Dead Air

by David A. Poulsen

  I laughed with him. “If that’s your best spy impression, I think we better keep it out in the open. But I wouldn’t mind knowing sooner than later.”

  “Okay, leave it with me.”

  I wasn’t sure if Cobb would approve of my asking someone with a less-than-airtight alibi to help me gather information, but I didn’t have a lot of other ideas. Besides, I figured if Beamer was someone to keep an eye on, this would give me the opportunity. I gave him my email address and we parted company for the second time in minutes.

  After one more look around for a small, dark-blue foreign car and drawing a blank, I climbed into the Accord, rolled down 17th Avenue to 4th Street West, and turned south. I parked directly opposite the Purple Perk, crossed the street, and got the last empty table in the place. I couldn’t have swallowed any more coffee to save my life, but the place had a meat loaf sandwich that I would’ve walked barefoot on broken glass to get to.

  I ordered the sandwich and a hot chocolate, then, as I sat at a back corner table, I pulled out my phone and called Cobb again.

  “Nice timing,” I heard him say. “You caught me between interviews.”

  “I didn’t know you were interviewing, as well. I just wrapped up. I hope you’re not stuck in that miniscule coffee room.”

  “Hell, no. I set up shop at a tavern just down the street.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that? I settled for a coffee place.”

  “And that, my friend, is why I’m the detective and you are just the lowly assistant.”

  I laughed, took delivery of my sandwich and hot chocolate, and licked some whipped cream off the top of the mug.

  “How’d the arraignment go?” I asked him.

  “Short but not so sweet. No bail, at least not for the moment, though the judge did tell Shulsky he could file a follow-up request and he’d consider it. Shulsky huffed and puffed and I could see Larmer was having a hell of a time not blowing up completely, but he kept it together.”

  “Humbling experience, jail,” I said.

  “I don’t know, lots of superstars have done a little time here and there and seemed to get through it, ego still intact. Can you say Conrad Black?”

  “True enough.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Well, one item that may be interesting. Monday getting shot in Hamilton and now Hugg might not have been the only attacks on right-wing media personalities.” I told him what Helen Burgquist had said about the explosion in California and the death of the woman journalist in Texas.” Waited ten or fifteen seconds for a response.

  “You still there?”

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he hissed into the phone.

  “Sorry,” I said, a little angry, “I thought it was something —”

  “No, no, not you,” Cobb cut me off. “Me. I remember the California thing — it was a big deal at the time, but as far as I know there was never any evidence of criminal intent proven. Guess I just put it out of my mind. Shouldn’t have. I didn’t know about the Texas death. Where in Texas?”

  “Don’t know. I’ll look into that. Should be easy.”

  “That and when.”

  “Right. Helen said the two incidents were fairly close together, but I’ll check that out.”

  “Good. They may or may not be related, but they’re definitely worth a look.”

  “Sure, I’ll get on both right away,” I said.

  “How about your interviews? Anybody jump out at you as capable of being the killer?”

  “Not right off,” I told him. “But I’ve got a couple of things to check out. There’s one guy, a fairly young guy, you might want to follow up with. But let me put something together on that for you, too.”

  “Good, thanks. A couple of things for you to be aware of. I talked to Detective Landry and she was fairly forthcoming. The attack on Hugg was frontal, meaning head-on — I’d already figured that, but now we’ve got it officially, and since we’re not going to be privy to the results of the autopsy, this is helpful. She also told me that given the kind of wounds that were inflicted, it’s almost certain that the killer was splattered with blood, probably a fair amount of it. And again, based on the entry pattern of the wounds, the killer was very likely right-handed.”

  “With all that blood on him, it would certainly have drawn attention if anybody’d seen him.”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about that. The police did a pretty thorough canvass, no witnesses so far. Or at least no one who’s come forward. Sometimes someone sees something strange and it doesn’t register until they hear that there was an incident that might have been related to what they saw. I’m betting the police will have a news conference and ask for the public’s help. The other possibility is that the killer had a car and got into it quickly and left the scene. Somehow got washed up and changed without anybody seeing him covered in blood.”

  “The car in question being a Lincoln Navigator?”

  “That seems a possibility.”

  “Meaning that either Larmer murdered Hugg or someone took the car that morning and returned it to the garage after committing the murder.”

  “I think it’s fair to say that the police are leaning toward the former.”

  “If there is a media briefing, you want me to attend?”

  I could hear Cobb breathing as he thought about it. “Might be a good idea. Could be a waste of your time, but you never know. There might be something useful that we don’t already know. I’ll see if I can find out if there is one and if so, when and where.”

  “Right, oh and by the way, the word is that Larmer was something of a ladies’ man. I got that from a couple of my interviewees. Might have caused a few problems for the station.”

  “No real surprise but interesting nevertheless. Could have something to do with threats but doesn’t explain Hugg getting wasted.”

  “Pissed-off husband setting him up?”

  “Wow, that’s some kind of pissed off. Wouldn’t it be easier to just push the guy who’s screwing your wife into traffic? Still let’s keep that thought in the background. I don’t like to rule out anything until we’re sure.”

