Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “That’s right,” Ana Maria said as she stood and walked to the tea pot. “A major emergency—he drove to Safeway to buys some fresh lobster. We all—collectively—figured with the killings so close to home and us working our tails off, we needed some comfort food.”

  Arn groaned. Even if Danny didn’t get arrested for driving without a license and the truck impounded, several pounds of fresh lobster would set Arn back more than if he’d taken them all out for supper. “Did Danny take my Visa card?”

  Ana Maria nodded. “Relax. Even with the cost of that, Sam didn’t charge for getting the truck running. In the long run, you saved a ton of lucky bucks. So quite being a cheap skate.”

  “Did you find out anything?” he asked Sam.

  “I did some heavy duty asking around the VA this morning. A couple people thought they saw someone matching Jonah’s description walking the hallways during the protest.”

  “Good.” Arn took his notebook out of his pocket. “I’ll want to talk with them.”

  “Crap,” Sam said. “I didn’t get their names, and I don’t know who they were. I only get here once a week. I’ll ask around tomorrow again before I go to the outreach clinic in Gillette. If I get names, I’ll call you.”

  “Just watch yourself.” Arn said, “Snooping around, asking about Jonah might not be safe.”

  “I doubt I have anything to worry about,” Sam said. “I was neither an officer and—if you hadn’t noticed—I’m not a man either.”

  Arn blushed, rescued when Danny entered the kitchen. He plopped down two Safeway bags and handed Arn his Visa card. “How much, I’m afraid to ask?”

  “You can’t put a price on comfort food,” Danny said and patted Arn on the back. “Don’t think for a moment that we don’t appreciate it.”

  —

  After Arn saw Samantha out to her car with the promise that they would get together the next week when she was in Cheyenne, she pecked him lightly on the cheek and sped off. By the time he came back in the house, Danny had finished the dishes, and he motioned to the coffee pot. “After springing for that lobster, you deserve a cup of fresh coffee. Picked a bag up at Starbucks.”

  “About time. Where’s Ana Maria?”

  “In the sewing room. She got some new information.”

  Danny trailed Arn into the sewing room as Ana Maria’s taped broadcast was ending. “We here at KGWN intend staying on this development until the killer is corralled and brought to justice. We are but a half-step away from unmasking the killer of innocent veterans,” and she signed off.

  “Rewind that a few seconds,” Arn said.

  Ana Maria tickled the buttons and her night cast rewound in double time.

  “Stop! Hit play.”

  Ana Maria started the DVR again while Arn bent close to the TV screen and squinted. “Stop!”

  “What are you seeing?” Ana Maria asked.

  “There,” Arn jabbed the screen with his finger. “Look at the crowd behind you wanting to get into the frame.”

  Ana Maria’s hand began trembling, and Danny took the remote before she dropped it. “What is it?” Danny asked.

  “Behind me,” she said. “It’s… him.”

  Doc Henry stood among the crowd that had gathered in back of Ana Maria listening to her broadcast. Watching her.

  Within grabbing distance of her.

  —

  Arn drank a beer now and again. Danny, never since he stopped altogether and joined A.A. ten years ago. Ana Maria—on the other hand—could, belt down all sorts of libations with the best of them when she felt the urge. And tonight, she felt the urge. “How could I be so stupid,” she asked, but it came out schtupid, her words slurring badly this last hour, “to allow Doc Henry to get that close?”

  “Couple reasons,” Arn said. “You let your guard down. And, you refused to file a restraining order against Doc.”

  “The court wouldn’t issue one on something as flimsy as Doc standing close to me. Not doing anything— oh shit, I forgot how you cops put it—.”

  “Overt,” Danny said, “is what I think you mean.” He nodded to her empty glass. “I’ll grab refills,” and left the room.

  “Overt.” She tried snapping her fingers, but coordination eluded her. “That’s it. They wouldn’t issue an order unless he did something overt towards me.”

