Hunting the Five Point Killer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  I start out the back door. Perhaps I can get close enough to hear what they’re talking about …

  “Hey!” Pencil Neck yells after me. “You need to pay for your sandwich.”

  I toss it back onto the counter, and it skids to the floor. The kid comes around the counter and stops cold. There must be something in my look that bores right through him that shuts him up. He backs against the wall and starts shaking. Candy-ass. If I had time, I’d come visit him when I got a spare moment. But not tonight. I need to know what Arn wants with this other clerk.

  By the time I get outside, the guy is just hauling himself out of Anderson’s car. I stand at the corner of the building, cars hiding me. Anderson goes through some contortions inside his car, stuck on the seat belt, when … Meander Wells walks up and opens the passenger door. She dips her head inside and helps him untangle. What’s she doing here?

  Anderson shuts his car off and they go inside. Do I chance going in the back way and eavesdropping? Pencil Neck would surely call the law if I came in again. So I return to the warmth of my car to wait.

  Anderson finally emerges. What they talked about for a half hour doesn’t bother me. Their meeting spontaneously here was a fluke—Anderson making a special trip here to talk with the Flying J clerk is what concerns me. I think I’ll ask him later. I got no time now. Anderson’s pulling out. I lay back. I don’t have to follow him. All I got to do is follow the cop in the beater van.

  The cop hits his headlight a little too soon. I’d bet that lethal injection again that Anderson’s spotted it too as he motors west on Lincolnway. The cop hangs back, like he’s overcompensating for his mistake with the headlights. If he doesn’t pull out now, he’ll lose Anderson.

  I can’t risk it. I pull onto Lincolnway. The cop pulls behind me. If he knew who was driving, I’m sure he’d pull me over. What cop wouldn’t want to be the one who caught the Five Point Killer?

  I hang back, judging the light ahead. When it changes to green, a truck with nasty exhaust stacks spewing diesel gets between us. The truck gives me cover, but I’ve got to slow up. When the truck turns off, I don’t want to be parked in Anderson’s rear-view mirror.

  Anderson turns at the 9th. Streetlight and I get ready. But the truck also turns, and I fall in behind it. I can taste the diesel and am momentarily blinded by black smoke from its twin stacks. I lose Anderson. I can’t slow, and I go to the next block before dousing my lights and working my way back to where I lost him.

  In the parking lot of the old Leapfrog Bar, the cop’s van sits idling, driver’s door open. He must have spotted Anderson, and I park in the alley across the street watching the back of the building. I grab the spotting scope, but it’s too strong at this close range, and I make a mental note to pack my binoculars the next time. All I can see is two men talking in the dark. And one appears to be taller and wider than the other. Anderson.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a listening device.” The words startle me in the darkness. Words startled Joey Bent in the darkness of the Leapfrog that night, too. He jumped when I sat beside him and said hello.

  “Come here often?” He’d finally regained his composure.

  “I think I saw that in some movie,” I said.

  “You did. I’m not sure which one. I didn’t know you were … ”

  “Gay?”

  Joey nodded.

  “In Wyoming, it’s wise to keep it under wraps.”

  Joey nodded again, and nervously took out a pocket knife and cleaned under his dirty nails. Like most mechanics. As if I wouldn’t go home with him just because he had the dirty hands of an auto mechanic.

  “It’s kind of loud in here,” Joey said. “I get my fill of loud noises in my shop every day. Cars running. Machines whining. Noisy.”

  “Then let’s go somewhere.” I gently laid my hand on the inside of his thigh. “Like your place.”

  I followed Joey out of the bar, hobbling in the shoes that hurt my feet so badly but which produced such a nice, traceable print for the police to find. At least that was my plan. And this being my first time, I’d planned things out meticulously. In a sense, Joey popped my cherry. He was my first.

