Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  He howled in pain and dropped to the ground when Arn caught movement from the first man. He had taken his rifle from his shoulder and cocked it behind his head to deliver a butt strike when Arn stepped into him. He slapped the guard hard across the face and—as his eyes rolled back in his head—kneed him in the thigh as well. As the man fell to the ground, Arn caught his rifle and stepped back. “You ladies are some guards,” Arn said as he cradled the man’s rifle under his armpit.

  “I ought to kick their sorry asses down the road,” another man said. Arn spun around when he heard the racing of a shotgun slide. He turned to the sound and towards the two men pointing pump guns in his direction.

  Another man—unarmed—stepped from in back of the biggest man and stopped in front of Arn. “Just give the rifle back to that boob.”

  Arn dropped the magazine before handing it to the guard writhing on the ground holding his leg.

  “There a reason you’re beating up on my men?”

  “Your men.” Arn slipped his hand inside his trouser pocket and rested it on the butt of his revolver. Thinking back to Brian Gibbs’ murder, Oblanski made it a point to tell Arn that Jonah had argued with the big bartender only hours before the man’s death. “You must be Jonah Barb?”

  “Colonel Jonah. And you still haven’t answered my question—why are you beating up on my men?”

  Arn stifled a grin as he motioned to the guards on the ground. “Let’s say I take offense to men pointing guns at me.”

  Jonah stood on his tiptoes. He whispered to the men with the shotguns and they lowered them. “My men there,” he chin-pointed to the two guards struggling to stand, “are new to the movement.”

  “Fresh out of the military, no doubt.”

  Jonah nodded. “They are. Joined our movement when they… saw the light. Realized the military treated them badly, and that we,” he waved his hand over the prairie and their compound in the distance, “are doing all we can to change that.”

  “If they’re going to man a guard post, they need to handle themselves a whole lot better.”

  “Oh, they can handle themselves,” Jonah said as a white gelding pranced up to the fence. It hung its head over the top wire until Jonah walked to the horse and handed it a carrot sticking out of his back pocket. “You just . . . surprised them. Now what is it you want? And who the hell are you…” he snapped his fingers. “I’ve seen you before… Ft. Meade little more than a week ago.” He pointed to Arn’s car. “I’d know that car anywhere.”

  Arn exaggerated reaching inside his shirt pocket and handed Jonah his business card. He turned it over in his hand before saying, “Okay Mister Mystery Man—what is a private investigator snooping around our compound?”

  Arn motioned to the two guards still cradling their shotgun under their arms. “I’d feel more open to answering questions if men didn’t wait to shoot me.”

  Jonah jerked his thumb at the two guards, and they retreated to the guard shack, still within range if they needed to assist their leader. “And you two—get back to the compound,” he told the two just now regaining their footing. They glared at Arn as they walked, each holding the other like in a slow three-legged race They crow-hopped into a Jeep and disappeared over the hill. “Ok, Mister PI. Make it quick. Why are you here?”

  Arn reached into his notebook and handed Jonah a sheet with dates when the VA victims were murdered. “Were you and your group protesting these places on these dates?”

  Jonah glanced at the list and handed it back. “Without looking it up, I would imagine we were conducting operations then. Why?”

  Arn turned so that he could look closer at Jonah, study his face to see if he lied as he said, “men were killed at VA centers in this region on those dates. All under suspicious circumstances.”

  Jonah glanced at the shotgun guards leaning against the shack. “Are you implying somebody in my organization might be responsible?” Arn detected nothing, no involuntary tic, nothing to reveal Jonah was lying as he asked.

  “We are a peaceable movement. Our operations do not advocate violence.”

  “Folks have been hurt at your protests.”

  Jonah waved it away. “I do tell our people to defend themselves if attacked.”

  “Why would they need to,” Arn asked, “if your protests are peaceable?”

  Jonah half-turned and motioned to the tip of a chimney popped up just over the hill. Thin tendrils of smoke wafted straight upward on this airless day. “Most of our flock are prior military. They have seen the fallacy of pushing American values on unsuspecting people worldwide. Of the misery that war brings.”

