A Cold Case of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  “Meaning what?” Al asked.

  “Meaning that I’ve been her lover for twenty-five years,” Sister Jonathan said. “She told me she had a boyfriend back in St. Paul, but I taught her about real happiness—being a woman with another woman.”

  “Whoa, that’s way more information than we need,” I said. “On the other hand, you’ve just confessed to a cold-blooded killing, which is something we definitely can’t keep secret.”

  “I know you can’t,” she said. “That’s another reason why the two of you are going to be the ones who disappear this time.”

  “You’re going to try to stab both of us?” Al said. He shuffled sideways, creating six feet of space between us.

  “No, I’m going to shoot both of you.” She reached behind her back and pulled a shiny handgun out of her waistband. Naturally, the gun was also black.

  Marilee screamed.

  “Shut up, you silly goose,” Sister Jonathan said. “We can’t let these two worthless hacks tear our lives apart.” She waggled the gun back and forth. It was a revolver with a barrel opening that looked as big around as a bagel.

  “No, no, you can’t kill them,” Marilee said. Tears began streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t believe you want to kill them. Old Hank’s death was bad enough. You can’t—”

  Sister Jonathan cut her off. “Shut your face, I said. It’s the only way to save what we’ve had all these years.”

  “I don’t want to save it that way,” Marilee said. I was definitely on her side.

  “We have no choice. They know we killed Old Hank. Or that I killed him for your sake.” She turned toward me. “I killed him to keep our secret and because I love Missy Mary and I need her love.”

  “No,” Marilee said. “I can’t love you anymore if you kill these men. I’ll give up my secret. I’ll tell everyone the truth. Let these men go and get yourself away somewhere. I’ll hate you if you kill them.” Again, I was on her side.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Sister Jonathan said. “We’ll talk about it when I’m done with them. You’ll see how much you need me, how you can’t live without my warm body on yours and my—”

  “I’ll never let you touch me again,” Marilee shouted. “Never, never, never.”

  “We’ll see about that, Missy Mary,” Sister Jonathan said. “Now, gentlemen, if you’ll turn and face the back door, we’re going for a little ride. One of you will even get to drive so I can keep Little Remmy here pointed at the other one’s head.”

  “Little Remmy?” Al said. “You call your gun Little Remmy?”

  “It’s a Remington Special,” she said. “Because it’s so special, I gave it a special name. Now, both of you get your butts in gear to the back door. Don’t make me mess up the cottage with a lot of blood.”

  “Might be hard to talk your way out of committing a mass murder in here,” I said.

  “Oh, I’ve got a great story cooked up in case you make me shoot you here. All about how you two apes were assaulting poor helpless Missy Mary here, and I had to save her from a gang rape.”

  “Missy Mary” still stood in front of her chair, sobbing. She bent at the waist, her head hanging down and her hands covering her face. Between sobs she was saying the word “stop” over and over again.

  Al and I walked toward the back door, with Sister Jonathan keeping a careful distance behind us. As we reached the door, I felt my silenced cell phone vibrate in my pocket. I wondered who could be calling but I didn’t think it was a good time to reach into my pocket. I didn’t want to do anything that might startle Sister Jonathan and cause her left index finger to jerk tight on the trigger.

  I opened the door and stepped out onto a blacktop path, followed by Al and then by Sister Jonathan. At Sister Jonathan’s command, Al moved up beside me. I was looking for a chance to grab Little Remmy, but its holder was staying just far enough away to make such a move suicidal.

  We were facing the black sedan parked in the alley. “Go to the car,” Sister Jonathan said. “Mitchell, you drive. You with the cell phone camera, get in the front passenger seat. I’ll be in the backseat with the gun pointed at your head, and I’ll take that cell phone once we’re in the car. I saw you sneaking pictures of my Missy Mary, even if she was too dumb to catch you.”

  We’d taken about three steps when a uniformed police officer appeared in the alley, stepping from behind the car. He looked startled to see us, but he quickly snapped to attention and yelled, “Hold it right there.”

  The cop’s hand was moving toward his weapon when a gunshot exploded beside my left ear. The officer crashed to the ground, landing on his back in front of the car. I turned my head and saw the gun barrel only inches away. I was starting to reach for it when a flying body hit Sister Jonathan from behind and knocked her down onto her knees. The attacker, who I realized was Marilee Anderson, clung to the fallen woman’s back, and Al and I piled on beside her.

  Another gunshot went off in front of my face but I could see that the barrel was pointed toward the sky. Nobody hit with that shot. I reached out, grabbed the barrel, and started pulling and twisting it. Either Al or Marilee slammed Sister Jonathan’s face into the blacktop and the gun finally came out of her hand. I flung Little Remmy as far as I could and the four of us wrestled on the blacktop for a minute.

