A Cold Case of Killing

Jeffrey

Chapter One

Blockade

TWO YELLOW SAWHORSES supporting a weathered wooden sign that said ROAD CLOSED – POLICE in black stenciled letters stood across the middle of the street, stopping us half a block from our destination. Looking down the block beyond the barrier, we could see so many flashing blue and red lights that it looked like Christmas in July.

Al parked the blue Ford Focus with the St. Paul Daily Dispatch logo at the curb, with the bumper almost touching the end of the sawhorse on the right. We got out and started walking toward the flashing lights, Al with his camera slung over his shoulder and me with my reporter’s notebook in my left hand.

Al is Alan Jeffrey, the Daily Dispatch’s best photographer. I am Warren Mitchell, better known as Mitch, and I think of myself as the paper’s best investigative reporter, whether anyone else does or not. We had been sent to East Geranium Street on St. Paul’s East Side by our city editor, Don O’Rourke, when a subscriber called to report a flurry of police activity at the house next door to hers.

The place is swarming with cops, the caller had said. We found her description to be accurate when we reached the scene and encountered more yellow, this time in the form of a ribbon of plastic tape encircling the property line of a modest two-story frame house. On the street, I counted six marked squad cars and two unmarked black sedans, all with lights flashing. I expected to see an ambulance, but instead I saw a hearse parked on the opposite side of the street. Okay, that meant they expected to be bringing out a body, not a patient.

I was pleased to see that no television crews or other reporters were on the scene as yet. It’s always an advantage to be first. As we approached, a uniformed officer who looked like he spent all his breaks in a doughnut shop moved toward the yellow tape and held up his right hand like a stop sign. You don’t come no further, he said as we arrived at the tape.

What’s going on, officer? I asked as Al raised his camera and began shooting photos of the vehicles and the house.

I ain’t authorized to say nothin’ to the press, the officer said. You’ll have to wait ’til one of the detectives comes out to ask any questions. Behind him, two uniformed officers came out the front door. Each carried a large cardboard box.

Who all is in there? Can you ask one of them to come out?

I ain’t authorized to say who’s in there and my job is to stay out here and make sure nobody crashes the tape. The two uniforms loaded their boxes into the trunk of the nearest squad car.

"I know most of the detectives. Couldn’t you just duck in for a minute and tell somebody that Mitch from the Daily Dispatch is here?" The two uniforms returned to the house.

My job is to stay right here, the cop said. You’re just gonna have to wait ’til one of those detectives that you say you know comes out on his own. He backed away from the tape and took a more relaxed position with his back against the trunk of a large oak tree at the front corner of the lawn.

As I watched the door for a familiar face, I heard the roar of an engine behind the house. Al heard it, too, and we both started walking just outside the tape line toward the backyard.

Funny time to be mowing the lawn, Al said.

I’m betting it’s an excavation, not a clip job, I said.

I dig that.

The cop stepped away from the tree. Hey! he yelled. You guys are trespassin’ on that neighbor’s lawn. Get outta there.

We’re outside the tape, Al said. We’ll get off the grass if the neighbor complains. The dividing line between the two lots was a four-foot-high white picket fence on which the yellow tape was strung. On our side was grass; the other side was lined with a multi-colored patchwork of flowering plants.

The cop’s face turned as red as some of the blossoms in the flowerbed as he walked toward us with his hand on the butt of his nightstick. By the time he caught up to us, we had gone far enough to see a small backhoe lower its scoop into a rose garden that stretched across the entire width of the backyard about thirty feet from the house. The chrome yellow of the backhoe stood out in stark contrast to the red, white, pink, and salmon-colored blossoms covering the plants about to be torn out by the roots. Two men wearing hardhats and holding shovels were watching the backhoe, along with two more uniformed policemen.

Al shot a series of photos as the backhoe driver raised the scoop, ripping up a cluster of rose bushes, and backed away, leaving a shallow furrow about three feet deep. The machine sat with the engine idling while the men with shovels moved in and began probing the scraped area.

Are they digging up a body? I asked our red-faced pursuer.

I ain’t authorized to tell you nothin’, he said. Now get offa that guy’s lawn.

