Free The Weatherman by Steve Thayer Page B

boy started to ride away, but he looked back at his brother. The man saw him and fired a shot into the air. Keenan rode home for help.
    The sheriff’s department found Harlan’s bicycle on the side of the road. They also found a spent bullet that had recently been fired. A farmer along die route reported a
    gun stolen from his car. Within hours a massive search was launched. The FBI was called in. Helicopters were put into the air. An all-points bulletin was issued for a “big man with a ski mask.” In the days to come even the National Guard was called out to sweep miles of woodland in the St. Croix Valley. It became the largest manhunt in state history.
    Dramatic headlines were splashed across the front pages of every daily newspaper in the state. Live television reports from Stillwater dominated the news at five, six, and ten p.m. Harlan Wakefield’s parents were as smart as their children. They were not about to become victims of the press, so they took control. They said they wanted their son back, or at least found, and they would use the media to get it done. In the days and weeks that followed they became totally accessible. Any reporter from anywhere was given almost anything he or she wanted. They endured a total lack of privacy and tolerated the most personal questions imaginable to keep their son’s name in the news. One reporter even asked them if they or any other family member had kidnapped Harlan. They kept their poise and answered no.
    Rick Beanblossom was one of the people the family befriended. His initial conversations with them were done over the phone. Because he was a Stillwater boy himself, they took to him, and time after time reporters at Channel 7 News, via the new masked producer, came up with fresh angles. The Wakefields visited the station one day. He had warned them about his mask. He joked how since the kidnapping he’d been stopped and questioned four different times. He soon felt comfortable enough to visit them at their home.
    One person Rick Beanblossom was never allowed to talk with was Keenan Wakefield, Harlan’s twin. He too had become a victim of the crime. The morning after the abduction Keenan was missing from his bed. The nightmare seemed endless. Now Keenan’s name was added to the search. But this search lasted only a couple of hours. Keenan was found crawling out of the woods down by the river, still in shock. Channel 7 news photographer Dave Cadieux was with the search party that found him. He recorded on videotape the frantic crying and stammering of a lost boy who had been wandering through the woods in the dark looking for his twin brother. It was the most gut-wrenching video shown on television during the entire ordeal. After that his parents put Keenan off limits even to police.
    The FBI put together a task force of local, state, and federal officials that at one time numbered more than a hundred full-time investigators. For months bogus sight-ings of Harlan Wakefield were reported throughout the Midwest. But the boy genius was never found, and nobody was ever arrested.
    The Wakefield family kept their boy’s name in the news almost daily for six months. In manipulating the media they became as proficient as the best public relations firms. They went on talk shows. They threw benefits against scenic backdrops to attract television. It seemed they announced an anniversary of the kidnapping every thirty days. People kept sending them money, so a trust fund was established for Keenan. Thousands of dollars in donations poured in. But as the months dragged by and Harlan remained missing, the task force dwindled and the press moved on. In local newsrooms the Wakefields became a pain in the ass. Cruel jokes were made about the next Harlan Wakefield staged media event: “Will Elvis be there?”
    Rick Beanblossom moved on to other stories too, but he kept his Wakefield file close at hand. He still called on the family every now and then. It had been over a year since the