Hunting the Five Point Killer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “I can’t say. He was paroled from Four Mile in Colorado last year. Humor me, and just verify he’s current with his parole officer and still in Colorado.”

  Oblanski jotted the information down. “That I can do. And I’ll assign an officer to babysit her. If she needs it.”

  “She won’t know she needs it until something happens.”

  Oblanski shrugged. “I’m in a reactive profession. So sue me.”

  “I will, if anything happens to Ana Maria.”

  Thirteen

  On his way to Frank Dull Knife’s shop, Arn passed Poor Richard’s and pulled into the parking lot. The afternoon crowd was gone, and the parking lot deserted as if catching its breath before the rush of dinner patrons who would arrive in a few hours. Arn breathed deeply a final time before he entered the restaurant. He felt more like a high schooler sniffing around the class queen than a widowed over-the-hill ex-cop.

  He stepped through the door and let his eyes adjust to the dim light. He spotted Georgia reading the morning copy of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, and he watched the way her lips moved silently as she read, the way she took off her glasses now and again to study a picture. She looked up and saw Arn by the front door and waved him over.

  “I thought someone was watching me.” She smiled and patted the booth beside her. “Like those Nat Geo documentaries, where the wildebeest sense that lions watch them and bound away just before they’re pounced on. You going to pounce on me, Arn?”

  He’d kicked that very thought around many times, and he quickly changed the subject. “I used to deliver this before they merged when I was a kid.” He tapped the newspaper.

  “Eagle or Tribune?”

  Arn groaned. “Eagle. I had to get up at o-dark-thirty before school. Dad would have killed me if I missed junior football just to deliver the paper.”

  “How can I forget, you in your red-and-black Indians uniform that always seemed a size too small.”

  “I think the coach purposely issued uniforms smaller to make us look more buff.” Arn laughed and fidgeted in his seat. “But all it managed to do was give us snuggies.”

  Georgia laughed as she folded the newspaper and set it aside. “Like my Aunt Bethany, who was ten years older and more like a big sister. She convinced me that if I wore a training bra a size too big and stuffed it with tissue it would make me appear more … mature.”

  “Did she ever answer that old question: why is ‘panties’ plural and ‘bra’ singular?”

  “You are a romantic.”

  Arn blushed, and Georgia let him off the hook. “But you didn’t come here to talk about panties and bras.”

  “I’m here strictly on business.”

  “Liar.” She grinned. “But I’ll let you tell me what your business is.”

  Arn opened his bag and Georgia smiled. “You always cart around that purse?”

  “Man bag. And it was a gift,” Arn lied. He took out his notes and set them on the table. “I’m headed over to talk with Frank Dull Knife.”

  “You talked with Pieter.”

  “He stopped by Mom’s old house yesterday. I moved back in. At least, I’m renovating it while I hang my Stetson there.”

  “I think Pieter has as big an obsession with Frank as he does with old houses. But Frank won’t tell you anything. He’s never confessed yet.”

  “I’ve got to try.” The waitress brought coffee and Arn waited until she was out of earshot. “Tell me what you know about Frank.”

  Georgia sipped her coffee and studied the ceiling. “Butch told me most of what I know about Frank and Hannah. They had an affair for a couple months before Butch died. It just happened to be Frank’s turn at her. Before him, it was someone else, and before him, someone else … you get the picture. She made it a career to sleep with everyone except my brother.” She refilled their cups, and her hand shook as she continued. “Their problems began right after Pieter was born. Hannah saw her life drifting by on the cloud of cleaning and cooking and taking care of a kid she never wanted. And putting up with Butch.”

  “Sounds like Butch is the one who put up with a lot.”

  The coffee fogged Georgia’s glasses and she took them off. “I loved my brother, but he was no saint. Typical Type A personality. Demanding. Perfectionist. Vain as hell. And if anything upset that in his home, Butch could get … pushy.”

  “With Hannah?”

  “They argued. Good Lord, they argued. Yelling matches so loud, that old busybody next door—what was her name?”

  “Police report says Emma Barnes.”

  “Yes, her. She’d call the police at the slightest hint of an argument between them.” Georgia wrapped her hands around her mug and stared into the cup. “But Butch never would have hit Hannah. He was too concerned what others would think if he had. And he wouldn’t have been physically abusive to Pieter, either—might have showed marks. But it didn’t mean he didn’t abuse him up here, of course.” She tapped her head. “Never a day went by that Butch didn’t tell that boy how worthless he was. Or how he was someone else’s kid. Or how he’d never amount to anything.” She frowned and her voice became louder. “And dragging Pieter along to work. That was abuse enough, don’t you think, in Butch’s warped way? He thought he’d get Pieter interested in going into law enforcement when he got older. That if he tagged along to often-gruesome scenes it would peak his interest.”

  Arn thought it was abusive as well. He recalled a serial killer a decade ago who’d worked his way across the country. He’d begun killing in Arkansas and made his way west, killing farm couples in four states. He slipped up when he deviated from his MO and killed a single woman in downtown Denver, all the while dragging his preteen daughter along when he raped and murdered his victims. By the time Arn retired from Metro, the girl was still in residential treatment for the trauma she’d witnessed. He couldn’t imagine dragging your son along to work. But smaller agencies, he knew, bent over backward to accommodate their officers. “It must have been hard for Pieter.”

