Stalking Susan

by Julie Kramer

  I reached Garnett on his cell phone as he walked past the Paul Bunyan flume, getting a feel for what passes as normal at the Mall of America’s giant indoor amusement park. Too busy to meet him, I was caught in the “chain and chase” phase of sweeps, either chained to my desk writing a script, or chasing frantically to nail a final story element.

  “I’ll worry about that later. Right now, I’m crashing on another script. And nowhere is it going to include the name Susan.”

  As I began outlining, I relived the crackle of the Taser and the crash to the ground, realizing the dog story might actually have a perfect movie ending. Write. Rewrite. Edit. Re-edit. The next couple of days passed in a blur until Malik called me for what we hoped would be the final screening before air that night.

  “What do you think?” I whispered as Noreen and Miles walked in. “Is it any good?”

  “It’s better than good,” he answered. “It’s done.”

  ((RILEY, LEAD-IN))

  FOR MANY OF US, OUR

  PETS ARE LIKE OUR

  FAMILY.

  CREMATION IS

  BECOMING ONE OF

  THE MOST POPULAR

  WAYS TO HONOR A

  DECEASED DOG OR

  CAT.

  BUT HOW CAN YOU

  BE SURE YOU’RE

  GETTING YOUR

  MONEY’S WORTH?

  …AND YOUR PET

  IS GETTING THE

  FINAL RESTING

  PLACE IT

  DESERVES?

  I started the story broadly, a classic consumer investigative spin designed to draw the viewer along, to make them worry “This could happen to me.” Then I introduced our everyman, Toby Elness, someone viewers could relate to, as long as they didn’t catch on that he was missing a few screws.

  ((TOBY ELNESS SOT/COVER

  W/ FLUFFY PIX))

  I NEED TO KNOW

  WHAT HAPPENED TO

  FLUFFY.

  ((VOICE TRACK)))

  TO TOBY ELNESS,

  FLUFFY WASN’T JUST

  A DOG.

  FLUFFY WAS FAMILY…

  AND TOBY WAS

  HAUNTED BY HIS

  DOUBTS THAT FLUFFY’S

  ASHES WEREN’T THE

  REAL THING.

  ((TOBY ELNESS SOT))

  I HAVE SUSPICIONS, BUT

  NO PROOF.

  ((STAND-UP))

  SO CHANNEL 3 SET OUT

  TO INVESTIGATE…

  WE WENT UNDERCOVER

  WITH HIDDEN

  CAMERAS…WE

  FOLLOWED THE

  MONEY TRAIL…WE

  FOLLOWED THE

  PAPER TRAIL…WE

  DID SCIENTIFIC

  TESTING…

  ALL TO EXPOSE A PET

  CREMATION SCAM

  THAT WILL MAKE YOU

  SICK TO YOUR STOMACH.

  Now I was embarrassing even myself, with every TV investigative technique and cliché rolled together. I could feel viewers on the edge of their seat, waiting to see if we could deliver.

  ((UNDERCOVER

  PIX/COUNT $$))

  20–40–60–80–100–120–140–

  160 BUCKS.

  ((VOICE TRACK))

  FIRST WE PAID DR.

  KEITH PETIT…A

  LOCAL

  VETERINARIAN…

  160 DOLLARS FOR AN

  INDIVIDUAL

  CREMATION FOR A DOG

  WE FOUND DEAD

  ALONG A COUNTRY

  ROAD.

  HE’S THE SAME VET WHO

  HANDLED FLUFFY’S

  CREMATION.

  ((PETIT/SOT))

  CREMATION IS A

  FITTING CLOSURE TO

  A PET’S LIFE.

  WE TAKE SPECIAL CARE

  TO MAKE SURE THE

  ASHES OF YOUR PET

  ARE NOT BLENDED

  WITH THOSE OF ANY

  OTHER PET. THAT’S

  THE PROMISE I MAKE

  TO YOU.

  ((VOICE TRACK))

  IT’S THE SAME PROMISE

  HE MADE TO TOBY

  ELNESS.

  ((TOBY/WIPE TEARS))

  I JUST HOPE NOTHING

  BAD HAPPENED TO

  FLUFFY.

  ((VOICE TRACK))

  BUT IT APPEARS TO

  HAVE BEEN A BROKEN

  PROMISE.

