Hunting the Five Point Killer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Just great.”

  “But you’re in luck. I got a friend who’s a master electrician.”

  “What would that cost me?” Arn pulled his stocking cap over his ears and tugged at his gloves.

  “Nothing.” Danny smiled and hooked his thumbs in his patched jeans. “He just needs a place to stay.”

  “Like you needed a place?”

  “Just like me.”

  “Forget it,” Arn said. “I adopted you, but I can’t afford to adopt another … homeless person.”

  “A professional will cost a mint. Let him stay. Just for a couple of nights.”

  Arn grabbed his flashlight and opened his door. He tucked his notebook between his shirt and his jacket. “We’ll talk about it another time. You coming in?”

  “Where some guy hung himself?” Danny said. “Excuse me, but I’m just a little superstitious. Especially since old Gaylord did it not a block from a Catholic church.” Danny pulled his cap down over his eyes and drew his coat around him as he leaned back as best he could. “Besides, this will give me a chance to catch up on my sleep, since someone’s snoring’s been waking me up at night.”

  Arn started to argue, to tell Danny his own snoring was waking him up at night, but slammed the door before the wind took it off. He put his hand on top of his stocking cap and headed for the front door. It was much like his mother’s had been: kicked in, hanging by rusty hinges that threatened to give way in the slightest breeze.

  The windows had been broken, and the west wind had whipped the mold-crusted curtains to shreds. The rest of the windows had plywood nailed over them, one sheet ripped away and lying in splinters, halfway in and halfway out of the dilapidated house.

  Arn shone his light on two sets of footprints, coming and going off the porch. It was hard to age them with the wind; they could have been made this morning, or they could have been made an hour ago. He patted his gun in his front trouser pocket and stepped past the broken door.

  Adelle said she’d auctioned everything in the house after Gaylord’s death, except for some junk no one would buy like the three-legged occasional chair leaning against one wall, waiting for someone to sit and relax. Just like a Currier and Ives postcard, Arn thought, playing his light around the living room. Empty Spam cans and chip bags littered the floor, and a wine bottle lay where it had been smashed against one wall. Colored light reflected Arn’s flashlight, casting odd, animated shadows on the mold-blackened ceiling that brought his neck hairs to attention.

  He tucked the flashlight under his armpit and opened his notebook on the occasional chair. Butch and Oblanski had investigated Gaylord’s death, and Arn thumbed through the reports until he found the sketch Oblanski had made of Gaylord’s house the night of his death. He turned around in the room until he oriented himself with the door leading to the basement stairwell.

  Stuffing the notebook back inside his jacket, he walked to the stairs, stepping over a broken beer bottle. A used syringe crushed under his foot, and he stepped over a crusted condom. He put his hand on the knob and pulled, expecting the door to be stuck from years of disuse. But it swung open freely, the rusty hinges making a grinding sound like a casket lid being opened upon exhumation.

  He caught sudden movement to his right. Coming at him. A blur in the darkness, just outside the periphery of his flashlight. Arn flattened himself against the wall and clawed for the revolver in his pocket when a calico cat—as large as a terrier—bolted past him. It swiped at his trouser leg in passing, ripping the denim.

  Arn’s hand came out of his jacket and clutched his chest as he bent over, sucking in air, his side aching like he’d just run a hard mile. The flashlight rolled on the floor where he’d dropped it, the beam illuminating the cavernous stairwell.

  He snatched the flashlight and picked his way down the stairs. A step buckled under his weight and he grabbed for the stair railing. It ripped from the wall and hit him in the knee. He stifled a cry of pain out of fear of hearing his own voice loud in the creepy house. “Be careful of a couple bums I’ve run out of there”—Pieter’s words of warning came back to him. But at the moment, he feared the wild cat returning for a rematch more than the bums.

  He descended the rest of the steps more carefully, leading with his flashlight. He reached the basement, and dirty snow and twigs from a bush outside pelted him through a broken window.

