A Cold Case of Killing

by Glenn Ickler

  Ah, but there was. The bottle of wine that Martha had shared with Zhoumaya had not been emptied. It had to be somewhere in a kitchen cupboard. I told myself, “Do not look for it.”

  I looked for it. And I found it. I held a one-third-full bottle of merlot in my quivering right hand. With the left hand, I pulled out the silver stopper that Martha had stuck into the bottle to keep the wine fresh. I told myself that just one sip wouldn’t hurt me. I needed this to steady my nerves and let me relax after the terror and shock of being held at knifepoint by a madman. I wouldn’t even pour the wine into a glass. I’d take one tiny, steadying sip, put the stopper back, and set the bottle back on the cupboard shelf where I’d found it.

  I was staring at the bottle, preparing to bring it to my lips, when my cell phone, which was lying on the counter beside the kitchen sink, rang. The caller ID read MARTHA. I picked up the phone in my left hand and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi, lover, how are you?” Martha said.

  “I’m just fine now,” I said.

  “Your voice sounds a little weak. Are you okay?”

  My right hand was still trembling as I poured the contents of the wine bottle down the sink. “Let me tell you about my day,” I said. I could apologize later for wasting the wine.

  * * *

  IPICKED UP AL at his home in the Midway at 7:10 a.m. and continued driving north on Snelling Avenue to Falcon Heights. I was still wearing a patch of gauze taped to my throat, even though the oozing had stopped after the second change. I preferred to have people curious about the bright white dressing rather than getting nauseous looking at the deep red scab.

  This John Doe, who we’d dubbed John Doe the First, lived on a side street near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. As we passed the fairgrounds, I remembered trying to pry information out of an uncooperative Falcon Heights homicide detective after a murder there the previous summer. Al remembered her also, and reminded me that her initials were KGB, which fit both her tactics and personality to a T.

  We were singing, “Doe, a deer, a female deer,” when I parked in front of John Doe’s number, which was attached to a one-story rambler probably built in the housing boom that followed World War II. It was painted white, with green shutters and trim, and surrounded by a neatly kept assortment of shrubs and flowers. The small lawn was mowed and the sidewalk was free of debris. John Doe the First obviously took meticulous care of both the house and its surroundings.

  A two-foot-tall plastic gnome with a red hat and a silly grin stood on the top step beside the front door. Al patted it on the head and rang the bell. Nobody came to the door. He rang again. Still no response.

  “Maybe he’s deaf and doesn’t hear the bell,” Al said. He knocked hard on the metal screen door. When this brought no response, he opened the screen door and knocked on the wooden inner door. Same result.

  “I don’t like this,” Al said. “He promised he’d be here to meet us if we got here by seven thirty.” He knocked again, but no one answered. He tried to turn the knob and discovered that the door was locked.

  We decided to try the back door. We walked around to the side of the attached single-car garage and peeked in a small window. There was a black pickup truck inside. We continued around the garage to the backyard, which was as neat and trim as the front, and found a small porch in back. Al went up the steps and knocked loud enough to be heard at the house next door.

  Getting no response, Al tried turning the knob. “It’s open,” he said. “I’m going to stick my head in and yell.” He stuck his head in and yelled. Nobody yelled back.

  “I’m going to peek inside,” Al said. “Something’s wrong with this picture. His pickup is in the garage and the door is unlocked. He should be in the house.”

  Al went in the back door and I climbed the steps to the porch. I was just opening the door when Al yelled, “Holy shit! Come here.”

  I bolted through the door into a small room containing a washer and a dryer. A few quick steps took me into the kitchen doorway, where Al stood looking into the room at a balding man lying on the floor. The man, who was wearing pants but no shirt, lay on his back with his eyes wide open and his right hand resting on the left side of his naked belly just beneath his ribs. The entire front of his body was coated with blood and the proverbial pool of blood (a cliché we were forbidden to use in the Daily Dispatch) had spread across a wide expanse of the kitchen floor. There was no point in wading through the sea of red to check him for a pulse.

