The Weatherman

by Steve Thayer

  I wrapped Tan Jan in my arms like she was a football and I was the tight end for the Dallas Cowboys just like I always wanted to be. I burst out of the pack and knocked down the two soldiers in front of me. Then I was off chasing the plane.

  I hadn’t run ten yards when I had to leap the bodies of two American Marines, the same Marines I’d argued with less than an hour before. In the few seconds I glimpsed their horribly disfigured faces I could tell they’d taken a direct hit from a rocket. I felt a shiver of shame run up my spine for the way I’d talked to those boys.

  I held Tan Jan tight and ran as fast as I’d ever run in my life, ran even faster than I had when I caught that pass over the middle during the Homecoming game and made the longest run in Vicksburg history. I could hear the South Vietnamese soldiers swearing. They were chasing us, rifles in hand. Just don’t shoot, I prayed. Then I heard American voices yelling, “Run, Dixon, run!” My buddies cheering me on from their bunkers. A rocket exploded at the end of the runway, the flash stinging my eyes.

  If Dixon Graham Bell could outrun an airplane I’d have joined Ole Miss instead of the Air Force. But that big C-130 was so overloaded, and it lumbered down that runway so slow that I was catching up with it. This was the run of my life, a high I’d never experienced before. My sides were aching. Tan Jan was crying. She was holding on to me for dear life, didn’t want to let go. But I pulled the child away and held her out to them. “Take her,” I screamed. “Please, take her!”

  They were still trying to close the door to the plane, but when they saw I wasn’t going to try and board, that I just wanted them to take the girl, they held out their arms and waved me on. Their mouths were screaming encouragement but I couldn’t hear the words. The plane was picking up speed.

  Thank God it had just rained because I’d have doubled over in the heat. As it was I had just enough left in me for one last burst. I thrust Tan Jan as far forward as I could. Then the mean-looking man in the white shirt snatched her from my arms and I fought to keep my balance without her. She got pulled kicking and screaming into the plane and the door swung closed.

  I stumbled and fell onto the runway, still wet from the rain. The South Vietnamese soldiers arrived out of breath and put the boot to me. A bayonet slashed my face. I covered my head. They were just taking out their frustration on the only American they were free to stomp on. When their anger was spent I peeked through my bloody fingers and saw the fat plane lift slowly off the ground, barely clearing the abandoned control tower.The big green angel climbed higher and higher into the smoky sky until I lost sight of it in the Asian sun.

  The Weatherman laid down his pen. It helped to record such memories. Again he picked up the letter and traced his scar. Perhaps some night he’d write about it. But not this night. He folded the letter and slipped it into his diary. Closed it. Walked to the window.

  The downpour continued. Rain driven by wind had stripped the trees of their glorious colors. An occasional burst of lightning lit up the cities, revealing naked limbs against a black sky. The ugly season. When he was a little boy back in the early fifties, his granddaddy and he got caught in thunderstorm in Louisiana. They were driving home from Baton Rouge, and his granddaddy pulled off the road because it was raining cats and dogs and he couldn’t see a thing. Then lightning lit up the sky just as a truck was passing by and Dixon Bell saw that the truck had a big wooden chair strapped to its flatbed. His granddaddy told him it was the electric chair. Louisiana just had that one chair and they drove it around to the counties where a prisoner needed to be executed. To this day it remained the most frightening thing he’d ever seen.

  Dixon Bell switched on a lamp over the work table and flipped through the surface maps. Three maps down, somebody had scrawled in red ink; “I’m gonna ice you, Weatherman.”

  If these juvenile threats were coming every day, or every week, he might have reported them. But they came only once every three or four months. Obviously some jerk in the newsroom. No big deal.

  The Weatherman checked the national database. Water temperatures were rising off the Pacific coast of South America. They already had snow in the Dakotas. He studied the computer’s answers to his calculations. No doubt in his mind. Harsh winter due.

  The Child

  "Captain, I am really sorry to bother you on Christmas Eve, but we found a letter our little princess wrote. We really think you should have it."

  Les Angelbeck thought he could make it out to Afton and then back again. “If the weather holds.” But it didn’t hold. All hell broke loose, just like the Weatherman said it would. Now he was driving through an infernal snowstorm, beating a hasty retreat home. He had the letter.

  Search dogs found victim number seven buried in the wet autumn leaves. She was fifteen years old, mildly retarded and strangely gifted. Her name was Karen Rochelle. An only child, her parents called her the Princess of Afton. She got off a school bus one rainy afternoon in late October and was never again seen alive.

  Afton Township sat tucked into the south end of the St. Croix Valley on the Minnesota side of the river. Her rolling hills and thick woods reminded early settlers so much of the New England countryside that they drew up plans to ensure that the land would remain pristine. But now the cities were only an onramp away.

  The white-haired father of the murdered girl led Les Angelbeck past a lonely Christmas tree and into the girl’s bedroom. A small desk stood in the corner. The bereaved father picked up a white notepad and showed it to the police captain. “I noticed the indents on the paper, so I scribbled over it with a pencil. This is what appeared.”