  Arn reached inside his shirt and took out the floor plan of the basement that Butch had sketched at the time. He turned it to orient himself and found the first room off the bathroom: Gaylord’s man cave. Oblanski had labeled it “Family Room” and Arn suppressed a laugh, thinking it some irony Gaylord masturbated in the family room.

  The door swung in as easily as the basement door had, and Arn laid his hand on the butt of his gun, playing the light around, expecting the bums to rush him. But only the wind whipping dirt over a broken-down couch greeted him, and he breathed slowly to calm his heart.

  He kneeled down and weighted the sketch with a rock on one corner, a broken water faucet on the other as he shuffled through the photos. Had he just now trembled when he found the picture of Gaylord hanging? He’d never been superstitious like Danny, yet the goose bumps along his arm competed with the hair on his neck to indicate otherwise.

  He stood with the photo in hand, playing the light on the rafters above. Closing his eyes, Arn imagined Gaylord standing on a stool that had fallen out of the way, hand dangling at his sides, one hand on the escape knot that failed as he looked at porn propped against a full-length mirror in front of him. “Did you swing after you passed out?” Arn heard himself say, and he shuddered anew. The victims of his investigations often had a way of talking to him, and he to them. But this was one conversation he didn’t want to have. Not right here. Perhaps I should have waited until morning …

  Then his light fell on the rafter that seemed to be the one where Gaylord had secured his rope. He moved to one side as he compared the death photo with the exact area overhead. Shining his light from different angles, Arn raised up on tip toe and felt along the length of the beam, but he found no telltale gouge marks in the roughhewn wood. Then something fluttered overhead, and he saw that it was a single strand of cotton rope, the only thing remaining that marked where Gaylord had hung.

  Arn looked at the pictures again, confirming that this was the very rafter that Gaylord used. Yet there was an absence of gouge marks, which would have indicated that Gaylord practiced autoeroticism while hanging regularly. But the photos showed hard-core porn propped against a mirror in front of where Gaylord hung, watching himself in the mirror while he reached the ultimate high.

  The mirror. Arn strained his memory. The mirror. Where the hell did the mirror hang? If I had been smart enough to bring the pictures of the rest of the house along …

  He snapped his fingers involuntarily, and the sound started him. “The damned mirror,” he blurted out, finally recalling photos taken of the upstairs rooms. An intricately carved five-foot mirror, scalloped at the top, had hung in the Fournier’s upstairs hallway. But the photos taken at the time of Gaylord’s death showed a sun-bleached part of the wall where the mirror must have hung for years. And which was suddenly—at the time of his death—absent from that spot.

  Arn walked bent over as he shone his flashlight around the basement floor, working slowly until his light caught a reflection of broken glass. He kicked a piece of cardboard blown against a wall. It flew across the room, revealing the scalloped frame of the mirror rotting beside a splintered dresser drawer. “No one takes a mirror down every time they use it, then puts it back,” he muttered. He couldn’t see Gaylord taking it down every time he did his dirty deed downstairs. He would have just bought another long mirror.

  “I think you were murdered,” Arn said aloud. “But who?” The answer came easily: the Five Point Killer, the only person who would think it through enough to set Gaylord up to look like
his escape knot failed.

  Arn stuck the flashlight under his arm, bending to put the pictures back in his notebook, when his light caught movement in a broken piece of mirror. Movement coming at him. Movement that might be the cat coming back for that rematch.

  He turned at the sound of glass crunching under feet. Felt a strong arm encircle his neck. Quick. Sudden. Pulling him back off balance, lifting him off the floor. Arn yelled, but his cries were muted. He felt himself go under even as he clawed helplessly at his attacker’s forearm.

  He dropped his flashlight and it rolled aimlessly across the floor, reflecting in the shards of mirror some sinister figure behind him as he lost consciousness.

  Arn came to. Choking. Gasps coming in short spurts past the rope around his neck.

  He kicked his dangling feet beneath him, struggling for something to stand on, something to relieve the intense pressure. He tried breaking free of the plastic ties that bound his wrists, but they held fast. Cutting deeper. But there was nothing to ease the impending loss of his life only moments away.

