days to come even the National Guard was called out to sweep miles of woodland in the St. Croix Valley. It became the largest manhunt in state history.
Dramatic headlines were splashed across the front pages of every daily newspaper in the state. Live television reports from Stillwater dominated the news at 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00 P.M. Harlan Wakefield’s parents were as smart as their children. They were not about to become victims of the press, so they took control. They said they wanted their son back, or at least found, and they would use the media to get it done. In the days and weeks that followed, they became totally accessible. Any reporter from anywhere was given almost anything he or she wanted. They endured a total lack of privacy and tolerated the most personal questions imaginable to keep their son’s name in the news. One reporter even asked them if they or any other family member had kidnapped Harlan. They kept their poise and answered no.
Rick Beanblossom was one of the people the family befriended. His initial conversations with them were done over the phone. Because he was a Stillwater boy himself, they took to him, and time after time reporters at Channel 7 News, via the new masked producer, came up with fresh angles. The Wakefields visited the station one day. He had warned them about his mask. He joked how since the kidnapping he’d been stopped and questioned four different times. He soon felt comfortable enough to visit them at their home.
One person Rick Beanblossom was never allowed to talk with was Keenan Wakefield, Harlan’s twin. He too had become a victim of the crime. The morning after the abduction, Keenan was missing from his bed. The nightmare seemed endless. Now Keenan’s name was added to the search. But this search lasted only a couple of hours. Keenan was found crawling out of the woods down by the river, still in shock. Channel 7 news photographer Dave Cadieux was with the search party that found him. He recorded on videotape the frantic crying and stammering of a lost boy who had been wandering through the woods in the dark looking for his twin brother. It was the most gut-wrenching video shown on television during the entire ordeal. After that his parents put Keenan off limits even to police.
The FBI put together a task force of local, state and federal officials that at one time numbered more than a hundred full-time investigators. For months, bogus sightings of Harlan Wakefield were reported throughout the Midwest. But the boy genius was never found, and nobody was ever arrested.
The Wakefield family kept their boy’s name in the news almost daily for six months. In manipulating the media, they became as proficient as the best public relations firms. They went on talk shows. They threw benefits against scenic backdrops to attract television. It seemed they announced an anniversary of the kidnapping every thirty days. People kept sending them money, so a trust fund was established for Keenan. Thousands of dollars in donations poured in. But as the months dragged by and Harlan remained missing, the task force dwindled, and the press moved on. In local newsrooms, the Wakefields became a pain in the ass. Cruel jokes were made about the next Harlan Wakefield staged media event: “Will Elvis be there?”
Rick Beanblossom moved on to other stories too, but he kept his Wakefield file close at hand. He still called on the family every now and then. It had been over a year since the kidnapping. Most of his visits, like the one today, were spent listening to complaints about the media and their lack of coverage and concern. He told the family a fat man arrested in Racine, Wisconsin, was no longer a suspect in their son’s disappearance. They were not surprised. Rick wrote them another check for Keenan’s trust fund and then left.
A squad car pulled into the parking lot at Pioneer Park. The officer stared long and hard at the man in the mask. He shut off the engine and radioed in.
Rick Beanblossom shook his head and sighed. He hated hot weather. The sweat glands in his head had been destroyed by the napalm. This made him acutely aware of changes in the weather. His long-sleeve shirt was sticking to his back. He seldom wore short sleeves.
The cop removed his sunglasses and sauntered down the lawn, thumbs under his gun belt. Rick slowly reached for his wallet. Years of experience had established a procedure.
In the first months, following his medical release and honorable discharge, he wore a clear plastic mask, much like a hockey goalie. It was more to protect him from infection and to stem the scarring than to hide his face. He seldom ventured out then, mostly down to the burn center at Ramsey Medical Center in St. Paul. Winter wasn’t bad. He read and slept. He watched a lot of television. But after a year in a hospital and another year hiding indoors, a decision had to be made with the advent of spring—go out and rejoin the world or live life as a mole. The clear plastic mask was traded in for the blue cotton pullover, the most attractive, least offensive mask he could find. A comic book hero. He swore off television. Books would be his entertainment, newspapers and news magazines his diversions. His spring, summer, and fall would be spent enjoying the great outdoors he loved as a boy. But on his first day out alone he ran into the face of reality.
