Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “How do you know it’s a cock-a-mamie request?” Arn asked.

  “Because you’re a civilian and you keep sticking your nose into police business.”

  “It’s a good thing I did that a couple times these last couple years, don’t you agree?” When Arn first moved back to Cheyenne, DeAngelo Damos at the television station hired him to work with Ana Maria as a consultant, looking into a decades-old series of police deaths. He had helped the police solve that as well as uncovering a serial killer living—and hunting—here in Cheyenne.

  “At least you agreed to buy,” Oblanski said. He walked to the counter to await the barista completing his order, and Arn turned to the cashier. “How much?”

  “Nine-dollars and ten cents.”

  “What! All I ordered is a small coffee.”

  The kid at the register toyed with his nose ring. “The chief ordered a Venti Caramel Macchiato with two extra shots. All that gourmet coffee costs money, pops.”

  “Most meals I eat don’t cost that much.”

  “Just chalk it up to experience,” Oblanski said. “Or just figure it’s a small price to pay for my pleasant company.”

  “I hope you have some answers after I shelled out that much.”

  “Or else?”

  “Or else I’ll call up Gorilla Legs and ask her to meet you here for coffee.”

  “I know that’s a bluff,” Oblanski said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Would you willingly talk to the woman if you didn’t have to?”

  “You got a point,” Arn said and followed Oblanski outside.

  They sat under the shade of the overhang beside two college-age men drinking iced tea. One wore a jean vest with a large marijuana patch sewn on the back, while the other sipped his drink through gnarly teeth ravaged by methamphetamine. They looked Chief Oblanski over for the briefest of moments before leaving. “See you boys sometime soon,” Oblanski called after them as they scurried away.

  “Just a matter of time,” Oblanski said to himself as he sipped his drink through a tall straw. “Now what is it that’s so pressing?”

  “Ana Maria did some checking on Jonah Barb but didn’t find anything matching his name in any of her databases.”

  “That’s because she didn’t research under his given name—Quentin. I understand the man has some complex about the name. Hates anyone calling him it.”

  “Good a name as any.”

  Oblanski sipped lightly, and Arn thought he herd him coo as the caramel-whatever-the-hell-it-is slid down his throat. “From what Brian Gibbs tells me, Quennie—that’s what Brian calls Jonah—has always insisted on going by some macho name. And Quennie isn’t it.”

  “Who’s Brian Gibbs?”

  “Bartender down at the Legion. He served with Quentin—Jonah—in Iraq.”

  “Same infantry unit?”

  “Not infantry,” Oblanski said. “Medic unit. Brian got burned out on it and left the Army as soon as he served his twenty. Now, he’s just content to tend bar down at the Legion. He says that every time Jonah pops into the Legion for a beer, he harasses the daylight out of him. We got called there last spring for a fight between the two, though it wasn’t much of a fight when you see how big Brian is.”

  “How do you know I’m going to pay Brian a visit?”

  Oblanski chuckled. “Because you cannot not stick your nose into odd places. And just out of pure curiosity, did your contact at Ft. Meade get back to you about the toxicology report on Steve Urchek?”

  Arn had gotten off the phone with Lt. Waddie not an hour ago. She had reluctantly told Arn that Steve had a lethal dose of cocaine in his system. Just like Frank. “Now I have to tell Helen her brother died of an OD like her husband. I just don’t see how it could happen.”

  “It happens because druggies are used to a certain… quality of product. When they get their dope from a new supplier… you know how it goes. I’m sure you’ve seen druggies who bought a product purer than they’re used to. And the moment they shoot up—hell, you’ve seen druggies OD enough times—.”

  “Frank wasn’t a druggie, and I doubt Steve was.”

  “Arn,” Oblanski said, “don’t let emotion cloud your thinking. Coke heads are harder to spot—they can hold down a job. Even be socially viable, with a family. Friends might not even know they use.”

  Oblanski was right, Arn knew. Both Steve and Frank could have been users, leading normal-appearing lives. But damnit, they were both old friends Arn had known through the years, and it was just hard to imagine either man shooting up.

