A Carnival of Killing (2 page)

“Haven’t a clue,” Al said.

“I just got here,” I said. “You’re up awful early aren’t you, Trish?”

“This is Trish Valentine reporting live, any time of day or night,” she said.

“As long as you’re reporting live, you’re better off than she is,” Al said. He pointed to the rigid form being loaded like a log onto a gurney for the ride downtown to the morgue.

I walked up to one of the uniforms at the yellow tape and asked about the victim. He was flapping his arms to stimulate blood circulation and fend off frostbite, but he stopped long enough to tell me that the body was that of a white female about five-foot-four and “kind of pudgy.” He added that any additional information would have to come from Homicide Chief Brown.

“Do you know who found her?” I asked.

“You’ll have to get that from Detective Brown.”

“How about the people who live here?”

“Their name?”

“Yes, their name.”

“You’ll have to get that from Detective Brown, too.”

As I gritted my teeth and pressed my numb lips firmly together, Al spoke softly behind me. “Nice try.”

Looking past my purveyor of limited information, I saw Detective Curtis Brown, chief of homicide, slide into one of the steam spewing unmarked cars. “I don’t know why we’re freezing our butts out here,” I said. “I can call Brownie from someplace a hell of a lot warmer than this.”

“How cold is it?” Trish asked. “Do you guys know?”

Before I could relay Don’s weather report, Al said, “It’s so cold that the flashers in Rice Park are just showing people pictures of their privates.”

“How do you get to Rice Park?” asked Trish.

Getting Warmer

My arrival in the newsroom at quarter to seven brought forth a chorus of comments from the early birds on the city and copy desks. These ranged from, “Who’s that masked man?” to “Hey, Mitch, how was the skiing?”

Ignoring these lesser creatures, who had been basking in the warmth of the newsroom while I was bearing the rigors of the frigid northland, I pulled off my gloves and hat, ran a hand over the light-brown haystack of hair to push it down, smoothed my moustache and clumped over to Don O’Rourke’s desk to tell him what little I knew.

“Christ, I got everything but the ‘kind of pudgy’ part just sitting here,” Don said. “I hope your twin did better with the camera than you did with the questions.”

“It’s easier to shoot pix long range than it is to yell questions at people who aren’t listening and don’t want to answer,” I said. “I’ll get on the phone to Brownie and get as much as he’s willing to tell me. And I’ll write a description of the scene that’ll raise goose bumps all over your body.”

During my ten years at the
Daily Dispatch
, I have cultivated a relationship with the head of the St. Paul PD Homicide Department, Detective Curtis Brown, otherwise known as Brownie. This has not been an easy field to cultivate because of the nature of Brownie’s job and his personal tendency toward minimal conversation with the media.

Brownie has a private number known only to a select few. After dumping my puffy ski jacket on the floor beside my desk, I punched in the secret digits and heard Brownie’s phone ring a dozen times before he picked it up and gave his customary one-word answer: “Homicidebrown.”

I always respond in kind. “
Dailydispatch
mitchell.”

“Was that you I saw standing out by the tape dressed for a day on the slopes?” asked Brownie.

“It was,” I said. “But I’d never go out on the slopes on a day like this.”

“Good thinking. Very thoughtless of some asshole to dump out a body on a day like this.”

“Do we know what the body’s name is?”

“We do, but you won’t until we notify the next of kin.”

“How did you identify her?”

“She had a little cloth purse attached to the belt around her waist. Her driver’s license and a credit card were in it.”

“It looked like she was dressed kind of different,” I said, hoping to elicit some details. “Not the usual winter combo of sweater and slacks.”

“As you’ll probably see in your partner’s pictures, she was wearing a purple dress with a big skirt and very short sleeves.”

“Do you think it was some kind of costume?”

“I ain’t saying what I think at this time.”

“Was her coat or hat anywhere around?”

“Nope. We’ve got guys out looking for that stuff.”

“What about her underwear?” I had to ask that one.

“No comment on that at this time,” he said.

I was jotting down notes but getting very little to put in a story. “How about the guy who found her? Can you identify him?”

“We’re not releasing his name at this time.”

“What about the owner of the house where the body was found?”