  With my breakfast rising in my throat, I swallowed hard, tiptoed around the red sea and escaped into the dining room. Al followed, almost stepping on my heels. My call to 911 was answered by a business-like woman who took my information and assured me that emergency personnel would be on the way immediately.

  “Do you need an ambulance?” she asked.

  “Too late for that,” I said. “The victim is ready for a hearse.”

  Four minutes later, two Falcon Heights squad cars with lights flashing pulled up in front. Al unlocked the front door from the inside and greeted the officers who got out. I followed Al into the living room and stood pointing toward the kitchen.

  All four cops strode past me to the kitchen, and after a quick look, one of them returned to the living room. “Did either of you touch anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing, Officer,” I said. Then I thought about what we might have touched. “We both grabbed the back doorknob. When you dust for prints, you’ll find ours there.”

  “Hope you haven’t messed up any others that might be there,” he said.

  “Homicide is on the way,” said another officer, who had called in as soon as he’d seen the body.

  “Who is this man?” asked the first officer. He wore a badge that said HARRISON.

  “Don’t know his name,” Al said. “He invited us here for an interview under the name John Doe.”

  “You got some explaining to do,” Harrison said. “Don’t you two go anywhere until homicide gets here.”

  Al and I adjourned to the front steps, where we sat waiting for homicide to arrive while the officers inside were doing their thing. After about ten minutes, another Falcon Heights squad car pulled up and a tall, dark-haired woman in a black pantsuit emerged from the passenger side.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” Al said.

  It was KGB.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Facing KGB

  THE EXPRESSION ON her face told us that KGB, whose official title was Detective K.G. Barnes, was no happier to see us than we were to see her. We rose to greet her and she ignored the opportunity to shake my outstretched hand.

  “In the four years we’ve been on the Falcon Heights police force we’ve worked two homicides. Why is it that you two have been present at both of them?” KGB said. She had the damnable habit of using the royal “we” when referring to herself.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” I said, letting her wonder whether I meant lucky for us or for her.

  “We weren’t really present at this one,” Al said. “This victim was already dead when we got here.” In the previous case, the victim had performed a bizarre death routine before our eyes on a small State Fairgrounds stage.

  “So who is the victim?” KGB asked.

  “He gave his name as John Doe,” I said. “We suspect that it might be an alias.”

  “Aren’t you the bright ones? So what are you doing here, if you don’t know the man’s real name?”

  We explained the reason for our presence, telling her that John Doe had offered to tell us where we could find a woman who looked like the missing person from a twenty-five-year-old cold case in St. Paul.

  “Couldn’t you have kept the investigation in St. Paul?” KGB asked.

  “I actually invited him to meet us downtown but he insisted that we come here,” Al said. “Sorry about getting you involved.”

  “Well, we’ve got work to do,” KGB said. “We’ll need statements from both of you.” She looked at a large silver wat
ch on her wrist. “One o’clock, our office. We’re sure you know where it’s located.”

  “I’m sorry but you’ll have to get in line,” I said. “I have a one thirty date at the St. Paul PD to give a statement from another crime scene.”

  “Jesus, what are you guys? Some kind of magnets for all kinds of criminals?”

  “Sometimes it seems that way,” I said. “This particular criminal was drawn to me by a desire to slit my throat.”

  I half expected KGB to say she wished he’d been successful, but she merely frowned and said, “Can you make it by three thirty?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe we’d better make it four o’clock to be on the safe side.”

  She agreed and hustled into the house. A young man who’d driven the car for KGB and stood behind her during our conversation followed her in. “Sounds like my partner isn’t exactly in love with you guys,” he said as he went past us on his way into the house.

  “A detective that observant will go far,” Al said. “Our afternoon with the KGB should really be fun.”

  “I’m looking forward to it with all the enthusiasm of a man facing a colonoscopy,” I said.

  “You don’t face a colonoscopy, it goes up your ass.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid KGB will do.”

