Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “According to Mary Ann, Pudgy wasn’t pudgy anymore. She said he was fit and trimmed up. If it wasn’t for a small scar on the back of his head where a bull gored him when he was a youngster, she might not have known him.”

  “Possibility,” Ana Maria said. “People can change dramatically in twenty years.”

  “Mary Ann dated Pudgy when they were in high school until Bo pulled him out to homeschool him. She told me she’s know Pudgy anywhere.”

  “Was she helpful with anything else that might help you find him?”

  “No,” Arn answered. “But she did tell me a story that’ll help us once we do locate him. She said Pudgy was a wrestler in school before Bo pulled him out, and he was at a meet in Davenport when the other kid was about to pin him. Seems like Pudgy took offense to it and gouged the other wrestler’s eye. Damn near put it out. Mary Ann said when the team returned to Custer the principal pulled him into his office and suspended him.

  “A week later, the principal promptly resigned and left for parts unknown.”

  “At the prodding of Bo Randall I would imagine?” Ana Maria said.

  “That’s what Mary Ann figured.”

  “What did she tell you about Beth Randall? I heard you ask about her.”

  Arn stared at the white wall like it was a television set. “‘If damn Pudgy would have stopped,’ Mary Ann told me, ‘I would have told him where his Ma and sister moved to.”

  “She knows?”

  “She knows,” Arn said. “Beth came back for a day a couple years after she fled Custer to settle her mother’s estate. Mary Ann ran into her and they had coffee.”

  “Tell me she knows where Beth is?”

  “Sort of,” Arn said. “She said Beth and the girl Jenifer—who’d grown into a real cutie—just wanted to say away from that crazy-ass Bo Randal. She wrote her new address for Mary Ann on a napkin but told her never to tell anyone. To keep it strictly secret.”

  “Mary Ann has Beth’s address,” Ana Maria sighed. “At least we have a starting point to line up an interview—.”

  “Mary Ann ate the address.”

  “She what?”

  Arn shrugged. “My impression is that Mary Ann’s kind of a dingbat, and she thought the only safe way for no one to learn where Beth loved was to eat it. Figured she’d remember the address.”

  “I have the sinking feeling she doesn’t.”

  “Bingo!” Arn said. “She was lucky to recall the city—Seattle. She did recall that Beth took her grandfather’s name of Schwartz, knowing Bo would try to find her.” He nodded to Ana Maria’s notebook. “What do you have going?”

  “Doc Henry,” she said. “I’ve had about enough of that SOB as I can take. He placed a white rose in the front seat of my VW while I was inside the TV station.” She held up her hand. “And before you ask, I am not going to give him the satisfaction of filing a restraining order on him. I am, however, going to do my best to get his parole revoked.”

  “How do you intend doing that?”

  She tapped her notebook. “You looked into Doc’s parole and found he is not to have contact with his victim—that’d be me.”

  “That’s what Sheila down at the Parole Office in Denver said. And she also said she got word to his PO here in Cheyenne who gave him one warning about being even close to you.”

  Ana Maria waited until Danny’s pounding upstairs stopped. “That’s my point. Doc is fascinated by these killings and by the RSL it would seem. Twice, he’s been spotted in the periphery of my broadcasts. Mostly concealed by the crowds, but he was there. The next time he’ll be nailed and sent back to Florence.”

  “Still doesn’t explain how that’s going to come about?”

  “I talked at length with DeAngelo and gave him my two-week notice. ‘I’ll take it back,’ I told him, ‘if you give me free reign to run with these VA deaths and the Righteous Sword of the Lord fanatics.’”

  “He was just looking out for you.”

  “I can look out for myself. My decision.”

  “You’re leaving and going back to turning a wrench?”

  “Not today,” she answered. “DeAngelo agreed to let me go ahead. After all,” she grinned, I am his star.”

  “Just make sure that star doesn’t wink out before it’s time,” Arn said, absently looking over the white wall again. “It sounds dangerous. Doc might not be a rational man like we think of rationality, but he is a genius. Thinks things through before he acts.”

