Final Vows

by Karen Kingsbury

  At that time Brian’s social life revolved around his family and his involvement at Burbank’s Christ Lutheran Church of the Missouri Synod. Brian enjoyed attending church because its members still very much espoused the values of the 1950s: conservatism, good manners, decent morals.

  It was after a weekly church meeting in late 1962 that Brian heard that President Kennedy had announced that a war with Cuba—and possibly even the Soviet Union—was imminent.

  As Brian read the headlines that day, absorbing each detail about the Cuban missile crisis, he believed that his country was on the brink of another worldwide war. One article in the paper told the story of a nineteen-year-old East German youth who was killed trying to escape over the Berlin Wall. Brian was haunted by the picture of the dead young man sprawled across rolls of concertina barbed wire, a victim of the pursuit of freedom. For several long minutes tears filled Brian’s eyes and he was unable to tear himself from the picture. Slowly and painstakingly, he ripped out the article, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

  Not long afterward, remembering the price the young German had paid, Brian walked to the local recruiter’s office in Burbank and enlisted with the United States Air Force. His job as a machinist would have to wait.

  When the missile crisis was diffused a few days later, Brian was not sorry about his decision to join the Air Force. Like sports, the service provided Brian with an outlet and, not surprisingly, he excelled under the Air Force’s strict discipline. Brian was assigned to the Bossier Base Atomic Energy Commission, which operated within the confines of Barksdale Air Force Base Strategic Air Command in Shreveport, Louisiana.

  Shortly afterward two of Brian’s brothers also became involved with the military, eventually ending up in Vietnam. Although Brian’s assignment with the Atomic Energy Commission was prestigious and required top-secret clearance, he was frustrated that the position did not allow him to fight in the war against Vietnam. Three times Brian put in requests to leave the commission and join his brothers overseas, but his was a permanent duty assignment and his requests were consistently turned down.

  When Brian became aware that he was going to stay in Louisiana he turned his attention to more personal matters. During the following months he married his first wife, Bobbi, and within a few years of living on base the couple had two children, David and Diana.

  While in the Air Force Brian got his first taste of law enforcement, serving four years as a member of the Air Police. Still, when he left the service in September 1966, Sergeant Arnspiger brought his young family back to Burbank with no thought of becoming a police officer. Instead, he returned to work with his father, while Bobbi set up house in a small home near Brian’s parents.

  Then, in the late 1960s, the country seemed to have forsaken its values and morals overnight. College students staged public demonstrations, drugs and sex were encouraged as a means of expression, and women could be seen burning their bras in their quest for equality. Brian was disgusted by these changes and grew increasingly tired of the sudden crime and rampant drug use that seemed to be affecting even his community.

  “Dad, maybe I ought to be a cop,” he would occasionally confide to his father.

  But the senior Arnspiger would only regard his son with disapproval and shake his head. “Why would you want to do a foolhardy thing like that, Brian?”

  “Someone has to do it. Come on, Dad. Aren’t you sick of the way things have changed?” Brian moved away from the workbench and looked intently into his father’s eyes. “Who’s going to make a difference if I don’t?”

  The older man laughed. “Don’t take the world so seriously, son.” He patted Brian on the shoulder. “Anyway, you wouldn’t be happy as a public employee, working with people.”

  For the next four years, Brian believed his father was right. But then in the early 1970s, something happened that changed his mind forever.

  Brian’s grandmother owned an apartment complex in Hollywood called the Romaine Gardens. Several times a week, the seventy-year-old woman would walk slowly down to Western Avenue where she would buy fruit and vegetables from the open air market. One afternoon, she did not return.

  Brian and his father finally located her at a nearby hospital, beaten and bruised and scared to death. As the pieces of the story began to unravel, the Arnspigers learned that the woman had been coming home when she had been attacked by two purse snatchers. The men had not been satisfied with taking the elderly woman’s purse. They had also knocked her to the ground, seriously injuring her. A passerby had found her and taken her to the hospital.

  That afternoon as Brian gently stroked his grandmother’s soft, wrinkled hand, he felt overwhelmingly angry and helpless. Afterward he took personal responsibility for her safety, visiting her several times a week and making sure the grounds of her apartment complex were free from the shady characters that lurked in the area.

  Despite his actions the older woman was mugged a second time. This time Brian knew he would be unable to live with himself if he didn’t do something to help people like her. He drove to the Burbank Police Department and, at age thirty, signed up as a reserve officer.

  From the beginning, Brian loved the position. There was the physical training, the camaraderie of the other officers, and, in his opinion, the ultimate thrill of putting crooks in jail. A year later Brian tested for a fulltime position with the department and out of nearly 150 people he finished with the second highest score.

  After two years, Brian was promoted from rookie to field training officer, a position that usually took much more experience to attain. During that time, in a three-month span in 1976, Brian was involved in two events that opened his eyes to the roller coaster of emotions in police work.

