Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Rick
March comes in like a lion. Roaring. Savage. Unforgiving in its ferocity. A childish game the winter weather plays. Come the end of February the snow melts, the air warms and spring appears on the way. Then the temperature plummets with little warning, the winds pick up, and snowflakes begin to fly sideways. Hell hath no fury like a Minnesota blizzard. It was only 4 P.M. but already the sun was barely visible through the cloud base.
The man without a face came in from the cold. He blew warm air into his bare hands, bounded up six flights of stairs and into the newsroom. He was mad. Snow. Sure as hell it was going to snow. The wind had numbed his fingers, whipped through the holes in his mask and stung his eyes. Rick Beanblossom had no business living in this frostbitten state. He read there were parts of Arizona that averaged three hundred days of sunshine a year. The average high was 82 degrees. The thought of it. And after a long, hard winter he thought about it a lot. But it was only a fantasy. His sweat glands had been destroyed in the fire. The heat would kill him.
The newsroom was clearing out, the day shift going home, the night shift coming on. Today Rick was night shift. Andrea was home with a cold. The baby was napping. A perfect time to slip downtown and get some writing done. He mumbled a few hellos and crossed into his office, which was nothing but a big cubicle with a glass partition. No door. Still, he was one of the few people below the editors with his own office. At the North Star Press Rick Beanblossomwas a star. Features only, just two or three stories a month. Always front page, usually above the fold. For this he was paid handsomely and nobody in the newsroom begrudged him his salary or his perks. They knew the masked newsman could very well be writing for the evil paper across the river. That was the great thing about working in the Twin Cities. If they didn't appreciate your talents in St. Paul, you could always shop them in Minneapolis.
Rick Beanblossom took off his navy flight jacket and tossed it in a chair. He stole a peek out the sixth-floor window. It even looked cold. The first snowflakes sailed up Cedar Street. The advance team. Getting home was going to be a real bitch. He probably should have driven, but one of the advantages of living on Summit Avenue was being able to walk to work. Twenty minutes. Fifteen if he hustled. Besides the exercise and the fresh air the walk afforded him, people on the street got used to seeing a man with a sky-blue mask pulled completely over his head. It was the kind of mask worn by a comic book hero, only this mask had a black leather triangle for a nose. A nose that lived and breathed the news. The mask was as much to protect him from infection as it was to hide a face made hideous by fire. He was a burn victim. This was how he would go through life. No graying temples. No crow's-feet. No receding hairline. He'd just slip out every year and buy a new mask.
Rick Beanblossom no longer kept track of his age. He was forty-something. He knew only that he had now lived longer without a face than he had with one. A great athlete in high school, an All-American boy, he was still in pretty good shape considering that after high school he'd been given three torturous tours of Dante's inferno. He slid behind his desk and gathered his mail, most of it junk.
Hung prominently on the wall behind his desk was a gold-framed propaganda poster from World War I. Painted in 1917 by artist Charles Dana Gibson, the poster depicted a khaki-clad doughboy in skin-tight puttees and a broad-rimmed helmet standing in a field of wheat with his bayoneted rifle poised to smash the Hindenburg Line. In bold letters the caption read, JOIN THE MARINE CORPS. Rick Beanblossom had paid five hundred dollars for the rare poster at an art gallery in the warehouse district. Something about the corny patriotism struck a chord deep inside of him. Esprit de corps.
Compared to other reporters Rick's desk was tidy. Almost Spartan. Tucked under a sheet of tempered glass was a handwritten note from Mrs. Howard welcoming him to the North Star Press. Atop the glass was a picture of his beautiful wife. A picture of their baby boy. A crystal vase stemmed with fresh flowers. A remote control.
The television set was atop a file cabinet in the corner. Despite numerous awards for journalism, Rick Beanblossom was probably best known as the most famous husband in Minnesota. He was married to Channel 7 anchorwoman Andrea Labore. Sky High News. Number one in the ratings at six and ten. She had the most recognized face in the land of ten thousand lakes. Beauty incarnate. Local columnists went from calling her Princess Andrea to calling her Queen Andrea. Every night thousands and thousands of men in the seven-county metropolitan area went to bed at 10:30 and jacked off with Rick's wife in mind. When she got pregnant the show's ratings went through the Sky High News roof. When the baby was born congratulatory mail poured in from as far away as Iowa, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula where they picked up her broadcasts on satellite. Then the TV cameras showed up at the hospital for the requisite photo op of Andrea in bed holding the baby, which later that night was dutifully broadcast across the Midwest, and to all ships at sea.
Forget that her husband had been awarded the Navy Cross for the lives he saved in Vietnam, not to mention the face he lost. Forget that as a young newspaper reporter in Minneapolis he won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Or that as a television news producer at his wife's own station he earned a Columbia/Dupont Award for his story on a missing child. Oh yeah, he also had a novel published. Good reviews. Modest sales. He was at work on another. But forget it all. He was the husband of Andrea Labore. The father of her golden child.