  The figure walked around Arn, watching his agony from different angles. Through some type of mask across his face, Arn saw the person smiling, even in the blackness of the basement.

  The man passed in front of him. Arn kicked out, his blow landing on his attacker’s shoulder. The figure stumbled against a broken window, then growled with an intense fury as he picked himself up and moved behind Arn. He threw himself on him, his weight dragging Arn down tighter on the noose. No sound escaped Arn’s constricted throat. His head felt as if it would implode with the loss of air, the life leaving him.

  No. Air. Swaying. Like Gaylord swung. Legs twitched. Heart slowed. Chest heaved. Only. Seconds. Left …

  Someone grunted in the darkness like a wild hog and rushed, knocking the attacker off Arn and onto the floor.

  Danny yelled and kicked out. The figure avoided Danny’s kick and hit him on the side of the head. Danny rolled across the floor and came to rest against a wall. The figure lunged at him, but Danny slashed the air with a knife as Arn lost consciousness once again.

  He was only remotely aware of someone lifting him up, relieving the pressure on his windpipe. Air rushed in, searing his lungs. The awareness of pain returned as he sucked in great gasps of stale, basement-mildewed air.

  “Here,” Danny said as he put the knife in Arn’s hand. “You’re too damned big for me to hold you and cut the rope, too.”

  Arn stared, disbelieving, at the knife, his flashlight somewhere on the floor bouncing off the bright blade. “Cut the damned rope above your head!” Danny yelled.

  Arn felt for the rope. Found it. Sawed it with both hands still secured by the plastic tie, thinking how the hell does Danny dull his knives so much …

  Arn fell to the floor on top of the old man. Danny squirmed to get out from under Arn and then flopped back onto the floor. Arn rolled over, blood sticky on the back of his neck. Danny’s blood, and Arn felt Danny’s head. He squirmed, and Arn tried telling him to lie still, but no words came from his bruised throat.

  He took off his jacket and stuffed it under Danny’s head as he felt in his pocket for his bandana. Danny opened his eyes and forced a smile. “Did I ever tell you you’re too damned big to hold up?”

  Arn focused on the knife still in his hand, expecting his attacker to return. “I think you told me,” was his guttural, raspy answer. The pain travelled along his throat and he struggled to stand, but Danny grabbed his shoulder and eased him back down.

  Arn clawed at his trouser pocket; his gun still there, useless. “We need to get out of here,” he said. It came out in little more than a whimper. “He might come back.”

  “I doubt it.” Danny patted Arn’s pocket for his cell phone. “I heard a car start up a few seconds after he ran out. Who was it?”

  Arn shook his head, and even that slight movement brought pain. “Came up behind me. Didn’t see him. Had a ski mask.”

  “That was no ski mask,” Danny said as he punched in 911. “That was a surgical mask.”

  Forty-Five

  Arn awoke again on his way to the hospital as paramedics monitored his heart rate and adjusted a saline drip. The bag swayed over his head every time the ambulance hit a bump or took a turn. Arn tried talking to the medics, but his swollen throat had left his voice somewhere in Gaylord’s basement. A lady paramedic rested her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t try talking until you’ve been examined. Your friend showed us where you were hanging, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Arn swallowed hard and managed to ask where Danny was before pain overtook him again.

  “That little old fella?” she answered. “We cleaned the cut on his head and slapped a Steri-Strip over it. He refused to ride in and get checked out. Said the bandage was good enough for him. He said to tell you he was driving your car back to your house.”

  “But he doesn’t have a license.”

  The paramedic grinned. “Then I guess you can ask the policeman waiting for you to ticket him. Here is where we go in.”

  The ambulance drove into a sally port and stopped. Nurses jerked open the back doors and hit the air ride. The ambulance slowly lowered as the air hissed out of the suspension until Arn’s gurney could be wheeled off. “I can walk,” he heard himself say, but he wasn’t sure if anyone heard his raspy pleas.