  Arn finished his coffee and crunched the cup before standing and tossing it into a trash receptacle. “What else do you know about Q… Jonah?”

  “You’re still beating that dead dog—believing the Righteous Sword of the Lord has something to do with the veterans’ deaths?” Oblanski held up his hand. “I might as well let you have your delusions. After all, you did buy me this,” the chief said before sipping his drink like it was a fine, vintage sherry. “Jonah Barb keeps to himself like the rest of those boobs living in their compound in Colorado. He comes to town now and again, though, and hangs around the VA waiting for some disgruntled vet fed up with the system and bureaucracy to recruit to the RSL. And like the fight with Brian Gibbs, Jonah got the dog shit kicked out of him by the VA service officer last summer.”

  “Did the service officer wind up in the pokey?” Arn asked.

  Oblanski shook his head and closed his eyes, waiting for the thing he ordered to trickle down his throat. “The service officer did not. Jonah’s ego wouldn’t allow him to press charges.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Jonah was beaten by a woman service officer. If you’re lucky you might catch her in her office. She’s at the VA on Mondays—Samantha Holder.”

  —

  Arn had just enough time before the VA employees left for the day to stop at the American Legion. When he pulled off Lincolnway, four cars were already parked in the lot. Regulars. Arn thought back to his years as a cop, thought about the regulars who would sit at the doorstep of their favorite bar waiting for it to open. Those were the same regulars who—whenever there was a major blizzard forecast—would rush to the bar in the hopes of getting snowed in where they could get sloppy drunk while they ate pickled pig’s feet and eggs all night, safe from nagging wives.

  Arn was spot on.

  When he entered the bar, four men each cradling beers sat pie-eyed watching Arn. Like those regulars on Cheers and Arn half-expected Norm and Cliff to raise a toast as Arn walked up to the bar. “What’ll you have?” an enormous man behind the bar asked. A white towel was draped over one shoulder, and a stub of a cigar stuck in his mouth. Tattoos rippled on his forearms as he polished glasses, and he scowled when Arn ordered Diet Coke.

  “What!” One of the drunks said. He squinted as he tried focusing on Arn. “Your old lady won’t let you have a beer?” He nudged the drunk next to him and both men nearly fell off their stools laughing. “Man don’t know how to be the boss in his own house.”

  “That why you’re here,” Arn asked, “because your wife won’t let you drink at home?”

  The drunk at the bar set his glass on the counter and started to rise when the bartender stopped him. “Easy, Harlan. By the size of this feller, you couldn’t whip him if you were stone sober.” He handed Arn a glass of soda. “And I would bet you didn’t come in here just to give ol’ Harlan grief.”

  “I’d like to visit for a moment, if you’re Brian Gibbs.”

  “That’d be me, pard’ner. What ’cha wanna talk about?”

  “Jonah Barb.”

  Gibbs tilted his head back and laughed heartedly. “You mean ol’ Quennie. I just put the run on him not an hour ago.”

  “He was here?”

  “Stood right where you’re standing.”

 
; “Problems?”

  “Nothing that I couldn’t handle,” Gibbs said. “Quennie comes in here now and again. Shoots off his mouth about how bad the military is. Dumb ass—the last place he ought to criticize the services is at the legion. I just had to get a mite… physical with him is all.”

  “That’s what the police chief said—that you two got into a scuffle a couple times.”

  “Weren’t much of a scuffle,” Harlan said, swiveling on his stool, clutching the bar for support. “Brian here likes to tease Jonah. Like he done today.”

  Gibbs grabbed a fresh glass, spit on it, and began polishing. “Quennie didn’t know I was bartending today, or I’m sure he would not have stopped by. He likes to come in and… recruit for that bogus RSL he commands. You two practically brushed into one another. He just left.”

  “Bad blood between you?’ Arn asked, sipping the Diet Coke, lukewarm and flat with the fizzle of a glass of water.