  A large body appeared above us, and then another. Both were wearing blue uniforms. I rolled out of the pile and yelled to them that their officer was down. One of them ran to the cop on the ground while the other separated Al and Sister Jonathan. Marilee was no longer in the pile—or in sight.

  Sister Jonathan’s nose was bleeding and her lips were bruised and bloody. She and Al both started to get up, but the officer ordered them to stay on the ground and drew his weapon as a persuasion. I was already standing and he ordered me to my knees.

  “Al and I are the good guys, Officer,” I said as I complied. “She shot your man.”

  “Just everybody stay where you are ’til we sort this out,” the cop said. He spoke into the radio on his shoulder and a fourth officer soon came running up.

  “Jerry’s down,” said the first officer, pointing toward the fallen cop. “Tom’s with him, calling for an ambulance. This guy claims the woman shot Jerry. I don’t really know what the hell’s going on.”

  “I can tell you what’s going on,” I said. “Let me show you my ID. Al and I are the people you were sent here to protect. The woman was taking us away at gunpoint when your man appeared. She shot him, and we were able to jump her in the confusion. I got the gun away and threw it over there somewhere. You’ll find her fingerprints on the butt and the trigger, and mine on the barrel.”

  While the cop’s attention was on me, Sister Jonathan started to crawl away. She had risen to one knee when Al lunged after her and grabbed her right foot. The sound of the scrabble turned the officer’s attention back to them and he yelled, “Hold it right there, lady, you ain’t going nowhere. All of you, on your knees with your hands on your head.”

  Sister Jonathan stopped, Al released her ankle, and we all became quiet, waiting for the ambulance. With the officer’s permission, I slowly reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone to see who had called as we were leaving the cottage with Little Remmy at our backs. I found a voice message from Detective Terry Townsend. “Hi, Mitch,” he said. “This is to inform you that the police backup is in place. It’s safe for you to enter the cottage now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Missing Person

  AS LONG AS WE’VE lived together, Martha and I have been dining with Al and Carol Jeffrey and their kids, Kevin and Kristin, on Friday nights. We normally start the party with snacks at about 5:30 p.m., but on this Friday Al and I didn’t get there until everyone else was finishing their slices of Carol’s fresh-baked apple pie.

  It took the rest of the afternoon for the police officers at the scene to get the situation resolved to their satisfaction. First priority, of course, was taking care of the wounded officer.
Everything else was put on hold until Jerry, who was officially described as “alert and responding,” had been loaded into an ambulance and sent on his way to the hospital. The flesh wound in the inner part of Jerry’s upper right thigh was described by one of the attending EMTs as “not life threatening, but awful damn close to his right nut.”

  Once Jerry was on his way, an officer named Adam Olsen, who seemed to be in command, had Sister Jonathan, Al, and me escorted into the cottage. We were allowed to sit down while Olsen looked at our Daily Dispatch IDs and questioned us about the events that led up to the backyard shooting and wrestling match.

  When Olsen was satisfied with our description of the pre-shooting activity, he called for Sister Jonathan to be handcuffed and taken to the police station. She complained loudly, insisted that I had done the shooting, and put up a momentary struggle when the handcuffs were being snapped on. Little Remmy had been retrieved and placed in an evidence bag, and it was taken away by the officers escorting Sister Jonathan.

  “We’ll be needing statements from you two, along with a statement from this Marilee Anderson you said you were interviewing,” Olsen said. “Where is she?”

  Where, indeed? We hadn’t seen Marilee since the battle with Sister Jonathan had been broken up by the cops.

  “She lives in this cottage,” I said. “Maybe she’s hiding in the bedroom.”

  Two police officers searched the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the perimeter of the cottage with negative results. Next they searched the convent, to no avail. That left the church, which they combed completely under the guidance of a very distraught Father Joseph. Still no Marilee.

  “Ain’t that the shits?” Al said. “After twenty-five years we find her, and bam! She vanishes again right before our eyes.”

  “The foot is faster than the eye,” I said.

  “At least I got two pictures to prove we actually saw her. Unless she’s like a vampire and the images aren’t there.” He took out his cell phone and checked. “Not a vampire. We got her.”

  “Don O’Rourke will be happy, anyway,” I said. “I’m not so sure about Brownie. He’ll probably accuse us of letting her get away.”

  “Maybe she’ll hide in another Catholic church. If we check around, we might find her in one.”

  “I’d rather let the case go cold again. What’s the point of dragging Marilee back for a media spectacular?”

  “I’ll go along with that. Let the frost begin to form right after our story and pix run in the Daily Dispatch.”