  Meanwhile, we had a lot of work to do. I called Don O’Rourke and told him what we’d found and what was happening. He told us to stay on the scene, find out who the victim was, and how he was killed. That meant we’d be dealing with Detective K.G. Barnes all morning.

  We went back into the house to ask some questions and were ordered to leave immediately unless we could identify the body. Already aware that KGB would not accept “John Doe” as a valid ID, we went back outside. I retrieved my laptop from the car and we resumed our seated position at the top of the front steps.

  Going online, I learned from the city’s reverse directory that the house was the residence of Henry L. Moustakas. Chasing the name through Google, I found a Henry Moustakas whose phone number matched the one that our John Doe the First had given to Al. This man was sixty-four years old and was employed by St. Adolphus Catholic Church in north Minneapolis as a maintenance man. At that age he could have been partially bald, and the church was within an easy commuting distance from this house.

  Next I Googled the church, found its office phone number and called. A woman answered and I asked for Henry Moustakas. “Old Hank hasn’t come in yet this morning,” she said. “He’s almost always here by now but he seems to be late today. May I take a message?”

  I decided not to pass on the bad news about Old Hank. I told the woman that I’d try back later and thanked her.

  “No problem,” she said. Aargh! She must have been younger than she sounded.

  I e-mailed what I’d learned to Don, and Al forwarded two photos of the house and a shot he’d taken of Detective K.G. Barnes as she was walking toward us from her car.

  “How was he killed?” was Don’s e-mail response.

  “Looks like he was stabbed. I’ll check with KGB,” I replied.

  I either had to wait for KGB to offer a statement or beard the lion in her den. Remembering how little information she’d offered the media in the previous case, my choice was obvious. I again entered the house and found KGB seated at the polished oak dining room table, talking on her cell phone. She glared at me and waved me back toward the door. I took a seat at the other end of the table and folded my hands in a prayerful pose on the tabletop.

  KGB snapped off her phone and said, “You can’t be in here. This is a crime scene.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “What I need to know is the probable cause of the victim’s death. Looked very bloody. Was he shot or stabbed?”

  “You’ll have to wait for the M.E. on that. Now get out of here or we’ll have you handcuffed and placed under arrest.”

  I stood up. “How long before the M.E. gets here?”

  “He just left his office. Now out!”

  “Can you confirm that the victim’s name is Henry Moustakas?”

  She looked surprised to hear that I had a name. “We’re not releasing the victim’s name until his family has been notified.” She rose and took a step toward me. Thinking she might be carrying handcuffs, I turned and hustled out the front door.

  “Any luck?” Al asked as I sat down beside him.

  “She says we have to wait for the M.E.”

  “Story of my life, sit around and wait.”

  “We could take turns playing Solitaire on my laptop.”

  “I’d rather watch the grass grow in Henry’s yard.”

  “With two of us, we can watch every solitary blade.”

  “A singularly exciting prospect. But while we’ve been sitting here with nothing to do, I started wondering something,” Al said. “Do you think Henry Moustakas’s murder had anything to do with his plan to tell us where to find that Marilee Anderson lookalike?”

  I’d been wondering the same thing. Was Henry Moustakas murdered in an early-morning break-in gone bad? Or was it possible that Marilee Anderson was alive in the Twin Cities and that somebody who didn’t want her to be found knew Henry was meeting with us? Had Marilee been held captive all these years? And, if so, who might her captor be?

  The door behind us opened and one of the original cops on the scene came out carrying a roll of yellow police line tape. He asked us to move off the top step so he could begin stringing the tape around the house. We slid down one level and continued to monitor Old Hank’s grass.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Over Cooked

  THE ARRIVAL OF Dr. Lyle Lundberg, the Ramsey County medical examiner, interrupted our perusal of the growing grass. He nodded a greeting as we rose from our seats on the steps and I said I’d like to have a statement on the probable cause of death when he’d finished examining the body. He said he’d talk to me then, ducked under the yellow tape, and went into the house. Al and I resumed our contemplation of the growth of the greensward.

