Stalking Susan Read online

  “She didn’t deserve to die like that,” Ken said.

  Susan was their only child. They had her late in life and their modest south Minneapolis rambler, while not a shrine to Susan, was proof enough of her existence. Eight-by-ten school photographs from kindergarten to high school hung in two rows down a long hallway.

  As a child, she smiled a shy, crooked grin. As a teenager, her smile was closemouthed and self-conscious. If her family had money, she’d have had braces by fifth grade, perfect teeth by eighth.

  I listened as they told me about a girl who wasn’t smart or social, but was friendly enough if someone was friendly first.

  Yes, Susan dated. But while her friends became fiancées and brides and mothers, Susan remained simply their daughter. From time to time, she would be somebody’s girlfriend and he would pick her up at the door. But those relationships generally measured weeks, not months.

  It’s possible she had been on her way to meet someone that night. Her parents had stopped asking, and Susan had stopped telling. She was the kind of waitress who could flirt well enough for tips at a casual diner, but not at an upscale restaurant. For her, waitressing was a dead-end job in more ways than one.

  Her bedroom was as it had been the last night she left home.

  “We talk about clearing out her stuff, but can’t seem to do it,” her mother told me, almost apologetically.

  “I know how hard it can be to let go,” I said. Boy, did I know. Boyer’s State Patrol uniforms were still hanging in my closet. His golf clubs sat in the garage. Everything was where he had left it. Except his gun. I keep that under my bed. Loaded.

  I opened the closet and found several black skirts and white shirts.

  “That’s what she wore waitressing,” Tina said. Pinned to each shirt was a black plastic nametag reading SUSAN.

  KEN AND TINA held hands tightly as they sat on the tattered couch. They slouched down more than I liked, but it was important that they be comfortable. They’d sit higher if we used the straight-back chairs from the kitchen, but they’d also be tense.

  I wanted the interview to be emotional. That means, I wanted them to cry. This, after all, was television.

  I phoned Malik Rahman and told him to bring in the camera. He’d been waiting on standby outside in the van. He did a careful job with the lighting, pulling the living room drapes shut and then setting up two light stands with a rose gel over the bulbs. The shot felt warm and the room looked rich. He eliminated the shadows on their faces. I wasn’t crazy about the two-shot because Ken was so much taller than Tina, but Malik convinced me it would work.

  I briefly rested my hand on theirs and assured them we could stop the interview at any time, but this was their chance to tell viewers how special Susan was.

  “Remember the interview is taped, not live. If you stumble, just start over.”

  The secret to getting an interviewee to cry is trust: making them feel safe. If you’ve frightened them or made them nervous, it won’t work. Their words will seem stilted. You can’t scare someone into crying on camera. It’s also important that they not look directly at the lens, otherwise they’ll have an unnatural, deer-in-the-headlights appearance. I instructed Tina and Ken to look only at me and ignore Malik.

  Our audio check found a low buzz coming from their refrigerator. I unplugged the appliance and put my car keys inside to remind me not to drive off without plugging it back in.

  I set a box of tissues between Susan’s parents, and then we started.

  They were good talkers. They had waited more than a decade for someone like me to knock on their door and clip a microphone to their collars.

  “Susan was our life,” Tina began.

  I had asked them not to speak with any other media until after Channel 3’s story aired. Other stations often try to undercut a competitor’s exclusive by airing a “spoiler” ahead of time. Sometimes newsmakers, either to be polite or to go for maximum exposure, decide to talk to all the media. This often backfires, diluting their story because no station feels ownership. Instead of being one channel’s lead story they get short shrift in multiple newscasts.

  This television business may seem calculated, but I have personal limits that have evolved from reconciling what I do for a living with how I live with myself. For example, I won’t seek an exclusive in the case of a missing person, when time is critical. A family facing that horror needs all the publicity they can get. They can’t risk turning down any interview, because that station or newspaper just might be the one that leads to the tip that brings the return of their loved one. I carry enough job-related guilt; I don’t need that on my conscience.

