The Weatherman (35 page)

He pats her leg, further up the thigh, very understanding. “I know, I know, we ask a lot of our people. But it’s important our anchors be seen out there in die community. That’s why I’m thinking about this part-time reporter position for you.” His hands are approaching her hips now.

Charleen leans into him. Kisses him, just a sweet touch of the lips, then runs her long fingers through his hair. “What do I have to do to get the first year of that contract?”

Napoleon drops to his knees. He caresses her thighs, slowly inching up her dress. “I have needs, Charleen. Lord Jesus help me, I have needs.” “Tell me about them, honey.”

The news director reaches up and grabs hold of her throat with his big right hand. He squeezes gently. “Did you ever have sex while being choked?”

She smiles, a nervous laugh. “No, I never have.” Napoleon, also nervous, laughs along with her. Then he reaches behind her neck and violently jerks her head into his. They are nose to nose. The news director talks in a nasty whisper, difficult to hear. He traces her mouth with his finger. “First year, three percent raise. You get down on your knees and you pray to me, worship every inch of my manhood.” He passes his hand down her neck and unbuttons her blouse, exposes her black lace brassiere, rubs his hand over her bare belly. She is breathing hard.

There is a pair of scissors on the end table beside the couch. Napoleon reaches for them. He passes the sharp chromium blades up her bare belly to her bra. A frightened look appears in her eyes. He snips the bra in two and her white and freckled breasts spill out. He sucks on them like a man dying of thirst. Then he breaks away and begins slowly snipping her dress between her legs. “Ten diousand is as high as I’ll go on the bonus,” he tells her. But he is already as high as her crotch with the scissors. Her skirt splits in two. “Second year,” he explains, as he pulls her skirt from beneath her, “two percent raise. You spread your legs wider than they’ve ever been spread before and you take in every last inch of me.” He lays the scissors down and jams born his hands beneath her and grabs her ass. She drops her head back. “Then, to get the elusive third year on that contract,” he instructs her, “you get on your knees, put your face in a pillow, and put this beautiful ass of yours in the air, and pray. I mean it-pray so I can hear you.”

Charleen is nodding, excited, frightened. She understands what has to be done. She strokes the back of his head. “I won’t sign a no compete clause,” she moans.

Napoleon is tearing away her blouse. “If you can suck it out of me, I’ll waive the no compete clause.”

From here the negotiations get better than anything in any video store. Jack Napoleon pushes his female anchor to the couch and literally rips her clothes from her. When he has her down to only her panties he again picks up the shiny scissors. He is on his knees over her shapely body, ghostly white. He slides the scissor blades up the side of her leg, scratching her, drawing blood, up under her black bikini panties. He snips. Snips again. Napoleon leans back and pulls the panties free.

Forty minutes later the tape plays out. Sky High News anchor Charleen Barington, in living color, earns everything but the no compete clause.

The rewind button is beeping.

Rick Beanblossom got up off his couch. He rewound the contract talks, then pushed the eject button. The amateur video popped into his hands. He stuffed the video into a

padded mailer. Then he peeled off the address label he’d typed up and attached it to the envelope.

J. C. Peters

HY
PETER
PRODUCTIONS

466 First Avenue North Minneapolis, MN 55403

The trial was delayed another five days due to the annual tournament blizzard. This late winter storm strikes every year during the state high-school hockey tournament, or so says the local weather myth. The storm gave Minnesota over one hundred inches of snow for the season. A flood advisory was issued for parts of the state, a mighty tepid warning for record snowfalls. Dixon Bell, sitting at the defense table reading the morning newspaper while waiting for the jury to be brought in, thought flooding was more a probability than a possibility and should be taken more seriously at this point in the season. He wasn’t buying the ninety-day forecast of below-normal temperatures and a dry spring. Strange winds were blowing. When he’d finished studying the weather page he turned to the metro section. Once again his friends at the newsroom in the sky were making more news than they were reporting.

NEWS
DIRECTOR
RESIGNS
Channel 7 news director Jack Napoleon submitted his resignation to the station’s owners, Clancy Communications, in the wake of a Sky High News sex scandal. Anchorwoman Charleen Barington has taken a paid leave, the station said. Reporter and part-time anchor Andrea Labore will take over the anchor duties in the interim.