  “Got it.”

  “As for my interviews,” Cobb continued, “I’d say I’m drawing blanks here. About fifty-fifty between those who thought Hugg was the second coming and those who thought he was the devil incarnate. About the same breakdown on Larmer. Anyway, I’ve got another one coming up — probably the second-biggest star in the station’s on-air stable. Better go.”

  He rang off and I started in on my sandwich, glancing out the window that looked out on 4th Street from time to time, checking for the blue Jetta. I didn’t see anything.

  THIRTEEN

  Tom Cochrane and the rest of Red Rider were just finishing up “Lunatic Fringe,” with Elliott Brood on deck on my embarrassingly inadequate stereo. Great music collection. Below-average technology for conveying that music to the listener. I promised myself for the fortieth time I would do something about that. Soon. Really.

  I was rewriting my notes from the interviews. They were brief. I summarized the conversations with the four RIGHT TALK 700 employees and refrained from adding comments. I knew I was biased and the best way for me not to taint what I passed on to Cobb was to keep my opinions to myself. I knew he’d ask me again if I thought any of the four people I’d interviewed was capable of killing Jasper Hugg. When he did, I’d tell him that I thought three of the four were capable (I’d leave researcher Bernie McCready out of that conversation, unless boring people to death could be considered a capital offence), but I would likely add that despite Shawn Beamer’s flimsy alibi, I didn’t really like any of them for the attacker and it didn’t appear that any of them had been in a position to be implicated in the Hamilton, California, or Texas incidents — though I knew I’d have to check further into that before confirming my non-suspicions.


  I finished the notes as Elliot Brood was wrapping up the Days into Years DVD. As I looked them over, I realized they were far from my best work — sketchy, not comprehensive, and not particularly illuminating … and I knew why. I was distracted — at least some of my focus was on the blue Jetta. In our previous collaboration, Cobb and I had been followed on at least a couple of occasions and one came close to a disastrous conclusion for us. Maybe that explained my being somewhat hung up on the possibility that once again I was being tailed.

  Pushing those thoughts aside and wanting to keep moving forward with the case, I went to my laptop and searched “explosion radio station Fresno.” Wikipedia gave me this:

  On November 3, 2011, at 2:48 p.m., an explosion shook the Malahattan Building in downtown Fresno, just blocks from Cal State University, Fresno. The building, which housed radio station KKMR at the time, was severely damaged and one station employee lost his life while four others sustained injuries ranging from minor to severe, and in one case life-threatening, although the injured party survived. The deceased was Michael Morrissey, station manager, a veteran of the radio business who had been with KKMR for eleven years; the most seriously injured was Kirby Hei­bert, who was a student at the nearby university on a basketball scholarship and was working part-time carrying out miscellaneous tasks at the station. He wasn’t normally at the station at that time of the day but had a class cancelled that afternoon and had gone into work to catch up on some office cleanup. Sixty-four-year-old Ned Waterhouse, a writer in the promotion department, was just months from retirement. Water­house’s injuries from the blast were minimal, but he suffered a massive heart attack thought to be brought on by the shock and stress of the explosion and was hospitalized for seven weeks while recovering from the incident.

  Two station employees suffered less serious injuries. Assistant Program Director Dewey Hutsell, who had been with the station for just under four years, returned to work two months after the explosion on a part-time basis. Radio-show host Jackson T. was on the air at the time of the explosion and was in his sixth year with the station; he sustained non-life-threatening injuries. He never returned to radio and is now a counsellor at Mississippi Valley State University. All of the remaining staff returned to work at the station as their health allowed.

  The explosion took place one day after a Just Energy Natural Gas crew had completed work on a line test and change of the meter at the Malahattan Building. Investigators into the cause of the explosion stated that the cause was a gas leak due to improper installation of the meter, but months later there were those who felt that the explosion was deliberate — triggered by a device set at or near the newly installed meter.

  While a number of station and gas-company employees were questioned at length by FPD fire investigators and homicide detectives, no arrests were ever made and no charges were laid. The station reopened six weeks to the day after the explosion and the first day of broadcasting was dedicated to the employees who were casualties of the explosion.

  I summarized that report and a few others, all of which gave similar accounts of what happened that November day in 2011.

  Next I searched “Texas female journalist heart attack gym.” Up came a December 19, 2011, story about the sudden and unexpected death of Jasmine Swales, a forty-two-year-old journalist who had been working out at a gym in downtown San Antonio, Texas. I noted that her death took place forty-six days after the Fresno explosion:

  Ms. Swales was nearing the end of her workout when suddenly she clutched at her throat and fell to the floor. Her trainer, Rudy Lopez, a skilled para­medic who had worked for two years as an Assistant Trainer with the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA, immediately called 9-1-1, then worked over the fallen woman until an ambulance arrived. Ms. Swales was pronounced dead on arrival at the nearby Christus Santa Rosa Hospital.