“I can’t release his name at this time but you must have a city directory in your office,” Brownie said.

“Well, thanks. That’s a start. Any idea how long the woman had been there?”

“She was frozen stiffer than a teenager’s dick on prom night, so we’re guessing she was dropped there around midnight.”

“Any idea when can I get her name?”

“Like I said, not until the family has been notified. I’ll have Franny call you when the chief gives me the word.” Franny is Frances Furness, the police department’s public information officer.

“Why don’t you call me?” I asked. “After all, we’re friends.”

“Friends?” said Brownie. “You consider us friends because your partner always takes pictures of my good side? Because you buy me a steak every other week?”

“I’ve never bought you a steak.”

“Might be worth trying.”

“Only if I can put it on my expense account,” I said. “Meanwhile, what else can you tell me?”

“Nothing at this time,” said Curtis Brown. “Have a good day.” The line went dead before I could say thanks.

Of course we had a city directory. I thumbed through it, found the house number on Mississippi River Boulevard and discovered that the owners were John J. Robertson, Jr., and Cynthia Q. Robertson. I copied the phone number and called it. A woman answered: “Robertson residence.”

“Is this Mrs. Robertson?” I asked.

“This is Mrs. Alexander, an employee of the Robertson household,” she said. “Mrs. Robertson isn’t taking any calls right now.”

“Actually, it was Mr. Robertson I wanted to speak with,” I said.

“Mr. Robertson has gone to work. You may be able to reach him there.”

“And that would be where?”

She gave me a number that I recognized as the main line for the State Capitol and an extension that meant nothing to me. I thanked her, punched in the Capitol number and followed up with the extension. After several rings, a woman answered: “
Enquirer
, Liz Adams speaking.”

I had reached the Capitol bureau of our Twin Cities newspaper rival, the
Minneapolis Enquirer
. “Hi, Liz,” I said. “This is Mitch Mitchell at St. Paul’s finest newspaper. Is John Robertson there?”

“He just went to sit in on a seven o’clock breakfast meeting in the governor’s office,” she said. “Can I have him call you?”

“Absolutely.” I gave the
Daily Dispatch
’s number and my extension.

“Can I tell him what it’s about?” she asked.

“It’s about what he found in his driveway this morning,” I said. It seemed so obvious that I almost prefaced my answer with, “Duh!”

“What was that?” Liz asked.

“He hasn’t told you?” My voice went up an octave in incredulity.

“He came in, said he was running late and dashed off to the meeting. What hasn’t he told me?”

“Check the
Daily Dispatch
website,” I said. “And have a good day.”

I almost ran to the city desk to tell Don that the man who found the body was an
Enquirer
reporter and that he hadn’t said anything about the discovery to his colleague at the Capitol bureau. “I wonder if he bothered to tell his city desk that his driveway was the center of a crime scene,” I said.

“Let’s look,” Don said. Both the
Daily Dispatch
and the
Enquirer
deliver printed editions of the newspaper to subscribers’ doorsteps and newsstands in the morning. The print edition is augmented electronically by Website pages that are updated frequently throughout the day. Don called up the
Enquirer
’s home page and scanned it. Whereas our home page was headlining what few details we had about the Mississippi River Boulevard body discovery, the
Enquirer
was showing nothing.

“What’d you say this clown’s name is?” Don asked.

“John Robertson, Jr.,” I said. “And I’m aware of who that is.”

“Aren’t we all?” Don said. He stood and shouted across the newsroom. “Hey, everybody, want to hear a funny story about the son of the publisher of the great
Minneapolis
Enquirer
?”

It was after ten o’clock when Franny Furness finally called. I set my half-full coffee cup to one side and prepared to copy the information.

“The victim’s name is Lee-Ann, spelled with a hyphen and an upper-case A, Nordquist,” Franny said. “She was twenty-seven years old, single, and the mother of a little girl named Sarajane, all one word no hyphen, age five. She is also survived by her parents, Leonard and Sophie Nordquist of St. Paul.”

Franny gave me the parents’ address, which was on the East Side where many of the city’s Scandinavians are clustered. “She also has a sister, Lori-Luann, spelled with a hyphen and an upper-case L, who lives in Fargo, God help her.”

