A dead man is more newsworthy than a dead bat.
So when Ozzie interrupted the morning meeting to say someone had been killed at the wind farm, I knew my story was gaining in respect under the TV news code of “If it bleeds, it leads.”
Even Clay looked interested at the mention of death.
I grabbed the phone Ozzie was waving and heard my dad explain how all the neighbors were abuzz about the dead body in the weeds by one of the turbines.
“Did somebody shoot somebody?” Wouldn’t have surprised me after all the trigger talk the other day.
“No,” he said. “There was another explosion. Nobody knows anything more. Your mom and I are safe.”
The bombers apparently decided to escalate matters with a human casualty. Chances were, I knew the victim. We could have been related. The bloodlines along that Minnesota-Iowa-state-line neighborhood were intertwined pretty deep. Everybody was a cousin of everybody else. This story had the potential to jerk some tears. Even mine.
“We’re on our way, Dad,” I said. “Tell folks not to talk to other media.”
A bad break for me, the weather was clear but the chopper was in for maintenance. That meant it lay in pieces on the floor of the hangar. Sometimes the station rents a small plane for out-of-town shoots, but that only works if there’s an airport runway nearby. And the aerials are never any good; the fixed wings get in the way. So once again Malik and I drove south even though news was breaking.
“No comment.”
The county sheriff wouldn’t release any details over the phone about the mysterious death. I hoped by the time we arrived, he’d have a statement. But in the meantime, their tight lips might mean the rest of the media pack was unaware of this latest development.
To save gas money, both the St. Paul and Minneapolis newspapers were attempting to conduct poignant telephone interviews about distant tragedies. Our television competitors hadn’t been covering the wind explosions much because they happened on the far edge of the viewing area and because, unlike Channel 3, they didn’t have dramatic video of a falling turbine.
But a dead body could change everything.
By the time we arrived at the wind farm, we’d missed the critical shot of the corpse being moved. Yellow and black crime-scene tape surrounded about two acres of land. In the distance, Scout and his handler, Larry, were sweeping the field.
My bachelor farmer pal Gil Halvorson had discovered the body. Or parts of it. I wasn’t going to risk another live interview with Gil, so Malik rolled tape as we talked.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Still dark this morning. Heard a blast. No huge crash like when the turbines fell. But a big noise.”
Prudently, Gil grabbed a rifle before going outside. “Didn’t want to walk into an ambush.”
At first nothing seemed wrong, except for a burning odor. All the turbines looked fine under the moonlight. And he didn’t see any unusual movement. Then his dog started barking. Gil headed over and saw the animal carrying something—a human arm. Ends up the body was in pieces.
“That’s when I called the cops.”
Malik shot cover video of Gil and his black Lab walking around the farmyard. Every once in a while, the animal would head toward the police line, but Gil would call him back.
“It could be worse,” he said, probably because he didn’t know what else to say.
I could see scattered paint marks on the freshly cut straw field where a crew from the state crime lab moved around, gathering evidence. I tried calling the station before realizing I had no cell service. I figured authorities were again blocking calls until they cleared the area.
Initially, the neighbors feared what I’d feared. That one of their own had taken a hit, victim of the mad wind bomber. But nobody from the surrounding farms seemed to be missing. Most were rubbernecking from the road. As for the dead man, being blown apart made visual identification impossible.
Locals also concluded he must have been an intruder because no one they knew would ever do anything so violent. Or stupid. Their consensus: the evil bomb builder had accidentally blasted himself. They’d dismissed suicide bombing because he didn’t take anyone or anything else with him.
“Are there any unknown vehicles parked in the area?” I asked.
That might have indicated whether the trespasser worked alone, and might also have helped with identification through motor vehicle records.
Gil shook his head. “Not unless it’s hidden in the corn.” Several of the surrounding fields still hadn’t been harvested because it had been such a wet fall.
By then a small crowd had gathered around us. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to be helpful or just trying to get on TV now that the bad guy was dead.
“That terrorist got what he had coming to him,” one of the farmers said.
“Must have gotten a little sloppy with those explosives,” another added.
They all nodded, relieved danger had passed and order had been restored.
The sheriff went on camera saying the death was under investigation and he would release more details on Operation Aeolus as they became available. I was surprised to hear him use that term.