  Since I was the first reporter to contact the Chenowiths since their daughter’s death, they readily agreed to stick by me.

  “I can’t solve her murder,” I explained to them. “But I can make sure she’s not forgotten.” For them, that was good enough.

  “I feel like we’re not a family anymore,” Tina went on. “A family should be more than two people.”

  The magic came with my fourth question: “What was it like when the police came to your house that morning?”

  There was a long pause. “Our world ended,” Tina told me, the camera rolling. “A policeman saying ‘murder’ and ‘your daughter’ and our world ended.”

  Tina began to weep. Ken wrapped his hairy arms around the mother of the murdered waitress and leaned his cheek against her forehead.

  “Sound up, tears,” I thought in TV lingo, hating and congratulating myself at the same time.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’d seen it before and I had experienced it personally. The loss of a loved one can cause survivors either to turn their back on religion, or to seek solace in it. I’d done the former. Susan Moreno’s father apparently had chosen to embrace God. He lived alone in a split-level home in the old part of Bloomington, an inner-ring Minneapolis suburb. The living room décor was biblical. Crucifixes and Madonna figurines. A sanctuary to the loss of his sixteen-year-old daughter. But I misjudged what that loss was.

  “Oh, my life did not end when Susan died. My life ended when she was born.”

  My shock did not thwart him.

  “My wife died in childbirth. Susan killed her mother.”

  I couldn’t speak, and that doesn’t happen too often. I wasn’t sure if I was more disturbed by his words, or by his candid delivery of them. I looked away from him, toward a wall where a baby sampler hung. It read SUSAN and was embroidered with white lilies, her date of birth, and her weight and length.

  “Susan means ‘lily,’” Tim Moreno said. “I only keep that because my mother made it. Lilies symbolize purity.”

  So Susan meant “lily.” I made a mental note to research name origination as a possible clue. I had always associated lilies with death. Just as I was thinking he must have named her as a constant reminder of his pain, he explained that Susan had been his grandmother’s name. He stressed that the choice had ended up being a poor one for his daughter.

  “Susan wasn’t pure,” he told me. “She was Satan’s whore. That’s why she died.”

  “She didn’t deserve murder.”

  “Neither did Christ. But as He rose again, so shall she, if forgiven by the Lord.”

  He didn’t offer me coffee, he wouldn’t go on camera, and he didn’t seem to care whether her killer was ever caught or not.

  “Leave now, TV lady.”

  I wished I could cry for Susan Moreno; her father apparently never had. But I hadn’t cried for anyone, even myself, in months. Years ago I had realized one of the reasons I stay in this business is selfish. Like a leech, I feed off the emotion of others. Their sorrow, their pain, their anger satisfies an emptiness that used to bring me to tears when I sat alone in a viewing booth replaying their interviews. That Tim Moreno felt none of these things unsettled me. I’d cried plenty in the days after my husband died. Since then, nothing. I was in search of a good cry, but couldn’t seem to find one.

  “I’ll let you
know if I learn anything.” I always like to leave the door open for a return visit.

  His final words to me: “If He wills.”

  As I walked down the driveway, moonlight reflected off a large garden of white lilies.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Moreno house was just minutes from the Mall of America, so I stopped by to see how Garnett was adjusting to his first days on the job, and to fill him in on the chase.

  The Mall of America put the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington on the world retail map in 1992. More than 4 million square feet of entertainment and shopping space. Complete with an indoor amusement park and a giant aquarium stocked with sharks. Last Valentine’s Day a couple even got married underwater, live on the Today show.

  I couldn’t help noticing the signs posted on the doors: MALL OF AMERICA BANS GUNS IN THESE PREMISES. Similar signs greet visitors of churches, restaurants, and other buildings throughout the state. Years ago Minnesota Republicans got a conceal-and-carry law through the legislature by burying it in a natural resources bill along with ice fishing, snowmobiling, and litter. Any establishment that didn’t want armed customers posted the signs and hoped for the best.

