‘Super Sunday’

Mark Hennessy wasn’t sure how it started; perhaps it was the way his colleagues at Channel 8 smirked when his name was mentioned, even when he was standing near enough to see, or the unceremonious way his girlfriend of three years, Monica Gathers, dumped him by leaving him a note taped to his front door. It may have been the lack of loving father figure when he was a child, which is what his lawyer would argue rather unconvincingly at his trial. However it started, when it started was no mystery. The fourth of November, after work one day.

Mark was a sports anchor, well-respected if not particularly well-liked. He knew everything there was to know about sports, and it was the only conversation topic he could lucidly discuss without stumbling over words, losing his train of thought, and generally making an ass of himself. He watched sports on television, read about sports in the newspapers, and analyzed sports ceaselessly on his own local Saturday morning television show. He was particularly fond of the University of Oregon Ducks; he had graduated from U. of O. and spent four years on the football team’s bench as a walk-on wide receiver; he made three receptions during his time there. But even though his passion was the Ducks, he talked about the OSU Beavers, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Winter Hawks hockey team, the Seattle Mariners, and the University of Portland soccer team with equal devotion. Of course, this devotion made him an invaluable anchor for Channel 8, but pretty much pigeon-holed him in terms of acquaintances. His lack of friends and awkward history with women led his lawyer to argue, again unconvincingly, that Mark was a homosexual, frustrated and driven to rage by the stigma attached to his sexuality by his fellow newscasters. Mark Hennessy, for his part, never had any homosexual feelings. Maybe it would have cut some slack with the jury, maybe not.

But it was definitely on the night of November fourth, after completing the eleven o’clock broadcast, that everything started to go wrong for Mark Hennessy. For months he had been thinking about asking out Casey Carnarvon, the co-lead anchor. With the recent schism between him and Monica Gathers, he decided it would be the perfect opportunity.

Casey was the perfect co-anchor of the news — bubbly and stern at the same time, glowing with kindness and intelligence while Carl Holt, the other anchor, emanated experience and toughness. Casey had worked her way up from a lifestyles show on a local cable station in Ontario, Oregon, making pit stops in Eugene and Salem on her way to Portland. Mark was mesmerized by her — she wore glossy lipstick and bright silver nail polish, her hair was shiny blonde, thick, and curly, and her eyes burned with desire to achieve. Everyone at Channel 8 knew she wasn’t long for Portland. Bigger and better things were her destiny, because she wanted it that way.

Every heterosexual male at the station had at least one fantasy about Casey, and Mark was no exception. He dreamed of a log cabin deep in the Cascades, fire-lit and cozy, a shrill winter wind howling outside. Inside, there was no need for clothes, at least not on Casey; she was wrapped only in a thick fur coat. It went many different ways from there, some standard, where they would have sex, some not-so-standard, where the sex would get increasingly dangerous and rough, and blood would be shed and screams would be heard. Mark always became a little unnerved by his darker fantasies, but the truth was, he liked sports more than he ever liked sex, and his fantasies usually just kept him occupied until the next big sporting event, which was never far off.

At his trial, his lawyer argued many things, all of which sounded completely silly to him. His lawyer, whom his family had hired, was named Howard Grimsky, and he made a comprehensive list of all the things that were wrong with Mark Hennessy. First, the lack of a father figure. Mark’s father was a Lewis and Clark law professor who shot himself when Mark was fifteen, leaving his mother with bills to pay (his father’s wealthy family ignored her needs), three children to raise, and the knowledge that her husband committed suicide because he couldn’t face his wife after indulging in an affair with a colleague. An overbearing mother, Grimsky then argued, had turned Mark off girls and made him a homosexual, which not only ruined his chances of having a stable relationship with a woman, but also, as his sexual orientation resulted from a revenge motive rather than biology, with men as well, unless the sex was brutal and ugly, which is how Mark saw himself. None of this talk show psychobabble convinced the jury.

So on the night of November fourth, Mark was thinking about Monica Gathers, and how she dumped him, and how going out with Casey Carnarvon would be a perfect way to get even. It was with confidence that he approached the co-lead anchor.

And it was with humiliation that he left her, after she blithely turned down his offer of drinks, maybe a late dinner now that the broadcast was over. Afterward, all he could remember were her eyes — a weird cobalt which had to be unnatural, blazing with disdain and haughtiness, wondering why he would even dare approach her with first getting written permission. He slinked away, watched her sidle up to the station manager and casually ask him out, and he realized she was only focused on one thing — her career.

“I can’t blame her for that,” he said later at the sports bar downtown where he, weatherman Hal Vesterman, and head cameraman Paul Keller often went. “I mean, we all want to get ahead.”

