A Cold Case of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  “And he could have made your job reporting on this story a hell of a lot harder,” I said. “If Brownie’s pissed at you, Brownie doesn’t talk to you.”

  “That’s discrimination,” she said. “He should treat everyone equally.”

  “He would,” I said. “He’d shut all three of you off with equal silence.”

  “The William Tell Overture” sounded in my pocket. Again it was Don. “What have you got?” he asked.

  “Skeletal human remains and a roped-off crime scene a block wide,” I said. “They’ve got us pushed back so far we can’t see the whites of their eyes and they haven’t told us anything beyond the bare bones.”

  “Very funny. I’ll switch you to Corinne Ramey and you can entertain her with your puns and what little bit of information you have. Describe the scene and give it a little background. Have Al send some pix of the scene.”

  “Don wants some pix of the scene,” I said while I waited for Corinne to pick up her phone.

  “Already on the way,” he said. “Got a good one of the three choppers practically hooked together, almost scraping the roof of the house. The folks at the FAA might enjoy that one.”

  For the second day in a row I dictated a short story about the Anderson case to Corinne Ramey. When she finished taking my story, I did not thank her. I knew it was no problem.

  We went back to standing and waiting for some word from Brownie. The TV reporters took turns standing in front the cameras with their backs to the house, reporting breaking news “live from East Geranium Street in St. Paul.”

  At 2:55 p.m., Don called again. “I’m done for the day. Call Fred when you’ve got something.” Fred is Fred Donlin, the night city editor, who comes on at 3:00 p.m.

  “Have a nice night,” I said.

  “I’ll be watching Trish Valentine reporting live,” he said. “She’d better not be reporting anything that you don’t.”

  “So how long do Al and I stay here?”

  “As long as it takes. Or until Fred sends somebody out to relieve you.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  “Welcome. See you bright and early.” I don’t know how I’d have responded if he’d said, “No problem.”

  It was almost four o’clock when Brownie came around the corner again. Behind him were two men carrying a stretcher bearing a black body bag. All eyes and cameras turned toward the stretcher and followed it as it was laid on a gurney and rolled through the back doors of the hearse. As soon as the doors swung shut, people around me started yelling questions.

  Brownie held up his hands for silence as he approached the tape, dragging his feet at a slow, weary pace. His face was wet with sweat, his shirt collar was unbuttoned, the knot on his tie was halfway down to his belt, and his shoulders were sagging.

  When the clamor finally ceased, he spoke. “Here’s what I can tell you: At approximately twelve fifteen this afternoon, one of the two men working with shovels contacted bones in a portion of the garden scraped to a depth of about four feet by the backhoe.

  These bones were exposed further by careful hand removal of the soil around them. Eventually a complete set of skeletal remains was revealed. A medical examiner and a forensic specialist then examined the bones and confirmed that they were in fact human remains. These remains have been carefully placed in a body bag and taken to the laboratory for further examination.”

  He stopped talking and folded his arms. Trish broke the brief silence. “Is it Marilee Anderson’s body?”

  “I really can’t say,” Brownie said. “That will have to be determined by the forensic people.”

  “Do they look like the bones of a young girl?” Barry Ziebart asked.

  “Never having seen the bones of a young girl, I cannot say,” Brownie said. This drew a groan from the crowd.

  “Are they the size of a young girl’s bones?” I asked.

  “Again, I couldn’t say. The bones will have to be reassembled in the lab before the size of the remains can be measured.”

  “Are they female bones?” a woman behind me asked.

  “That will also have to be determined in the lab. I can say that the remains have deteriorated substantially during the time they were buried.”

  “When will you have the lab results?” another reporter asked.

  “I can’t say for sure,” Brownie said. “We could have a preliminary report in a couple of days or it could be longer. You’ll be notified as soon as I have anything from the lab. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a very long, hot, and unpleasant day and I’m heading for a long shower and a very cold martini. Maybe two very cold martinis.” He turned and walked away, ignoring a hailstorm of questions and comments from the gallery.

  I phoned Fred Donlin and said we were coming in with a story and pix. All three TV crews were lined up and reporting live as Al and I started toward our car.

  “Did you get the feeling from Brownie’s answers that the skeleton might not be Marilee’s?” Al asked.

  “Make no bones about it; I got the distinct impression that Brownie knows more than he was telling us.”

  “So it would be a grave mistake to tell our readers that Marilee has been found.”

  “I can’t imagine who else would be buried in the Andersons’ backyard, but I won’t tell the readers that it’s Marilee until I’m dead certain that it is.”

  * * *

  ON MY DESK WEDNESDAY morning was a message slip noting that I’d had a call from “Mr. Shibelski” about an hour after I’d left the office Tuesday. I punched in the number and was amazed to get a direct connection to the man with the Polish name.

  “Our secretary mangled your name as badly as I would have,” I said. “I take it you didn’t spell it for her.”

  “She didn’t ask,” he said. “And I never volunteer it.”

  “What are you volunteering in the way of information this morning? Is there a chance I’ll be able to interview Patrick O’Brian?”