  Arn awoke from a light sleep, the product of something the paramedics had given him on the ride in. Or the product of an adrenaline dump from fighting for his life in Gaylord’s basement. He tried sitting, but gentle hands eased him back down.

  “Danny called and told me paramedics were transporting you to the hospital,” Ana Maria said. “He told me what happened.”

  “I thought you had a date with your bodyguard?”

  “He’s waiting outside the ER. I thought you were more important than a free meal.”

  Ana Maria stepped out when an emergency room doctor who looked young enough to be Arn’s grandson—if he had a grandson—pulled aside the curtain. He snatched a metal clipboard hanging from the foot of Arn’s bed, scanned it quickly, and moved to the side of the bed. He deftly retrieved a small pen light from his pocket protector. “Open wide, Mr. Anderson. Not too wide, just enough so I can see what damage was done.”

  The doctor shone his light around inside Arn’s throat, his glasses riding on top of his head. When he finished, he brought the glasses down and gently felt Arn’s neck. He clicked off the light and it disappeared back into his pocket protector. “You’re lucky. I see no permanent damage. But we’re going to run x-rays just to be safe. You’re going to be talking like you’ve been eating gravel for a while, but you’ll recover.”

  “Thanks, doc,” Arn heard himself say, but he didn’t recognize his own voice.

  The doctor nodded and pulled the curtain back. “He’s all yours,” he told Ana Maria, his eyes lingering on her just a bit longer. She pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed, while the doctor’s voice trailed off as he ordered x-rays.

  “If you played your cards right”—Arn forced a smile—“I think you could have a dinner date with that doctor, too.”

  “Naw,” Ana Maria said. “He probably just wants his car tuned up.” She grew serious and took Arn’s hand, careful not to disturb the saline injection spot. “I think with this, along with everything else that’s happened, I can convince DeAngelo to stop the special.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Arn said. He gagged and reached for a glass of ice water by the bed. He sucked slowly on the straw until he was able to continue. “We’re close to finding Butch’s killer. And probably Gaylord’s and Steve’s as well. And you want to pull the plug?”

  “How do you know we’re close?”

  “What did you tell me when you started getting threats?” Arn said. “’We must be getting close. The son of a bitch is worried.’ Well, the son-of-a-bitch must be worried if he tried killin
g me tonight.”

  Ana Maria’s eyes welled up and she wiped them with the back of her hand. “But it’s not worth you getting killed.”

  “Unless we find the killer,” Oblanski said. He’d parted the curtain and glared at Ana Maria before pulling a chair close to Arn’s bed. “I know you can’t talk very good right now, but give me the quick and the dirty of what happened tonight.”

  Arn tried sitting, and Ana Maria propped pillows behind his back. “Me and Danny went to Gaylord’s old house, the one Pieter Spangler bought—”

  “Who’s Danny?”

  “Guy I hired to help me renovate Mom’s house.”

  “We’ll need a statement from him.”

  “I’ll tell him.” Arn ran his tongue across his dry lips and reached for the glass of ice water on the tray. Ana Maria handed it to him and angled the straw so he could drink. “We went to the house, but Danny got hinked and stayed in the car while I went in.”

  “Why’d you go there?”

  “I wanted to see where Gaylord hung himself,” Arn said between sips. “I thought his death might have been suspicious.”

  Oblanski shook his head. “I worked with Butch on Gaylord’s case. I wasn’t the most experienced investigator at the time, but I’d been on the street long enough to know a setup when I saw it. And Gaylord’s was no setup. He died just like we noted.”

  “Even though I found evidence that he was probably murdered?”

  “What evidence?” Oblanski stood and nodded to Ana Maria. “Is this something she put in your head, just to sell copy?”

  “Maybe you’re pissed ’cause Arn found something you missed,” Ana Maria said. “Or doesn’t the great Ned Oblanski ever miss anything?”

  “I didn’t miss a thing.”

  The ice water soothed Arn’s throat, and he took another long sip before handing it to Ana Maria with a shaky hand. “There were no gouge marks in the rafters where Gaylord hung himself.”