“Thank you,” I said. I slipped off my bomber’s jacket, draped it over the back of a chair, and sat down.
I opened the first thick book and tried to find March 15, the day Elizabeth Rogers was killed. Only the Herald didn’t publish on Saturday—only Sunday and Tuesday through Friday. I scanned the front page of the Sunday, March 16, edition. The cover story was all about how the Victoria Seven had upset Minneapolis North High School for the right to advance to the state basketball tournament the following week. There was no mention of the murder of Elizabeth until Tuesday, March 18. The headline read: Murder of Cheerleader Casts Shadow on State Basketball Tournament. The subhead claimed Victoria Seven Will Fight On Despite Loss. Both stories were wrapped around a shot of the basketball players, which included an impossibly young John Allen Barrett.
A shot of Elizabeth, obviously her school photo, was tucked inside. The pose was typical, shoulders rotated slightly to the left, head turned to the right, chin up, eyes staring above and past the camera. Yet Elizabeth’s youthful beauty seemed to transcend the mediocrity of the photographer and the ancient newsprint. She had straight, light-colored hair falling to her shoulders, a self-confident, almost smug smile, and large eyes. The cutline beneath the photograph said her funeral had been scheduled for early Wednesday morning so the basketball team could attend before boarding the bus to St. Paul.
I jumped ahead to the March 20 edition. There was extensive coverage of the funeral, yet again it was all about the boys, with plenty of photographs of them standing at the graveside looking uncomfortable and bored. It annoyed me that none of them appeared to be grieving. Included was a midrange shot of Barrett and a man the cutline identified as Coach Mark Testen. I was pleased to see what I thought were tears on Testen’s face, but closer examination revealed that it was merely two narrow bandages running from his left eye to the middle of his cheek.
I returned to the Tuesday edition and began taking notes. Over twenty minutes passed before Salisbury spoke, startling me. I had forgotten that he was there.
“The case was never solved,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“They never found her killer. That’s what you’re interested in, isn’t it? Not the Seven, the murder.”
“Why do you say that?”
Salisbury pointed at my notepad.
“Like all good journalists, I can read upside down.”
I glanced at the notepad. I had scribbled notes about Elizabeth, where her body was found, when, by whom, where she lived, and more. There was nothing about the basketball team.
“It’s part of the story, isn’t it? The story of the Victoria Seven?”
“I suppose it is,” Salisbury agreed. “I wrote a piece about it myself a few years ago during the Seven’s anniversary reunion.”
“I’d like to read it.”
“There’s nothing there that you can’t read here,” he said, indicating the binder. “Except my contention that the chief of police screwed up, and didn’t I catch hell for that.”
“Chief?” I glanced at my notes.
“Leo Bohlig. He had been chief since the beginning of time. He retired last year and Danny Mallinger took over.”
“Danny Mallinger?”
“Danielle. Know her?”
So that’s what the D stands for.
“We met on the road,” I said.
“Anyway, Bohlig was still chief when I wrote the story. He wouldn’t answer any of my questions, wouldn’t even let me read the files. Since the case was still active”—Salisbury quoted the air with both hands—“he said the public had no right to see the files. Personally, I don’t know about that.” Salisbury shrugged. “He screwed up and I wrote that he screwed up and that almost got me fired.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a small town newspaper and I wrote a story that gave the small town a black eye and the owner didn’t like it. Simple as that. This paper—my boss doesn’t want negative stories about Victoria in it. Last week a couple of kids got busted doing crystal meth. Should have been on the front page. We had three paragraphs on page five.”
“Tell me about Bohlig’s investigation.”
“Elizabeth’s body was found in a ditch along County Road 13. Next to Milepost Three, they found her, not far from the Des Moines River. It was within the Victoria city limits so Chief Bohlig claimed jurisdiction. Normally, a crime like that would automatically go to the Nicholas County Sheriff’s Department regardless of where it was committed. Bohlig wouldn’t give it up. He was pretty adamant about it. Why the county didn’t just shove him out of the way, I can’t say. I figured Bohlig must have pulled some pretty stout strings, collected a lot of favors. Anyway, he ran the investigation and came up with nothing. No one was arrested. No leads were developed. No one was even questioned hard as far as I could tell. Eventually, he announced that the murder was committed by transients who were just passing through.”