It’s all right, officer, said a female voice behind us. I’m the one that called the press to come here.

I turned and saw a woman wearing a blue St. Paul Saints T-shirt and baggy knee-length red shorts walking toward us. She looked to be in her fifties, with curly salt-and-pepper hair and a few extra pounds on her breasts and belly. Although it was mid-July, her skin was mid-March white. If she was truly a Saints fan, she apparently only attended night games.

Hi, I’m Donna, she said, grabbing my right hand and shaking it until I thought it would rattle. Donna Waldner. I called your Tipster Line. The Daily Dispatch rewards Tipster Line callers whose tips turn into stories with fifty-dollar checks.

Thanks for calling, I said. I’m Mitch and this is Al.

Nice to meet you, Donna said. She reached for Al’s hand but it was holding a camera so she settled for a pat on his wrist.

Do you know what’s going on here? I asked Donna.

Not a clue. Just all of a sudden a whole bunch of cop cars show up and some of them go into the house and the others go out to the backyard. And then a truck with a Bobcat pulls in and the Bobcat goes back and starts diggin’ up the Andersons’ beautiful rose garden. It’s a shame what they’re doin’.

We had walked past a flatbed trailer hitched to a parked pickup truck on our way in, but I hadn’t connected it to the police action.

You said ‘Andersons’ house.’ Is that the name of people who live here?

Yah, Donna said. Jack and Jill, would you believe. Nice people. You’d never expect the cops to be tearin’ up their place like this.

You’ve known them a long time? I asked.

Yah. We’ve lived here ten years now and Andersons were here when we moved in. Jill brought over a hot dish the first night we slept here. I think they’ve been livin’ in that house for a real long time.

They’re an older couple?

Yah, they’re somewhere in their sixties. Jack just retired this spring, so he’s got to be at least sixty-five.

And you say they’ve been good neighbors?

Oh, yah, very good. Nice and quiet. They pretty much keep to themselves but they’re friendly enough when you see them. Jill spends most of her summer workin’ on all those gardens. She pointed toward the Andersons’ backyard, where several smaller patches of flowers augmented the space where the Bobcat was churning up buckets of soil and rosebushes. I couldn’t help wondering what their water bill must be.

Do you socialize with them at all? Cookouts or card games or anything like that?

No, not really, Donna said. They don’t seem to be into that kind of thing. I mean, we said they should come over for dinner some time when she brought the hot dish, and she said okay, but when we’d try to set a time they could never make it. They never seemed to go anywhere else, either, so after a while we kind of got the message. Like I said, she spends all her time putterin’ in her gardens, which is a lot more ambition than I’ve got. I don’t know what Jack does with himself now that he’s retired.

What kind of work did Jack do? I asked.

He worked at the Mall of America out in Bloomington but I don’t really know what he did there. Fred might know. I could ask him when he comes home and call you.

Fred is your husband?

Yah. He works at the 3M office on the Hudson Road. Security guard.

I handed her my card. Okay, you ask Fred and give me a call. If I’m not there, you can leave a message.

Donna took the card, pulled down the neckline of her T-shirt, and tucked the card into the top of her bra. Anything else I can tell you? she asked.

Do the Andersons have any children?

Not that I’ve ever seen visit them or heard them talk about.

I guess that’s it, then, unless you have some idea of what the cops are looking for, I said.

Like I said, not a clue. This is the last place in the world I expected to see this kind of thing goin’ on.

Thanks for your help, I said. And I’ll see that you get your fifty dollars.

Yah, that would be nice, Donna said. Nice talkin’ to you guys. Hope you find out what the heck this mess is all about. She turned, walked to her house, and went in the back door.

While we’d been talking to Donna, our red-faced police shadow had returned to the shade of the oak tree. We watched the backhoe rip out another bucketful of roses, then walked back to the street to wait for somebody in plain clothes to come out of the house.

Oh, look at that, Al said. We’ve got company.

Chapter Two

Growing Interest

OH, DAMN," I SAID. Our company was a crew from Channel Four, led by flaxen-haired Trish Valentine, the possessor of the finest set of boobs on Twin Cities television. She was in mid-July form, wearing a pale blue scoop-neck blouse with the top three buttons open to display an evenly-tanned expanse of cleavage.