"Isn't she married to that burn victim guy?"
This was hero worship in the 1990s. If Rick didn't love Andrea so much he'd resent the hell out of her. Still, if the general public showed him little respect, his wife and his peers showed him plenty.
Rick was still sorting through his mail when a gust of March wind rattled his office window. Startled him. He shot a glance that way. It was getting dark. More snowflakes. Dancing now. Then his eyes fell on a letter-size envelope addressed to him in handwriting that more resembled a scribble, one of those ominous dispatches that gives off bad vibes before it's even read. He yanked open his top drawer and lifted out a switchblade, illegal in all fifty states. Rick popped the blade. The razor sharp chromium shone like white fire even on a bitter, gray day. The Marine stabbed the envelope and slit it open. One clean cut.
It was not uncommon for readers to send Rick Beanblossom his own news articles with a note telling him to eat it. At first glance that appeared to be the case. But there was no note with this article, just an old twenty-dollar bill that bore a round yellow seal. Rick read the story.
ST. PAUL NORTH STAR PRESS
ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH DIES
Rick Beanblossom staff writer
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author, aviatrix, loving wife and mother died today at a convalescent home in Darien, Connecticut. She was 93. Mrs. Lindbergh had been in failing health for several years. One of her last public appearances was here in St. Paul in 1985 when she attended the dedication ceremony on the capitol grounds of the Paul Granlund sculpture of her famous aviator husband, Minnesota's own Charles A. Lindbergh.
When the history of the twentieth century is written Anne Morrow Lindbergh will undoubtedly be listed among the great women. Sadly, at her passing she may be best remembered for the kidnapping and murder of her first son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., stolen from his nursery at their country estate in New Jersey in 1932. Her death comes only a week before the March 1 anniversary of the kidnapping ...
The story was a week old. It had come across the wire shortly before deadline, a simple obituary piece the newsman cranked out before he went home that night. Most of the background info was culled from the AP story. Next day another reporter was assigned to write a feature piece on the life and times of the woman who had married Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Rick Beanblossom had to confess he knew little about the Lindberghsother than the fact that young Charles, from Little Falls, Minnesota, had flown solo across the Atlantic in The Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. And that several years later the national hero known as the Lone Eagle and his wife Anne Morrow had their firstborn son kidnapped and murdered. It was one of the most sensational news stories in American history. Crime of the century and all that stuff. A German carpenter named Bruno fried for it.
Again he searched the envelope for a note. There was nothing. But the twenty-dollar bill was an interesting touch. Rick sat at his desk. He stashed the switchblade and pulled out a magnifying glass. He magnified Andrew Jackson's face, then the writing below. "IN GOLD COIN PAYABLE TO THE BEARER ON DEMAND." It was a gold certificate. A collector's item. "SERIES OF 1928." Rick put the gold note to his nose. It had a musty smell to it, wet, earthy. What to think? He reluctantly put the twenty aside and opened the rest of his mail.
For years Rick Beanblossom lived alone in a high-rise condominium overlooking Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. At times it seemed more of a cave dwelling in which he was hiding. Andrea Labore lured him out of his cave and out of his shell. Marriage took them back to Rick's hometown of Stillwater, Minnesota, once a sleepy river town, now a trendy suburb. Then came Andrea's new multimillion-dollar contract. She said the long commute from Stillwater to the newsroom atop the IDS Tower in downtown Minneapolis was killing her.
After the baby was born, legendary publisher Katherine Howard personally offered Rick a job with the North Star Press in downtown St. Paul. Going stir-crazy at home as a writer and a house-husband, Rick accepted the offer. But he wanted to stay planted in Stillwater. Andrea wanted to move back to Minneapolis. They compromised.
Rick Beanblossom and Andrea Labore with their newborn child settled into a Romanesque-style mansion on St. Paul's historic Summit Avenuea street F. Scott Fitzgerald once described as "A museum of American architectural failures." The Beanblossom "failure" was built of red sandstone in 1887, three-stories tall with a peaked tile roof over a skylighted attic. The back porch served up an incredible view of the Mississippi River. The front windows offered up Cathedral Hill. Carved stonework of classic nudes topped a dramatic entrance arch. Rick thought the Victorian mansion was so tacky it was cool. Neighbors swore the old place was haunted. That sealed the deal. His own ghost. The family fortress. Lord of the manor. Andrea was twenty minutes from her jobthe lord could walk to his.
The wind increased to a howl. Daylight fading fast. Rick was watching the worsening weather outside his climate-controlled office when Andrea called. She was feeling better. Little Dylan was fed. Andrea was bouncing him on her knee. The housekeeper was home with them.