  And later, after I dragged the survival knife across his throat deep enough to sever his carotid artery, I sat down watching him as he thrashed about, hands clutching the gaping hole that he’d never be able to close. There had been something in his eyes as his fire died out, something between disbelief and hatred, even though he was drugged and drunk nearly unconscious at the time. That was something I tried to recreate in subsequent murders. But I never achieved it. It remained just out of my reach. But being back in the game, I’ll try again. But I’m not sure I’ll ever feel as good as I did the night Joey Bent popped my cherry.

  Fifty-One

  “Where’s Erv?” Ana Maria asked. She sat rubbing the sleepers out of her eyes, hadn’t put on makeup yet, and slouched at the table in a pair of Arn’s sweatpants. He thought she still looked beautiful. “Is he still sleeping?”

  “At seven o’clock?” Danny said. He put three eggs and a waffle on Arn’s plate and a poached egg and one slice of whole wheat toast on Ana Maria’s. “Erv was up at five, made his list, and went to Lowe’s to get wire and a new breaker box.”

  Arn dribbled syrup over his waffle. “That’s ambitious.”

  “I told you he’d come in handy around here.” Danny sat down across from Ana Maria and slid a carafe of coffee her way.

  Arn took a sip of coffee and settled back to inhale his breakfast. After the stress of luring what could have been a killer to a dark place last night, his appetite had exploded. “What did Erv use for money?” he asked. “He didn’t strike me as a homeless man with lucky bucks in his pocket.”

  “He isn’t,” Danny said. “He used your Lowe’s card.”

  “What! How did he get my card?”

  “I gave it to him.”

  Arn dropped his fork on the plate, prepared to do battle with Danny, but the old man disarmed him. Somehow. Like he usually did. “Erv had to get supplies. And as you so aptly pointed out, he’s broke.”

  “I would have given you the card if you’d have asked.”

  “You were sleeping like a log,” Danny said.

  “All right,” Arn said. “I guess it was for the better. But did he call a cab?”

  “You want bacon?” Danny asked.

  “How did he get to Lowe’s?”

  “Let me put on another waffle.” Danny stood up and bent over the stove.

  “Danny!”

  He lifted his face up and met Arn’s stare. “Better and cheaper than a cab.” He turned back to the stove and grabbed a pair of tongs. “He used your car.”

  “What! Erv stole my rental car?”

  With his hands on his hips, Danny stood looking down at Arn. “That’s pretty judgmental. He would have asked you, but he wanted to let you sleep in. I’d say he was being pretty considerate.”

  “And just how did he get my keys?”

  “Do you know how soundly you snore when you come in from a date?”

  “Relax,” Ana Maria said. She wiped orange juice from her lower lip. “The way you gripe about the car, it might be a blessing if he did wreck it.”

  “Great,” Arn said. “Just great. Erv’s going to wreck the Clown Car and I can just imagine what the insurance company’s going to give me after that.”

  “By then you’ll have your Olds out of the shop,” Ana Maria said.

  “I called them yesterday.” Arn sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee to calm himself. “They have the tires on, and they repainted the door. They just need to let it cure before I can pick it up.”

  “Look at the bright spot in all this,” Danny said, daintily dabbing the corners of his mouth. “With Erv gone for a while, that frees you up to help me lay flooring.”

  Arn’s car cru
nched ice on the curb as Erv parked it. Arn started to get up.

  “We got that last row left,” Danny ordered, dragging the compressor hose and nail gun along the floor as he squinted to see his chalk line. They finished the last row of mahogany hardwood, and Arn grabbed a door jamb to stand. His knees popped in protest, and he kicked one leg out when it started to cramp.

  Danny, on the other hand, jumped up easily. He stood looking smugly down at Arn, enjoying his predicament, and reached out his hand to help, but Arn slapped it away. “You’re even older than me,” Arn snapped. “I’d never live it down if anyone found out you helped me up.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll meet you downstairs for coffee.”

  Arn hobbled down the stairs just as Ana Maria walked into the house. She motioned him into the sewing room. “I found this on the seat of my car.” She handed Arn a plastic badge.

