A Cold Case of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  “It’s Morrie,” said the voice. “I been waiting on hold to tell you that I just saw your missing girl.”

  This would be the last person from whom I would expect lucid assistance. But I asked the question anyway: “Where?”

  “In the skyway,” Morrie said. “She was walking her dog in the skyway.”

  “I didn’t think that was allowed.”

  “Oh, she had a dog on a leash all right. Blonde woman with something like a little Shih Tzu on a leash. She was smiling. The woman, that is.”

  Something about this picture rang a bell but I wasn’t sure what. “Where in the skyway was this?”

  “Over your way. Just after you cross Cedar Street when you’re coming from my apartment.”

  The bell was ringing more clearly. “It wouldn’t have been in front of that store that sells pet food and supplies, would it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, now that you mention it, it was right in front of there,” he said.

  “Did you speak to the woman?”

  “Oh, no, I would never speak to a strange woman in the skyway.”

  Just what I suspected. “I hate to tell you this, Morrie, but that woman is a mannequin and the dog is a stuffed imitation. It’s the store’s advertising gimmick.”

  Morrie was silent for a moment. “Oh,” he said at last. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I’ve seen her and her dog there before.”

  “I’ll bet she was smiling then, too.”

  “Yeah, she was. I just thought of that picture in the paper when I saw her today.”

  “Tell you what, Morrie. You go back and talk to that woman, and if she answers you, give me a call because that will be a real news story.” I put the phone down harder than necessary and drew a quizzical look from Corinne Ramey.

  “Morrie,” I said.

  “I thought it might be,” Corinne said. “You always get red in the face when you’re talking to him. You should have your blood pressure checked.”

  The little bell on my computer that alerts me to incoming e-mail dinged. I punched in my password and clicked the mailbox open. The e-mail had been forwarded to me by City Editor Don O’Rourke. The original sender was Ramsey County medical examiner, and the subject was Skeleton X.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Nick on the Neck

  ATTENTION ALL MEDIA,” the message began. “Further close examination of Skeleton X reveals an indentation on the inside of a vertebra which could have been caused by a sharp object striking the bone. This vertebra was high up in the neck, just below the base of the skull, and would have been located behind the victim’s throat. An extremely sharp and heavy blade might have penetrated to that depth if the victim’s throat had been cut by a strong person using a powerful stroke. Therefore I am making a tentative determination that the cause of death for Skeleton X was a severing of the throat with a sharp object. Our office will continue to examine the remains in an effort to either confirm or discredit this supposition.”

  The notice was signed by Dr. Lyle Lundberg, Ramsey County medical examiner.

  I picked up my phone and punched in Brownie’s number on speed dial. I got his voicemail and left a message. He was probably still talking to Jack Anderson, who had been employed as a butcher when his daughter and her young lover had disappeared. How had Donna Waldner put it? Oh, yes, something about his job entailing cutting up steaks and things with big sharp knives.

  Brownie did not return my call until an hour after lunch. “If you’re calling about the cause of death I can’t tell you anything beyond the ME’s statement,” he said.

  “How are you coming with questioning Jack Anderson?” I asked.

  “He insists he knows nothing about Skeleton X. He finally got tired of answering questions and lawyered up.”

  “Is he in custody?”

  “Negative. We have nothing to hold him on.”

  “Any heavy, sharp knives in the stuff you took out of his house?”

  “You think he’d keep the murder weapon laying around the house for twenty-some years if he cut a man’s throat?”

  “Might have been a knife he used every day on his job,” I said. “He was a butcher, remember?”

  “I do remember, but you should remember that I can’t comment on what we took out of his house,” Brownie said.

  “Just a passing thought.”

  “Well, you’d better pass that thought into the wastebasket. You’d be sticking your neck out for cutting if you printed what you’re thinking.”

  “Okay. So tell me, who’d Anderson hire as a lawyer?”

  “Nobody from your wife’s firm.” That was always a possibility because the firm was headed by Linda L. Lansing, St. Paul’s number one defense attorney. “His name is Harold Smalley. Has an office on the East Side, over near where the Andersons live.”

  “Thanks. I’ll give him a call.”

  “I predict he’ll say ‘no comment.’”

  “So do I, but I have to make the call.”

  “Anything beyond ‘no comment’ would be more than I got. Have a good day, Mitch.”

  I looked up Harold Smalley’s office number and made the call. The guardian of his gate, a woman with a silky smooth voice, said he was consulting with a client and would I like to leave a message. I left a message, and I was still waiting for Smalley’s return call when I shut down my computer, rose from my chair, and got on the elevator. I hoped the client with whom he was consulting had sufficient funds to pay for all those billable hours.

  * * *

  MY MONDAY NIGHT ritual consists of eating an early supper, attending a meeting of my Alcoholics Anonymous group in a church basement on Grand Avenue, and having a ginger ale after the meeting with fellow alcoholic Jayne Halvorson in a place called Herbie’s Bar. Jayne is five or six years older than I am and is the divorced mother of two teenage girls. Together we find something invigorating about slurping ginger ale in an establishment where everyone else is drinking what to us is forbidden fruit.