  Gibbs filled up another glass with Rolling Block and slid it across the bar to Harlan. “Quennie and me served in Iraq in the same tour. Medics. We went into the field with the grunts. Or we were supposed to, except that chicken shit little bastard always found some way to stay at base camp. Sometimes it was making coffee for the colonel in Headquarters’ Company. Sometimes he’d wrangle an excuse to go to the field hospital for some perceived ailment. It always stuck in my craw, that cowardly A-hole. End game for him was working in the field hospital back at base camp. Why do you want to know about him?”

  Arn left out his suspicions about the RSL and Jonah Barb and about the times they had been protesting the dates of the deaths. “I understand Jonah—Quennie—calls himself a colonel in the Righteous Sword of the Lord.”

  Gibbs smirked. “That’s about the only promotion that piece of crap could muster—a self-promotion.” He set the glass atop the pyramid of other glasses lined up along the back bar. He bent and grabbed a Budweiser from a cooler and popped the top. “The night after Quennie picked a fight with me and got himself arrested,” Gibbs took a long pull of the Bud,” three toughs came into the Legion here. They hung around until closing time and were waiting for me outside after I locked up. ‘Righteous Sword of the Lord soldiers’ they hollered right before they rushed me.” He chuckled. “They rushed themselves straight to the ER after I finished kicking the shit outta them.”

  “Did you report them to the cops?”

  “Are you kidding me,” Gibbs said, “and risk them not coming back for another ass-whooping?”

  17

  JUST WHAT THE HELL IS Anderson doing at the Legion at two in the afternoon? He doesn’t drink from what I could see. And he sure doesn’t hang with those rummies drunked-up in the bar. There can be only one reason he went in there—he’s nosing around, trying to figure out a connection between the men I’ve killed these last couple years.

  But why the American Legion?

  That’ll bug the hell out of me until I can figure it out… Brian Gibbs!

  That’s got to be the reason Anderson’s taking so long inside, talking with that big bastard. But what can Gibbs tell him about me? Nothing incriminating, that’s for sure. And Gibbs being the friendly neighborhood bartender everyone wants to pour out their soul to just doesn’t fit that grouchy SOB. I think back to my conversations with him, and perhaps he will remember something that points Anderson to me.

  Perhaps he already has.

  Can I take that chance?

  Anderson is leaving in that hot rod of his. I’d follow him and see where he goes but I need to get back to work.

  I’ll come back to the Legion tonight.

  After they close.

  And talk with Brian Gibbs once again.

  18

  ARN DROVE THE THREE MILES to the VA center and parked beside a truck with a Confederate flag on a pole stuck in the bed. An old man slowly climbed out and put his twin canes against the truck before shutting the door. Arn turned to him and reached for the canes when the man sputtered, “I don’t need help, asshole!”

  Arn shrugged, figuring the old timer didn’t need help after all and walked into the center and to the Police Office. Sgt. Wagner sat hunched over his desk writing on a tablet when Arn knocked on the door. Wagner groaned and took off his reading glasses. “You here to let Winger Hays beat on you a little more?”

  Arn rubbed his neck. He thought it still hurt, though it might be all in his mind, too. “I’m here to see Samantha Holder.”

  “Ain’t we all,” Winger said. He entered the police office wearing pressed slacks and a sport coat. He had cleaned up since he beat on Arn, and the man looked like he was going on a dinner date himself. Or to a wedding as dressed as he was. “Don’t think less of yourself when she turns you down.”

  “Pardon?”

  Wagner snickered. “Here to see Samantha, you say? Next you’ll claim it’s official business.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Arn said, “I wanted to talk with her about Jonah Barb.”

  “And not because you want to line up a dinner date with her or anything?”

  “What are you rambling about?” Arn said.

  “I think you know just what I’m talking about. But I’m here to tell you that snagging a date with Sam would be a major coup for an old dude like you.”

  Arn shook his head, not knowing just what Wagner was inferring. “Just tell me where the Service Office is.”