  “And this justifies your group bringing misery to veterans who have sacrificed so much in defense of this country… to ensure your right to protest?”

  Jonah smiled. “We bring our message to where it is most needed—veterans centers. Let vets know they are not alone in decrying anguish that our military has wrought. And to encourage them to join us.”

  “I’d like to talk with Nehemiah,” Arn said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Your General Nehemiah. I’d like to talk with him.”

  Jonah started pacing in front of Arn’s car, his hand wringing, knuckles white before he blurted out, “The General is a very busy man. He cannot meet with anyone.”

  “Then what’s his number?” Arn asked as he grabbed his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, finger poised above the numbers. “It’ll only take a moment.”

  Jonah stopped pacing and motioned to the shotgun guards. They came off the guard shack and walked toward Arn while they unslung their long guns. “This isn’t going to be another Jonestown thing where inquiring people are gunned down?” Arn asked, taunting Jonah, until Arn realized it could well end up bad for him and his hand went back into his pocket.

  “Leave, Mr. Anderson, before I can no longer control my temper.”

  Arn backed up to the door of his Olds while he kept his hand on his gun butt. It might not stand him well against shotguns, but at least with his last breath he’d nail Jonah with his .38 if it came to gunplay. “By the way, did your temper flare a couple nights ago when Brian Gibbs put the run on you from the Legion? The night before he was found bludgeoned to death?”

  “Leave.”

  “I will but hear me—don’t ever slip by the television station and threaten Ana Maria Villarreal again.”

  “Leave, Anderson!”

  25

  ARN HUNG UP THE PHONE and stared it like it was a thing possessed.

  “Well, what did Agent Kane say?” Ana Maria asked as she followed Arn into the sewing room. “No, wait. Tell me as soon I taste this great peach cobbler.”

  “Great?” Danny said. “More like memorable once you taste it.”

  When they had all seated with forks poised over the dessert, Arn said,” Kane drove the syringe and tissue samples to the state lab in Pierre himself. They found small amounts of Xlazine in the victim’s blood. But massive amounts of cocaine. Twice the fatal dose.”

  “Why do you suppose the killer used horse tranquilizer?” Danny asked. “And not even enough to do any damage?”

  “The only thing I could think of,” Arn said, “is the killer injected Boding with just enough to get him loopy before injecting the coke.”

  “So he is learning?” Ana Maria said.

  Arn nodded. “Our killer’s learning.”

  “And so am I,” Ana Maia said. “I found Bo Randall.”

  Arn set his cobbler on the TV tray. “Are we going to have to guess where? He might be the key to all the VA deaths. We need to talk to him—.”

  “Bo and his wife were living on ten acres outside Custer, but she left him some years ago. Took their daughter and lit out, but she had to leave the boy—Bo threatened to kill her if she took him, too.”

  “So where is Bo?” Danny said. “You g
uys need to talk to him—.”

  “Not in this lifetime,” Ana Maria said. A beat. “He’s resting comfortably in a pauper’s grave. The sheriff of Custer County at the time Bo and his wife were living there said he’d show me just where Bo was buried if I came up there. Seems like he committed suicide six years ago.”

  “Because of the divorce?” Arn asked.

  Ana Maria dabbed at her peach cobbler, stringing Arn along. “The divorce happened long before Bo shot himself. The sheriff wasn’t sure why, and he thought at first Pudgy might have come back home and killed his own father.”

  “Pudgy?”

  “The boy that Bo kept in the divorce.” She downed a piece of dessert with coffee, the wonderful odor mingling with the acrid odor of Arn’s tea.

  “Does the sheriff know where Pudgy is now?”

  “Nada,” she said as she gathered plates. “He hasn’t seen the kid in years. Didn’t even come back for the old man’s funeral. Sheriff says Pudgy ran away from Bo when he was sixteen, though never reported him gone. Sheriff heard rumors the kid enlisted in the Army when he was old enough and just stayed away from home. ‘Good for him’ the sheriff told me. ‘Best thing the kid could do was get away from the old man, even if Pudgy was odd.”

