Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  Ana Maria looked away and Arn saw fresh tears streaming down her cheeks and her lips quivered as she spoke. “How did Doc ever get his parole transferred up here?”

  “That’s what I intend checking into,” Arn said. “I know a parole officer in Denver who can check discreetly. The main thing is that you’re safe now.” He gently massaged her shoulder. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Doc’s been working here for two months and this is the first we’ve encountered him. If he hasn’t contacted me by now he won’t.”

  She shrugged his hand off and met Arn’s gaze. “Unless he’s biding his time to make a move against me. That’s what the Arn Anderson I know would be thinking right about now.”

  Arn had. He just didn’t want her turning into a basket case before he found out about Doc.

  Danny entered the room carrying three mugs—two hot chocolate and one steaming green tea which he handed to Arn. “For the man with the GI issues.”

  “I don’t have GI issues dammit.”

  “Stick to that attitude,” Danny said, “and before long you’ll be wearing a colostomy bag.”

  Ana Maria picked up the mug of hot chocolate and sipped lightly. Her hand began shaking again and liquid spilled over the side and on to her jeans. She set it down and looked at Danny. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Danny said. “This room needs a good cleaning anyway.”

  She stood and dabbed at her eyes with the bandana. “I think I’ll just turn in a little early.”

  “Want me to call DeAngelo in the morning and tell him you won’t be in to work?” Arn asked.

  “Don’t you dare!” she said. “If that son-of-a-bitch Doc Henry gets wind that he’s rattled me bad enough for me to skip work, he will have won. I’m going to bed early is all. When I wake up in the morning, I’ll have all these thoughts about Doc out of my system.”

  As Arn watched her leave and heard her climb the stairs to her room, he knew Ana Maria would not expel Doc Henry out of her thoughts when she woke up. The intense fear that had overcome her when she saw Doc appear at their table would not leave her anytime soon. Hell, she may never be free of it, and if Arn had gone through what she had at the hands of Doc Henry he wouldn’t have been able to either.

  Danny set his mug of hot chocolate on the TV stand and curled his thin legs under him. “I know you and Ana Maria talked about this Doc Henry, but is there something I need to know like reinforcing the locks on the doors and windows? Maybe looking over my shoulder? We don’t exactly live in the best neighborhood where folks watch out for one another.”

  “Maybe it’s time I do fill you in about that sociopath. Then you can decide if you want to keep living here or leave for safer pastures.”

  Danny turned his chair so that he could face Arn. “I’m listening.”

  “Doc got his name,” Arn began, fidgeting with the mug in his hand, “while living in southern Colorado. He killed—suspected but never proven—a young veterinarian just outside Trinidad and assumed his practice. He would make his rounds to the local ranches allegedly to drum up business for his new practice. Now and again, the ranch women would be alone while their husbands were in the field or buying stock or just in town at the feed store. Big mistake, ’cause it gave Doc the perfect opportunity to kill them.”

  “How’d Ana Maria get tied up with him?”

  “When she realized two other murders displayed the same pattern—a man claiming to be a vet stopping by the ranches. She got hold of me, even though it was well out of my jurisdiction and we put together the killings—one in Utah, and the two in southern Colorado. But we were too late. Doc had skipped the country. Or so we thought until Ana Maria dug up three more victims in northern Colorado in and around Metro Denver.”

  “You said once that he abducted her,” Danny said.

  Arn nodded. “Doc moved to Denver and took on the persona of a professional man—claimed he was a gastrologist.”

  “An ass doctor.”

  “I know what it is. Now you want me to tell it?”

  Danny waved the air. “Tell away.”

  “Anyway, Ana Maria was closing in—her research techniques really were something to behold. She knew everyone in Denver, and she started connecting Doc to dating sites where he met his victims on-line. Now that the gig was up with his faux veterinarian practice, he had to meet his victims discreetly somehow, and internet dating was it.”

