and no dog. It had been unbelievably hard to leave Grace’s tonight, but he had an early call and a hefty stack of accumulated reports to go through before morning, and reading would have been out of the question with Grace sitting next to him in her flannel pj’s.
He grabbed a Summit Pale Ale from the refrigerator, turned on the television, and steeled himself for the ten o’clock news.
The news teams had had all day to polish up this story for maximum impact and it showed. Dramatic, inflammatory scripts laced with adjectives like horrific, shocking, and ghastly played well against the backdrop of skillfully edited montages that made what ultimately had been a well-managed, controlled crime scene look like a soccer stadium stampede. Especially effective were the images of screaming, crying children as they watched the boys in blue knocking down one snowman after another. Without exception, every single broadcast made the MPD come off like a bunch of heartless jackasses.
They all ran snippets of Chief Malcherson’s press conference, and none of it had been good. The man was a master of the calm, forthright presentation, but it wasn’t working this time. He made a good case for an ex-con with a grudge going after the cops who had put him away, but the press kept hammering him with the one question that even the cops were asking themselves: What kind of killer poses bodies in snowmen? That was B-movie stuff.
Kristin Keller of Channel 3 was putting an even more salacious spin on it. As they showed the tape of him and Gino no-commenting their way throughthe reporters at City Hall, she did a somber voice-over in her best end-of-the-world tone. ‘One has to wonder if the Minneapolis Police Department is concealing the truth, trying to avoid panicking the population of this city. A retired criminal psychologist who wishes to remain anonymous has told this reporter that the elaborate posing of these bodies in snowmen is the unmistakable mark of a psychopathic serial killer …’ She paused dramatically, looking straight into the camera. ‘A killer who will most probably strike again.’
Before he had time to put his fist through the TV screen, the phone rang, and he didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.
‘Gino.’
‘Leo, I want you to feel free to mentally insert as much profanity as possible into my side of the conversation, because I’m sitting here with my kids and I can’t do it myself.’
‘I take it you’re watching Channel Three.’
Gino sputtered, but apparently couldn’t manage to eke out a G-rated word.
‘They haven’t really said anything we haven’t been thinking ourselves, Gino.’
‘It isn’t what they said; it’s the way they said it. Bunch of bullshit scaremongering. Kids are going to be afraid of snowmen. They’ll stop building them. Then they’ll grow up and won’t let their kidsbuild snowmen. The networks will never show the Frosty the Snowman cartoon again, and all the radio stations’ll pull the song off their playlists. Gene Autry’s family will never see another residual check again. This could change the winter landscape of the whole country just because Kristin Keller’s got a hard-on for a network slot.’ He finally wound down his rant and signed off, leaving Magozzi with a warm beer and a mountain of paperwork.
8
Kurt Weinbeck blinked himself awake, then jerked upright in the seat and looked around in a panic, wondering how the hell he’d managed to fall asleep in the first place, and what had awakened him. The cold, probably. Or maybe it was a gust of wind, rocking the little car. No, that couldn’t be it. This piece-of-crap tin was locked so tight in the holes that four bald tires had dug, it would have taken a hurricane to move it a fraction of an inch.
The ditch was ridiculously deep, and any Minnesota boy knew what that meant. They’d built the damn road right through the middle of a swamp, hauling in enough fill to raise it above the
He grabbed a Summit Pale Ale from the refrigerator, turned on the television, and steeled himself for the ten o’clock news.
The news teams had had all day to polish up this story for maximum impact and it showed. Dramatic, inflammatory scripts laced with adjectives like horrific, shocking, and ghastly played well against the backdrop of skillfully edited montages that made what ultimately had been a well-managed, controlled crime scene look like a soccer stadium stampede. Especially effective were the images of screaming, crying children as they watched the boys in blue knocking down one snowman after another. Without exception, every single broadcast made the MPD come off like a bunch of heartless jackasses.
They all ran snippets of Chief Malcherson’s press conference, and none of it had been good. The man was a master of the calm, forthright presentation, but it wasn’t working this time. He made a good case for an ex-con with a grudge going after the cops who had put him away, but the press kept hammering him with the one question that even the cops were asking themselves: What kind of killer poses bodies in snowmen? That was B-movie stuff.
Kristin Keller of Channel 3 was putting an even more salacious spin on it. As they showed the tape of him and Gino no-commenting their way throughthe reporters at City Hall, she did a somber voice-over in her best end-of-the-world tone. ‘One has to wonder if the Minneapolis Police Department is concealing the truth, trying to avoid panicking the population of this city. A retired criminal psychologist who wishes to remain anonymous has told this reporter that the elaborate posing of these bodies in snowmen is the unmistakable mark of a psychopathic serial killer …’ She paused dramatically, looking straight into the camera. ‘A killer who will most probably strike again.’
Before he had time to put his fist through the TV screen, the phone rang, and he didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who it was.
‘Gino.’
‘Leo, I want you to feel free to mentally insert as much profanity as possible into my side of the conversation, because I’m sitting here with my kids and I can’t do it myself.’
‘I take it you’re watching Channel Three.’
Gino sputtered, but apparently couldn’t manage to eke out a G-rated word.
‘They haven’t really said anything we haven’t been thinking ourselves, Gino.’
‘It isn’t what they said; it’s the way they said it. Bunch of bullshit scaremongering. Kids are going to be afraid of snowmen. They’ll stop building them. Then they’ll grow up and won’t let their kidsbuild snowmen. The networks will never show the Frosty the Snowman cartoon again, and all the radio stations’ll pull the song off their playlists. Gene Autry’s family will never see another residual check again. This could change the winter landscape of the whole country just because Kristin Keller’s got a hard-on for a network slot.’ He finally wound down his rant and signed off, leaving Magozzi with a warm beer and a mountain of paperwork.
8
Kurt Weinbeck blinked himself awake, then jerked upright in the seat and looked around in a panic, wondering how the hell he’d managed to fall asleep in the first place, and what had awakened him. The cold, probably. Or maybe it was a gust of wind, rocking the little car. No, that couldn’t be it. This piece-of-crap tin was locked so tight in the holes that four bald tires had dug, it would have taken a hurricane to move it a fraction of an inch.
The ditch was ridiculously deep, and any Minnesota boy knew what that meant. They’d built the damn road right through the middle of a swamp, hauling in enough fill to raise it above the
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