Two days later, in the early afternoon on Wednesday, April 11, the woman left Room 227 and walked across the parking lot to the Padre Rita Grill for lunch. She requested an out-of-the-way room and paid cash in advance for a weekвЂ™s stay. On April 9, 2018, a middle-aged woman with long blond hair checked into the islandвЂ™s Motel 6, a white complex with blue doors. ItвЂ™s a popular vacation spot for families and retirees. South Padre Island is a narrow strip of land in the Gulf of Mexico at the southernmost tip of Texas. вЂњEvery day I go by their house, I wonder what the hell happened up there.вЂќ To find out, law enforcement had to answer another question: What the hell happened to Lois Riess? Blooming Prairie is a town of about 1,900 people who leave their front doors unlocked and know each other by their first names. вЂњHe was my best buddy,вЂќ Jerry Bissell, a Blooming Prairie resident, told me recently. Soon you were laughing, too, maybe without even realizing why. The rumble in his throat built to an eruption that shook his husky frame. But his laugh left the biggest impression. His body had started to marble, bloat, and decompose.ДЄsk anyone in Blooming Prairie and theyвЂ™ll tell you that Dave was a jovial guy. HeвЂ™d been dead for ten days, maybe longer. A bullet had pierced clean through his forearm, suggesting that he had raised it to protect himself. 22 handgun-once in the chest, once in the back.

The cops summoned two deputies from the Dodge County SheriffвЂ™s Office, who went inside the house. He spotted what appeared to be a body covered with a blanket. The two officers walked around the houseвЂ™s perimeter and noticed light coming from an open bathroom window. The night the police visited was dark and cold, with snow still on the ground. The RiessesвЂ™ home was in the country-a mile south on 218, past six massive grain bins that sat on the edge of town.

Blooming Prairie is a town of about 1,900 people who leave their front doors unlocked and know each other by their first names. A neat grid of quiet streets about a mile and a half square contain mostly single-story houses. ThereвЂ™s a two-block Main Street of brick buildings, with storefronts that include B-Z Hardware, Farmers & Merchants State Bank, and J & H Liquors. Highway 218, surrounded by vast fields of corn and soybeans. ItвЂ™s a stop along the railroad tracks that run parallel to U.S. They hadnвЂ™t seen her since.Д¬oncern soon escalated to alarm, and the employees called the police.Д«looming Prairie is a blink of a town in southeastern Minnesota. But on Thursday, two worm-farm employees saw Lois, DaveвЂ™s wife of 35 years, pull out of the driveway in the Escalade. He would have taken his white Cadillac Escalade, which was what he typically used to pull his 20-foot-long boat. Stranger still, Dave was supposed to have left for a fishing tournament in Illinois on Tuesday, March 20. They had received responses to texts, but Dave usually dictated his messages, which made the words run together. He hadnвЂ™t picked up or returned their calls. None of DaveвЂ™s employees nor his business partner had seen or talked to him for almost two weeks. So too was the long, low-slung building, located about 50 paces from the front door, where Dave raised fishing bait at the Prairie Wax Worm Farm. They drove up a winding dirt drive to a modest tan rambler. On the evening of Friday, March 23, 2018, the police department in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, dispatched two officers to check on a man named Dave Riess. He is the author of nine books, including Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes. John Rosengren is a journalist based in Minneapolis who has written for more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, and The Washington Post Magazine.

David reiss mn