  Arn knew Ana Maria was right. She’d covered the police beat enough to know Doc had to do something—threaten her. Show up at her work place repeatedly. “It would have still gotten the police involved. Got something on record.”

  Arn hit the TV tray. “I guess I need to have a private talk with Doc.”

  “And get yourself tossed in the hoosegow?” she said.

  Arn, and Ana Maria, had few options. She was right—Doc hadn’t done anything to her. He could argue that he happened to be outside the capitol building when she aired, merely watching the broadcast like the other thirty people who had gathered in the hopes of getting their mug on television.

  Danny returned to the room and placed a bottle Jack Daniels on the TV stand in front of her. Arn snatched the bottle before Ana Maria could and poured two fingers, not the four she’d been belting down the last hour before emptying the last bottle. “You need to slow down or Danny will have a big mess to clean up in here. You dropped your guard, but you’re all right.”

  She watched through bleary, red-rimmed eyes as Danny left the room once again. “I’m not all right,” she said, sounding as if she talked through a hollow barrel. “Doc’s here and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  This wasn’t the first time Arn had run into a false bravado by someone, only to reveal how frightened they were once the booze started flowing. Ana Maria had put up a strong front about Doc Henry when she was sober. Drunk, her fears surfaced. As they should have. “Maybe you ought to stop your live updates,” Arn said. “At least for a while.”

  Danny came back balancing three saucers of double-chocolate cake. He set one in front of Ana Maria and handed Arn a much smaller piece. “Tell me you didn’t frost this with Ex-lax, ’cause I don’t need anything to help my regularity after Ana Maria’s broadcast.” He leaned closer to her. “I about shit when you claimed the authorities were close to finding the killer. We’re not. What were you thinking?”

  She shrugged and her fork slid from her fingers. Danny picked it up and handed her one of the slices of cake. “I thought I’d prod the killer into thinking we have more than we do. Worked before, didn’t it?”

  Arn agreed. Except now, with Doc Henry in town, she had other things to worry about beside the killer thinking she had more information than she did. She had to worry about Doc.

  “Give me the word and I’ll put in a call to some of my old AIM buddies,” Danny said, running his finger across his throat. “Ana Maria’d never have to worry about Doc Henry again.”

  “If it were only that simple,” Arn said.

  “While you’ve been looking for Jonah Barb,” Ana Maria squinted through one eye and managed to cut off a corner of cake, “I’ve been talking to suspects.”

  Arn stopped his fork mid-mouth, a bad feeling coming over him. “What suspects?”

  “That beautiful woman we just had as a dinner guest. While you were gallivanting around, wasting your time today, she and I… bonded over that old truck of yours.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Do you really think I invited her here to help fix your old pickup?” Ana Maria said. “Hell, all it needed was new glow plugs. I’ve replaced a bunch of those when I worked my dad’s shop. I didn’t need her to do that for me. But while we were both turning wrenches, I asked her about the dead veterans. In my own way.”

  “I thought you said you were talking to suspects?”

  Ana Maria set her fork down and grabbed for the bottle of whisky, but not before Arn snatched it our of her rea
ch. “All right already. She told me the dates that she at the VA centers for her benefits job. In all but three, she was at the VAs where the men were found dead.”

  Arn landed closer to her. “Sam is no suspect, but I appreciate you looking out for me.”

  Ana Maria seemed to clear her head for a moment and looked at Arn, her voice—though slurred—taking on a serious tone. “Remember us talking about a beauty like her chasing after you?”

  “How can I forget,” Arn said. “You brought up something about it being unnatural for a looker like her—her age—to come on to an older man like me.” He looked at the bottle in his hand, now tempted to take four fingers himself and he handed it to Danny for safe keeping. “In some circles a mature man—even fifteen years older—would be considered a catch. Did it ever occur to you that she sees me as a stable part of her life?” But Arn knew just where Ana Maria was coming from. He’d had his doubts all the while Sam and he had been seeing one another.

  At some point, he admitted to himself, he’d have to stop thinking of her as a romantic part of his life and more as a suspect.