“She’s a bitch,” Paul said. “Always has been, always will be. Somebody should dump her in a lake. Women.” Paul was a notorious misogynist, and Mark didn’t want to know what went on with his wife at home.

He kept silent and drank his beer as Paul and Hal digressed into a tirade against various women who were “bitches.” Perhaps that was why, when Casey Carnarvon’s body turned up floating face down in the swampy area by Swan Island three weeks later, her throat cut so horribly that her head was almost separated from her body, nobody suspected Mark Hennessy. He had no reason to kill Casey Carnarvon, at least not that anyone knew. Paul and Hal had forgotten Mark’s rejection, and he hadn’t tried again. Portland drove itself into a minor frenzy over the murder — Oregon and Oregon State had both ended their football seasons, the Trail Blazers had yet to fail again in the first round of the playoffs, and there was little else to occupy the populace. There were no suspects — everyone Casey worked with agreed that she was a sunny person, incapable of anger or caprice, and Carl Holt postulated that she had been kidnapped by a psychopath and killed. Thoughts of a new Northwest serial killer flamed in people’s minds. The golden girl was dead.

Mark watched the media storm, the bleating of platitudes, the black-shrouded mourners at Casey’s public funeral, the human-interest stories with the Carnarvon family and friends, the one-on-one interviews with members of the crew — himself included (“Casey was like pure sunshine. When she walked into a room, everyone and everything brightened. A light in Portland has been snuffed out.”) — with mounting amusement. Killing Casey hadn’t been as difficult as he thought. Trailing her home after one of her late-night trysts with some local model, he had nabbed her outside her apartment, chloroformed her, dragged her into his car, and taken her to a deserted spot in Forest Park. There, he had considered raping her, but shied away from that disgusting act. So he simply chopped at her neck with a butcher knife, unaware of when he actually killed her, buried the knife in a deep hole, wrapped her body in some old sheets, and drive to Swan Island. The vast industrial complex was never completely silent, but he found a sufficiently secluded creek in which to dump her body. Then he went home, threw the sheets and his bloody clothes into the washer, and went to bed. As the manhunt reached a fever pitch, he still had the sheets and the clothing. As far as he knew, he was never a suspect.

He felt vindicated, however, a week after the murder, when he again went out with Hal Vesterman and Paul Keller. This time, the topic of conversation was, naturally, Casey, but away from the cameras and microphones, Hal and Paul were not as melancholy as they let on.

“Well, the queen is dead,” Hal said sarcastically.

(Hal told The Oregonian: “Casey was a hard worker, a caring person, always ready to help, always questioning the news, trying to find the truth. She loved this city, and loved the people in it. We will all miss her.”)

“Brutal way to die,” Mark offered, rather timidly. He was still feeling out his co-workers on the subject.

“Well, yeah, but she had it coming,” said Paul, guzzling a Hefeweizen. “I mean, always fucking around with everyone. You just can’t push some people. She probably pushed the wrong guy.”

(Mark overheard Paul talking to Willamette Week after the murder: “This is a symptom of the disease ravaging our society. A beautiful and talented young woman is a threat to the male-dominated media culture. Casey wasn’t just a bimbo who read the news. She was a force of nature, trying to sweep away the bullshit that permeates television journalism in this country.”)

“Don’t you have any pity?” Mark asked his two friends.

“Weren’t you the one she dumped on, big guy?” Paul said. “You should be buying the guy who killed her a drink.”

“You two are sick,” Mark said, suppressing a grin of glee. “She rejected me, sure, but she was butchered.”

Hal finished his beer and signaled the waitress. “Look, Mark we’re not saying this guy’s a hero. But Casey wasn’t exactly liked by everyone, you know. Sure, we all wanted to fuck her, but she was a bitch. You know that. This guy killed her, maybe he was rough, maybe he’s crazy, but we all thought about doing it. He just had the guts.”

And Mark accepted the compliment silently. Hal and Paul were subpoenaed by the district attorney, who asked Hal, “Did Mark Hennessy admit to you that he committed these crimes?”

Howard Grimsky objected, but the judge overruled him. “Yes, he did,” Hal said. Paul Keller confirmed this. Howard Grimsky tried not to glare at his client.

“Why did you admit it?” Howard Grimsky asked Mark, at the first interview.

“I was bragging,” Mark said. “You know, like it you score a touchdown, something like that. You know.”

Howard Grimsky thought of his check.

Mark’s father’s family was an old, established, well-known Portland institution. Preacher Hennessy had arrived in 1897 and immediately ditched his Quaker faith to worship at the altar of commerce. The Hennessys had been involved in shipping, lumber, politics, and urban development. Mark’s grandfather, Horatio, was a city councilman and a trustee of the University of Oregon, and Mark got his taste for sports watching the Ducks get pummeled routinely by USC, UCLA, and Washington in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It didn’t matter if his favorite team won or lost. It was the game that was important.