  Arn stood and began pacing the room, recalling the details that—even that happened so many years ago— sent shivers up his arms. “Ana Maria went live asking the public’s help locating the fake veterinarian. Doc knew Ana Maria’s broadcasts would eventually lead to him, and he found her profile on a dating site. He passed himself off a doctor and suggested to meet her for a first date.”

  “Ana Maria’s sharp enough,” Danny said, “that some alarm bells should have gone off as many first dates turn tragic. She knew that.”

  Arn shrugged. “She told me later she got bad vibes from the doctor. But she thought she was just bullet proof. Always figured no one could get the better of her. But Doc did. When she went to the Five Points where they were to meet, Doc abducted her. Took her to a run-down place south of there.”

  “Did he… molest her?”

  “Doc’s not about rape,” Arn said. “He never touched Ana Maria any more than he touched the others… sexually. Doc’s all about imposing maximum fear in his victims. Right before he murders them.”

  “So he did torture her?”

  “Psychologically. Every day for the week he held her, he would show her photos of his previous victims, gruesome that they were. He promised to kill her in the slow way he killed the others. But he never got the chance.”

  “How did you find her?”

  Arn fought back tears as he told Danny, “She found me. Or at least she found a cell phone. Doc had taken her phone and purse, but he didn’t take her money. When I interviewed him in jail, he said he never thought about taking her money. Thieving—he said—was beneath him.”

  “My ex-wife used to beat around the bush, too,” Danny said. “Will you tell me for Pete’s sake how you found her.”

  “I’m getting to it. She bought a cell phone,” Arn explained. “She managed to open a basement window where Doc was keeping her and yell for help, but no one paid her any attention. Shitty neighborhood where everyone minded their own business, especially if it had to do with drugs. Anyway, she caught the attention of one junkie walking by. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help her, but he would sell her his cell phone for a bundle of cash. Her bundle that Doc was dumb enough to let her keep. She called me and I figured it out by her description where she was.”

  Arn sat back down and eyed the cup of tea. “They were gone by the time I got there. Doc had just decided he didn’t want her there anymore and took her to a park in Lakewood. Bastard had a thick leather shoelace coiled in his hand ready to kill her when we finally found them.”

  “Crapola!” Danny said. “I see why she’s upset seeing him. But isn’t there anything you can do to send him packing out of Cheyenne?”

  “I just don’t know,” Arn said. “I’ll check with Colorado Probation tomorrow, but I have my doubts.”

  “You know,” Danny said, “there is another way.”

  Arn looked sideways at Danny. “What way?”

  “Take Doc for a one-way ride somewhere. Or rather, pay someone to take him for his last ride.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were advocating murder.”

  “Let’s say I’m advocating justice,” Danny said. “You give the word, and I’ll get hold of one or two of my old American Indian Movement buddies and make sure Doc gets sent to the happy hunting ground.”

  Arn laid his hand on Danny’s thin shoulder. It had been decades since Danny was involved in the often-violent militant AIM, but Ar
n had no doubt he still kept in contact with many of those in the movement. “If it were only that easy… but thanks. I’ll let you know. For the record, I’ve thought of giving Doc the royal send-off myself a time or two.”

  “I just don’t see how he is out on parole after killing all those women.”

  Arn thought back to that frustrating day in the courtroom when Doc Henry was sentenced to abducting Ana Maria and killing one woman. “Doc is one of those geniuses that think things out methodically. He confounded his crimes so good, we weren’t able to lay a glove on him for the southern Colorado murders. But we knew he was good for them.”

  “Pretty clever, meeting women on a dating site,” Danny said. “But even I know it’s easy to misrepresent yourself. Or someone else misrepresenting themselves.”

  “Danny,” Arn said, “You didn’t go on one those sites?”

  “I did,” Danny said, “Two years ago I wandered into the library downtown and used one of their terminals. I met a lady through Babes Are Us site who said she was fifty-three—.”