Hi, guys. What’s going on? Trish asked.

Don’t know, I said. I pointed to the cop leaning against the tree. The guardian of the perimeter says he’s not authorized to tell ‘nobody nothin’.’ What brings you here?

A woman called the station and said the place next door to her was swarming with cops. What’s that noise behind the house?

Damn that Donna. Why couldn’t she have been satisfied with calling just the Daily Dispatch? It’s a Bobcat, I said. They’ve started fall plowing in the family’s flower garden a few months early.

Whoa, Trish said. We’ve got to get a shot of that. Come on, Tony. She beckoned to her camera man and trotted toward the backyard with Tony at her four-inch heels. The cop took two steps away from the supporting tree and started to raise his hand, then did a what-the-hell shrug and went back to leaning against the trunk, all the while keeping his eyes focused on Trish’s blouse.

I hauled out my cell phone and punched in Don O’Rourke’s number. I told him what little I knew and mentioned that Trish Valentine was on the scene.

We need to get something into the online edition, Don said. I’m going to switch you to Corinne Ramey. You can give her your notes and she can whip up a quick bulletin.

Don made the transfer and Corinne, a young reporter whose desk was next to mine, said she was ready to copy. To hell with notes, I thought, and I gave her a five-graf story, complete with commas and periods, describing the scene and quoting Donna Waldner.

Good job, Corinne said when I’d finished.

I gritted my teeth and swallowed a nasty response. Good job is one of my most hated clichés. First of all, it’s been run into the ground by overuse. Second, it’s grammatically incorrect. I have a good job. I keep my good job by doing good work.

Thanks, I said after a brief pause.

No problem, Corinne said. Aargh! Another of my pet peeves. What ever happened to good old you’re welcome? I broke the connection without another word.

Looks like moving day at the Andersons’ house, Al said as two more large cardboard boxes were carried out and deposited in the squad car’s trunk.

Our tax dollars at work, I said.

I wonder what’s in those boxes.

Too bad you don’t have a camera with X-ray vision.

I’m saving that for Trish, he said.

Speak of the devil and she returned, with Tony, who stood at least a foot taller than Trish even in her four-inch heels, following in lockstep.

They’re really ripping the crap out of that flowerbed, Trish said. I broke into whatever network drivel we’re showing at this hour and reported breaking news live with the Bobcat yanking up rosebushes behind me. The garden clubbers are already tweeting about what a terrible thing the police are doing to that flowerbed. Do you know whose body they’re looking for?

I don’t even have confirmation that it is a body that they’re looking for, I said. Granted, all the visual evidence points that way.

Do you know the name of the people who live in the house? Are they home?

The cops haven’t identified the homeowners and I haven’t seen anybody who looks like a resident, I said, dodging the name question without telling a lie. I’ve learned this technique by covering politicians’ press conferences.

God, I’d like to know what’s going on, Trish said. I’ll bet that cop couldn’t stop us if all four of us crashed the tape at once.

He has a lot of backup, Al said, waving toward the convoy of squad cars in the street. I’m not interested in getting clubbed or handcuffed.

Why not wait it out? I said. We’ve got no competition and it’s still early. It was, in fact, only a few minutes past nine on a Monday morning.

My cell phone played the opening bars of The William Tell Overture. It was Don O’Rourke wondering if I had anything new.

Only thing new is Trish Valentine reporting live, I said. She was, in fact, moving into position to do a live shot in front of the house. Don told me to stay on the scene and report any new developments immediately. Our conversation ended in time for me to hear the sign-off: Trish Valentine, reporting live.

Always better than reporting dead, Al muttered. I assume Don wants us to stick to this story.

Like bubblegum to the bottom of your shoe, I said.

So this is our sole assignment?

Before I could answer, a male voice in the street behind me shouted, Hey, guys, what’s happening? I turned to see Barry Ziebart of Channel Five and his cameraman hustling toward us. If this trend continued, we’d soon have as many reporters and photographers as police officers on the scene.