  Jayne has been a positive force in my life. Not only has she reinforced my abstinence at times of temptation, but she has also often shown me a way to solve a problem that seemed unsolvable. The best thing she’s ever done was to drag my quivering ass into the jewelry store where I bought an engagement ring for Martha Todd.

  “Showing an age-advanced picture of the missing girl was a great idea,” Jayne said after her first sip. “Did it produce any results?”

  “It was Al’s idea. He knows the guy who did the aging,” I said. “And did it ever produce results.” I told Jayne the number of calls that the paper and the police had received and she expressed amazement.

  “Did any of them sound real?” she asked.

  “Most were off the wall, but one woman’s sighting really intrigued me. She saw a woman of about forty with features like Marilee’s, including the bright blue eyes, coming out of a Catholic church. Marilee was Catholic, so it could be possible. The only question is her hair color. She was wearing a black hoodie, so the woman couldn’t see if she was a blonde. Anyhow, I need to talk to the priest at that church to see if the person the woman saw is a member of that congregation.”

  “What about Skeleton X?” she asked. “Do you have any idea who he might be?”

  “I do, and I think the cops do, but as yet they don’t have the DNA match they need to confirm it. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s the young man who worked in the convenience store where Marilee was going for bread the morning she disappeared.”

  I told Jayne about Marilee’s pregnancy and Lauralee’s and my suspicions. “I’d just really like to talk to Marilee’s mother alone,” I said. “She said something about it being time for things to come out, which makes me sure she knows what happened. I just can’t figure out a way to get in to see her. There’s a cop at the Andersons’ front door keeping reporters away.”

  “Could you get in if Mrs. Anderson gave her permission?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t know any way to get her permission.”
<
br />   “Didn’t you and Al borrow a picture of Marilee from her to use for the age enhancement?”

  “We did.”

  “Have you returned it?”

  The light came on in my brain. “We have not. What a great idea. Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

  “You’re too close to the events. Sometimes an outside mind can think of things that an insider doesn’t see.”

  “Once again, you’ve lit up a dark alley for me. I’ll be on East Geranium on the morrow with Marilee’s picture in hand thanks to you.”

  Little did I know how early I’d be on East Geranium on the morrow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Blockade III

  THE PHONE BESIDE our bed rang before our alarm clock Tuesday morning.

  The glowing numbers on the clock said 5:49 a.m.

  I said, “What the hell?”

  Martha said, “Moomph!”

  The phone rang again. I rolled over, picked up the receiver, and mumbled hello.

  “I need you to get over to East Geranium right now,” said Don O’Rourke. “I’m calling your twin to meet you there. The police radio says there was a shooting at the Andersons’ number a few minutes ago.” He hung up while I was saying, “okay.”

  I dragged my body out of bed and made the required trip to the bathroom. Still half asleep, I pulled on some underwear, a short-sleeved shirt, and the first pair of pants I encountered in the closet; stepped into a pair of loafers without putting on socks; kissed Martha, who had never opened her eyes, and dashed to my car. At the red light on Arcade and East Geranium, I cruised to a stop behind a familiar-looking gray Subaru. The Subaru turned right onto East Geranium and I followed it. When it stopped beside the curb, I stopped behind it. Al was standing beside the Subaru waiting for me when I jumped out of my Honda.

  Two yellow sawhorses supporting a weathered wooden sign that said ROAD CLOSED – POLICE in black stenciled letters stood across the middle of the street, stopping us half a block from our destination. Looking down the block beyond the barrier, we could see so many flashing blue and red lights that it looked like Christmas in July.

  “I wonder who shot who,” Al said as we skirted the sawhorses and hustled toward the flashing light show.

  “Whom,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The correct usage is ‘who shot whom.’”

  “Thanks for the grammar lesson, but I’ll let you shoot the pronouns while I stick to shooting the pictures of whoever or whomever I want to.”

  I saw no need to comment on the fact that he’d ended his sentence with a preposition. Al was right, his camera would not be recording his grammar.

  The Andersons’ property again was circled by yellow plastic police tape. The street again was crammed with emergency vehicles: five squad cars, an ambulance, and a hearse, the latter being the only one not displaying flashing lights. Uniformed police officers were going in and out the side door of a one-car garage at the end of a short driveway beside the Andersons’ house. The overhead door of the garage was down, blocking our view of what was happening inside.

  I approached a young uniformed officer who stood just behind the tape watching for intruders. “What happened in the garage?” I asked.

  “Guy apparently put a handgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger,” the officer said. “It ain’t a pretty sight.”

  “Was it Jack Anderson?”

  “Don’t know. And I ain’t authorized to tell you if I did.”

  “Who is authorized?” I asked.

  “Nobody yet,” he said. “Word is that an investigator is awake and on the way.”

  A car horn sounded behind me and I turned to see headlights at the barricade. “That must be him,” the cop said. “I have to open the barricade. You’ll stay on your side of the tape, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “Go do your job.”

  The cop left and Al asked if I wanted to crash the tape.

  “No reason to piss off the cops,” I said. “Plus, I have no desire to conduct a personal inspection of the mess in the garage, do you?”

