Hunting the Five Point Killer

by C. M. Wendelboe

Emma shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

  “So someone might have?” Ana Maria pressed.

  Emma looked longingly at the bathroom door. “I’ve got bladder issues. Always have. I can’t seem to drink a cup of joe that I don’t have to pee. That was the only times I left that window that night, when I had to take a whiz.”

  As if to punctuate her explanation, she used the arms of the chair to stand and shuffled into the bathroom. Ana Maria leaned over and whispered, “You think someone was there that night before Georgia came over?”

  Arn checked his watch. “We’ll see.”

  Emma was in the bathroom long enough to tat several doilies, Arn thought, checking his watch. When she finally emerged, she pulled her dress over her legs.

  “Eight minutes is long enough to kill anyone,” he whispered to Ana Maria. He jotted in his notes that someone could have come to the house before Georgia did while Emma was in the bathroom. “Did anyone come to the house after Georgia?” he asked.

  Emma tatted lace.

  “Besides the police?” he pressed.

  “That no-account Indian she was sparkin’,” Emma said.

  “Frank Dull Knife?”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  “He came that night?” Arn asked.

  “Don’t try to confuse me!” Emma grabbed a small pair of scissors and snipped the string. She spread the doily across her lap, her head bobbing as she focused through her trifocals. “Of course he didn’t come that night. He came around after the cop was killed. To see Hannah.”

  “Often?” Ana Maria asked.

  Emma stopped, working her fingers out of the scissors. “That’s the odd part. The Indian came around quite a bit before the cop died, when he was out working. But after the murder, I only saw the Indian once.”

  Ana Maria moved closer and met Emma’s eyes. “When was that, Emma?”

  “Couple weeks after it happened. Hannah chased him into the yard, grabbing his greasy hair. Slapped him. He turned and knocked her to the ground. ‘If you don’t come back,’ she screamed, ‘I’m going to tell.’”

  “Tell what?” Arn asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” Emma wheezed between her dentures. “I’m not nosy.”

  Pimple Face was knocking snow off his Nikes, and a stocking cap had replaced his AC/DC cap. “Guess he actually thought you’d call the state inspectors,” Ana Maria said as they stepped onto a clean walk. The kid had sprinkled snow melter on the steps, and Arn was grateful that Ana Maria wouldn’t have another YouTube moment as he picked his way down.

  He held the car door for Ana Maria and walked around to the driver’s side. As Arn was halfway through his entry ritual, he froze. A solitary shoe print—distinct among other shuffling prints that were not his—had been set in the snow beside the door.

  He crawled out and looked closer at the print. It was placed a few feet beside tire treads that had pulled up to Arn’s rental. Someone had stood where Arn stood, but there was no damage to his car. Nothing taken.

  “What is it?”

  He motioned for Ana Maria. She climbed out and walked around the car. As soon as she cleared the trunk, she spotted the print. She paled when she realized the implications. “It’s that same print that was at Gaylord’s house.” She trembled noticeably as she looked around the cul-de-sac. “And on Delbert Urban’s back. And Joey Bent’s house.”

  “And just outside my car when it got vandalized.”

  “Another warning?” Ana Maria asked.

  “Or the killer’s throwing down the gauntlet. Let the games begin,” Arn said to himself. “I’m tired of being the hunted.”

  Thirty-Seven

  “Piss on you.” I give some prick backing out of his driveway the middle finger. This is a public street. I can sit here as long as I’m not blocking his drive. And if he thinks I’m looking at some babe with my spotting scope—I am. I lower it. Now’s not the time to throw caution to the wild wind just because I want to see Anderson’s reaction. And watching Ana Maria’s reaction to seeing the shoe print is a bonus. Still, it wouldn’t do for the police to get a call about a long-distance window peeper sitting on the street, and I drive away.

  This is the second time I acted impulsively today. The first when I followed Anderson and Ana Maria to the Shady Rest and, on a whim, drove the cul-de-sac and turned around. I stopped next to Anderson’s rental car and grabbed my shoes from their box. Did I put that single shoe print by his car door to warn him? I thought I did. Until just now, when I saw how he nervously checked the area when he found it.