  “You would be old enough to be her father. What did she say when you told her your age?”

  Danny forced a smile. “I told her I was fifty.”

  “Fifty! You haven’t seen fifty in many moons. Weren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  “At first,” Danny said. “Until I met her. She had the nicest eagle head walking cane you’d ever imagine. Bad hips, she said. Artificial knee the year before, she said. When I found out she had me by about ten years, I didn’t feel so bad fibbing a little. But it still makes no sense that someone as street-smart as Ana Maria got sucked into Doc’s trap.”

  Arn sat, gathering his thoughts. Ana Maria was more like a daughter he didn’t have than his friend and roommate. If Doc had been successful back in Denver that night… “Doc was to meet her at a restaurant in Aurora and changed plans at the last minute… claimed a hospital emergency and arranged to meet Ana Maria at an outside bistro in the Five Points. When Doc came up behind her—with not a soul still sitting there by the sidewalk café—she lasted about ten seconds until the chloroform took effect.” Arn stood and started for his bedroom. “But before I head for the VA tomorrow, I’ll know how Doc made it to Cheyenne.”

  11

  ARN WAITED UNTIL ANA MARIA had left for the TV station and Danny had gone to Home Depot for paint before calling the Colorado Probation and Parole and punching in Sheila Dior’s extension. He and Sheila had worked closely many times when Arn was with Metro Homicide, and they even went farther back to when Arn was a street cop. Sheila would tip Arn where he could find someone she wanted to revoke on, and Arn would often tip her off as to activities by parolees under her supervision. Now—ten years after he’d retired—she sounded the same as he remembered. “Thought you had died,” Sheila said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I might still have to buy flowers one day?”

  “Unless you go first,” Arn said. “Then I’ll pick up a nice six-dollar bouquet at Safeway Grocery for you.”

  “What a deal,” she said. “But what you been doing after all these years?”

  Arn gave her the headline version of his stints as a private investigator in Wyoming, and how he was looking into suspicious deaths at VA centers. “But I’m not calling for that. I’m calling to check in as to how the hell Doc Henry made parole out of Florence. People just don’t make parole every day from the supermax. Just how his probation could have been transferred up here is beyond me.”

  “Let me shut the door,” Sheila said and returned to the phone in seconds. “Doc Henry was in the federal system, but I’m damn sure familiar enough with that SOB. He managed to sign up for drug treatment as soon as he went to Florence ADX— .”

  “But he’s never been into drugs.”

  “Florence didn’t know that, and he got a year knocked off his sentence right off the bat. For the next three years, he was a model prisoner. Doc was a genius on computers and he helped the staff reconfigure their entire system. That Boy Scout tactic managed to earn him a transfer to Florence High. High security, but sure not the Supermax. While there, Doc studied culinary arts intending to use his new-found skills if he ever got out. He was again transferred, this time to Centennial where he cooked up a storm for the staff.”

  “Why get into cooking?’ Arn asked. “Doc was one of the true geniuses I met concerning computers. I recall how damn hard it was to trace his on-line activity when he was luring women to him.”

  “A condition of his parole was that he never touch another computer. Ever. And before you ask, the warden got Doc a waiver through the federal judge to reconfigure Florence’s system. He studied the culinary arts and became somewhat of a celebrity in prison, and before long, he got a sentence reduction. Of course. And another reduction the next year. Then out the door on parole.” Sheila coughed violently. She was still smoking Camels. “I understand the warden about cried when Doc was paroled—guess the staff was going to miss his elegant meals. As for how he was transferred to Wyoming… I can only imagine what loophole his PO used to get rid of the son-of-a-bitch.” She laughed which turned into a coughing spell lasting half-a-minute. “I would have passed the bastard off myself if he were mine.”

  —

  Arn stopped by the VA Police office, but it was closed. A note telling folks the officers were training in the conference room hung on the door, and Arn walked the long corridor towards the room. Grunts and an occasional scream of pain echoed off the walls, and now and again a veteran walking past the room would flinch when he heard the screams.