  I saw u on TV. I no u r the killer. I saw u on TV. I no u r the killer. I saw u on TV. I no u r the killer.

  That was all it said. He handed the captain a book of first class stamps, the Virgin Mary cradling the Christ Child. Angelbeck flipped open the book. One stamp of Mary and the baby was missing. “And you think she mailed this to somebody?”

  “I don’t know how else to explain it, Captain. There is no sign of the actual letter, and just that one stamp missing.”

  “Your daughter was mentally retarded. Did she have the capacity to write and mail letters?”

  “Oh, yes. She was quite functional. She could read and write at a third grade level. She was always sending things off—Publishers Clearing House, free samples, things like that. She loved getting mail with her name on it. But she never wrote anything like this.”

  “Would she have put her return address on something like this?”

  “Oh, yes. Upper-left-hand corner of the envelope, just as we taught her.”

  Les Angelbeck examined again the small white letters in the stormy scribble.

  I saw u on TV. I no u r the killer.

  “What kind of shows did she watch?”

  “Oh, Wheel of Fortune, Cheers, Jeopardy, that sort of harmless fare. After dinner she watched television until she went to bed.”

  “Any local programming?”

  “Just the news. I think she had a crush on Dixon Bell, that weatherman.”

  “Does anybody else know about this letter?”

  “No, we called you right away.”

  “Let’s keep this a state secret. We don’t want the press getting a hold of something like this.”

  “I understand.”

  “It’s snowing. I’d better start back.”

  But the girl’s father stopped him. He and his despondent wife were the victims murderers leave behind. “Captain Angelbeck, in many ways our princess was quite blessed. She sometimes said things, saw things we couldn’t explain.” His last words to the old cop were “Be careful—it’s easy to get lost out here.”

  Les Angelbeck had the car radio tuned to WCCO-AM. The Good Neighbor, they called themselves. He remembered how they had sat listening to WCCO that tragic Armistice Day so many years ago.

  “Your father’ll be fine. If the weather holds.”

  For the hundredth time the Good Neighbor announced the winter storm warning. Blizzard co
nditions. Six to ten inches of snow. Thirty-five mph winds and a rapidly dropping windchill. Treacherous driving. Only the brave and the foolish should venture outdoors. “Welcome to winter,” said the voice on the air. “We got off easy last year.”

  “Merry Christmas to you too,” Les Angelbeck replied. He was feeling more foolish than brave. Conditions in Afton were near whiteout. The headlights were useless. He coughed his guts up, then wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his parka. He’d reluctantly made a doctor’s appointment. He could breathe in okay, but exhaling was becoming increasingly difficult.

  Angelbeck started the unmarked squad car down a steep road. There was no blacktop to see, only a mean ocean of white running along the tree line. No other cars kept him company. He steered a middle course. Visibility was nearing zero. So was the temperature. He knew the interstate was only a mile north, but the roads in Afton didn’t run north-south. They were serpentine, rolled up and down and wound around. He was lost. No sooner had he reached that conclusion than he had another coughing attack. The big Chevy tilted right. Angelbeck violently jerked the steering wheel away from the fall. The car fishtailed off the road and stopped with the snap of a whip. He floored the gas pedal. The tires spun in circles until he could smell the burning rubber. He was stuck!

  Les Angelbeck sat behind the wheel and recaptured his breath. He was not one to panic. He turned down the heater and cracked open his window, smoked a cigarette, and watched the snowstorm raging around him. He recalled what he’d heard on Channel 7 the night before.

  “El Niño,” Dixon Bell had told his viewers. “That’s Spanish for ‘the Child.’ It’s an unexplained buildup of warm water in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of South Amer ica. We call it the Child because it usually occurs around Christmastime. When El Niño occurs, the effects can be dramatic. It nudges the jet streams off course and disrupts weather patterns around the world. Here in the Midwest the result is heavier than normal precipitation. Snow! And that’s what we’re in for tomorrow night, folks. A megastorm. A gift from El Niño. So stay home. Or wrap up your Christmas Eve early and get home!”

  Good advice. Angelbeck took a deep drag on his cigarette. His mind raced over the case. His Calendar Task Force was not without leads. In fact, it had too many leads. Besides the partial fingerprint and now this strange letter, thousands of phone calls poured in from around the country. Every tip had to be written down, so many tips they could only check out the hot ones—those from other police departments or reliable sources. They had filled 150 three-ring binders with facts. They fed the facts into computers and supercomputers that spit out even more facts. They interviewed every lunatic in the five-state area. As year-end approached it was estimated the state had spent nearly two million dollars on the investigation, surpassing the amount of money spent on the Wakefield kidnapping.

  An FBI agent who specialized in serial killers flew in from Quantico and joined the task force. The task force interviewed scientists at the University of Wisconsin who were studying the effects of the atmosphere on human behavior. They talked at length with a professor of climatology at the University of Minne sota. Angelbeck himself had interviewed the chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City. Everybody they’d spoken to was cooperative and informative. But they were of little help.