  “How much do you think it has grown since we started watching?” Al asked.

  “About one-tenth of an imperceptible amount,” I said.

  “I see,” he said.

  This witty repartee was broken by a greeting from a new arrival. “Hi, guys,” said Trish Valentine, who was coming up the walk followed by Tony, her faithful cameraman. Trish was wearing a baby blue skirt that stopped well above her knees and a silky white blouse with the top three buttons flying free. I didn’t notice what Tony was wearing, if anything.

  “About time you got here,” Al said. “You’re usually on the scene before the corpse is cold.”

  “Trish Valentine reporting live,” she said. “Whose corpse is cooling?”

  “Cops won’t release a name until they notify the family,” I said. “He’s a white male, about sixty-something, and he’s resting on his back in the kitchen. M.E. is looking at him as we speak.”

  “That’s all you know?”

  She’d have to read the rest in the Daily Dispatch. “That’s all we’ve been told by the homicide investigator. You might remember her: Detective K.G. Barnes.”

  “Oh, God! Not KGB?”

  “The one and only. Prepare to report live on a lot of no comments.”

  Trish seated herself beside me on the steps. Her skirt slid upward to within an inch of providing a view of whatever style panties she was wearing and her unbuttoned blouse revealed a tantalizing expanse of suntanned breasts. Unable to decide which part of Trish’s anatomy to ogle, I turned my eyes back to the growing grass, but they wouldn’t focus there. Trish’s charms were too much of a diversion to resist after my lengthy observation of the dead man’s lawn.

  By the time Dr. Lundberg emerged from the house, crews from two other TV channels had arrived, along with a reporter-and-photographer team from the Minneapolis paper. The three of us got off our butts and joined the gathering at the foot of the front steps to hear the doctor’s report.

  “All I
can tell you is that the victim has a stab wound in his abdomen that resulted in a great deal of blood loss,” the M.E. said. “I can’t say for certain if that was the actual cause of death until we’ve done an autopsy. As for time of death, I’d estimate that the victim died about twelve to fifteen hours ago.” Using my incredible mathematical skills, I deduced that this would place Henry’s demise at between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Thursday.

  “Did the knife reach his heart?” Trish asked.

  “I won’t know that until we do the autopsy,” Dr. Lundberg said. “But as I just said, the victim lost a great deal of blood.”

  “So it could have reached his heart?”

  “I have no further comments, except to remind you that I haven’t confirmed that the wound was caused by a knife,” the doctor said. “You’ll all be notified when the autopsy results are available. Have a good day, everyone.” He came down the steps and the clump of media parted like the Red Sea opening before Moses to let him pass through to his car.

  * * *

  I WROTE A STORY that included the address of the house and the fact that the owner was listed as Henry L. Moustakas. As usual, Detective K.G. Barnes had answered “no comment at this time” to every question reporters asked at the scene. This left little for the TV reporters to report live, and gave the Daily Dispatch a big lead on the story. I wondered what Trish Valentine would say when she learned that Al and I had discovered the body upon arriving for an interview. The one thing I held back in my story was the purpose of the interview. Let the rest of the world wonder about that.

  Friday afternoon turned into a blur of questions and answers. I sat with two interrogators at the St. Paul PD for an hour while they questioned me from every possible angle on my adventure with Robert Obachuma. When they were finished, I was told to remain seated. They left the room and were replaced by Special Agent Clarence Jordan of the FBI.

  Jordan began our conversation by implying that I was a damn fool for letting Obachuma into my house. This was not necessary. I already knew I was a damn fool for letting Obachuma into my house. Then Jordan asked me the same questions the police had asked in several different ways. I was finally told I could leave the police station five minutes after Al was supposed to pick me up for our trip to Falcon Heights to meet with KGB. He was waiting for me, parked in front of a fire hydrant twenty feet from the front door of the police station.