A Cold Case of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

“Don’t you hear him? It’s all over town.”

  “I’m wearing a telephone headset so I can’t hear anything but you,” I said. “Hang up and I’ll go outside and listen.”

  “You promise?” Morrie said.

  “On a stack of AP stylebooks. Now please hang up.”

  I set the receiver down so hard that Corinne Ramey looked up from the next desk. “Crank call?” she asked.

  “Morrie,” I said.

  “Oh, God. Which was it, radar or Robinson?”

  “Robinson. Morrie says you can hear him all over town.”

  “Guess our building must be soundproof, huh?”

  “Oh, good idea. I’ll use that the next time the little creep calls.”

  “Be careful what you say or he’ll come here to get away from the sound.”

  The potential horror of having Morrie cowering under my desk was going through my mind when the phone rang again. This absolutely had to be Brown.

  “Dailydispatchmitchell,” I said as fast as I could.

  There was a brief silence, then a timid male voice said, “Is this Warren Mitchell?”

  “It is,” I said. “Can I help you?”

  “I might be able to help you,” he said. “Did you leave a message on my voicemail?”

  “That depends on who you are.”

  “My name is Roger Bjornquist.”

  Oh, yes, I definitely had left a message on his voicemail.

  Chapter Twelve

  All About Jimmy

  JIMMY BJORNQUIST IS my cousin,” Roger Bjornquist said. “Or maybe I should say he was my cousin. I don’t know if he’s still alive.”

  “When was the last time you knew he was alive?” I asked, grabbing a notebook and a ballpoint.

  “I saw him a couple of days before he supposedly took off for California.”

  “Supposedly? Do you think he didn’t go to California?”

  “I don’t know what to think. He went somewhere, but California seems kind of far for a kid with no money. Wherever he went, nobody here ever heard from him again, as far as I know.”

  “Not even his grandparents?”

  “If they did, they never said anything about it.”

  “Is it possible for me to ask them?”

  “No. They’re both gone. Grandma passed away just a month ago, in fact. She was a hundred years old.”

  “She did very well. So what can you tell me about Jimmy? Did you see him the day Marilee Anderson disappeared?”

  “No. The last time was the day before she disappeared.”

  “Do you think Jimmy left because he did something bad to Marilee?”

  “Just the opposite. I think he took her with him, wherever he went. He had something going with her, you know.”

  “I didn’t know. She was only fifteen and he was nineteen. What did they have going?”

  “I’m pretty sure he was screwing her,” Roger said. “She hung around the store a lot while he was working and she was one wild little bitch.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Oh, yah. I hung around the store some, too, when Jimmy was working.”

  “And you thought she would let Jimmy have sex with her?”

  “Let him? Hell, she’d have been the one to start it. She grabbed him by the nuts . . . I mean the crotch . . . more than once when there was no customers in the store.”

  “What was she like otherwise?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was she smart? Dumb? Happy? Unhappy? How was her life?”

  “She was no dummy. No Einstein, either, understand, but she was smart enough. She wasn’t happy at home, that’s for sure. And she was scared stiff of her father.”

  “Why was she scared of her father?”

  “He had a hell of a temper. Beat the crap out of her more than once. She’d run next door to her Uncle Eddie after her dad whipped her, and Eddie would hug her and cuddle her and comfort her, you know.”

  “Did you ever think that Uncle Eddie might be doing more than hugging and cuddling?”

  “Oh, jeez, no. I never thought about that. I was the same age she was, fifteen, you know. But now that you ask about it, Uncle Eddie was kind of, uh . . . I don’t know . . . strange might be a good word.”

  Oh, great, a funny uncle. “What did he do that makes you think he was strange?”

  “I guess the way he hugged Marilee. I only saw it happen once, but he pretty much ran his hands over everything.”

  “Everything including . . . ?”

  “Oh, jeez, you know. Butt, breasts, belly, you name it.”

  “What do you think happened to Marilee when she disappeared?” I asked.

  “I think she ran off with Jimmy,” Roger said. “She wanted to get away from her family real bad and he wanted to get away from the damn boring life he was leading working in that stupid store.”

  “You don’t think he would have hurt her in anger or anything?”

  “No, never. Jimmy would never hurt anybody, especially not a girl.”

  “How about Uncle Eddie? Could he have done something to Marilee?”

  “I guess that’s possible. Like I said, he was strange.”

  “Any other thoughts about Jimmy or Marilee, Mr. Bjornquist?”

  “No, not really. I just thought you might like to know that Marilee and Jimmy had a thing going.”

  “You were right about that.”

  “Are you gonna put this in the paper? What I said?”

  “I’d like to use what you said about Jimmy,” I said. “Your comments about Marilee I’ll save as background.”

  “Oh, jeez, I don’t want my name in the paper,” Roger said.

  “Suppose I refer to you as a family member who doesn’t wish to be identified?”

  He thought for a moment. “I guess that would be okay.”

  “Great. Thanks very much for calling.”

  “No problem.” Aargh! A pox on the forty-year-old generation.