Then the sheriff walked away, with me and Malik following. “Do you think the deceased was trying to bomb a turbine and accidentally detonated the explosives?” I asked.
“Too soon to say.”
“What kind of evidence were you able to recover?”
“No comment.”
“Could you tell if the man had partners?” I asked. “Someone must have driven a getaway car.”
“That’s enough questions for now,” he said.
Not a whole lot of usable sound. The sheriff was much chattier when there wasn’t blood and gore to explain to his constituents. Today, he was all law and order. Then I saw the FBI guy waiting for him at the command center and figured that was where he got his media coaching on Operation Aeolus.
Charlie Perkins stood off by himself, watching the show unfold but not mingling. I pointed him out to Malik and told him to casually get some video even though he wouldn’t do an on-camera interview. I wanted a shot in case Charlie ended up being important. And now seemed as good a time as any to chat Charlie up about his past experiences as a power-line protester.
“Does this remind you of anything?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not particularly.”
“How about maybe thirty years ago and three hundred miles north?”
Immediately he knew what I knew. “That was a different time and place.”
“Forgive me, Charlie, but I do see some similarities. Transmission towers falling. Turbines falling.”
“But there’re some major differences.” He started walking away. “There the energy companies took people’s land against their will. Here everybody in wanted in.”
“Care to talk more in an interview?” I asked.
But without saying anything more, he climbed into his car and drove back toward his place.
With Charlie’s cooperation, a story comparing the wind farm bombings with the power-line protests would be fascinating. Without him, it would still be interesting. Two energy wars. Decades apart. But the news of the day was the dead man. So Malik and I shot a standup with the few facts we had.
((RILEY, STANDUP))
LAW ENFORCEMENT TEAMS
ARE SEARCHING THE AREA
FOR CLUES, BUT THE BLAST
DESTROYED MOST OF THE
EVIDENCE … INCLUDING
MUCH OF THE MAN’S BODY.
I was just telling Malik we needed to swing by my parents’ place before heading north when I spotted a familiar face.
Part of me wanted to rush over and wrap my arms around Nick Garnett. Our being apart made me realize I missed him. But people were watching, and other media were arriving, so after the mean dirt Sam Pierce had written about me being a bad wife, part of me just wanted to stick to the plan of pretending Nick and I had never met.
“What brings you here?” I wondered if his mysterious assignment was over or if this was it and he didn’t want to tell me.
Because we were out in public, I compromised by playing our relationship cool and professional. My businesslike attitude annoyed him, but he followed my lead.
“I’ve been assigned to this case,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security is helping coordinate the various agencies involved in the bombing investigation.”
“Anything you can share about today’s explosion?”
“We’re still in the early stages and will release information as it becomes appropriate.”
“Now that there’s a dead body involved,” I teased, “the public might demand answers a bit faster.”
Garnett glared at me.
“Honest,” I whispered, “you’re sounding like a government bureaucrat.”
“And you’re sounding like a media asshole.”
“That’s not the kind of cop talk I like.”
Malik looked straight ahead, climbed into the van, and turned on the radio to give us some space. I leaned against the driver’s door to block his view of our conversation.
“Really, Nick, you know I’ve been covering this story since day one; you should have given me a heads-up you’d be here.”
“In this situation it would have been awkward. But now that we’re both here, how about we make peace?”
I gave him a two-fingered peace sign, but he had something else in mind.
“Sounds like you’re heading over to your folks’ farm,” he said. “This might be a good day for us to meet.”
Garnett had been pushing to meet my parents for the last few months. The geography was complicated. Because he lived in Washington, I was in Minneapolis, and my mom and dad were almost in Iowa … this convergence had been easy to stall.
“Don’t they live just a couple miles down the road?” Garnett pointed east. He knew what my family’s farm looked like from an old aerial photo that hung in my kitchen. If I nixed the meeting, I wouldn’t have put it past him to drive over and introduce himself without me.
“Well, yes, they live nearby. But I think I need to prepare them first. Especially after that ‘Piercing Eyes’ newspaper column and Sam’s murder. Please understand, Nick, this is sort of tricky.”
He didn’t look like he understood. “Speaking of tricks, Riley, I’m starting to think you want to keep our relationship secret forever.”