  “Afraid not, Mr. Mitchell. It seems your Mr. O’Brian was stabbed to death in his cell by a person or persons unknown about thirty days after his arrival here in the warm, welcoming arms of our residential institution. Apparently child rapists weren’t popular with the other residents at that time.”

  “Damn. He was my very best suspect, although her parents are now in the spotlight.”

  “Yes. I heard on the TV news this morning that they found the girl’s skeleton in their backyard.”

  “The police aren’t verifying that it’s Marilee until they get the lab tests, but I don’t know who else they’d find back there.”

  “Cops like to err on the side of caution,” Przyblski said. “But you’re right—folks don’t just go around getting buried in strangers’ backyards.”

  Or do they?

  Chapter Eight

  Seeking Jack and Jill

  MY HOPE WAS TO talk to one or both of the Andersons before any other reporter got to them. Where would I find them? Were they still in seclusion with good old Uncle Eddie? Were they home on East Geranium? Or were they in police custody in downtown St. Paul?

  I tried the home phone first. I got their voicemail and tried to leave a message. A cool feminine recorded voice said the message box was full. Why was I not surprised?

  Next I called Uncle Eddie. Same result—no pickup and a full voicemail message box. Popular folks, the Anderson family.

  That left only one possibility: the police. I punched in the number of Detective Lieutenant Curtis Brown’s private line. There I finally got a message: Brownie’s voice saying he wasn’t at his desk right now, please leave a message. Interrogating the Andersons, no doubt. I left a message and looked at my other options for a story.

  The convenience store clerk topped the list. But James Bjornquist had been only nineteen years old, and a nineteen-year-old man could have gone anywhere in the ensuing quarter century. He sure as hell wouldn’t be working at the store anymore.

  On the other hand, somebody at the store might know where he�
�d gone from there. The odds were against me, but I looked up the number and called it. The phone was answered by a man named Cole, who sounded like he was nineteen. I asked if he knew anything about a former employee named James Bjornquist.

  “Jeez, Mr. Mitchell, I never even heard of the guy ’til yesterday,” the young man said. “The thing with the missing girl happened before I was born. I suppose you could talk to the owner. He might know something.”

  “Is the owner there?”

  “No, sir, he’s not. He generally comes by about noon to pick up the morning’s receipts.”

  “Do you have his home number?”

  “Yes, but he said he’d fire my . . . my butt . . . if I ever gave it to anybody. It’s strictly for emergencies, like me getting robbed or shot or something.”

  “I’ll give you my number,” I said. “Please ask him to call me.”

  “Okay.”

  He copied the number and I said, “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Aargh! I put down the phone and uttered a curse word out loud.

  Corinne Ramey looked up from the next desk. “Problem?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “There’s never no problem.”

  “That’s a double negative, Mitch.”

  “No shit?” I said.

  “That’s better,” she said, and went back to writing her story.

  A half hour later, Brownie returned my call and asked what I wanted. “Just wondering if the Andersons are in your interrogation room,” I said.

  “No, they are not,” he said.

  “So where are they?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Excellent deduction,” Brownie said. “Jack and Jill seem to have gone up some hill that we don’t know about.”

  “What about good old brother Eddie? Can’t he tell you?”

  “Good old brother Eddie seems to be among the missing, also.”

  “So now you have three missing adults in addition to one missing teenage girl and one unidentified set of bones?”

  “That about sums it up. We’ve got people talking to the Andersons’ neighbors again to see if they have any idea where Jack and Jill might have gone tumbling off to.”

  “When you find them, will you break Jack’s crown?”

  “You know we don’t indulge in physical abuse in this department.”

  “I’m only kidding, but I have heard rumors about uncooperative people who’ve had accidental falls on the stairs of the city jail.”

  “Accidents sometimes happen to people who are drunk enough or stupid enough to attack an officer. I can’t imagine either Jack or Jill Anderson being either that drunk or that stupid.”

  “I can’t, either. Anyhow, please let me know when and where you find them.”

  “You and everyone else. Have a good day, Mitch.”

  I went to the city desk and told Don O’Rourke about the latest development in the Anderson cold case. “My God, who else can go missing?” he said.

  Who, indeed? I had no answer at that moment.

  I wrote a quick update for the online edition and was about to head for the cafeteria when my phone rang. “This is Mike Casey,” said the caller.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Casey?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing you can do for me. You wanted me to call you.”

  “I’m sorry, but your name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I own the convenience store on Arcade Street, near the corner of East Geranium.”

  The light in my brain went on. “Oh, of course,” I said. “I’m sorry. Your clerk didn’t tell me your name—just referred to you as the owner.”

  “That dummy can’t remember his own name, much less mine. What was it you wanted me for?”

  I told him I was trying to track down a former employee named James Bjornquist and asked if he’d ever known the young man.

  “Before my time,” Casey said. “I bought the store eight years ago from Adelbert Love, who had it for a long time before me. Bjornquist would have worked for Del.”

  “Any idea where I can find Adelbert Love?”