  The first happened in June, shortly after midnight, when he and his partner came across a car completely engulfed in flames. A circle of onlookers stood helplessly nearby pointing at the car. Brian understood what was wrong; someone was trapped inside. With no concern for his own safety, he raced toward the car, opened the door, and pulled a 300-pound man to safety. Seconds later, the car exploded. The man lived because Brian gave him artificial respiration until paramedics arrived. Brian was awarded the department’s first ever Medal of Valor award for his efforts.

  Ninety-six days later Brian was still feeling the heady effects of knowing he was responsible for saving a life, when he and his partner responded to a burglary in progress. Brian was inching along the back wall of the building when a man burst into the alley and began shooting at him. Brian returned the fire and dove for the ground as one of the burglar’s bullets passed through his right bicep. The burglar turned and ran, collapsing out of Brian’s sight. Not until later at the hospital did Brian learn that one of his bullets had pierced the burglar’s chest. The man died that night in the hospital.

  Brian now understood the high stakes with which he was playing. This was no athletic competition, no game for high achievers. It was life and death. He learned the next day that the man he had killed was an ex-convict, on parole for armed robbery. He had been released from prison just a few months before.

  Brian did not regret what had happened to the man. Crooks were responsible for ruining society, making streets unsafe, and placing in jeopardy the lives of innocent citizens and officers like himself. After that incident Brian became very good at catching burglars and putting them in jail. He learned the special tricks of hunting them down and finding enough evidence to make a case against them. Brian rejoiced in the sound of a jail door slamming shut on a convicted burglar. It was a sound that kept Brian going during even the toughest cases.

  Although Brian was more than satisfied with his newfound career, his personal life took a beating in the late 1970s. In 1976, his parents retired to the Southwest and only a few months later his father died of a massive heart attack. In the years after that, while Brian tried to deal with his grief, he and Bobbi began to realize that somewhere along the course of their marriage they had stopped sh
aring their ideas and dreams, fears and hopes. By then they had a third child, Bill, and by all appearances seemed to have the perfect family life. But Brian was dedicated first and foremost to his job, often working until the early hours of the morning before coming home. Finally, after eighteen years of marriage, Brian and Bobbi realized they barely knew each other anymore. His determination to keep the streets safe had left an uncrossable chasm between them, and although they were both sorry to see their marriage end, they divorced in 1981.

  Brian dealt with the blow by throwing himself even more fully into his work. By late 1981, six years after he had joined the police force, Brian’s superiors recognized that many of their burglaries were being solved by the careful documentation and investigative work of Officer Arnspiger. That year Brian was promoted to detective. Based on the department’s rotating schedule, he was assigned to the burglary division.

  Though few homicides occurred inside Burbank’s city limits, burglary had always been a problem—especially in the late 1980s. Brian loved his new position. There was a rush that came with tracking down burglars—slimy creeps like the guys who used to beat up his grandmother—and finding out where they were stashing the goods. The climax came the moment he and his partner burst through the front door, guns drawn, and made an arrest. Finally, after months of going after burglars with almost reckless abandon, Brian began to believe that the pain of his broken personal life would one day fade.

  After his divorce Brian treasured his weekends, when he coached his children’s Little League teams. Even as a youth coach, Brian could not tolerate people being treated unfairly. When other coaches cut certain children for their lack of ability, the kids were always welcome on Brian’s team. Brian would then enlist the help of many dedicated parents, who worked with the children individually. In fifteen years of coaching, Brian’s teams never finished worse than third place in their leagues.

  During the 1981 Little League season Brian met a special woman named Kathy, whose son was on his team. They shared their struggles and hopes and came to depend on each other. A year later they were married. Now, in addition to his three children, Brian had two stepchildren. Finally Brian began looking forward once again to coming home.

  Five years later his hard work with the police department paid off, and when the detectives were rotated he was assigned to the robbery-homicide division. This was the big time, the cases that involved attempted murder, bodily assault, robbery, and kidnapping. In this new position Brian hustled as he never had before, cracking one tough case after another.

  There was the Barcena family of Burbank. For years police in the neighboring city of Glendale had known that the Barcenas were furnishing local gangs with PCP and other illegal drugs. But they had been unable to form a case against them.

  One afternoon in 1987 some of the Barcenas kidnapped a girl who knew too much, forced a funnel down her throat, and tried to poison her with a drug overdose. Then they pushed her from a moving car and forgot about her until—after much prodding by Detective Arnspiger—she turned up in the witness protection program and brought the family to its knees with her testimony. Two adults and three juveniles were ordered to serve time and Brian was applauded by both Burbank and Glendale for a job well done.

  After that there were more well-known cases until finally, by January 16, 1989, Brian Arnspiger had a reputation that few detectives ever come by.

  On that day, Sergeant Bob Kight examined the file on Carol Montecalvo’s murder. Detective Lynch had done a good job establishing circumstances and motive, but they needed someone obsessed with detail, someone who would leave nothing in Burbank unturned in the quest for evidence.

  Finally Kight realized he had just two choices: shelve the case or give it to Arnspiger.