  Arn turned it over and handed it back. “It’s different.”

  Ana Maria nodded. “This one’s a six-pointed star.” She slipped it into her purse. “I thought the killer might be running out of badges. Until I … happened to look in Nick Damos’s desk. He’s got a dozen of them stashed away.”

  “Are you going to go to DeAngelo about his kid?”

  “No.”

  “Want me to have a come-to-Jesus moment with him?”

  “No,” Ana Maria answered. “I compared those scribbled threats someone put on my seat at work and the one under my windshield wiper. They match Nick’s writing.” She tapped her purse. “I’m not going to let him know that I know. But when the opportunity comes, Nick will get his comeuppance for sure.”

  Arn had been reluctant to fill out the intake form at Dr. Rough’s office, remembering the memorable adventures in proctology he’d had last time.

  “Your turn.” The receptionist called to Arn in the waiting room. “You boys have fun.” She exaggerated a wink.

  He entered the examination room just ahead of the doctor. “Are you here for another happy ending?” Rough asked.

  “Not if I can help it.” Arn took a laptop from his bag and set it on a chair.

  “That’s not going to save you.”

  “I’m here to ask questions,” Arn said. “Not for another finger wave.”

  “Ask away.” Rough opened a drawer and took out a pair of examination gloves.

  “You were the East High team doctor for the girls’ basketball team for three years?”

  Rough nodded as he took the end cap off a tube of KY Jelly. “I volunteered those three years. I did my internship at a sports medicine complex in Billings. I figured it was the least I could do since my daughter was on the varsity team at the time.”

  Arn powered up the computer and inserted a disc.

  “What are we going to watch?”

  “The person who killed Chief White.”

  “I told you I was out of that business.”

  Arn ignored him and paused the recording just as the killer came into view of the camera. “I looked over this a dozen times before I spotted it.” He resumed the CD. The killer approached Johnny’s room and walked by the policeman sitting outside in the hallway. Arn looked up at Rough. “See it?”

  “See what?”

  “He’s got something wrong with the way he walks.”

  Arn turned the computer so Rough could better see it. Again, the killer walked the hallway leading to Johnny’s room. “I caught it that time,” Rough said. “He’s limping ever so slightly. Let’s see it once more.”

  Arn replayed the twenty seconds of footage another four times until Rough was satisfied. “He’s got something wrong with either his knee or his foot. I can’t tell from the video, but it could be either.”

  “Could he disguise that limp?”

  Rough snapped on his latex gloves. “If he were to disguise a limp, wouldn’t he exaggerate it so it could be spotted easily?”

  “Good point,” Arn said.

  Rough put a miniscule dab of KY on the end of his gloved finger, and Arn clutched at straws, prolonging the inevitable. “Would a runner experience such traits?”

  Rough paused, and Arn knew he was running out of questions. “If the runner was wearing old shoes, worn down, they could cause him to limp,” the doctor said. “Or if the shoes didn’t fit right—wrong brand, a size too small—it could cause this. Or an old injury.”

  “No way to see what brand of shoe he’s wearing?”

  “Not while he’s wearing those paper booties over them. This guy a doctor?”

  “We’re not sure.” Arn closed his laptop and slipped it inside his bag. He started for the door when Rough stopped him.

  “Not so fast. I need payment for my time.”

  Arn nodded in resignation. He dropped his knickers and gritted his teeth.

  Fifty-Two

  On the way to pick up Ana Maria at the television station, Arn called Oblanski. “I asked Dr. Rough to look at the hospital surveillance disc.” He explained what Rough thought from a sports medicine angle.

  “Jeff runs every day, though he said he wouldn’t recommend it in icy streets like this. Too much chance of injury,” Oblanski said. “I think we’ll haul the doctor in again. Even if he won’t talk under advisement of his attorney, at least I’ll be able to gauge his reaction when I ask about any running injuries.”