  This conversation left me with at least five possible scenarios. I wrote a list: (1) Marilee ran off to parts unknown with Jimmy Bjornquist; (2) Jimmy and Marilee quarreled—maybe she was pregnant and he wanted her to get an abortion—and he killed her; (3) Marilee resisted Uncle Eddie’s sexual advances and he killed her, either accidentally or intentionally; (4) Jack Anderson beat Marilee to death in a fit of rage; (5) Marilee took off by herself and never wanted to be found.

  The bones in the backyard seemed to point the finger at number four, but the police had no evidence as yet. Still, one other question was haunting me as I began to write a story about my conversation with a James Bjornquist family member who didn’t wish to be identified. What had Jill Anderson meant when she said, “It’s time it all came out,” as she handed me Marilee’s picture Monday afternoon?

  * * *

  MY CALL FROM BROWNIE finally came at 2:58 p.m. as I was shuffling through layers of old notes and newspapers on my desk for possible mass disposal. The police had smuggled Jack and Jill Anderson out their back door and into a squad car parked in the alley without being detected by the TV crews still parked in front of the house. The couple had been separated at police headquarters and they were being questioned individually about what they might know about the burial of the backyard skeleton.

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Brownie said. “You’ll find that out if we bring one or both of them into court.”

  “Any charges yet?”

  “No. The interrogations are still going on. I just took a break to pee and return your call.”

  “I’m thrilled to hear that my call came in a close second to nature’s.”

  “When you gotta go you gotta go. Have a good day, Mitch.”

  He ended the call before I could ask if and when they’d be questioning Uncle Eddie. I completed my half-finished doodle of a skull and crossbones and went back to shoveling off my desk. “It’s time it all came out,” kept running through my mind.

  * * *

>   FRIDAY WAS MY day off (our days off rotate so the newsroom is always equally staffed) and I waved goodbye to Martha from a prone position between the sheets as she left for work. I rose some time later and was consuming a bowl of Cheerios and blueberries when the phone rang. The caller ID said “city editor.”

  “Hi, Don, what’s up?” I said.

  “I hope you are,” Don said.

  “I am, but this is—”

  “I know it’s your day off, but you might want to change it. The coroner is going to give a report on the Anderson backyard bones at ten o’clock in the police station. If you cover it, I’ll give you a whole day’s comp time you can use whenever you want.”

  “I’ll be there.” I wasn’t about to let some other reporter move in on my story. “What about Al? It’s his day off, too.”

  “I’m calling him next. You can meet him there.”

  Knowing there would be a mob of reporters and photographers, I arrived early. So did everyone else. The briefing room was packed by 9:45 a.m. and the air conditioning system was overwhelmed. The atmosphere grew heavy as various brands of deodorant lost their grip on sweating bodies. I was in my usual spot behind Trish Valentine when Dr. Lyle Lundberg, the Ramsey County medical examiner, appeared before us. He was accompanied by Brownie and Police Chief Casey Riley. All three wrinkled their noses and they huddled together for a whispered conference. I’d have bet my paycheck they were discussing the locker-room smell in the air.

  Brownie made some introductory remarks and turned the show over to Dr. Lundberg. His opening line produced a chorus of gasps and a synchronized row of dropped jaws.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. Lundberg said. “I have examined the remains found buried in the backyard of the John H. Anderson residence and determined them to be those of an adult male.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Skeleton X

  YOU COULD HAVE heard a pin—hell, a feather—drop after the gasps died. The M.E. was a showman; he played the silence to its maximum endurable length before continuing. “Our problem now is identifying the remains,” he said. “We are checking dental records of missing adult males back to the time the makeshift grave was dug, but some of the teeth were out of their sockets and we’re not sure we have them all. We are also going through police reports of missing adult males from that period. So far, we have had no success. We have taken a DNA sample from the remains and are searching for a match among known missing persons on whom we have data. We are asking you to broadcast our plea to families of missing adult males. We’re asking them to come forward with information about their missing person—things like height, weight, et cetera—that could help us determine the identity of these remains.”

  He held up a card with an 800 phone number and said it was the number to call if you knew of a missing person who disappeared during the summer twenty-five years ago or soon thereafter.

  “So how tall would this person have been?” Trish asked.

  “We’re estimating him at about six feet,” Dr. Lundberg said. “Give or take an inch or two.”

  “If he was that tall, it seems like you could have told us earlier that the bones weren’t Marilee Anderson,” Barry Ziebart said.

  “The remains were just a mass of scattered bones,” the doctor said. “All the connecting tissue had long since decayed, plus the bones were disturbed by contact with the backhoe when we exhumed them. The skull was actually a couple of feet away from the neck. We really couldn’t tell how tall the deceased had been at that point.”

  “Any estimate of the dead man’s age?” someone asked.

  “The bones have been softened and bleached a bit, but they appear to be those of a young person. We’re estimating somewhere from late teens to early twenties.”

  “What was the cause of death?” I asked.

  “We haven’t determined that as yet,” the doctor said. “There are no obvious indicators, like bullet holes in the skull for example.”