  “Odd how?”

  “He didn’t say. He’ll tell me more if I drove up to Custer to meet him.”

  “I hear a but in there somewhere,” Arn said.

  Ana Maria nodded. “The but is DeAngelo. He says I need to go on-air live with what I’ve found about the RSL. I can’t go up there with you.”

  “If that old sheriff can give us any information, it’d be worth a drive back up there. Be another excuse to drive through the Black Hills.”

  Ana Maria winked at Danny and asked Arn, “and seeing Samantha isn’t an incentive to drive up there?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Arn answered.

  26

  “WATCH OUT FOR THAT DAMNED buffalo!” Danny shouted.

  Arn laid on the brakes and the Olds slid to a stop mere feet from where the big bull was ambling across the road, not even looking their direction. If a two-thousand-pound beast can amble. “Crap,” Arn said, breathing deeply to calm himself. “Guess I was a little distracted.”

  “With thought of that babe from the VA you’ve been seeing, no doubt.”

  When the buffalo had crossed the road, Arn motored slowly past him. “Hard not to be distracted by her.”

  “And you are disappointed that she is not going to be in the Black Hills area on her VA rounds?”

  “Wish the hell you didn’t know me so well.”

  Danny smiled. “Just trying to steer the hero in the right direction.

  Danny had a good point, Arn thought as they meandered through twisting hills northbound, through Black Hills forests dotted with ponderosa and lodgepole pine, buffalo berry and chokecherry bushes. Arn’s thoughts went seamlessly from Sam to Ana Maria. He worried about her being alone at the house with Doc Henry in town. Even though Doc hadn’t contacted her, and Oblanski said his daily patrols never spotted Doc anywhere near the house, he worried. Oblanski even stopped at Mimi’s only to learn that Doc worked late into the night and it appeared as if he had no time to stalk Ana Maria.

  “You’re concerned about her, aren’t you?” Danny asked.

  “Samantha?”

  “Ana Maria.”

  “Can’t help it. Even though the prisons tout the great rehabilitation programs, inmate recidivism is still terribly high. There’re just some people that are unredeemable. Like Doc Henry.”

  Arn was worried about Ana Maria, especially since he climbed into his car this morning. He had said nothing to Danny, but Arn just knew someone had been in the Olds since last night. The seat had been pulled ahead; the rear-view mirror cranked down. But nothing else has been tinkered with, and he blew it off as some kid walking the neighborhood looking for something to jack from parked cars. Yet, that old gut feeling was that someone besides a kid had been in his car.

  Doc Henry? The psychopath was the first who popped into Arn’s head, yet he had nothing but that gut feeing that had served him so well for so any years to go on.

  “I’m like you.” Danny took off his ball cap and his stringy, gray ponytail fell onto his frail chest. “The more I think about this Pudgy character, the stranger it seems that he wouldn’t even come back for his own father’s funeral. It’d take a special kind of man of walk away from the death of a parent like that.”

  “It would take some cold bastard, that’s for certain.” Even though Arn’s father had been an abusive drunk despite being a city cop, Arn had attended the funeral. He had even shed a tear, though it was more window dressing for the sake of his mother than genuine sorrow. Perhaps he would ask Ethan Ames the next time he saw him how certain people—like Pudgy—could turn away from a dead parent like that.

  “I’m worried about her too,” Danny blurted out. “Dammit, I still don’t see how Doc Henry can be walking the streets.”

  “It’s our system,” Arn said, slowing and weaving the car through a herd of six deer walking across the road from one grove of trees to an inviting meadow on the other side. Arn explained again how Doc had earned several sentence reductions until he was paroled.

  “Well, it’s just not right, him killing all those women—.”

  “Which we could only tie Doc to the one.”

  “Just say the word,” Danny said, “and some of my old AIM buddies will drive down to Pine Ridge and… show Doc the door, so to speak.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Arn said.