  Especially after what Ana Maria had just told him about Samantha.

  34

  ARN SPENT THE MORNING TALKING with investigators in South Dakota, but none were any more interested than Wyoming authorities about exhuming the bodies of the other victims. “A drug overdose,” Agent Kane said, “is not uncommon with veterans. It would take a whole lot more influence than I have to go through that expense.”

  “But you agree there could be a connection, given Frank and Steve’s deaths—and Charles Boding’s in Hot Springs?”

  “I’m just telling you what’s reality,” Kane said. “The state’s not going to shell out the bucks to exhume four bodies on a theory.”

  Finally, Arn gave up and did something to take his mind off his failures—helping Danny rewire a room. “Stick your finger in that light socket,” Danny told Arn when they had finished running Romex three-strand through the guest room. “Go on—just for a second to see if it’s hot.”

  “Are you serious?” Arn asked.

  Danny kept his straight face for as long as possible before busting out in laughter. “Of course, I’m not. Besides, I haven’t tripped the circuit breaker yet so it would have been all right.”

  “Thank goodness,” Arn said and checked his watch. “’Bout lunch time anyway.”

  —

  After watching Ana Maria’s noon broadcast consisting of a road closure towards Denver on Interstate 25, and how there was a high-wind warning on the pass outside Laramie, Danny shut the television off. “You barely touched your club sandwich I made,” Danny said, “plus your coffee is getting cold. I know you like your coffee, hot and strong. Better than that tea you’ve been drinking.”

  Arn stared into his cup, silent.

  “These deaths are bugging the hell outta you.”

  “I can’t help it,” Arn said at last. “I might not be so angry at myself for not figuring things out by now, except it’s personal. One of the victims was Frank Mosby, and you know how many times I talked about him.”

  Danny chin-pointed to one wall opposite the television. “There might be a reason you didn’t want to finish this room just yet.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The white wall. It’s still just drywall. We haven’t painted it yet. Just perfect for notes.”

  “It is,” Arn said, looking at the wall that had faint traces of marker bleeding though the coat of primer from the last time he had scribbled notes on a case.

  Danny handed Arn a marker. “I think you’re gonna need this.”

  Arn shook his head, amazed at the old, skinny Indian who he’d rescued from homelessness two years ago had grown to read him so well.

  He stood and uncapped the marker. Suspects he wrote first and underlined it. Just the writing on the white wall started him thinking and he wrote Jonah beneath it and stood back.

  “That’s it?” Danny said. “If it is, you don’t have to look any farther. Just ask Oblanski to draw up an arrest warrant and you can tell your friend Helen you’ve solved the case.”

  “You think there are others who might be good for the murders?” Arn asked, not turning around, staring at the wall, knowing he had to write Winger underneath Jonah.

  “And why do you think either man killed those veterans?” Danny asked.

  Arn faced Danny, grateful that he had someone to bounce thoughts off of. Grateful for someone to ask the questions that he ought to be asking—if this case hadn’t gotten him in the dumps so badly. “Winger travels this area. It’s his territory. He would have opportunity, and ability to put someone down quick before injecting them with coke.”

  “Have you asked Wagner to pull up Winger’s service record?”

  “I was reluctant to ask. Winger and Sergeant Wagner have known one another professionally. I didn’t want to cast dispersions on Winger—.”

  “I’d better write that down for you,” Danny said as he dug a pen and notepad from a pocket hanging from his TV tray. After he wrote down that Arn needed to look at Winger’s service record, Danny said, “as much as I hate to bring it up, you’re missing another name—Samantha Holder.”

  Arn stepped away from the white wall, as if stepping away from the thought that the woman he had feelings for was involved in the murders. After long moments, he wrote her name to one side and started listing the reasons he should consider her. “Like Winger, she travels the VA system.”

  “And her primary MOS in the Middle East was military police—.”

  “For which she never worked in,” Arn said.