  Chief Riley stepped forward. “We really could use your help in this. The more you repeat our request, the greater the number of people who will hear it or read it. We’re obviously searching all our missing persons files but not everyone who goes missing gets reported to the police. We’re referring to the remains as Skeleton X, and people can use that identifying code when they call.”

  “Have you asked the Andersons about it?” I asked. What could be more basic?

  “Neither of the Andersons professes to have any knowledge of the buried remains,” the chief said.

  “Do you believe them?” someone behind me asked.

  “Yes and no,” said Riley.

  “Does that mean yes for one Anderson and no for the other?” I asked.

  “I’ll drop it at that,” the chief said. “You may interpret it any way you wish.”

  Trish Valentine turned her head halfway toward me and said, “I’ll bet he believes Jill and not Jack.”

  “That’s my guess,” I said. “Did you get that comment live?”

  “Trish Valentine is always reporting live,” she said. “See you when they dig up another body.” She motioned to Tony, the man with the camera, and followed the trail of the dispersing crowd.

  “You look like you’re deep in thought,” Al said when we were outside.

  “Your brain must be working; I can smell wood burning.”

  “I’m just wondering how tall Jimmy Bjornquist was,” I said.

  * * *

  NO ONE ANSWERED the phone at the Roger Bjornquist residence. I left another message, specifically asking about his cousin Jimmy’s height, on the voicemail. I hung up thinking what a frustrating business reporting is—always waiting for someone to return a call. It becomes even more frustrating when you know that the person doesn’t want to talk to you and hell will freeze over before he or she makes a return call.

  My interview with Roger was in our online edition, which meant that other editors and news directors could read it and tell their reporters to find the unidentified Bjornquist family member and call him. Phones had to be ringing in every Bjornquist household in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Maybe Roger had been flooded with calls and was no longer answering the phone. Whatever. There was nothing to do but wait and hope I’d be the first to learn if Skeleton X, which matched Jimmy Bjornquist’s age, also matched his height.

  I wrote my story and sent it to Don. He sent back an e-mail suggesting that I spend some time in our library looking for stories about missing adult males from twenty-five years ago. As I passed Don’s desk on my way to the library, a light went on in my brain. Don might have interviewed Jimmy Bjornquist.

  “No such luck,” Don said. “The kid went home right after the cops questioned him, and his grandmother wouldn’t let any reporters near him that day. And then of course he skipped the following day. I’ve always thought he killed Marilee and hid the body, but maybe she did go off to California with him if the cousin is right about them getting it on in the sack.”

  Another light went on. “I have one more possibility,” I said. “His boss at the store: Adelbert Love.”

  I called the nursing home and asked to speak to Mr. Love. “I’ll direct your call to Mr. Love’s room,” said the nice lady who had answered my call. The phone in the room rang ten times before I gave up. I called the nursing home again and told the nice lady that Mr. Love apparently was not in his room and that he didn’t seem to have a means of leaving a message.

  “Oh, he always turns off his voicemail when he leaves the room,” she said. “Says he can’t hear what the callers are saying, so why waste the electricity?”

  “Does he turn it on when he’s in the room?” I asked.

  “Yes, he does. If he doesn’t recognize the voice of the person leaving the message he doesn’t pick up the phone.”

  “Is there any way to talk to him when he’s not in the room?”

  “I’ll see if one of the attendants can find him and have him call you back.”

  I gave her my number and thou
ght again about the frustrations of constantly waiting for return calls.

  This one came more quickly than most. I was debating leaving my desk and going to search old missing men files in the library when my phone rang. I picked it up and gave my usual greeting.

  “This is Bert Love,” he said. “Who’d you say you were?”

  I explained that I was the reporter who’d talked to him about the Marilee Anderson case on Wednesday.

  “You the guy that told me about the old lady that plays Solitaire?”

  What pot was calling the kettle old? “That’s me. Did you find her?”

  “I did. She’s a shark at Cribbage. Beat me three out of five yesterday. Only problem is that when I went back today she didn’t remember who I was. Then she beat me three out of five again.”

  “Well, I’ve got a question that will test your memory,” I said. “Do you remember how tall Jimmy Bjornquist was?”

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy Bjornquist. The young man who was working for you in the store when Marilee Anderson disappeared.”

  “Oh, Jimmy. Yeah, he was about eighteen or nineteen I think.”

  “No, I’m not asking his age. Do you remember how tall he was?”

  “I ain’t hearing you so good. Did you say how tall?”

  “Yes. How tall?”

  “Well, I can’t say exactly. He was taller than me.”

  “And how tall are you?”

  “Now or back then?”

  “Back then. How tall were you when you stood next to Jimmy?”

  “Oh, I’d say he was a good four inches taller than me.”

  “And how tall were you?”

  “I was that much shorter than Jimmy.”

  This was turning into “who’s on first?” I clenched my teeth, turned my head away from the phone and emitted a sigh of frustration before saying, “Can you give me your height in feet and inches?”

  “Back then?”

  “Back then.”

  “Well, I’d guess I must have been about five-eight back then. Now I’m more like five-four, they tell me. Old farts like me keep shrinking, you know.”

  “I’ve heard that that happens,” I said. “So you were five-eight and you say Jimmy was four inches taller?”