"How are you getting home?"
"I'll get a ride. Don't worry about me."
"I love you."
That call was at 5:45 P.M. Rick set his work aside. He sat at his desk staring out the window. Easiest thing in the world. More snow. More wind. More winter. He picked up the mysterious twenty-dollar bill. Seemed the worse the weather got the more suspicious the bill became. He scanned the article again.
Her death comes only a week before the March 1 anniversary of the kidnapping ...
Rick checked the day calendar on his desk. Monday. March 1. He looked at the gold note in his hand. Again at the article. The wind kept rattling the window. Rattling his nerves. A chill crawled up his spine. He shook it off. The incurable newsman stared long and hard at his telephone.
The old man would be at home. He was near retirement. Christ, he was near death. Emphysema. Kept threatening to move to California and live with his daughter. But as long as the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state police in Minnesota, provided the old man with an office and a telephone he would be forever a cop, forever searching for one last case. Rick hated to bother him. He expected to be writing his obituary soon.
By this time it was dark outside. In the morning the paper would read, OFFICIAL SUNSET: 6:01 P.M. Rick Beanblossom hit the remote on his desk. The television set popped on. Channel 7. Schlocky music was playing over videotape of his wife smiling into the camera. The news began with the announcement that Andrea Labore was home sick. Katherine Thompson-Jones, known in the Sky High newsroom as Katie Tom-Jon, was filling in. Her coanchor tonight was the regular guy, Stan Butts, known in the same newsroom as the "butthole from Cleveland," a.k.a. "Frankenanchor." It was a lovely business. The lead story was a blizzard warning. The Twin Cities were sitting on the eastern edge of a massive storm system.
Rick clicked the sound down to a whisper on his former employers and reached for the telephone. He punched in a number he knew by heart.
"What have you done for me lately?"
"That's my line. How goes the battle?"
"Feels good to be working for a newspaper again."
"I knew you'd be back. You've got newsprint for blood."
"So they tell me. Watching the news?"
"You bet. Where's Andrea?"
"Home with a cold."
"So what do you want? ... the weather's on."
"Aren't you a coin collector or something?"
"Coins and stamps."
"I've got an old bill sitting on my desk here. I'm wondering its value."
"Coins and stamps, Masked Man."
"Well, you must know something about bills."
"Shoot."
"Twenty-dollar gold certificate. Series 1928. Slightly worn. Fair condition."
"Roosevelt recalled them in 1933 when we went off the gold standard, but a lot of people hoarded them as a hedge against inflation. It was the Depression, you know. Not being in mint condition, it can't be worth a whole lot."
The old boy sounded pretty damn good. Much better than Rick had expected. The hard-to-retire cop wouldn't be the first two-pack-a-day smoker to cheat the Grim Reaper. Rick Beanblossom took a deep breath and tried to sound nonchalant. "Could you run a check on the serial number for me?"
It didn't work. There was an icy silence on the far end of the line, a dramatic pause Rick had come to know well. He could hear the sound on the old man's television set go dead. "I'd have to run that through FBI computers."
Now it was Rick's turn to dish out the silence, a game they had played often over the yearsplayed it with crooked politicians, with local yokel mobsters, and with a serial killer known as the Weatherman. After allowing for the seriousness of the request to sink in, Rick Beanblossom chose his words carefully.
"And could this routine check of serial numbers be done without setting off alarms at the FBI building?"
A sharp smoker's cough could be heard at the other end of the phone. His death rattle. "I might choose to do it that way. Worth the risk?"
"Yeah, worth the risk."
"Give it to me."
Rick Beanblossom's story has been told before, but it deserves mentioning here again how he came to meet the old man who would become his mentor, the cop who would become his unimpeachable source for both information and inspiration. It was during the recovery years, after Vietnam but before the thought of being a journalist crept into his head. He seldom ventured out back then, mostly down to the burn center at Ramsey Medical. The ugly incident took place at a park on St. Paul's East Side, up the bluff from the hospital. It was a glorious, spring day. The view over the capitol city was incredible. The Mississippi River was raging with snow melt, near flood stage. A warm breeze told him winter was over. No more snow. Rick stood on a retaining wall, hands in pockets, forgetting for the moment there was anything different about him. He was as caught up in the optimism of spring as anybody that day.
They came up behind him. The two cops shouted not to move and he almost fell off the wall. He was ordered to put his hands in the air. He still stuttered back then and this war wound rendered him speechless. They ordered him down from the wall and up against it. "Feet spread!" He mumbled and stammered but the words would not come. Their questions went unanswered. He clung, shaking, to his new mask. Despite his uncommon valor in war he was now treated like a cruelly deformed puppy. The cops handcuffed him and led him to the squad car.