  Outside Garnett’s office, twenty monitors for a hundred security cameras filled the wall. Not fuzzy black-and-white images like you see in banks and gas stations, but crisp color pictures as good as any police mug shot. Some screens were divided into quads, but the click of a mouse could bring any of them full screen and enlarge the image.

  Two security guards monitored the monitors. One was a young black guy with muscles and attitude. The other guard had a gray balding head, like a Franciscan monk. They glanced up as I moved by, then returned to switching the screens from camera to camera. First a food court, then an escalator, then a parking ramp. I felt myself getting drowsy watching them.

  “How do you keep from zoning out?” I asked them.

  The older guy laughed. “Don’t try to watch everything. Just watch for what don’t belong.”

  “Like some of the juvies,” the younger guy added.

  In its early years, MOA had become a popular and convenient hangout for gangs because it was on the downtown bus lines and it was open late. Skirmishes became frequent; shoppers became nervous. Not wanting turf wars over Legoland, the mall had started a “safety policy.” After four in the afternoon on Fridays and Saturdays, anyone under sixteen has to be accompanied by an adult.

  “We spot ’em, we radio the bouncers.” The young black guard waved an impressive walkie-talkie in my face. “Trouble spots are always up on screen.”

  He pointed to an eye-level row of monitors. One showed the area by Johnny Rockets restaurant. Another, just outside the Paul Bunyan flume ride. Others showed skyway entrances between the mall and parking ramps. “Most of the other cameras rotate through the screens, unless we see something that needs closer inspection.”

  The console in front of him looked like a video game board. He pushed a lever and a camera zoomed in close. Another lever shifted the scene sideways.

  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” Garnett said, as he walked up behind us.

  “Frank Morgan, The Wizard of Oz, 1939,” I replied. “The guys here were just giving me a behind-the-scenes tour.”

  “Don’t give away all our secrets,” he told them.

  The rest of the administrative staff had gone home a few hours before. He ushered me into his office overlooking the roller coasters of what used to be called Camp Snoopy. Partially unpacked boxes filled one corner. Propped on a shelf, a plastic sign read REMEMBER, WE WORK FOR GOD, the motto for Practical Homicide Investigation. I recalled it from his desk at the cop shop.

  “Better security than even the Indian casinos,” he said. “And we need it. With a name like Mall of America, we’re not only a tourist destination, we’re a terrorist target. A symbol of conspicuous consumption in America’s heartland. Wouldn’t have half the problems I’ve got if they’d called it the Bloomington MegaMall.”

  “You probably wouldn’t be making half the money you are either. I bet it’s a nice bump from the public payroll.” I noticed the suit and tie he wore were nicer than his usual wardrobe. Good enough for on air, even.

  “Nice hours. Better benefits. Extra vacation. You might want to pick up an application on your way out, Riley.”

  “Come on, Nick, you know only TV can satisfy my ego,” I teased him. “Really, you didn’t take all your vacation as a cop, what makes you think you’re going to take even more now?”

  “Then I had a job I couldn’t bear to leave. Now I’ve got a job I can’t wait to leave.”

  “Then how come you’re still here tonight?”

  “Just getting the lay of the land so my instincts will kick in if I need them.”

  “A little while ago my instincts were telling me to stay far away from Susan Moreno’s father.” I briefed him on my encounters with the Susan families. Garnett knew the players; he’d met them years earlier when their anguish was rawest.

  “I’m guessing Mr. Moreno wasn’t terribly heartbroken when you told him his daughter was dead,” I said.

  “I thought he was nuts then, no reason to change my diagnosis now.”

  “Did you ever look at him as a suspect?”

  “Yes. He is delusional, just the kind of guy who’d kill ’cause the voices told him to do it. No one could vouch for where he was that night. But when folks like him are pushed, they usually confess their sin. Remember, she’d also been sexually assaulted, and I just didn’t see him good for that.”