  He peeked through the tiny window before entering the training room and stood with his back against a wall. Wrestling mats had been placed end-to-end the width of the room, and eight officers were in various stages of throwing one another or slapping handcuffs on their training partner or just inflicting enough pain that Arn was glad he wasn’t still in law enforcement. One officer had his larger opponent on the ground, kneeling on the big man’s back, his elbow locked when he tapped the mat. When the smaller officer let his partner free, he rolled over and rubbed his shoulder.

  Sgt. Wagner bent to his partner when he spotted Arn. He whispered something before standing and walking to where Arn stood. Sweat poured from Wagner’s face and down to stain his gray sweatshirt. He stopped and bent over, catching his breath. “I think… we need… another victim,” Wagner said, motioning to the officers.

  “I’ll pass,” Arn said. “I did just what you’re doing once a year for thirty years. Don’t need to work up a sweat thataway.”

  Wagner swiped his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and exaggerated a look up and down Arn. “A ittle sweat wouldn’t hurt you none.”

  Arn laughed. “Nowadays, I work up a sweat hanging drywall.”

  “Copy that,” Wagner said. “I take it you’re here to see the instructor.”

  “I am.”

  “I’ll grab Winger.” Wagner walked to the far side of the room and talked with a small man not much bigger than Danny, but about forty years younger. He talked with Winger who looked around Wagner at Arn and called out, “Beak. Twenty-minutes, ladies.”

  Winger Hays exuded that little-man attitude as he swaggered over to Arn. “Sgt. Wagner said I have to talk to you,” Winger said but did not offer his hand.

  “And you don’t want to.”

  “For an old dude, you’re pretty sharp.” His lean face dripped sweat but he let it drip drip drip on to the mat. “You’re right—I don’t want to talk to you after Wagner said you insinuated there was something… dangerous with one of the techniques I teach. But the good sergeant said I had little choice but to answer your questions.”

  “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with what you teach,” Arn said. “I’m just trying to understand the brachial stun you train your officers on.”

  “What’s to understand? You slap the hell out of them and
boom, they go down.”

  “Then look at this for me.” Arn opened his laptop onto a table that had been shoved into a corner. When the computer powered up, he scrolled through Steve Urchek’s photos. “Look at this one I particular,” Arn said, enlarging the image and pointing to the bruise on Steve’s neck. “Could a brachial stun cause such a bruise?”

  Winger turned the laptop against the glare of the florescent lights. “It could. If it was administered with enough force. But when I teach the technique, I tell the officers they don’t have to do it hard enough to permanently injure someone.”

  “How big would a person have to be to inflict that kind of injury?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Steve Urchek was a big man,” Arn said. “Nearly as big as me.”

  Winger laughed. “Size makes no difference. You put the whoop-ass on someone with the stun and they go down.”

  “Even someone as big as me?”

  “It’s for guys your size that I teach the technique,” Winger said. “It evens the playing field for little guys. Like me.”

  Arn scoffed, and Winger said, “You want to see what the stun feels like?”

  Arn had attended enough custody control classes in his law enforcement career to doubt anything would seriously faze him. “It would help me understand it better. What do I do?”

  Arn became aware that the other officers had come back into the room and stood in a half-circle around Arn and Winger. “Take your briefcase off your shoulder and I’ll explain.”

  As Arn set his briefcase onto the table beside his laptop, and took off his hat. He looked around the room and saw—to a man—the officers grinning at him.

  “The technique can be used with either hand, with a forehand or a back-hand blow. Makes no difference. And it can be dealt with an open hand like a slap or a fist. But I’m gonna be a real sweetheart and use an open palm on you.” He winked at the officers. “Don’t want the old dude rushed to the ER.” He turned to Arn. “Now get on your knees.”

  “What for?”