  They completed the four-hour drive to Custer talking about things that got their mind off Ana Maria and Doc Henry: how hot the weather was, and how the traffic seemed more congested with tourists the closer to the southern hills they drove. But despite Danny’s ramblings about how he used to practically live in the Black Hills in his youth, Arn’s mind kept returning to Ana Maria and her safety. She had been more on edge since that first night seeing Doc Henry, but she had recovered quickly, always keeping the small revolver handy. No matter how Arn scolded her about going out alone at night during her broadcasts, she marched to her own drummer. It was almost as if she went out of her way to defy Arn. Just like a rebel child would do to her parent.

  “Where’s this retired sheriff supposed to meet you?”

  “The old courthouse,” Arn answered. “The one your American Indian Movement buds trashed in that ’73 riot.”

  “Was no riot to it,” Danny said. “It was a demonstration against white abuses.”

  “You were there, I suppose,” Arn said as he pulled in front of the Victorian-looking brick courthouse.

  Danny unlatched his seat belt. “I was. I marched with the two-hundred other poor bastards freezing our cojones off. Marching on the courthouse in peaceable protest.”

  “We studied that in high school when that went on,” Arn said. “As I recall, AIM torched the courthouse and burned some police cars. Beat up some locals.”

  “So we got a little… rambunctious. At least we drew attention to ourselves.”

  Arn laughed, recalling Danny’s rambunctious side. A year after the Custer riot, Danny and two other AIM activists had planted bombs in a building in Minneapolis meant to shine attention to the plight of Indians. Fortunately for Danny and his cohorts, the building had been condemned, empty and awaiting to be torn down, and the explosion had actually done the city a favor. After many years—like so many arrest warrants—Danny’s had sat idle long enough to be expunged.

  They walked up and through the steps past the colonnades on either side of the entrance where an elderly man sat behind a reception desk reading a copy of the Custer County Chronicle. He looked over the top of his half-glasses before returning to his newspaper. “Self-guided tour,” he said without looking up as he pointed to an empty gallon pickle jar on the counter. “Ti
ps appreciated.”

  “We’re not here to tour the courthouse—.”

  “You got something against our local history?” the old man asked as he turned a page of the newspaper.

  “No,” Arn said. “We’re just here to speak with Sheriff Mick Ridley.”

  The man put his newspaper down and stood to his full height of five feet and some change. “Ain’t been called sheriff in a long time. You must be Arn Anderson.”

  “I am. And this is Danny Spotted Elk.”

  The old sheriff’s eyes narrowed. “Spotted Elk… I ever arrest you?”

  “Some policeman did during the ’73 protest,” Danny said. “But the charges were dropped.”

  Sheriff Ridley dug into the pocket of his bib overalls and retrieved a pipe. He filled it from a pouch on the counter and lit it. Waving smoke out of his eyes, he stood face-to-face with Danny and said, “guess we both learnt something during those awful times.” He held out his hand and Danny shook it before facing Arn. “Now what was this about Bo Randall that caused you to drive up thisaway?”

  Arn explained the suspicious deaths at the VA centers in the region, and the possibility that Bo Randall was somehow connected. Even though he was long dead.

  “If Bo was alive, I could see him doing that. He was a little feller—not much taller than me—but wiry. With an evil glint in his eyes. Took out his frustrations on his wife, and that’s when we got involved with him—breaking up their damned family fights.” The sheriff spit in disgust. “Son-of-a-bitch had an attitude since he was released from Leavenworth.”

  “Attitude about what?” Danny asked.

  “About getting drummed out of the Army like he was I guess. Or born with a nasty-ass attitude. Hell, I don’t know. Some men are just plumb nuts. Every now and again Bo’d come into town and raise hell. Start cleaning out bars, especially if he thought there was some retired officers in there drinking. And that’s when he’d go home and tune up his wife.”

  Sheriff Ridley knocked burnt ashes into the trash can beside the counter and pocketed the pipe. “Like I said, Bo would be good for it. But I personally cut him down from the rafters in that old horse barn of his after he hung there for a week, so I know he’s dead. “He spit. “And I’m here to tell you I’m not sorry.”