  “How come you never told me about the Susan cases earlier?”

  “There are lots of cases I never told you about. The chief didn’t buy a connection, and I didn’t have any proof to sell it otherwise.”

  “So you think the name and date might just be coincidence?”

  “Might.” He nodded. “Except there was one other thing that made these cases different. I’d be willing to connect the killings based simply on that.”

  “What?”

  “The victims were re-dressed.”

  “Re-dressed?”

  “Yeah, the killer put their clothes back on after.”

  I thought back to the crime scene photos and realized he was right. I wondered what else the file told him that my eyes had missed. “How unusual is that?” I asked.

  “Different from most homicides I’ve worked.”

  “And why would he do something like that?”

  “It could be part of his signature.”

  A signature is something a perpetrator feels compelled to do. It goes beyond what’s necessary to commit the crime. Often it has a sexual component. Murderers change their MO as they learn better ways to kill, and better ways to stay ahead of the police. But signature may reflect an inner need they can’t change. Signature can also be a clue that catches a killer.

  “That re-dressing stuff wasn’t in the news stories,” I told him.

  “We held it back as something only the real killer would know. It wasn’t difficult; neither case got much publicity.”

  The brutal images from the file lingered in my mind. “But you’re telling me and I’m a reporter.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to trust that you see the sense in keeping a few things off air. But I also want you to understand why my cop gut is telling me this is the same killer.”

  “Sometimes my reporter gut tells me things, too. What does the chief’s gut say?” I asked.

  “Police chiefs don’t have cop guts. They’re administrators. The last thing the chief wants is a serial killer on the Minneapolis chain of lakes. Most of the money in this city lives on that water. If our guy had been snatching victims from that neighborhood instead of dumping them there, we’d have heard a whole lot more commotion.”

  “So the chief isn’t covering anything up; he just doesn’t want to find evidence of a Susan killer?”

  “He didn’t encourage that direction of the investigation.”

  “Did he discourage it?”


  “When he heard the addresses, he showed up at both crime scenes, Mayor Skubic by his side, probably to make sure the deceased wasn’t a campaign contributor. Police procedure calls for as few folks behind the tape as necessary. Yet he VIPs them through, they get in our way, muck with the evidence. Their very presence could contaminate the crime scene and complicate the investigation.”

  “That’s why you never let us reporters back there.”

  “Right. If anyone drops fibers or leaves a print, it’s one more person to eliminate, and a sharp defense attorney can use it to embarrass us. The chief knows better; you don’t see him out on location when it’s a drive-by shooting in north Minneapolis.”

  “Bosses are hell in the field,” I agreed. “But pragmatically, I still don’t understand why any killer would take the time to put a victim’s clothes back on.”

  “That’s why it’s so unusual,” Garnett said. “Psychopaths often like to leave their victim naked. Accomplishes two things. Shocks whoever finds the body. Plus, as a practical matter, nudity cuts down on the amount of evidence they leave behind. If it were me, I’d have thrown the body, naked, in the lake. That takes care of fibers and hair evidence.”

  “So the killer was taking a risk. Why?”

  “Might be trying to undo the violence. Restore the victim’s dignity. I’m trained in reading evidence, not Freud. But if our unsub is a serialist, a profiler could have some insight. I’d say the perp was bolder the second time around. He didn’t just dump the body. He displayed it. He propped it against a tree because he wanted it to be found, and quickly.”

  “But why?” I asked. “There’re places within a half hour of here where a body would never be found. At least not until hunting season.”

  “Might be remorse. Maybe he wanted the body to have a proper funeral. Clearly, he felt comfortable in that neighborhood and didn’t worry about attracting attention. If we play the odds, he’s probably a decent-looking guy.”

  “How come?”

  He shrugged. “Ugly serial killers have a harder time attracting victims.”