Free The Weatherman by Steve Thayer Page A

the news; those who say they don’t are lying through their glistening white teeth. But that electrifying chair is reserved for those special few with just the right combination of arrogance, killer communication skills, and dumb luck. Andrea was well aware of what was required, and she was up for the challenge. She knew in her heart that anchor chair would one day belong to her.

THE KIDNAPPING
    The welcome warmth of June became the sweltering heat of July. The weather topped 90° every day. Rick Beanblossom stood on the high bluff of Pioneer Park overlooking his hometown of Stillwater. The vista seemed straight out of a Rockwell painting, a Tom Sawyer village on the St. Croix River. An old lift bridge was strung like an iron necklace across the heart of this scenic valley. But the view was deceptive: nineteenth-century charm with twenty-first-century problems.
    There is a point where growth and development become blight and destruction. Stillwater was a village split in two. What was once a river town taken to sleep after the lumber barons packed up and left was now, a century later, waking up a tony eastern suburb where people from St. Paul and Minneapolis tried to escape the incipient descent into urban hell. The tornado had spared the town, but progress was not so generous. A heated debate developed between those who demanded growth and those who cried enough. It was one of the few stories Rick had been able to capture for television with the same impact as in print.
    You can’t go home again … or so they say. Rick Beanblossom knew that all too well. He didn’t live here anymore. Too many ghosts resided in Stillwater. And he was the biggest spook of them all, haunting up and down steep streets behind a mask hiding hideous burn scars unmatched in any horror movie. He was once handsome, popular, and fleet of foot. He rode in a convertible during the homecoming parade, and the town cheered for him as he ran for touchdowns that night. Because of the luck of the draw, he went over there while others stayed home enjoying the best years of their lives… college, sex, marriage, and children with incredibly beautiful young women … high-school sweethearts whose names he could still rattle off.
    But over the years their names had changed, and now he wouldn’t recognize their faces any more than they would recognize his. On storefronts below, flags still fluttered in the valley wind for the Fourth of July celebrations. “Take the American flag, old hometown, and shove it up your ass.”
    The year before, there was another news story in this storybook town. A nightmare. Though it never became part of the big-city-versus-small-town debate, it was always there, just beneath the surface. It was the kidnapping of Harlan Wakefield.
    Twelve-year-old Harlan Wakefield and his identical twin brother, Keenan, were popular town boys with a paper route. Much of their popularity stemmed from their freakish intellect. Driven to academic perfection by forceful parents, they were already testing out of high school and preparing for college. Their remarkable talents had been displayed on local TV news and talk shows. The last leg of their paper route was on a road that took them a mile out of town, north into the country. Even in the winter, despite the weather, they rode their mountain bikes. They loved their paper route. These were the only hours of the day when they were freed from learning, freed from mother and father and allowed to be normal boys. One morning in late spring Keenan Wakefield rode home from the paper route alone. He was scratched and filthy. He was in shock. Through fright and tears he told his mother and father a tale as frightening as any story coming out of the worst cities.
    They were heading home after delivering their last paper. A big man, as Keenan described him, stepped out of the woods with a handgun. He was wearing a ski mask. He ordered Harlan off his bike and took him by the arm. He ordered Keenan to go. The