  “I can live without it. Blood and brains before breakfast isn’t my cup of tea.”

  “Not part of my diet, either. I’ll settle for a second-hand report from the investigator.”

  Said investigator parked his black, unmarked Crown Vic and came hustling past us, followed by the cop who had moved the barricade. We both said “hi” as the man, dressed in a light green shirt and khaki pants, was ducking under the yellow tape and he waved his right hand in response. We watched him trot up the driveway and go into the garage.

  “What’s happening?” said a familiar female voice behind us. I spun around to face Trish Valentine and her trusty cameraman.

  “A man shot himself in the head inside the garage,” I said. “We’re told it’s not a pretty sight.”

  “Nice of him to do it in the garage and not mess up the house,” Trish said. “Is it Jack Anderson?”

  “Don’t know for sure. We have to wait for the investigator to give us the official word, but I can’t imagine who else it would be.”

  “You’re sure it’s not whom else?” Al said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Trish said.

  “It’s an inside joke,” I said.

  “You had to be there to hear it.”

  “I can never follow what you two are saying,” she said. “Your boss should split you up.”

  “He’s threatened to do that with a big sharp axe,” Al said.

  “That’s what I mean,” Trish said. “You’re always talking nonsense.”

  “We’re not reporting live,” I said. “We have time to clean up our work before the public sees it.”

  “Good thing,” Trish said. “I’d hate to see your act on live TV.”

  This reminded me that I needed to call Don O’Rourke and let him know what was happening. While we talked, more members of the media, both print and electronic, straggled in. Soon we had a substantial group of sleepy-looking, sloppily dressed people standing around the yellow tape waiting for the investigator to emerge from the garage. Even Trish, whose hair and make-up were always the picture of perfection, looked pale and droopy in the early morning light. I heard her complain to another TV reporter about the dead man choosing such an ungodly early hour to blow himself away.

  While we waited, another investigator who’d taken the time to put on a dark pinstripe suit with a striped necktie pushed his way through the crowd. He ignored our greetings and our questions and proceeded silently to the garage.

  “Who’s that jerk?” Trish asked.

  “That’s Mike Reilly from homicide,” I said. “Don’t know why he’s here at a suicide. But you’re right about him being a jerk.” Al and I had a history of run-ins with Reilly, who bore a deep dislike of all reporters and photographers.

  Some forty minutes later, Reilly and the original investigator came out of the garage and walked toward us. Reilly ducked under the tape and walked away without a word while the other man stopped inside the tape and held up his hands to silence the barrage of questions fired at him.

  “My name is Tony Albright and I am investigating this shooting incident,” he said when he could be heard. “All I can tell you right now is that we have the body of a man who apparently took his own life by placing the barrel of a handgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.”

  “Who is he?” at least a dozen voices yelled in unison.

  “We won’t be releasing the victim’s name until his family has been properly notified,” Albright said.

  “Isn’t it Jack Anderson?” Trish Valentine said.

  “I’m sorry but I can’t release his name until the family members are notified.”

  “But Jack’s closest family member is right there inside the house,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but rules are rules,” Albright said. “Any other questions?”

  “What kind of gun did he use?” a man behind me asked.

  “A .38-caliber
Colt revolver. It was found near the victim’s right hand with one bullet fired.”

  “What time did it happen?” asked another reporter.

  “St. Paul police were called at 5:36 a.m. today by a neighbor who heard a gunshot.”

  “Which neighbor?” Trish asked.

  “We’ve been asked not to identify her . . . I mean the neighbor,” Albright said. Well, guess which neighbor that was. We would all be storming Donna Waldner’s front door the minute the question-and-answer session broke up. Realizing his gaffe, Albright’s face turned red.

  “Why was a homicide detective here?” I asked. “Aren’t you sure it’s a suicide?”

  “Detective Reilly was asked to look at the scene for confirmation,” Albright said. “We have no doubt that it’s a suicide.”

  “Any note by the body?” Barry Ziebart of Channel Five asked.

  “No note has been found at this time,” Albright said. “We will continue searching for a note within the victim’s residence.”

  “After you’ve officially notified Mrs. Anderson?” I asked.

  “After we’ve officially notified the victim’s family,” Albright said. Damn! I’d hoped to catch him in another slip.

  I turned to Al. “Got enough pictures?”

  “I’ve got shots of the garage and the helpful Mr. Albright,” he said.

  “Then let’s get out of the crowd. I want to talk to Donna Waldner before the TV mob swarms around her door.”

  We retreated from the noisy scene and I took out my cell phone. I had added Donna’s number to my contacts, as I always do with people I interview. I store the numbers until I’m sure I won’t need them anymore and then I delete them.

  Donna Waldner answered on the second ring. I identified myself and asked if she was watching out her window. “I am,” she said. “Is it Jack?”

  “Cops won’t say, but I can’t imagine who else would shoot himself in Jack’s garage,” I said. “The investigator said a neighbor heard the shot. Am I right in assuming that neighbor was you?”

  “I don’t want my name in the paper,” Donna said.

  “I’ll say that you didn’t wish to be identified.”