  “It was,” Georgia said, “until he was old enough to escape.”

  “He run away?”

  Georgia shook her head. “Not that kind of escape. When Pieter got old enough, he went out for every sport he could. The more time he spent in school activities, the less he had to be around his dad. Pieter loved Butch, but he had to get away when he could.”

  Arn filled their cups again and grabbed the sugar. He quickly swapped it for Sweet’N Low packs. “Why didn’t Hannah just file for divorce?”

  “And lose her meal ticket?” Georgia laughed. “She knew Butch was too worried what others would say to divorce her. She had it made.”

  Arn sipped his coffee and thought what might not be covered in the police reports he’d read. “Did Butch talk about the Five Point cases to you?”

  “Incessantly. He bragged he was so close to catching him, he could smell him. He even suspected Frank. I could see why Ned Oblanski thought Frank killed Butch.”

  “But why would he have opened the door for Frank that night?” Arn asked.

  Georgia stopped her coffee cup mid-mouth. “Who says he did?”

  “Johnny White said Butch was paranoid. That he was worried about bad guys he’d put away hunting him down.”

  “He was always worried that one of those nasty bastards would find him with his guard down,” Georgia said.

  Arn knew how Butch would have lived. He had lived in that world for thirty years: Looking through the peephole before he opened the door. Glancing in the back seat of his car before he climbed in. Checking the rearview mirror more than he should have. Arn knew the hunter could easily become the hunted if caution was thrown out. So he couldn’t see Butch answering the door for Frank Dull Knife.

  “Butch would have had to let his killer in,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “The front door.” Arn
shuffled through papers before he found Pieter’s statement. “Pieter told the investigators that his dad always—and he emphasized always—locked the door when he came home from work.” He fingered the papers until he found the call log from that night. “Butch called out at home on the radio at 10:40 p.m. Between then and when Pieter called you at 1:30, Butch let his killer inside the house.”

  Georgia’s eyes widened. “Pieter had to let me in when I came over. The front door had one of those spring-loaded locks that a person could lock back. But Butch never did. But … someone inside could have tripped the lock and gone out the front, and it could have looked like Butch had locked it like he always did.”

  “That makes it easy. All I got to do is find out who Butch let in that night.”

  Arn gathered his notes together and stuffed them in his briefcase when Georgia stopped him. “Thought anymore about that dinner date?”

  “Every minute, it seems.”

  “Then when … ”

  Arn rested his hand on Georgia’s forearm and squeezed gently. “Cailee’s been dead fifteen years, and I’ve never been able to … get close to anyone else. But I’m working on it. Believe me when I say I want to call.”

  “Then do so soon, Arn Anderson, before I waste away behind the grill.”

  Fourteen

  Arn pulled into the downtown Depot Museum parking lot beside Ana Maria, who was sitting in her thirty-year-old Volkswagen. He squinted against the bright light reflecting off the ten-foot-tall horse and rider galloping in slow motion atop the Wrangler store.

  A man in a torn and faded camouflaged parka stood from his corner spot and approached them with his hands hidden inside his jacket pockets. Arn grabbed his gun from under the seat and set it between his legs. The man stopped abruptly, as if seeing something in Arn that didn’t make it worthwhile to bum drinking money. He turned around and rejoined another bum in a heavy tan coat waiting for an easier mark.

  “Shut the Beast off,” Ana Maria said. “Those noisy tappets are killing me.”

  Arn turned off the ignition. “Better?”

  “It is. Did I interrupt anything?” Ana Maria asked.

  “I was just headed over to Frank Dull Knife’s shop,” Arn said.

  “Don’t let that coyote touch your car. The last person I knew who took their outfit there ended up walking home a mile from his shop.”

  “You’re the only one that’ll touch the Beast.” Arn had bought the Oldsmobile 4-4-2 after Cailee died. He figured every man should have a midlife crisis and buy a vintage muscle car—especially when the love of his life dies prematurely. “What do you have?”

  Ana Maria handed him a copy of an ER form dated two weeks before Butch’s death. The bum who’d approached them fell to the pavement. He tried standing but had little luck. Arn didn’t really care. He wasn’t a cop anymore.

  “I’m not sure if it’s significant, but two weeks before he was murdered, Butch was rushed to the ER to have his stomach pumped,” Ana Maria said. “Seems he OD’d on his Xanax.”

  “I won’t ask who you sweet-talked to get this.”

  “It cost me lunch and an afternoon of listening to a rookie brag about the radio calls he got last week.”

  “What a trooper you are.” Arn grinned. “But everything is significant right about now.” He held the ER form at arm’s length and reached into his pocket for his glasses. “There was something in the evidence sheet about a prescription bottle … ” He thumbed through the stack of papers in Butch’s homicide file. He found the evidence sheet and donned his reading glasses.

  “Who sold you those paisley frames anyway?” Ana Maria asked.

  “Some kid at Walmart. She said it would go with my man bag and make me look ten years younger.”