“I just don’t want to flaunt it right now.”
“Flaunting sounds negative. Are you ashamed of us?”
“Absolutely not, but I feel like a lot of eyes are watching me, and I need you to keep a low profile because the last thing I need is more gossip.”
His face did not sport the look of a happy boyfriend.
“Come with me.” I gave him a playful shove.
Our voices were getting louder and I didn’t want Malik overhearing any more than he already had. I motioned Garnett toward some end rows of corn left standing for the pheasants. We walked and talked.
I remained convinced that his timing regarding my parents was all wrong. I knew them, and I knew once we got past the formality of their meeting Garnett, they’d grill me about our “plans.” That future was still too vague for such a debate. I thought it might be better to wait for a traditional holiday, like Christmas. Travel could always be delayed by weather.
Garnett maintained it was now or never. And he made it sound like an ultimatum.
“What’s the rush, Nick? It’s not like you’re asking my father for my hand in marriage.”
“What would be the point? You’re clearly married to your job.”
I could have said the same about him, but I didn’t. “This is not a conversation I want to have in a cornfield.”
“Well, I’m tired of sneaking around.”
“For a guy who doesn’t like sneaking, why don’t you tell me what you were doing in Minnesota the day before you came to see me?”
I stopped walking because I wanted to look at his eyes when he answered. I wished I hadn’t, because they looked hurt.
“What do you mean?”
“I saw your boarding pass,” I said. “I know you flew in a day early.”
“You can’t turn off that reporter urge to snoop, can you?”
“You left it in my house.”
“I’m pretty sure I would have put it in the trash. Are you nosing through my garbage? Maybe that judge was right about you journalists.”
That settled it for me. “I don’t want you to meet my parents today. And I want my house key back. You call me when you want to apologize.”
That apparently settled it for him, too. “You call me when you want to have a normal courtship. The kind where we can hold hands someplace besides a dark movie theater.”
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” I said, thinking Strother Martin’s 1967 quote from Cool Hand Luke might lighten things up.
Garnett didn’t respond, just turned and walked toward the crime scene without looking back. So either he didn’t know the line, or he was too mad to play our game.
I climbed into the van, telling Malik to head to the station and not ask any questions. I didn’t want to visit my parents in this foul frame of mind. This was becoming a very bad day. I tried to keep perspective by telling myself it could be worse.
Malik was also in a bad mood because the station had implemented an overtime freeze; usually he racked up enough overtime during a ratings month so that his wife could buy a new household appliance. With the cost cutbacks, they’d have to settle for a two-slice toaster.
When my cell phone started working again, I called the farm to tell my parents we had to rush back to make deadline.
“Any ideas about the dead body?” I asked my dad. “Him being a stranger nixes any theory of a neighbor angry over a ruined view or jealous they missed out on the wind money.”
Unless they were working together, I suddenly thought.
“Nobody around here knows what to think anymore,” Dad answered. “Nothing like this has happened here before.”
That sure was the truth. This environment grew crops, not news. There, when someone asks, “Where’s the beef?” they actually are talking about cattle, not substance. Same thing with pork. They mean pigs, not government waste.
To keep my mind off my fight with Garnett, I wrote the story on the drive back. I’d been told I was the lead. And for the first time all day, I smiled.
((SOPHIE LEAD CU))
A DEAD BODY IS THE LATEST
CLUE IN THE STRANGE
BOMBING OF WIND TURBINES
IN SOUTHERN MINNESOTA.
RILEY SPARTZ BRINGS BACK
THIS REPORT.
Plugging in a set of earbuds, I played the interviews back from Malik’s camera and pulled sound bites in the car, complete with time code.
I transcribed Gil’s answer about hearing a loud noise and going for his gun. I liked the part about how he didn’t think anything was wrong until his dog found human remains.
“Make sure you use a shot of him and the dog,” I told Malik. “Noreen will like that.”
((RILEY, TRACK))
SO FAR, INVESTIGATORS ARE
KEEPING QUIET ABOUT
POSSIBLE MOTIVES FOR THE
BOMBINGS.
I closed the piece by saying that no means of transportation had been found for the dead man, thus leading to speculation he might not have been working alone.