It was at a park in St. Paul up the bluff from the medical center. The view over the city was incredible—Stillwater times ten. On one hill stood the magnificent Cathedral of St. Paul with its huge green dome holding a cross to heaven. Another hill supported the elegant State Capitol Building, resplendent in white Georgia marble. The sun was shining bright over this proud little city. First spring-day-without-a-jacket weather. The Mississippi River was raging with snow melt. The breeze was so fresh and cool it was hard for Rick to remember the hellish heat of Vietnam. He stood on a retaining wall, hands in pockets, forgetting for the moment there was anything different about him. He got as caught up in the optimism of spring as anybody that day.
There were two of them. They came up behind him. They shouted not to move and he almost fell off the wall. One big cop kept his palm on his gun. The other cop told him to put his hands in the air. His stuttering rendered him speechless. His eyes washed over with unexplained guilt. They ordered him down from the wall and up against it. “Feet spread!” He mumbled and stammered, but the words would not come. Despite the uncommon valor of war, he was now a cruelly deformed puppy. Their questions went unanswered. He clung, shaking, to his new mask. The park, which at first seemed deserted, now was filled with people stopping to watch. A woman’s nasty little dog was barking at him. The cops handcuffed him and led him to the squad car. A man on the sidewalk remarked about the burglaries.
“What are we doing today, fella?” the Stillwater cop asked.
“My name is Rick Beanblossom, Officer. I’m a burn victim. Vietnam.” He handed the young cop his calling cards, one at a time. “Here’s my driver’s license.” After months of hassle and legal threats, he’d been allowed to be photographed wearing his mask. The code number under RESTRICTIONS labeled him handicapped. “I work at Channel 7 News. Here’s my press card. I’m also a volunteer at the Ramsey Burn Center. Here’s my hospital pass.” His speech was flawless. Plain, but firm.
“Sounds like you’ve been through this before.”
“Often.”
“Then you understand why I have to ask. We got a call.”
“I understand.”
“My oldest brother played football with a Beanblossom. I remember watching him when I was a kid. Was that you?”
“What’s your brother’s name?”
“His name was John Curran.”
“Was?”
“He was killed in a car accident. It’s been ten years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I do remember him. Nice guy.”
“Yes, he was. Do you still follow Pony football?”
“I glance at the scores. I live in Minneapolis now. Don’t get down here much.”
The young cop returned Rick’s plastic identity. “Listen, Rick, I’m sorry about this. I’m off duty in an hour. Do you want to grab a cold one down at Cat Ballou’s?”
“I’m going to start back, but thanks anyway.”
“Sure. Maybe some other time.” He put his sunglasses back on and looked down at the village with a pride unique to small town policemen. Then he gazed into the blazing sky. “It’s going to be another scorcher, Rick. No sleep tonight.”
“No, it’s going to rain tonight,” Rick told him. “Don’t you watch Channel 7? Heavy rains. Four inches or more. The Weatherman said so.”
The Rain
It had just begun to rain when Sky High News signed off that night at ten-thirty. Andrea Labore threw it to the new sportscaster who reminded viewers the Twins were in extra innings. Anchorman Ron Shea tossed it over to Dixon Bell in the weather center.
The Weatherman told viewers to be thankful for a domed stadium. He stood beside the radar screen and explained. Mild winter—wild summer. This was the most explosive type of weather situation the five-state area had faced in years. Warm air from the south was feeding these storms, and there were no cold fronts from the north to sweep them out. The front moving through tonight had stalled, setting up a barrier thunderstorms could not penetrate. “Here we go again, folks,” said Dixon Bell. “Better late then never. The National Weather Service has just issued a severe thunderstorm warning that does include the Twin Cities. You should expect strong, damaging winds and even more rain than the four inches I forecast earlier. Maybe six inches or more. And that spells flash flooding.”
On this particular night the Channel 7 weatherman was slightly unnerved, though viewers may not have noticed it. Just before he had gone on the air, the phone rang in the weather center. It was dateline, the number known only to family, friends, and employees. Dixon Bell picked it up.
“I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman.” It was a high, raspy voice, a feminine man, or a woman impersonating a man. Also a piss-poor attempt at a Southern accent.
“I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman,” the voice said again. Then he hung up.
Dixon Bell had heard that voice once before, the day of the tornado. Or was it the day before the tornado? He couldn’t remember. He thought, What’s he got against me? I’m just a local-yokel weatherman from the southern end of the river.