  “More like ten years goofier.”

  Arn paraphrased from the evidence sheet. “The bottle of Xanax was nearly empty when the tech bagged it. ‘For anxiety’ the prescription bottle read.” He thumbed through other pages. “There’s no mention anywhere that Butch suffered from depression.” He gave Ana Maria the ER form back. “If anything, he should have been on cloud nine if he was close to solving the Five Point cases.”

  “Wouldn’t you be depressed if your wife was hosing half the men in town?”

  Arn pocketed his glasses. “You didn’t call me over here just to tell me this.”

  “Chief White’s going on the air with me tonight,” Ana Maria said.

  Arn leaned out the window and cupped his hand to his ear to shield it from a train passing through the depot. “Did I hear you right: Johnny is cooperating with the media?”

  “I think the phone call the mayor got from our station manager had something to do with it, though Chief White denies it. He said he was coming on air with me because his agency doesn’t need an outside consultant to solve their cases.”

  “What’s Johnny going to say?”

  “He’s going to renew his appeal to the public for any information on the Five Point killings ten years ago, and say that the reward money is still in escrow. He’s going to tell the public his agency is starting to man the tip line twenty-four/seven and that he’s assigning two investigators to run down any leads that come in.”

  “That might get something moving.”

  “Especially since he’s personally heading up the renewed investigation,” Ana Maria said.

  “Johnny working the case?” Arn said. “I bet he hasn’t worked an investigation since he went to administration. He must want me out of his hair pretty bad.”

  “Or he wants to shine when the city council makes a decision on the permanent chief position next week.”

  Arn started his car to leave when he saw Ana Maria made no effort to drive away. She looked at her rearview mirror, her head on a swivel looking around the parking lot. Arn turned off his car and started to speak when another Union Pacific train blew its horn, passing fifty yards on the other side of the old Union Pacific Depot. “What’s bothering you?” he asked when the train rumbled on in the distance.

  “He … he called again.”

  “The guy from the other night?”

  “Doris said it sounded like him. He wants to meet again.”

  Arn grabbed his pen. “Where?”

  “He’ll call me at seven, right after tonight’s airing.”

  “Johnny and Oblanski both blew me off when I told them about what happened with him the other night, so they won’t be any help. If we’re going to trap him—”

  “There’s not going to be a ‘we,’” Ana Maria said. “I’ve got to meet him alone.”

  “I won’t have it. You have no idea who this guy is.”

  “What if he has something that points to Butch’s killer?”

  “If that happens, you might get that national exposure you want,” Arn said.

  “There you have it. I want this story to go viral. And the only way I can is if I earn this man’s trust.”

  “And if you’re wrong, and you become the story? You may get national exposure for that, too. Didn’t Doc Henry’s attack teach you anything?”

  “It did,” Ana Maria answered at last, her voice quivering. “That’s why I called you for help.”

  “I thought you said you were meeting this guy alone?”

  “I am,” Ana Maria said. “But I need your gun to take along to the meeting.”

  Arn felt a migraine coming on, and he closed his eyes while he rubbed his temples.

  “Are you going to let me use your gun or not?”

  “Maybe I can hide in your back seat, at least?” Arn asked.

  Ana Maria laughed. “You hide in my Bug? That’s a joke. Now can I use your gun?”

  Arn looked around the parking lot. People came and went into the restaurant in the Depot Museum, and the Albany restaurant across the parking lot, but no one paid them any attention. He reached betw
een his legs and opened the cylinder. His palm concealed the gun as he handed his snubbie through the window. “It’s got five shots.”

  “Same as the one you taught me to use in Denver?”

  Arn nodded. “Same gun.”

  Ana Maria stuffed it into her purse.

  “I can’t talk you out of it?” Arn asked.

  “I’ll be all right.” Ana Maria started her car. “And if you and that old guy you’re rooming with have nothing better to do tonight, tune in and catch Johnny’s debut television appearance.”

  Fifteen

  The damned Union Pacific engineer blowing his horn deserves … okay, maybe not what the others got. But he deserves something, for tooting right when I’m trying to hear Ana Maria’s conversation with that old cop.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “What?”

  A bum in a camouflaged parka pulled tight around his dirty neck walks up to me. His hands are deep in his pockets like he’s hiding something. A weapon perhaps? I can never tell with these street people, and my hand goes under my own parka and rests on the handle of my knife.

  “Who the hell gives you the right to work this parking lot?”

  “Get lost,” I tell him as I look around him at the parking lot.

  The bum stops a few feet in front of me. His morning breath has carried over to the afternoon and just about knocks me out. But I’ve smelled worse, I tell myself. Those men ten years ago were worse, and I survived. I always will.

  The man’s hands come from inside his pockets. He has no weapon, and I walk over, closer to Anderson’s open car window.

  “I always work here. This is my corner!”

  The man won’t go away. In another time, I might have set him up and flayed him. Just for fun. But this is the reformed me, and I motion him close. “You know me?”

  The man shakes his head. “Never saw you before.”

  I bring my knife out, careful to keep it hidden in the folds of my parka. “I’m the one who’s going to gut you. After all”—I smile wide—“it’s hunting season.”