The scandal broke last week after a local tabloid reported brisk sales of an underground videotape that shows Jack Napoleon engaged in sexual activity while discussing a new contract with an on-air personality. In the video the news director can be seen choking the woman.

Stacy Dvorchak, attorney for former Channel 7 weatherman Dixon Bell, now on trial in Minneapolis charged in the serial killings of seven Minnesota women, says she will try and have the tape shown at the trial. Dvorchak told reporters yesterday, “Police got the right newsroom, but they arrested the wrong man.”

Prosecutor Jim Fury called that accusation “ridiculous” and said the tape was totally irrelevant to the trial. He was confident the judge would not allow it to be admitted.

Jack Napoleon’s reign in the popular newsroom atop the
IDS
Tower was plagued by a series of bizarre incidents that began almost as soon as he arrived in the Twin Cities. He was only on the job a month when the Sky High News helicopter crashed after …

Dixon Bell put down the paper and looked around. The man in the mask was standing in the back, chatting with colleagues, the newspaper in his hands rolled tight as a club. What did he know? If police weren’t investigating Jack Napoleon, then surely Rick Beanblossom would be. Before this welcome bit of news a black cloud of depression had been stalled over the Weatherman’s jail cell. If worse came to worst he had three square bricks in the wall chipped loose, would slide right out of there. The Order of Masons would be proud of him. Now, as the jury was ushered in and the court was called to order, the meteorologist from Yicksburg, Mississippi, felt a warm ray of hope. But like the winter sunshine, it didn’t last. “Your Honor, the state calls Lisa Gilbert.” She was a frumpy woman, fat, unattractive. She was fiftyish-looking, maybe younger. Her dull brown hair, probably dyed, was tied back in a bun. She wore a frilly black dress skirted over granny shoes.

Stacy Dvorchak muttered a question to Dixon Bell. “Didn’t I once ask you about her?” “I’ve never seen the woman before.” The Gilbert woman was sworn in, then took the witness stand. She kept her eyes forward, avoiding the defense table. There was an aristocratic arrogance in her demeanor that Dixon Bell found disturbingly familiar. After the Davi Iverson secret-lover testimony he didn’t know what to expect. But nothing could have prepared him for the lightning bolt the prosecutor had aimed at his heart.

Jim Fury doing the questioning. “Where are you from, Mrs. Gilbert?”

“Dallas, Texas.”

“And before that?”

“I was born in Natchez, Mississippi. Daddy moved us up to Vicksburg when I was a little girl. There I was raised.”

“Did you know Dixon Bell when you lived in Vicksburg?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“How did you know him?”

“We went to high school together. He said he was in love with me.”

Dixon Bell froze like an icicle. God almighty, it was Lisa Beauregard! He knew in his heart right then and there that it was her, but his mind and his mouth were rejecting it. He was on his feet, talking down to Stacy. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.” Three deputies were coming at him. “Is nothing sacred to these sons of bitches?”

With the braces on her hands Stacy was clawing at his arm, trying to pull him back into his chair. “Sit down, Dixon. Sit down.”

Judge Lutoslawski was pounding his gavel. Two deputies dropped their big paws onto the shoulders of Dixon Bell and pushed him back into the chair.

Stacy Dvorchak was furious. “Your Honor, this is the second time in this trial that Mr. Fury has pulled this stunt.”

Prosecutor Fury responded with lawyerly glee. “Your Honor, Mrs. Gilbert’s name has been on the witness list for six months. The attorney for the defense had plenty of time to interview her. She’ll have the chance to cross-examine her today.”

Again the attorneys were called to the bench, where they argued in loud, intense whispers while the Weatherman, hotter than the Delta sun, sat glaring at this obese woman who claimed to be Lisa Beauregard. After the war he had had fantasies about killing the bitch. He’d do it with his bare hands. He’d take that letter she wrote him and literally stuff it down her throat and up her nose. Then he’d cover her face with his hands so she couldn’t spit it out. Make her eat her own words. Choke her to death on her lousy prose. Three deputies were standing over him. Two more deputies, big suckers, came in from the hallway. The women in the jury box were staring at him, and Dixon Bell could sense their fear.

Stacy Dvorchak lost this round. As she so eloquently informed her client, “Judge Polack ruled the fat lady of the circus could testify before the jury.”