Mark tried, unsuccessfully, to explain that to every woman he ever took an interest in. Monica never understood it. Neither did Casey.

“God, Mark, it’s just a game,” was a mantra with her, whenever Mark was waxing philosophical on matters of sport. She didn’t understand the passion of the Civil War, the thrill of the NBA Finals being played in Portland, the road trips to Kamloops to see the Winter Hawks get crushed in the playoffs, the crazed anticipation of the first Rose Bowl trip for the Ducks in 37 years. The term she used when she dismissed him after he asked her out — “sports boy” — did it push him over the edge?

Howard Grimsky certainly thought so. He argued, still unconvincingly and increasingly desperately, that Mark had been raised to be a competitor, a winner. Casey degrading his chosen profession — and the zeal with which he pursued it — drove him to kill her, in a fit of insanity. The district attorney didn’t buy it.

“Why did you wait so long afterward to kill her, Mark?” Howard Grimsky asked. “You make it very hard to plead insanity. Especially with what subsequently occurred.”

The murder of Casey Carnarvon went unsolved for two months, even with a large number of police working on it. Mark and the Channel 8 crew soldiered on; Casey’s replacement, Donna Illusia, was a calm, steady woman recently promoted from Klamath Falls who knew her days as a co-anchor were fleeting — she was the same age as Carl Holt, and the network wanted someone like Casey as a draw to the younger audience. Mark reported from the Cotton Bowl, made road trips to Corvallis to cover the highly ranked OSU women’s basketball team, and forgot about Casey. Eventually, so did the rest of the news team. Eventually, so did the police.

“We have no leads,” Detective Harmon “The Charmin'” Hulce told Fred Lighthouse, the station’s owner. “There’s no physical evidence. Nothing. We don’t even know if this was the work of a serial killer, or an isolated incident.”

“Have any other bodies turned up?” Lighthouse asked through clenched teeth. It was almost February, and he still hadn’t gotten any results.

“We’ve found none.”

“Then perhaps someone was out to get her. Her specifically. Any moron can deduce that, even you!”

Detective Hulce was no amused. “We’re working on –”

“Bullshit. Precisely what you are working on I don’t know, but you are not trying to find this brute that kills young and innocent women. Casey had a future, and it was ripped from her. Her family mourns her, her adopted family here mourns her, Portland mourns her, and Oregon mourns her. Maybe if you spent less time locking kids up for cruising Broadway –”

“Are you finished, Mr. Lighthouse?”

“Don’t you wish. Listen, you –”

But one thing Detective Hulce was no longer doing was listening. “I have better things to do with my time, Mr. Lighthouse. We have nothing on the case. She wasn’t raped, there were no fingerprints we could lift, nothing. Obviously, if anything comes up, we’ll pursue it, but there are other crimes to solve.”

“As if you could, Detective.”

But something did come up. Mark, Hal, and Paul went out to have another drink, this time with Carl Holt.

Carl was having problems with Donna Illusia. Thirty years earlier, they had worked together in Ontario, both of them just starting careers in broadcast journalism. Carl was twenty-six, Donna was twenty-one, fresh out of college and precocious as hell. Mark, Hal, and Paul loved listening to Carl tell stories. He had been all over Oregon, and had been involved with most of the major news stories of the past three decades. Now he was drinking heavily, reminiscing about his beginnings, and how it could end everything.

Mark wasn’t surprised when Carl and Donna ended up sleeping together. It was the Sixties, society was starting to be liberated, and they were youngsters away from the constraints of parental supervision. Carl thought Donna would make a good wife, but she didn’t want that, so he shunted aside any feelings he had for her and just indulged in sex. After six months, she got pregnant. At first Carl wanted her to have the child, but she convinced him an abortion would be for the best. He paid for her to visit a doctor in northern Idaho who would perform the procedure, and she terminated the pregnancy. It drove a wedge between them, however, and when Carl was offered a job in Astoria, he took it to get away from her. They hadn’t seen each other since.

“And now she’s back?” Paul said. “So what’s the problem? It was just a fling. Nothing to worry about.”

Carl finished his fifth beer; Mark had never seen him drink before. “Yeah, except she’s been flirting with me. I mean, I’m not stupid. She thinks … hell, I don’t know what she thinks. She knows I’m married, but doesn’t care. So I told her, knock it off, I’m not interested. So she threatened me. Threatened to tell my wife everything about us.”

“So?” Hal said. “It happened before your wife knew you. Let her tell.”

“Not that easy,” Carl said. “Mimi is a very good Christian, you know? No pre-marital sex, and she’s seriously pro-life. She thinks I’m the same way, and I am … now. But she thinks I’ve always been that way. An ex-girlfriend with whom I shared nothing but sex and an abortion? Not a pleasant thought.”