  Quietly Kight discussed the matter with the division captain, who then walked down the hallway and stuck his head into Brian’s office.

  “Arnie, I need to see you for a minute,” he said, motioning for Brian to follow him.

  Returning to his office, the captain shut the door and sat down at his desk.

  “This might not be fair, but you’re my only hope.” He sighed, staring down at the file on his desk and absently thumbing through the papers inside. “I’m giving you a case with no real evidence, no witnesses, and nothing more than suspicions to go on.”

  “What’s the case, Captain?” Brian felt a rush of adrenaline shoot through his veins. A chase was about to begin.

  “The Montecalvo murder.” The captain paused for a moment. “What do you think?”

  Brian knew the case well. The captain had been correct in what he’d said. The department had nothing to work with and the case was nearly a year old.

  He pictured for a moment the helplessness of the Montecalvo woman, the horrifying betrayal she must have felt if, indeed, her husband had killed her. The thought sickened Brian, bringing out every feeling he’d ever had about maintaining the sanctity and safety of life. Brian thought the matter over for only a few seconds, imagining the sound of another jail door slamming shut, another thug taken off the streets. Slowly he reached across the captain’s desk and picked up the file.

  “Let’s put someone in jail.” And with that, the investigation into the murder of Carol Montecalvo continued in full force.

  Chapter 14

  In the spring of 1989, with Brian Arnspiger working on Carol’s murder investigation and Suzan Brown deeply in need of psychiatric help, Dan Montecalvo befriended a petite, intelligent redhead from Texas named Annette Wilder.

  Back in 1982 Annette and Carol had managed different directory sales divisions for the same telephone company. They became friends when Carol was given a transfer from Wisconsin to Los Angeles. At first Annette had been impressed with Carol’s appearance, her neatly tailored navy blue business suit and the confident way in which she entered a room. Carol was easy to get close to. She had a warm laugh, lively brown eyes, and a way of making Annette feel like she’d known her for years. They were both married to men they adored and they shared an interest in old-fashioned family values, Elvis Presley, and black-and-white movies. Before long they began going to matinees and exercising together.

  By the time Dan was able to join Carol in California, the two couples began double-dating on the weekends. Even after Carol and Dan became involved with new friends at Overcomers’ Faith Center Church, Annette and Carol remained close. Through the mid-1980s, while Annette’s marriage ended in divorce, she found herself envying Carol for finding the kind of love that really did last a lifetime. When she joined the couple for lunch occasionally, she would watch wistfully as Dan held Carol’s hand and pulled her chair out as they were being seated. Throughout the meal Annette would notice Dan gazing at Carol like a lovesick schoolboy while Carol basked in his attention. In 1988 Annette decided the Montecalvos were one of the few truly happy couples she knew.

  So when Dan called Annette from his hospital bed at St. Joseph’s late on the night of April 2, Annette was completely shocked to learn that Carol had been murdered. After hanging up the telephone, she drove furiously to the hospital to comfort Dan. But it was after visiting hours, and the nurses refused to allow her in to see him. Shocked and confused, she climbed back into her car, pounding her steering wheel in frustration. Dan needed her and there wasn’t a thing she could do. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Annette began driving.

  At first she drove aimlessly, but eventually she wound up in front of the Montecalvo home. A police car was still parked outside and ominous black-and-yellow police tape circled the perimeter of the front yard, making it the center ring of some macabre freak show. Annette stared at the front door, as if at any moment Carol might open it and wave to her.

  Annette closed her eyes, shutting out the image before her, so she didn’t see the police officer walking toward her car. He tapped on her window, startling her. Embarrassed, she wiped the back of her hand across her wet cheeks.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” he sa
id softly.

  “I’m sorry.” Annette’s voice was shaky and the officer knew immediately that she presented no threat. “My friend lived here.” A sob escaped from somewhere deep inside her. “She was killed.”

  The officer nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

  An hour later when Annette had finally gone home that night, she had reached one conclusion. She would help Dan. She would do all she could to see that Carol’s widower did not want for company or food or a place to stay. She visited Dan at the hospital the next morning and the morning after that. Annette held Dan’s hand and allowed him to talk about what had happened the night of March 31.

  “Carol was all I had, she was everything to me,” Dan had told her several times during their visits. “How will I ever live without her?” Annette was moved by the man’s agony, his soft-spoken grief and sorrowful eyes. During those visits she found herself understanding why Carol had loved him. Dan seemed like a helpless boy, haunted by trouble and desperately in need of a woman’s rescue. By the time Dan left the hospital one week later to finish recuperating with a family from church, he and Annette were fast friends.

  Annette had told herself she had never met a more sincere and honest man than Dan Montecalvo. Over the next few weeks, he treated her with the charm of a southern gentleman and never crossed the line of friendship. When they were together, Annette found herself remembering Carol’s stories of how Dan had been drowning in a sea of self-destruction until she came along. After that, he had clung to her like a life preserver. Now, with Carol gone, Annette thought he seemed to cling to her in the same way.