At the booking center they pulled the mask from his head. He avoided their eyes. They gasped in horror. He tried to bury his head between his knees. He was three hours in the county jail before they figured out they had a war hero in custody, not a burglary suspect. An aging detective with a nasty smoker's cough came into his cell. Offered him a cigarette. Apologized profusely. Gave him a ride home.
Three hours of writing later his phone was ringing. He hoped it was some answers about the mysterious twenty-dollar bill. Rick checked the clock: 8:45 P.M. Now it was snowing hard. Long white spirals. He stored his work on the computer and picked up the phone.
"Beanblossom."
"Have you found a ride home yet?"
He grabbed hold of the picture of Andrea on his desk. A rare smile broke across his blue mask. "Haven't asked. How's the baby?"
"I worry about him catching my cold. I put him to bed about an hour ago ... fell right to sleep. You know he's over a year old. Soon we won't be able to call him our baby anymore."
"No. He'll be our little boy."
"So when are you going to find that ride home? The weather is getting pretty bad."
"People don't start heading out until ten or eleven."
"I know, but it wouldn't hurt you to ... just a minute ..."
"What's that, hon?"
"I thought I heard something ... a noise ... the wind is going crazy out there."
"Yeah, down here too. Is Jasmine there?"
"She's downstairs."
"Good. Then get some sleep. Everything is okay."
"First I have to call my sister ... then I'm off to sleep. I love you. Bye-bye."
"I love you," he muttered. But she'd already hung up the phone.
When the monster stood the ladder up to the side of the house the temperature had already dropped below the freezing point. It was the peak of snowfall season. Increasing flurries moved across the yard in a northwesterly wind flow. Low visibility. Good cover. Up in the nursery at the southeast corner of the big house, the dim glimmer of a night light shonemaybe a low-watt bulb, maybe light from the hallway. Further down was the flickering glow of an incandescent light in the master bedroom. These were the only lights on the second floor. The young housekeeper would be on the first floor at the other end of the house. A light was burning in her room, as well as in the kitchen.
The monster was huge. Grotesque. A scarecrow ballooned out of all proportion. There were cloth sacks wrapped around its boots. Black pants. Thick black arms and black leather gloves. A black down vest hung over a black coat, the collar turned up. In the flickering flames of light coming from the house one could see a gunnysack pulled over its head. The sack was tied at the neck with a rope. A pair of dark glasses, perhaps night goggles, were stuck in the middle of the mask. Served as eyes. A floppy black hat held everything together. The extension ladder was made of soft wood in hopes it would be noiseless. Up this silent ladder the monster crept, lifting one foot past the other, as a firefighter would do. On the top rung, at the nursery window, it was shielded from the nasty weather. The biting winds of March were playing eerie tunes through the trees. The icy river to its left could barely be seen as it ran beneath the bluffs. To its right was the dome of a church ablaze in lights, still visible through the irregular columns of snow. A gnarly oak tree stripped of its leaves hung over the baby's window, its dark branches and sharp, pointed fingers reaching down for the ladder like frantic arms.
The window slid open surprisingly easily. No need for the chisel. The monster entered the house, set its left knee upon the windowsill and carefully and quietly maneuvered through. Once inside the monster paused a moment, allowing its glasses and its eyes to adjust to the subtle shades of darkness. Evil framed in frosted glass. The nursery door was three-quarters open. The light seen from below was spilling in from the hallway. A muffled voice could be heard not too far away. Someone on the phone. Maybe a radio was playing.
The room was hot and smelled of Vicks Vaporub. It was smaller than expected. And older. A step back in time. The ceiling was high. The open door was tall and narrow, with a glass transom. A small fireplace was bricked into the wall. The furniture was antique, carefully selected, good wood, the kind of thing a carpenter would appreciate. Taped to the wall was paper sunshine to help ward off the grim, winter days. In the corner the monster could see the crib.
The baby was asleep, right where he was supposed to betucked snugly and securely into his blankets. The top blanket was white with gold lions on it. Cartoon characters. The sheets matched the blanket, as did the pillowcase. The child was lying on his back, face up. He was dressed for the night in a one-piece sleeping suit with enclosed feet and a zipper up the front. In the semidark the elfin outfit looked maroon. It was red. The monster put a gauze bandage over its victim's tiny mouth and pressed it flat beneath the nostrils to ensure the child could still breathe.
Then in what has to be the worst crime known to woman, known to man, the baby, still fast asleep, was lifted from his crib. Snatched. Carried out the window into the freezing air, into the raw winds, into the flying snow, and dropped feetfirst into a burlap bag. The church bells beneath the dome began to chime, ringing out through the winter storm. The monster almost forgot and hurried back to the crib. As the bells were tolling the hour a note was tossed on top of the covers among the sleeping lions.
(Continues...)