  LABORATORY TESTS

  SHOW THE ASHES OF

  BOTH OUR DOG AND

  TOBY’S DOG ARE

  BOGUS…

  A COMBINATION OF

  PEBBLES AND CAT LITTER.

  WHAT HAPPENED

  TO OUR PETS?

  CHANNEL 3 SET UP

  SURVEILLANCE OUTSIDE

  DR. PETIT’S VET OFFICE…

  THIS IS WHAT OUR

  HIDDEN CAMERAS SAW.

  I’d already mentioned the hidden cameras once, but repetition is an effective investigative scripting technique. Tell the viewers what you’re going to tell them; tell them; and tell them again.

  ((NAT/SOT TRUCK))

  THE BODIES OF

  NUMEROUS PETS,

  INCLUDING OUR DOG…

  DUMPED

  INTO THE BACK OF

  THIS TRUCK…

  TAKEN PAST THIS

  GATE AND NEVER SEEN

  AGAIN.

  SO WHAT IS THIS

  MYSTERIOUS

  BUILDING? IT’S NOT

  A CREMATORIUM…

  IT’S A RENDERING

  PLANT…WHERE

  ANIMAL CORPSES

  ARE MELTED DOWN

  AND MADE INTO PET

  FOOD AND EVEN…

  LIPSTICK.

  I smacked my lips together and paused just before I said the word “lipstick.”

  DR. PETIT DIDN’T

  WANT THIS STORY

  TOLD…

  HE WENT TO GREAT

  LENGTHS TO

  STOP US.

  No surprise, I ended the piece with the Taser video and the “Why are you cheating people?” sound. An explosive finale to a tabloid-style investigation. I finished up with a live on set tag, reading an excerpt from a nasty letter from Dr. Petit’s attorney warning what would happen if we besmirched his client’s reputation.

  Miles laughed when he first read the letter and said, “Bring it on.” Of course, I knew he was looking forward to the billing hours.

  TEN VOICE MAIL messages awaited me when I got to my desk the next morning.

  The first, a crank call with only a dog barking. Sounded like a big dog. I deleted it.

  I also deleted the one from Toby Elness. He offered me the pick of the litter from his next batch of puppies or kittens, my choice.

  I forwarded a blistering call from Dr. Petit to Noreen and Miles. We’d already posted his picture at the station security desk with a warning not to let him in the building.

  The message from Dr. Redding sounded almost conciliatory. Bottom line: he had seen the dog story on satellite in Duluth and figured anyone who would go to that much trouble for man’s best friend couldn’t be all bad. He left a cell phone number and an offer to meet again. Since he was back in Minneapolis. I hit save.

  The next two tip calls I deleted and ignored. One viewer wanted me to set up hidden cameras to catch his neighbor letting his dog crap on the sidewalk without cleaning up after him. The other complained that the media only covered bad news, and why didn’t we do any stories about all the good veterinarians out there.

  Garnett had called. He asked me to swing by his office later. We hadn’t seen each other for a week but had been in touch daily, bouncing Susan theories back and forth.

  Minneapolis councilwoman Susan Victor had phoned next. As a Susan herself, she felt confident and qualified to vouch for the safety of the city. She told me she would be fielding questions during a news conference at three that afternoon at city hall. I e-mailed the info to the assignment desk, with a note that I’d cover it.

  The barking dog with the deep voice was back. Erase.

 
Noreen left the last message. It was an “attagirl,” congratulating me on last night’s cremation story and reminding me it was her idea.

  Oh, and I buried the lead: dogs got a 39 share. I’d glanced at the overnights on my way in, not particularly proud that, going strictly by the numbers, our viewers seemed to care more about dead animals than dead women.

  CHAPTER 24

  Mayor Skubic pushed open the front door of Mickey’s on West Seventh Street in St. Paul. I hid my face behind a menu, but he had no trouble spotting my big red hairdo and slipped into the booth across from me. The smell of his cologne mixed with the smell of bacon and eggs and coffee.

  “Nice wig,” he said.

  I set the menu down and he stared quizzically at me, trying to figure out where he had seen me before, besides on his doorstep Halloween night. In his eyes, I saw confusion, not evil.