“The parents seem to have a great affinity for hyphens,” I said. “Anything special about Lee-Ann? The name sounds vaguely familiar.”

“As a matter of fact, there is something kind of special,” Franny said. “She was Klondike Kate at last year’s Winter Carnival.”

The Legacy of Klondike Kate

The original Klondike Kate was a weather-hardy woman named Kathleen Rockwell, who made her way across the snow-capped Alaska mountains to the gold fields around the Yukon and Klondike rivers during the Gold Rush of 1898. The St. Paul Winter Carnival’s Klondike Kate presided over a make-believe northern-frontier casino known as Klondike Kate’s Cabaret.

“Do we know the cause of death?” I asked.

“It appears to be strangulation,” Franny said. “But that’s not official. Autopsy results should be available sometime late tomorrow.”

“How about motive? Any signs of sexual assault?” That question must always be asked when a woman is murdered.

“No comment on that until after the autopsy,” Franny said.”

“Time of death still around midnight?” I asked.

“The body was probably dumped in the driveway about midnight. She may have been killed an hour or so before that. Again, we’ll know more after the autopsy. You won’t want to print this little tidbit because you’re not a tabloid, but it’s taking a while to get the body thawed out.”

I remembered how stiff the corpse had been when it was lifted onto the gurney. “That’s more than our readers need to know,” I said. “Is the chief planning to make a statement, or is this all until tomorrow?”

“The chief has scheduled a briefing for all media here at the station at 1500 hours,” said Franny. Great, I thought. Just in time to allow the TV evening news to tell everyone the story more than twelve hours before our printed edition subscribers would see it in the morning paper.

I thanked Franny and put down the phone just as Al found an open patch big enough to accommodate half of his butt on the corner of my desk.

“What do you know about Klondike Kate?” I asked.

“Not much,” Al said. “Some of the old ones perform with the current winner at the saloon, and they all dress like 1890s Gold Rush bar floozies. Why are you asking?”

“Because our frozen dead woman was last year’s Klondike Kate. I’ve got to get some background on the program.”

“Didn’t we see her a couple of weeks ago at the contest?”

“We did. Her name is Lee-Ann Nordquist.”

Because I gag while watching anything resembling
American Idol
, I don’t normally attend the Klondike Kate competition. However, Al’s wife, Carol, knew one of the contestants, so Martha Todd and I went to the show with the Jeffreys to cheer for her.

Carol’s friend had lost to a hydrant-shaped 180-pound blonde (have I mentioned that Klondike Kate is traditionally “kind of chunky”?) with a voice that could shatter storm windows all the way to the Wisconsin border. Lee-Ann had helped the new Kate, whose name was Angela Rinaldi, put on the winner’s sash and joked about the need for a longer piece of satin to encompass the expanse of Angela’s substantial bosom.

“I need to tell Don who the victim is,” I said.

“Good luck,” Al said. “You know what he’s going to say.”

I knew, but I walked to the city desk and told Don anyway. And, as if on cue, he replied, “Call the family. See if you can get a picture.”

These were the most dreaded words a reporter could hear. Nothing in this business was more distasteful than asking for a comment and/or a photograph from the parents or siblings of a crime, accident or suicide victim. There’s a fifty-fifty chance the person you contact will want to send you off to join their recently departed relative, so reporters have developed two rules: If phoning, hold the receiver at arm’s length after identifying yourself. If ringing the doorbell, step back out of arm’s reach before the door opens. If you don’t hear a scream or feel the breeze from a punch, you’ve got a chance of achieving your objective.

Given my druthers, I’d go on one of those god-awful TV reality shows where contestants eat raw cockroaches soaked in snail slime or fall 200 feet into a barrel of bubbling green acid than ask a mother for a comment on her daughter’s murder. But Don had given the order and, good soldier that I was, I obeyed.

A man answered the phone. “Nordquist residence.”

“Mr. Nordquist?” I asked.

“I’m his next door neighbor,” the man said. “Are you a reporter?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” I said, and stretched the receiver away from my ear.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said loud enough for me to hear and slammed down his receiver.