  While the cause of death was at first thought to be either a heart attack or an aneurysm, an autopsy was inconclusive and referred to the presence in the victim’s bloodstream of a potentially fatal dosage of aconite, an alkaloid toxin that comes from the deadly root of the aconite plant. Traces of tincture of aconite were found in the victim’s bloodstream, as well as in a bottle from which Ms. Swales had been drinking a commercial sports drink. A criminal investigation followed and concluded that Ms. Swales’s death was homicide, but no charges were ever laid in connection with the incident.

  Jasmine Swales was, in the words of the reporter, “flamboyant and provocative, a gifted writer and orator who was kept busy travelling from one end of the United States to the other, speaking here, fundraising there — she was the darling of the Republican Party and conservative talk-show hosts, and reviled by Democrats and the left.”

  I made more notes. And while there was nothing in the accounts I read to connect either incident to the murders of Jasper Hugg or Dennis Monday, it was clear that recent years had taken a heavy toll on right-wing media personalities.

  It occurred to me that my time could be best spent by a) looking into where people on our suspect list had been during the San Antonio, Fresno, and Hamilton killings and b) trying to learn if there was any connection between the victims in the four violent episodes we were now aware of.

  I checked my email and was surprised to see a message from Shawn Beamer and even more surprised that there was an attachment listing the staff at RIGHT TALK 700 and the cars they drove. It appeared Beamer had been both fast and thorough. In the cases of those who owned two cars, he had listed both. And he’d provided years, makes, colours, and licence-plate numbers, as well. He’d also included a note to me.

  “I figured it would be faster if I just asked everybody. Hope that’s okay. There were a few who told me to bugger off — I got their stuff by spending a little time in the parking lot. Cloak and dagger after all, ha ha.”

  I took a second to note that Beamer himself drove a black 1997 Chevy Blazer. Larmer, I already knew, made do with a gold 2012 Lincoln Navigator. I glanced down the rest of the page — Helen Burgquist drove a 2013 Toyota Corolla, Lance Knight owned a Silverado pickup, and Bernie McCready’s ride was a 2006 Ford Focus station wagon. No surprise there.

  No Jettas on the list, dark blue or otherwise.

  I wasn’t surprised by Beamer’s news. I’d been 90 percent certain that the Jetta threat was in my mind only, a remnant of the shock of the events of a few months previous. And if someone was following me, the chance that it was someone from the station seemed remote at best.

  My notes completed, I spent the next hour doing what I had been doing more and more in recent days — searching for information pertaining to the death of Faith Unruh. As was the case all the other times, I found nothing new or interesting. More news reports almost word for word with those I’d already read. I checked sites listing unsolved mysteries in Calgary, then Alberta, and finally Canada. Nothing.

  I googled the names of her parents, again learned nothing I didn’t already know. I finally shut down, saddened and a little angered that there was so little record of a child’s life that had ended so early and so horribly.

  I poured myself a rye and diet and took up the spot on my couch that afforded me the best view of the city skyline. I thought again about Buckley-Rand Larmer and was surprised to realize that I was actually beginning to want him to be innocent of the Hugg murder and all the other killings that may or may not have been related.

  I thought about why that was. I knew at least part of my changing feelings had to do with Cobb and his belief in Larmer. If Cobb felt Larmer was innocent, I was willing, or at least I was becoming willing, to set aside my personal loathing for Larmer in favour of not seeing a man convicted of something he hadn’t done.

  I thought again about the four attacks on right-wing media and, as I had before, looked for connections. Four violent incidents — I was, for the moment, and for the sake of argument categorizing the death of Jasmine Swales as a violent act. Was there some connection betw
een the victims or were the attacks random? And why multiple victims in Fresno, not just a single victim? Why were four very different methods of killing used — a shooting, a stabbing, an explosion, and a lethal dose of a poisonous substance?

  And then there was the fifth case — Larmer himself — first threatened, then set up. A different kind of death? Maybe, but why? If he was connected to the others by something more than just being on the right side of the political spectrum, then why hadn’t he been killed?

  And if there was a connection, what could it be? These were very different people in many respects, from different parts of two countries, from superstars — Swales and Larmer — to apparatchiks — Hugg and Monday. As I thought about it until my head began to throb, I kept coming back to their political stance: not merely right wing, but insofar as I could gather, the extreme right. Did that make them more susceptible to fatal attacks?

  If so, had some nut from the “socialist left,” a favour­ite Larmer phrase, finally snapped and decided to exact revenge on the hated opposite side by killing its team favourites? Except that this wasn’t someone losing it and going on a rampage. This was a carefully crafted and, at least so far, well-executed plan.

  And as Cobb had told me a few times, the question in criminal investigations involving violence was why. Figure out the why and the who will often follow.

  I decided I’d done enough navel gazing and wanted to swing into action, thinking I’d tackle first some unfinished business — the names of the four former Hope Christian Academy students I’d been able to track numbers for. One of them was Ariel Mancuso. I’d start with her only because it was a name I’d actually heard before — in connection with the Jaden Reese bullying incident.

  She’d told Patsy Bannister she didn’t know the details of the fight other than that there were either three or four boys and one girl picking on Jaden Reese, who was gay. Larmer had stepped in to rescue the kid and somebody may have suffered a broken nose. Ariel hadn’t been one hundred percent sure on that point.