  Oblanski planned to do what Arn often did: observe a suspect while he asked them questions. See if they became nervous and see if the suspect scratched. Or itched, as Arn called it. “Jefferson knows enough about injuries that he could easily conceal it if he thought people would notice,” he said.

  “I’ll send one of my guys over to district court to have a subpoena signed for Jeff’s medical records. We’ll find if he’s got a previous injury.”

  “Better go back further,” Arn suggested. “All the way to when he started at the hospital.”

  “Why that far?”

  “Remember the bartender at the Leapfrog saying the guy who left with Joey Bent that night had a limp?”

  “I’m on it,” Oblanski said.

  Arn hung up just as he pulled into the TV station parking lot. Ana Maria came out the door and started for the Clown Car. Arn looked around the station lot and across the street. The police must be learning something. He didn’t spot her security officer.

  “You look pleased with yourself for some reason,” he said.

  Ana Maria smiled and took her stocking cap off. “Nick Damos is heading to Denver for the day.”

  “If it’s only for a day, don’t be so happy.”

  “It might be longer than a day if he’s not careful,” she added.

  A team of horses trotted the street carrying a couple on a romantic tour of Cheyenne. The pair, in their eighties or perhaps nineties, sat in the buggy bundled up, laughing as cars passed them while the matched pair of Percherons trotted along, their massive hooves rattling bells dangling from their harness. Arn and Cailee had taken such a ride in the last year of her life. The last Christmas they’d spent together.

  “Nick got an anonymous tip, absolute proof that the Five Point Killer is holed up under an assumed name in Denver,” Ana Maria said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?” Arn asked. “Remember, we’re supposed to be working together.”

  “Relax.” Ana Maria smirked. “There’s no new information. I just finagled around and had a friend from Denver place the call. Untraceable. Nick will be tied up for … some time. And out of my hair.”

  “Whereabouts in Denver?”

  “I sent him to an address on Custer Place.”

  Arn had taken calls there through the years. Quite a few Indians lived there. And they wouldn’t like a white man poking around. Even a Greek who looked as dark as any Indian. “He better be on his toes if he slinks around there.”

  Ana Maria grinned sheepishly. “Like I said, i
t’ll keep him out of my hair. If he’s scalped in the process … ”

  “Understood.”

  “And I dug something else up.” She took out a long, narrow reporter’s notebook and flipped pages. “We’re so hung up on Dr. Dawes being the one in the hospital footage, but I found out someone else who may walk with a limp.”

  “You going to tell me, or should I go through the phone book and guess everyone?”

  “Or you can thank me for finding out Frank Dull Knife got busted up big time in a prison fight in Colorado. Seems like his knee was shattered by a table leg and just never quite healed right.”

  “Then I get a chance to visit him once again. How did you find this out?”

  “You just gotta have the charm, baby,” Ana Maria answered.

  Arn drove past the intersection that would take them to Emma Barnes’ house and continued toward the Holiday Inn. “Where we going?”

  “Georgia’s old house. Pieter called her at 1:30 the night he found Butch dead, and she said she arrived at Butch’s place at 1:45. I’m just curious if she’s right on the time, or if Emma Barnes was approaching senility even a decade ago.”

  Arn gave Ana Maria the slip of paper with the address, and she directed him past the Tortilla Factory. He slowed as he drove past, and Ana Maria slapped his arm. “If you’re thinking about stopping there—”

  “They have the best chili burritos.”

  “That’s my point,” she said. “I’d have to ride with you after.”

  They went another two miles and found Georgia’s old neighborhood. Arn could see why she’d opted to move in with Pieter. Her house had seen better days, and it sat unoccupied. In another ten years, it would look like Gaylord’s old house.

  Ana Maria noted the time on the dash clock, and they drove to Emma Barnes’. “We have some traffic today,” Arn pointed out as they passed the fifteen-minute mark. “Georgia wouldn’t have had that to worry about at 1:30 in the morning. She’d have gotten there quicker—”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were building her alibi. Like you were sweet on her or something,” Ana Maria said.