  “Don’t you think I know that. But by going live every night, it just might draw Jonah out, too. He must be worried, with the emails he sent me—.”

  “What emails?”

  “Just garbage,” Ana Maria said. “Says to drop my coverage of his RSL or he’ll kill me.”

  “You never mentioned that before?” Arn said, facing her. “This is serious. You need to report it.”

  “I did this morning,” she said. “Oblanski is going to have his computer forensics geek try running down the ISP Jonah used to send the emails,” she gagged. “Better than the dead cat he sent me.”

  Arn threw up his hands. “Why the hell don’t you tell me these things?”

  “Nothing to tell. He must have found out I loved cats—.”

  “Now don’t give me hell again, just because I’m allergic to them.”

  “I won’t,” Ana Maria said. “But he sent it from a post office in Central City—.”

  “By Denver.”

  She nodded. “Oblanski got hold of the postal inspector and he’s running down Jonah from that end as well.”

  “Well excuse the hell out of me, but these are things that you need to tell me.”

  “Didn’t want to alarm you for no reason—.”

  “No reason!”

  “Not much reason, anyway. Call it women’s intuition that you’re so dependent on now and again, but I’m not worried.” She held up her notes. “But what I think will happen after tonight’s special airs is that one or both of those bastards will be lurking around my broadcast.”

  Arn snatched his cell phone. “I gotta call Chief Oblanski. Get some security—.”

  “Already taken care of. The chief says he will have a couple men in plain clothes among the crowd. So let’s cross our fingers Doc or Jonah shows.”

  “As long as you stay safe,” Arn said, facing the white board. Something is wrong he thought to himself and snatched his notes from his TV tray. He thumbed through them hurriedly, until he dropped them and turned back to the notes scratched on the wall. He grabbed the marker and wrote Two Killers on the wall. And underlined it.

  Ana Maria joined Arn in front of the wall. “What’s that all about?”

  “We have been going on the assumption that whoever killed Captain Sims killed the others as well. Probably out of hatred of officers. But what if,” Arn grabbed his notes again and showed her, “there were two killers. Sims was murdered in a gruesome way, while the other vets were killed surgically. Neatly. Without a drop of blood shed.”

  “Two killers,” Ana Maria breathed out deeply. “If that were the case, would they be working separately? Or together.”

  “You mean as a team?”

  “It’s not uncommon,” Ana Maria said. “There have even been men-women killer teams in the past.”

  “If that’s the case, I’d put my money on Pudgy. Sims’ overkill—from what little we know of Pudgy right now—seems more like his style.”

  “And he’d be working with… who?”

  “Someone who might have hated officers because of Bo’s suicide.”

  “The sister?”

  “It’s a stretch,” Arn said. “But one that complicates things for us even more.”

  And Maria agreed. “The sooner we get a photo of the sister—and of Pudgy later in his life—the sooner we might know to exclude him from the suspect
list or not.”

  Arn groaned. “Oblanski and Wagner are going to love me for this.”

  35

  ARN WAS ON THE PHONE most of the morning with Lieutenant Waddie asking more about the RSL protests on the day Steve Urchek was killed. He had asked her if she could connect the RSL in any way to Steve, but—as of this morning—she could not.

  Agent Kane was even less pleased to hear from Arn. He asked him to check with veterinarians in the Black Hills Region to see if any had given Xylazine to anyone.

  “Do you know how many veterinarians there must be in these parts?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I’m going to do some checking here in the Cheyenne region. You might start with those vets specializing in large animals. Servicing ranchers.”

  —

  Arn had only to wait for a few moments at the pet clinic for Dr. Church to invite him back to an examination room. “I hear you’re asking if we give out Xylazine. We do to ranchers. Occasionally.”

  “What do they use it for?”