  “Second floor,” Wagner said. “Just follow the waiting line of other drooling fellers hoping for a date with her.”

  “And look out for her right,” Winger called after him. “She slaps like a mule.”

  Arn started out of the office when he turned back and asked Wagner, “You have access to military records?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  Arn jotted down Captain Sims’ name and handed it to the sergeant. “I’d like to see his service file—.”

  “No can do,” Wagner said. “Veterans have rights, or didn’t you ever hear that?”

  “Even dead vets?”

  “What?”

  “Sims was murdered at the VA in Sheridan three years ago. I doubt that he’ll complain to anyone if I have a peek at his file.”

  When Wagner hesitated, Arn said, “contact the Sheridan County Sheriff’s department to verify Sims’ death if you don’t believe me.”

  “I’ll make some calls,” Wagner said at last. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

  Arn thanked him and walked to the elevator. On the second floor, he read the legend and walked the long corridor towards the Service Officer’s room. As he neared, Arn saw Wagner wasn’t far off: there were eight men leaning against the wall outside the office waiting their turn to talk to Samantha Holder.

  “Take a chunk of wall,” one man said. “Sam just now came back from her workout.” He nodded to the line. “She’s got to hustle through vets pretty quick if she wants to get off work by four.”

  The line went quick, with each man in the Service Office less than five minutes until the receptionist yelled to him, “Next.”

  Arn entered the outer office. The receptionist sat behind her desk; half-glasses perched on her ruler-straight nose as she gave Arn the once over. “Vietnam or Korea?”

  I like to think I’m a little young for either, he thought. “Neither. I’d like to talk with Samantha Holder about a… personal matter.”

  A wry smile crept over the woman’s face. “Most men would. But you are next in line, so go on in.”

  Arn started into the office. And stopped. Staring.

  “Don’t just stand there gawking like a dummy,” Samantha Holder said. “Take a seat.”

  Arn sat slowly, all the while keeping his eyes on her. Eye candy doesn’t do her justice, he thought. Even sitting at her desk, Samantha projected strength through her muscular frame, her perfectly rounded face accentuated by an angular n
ose. If her short, brown hair would have been black, it would have reminded Arn of Liz Taylor in Cleopatra. She eyed him through eyes only a shade darker behind sequined-rimmed glasses. She wore scant makeup, though she needed none, and she sat straight up in chair which only emphasized her shapely body. “Name and branch of service,” she said, pen poised above a notebook.

  “I was never in the military.”

  Samantha took off her glasses and leaned across her desk, eyebrows coming together as she glared at Arn. “Then why are you here wasting my time?”

  Arn handed her his business card. “I was hoping you could give me some information.”

  She doomed her glasses once again and studied his card. “This is kind of tacky—Have Olds-Will Travel.”

  Arn shrugged. “My roommate came up with it, Ms. Holder.”

  “Sam,” she said. “Folks named me Samantha, but I was always a bit of a tomboy.”

  “Somehow,” Arn said, “I can’t picture you as a tomboy.”

  “And I can’t imagine you wasting my time if you’re not a vet.”

  “All I need is a moment.” Arn took his notebook from his back pocket, “to talk about Jonah Barb.”

  Sam leaned back in her seat, the buttons of her blouse threatening to pop off. “What about that weasel—he flapping his gums again? If he is, I’ll stomp him like I did last time we met.”

  Arn smiled. “Chief Oblanski said you made short work of Jonah. But he never said if you two had a history that started the… fight.”

  Sam laughed, the smile lines showing through her scant makeup. “We were both in Iraq—he a medic and me a mechanic.”

  “You were a mechanic in the Army?”

  She leaned forward in her seat again, one fist clenching and unclenching, muscles rippling in her forearms. “Are you old fashioned or worse—a sexist? Like maybe a woman can’t turn a wrench or something? It was my secondary MOS. Primary was military police, but I never worked in that field. Had too damn many trucks and Humvees to fix. Like my old man when he was in ’Nam—stuck in a motor pool getting greasy every day.”