The cop under the tree walked toward us, pointing to the yellow tape. Barry stopped and we went through the ritual of telling him that none of us knew anything other than what our eyes were seeing. Barry and his cameraman went to the backyard to get the obligatory live shot of the Bobcat at work, and the rest of us watched more cops carry more boxes out of the house and put them into squad car trunks. When the Channel Five duo returned, the beginning of a path was visible in the grass on Donna Waldner’s side of the fence. A few more trips by media observers and Donna would have to invest some of her fifty Tipster Line bucks in grass seed.

I’d give my right boob to know what’s in those boxes, Trish said.

You’d fall over onto your left side and wouldn’t be able to get up, Al said. Tony laughed so hard at this that Trish finally stopped him with a look that would have frozen hot coffee on the Fourth of July.

I used the waiting time to study the house. It was a run-of-the-mill two-story wooden structure, probably built in the pre-Depression nineteen-hundreds like everything else on the block. A shallow screen porch ran halfway across the front and a bay window with a lamp in the center took up most of the other half. The white clapboards should have been repainted a couple of years earlier, the green trim around the windows was chipped and peeling, and the red brick chimney looked like it could use some tuck pointing. Whatever Jack’s vocation was, his hobby was not home maintenance.

It was almost ten thirty when a man in plain clothes stepped out the front door and looked around. Jeez, the whole damn press corps is here, he said.

Not quite all of it, just the elite part, I said. Tell us what’s going on.

Give us a sound bite, yelled Barry.

I can put you on live, Trish shouted.

I’m not authorized, the officer said. I’ll see if my boss will come out. He zipped back into the house.

Another five minutes passed. Another uniformed officer emerged with still another box and carried it to yet another squad car. As he returned to the front door, the uniform stepped aside to let a man in a dark gray, pin-striped suit come out. Could this be the boss?

My God, it’s Brownie, Al said. This is a big deal.

Indeed, it was Detective Lieutenant Curtis Brown, the head of the Homicide Division, otherwise known (but not to his face) as Brownie. He stopped on the middle of the three front steps and looked us over. We all started shouting questions and Brownie walked to the tape with his hands high above his head as a signal to shut up.

When silence was achieved, Brownie said, Good morning, everybody. What brings you out on this hot July day?

That’s what we want to know, Barry said.

I can put you on live right now, Trish said.

What are you looking for? I asked.

We’re looking for evidence, Brownie said. But you’ll be disappointed to learn that there’s no blood. It’s a cold case.

How cold? Trish asked.

Twenty-five years. You were probably in diapers when the victim disappeared.

Ooh, thanks for the compliment, Trish said. I was guessing that she’d have been starting junior high.

Who was the victim? I asked.

The daughter of the couple that lives here, Brownie said. She was fifteen years old when she vanished. It was a Saturday morning. The parents gave her some money and sent her to the little convenience store on the corner three blocks away for a loaf of bread, and nobody has seen her since. Her parents said she never came home and the clerk at the store said she never came in.

Are you here because you’ve got some fresh information? Barry asked.

We have, and we’re looking for more, Brownie said. As I said, the case is twenty-five years old but we’ve never closed it.

Trish moved up to the tape so she was face-to-face with Brownie across the tape and asked, What are the parents’ names? She stuck her microphone in Brownie’s face as he answered.

Anderson, he said. Jack and Jill Anderson, would you believe?

Seizing the moment, Barry Ziebart jumped to the other side of Brownie as Trish was asking, And what is the victim’s name? Barry’s microphone joined Trish’s in front of the detective’s face.

Marilee, Brownie said. Marilee Anderson.

Do you think she’s buried in the backyard? Trish asked.

I can’t comment on that, Brownie said. All I can say is that we’re trying to cover every possible angle. We’ll be here for as long as it takes to go through everything in the house and the yard.

Do you think her parents killed her? Trish asked.

I can’t comment on that at this time, Brownie said.

Thank you, Detective Brown. Trish Valentine, reporting live from St. Paul’s East Side. Trish moved away and Barry Ziebart asked a couple of questions that brought non-committal replies before he, too, signed off with, Barry Ziebart, reporting live.

Brownie backed away a couple of steps and said, "Okay, that’s it; no more questions—live, dead, or wounded. Looks like we’re going to be working here all day, and you’re free to stand outside the tape and watch but I doubt that you’ll see much.