  “It’s horse tranquilizer,” Church said. “Ranchers use it for all sorts of things—when their mare is about to foal it helps ease the discomfort. Now and again ranchers use it when they have to treat an animal that is pain-sensitive. Puts the critter at ease.”

  “Have you given any out recently?”

  “Not recently,” Church said. “We’re mainly a small animal clinic. But I can give you a list of veterinarians who deal mostly to ranchers. Traveling vets, you might say.”

  He left the room and returned within moments with a computer readout. “Most of those folks work out of the backs of their service trucks. Good luck,” he smiled, “and run if they have a set of nut nippers in their hand.”

  —

  It was mid-afternoon by the time Arn got to the last two veterinarians on the list. He had met with three others working at local ranches, but none had given out Xylazine recently. He was about to give up when the fourth one on the list—Seth Barnes—answered. “Sure you can come down and jaw,” he told Arn. “I’m at the Nadier Ranch a mile east of the Terry Bison place tending to a mare that’s having some difficulty.”

  Arn drove the eight miles to the Nadier place, a hobby farm of forty acres. A newly-planted shelter belt lined one side of the long driveway, the budding pines having been beaten and bruised by the latest hail storm. The barn was a pole barn costing more than Arn made in a year in retirement, and two shiny Cadillacs sat on a concrete pad in front of a new, mid-century house, their license plates bearing dr1 and dr2.

  “Dr. Barnes!” Arn called out.

  “Back here,” he called out and Arn followed the sound of his voice.

  Seth Barnes was bent over a mare in labor, her panting telling Arn she was not yet ready. Dr. Barnes glanced up at Arn and looked around, but no one was with him. “Lady here isn’t close to her time. Her nipples aren’t even waxy yet.” he said. “Damned fools running hobby farms know just enough about livestock to be dangerous.” He used the side of the stall to stand and stretch. “She’ll be all right. Now what is it you wanted you talk about?”

  “Xylazine. Have you given any out recently?”

  Seth looked away just as Arn saw that faint micro-tic at the corner of his eye. He’s lying. “I haven’t given any out for ages.”

  “It’s important—.”

  “I said I haven’t given any Xylazine out!”

  Arn summed him up. He stood as tall as Arn, and his Enduring Freedom t-shirt rippled beneath muscular arms. He would be a handful if he chose to…

  “Just what the hell do you want from me?”

  Arn backed up a step and set himself. In case Seth became more worked up. “Do you keep records of medications you issue?”

  “Of course. We all do.”

  “But if a vial or two of horse tranquilizer slipped by… well, that might be understandable, as busy as you are,” he motioned to the mare lying in the stall.

  “I said I didn’t—.”

  “Of course you did!” Arn snapped. He had dealt with enough professional liars in his law enforcement career, he couldn’t take much more of this amateur. “Now you can tell me what I want to know, or I can place a call to the State Veterinary Board.”

  Seth dropped his head and grabbed a can of Skoal. He stuffed his cheek and snapped his fingers to rid them of the excess before pocketing the can. “I gave a dose to a… friend a couple weeks ago that I’ve known since Iraq.”

  “And…?

  “All right. I gave another dose a couple days ago.”

  “Who was this friend of yours?”

  Seth paused. “I am not going to tell you. I’d hate for them to get in trouble just ’cause they needed to doctor their horse. They helped me out when I came back from the war.”

  “Helped how?”

  “Listened.” Seth turned back to the mare and squatted down, running his hand gently over her protruding abdomen. “All the Army did when I returned from theater was change my MOS—made me a cannon cocker. Bad idea. My mood just got worse after my enlistment was up. I was a mess. Drunk all the time. Couldn’t hold down a job. Listened. That’s all. Understood where I was coming from because we spit out some of the same sand over in Iraq for a time, so they knew what I was going through. Convinced me I was worth something and steered me toward this,” he motioned to the horse. “So I’m damn sure not going to give them up.”

  “But if I run names by you, you’ll tell me if I’m on the right track?”