Dixon Graham Bell was raised in a “shotgun” house above the railroad tracks that run above the river in Vicksburg, Mississippi. They call them shotgun houses because the rooms were built one behind the other, so a shot fired through the front door would sail straight out the back door. Vicksburg, at the southern tip of the Delta, was built on thirteen hills where the Yazoo River flowed into the Mississippi. Indians called the Mississippi River “Father of Waters.” They called the Yazoo “River of Death.” In the thirteen hills above these two converging rivers, the future weatherman spent his boyhood, staring into the thunderheads, trying to imagine the fury of the tornado that had struck this town and got his life off to such a tragic start.
After the Eden Prairie tornado, the second tornado in his life, questions arose about the lack of warning from the National Weather Service. Officials confirmed that at least four sirens in the storm area didn’t go off. They still hadn’t located the reasons for the failures. Dixon Bell stated publicly that the National Weather Service was a technology museum, complaining that in Minnesota, as in some other states, the Weather Service did not issue a tornado warning until someone actually sighted one. The first two people to sight the Eden Prairie tornado were dead. So camps seemed evenly divided between those who wanted to shake the Weatherman’s hand and tell him what a wonderful thing he had done and those who wanted to blame him for the tragedy.
They had buried Bob Buckridge and Kitt Karson at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Military honors all around. But right after the funeral, the Weatherman had a run-in with Rick Beanblossom. The masked asshole, Dixon Bell called him.
“Why did you tell him to switch positions?”
“I directed him to a safe position.”
“You threw him right in the path of that tornado. Somehow you knew it was coming.”
“That’s ridiculous. He was out of harm’s way. After that, he made the decisions.”
“You knew damn well what he’d do once he saw that thing.”
“Get off my back, Beanblossom, and take your grieving act somewhere else. Buckridge didn’t care for you anymore than I do.”
The masked newsman shouted at the Weatherman as he walked away. “Why don’t you go back to Mississippi, or Tennessee, or wherever the hell it is you came from.”
That was the most insulting thing said, that Dixon Bell didn’t belong.
Andrea Labore was another story. Too often the woman of a man’s dreams turns into the nightmare that destroys his life. Dixon Bell knew in his heart that when the end came, his last thought on this earth would be of a woman. If not Andrea, or Lisa, it would be of another brown-eyed beauty down the road—a woman he loved with all of his heart but who never loved him back.
It was difficult to work with Andrea. A few weeks back, before the tornado, he’d asked her out for the first time. She told him no. As kind as she was, and she was kind, it was humiliating. He noted this humiliation in the diary he kept. It had taken him years to get over Lisa. He swore it would never happen again. And it didn’t until Andrea Labore laid those big brown eyes on him.
“As our metro area continues to grow,” the Weatherman told his viewers, “and our farmlands and wetlands are paved over, these heavy rains have nowhere to go but into the streets.” Dixon Bell threw it back to Ron Shea.
Then came big smiles from the anchors. The schlocky music kicked in. Balloons and confetti fell from the ceiling onto the news set, just like News Year’s Eve. Ron Shea hoisted a bottle of champagne onto the desk and popped the cork. The credits rolled over all of this as the anchorman from Virginia looked into the camera and told the people of Minnesota, “Good night from the number-one-rated news show in the Twin Cities.”
After the broadcast, Andrea Labore hung around her desk. The celebration over the ratings book quickly wound down. She finished her glass of champagne, then popped a mint into her mouth. She called up Script on her computer and tapped out a banal thank-you letter to a fan. She thought about answering
another, but it was difficult to concentrate. The news director had asked to see her in his office after the show. But Jack Napoleon was still on the phone.
She opened another letter. It was from a state legislator. He wrote how much he admired her work and asked if they might get together for a drink next time he was in town. A valuable news source, he promised. Andrea crumpled up the invitation and tossed it into the wastebasket. Television 101—never answer people who want to meet you, and never date cops or politicians.
She looked over at the glassy office. The curtain was drawn. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. What did he want at this hour? Other than that of a movie producer, perhaps, no job gives eager young men more control over the careers of ambitious and beautiful young women than that of a television news director.
Andrea Labore knew what she wanted: harder news. Since her arrival she had been assigned mostly puppy dog stories. Good training, she was told. Every time the zoo got a new resident, Andrea got the call. She did stories about wounded eagles in a hospital for birds, and peregrine falcons living atop a Minneapolis skyscraper. She even did a piece about a pet cemetery. She swore if she had to do another animal story she’d put the beast in the ground herself.