  I hope he doesn’t take it as a warning.

  For excitement’s sake, I hope he takes it as a challenge.

  Come find me, Mr. Metro Cop.

  Thirty-Eight

  Danny came down the stairs, drywall mud caked to his sweatpants and the front of his T-shirt. “Cop out front.”

  Arn moved the blanket masquerading as a curtain aside. A white Crown Vic had pulled to the curb across the street. “How you know it’s a cop?”

  Danny stopped at the coat closet long enough to grab his field jacket. “Trust me, it’s a cop.”

  “Where are you going? I’m sure he’s not here for you.”

  “I’ve got to walk the dog.”

  “By the back door?” But Danny had disappeared by the time the knock came.

  Oblanski stood in front of the door with his hands in his pockets, looking like he’d pulled an all-nighter at the local bar. He craned his neck around the door and looked inside. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” He nodded to the bare walls, seeing where insulation on old wiring had flayed to reveal exposed ends that needed taping off. Danny had wired a single naked bulb that dangled in the middle of the room with a drop cord that strung from the kitchen for power. The bare subfloor hadn’t been covered yet, and the staircase railing lay where it had fallen down the night before. “Is this what I got to look forward to in retirement?”

  “You should have seen it when we started.”

  “We?”

  “Handyman who’s helping me.” Arn looked to the back door. “He had to leave for a minute. Come in.”

  Arn led Oblanski through the house to the kitchen. Danny had hung and taped new drywall and routed the countertop edges yesterday. Arn motioned to chairs around a small table he’d bought at Walmart last night. “This will have to do me until my furniture arrives from storage.” He offered Oblanski a cup of coffee, but Oblanski declined.

  “This isn’t police coffee,” Arn pointed out.

  “In that case,” Oblanski said, accepting the cup.

  Arn sat across from him and slid a sugar bowl over. “Must be important for the chief to come around.”

  “Acting chief.”

  “You sound like Johnny now.”

  “Hope I don’t wind up like him,” Oblanski said.

  “How’s he doing?”

  Oblanski sipped lightly at first, then took a deeper drink. A smile crossed his face. “This is pretty good. Maybe I’ll marry you.” Arn debated telling him that Danny had made the coffee and the old man was already spoken for.

  “Johnny’s still stable,” Oblanski went on. “The docs say he’s doing better than expected. They’ll probably bring him out of the coma late today just long enough that I can talk with him for a bit.” He cupped his hands around the mug and was silent for long moments before he looked up. “With Johnny out of it, I’m the one who has to go on air with Ana Maria tonight. Gonna be different going on being the acting chief. What do I say on TV?”

  Arn kicked his bad leg back, the stiffness slowly leaving these last days as the swelling subsided. The doctor had taken the stitches in his ear out yesterday, and his sliced cheek was healing as good as expected for a fifty-five-year-old man. “Tell the viewers we’re close to solving Butch’s murder. Tell them some new evidence has come in thro
ugh the tip line that connects Butch to the Five Point Killer cases.” Arn stood to refill their cups. “And tell them we have a strong suspect in Johnny’s shooting.”

  “But we don’t have anything new.”

  “You ever do much hunting, Ned?”

  “I go to a pheasant farm every year, is about all I have time for.”

  “Well, I’ve hunted everything in this state, and most in other places. I especially liked to hunt bear when I was younger.”

  “I detect a moral to this parable?”

  “No, but there is a lesson.” Arn wiped coffee dripping down the side of his cup. “When you hunt bear, you bait them. I’ve hunted over elk or deer gut piles. Sometimes sweet gooey things like donuts and syrup, and I sat over the bait. Either way, you make the bear think you have something. You lure him in from the woods with the thought of that bait going down his hungry gullet.” He downed the last of his coffee and set the cup on the counter. “If you convince the killer we have more, he’ll want to come in and see for himself. We’ll make him hungry with our bait.”