Prosecutor Fury continued with his questions. “Do you remember a love letter Dixon Bell wrote you in the spring of your senior year?”

“Yes, I do. He said that he loved me and that he wanted to take me to the prom.” “Do you still have that letter?” “No. I don’t remember what became of it.” “Do you remember the letter you wrote back to him?” “Vaguely. I told him I didn’t ever want to date him and I wouldn’t go to the prom with him.”

“Could you be more specific about what you wrote?” “No, sir, I’m sorry, I can’t. I keep telling your police, I just never thought about it that much. I have children older than I was back-then.”

Dixon Bell could see Jim Fury was eating this shit up, as were the smug little lawyerettes he had on his team. “Please tell the court everything you’ve heard about Dixon Bell since high school.”

Lisa Gilbert never looked at the man she was testifying against, the man who worshiped her in her youth. “That he was in the Air Force. Then somebody at a reunion said he was a television weatherman in Memphis, and then he moved to Milwaukee. I guess they meant here. Then my momma called me last year to say that he was arrested for these murders. It was in the Vicksburg paper.”

“Is it fair to say, Mrs. Gilbert, that you didn’t give Dixon Bell much thought after you graduated from high school?” “I didn’t think about him hardly at all. Back in those

days I was pretty popular and I got asked out by many admirable young men.”

“Were you surprised when the officers from the task force showed you the passages from his diary, the passages that spoke of his never-ending love for you?”

“I was shocked.”

That did it. Dixon Bell was out of his chair. He was standing and screaming until his lungs hurt. “You’re not Lisa! Lisa was beautiful! You’re just some ugly fat lady trying to hurt me!”

Two deputies had ahold of him. Stacy was reaching for his arm. “Dixon, sit down. This is what they want.”

Judge Lutoslawski was pounding on the bench with his hammer. Everybody in the media and ghoul sections was on their feet. Even in his anger Dixon Bell could see the glowing red light atop the television camera. If they wanted good television, by God he was going to give them good television.

“Don’t tell me I ran off to war and risked my life for some fat lady! I loved that girl! You’re just trying to humiliate me like you always did. You tell lies-you pervert my diary! I did nothing to deserve this! I’ll kill you, bitch!”

“Mistrial,” Stacy was screaming. “The prosecution planned this provocation. I move for a mistrial.”

“I’ll kill all you bitches! I did nothing to deserve this!”

The judge ordered the jury to leave the courtroom, and the women jurors gladly complied, but some of the men lingered in the doorway to watch. The deputies, five strong now, were tripping over Stacy’s wheelchair as they tried to wrestle her client under control. They spun him around toward the media section-and there he could see Rick Beanblossom standing against the back wall with a stare colder than ice. He knew. Somehow the bastard knew. The deputies finally handcuffed Dixon Bell and wrestled him from the courtroom. The Weatherman stumbled by the witness stand. He could smell her. She still wore the same enchanting perfume. Ain’t that funny, he thought.

Rick Beanblossom didn’t believe Jack Napoleon had murdered those women any more than had Dixon Bell.

Napoleon’s blood type didn’t match the blood under Officer Sumter’s fingernails. His shoe size didn’t fit the prints found in the snow. A source told Rick the fingerprint found on the transformer did not belong to the news director. All of that evidence pointed to the Weatherman. Only the time frame fit Jack Napoleon-fit him like a glove.

Meanwhile the Channel 7 news staff was functioning as normal. Television newsrooms change news directors almost as often as Minnesota changes seasons. They were used to waiting for the new boss to arrive. At the assignment desk Gayle the Ghoul was directing a team of reporters and photographers about the Cities, pacing the floor in front of the assignment board like a panther, trying to talk into a phone and a two-way radio at the same time. She popped a cookie into her mouth.

Dave Cadieux stole a cookie from the desk, pulled videotapes from a metal rack, and disappeared into an edit room. The photojournalist hadn’t spoken to Rick Beanblossom since the Napoleon-Barington affair.

Up on the news set the aging but reliable Andy Mack was taping new promotional pieces with Andrea Labore, he at the weather podium, she at the anchor desk. Andy revised his forecast for the bit. Some flooding had begun on the Red River along the North Dakota border. Nothing unusual with heavy snowfall. Andrea turned on cue and asked about it. The weatherman circled the area on a monitor with an electronic pen and explained the minor flooding to the camera.