  Seth spit tobacco juice and it splat against the side of the stall. “Not even if you waterboard me.”

  —

  Arn sat across from Chief Oblanski and Sgt. Wagner. He glared at Arn when he walked through the door. “This better be good, Anderson. I’m about beat to a draw.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Wagner jerked his thumb at the closed door towards the chief’s secretary’s desk. “That woman out there—that WWE wrestler or whatever the hell she is—grilled me for fifteen minutes. I thought once she was going to leap over the counter and throttle me before Ned here came to my rescue.” He turned to Oblanski. “Why the hell do you keep her around?”

  The police chief slapped a ream of paper sitting on the corner of his desk. “Because of this. If I didn’t have her threatening me every day, I might screw off and miss my deadline. Which reminds me, Arn, Sgt. Wagner’s right—this better be good.”

  Arn opened his briefcase and handed both men sheets of paper that he’d printed out last night. “I’d like you to locate Beth Randall. She’s going by Schwartz now and apparently moved to Seattle. I’ve asked Agent Kane out of the Rapid City DCI office to do some checking, but he’s had no luck yet.”

  Oblanski leaned across his pile of paperwork. “I know just where you’re coming from, Arn, and it’s not going to work.”

  Arn exaggerated batting his eyes and remained silent.

  “You’re thinking that, because I worked at the Seattle PD before landing this job, that I have contacts there.”

  “You are the astute one,” Arn said. “I wouldn’t ask it if it wasn’t important. Veterans are in danger the longer it takes to catch this killer.”

  “All right. All right,” Oblanski said. “I’ll make some calls this afternoon.”

  “Thanks,” Arn said. “And thanks for sending a couple officers to look after Ana Maria at her broadcast last night.”

  Oblanski shrugged. “They didn’t spot Doc Henry or Jonah Barb in the crowd, but that doesn’t mean either won’t show up tonight.”

  “By the way, any luck locating Jonah?”

  Oblanski shook his head and hunted around for a victim-pencil to chew on. “He’s some kind of shrewd bastard. Our computer forensics people traced the ISP—it’s a routing network out of India. they put in a call to the FBI and hope they can run it down.” />
  Wagner chuckled. “Looks like you got your work cut out for you with that Seattle thing.”

  “Ned has it easy,” Arm said, “As you’ll notice if you turn to the next page.”

  Wagner scanned the entries and handed Arn the paper.

  “Keep it. You’ll need it to locate all those.”

  “You want me to pull the service records of Winger and Samantha? And who’s this Seth Barnes?”

  “He gave Xylazine to a friend. But he won’t give up the friend.”

  “Want me to have Mike the Mauler talk to him?” Oblanski asked.

  “Won’t do any good. Seth is too grateful to his… friend that he won’t give him—or her—up. He was that vague.”

  “What’s that got to do with Winger and Samantha?”

  “Seth alluded to having served with the person he gave the Xylazine to. Both Winger and Sam served in Iraq during that time. And both have horses. And that was the time Jonah served as a medic there as well.”

  “If I do manage to get their service records,” Wagner said, “what do I do with it?”

  “Cross-reference Seth Barnes’ name with the three of them. See who among the group he was stationed with.”

  Wagner sat back in his chair as he shook his head. “It might take a while, but I can do that.”

  “Hope it doesn’t take too long,” Arn said. “Or we’ll have another crime scene to look at.”

  36

  “IS THIS GOING TO BE a date or an interrogation?” Ana Maria asked. She stepped back and examined the knot she’d tied for Arn, reaching out and making a slight adjustment before she patted him on the shoulder. “You look like you’re ready for the town.”

  “I don’t know,” Arn said. “I’ve never put up some front like this with a woman. It’s… dishonest.”

  “Didn’t you ever tell at least one little fib to a lady?” Danny asked, seeming to enjoy Arn in a tie and sport coat. “Just one?”

  “No.”

  “Even when you’d get on-line to one of those sites you… experimented with.?””