“Understood.”
She nodded in the direction of the cell blocks as if she could see Pieter through the thick walls. “To answer your question, Pieter’s in solitary. He’s a celebrity in there.” She laughed nervously. “Petty druggies. Burglars, like Frank Dull Knife. People who’d rip off their grandmothers or do a stop-and-rob.” She threw up her hands. “But in there, Pieter’s special. He’s a serial killer.”
Her eyes watered and she looked away. “His attorney says Oblanski doesn’t have a case. ‘Leave this up to me,’ he said. ‘By the time I’m through with the city, they’ll be owing me for Pieter staying in this rat hole.’”
“Do you believe him?”
Georgia shook her head. “Butch always said that lawyers will say whatever you want to hear as long as they’re on the clock—a healthy retainer, in this instance, is what Pieter’s already shelled out.”
Georgia watched the last of the visitors leave the building. “You’ve been in law enforcement all your life. What are the chances that Pieter will walk on those murders?”
“After giving Oblanski an eight-hour confession, with verifiable corroboration? None.”
“Maybe he’ll be found incompetent to stand trial.”
Arn looked at Georgia clutching for emotional straws, for any thread of hope that Pieter would go free. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, tell her that he’d be there for her whatever Pieter’s outcome. But they’d talked well into the morning yesterday after leaving the hospital, and something had passed between them. Georgia knew that it wasn’t Arn’s fault that Pieter had murdered. She knew that it wasn’t Arn’s doing that Pieter began killing once again after so many years of dormancy. But she also knew that if the TV station hadn’t hired Arn and his investigative skills to work with Ana Maria, Pieter would never have been caught. He would have just gone on with his now-quiet life.
“It’s obvious from listening to Pieter that he prepared for the day he would get caught,” Arn said. “During the interrogation, he admitted to exhibiting textbook signs of a sociopath. And he’s right. But that doesn’t mean he’s criminally insane.”
“Will the state execute him?”
Arn nodded. “Not this year. Or the next. Perhaps not even this decade, as many automatic appeals as he’ll have. But at some point the public will demand their pound of Pieter.”
“I understand,” Georgia said, standing and wrapping a scarf around her neck. “All too well.”
She started for the doors when Arn called after her. She stopped and waited for him to catch up. “I have to know something that’s giving me fits,” he said.
She stood with her back to him, not turning around. “What is it?”
“All those years you took care of Pieter … all those times you were at your brother’s house … in all those times, did you ever suspect Pieter killed those men?”
“How can you even ask me something like that?”
“Because Pieter told Oblanski that when Hannah died, you came to clean out his room so he could stay with you. He said you probably found his stash of plastic badges, and his masks and surgical gowns. Did you know—”
Georgia turned around, her hand sliding into her purse. She handed Arn a plastic five-point badge. “Goodbye, Arn Anderson.”
“Goodbye, Georgia Spangler,” he said as he watched her walk out of the building on the heels of the last visitors.
The End
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my friends and mentors, Craig and Judy Johnson, for their advice and support; my literary agent Tiffany Schofield for her faith in my writing; editors Terri Bischoff and Sandy Sullivan for their wisdom and guidance; longtime-retired Cheyenne Police Officer Steve Brown, retired railroad engineer Howard Dykes, and Roy Bechtholdt for their intimate knowledge of the area; and my wife, Heather—who never tells me what to do.
About the Author
C. M. Wendelboe is the author of the Spirit Road Mysteries (Berkley/Penguin). During his thirty-eight-year career in law enforcement, he served successful stints as a sheriff’s deputy, police chief, policy adviser, and supervisor for several agencies. He was a patrol supervisor when he retired to pursue his true vocation as a fiction writer. Find out more about his work at www.SpiritRoadMysteries.com.
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