  “Do you like it?” I took the wig off and dropped it on the table. “Trick or treat.”

  I thought there might be a chance he’d hit me so I got there early enough to grab a booth by a window facing street side. I also had Malik waiting outside in the van, rolling tape through the glass.

  Mayor Skubic stood up to leave. “I don’t have time for practical jokes.”

  “I’m not laughing,” I said. “And neither is Susan Redding.”

  “I think I might call your boss about this little stunt.”

  “I think I might call your wife.”

  The mayor clearly didn’t want to call that bluff. He straightened his tie and walked out without looking back. I finished my coffee, left a five on the table, and headed to work.

  ONE WEEK INTO the November book and Channel 3 led our closest competition by nearly three ratings points, just under five share points. Mathematically we couldn’t lose, or so the bosses kept whispering, because they didn’t want to jinx the numbers.

  “I once owned a dog.” Mike Flagg kept coming up with lame reasons why he should help me with follow-ups to my pieces. “Just think how much easier it would be to catch this killer if we worked together.”

  His own stories this month—a rehash on auto title fraud and tips on how to clean up your credit report—had received lukewarm numbers. Viewers expect a ratings war between stations, but few realize the level of competition within a newsroom. I viewed Flagg’s phony offers to help as thinly veiled attempts to steal my story and glory. Politely I declined his assistance and tried to get him to leave by slouching over my desk, pretending to review some critical notes.

  “There’s enough angles on the SUSANS story for both of us,” he continued. “How about if I handle whether the prison guy should get a new trial?”

  “How about if you develop some sources and come up with your own ideas. I enterprised SUSANS,” I reminded him. “Originality attracts viewers.”

  “Well, that dog story came off the tip line,” he said. “You just got lucky there.”

  “Yeah, lucky for me you turned your nose up at it.” I hadn’t forgotten Mike Flagg was one of the reasons Noreen had stuck me with Toby Elness. “Anyway,” I told him, “it’s one thing to get an idea from the tip line. It’s another to know what to do with it.”

  “Here’s what you can do with your idea.” He made a gesture the FCC wouldn’t approve of and stomped off.

  I spent the rest of the morning researching Mayor Skubic’s background, looking for additional Susan links. I looked through an old file of newsmaker newspaper clips the station librarian kept before Channel 3 joined the computer age.

  Mayor Skubic grew up the eldest of five children in an abusive family on the Iron Range. His mother escaped by running off when he was ten. His father reportedly took it out on the kids, tangling often with his oldest boy. Life seemed to improve after his dad died in the mines and Skubic’s grandmother stepped in to raise the kids. Karl Skubic became a mediocre student, star hockey athlete, and owner of a local sporting goods store that slowly grew into a statewide chain. Name and face recognition followed when he started filming TV commercials spoofing sports heroes.

  His northern Minnesota roots made it inevitable that when he ventured into politics, it was as a DFLer. After two terms, he’d left a secure seat in the Minnesota House representing voters in the Duluth area. His move to the Twin Cities and success there came unexpectedly. Obvious money rolled in from labor unions, but he also became a crossover candidate, able to garner corporate contributions that normally went to Republican coffers. He ran for mayor on a lark.

  An old newspaper photo of him being sworn in as Minneapolis mayor while his wife and grandmother watched jogged my memory about an awkward incident involving Grandma during his first year in office. Nanna Zsa Zsa, as he called her, looked old country then; if she was alive today, she’d be damn old.

  She had joined a neighborhood card club in northeast Minneapolis after moving down from the Range. Luck stuck to her like glue—okay, she was a card sharp. Things got ugly when other little old ladies started complaining she was cheating them out of their social security. The Minneapolis newspaper ran a photo of the mayor with one arm wrapped protectively around her while his other arm knocked a camera away as they left the courthouse. The headline read “Leave My Nanna Zsa Zsa Alone.”

  Conventional political wisdom might predict voters turning against him. But senior citizens appreciated the family values he had demonstrated by sticking up for his shifty grandma, and they had supported him at the polls. The story was largely forgotten by now. Old news.