  “Last I heard from one of the regular customers was that Del was in a nursing home. He’d be up in his middle nineties, if he’s still alive.”

  “Do you know which nursing home?”

  “Customer didn’t say. Not sure he knew.”

  “Okay, I guess I’ll have to check around. Thank you for your help, Mr. Casey.”

  “No problem.” I clamped my teeth tightly together and put down the phone.

  On a whim, I called the nursing home in Shoreview where I’d interviewed Eleanor Miller and asked the woman who answered if they had a patient named Adelbert Love.

  “Oh, do we ever,” she said. “Del is one of our favorites. He’s a real hot ticket.”

  “Do you think he’d talk to a stranger?” I asked.

  “Del would talk to a wooden fencepost if it didn’t walk away,” she said. “Come on out and visit with him.” At last, a break.

  “I’m on my way.” I added, “Thanks for your help,” and held my breath.

  “You’re very welcome,” she said. I could have kissed her right through the telephone line.

  I rose from my desk, intending to buy a sandwich to take out from the cafeteria and find out if Al was free to accompany me and hustle out to the nursing home. I had taken one step away from my chair when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver expecting to hear Brownie’s voice telling me that Jack and Jill had come tumbling down home.

  Chapter Nine

  California Bound

  IT’S MORRIE,” SAID a dreary male voice. I almost screamed. Morrie is another person who belongs in a home—in his case it would be a residence with padded walls. Morrie is little white-haired man who walks the downtown streets with a little white shaggy-haired dog and imagines that—depending on the day—either a Russian radar operator or an American postal employee named Robinson is out to do him harm.

  Somehow Morrie learned my name—I certainly didn’t give it to him—and he usually asks for me when he makes one of his alltoo-frequent calls to the Daily Dispatch customer service number.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, trying to calm myself.

  “It’s the Russians,” he said. “They’re beaming their radar at me again. I can feel the rays coming through the ceiling.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to hide in the bathtub with the shower curtain pulled shut when that happens?”

  “I did that, but I can still feel the rays. You’ve got to write an article about it so the Russians will stop.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Put your little dog on a leash and take a walk around a few blocks, kind of zigzagging back and forth. The Russians will lose track of you and turn off the radar.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “I’d bet my last million-dollar paycheck on it.”

  “Okay, I’ll try that. Thanks, Mr. Mitchell.”

  “No problem,” I said. After all, he was not welcome.

  Fifteen minutes later Al and I, with sandwiches in hand, were in a Daily Dispatch Ford Focus headed north. “How could you be so lucky as to find the guy in the same nursing home as Mrs. Miller?” Al said.

  “Clean living and a humble heart,” I said.

  “If you’re saying that with a straight face, maybe you belong in the same padded room as your pal Morrie.”

  “Please, anything but that.”

  “You could always tell him you’re a Russian radar operator.”

  “Or Robinson.”

  “Who the hell is Robinson, anyway?”

  “Who the hell knows except Morrie?”

  At the nursing home, we went through the same rigmarole as our previous visit. We were led to a different, but similarly decorated, sitting room and introduced to a man with no hair on his head and a bushy white moustache on his upper lip. He was seated on a folding chair in front of a card table with a Solitaire hand spread befor
e him. A metal walker with wheels on the two front legs stood beside his chair.

  Adelbert Love stuck out his right hand and gave our hands a vigorous shake. “I’d get up, but you boys would have to help me get down again,” he said. “Damn knees don’t work so good anymore.” He was short, with a potbelly and broad shoulders, and looked much younger than his middle nineties. He was wearing a gaudily patterned short-sleeved shirt, faded blue jeans, and orange canvas tennis shoes.

  There were three additional folding chairs beside the table and Al and I each plopped into one. “Sorry to interrupt your game, but we’re looking for somebody you used to know,” I said.

  “Oh, never mind the game,” Love said. “I’m sick of Solitaire anyway. Who is it you’re looking for?” He swept the cards together, stacked them, and set them aside.

  “A young man who worked in your store on Arcade Street twenty-five years ago. James Bjornquist.”

  “Jimmy Bjornquist? How’s come you’re looking for him?”

  I filled Love in on the warming of the cold case on East Geranium Street and he sat in silence for a moment.

  “That seems like an awful long time ago,” he said. “As I remember it, the cops came and questioned Jimmy the afternoon the girl was reported missing. He told them she hadn’t been in the store. He seemed to be pretty upset about it, more than you’d expect. Made me wonder if he had something going with that little teeny-bopper. She came into the store pretty regular, so they might have got to know each other. Anyhow, when the cops were gone Jimmy asked if he could take the rest of the day off and seeing how shook up he was I said go ahead, and he went on home—he was living with his grandparents. Next day his grandmother calls and says Jimmy ain’t coming to work no more, that he’d packed up his clothes the night before and said he was going to California. I never heard from him again. He didn’t even come in for his last paycheck. I mailed the check to his grandmother and that was the end of it.”

  “So, as far as you know, Jimmy went to California?” I said.

  “I guess.”

  “Might he have had Marilee Anderson hidden somewhere and taken her to California with him?”