  “But for which she knows police techniques. Such as stunning blows,” Danny said, and Arn jotted that on the wall as well.

  “She could certainly blend in,” Danny said. “Maybe that’s why the surveillance tapes showed only veterans and employees. Maybe no one thought twice if they looked at the tapes and saw her walking the hallway.”

  Familiar with the VA he added under Sam’s name. Arn had thought of that before and dismissed it. Danny saying it aloud gave credence to the notion. “She was gone for several hours the day of the protest.”

  “Even factoring in an hour for her lunch break or workout,” Danny said, “that would give her an hour where she could have wandered into the men’s restroom and killed the major.”

  “But why?” Arn said and waved the air. “I know—ask Wagner to look at her service record.”

  “I notice you didn’t write Pudgy’s name on the white wall.” Ana Maria had entered the house without Arn or Danny knowing about it.

  “What the hell?” Arn turned to her. “The alarm didn’t go off.”

  “I was wondering why it wasn’t armed,” Ana Maria said, “when I tried punching the code in.”

  “Danny?”

  The old man seemed to slink farther down into his chair. “I guess I forgot to re-arm it after I took out the garbage this morning.” He held up his hand. “I ought to know better with Doc and Jonah roaming the town.”

  “No damage done,” Arn said. “But don’t forget—.”

  “I won’t,” Danny said. “But Ana Maria was right: you didn’t write Pudgy’s name under suspects. With what you found out about him, he’d be right at the top of the list.”

  He would be, Arn thought, and wrote father hated officers. Crazy and appears to have socio-pathological leanings.

  “Based on… ?” Danny asked.

  “Based on his dealings with Sheriff Ridley. Even some kid right out of puberty knows it’s not right to slash tires of a sheriff’s car. But all he did was merely grin at Ridley. I’m thinking if the sheriff would have come after the kid to arrest, that old Barlow knife would have been sticking in the lawman’s gullet.”

  Ana Maria set her purse on her TV tray. “But he hasn’t been back since he enlisted in the Army.”<
br />
  “That we can prove,” Arn said. “Kane did some checking with contacts in Custer. He found a girl—Mary Ann something-or-other—who swears she saw Pudgy the day of his father’s funeral.”

  “If my math is correct,” Ana Maria said, “Pudgy would have to be in his late thirties, early forties, assuming he did enlist at eighteen. A man can change a lot in that time.”

  “Kane gave me her phone number. I’ll know more after I call her when she gets off work at the diner.”

  “I almost hope he did return,” Danny said.

  Arn and Ana Maria looked at him. “As much as I detest Jonah Barb, he is providing entertainment. And I could get used to having Samantha around, too. Winger does nothing for me, except he spent a tour in the Middle East. To his credit. If Pudgy were the killer, it would make it easy to prove motive.”

  Arn sat in his chair and leaned closer to Danny. “All right, mister investigator, let’s hear it?”

  “Officers.” Danny said with a wide smile. “Pudgy’s old man hated officers, apparently since Sims nailed Bo for black marketing guns and ammunition. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe Pudgy started avenging his father’s reputation and suicide years later.” He stood and gathered the empty coffee cups. “Fruit not falling far from the tress, and all that Perry Mason shit. So that’s my analogy.”

  “You should have been a detective,” Arn said under his breath as Danny left the room.

  He stopped in the doorway and said over his shoulder, “don’t even suggest that, big guy,” and grabbed his toolbelt on the way out.

  —

  “What did Mary Ann say?” Ana Maria curled up in her chair with her legs tucked beneath her. She unfolded broadcast notes on her lap. “Did she actually remember Pudgy?”

  Arn jotted in his notebook before answering. “Mary Ann was walking Main Street in Custer the day after Bo’s funeral, when she passed a man in his early thirties perhaps. It was Pudgy. Or so she thought. ‘Pudgy,’ she called out and the man stopped for the briefest amount of time before ignoring her and walking on.”

  “That’s it? That’s her recollection of someone who may have been Pudgy?”