  “If he’ll be watching.”

  “He’ll be watching all right. He can’t drag himself away from the television,” Arn said. “If you make the killer think we have something substantial, it’ll bring him in from the woods. Like the bear. Then we’ll have him.”

  Oblanski stood and finished off his coffee. He stood, thinking. “Why do I get the impression you know more than you’re telling me?”

  Arn remained silent.

  “You still don’t trust me, do you? You still think I was hiding something because I never told anyone I danced with Hannah that night.”

  “It does look … odd,” Arn said. “But that may be the only thing it is: odd. And you’re right, I do have something.”

  “What is it? We had an agreement to share information.”

  “I haven’t put it straight in my head yet. There’s something I’m missing.” Arn tapped his temple. “This damned thick Norwegian head of mine, I guess. But I’ll figure it out just as soon as I make a few more inquiries.”

  Arn pulled through the circular driveway that lapped the front of Jefferson and Adelle Dawes’ house and parked under a pine tree twice as tall as the power pole at the edge of the property. He extricated himself from the Clown Car and was hauling himself out by the door when his hand slipped and he fell in the snow. He grabbed the side of the car and stood. He brushed himself off, looking around to see if anyone had seen him making a fool of himself. But there was no one else visible on either side of the tree-lined street. Arn figured that by the looks of the neighborhood, they were probably busy online with their stockbrokers.

  He ducked his head inside the car, rubbing his sore leg. He grabbed his man bag and shouldered it as he started up the winding pathway to the house. Native grasses coexisted with winter-blooming wildflowers lining one side of the walkway, dwarf orange and apple trees the other side. Arn was gawking at the foliage when he came around the corner of the garage and nearly collided with Jefferson Dawes. The doctor stood with one leg against the side of the garage, stretching, wearing running shorts despite the frigid temperature.

  Jefferson straightened up and arched his back. He grinned at Arn’s man bag. “Adelle said you were coming over to talk with her. I’d stick around, but I got to get run time in when I can.” As Arn looked after him jogging down the hill toward the outskirts of town, he wondered where Jeff was running to. And to whose arms he was running.

  “Who the hell gets drenched in cologne before a run,” he said to himself as he walked toward the massive front doors.

  The front door opened before he reached it, and Arn stopped in his tracks. Adelle stood framed in the doorway wearing an oversized Denver Broncos sweatshirt and baggy shorts big enough to fit Arn. She was barefoot, with purple polish caked to her scaly toes. She wore no makeup to hide the triple bags under her bloodshot bleary eyes, and her hair looked like she’d just stuck her head in a blender. You didn’t have to get fixed up for me, Arn thought. Adelle was looking a lot like his Uncle Tony, with his scaly elbows and beer belly that cascaded over his belt, and Arn couldn’t imagine why Jeff would ever want to mess around on the hunk of burning love gracing the doorway.

  “You set off the security cameras coming up the walk,” she spit out. Where the entryway smelled like it had been drenched in Old Spice after the doctor left, Adelle’s breath smelled like she’d drunk some. She stood aside to let Arn into the house, waving the air with a cigarette. “I was wondering when you’d come around asking your fool questions.”

  Adelle’s morning breath had carried over into afternoon breath and reeked of last night’s bender. Arn’s first thought was of that gut pile he’d told Oblanski he hunted bears over. “This way,” she said, as if directing a servant.

  Adelle had definitely traded up from Gaylord, Arn observed as he followed her waddling through twelve-foot-high hallways adorned with original art on either side, past a gas fireplace that disappeared somewhere in the ceiling. He sank in burgundy carpeting as they walked past double doors and into a den lined with leather-bound books along one wall, medical journals and reference books on another. Adelle motioned to twin leather chairs across from a matching chocolate leather divan. “Sit wherever,” she said and staggered to a wet bar. “What you drinking?”

  “It’s a little early for me,” Arn answered as he opened his bag and grabbed his field notes.

  Adelle’s double chin bounced as she laughed. “It’s never too early.”