  On another front, Les Angelbeck met with Glenn Arkwright that morning. “Of the fifty-nine names AFIS spit out,” the fingerprint expert told him, “we’ve eliminated half of them. Of prints we can’t be sure about, we’ve tracked down twenty of them. Eight of them have already died, and the other twelve have never set foot in our fair state. One guy from New York did confess to visiting Wisconsin Dells. He thought that was in Minnesota. Concerning our request for classified fingerprints . . . CIA said no way. Naval intelligence said no sir. The Army sent us more forms to fill out. And much to my surprise, the Air Force okayed a limited search . . . decommissioned officers of the Vietnam era only. There’s just one catch—it’ll take them six to eight weeks to declassify them before we can run them.”

  The Marlboro Man extinguished his smoke in the ashtray. He cleared his sore throat. It was time to see how bad. He breathed as deep as he could. He zipped up his heavy green parka and pulled on his gloves.

  As soon as he stepped from the squad car, Old Man Winter’s icy hand slapped his face. Angelbeck slammed the door closed to save the heat. He spit with the wind. He trudged to the rear of the car. The back end was hanging over a ravine. Drifting snow was up to the fender. The rear tires were buried. He had neither the strength nor the will power to shovel his way out. He’d have to radio for help. But where exactly was he? From what he could see through the storm, a stone canyon blocked the east. A forest lay to the west. A wild river of tumbling snow wound down the hill.

  The captain cleared the snow away from the tailpipe so carbon monoxide wouldn’t back into the car. He hugged the snowbound vehicle and made his way back to the front door. But the door had locked—the keys in the ignition, the engine running. A cold pang of fear shot up his back. The window wasn’t cracked open enough to get even his pinky through. The back door was locked. He slogged around to the passenger’s side. The gusting wind pelted his face with snow and ice. The doors were locked. Though not a man to panic, he felt foolish. The snow blitz was bone-chillingly cold and painful. He plodded back to the driver’s side of the car and tried to smash a window, but he lacked the muscle and the means. Les Angelbeck clenched his teeth.

  Across the road, snow-draped evergreens bowed in his direction. The howling wind was gusting up to fifty mph, churning the snow and burying the car. Ice chips battered his face. Snow tumbled into his overshoes. Rich people lived out here, but they lived a mile apart. “Stay with the car.” He said it aloud so he wouldn’t do anything else foolish. “Stay with the car.”

  The old cop took a seat in the swiftly accumulating snow. He leaned back against the front tire on the street side, where he could catch the warmth of the engine and watch the roadway. Soon another car would pass and see the headlights. He tucked his gloves into his armpits and tucked his boots under his legs. And there he sat, remembering what had happened to his father.

  Les Angelbeck was still in high school during the Armistice Day Blizzard. November 11, 1940. His father had gone out hunting that morning in his shirtsleeves. Sixty-degree weather. He’d asked his son to come along, but he declined: he was at that awkward age when a boy wants to do less with his parents, not more. Two days later the awkward boy helped sheriff ’s deputies pull his father’s frozen body out of a snow bank. The blizzard had slammed into Minnesota so fast and so furiously that no warning was possible. Snowdrifts ended up twenty feet high.

  In Belgium he had marched through a snowstorm like this, just another GI with a cigarette dangling from his lips. But he was young and healthy then, and there was a war to be won. Now he was old and foolish. He’d locked his keys in the car with the engine running. He could hear the anchorman on TV telling everybody about family history repeating itself, about the elderly cop who had perished in a blizzard just like his father. Only he’d been warned. He was just too damn stubborn to stay at home where he belonged on a night such as this.

  On Christmas Eve, while Captain Les Angelbeck was sitting in the middle of the blizzard, Sky High News reporter Andrea Labore was sitting on the couch in her warm Golden Valley apartment, feeling as cold and lonely as the snowbound cop. The lights were out. An empty bowl of popcorn sat on the table. A snow-white TV screen was pulsating in front of her. Her blue bathrobe embraced her like an old friend.

  It was this night a year ago she had toured the governor’s mansion and then fell asleep in the arms of Per Ellefson. Now all she had to hold on to was a check he’d written her and a new bottle of pills.

  “Take three pills a day for the first three days. Call us if there’s any fever or bleeding.”

  Perhaps she should have waited until after the holidays, but she had wanted it over
with. No pills could swallow her guilt. Andrea once thought those kinds of clinics were for naive teenagers, for the poor and the irresponsible. When the governor asked her how much it would cost, she told him. He wrote her a check for the exact amount. “Put this in your account,” he instructed her, “but pay them in cash.”

  Andrea Labore sat in front of the blank TV screen practicing something Rick Beanblossom had taught her—for every answer you get, come up with three more questions. How could a governor so full of good be so cold? Would a good man have been seeing her at all? And what of all those speeches about the sanctimony of life? He didn’t seem to have any qualms about the death penalty when he wrote that check.

  And what of the child? What might the child of a tall, handsome governor and a beautiful television reporter have grown up to be? She held the check in her hand. In the light of the TV screen, the governor’s signature stared up at her like a veto. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  A polar wind slammed a horde of snow and ice into her patio window. Andrea was startled, turned to look. God was furious. She had the haunting feeling that if she threw open that window she’d be sucked into the storm—all the way to hell.