  We followed Olsen’s squad car to the police station, where we were separated and interrogated all over again. When the questions were finished and our statements were printed and signed, we took the staff car back to the Daily Dispatch garage.

  Al went to the photo department to do his thing while I told Fred Donlin, the night city editor, what we had. An hour later, I had finished writing the story and it was posted in the online edition along with Al’s pix of Marilee and a couple of shots of the scene in the backyard at St. Adolphus.

  I had called Martha during the ride to the Minneapolis police station and told her it would take us until well after dinnertime to wrap up our cold case coverage. She promised to keep our dinner warm, and when Al and I finally got to our place on Lexington Avenue, we received a warm greeting as well.

  “What’s with your ear?” Martha asked as our lips parted from her long, luscious welcoming kiss.

  “It’s finally stopped ringing and I can hear with it again,” I said.

  “I mean, what’s the brown spot on the edge?” She grasped my left ear with her thumb and forefinger and examined it closely. “It looks like a burn.” She sniffed. “And it smells like gunpowder.”

  “My God, was it that close when she fired?” I said.

  “Who fired?” Martha said. “What fired? Who’s she?”

  “It’s a long story. Al and I will give you all the details about how hot our cold case got after we’ve finished that food you’ve been keeping warm.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, I was putting the final touches on a follow story about Friday’s fracas when my phone rang. It was Brownie.

  “I see you let another one get away,” he said.

  “I told Al that you’d say that,” I said. “But you can’t blame us for this one. There were at least eight Minneapolis cops on the scene when Marilee did her disappearing act. She vanished right under the long nose of the law.”

  “Is the long nose of the press going to go looking for her?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the case can go cold again. We know what happened twenty-five years ago, and we know where she went and where she’s been all this time. I don’t need to know anything else.”

  “I thought you reporters kept going until the end of the story,” Brownie said.

  “In my book, yesterday was the end of the story,” I said. “What about you?”

  “This time her disappearance isn’t in my jurisdiction. Let Minneapolis hunt for her if they want to. I’m out of it.”

  “I can’t see them putting much effort into finding her. They’ve got Sister Jonathan in custody and they’ve got a copy of my tape of her telling us that she killed Henry Moustakas. They really don’t need Marilee’s statement. If they do look for her I’ll write about the search, but I’m not going to try to find her on my own.”

  “I guess it’s over, then,” Brownie said. “Case closed after twenty-five years.”

  “Case closed after twenty-five years and three dead bodies,” I said. “Slick the pimp, Jack Anderson the desperate daddy, and poor Old Hank the greedy janitor.”

  “May they all rest in peace. Have a good day, Mitch,” said Brownie.

  I was stacking things up on my desk, getting ready to go home, when Al appeared beside my desk. “So is the Marilee Anderson cold case officially wrapped up and put away?” he asked.

  “Looks that way,” I said. “There is one little thing that kind of leaves me wondering, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The M.E. said he was sure that Old Hank was stabbed by a right-handed person, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Well, what bothers me is that Sister Jonathan carried her gun and fired it with her left hand.”

  “That’s right.” I could almost see the wheels turning in Al’s brain for a moment before he said, “Oh, God, you don’t think she was covering up for . . .”

  “I don’t know. I’m only saying . . .”

  Al shook his head. “Are you going to follow up and talk to the cops about it?”

  “No, I’m done chasing Marilee Anderson. But I definitely will follow Sister Jonathan’s case and watch her trial.”

  “Could be very interesting.”

  “Could be.”

  Al turned and walked away. Before I could follow him, my phone rang again.

  “Hello, Mr. Mitchell, this is Andrew Miller,” the caller said.

  I couldn’t place him. “Who?” I asked.

  “Andrew Miller. I live next door to the Andersons. Or just Jill now, I guess.”

  “Oh, sure, now I remember. Your grandmother helped me find the Andersons when they went up north to the lake.”

  “That’s right. And it’s my grandmother that I’m calling about.”

  I remembered that she was ninety-one and frail. “I hope she’s all right,” I said.

  “Oh, she’s great,” Miller said. “In fact, she’s getting married to the card player you introduced her to.”

  “Married? Those two are getting married? In the nursing home?” Here was a great story for Monday: Eleanor Miller, ninety-one, to wed Adelbert Love, ninety-five.

  “He has to remind her about it every day, but by God, they’re getting officially hitched tomorrow,” Miller said. “Grandma’s like a teenage kid every time they talk about it. I’m just calling to invite you and your photographer buddy to the wedding, and to say thank you for getting them together.”

&
nbsp; “You’re welcome,” I said. I like to set a good example.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to forensics expert Dr. E.P. Lyle for advice on the probable condition of a buried body in an unusual location after a certain number of years.