  Ice tinkled in a tall tumbler, and she struggled with a stopper before it finally popped out of the decanter. She took a long pull before pouring some in her glass and plopping into a chair, her fat folds blending with the folds of the overstuffed chair. She draped one beefy leg over the arm and surveyed Arn through the glass as she focused on him. “You married?”

  “Widowed.”

  She looked in the direction of the front door as if she expected Jefferson to return. “Well, don’t ever get married again.”

  Arn stood by a fireplace mantle, which was cold and lifeless this morning like Adelle and Jefferson’s marriage. Two badges sat side by side, one labeled “Gaylord” and the other “Steve.”

  “That was Bobby Madden’s idea.” Adelle pointed with her glass. “He thought I might like to have my brother’s badge. And when Gaylord hung himself, Bobby asked if I wanted that one too.” She swirled the drink around in her glass. “I told him what the hell, I might as well retain some little memories from those days. Just too bad … ”

  Arn sat on the couch and waited for her to continue.

  “Too bad about Butch’s badge,” she said. “I thought it would be nice to have all three badges lined up there. Like they were ready for roll call. But Georgia told me to pack sand if I wanted his.”

  “I saw Butch’s badge pinned to his old uniform down at the Police Department.”

  Adelle shrugged. “It would have been nice to have something from all three. They really were closer than … a lot of the old guys at the department think.” She took another swallow of breakfast. “How’s Johnny coming along?”

  “Doing well,” Arn said. “I think he’ll pull out of it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Any suspects?”

  Arn hesitated. Up until now, he hadn’t given Adelle or her husband a second thought. Until he smelled the Old Spice as he walked up to the Dawes’ front door. “Ned Oblanski’s working on some promising leads,” he lied.

  Adelle took a long pull of her drink. Some sloshed out of the class and spilled on her stained sweatpants. “Guess Johnny will be able to identify his shooter when he comes to?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, he sure the hell wasn’t shot in the back or anything. If he was shot in the chest, he’d damn sure know who did it.”

  Arn had been helping Danny hang ceiling drywall and hadn’t caugh
t Oblanski’s interview. He’d have to ask him if he mentioned where Johnny was shot. “I don’t know,” he lied again.

  “Well, why the hell you come out here and mingle with us … neat and elite?”

  Arn opened his bag. The fish under the glass aquarium coffee table skitted to the corners as Arn laid his notebook on it and flipped to his notes. “I need to ask some questions about Gaylord.”

  Adelle waved her glass, and her bourbon brunch sloshed down the front of her sweatshirt. She winked at Arn. “You want to dry it off?”

  Arn remained wisely silent.

  “Well, neither does Jefferson these days.” She took another pull of her breakfast. “But I thought you were hired to find Butch’s killer?”

  “Gaylord and Butch were working on several cases together at the time. I’m just trying to put everything together, especially since they died so close in time to one another.”

  She downed her drink and waved her glass in the air. “Ask away.”

  “How long was Gaylord involved in the autoerotic practice?”

  “How should I know?” Adelle used the side of the chair to stand and headed for the wet bar. “That sicko bastard may have always done it while we were married.” She looked at the front door again. “Wives are always the last to find things out.”

  More ice tinkling, and Adelle tipped the last of her bourbon into her glass. She wrapped both hands around the decanter like she was wringing out the last drop, while Arn remained quiet. Waiting for her to tell him things. And she did. “I was eight years older than Gaylord when we married. At the time, people thought I was a real catch. What ya’ think?”

  Arn shrugged. Answering truthfully wouldn’t get him the information he needed.

  “Daddy wanted me to marry one of his junior loan officers. ‘He’ll be president when I retire someday,’ Daddy said.” She sucked an ice cube and her cheek bulged out like a squirrel storing up for winter. “But I didn’t get along very well with my father. ‘Piss on you’ I told him one day when he pushed the loan officer on me. I ran away and married Gaylord.” She leaned forward and her loose sweatshirt dropped down. Arn looked away. That wasn’t the only thing drooping down.