“Surely she’ll understand,” said Paul.

“Not Mimi. Never. She might not divorce me, but she’d make sure everyone knew. They’d all take her side. I’m not that ambitious anymore — I know the network’s not going to come knocking — but I have a good life here. She can, and will, ruin it for me.”

The younger guys liked Carl; he was easy-going, calm, slightly introverted away from the cameras, but a solid, decent person. Hal and Paul brainstormed about how they could help the anchorman. Carl was considering going to Mr. Lighthouse with his problem or paying Donna off and hoping she’s get bored toying with him, but nothing sounded promising. Carl got drunker.

“Bitches” Hal finally said, trying to keep his voice down and fighting the alcohol to do so. “Why are they always making life so damned hard?”

Up until now, Mark had been quiet, keeping his own counsel. Now, he leaned forward, hoping the dim lighting in the bar would shade his face ominously. It was that kind of moment.

“I can take care of Donna for you,” he said quietly, almost whispering.

“What? What?” Carl said. The beer was making his eyes heavy.

Mark repeated himself, allowing a smile to grow on his lips. “It wouldn’t be difficult. Casey wasn’t.”

He felt a palpable chill descend on the table. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Paul said, speaking for all of them.

“So you told them you killed her,” Howard Grimsky said, exactly five weeks later. “You told them the whole thing.”

“They didn’t like her. They all wanted her dead. They did.”

Howard Grimsky knew his client was guilty. He had the testimony of three well-respected members of the news team, who were all friends of Mark Hennessy and wouldn’t damn him unless they believed it was absolutely true. He had plenty of physical evidence from the murder of Donna Illusia, which is when Mark got careless. Detective Hulce had blood samples and footprints and skin under Donna’s fingernails, but until the three men came forward with their story, he still had no suspects. Now he had everything, and Howard knew Mark was a sitting duck.

Insanity? Mark didn’t appear to be insane, although temporary insanity was a valid defense, he thought. But his client didn’t want to plead insanity, because he didn’t want to be labeled “crazy” by the press. So Howard had to pull every trick he knew, and the jury bought none of them. Howard believed Mark’s grandparents even knew it was a lost cause, but they wanted him to do anything he could to save him. Howard had a feeling Mark didn’t think he had done anything from which he needed saving.

“Are you serious?” Carl said after Mark had finished explaining what had happened to Casey.

In an instant, Mark made a decision. He smiled. “Of course not.” The three faces continued to stare gravely at him. “Do you think I would kill Casey? That’s … sick. Jesus, lighten up, you guys. Carl, you’re having a problem. I was just adding some levity.”

Paul was well on his way to oblivion. “You’re a fuckin’ maniac, Mark. A … maniac. Let me buy you a drink. Killin’ the bitch like that. Jesus H.”

Hal and Carl laughed uneasily. They weren’t laughing two days later, when Donna’s body was found on the slope of Mount Tabor by two joggers. Mark had planned on following the same procedure as he had with Casey, but Donna sensed him before he could knock her unconscious, and had managed to scratch him. Fortunately, she hadn’t screamed, but he still had a small cut on his cheek. When Detective Hulce finally got a suspect, the DNA tests from the skin matched Mark perfectly. Of course, by then, he already had a confession.

When Mark got to the office on Monday he was cornered by Carl Holt. “Donna’s been killed, Mark,” he said, his face haunted by guilt. “Just like Casey.” His voice dropped. “You weren’t kidding on Friday, were you?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You’re a fucking psychopath,” Carl said, backing away from him.

“‘Casey was a joy to have around, a true news hound, and determined to get to the kernel of truth behind every story. That’s what made her so special.'” Mark smiled.

“What the hell …”

“That was you, the day after they found her, on the air. And from three weeks earlier, at George’s retirement party: ‘That slut couldn’t report a story accurately if Lighthouse fucked it into her. She blows all her sources and reads the news like a puppet. God, I hate her.’ Remember, Carl?”

“Jesus …”

At his trial, Mark Hennessy took the stand against his lawyer’s advice, ostensibly in his own defense, and essentially convicted himself. Howard Grimsky thought harder about his check and asked him many leading questions which Mark refused to follow. It was far too late.

“Did you kill these two women?” the district attorney asked when it was his turn. Howard thought briefly about objecting, but saw no reason for it. His client was doomed.

“Of course,” Mark said. “In sports, there are winners and losers. I was never on the winning side. Then, when I thought I was, I wasn’t. See?”

Howard just watched, incredulous. The district attorney had no further questions. Mark Hennessy was convicted and later sentenced to two consecutive life terms. He did not appeal.

**********

[I would have loved for this one to have been published in a journal that people actually read, just to see if people got offended. I doubt they would have, but you never know!]