Free Missing Mark by Julie Kramer Page A

on me?” My cameraman had seemed a little distant the past couple of days.
    He didn’t answer as we passed the WELCOME TO MINNESOTA sign on the freeway. I didn’t say anything, either, because over the years I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to get a person to talk is to keep my own mouth shut.
    We were approaching downtown St. Paul when he told me that he was disappointed I was suddenly so gung ho on the missing groom and didn’t seem to care much anymore about investigating meth.
    “Meth?” I said. “I care plenty. It’s Noreen who put the kibosh on that project.”
    “But if you really cared, Riley you wouldn’t care what she thought. You’d do it anyway. Like with the wedding dress.”
    “I guess I didn’t know you cared so much about the meth problem, Malik.” He started paying extra-close attention to the traffic just then. “Do you want to tell me why?”
    He didn’t look like he wanted to, but finally, while keeping his eyes straight ahead on the car in front of us, he started to speak softly.
    “My sister was an addict.”
    “Your sister? Which one?” I recalled him having three. No brothers, though.
    “Hafsa. The youngest. She put our parents through hell.”
    I didn’t have to ask for details. I’d covered addicts and their families enough to know what he meant. Crystal meth is the most addictive, most accessible drug on the planet and can turn good kids into trash. “You said she was an addict. Is she recovered now?”
    “She’s dead.”
    Now I was the quiet one. Fatal meth overdoses are rare. But addiction can lead into a dangerous world of violence, prostitution, suicide.
    “She crashed her car while high,” he said.
    “I’m so sorry.”
    Sometimes “sorry” is all I can say. I was surprised that Malik had kept his pain to himself. The reporter-photographer dynamic can be the closest of all TV news relationships. We spend so much time together in a van, we see the best and the worst in each other and develop an us versus them alliance. One reporter I know calls her photographer the Husband She Doesn’t Sleep With.
    “I’m so sorry.” I repeated my regret because saying it once didn’t seem enough. Twice didn’t do the job either. “I’m so very sorry.”
    “Happened a year ago,” Malik said. “I didn’t feel like talking. But lately, when you made noise about doing a meth investigation, I began thinking maybe that would help me get some perspective.”
    “It would,” I agreed. “I’ll put it on my Stories Noreen Doesn’t Know About list and keep plugging away. We’ll find something to hang it on, Malik. I promise.”
    For the first time since we began this conversation he took his eyes off the road, looked at me, and nodded. Once again, we had an us versus them alliance.
    Then he went back to concentrating on the drive and I went back to making notes about our meeting with Mark’s mom. One detail I circled was the discrepancy over who proposed to who. I didn’t have enough information to confront Madeline. Yet. And if I pushed too hard, too soon, I might push her away.
    Remarkably, that didn’t happen with Jean Lefevre, even though I bullied her to tears during the interview. I stopped writing and thought back to an hour earlier, on the other side of the river, while we were packing up the gear in the back of the van and she came outside.
    I’d thanked her again and assured her I’d keep her posted on anything we might find about her missing son. I expected she had followed us to ask that we not air her tape or that we never set foot on her property again. Instead, she was apparently one of those people who feel freed by a good cry, and asked if we’d like to return another day and see any of Mark’s things.
    Malik and I looked at each other. “What kind of things?” I asked.
    She explained that Mark had one month left on his lease when he disappeared. The apartment came furnished. When the rent went unpaid, the landlord packed everything in boxes