  “What’s the word on him these days?” I asked Channel 3’s political reporter, Cara Madden. She’d covered the beat longer than I’d been at the station, and knew which politicians owed who favors. She was the only newsroom employee Noreen didn’t mess with. Her core competence insulated her from many of the difficulties aging women TV reporters face. It also didn’t hurt that she had married Minnesota’s Supreme Court chief justice. She could stay on the air longer than Willard Scott; Channel 3 couldn’t chance a legal scuffle.

  She pondered my question about Mayor Skubic before summing him up. “Slick, but can be shaken.”

  “Ambitious?”

  “Content to be mayor, so he says. Realistically, he could make a run for governor. He’s got support from the Range, support in Minneapolis, but I don’t think he’s got the support at home.”

  “First lady having second thoughts?”

  “Every so often we hear stuff about him and other women, but until his wife makes an issue out of it, it’s off-limits unless we catch him with an intern.”

  “He ever come on to you?” I asked.

  “He likes to let his fingers linger on mine when we shake hands.” We grimaced simultaneously.

  “Okay, so he’s disgusting,” I said. “Think he’s violent?”

  “Never heard that.”

  “Think he’s got secrets?”

  “They all do.”

  I told her Mayor Skubic was taking the SUSANS case personally, for good reason. After I shared his connection to the first victim, she promised to keep her reporter radar pointed in his direction. We bounced around a couple ideas about a good cop/bad cop scenario. I’d already been cast as the bad cop, and Cara was fine being good cop as long as the role didn’t call for letting the mayor brush up close beside her.

  The front desk paged me that I had a guest in the lobby. On my way, I passed Mike Flagg coming out of the audio booth. No doubt to annoy me, he softly sang a lesser-known Elvis tune. “I’d trade ’em all for just one hour of Susan when she tried.”

  Oh well, better than “Oh, Susanna.”

  LAST TIME I’D done the heavy lifting of Trying to Be Nice. Now it was Dr. Redding’s turn. He’d made reservations at Zelo, a sophisticated Italian restaurant near the station and popular for business lunches. But he seemed reluctant to get down to business. I became suspicious because instead of teasing me, like everybody else, about my “stunning” story last night, he sympathized. He had clearly done some sleuthing and was treating me with deference. I realized
this had nothing to do with dead dogs and everything to do with my dead husband. To steer the conversation in the direction I wanted, I mentioned Susan Victor’s upcoming news conference.

  He shook his head. “I just got used to your using my wife’s death for ratings; now you’re telling me there’s someone using it for politics?”

  “Yeah. But she’s actually more interested in the other Susans than your wife. Minneapolis is her turf.”

  “And you’re doing a story for tonight?”

  “Kind of have to. If we ignore criticism about our work, we lose credibility. It’s sort of a journalism rule.”

  “So if I want to blast you, you’d put that on the air?”

  “I’ll call for a camera right now.” I reached for my cell phone, but he waved me off.

  “No. I don’t want my name and face all over the news. It was bad enough when Susan died.”

  “It was bad when Boyer died, too.”

  I hadn’t meant to say that. We both stayed quiet for a minute, each reliving that day. The shock. The despair. The media. We shared a murdered spouse bond, but it still felt uneasy. I wished our food would arrive. All we had was ice water and crunchy bread.

  “At least you were never a suspect,” Redding said.

  “Did they think you did it?”

  “Briefly, but my DNA cleared me and they verified my alibi.”

  “At least you got to watch a trial. Got to look the killer in the eye. Got to watch them lead him away. I got one conspiracy theory after another. The blame never ended.”

  “But you don’t think my wife’s killer is to blame, so any comfort I might have derived from looking him in the eye is gone.”

  “That is shitty,” I agreed. “Sorry about that.”

  “So you think he’s really innocent?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think he’s really guilty? Or do you just want him behind bars ’cause she slept with him?”

  Lucky for me, our server arrived with plates of pasta. Redding decided to be the professional and ignore my question.

  “You would be a terrible therapist,” he observed. “You’re too confrontational. You seem to enjoy making people angry.”

  “You should see me when the camera’s rolling.”

  So there we sat: two single people, both wearing wedding bands. Pathetic, but he more so than me. After all, his wife had been dead more than a decade and he seemed unable to move forward; I had just over a year of widowhood under my belt. Also, my husband’s death gave me war widow status. Redding’s wife’s death made him a cuckold.