6

ARN PULLED INTO THE CIRCULAR driveway of the house that Frank and Helen had lived in since they were first married shortly out of high school. The two-story brick affair stood in the historic part of Cheyenne on Carey where—in Cheyenne’s infancy—the Cheyenne to Black Hills Stage Line rolled by twice a week on the way to Custer City and Deadwood beyond. Now all that rolled up was an aging former homicide detective who still retained some small amount of justice for those who can’t speak for themselves. As Arn climbed out of his car and walked towards the door, he thought of Frank and Steve—both who could never speak for themselves again.

Helen stooped bent over picking up loose pinecones under the bough of a huge evergreen. When she spotted Arn, she used the trunk to stand slowly. She put her hands on the small of her back and arched, stretching, before pulling her wide, floppy hat over her eyes against the bright morning sun. “If you take a seat, I’ll bring us some lemonade.”

“That would hit the spot.” Arn took off his Stetson and ducked low under overhanging pine branches to a wrought-iron wino bench well out of the blistering sun. As he waited for Helen to return with the lemonade, he thought back to the many times he had sat on this very spot whenever he’d come back to Cheyenne to visit his mother before she passed. Towards the end of her life, Arn found himself more and more sitting here talking with Helen. Fearing what lay ahead for her after she died, Arn’s mother had practically lived in the Greek Orthodox church that she’d been a member of since he was a youngster. She had tried her best to shame Arn into attending as well, but something about the dedication required to be Orthodox frightened him.

And Jessup. He and his childhood buddy would sit on this bench for hours after they were grown men. Arn would relate his exploits, about gory crime scenes he’d responded to as a Denver Metro cop, while Jessup told Arn of gory details of accidents on the slope when he was a ski bum in Telluride. Before the mountain claimed Jessup in a freak avalanche.

Helen returned balancing a sweaty pitcher in one arm, glasses in the other, and set them atop a small, round glass table in front of the bench. She poured lemonade over ice in both tumblers before sitting next to Arn. “I take it you’re here to tell me how stupid it was for this old woman to suspect her husband and brother had been murdered.”

Arn sipped his drink, drawing his explanation out slowly. He had rehearsed it on his way over, figuring just what he would tell Helen. He had thought hard about the photos of Frank’s crime scene—for he had realized after comparing the two deaths it was a crime scene. He recalled Frank’s body where it had hit the sink in falling down, and Steve’s final resting place on the toilet in the Ft. Meade restroom. At first, he reasoned that there was no connection, that he was placing too much stock in his gut—a feeling that had served him through thirty years as a lawman. He told himself that common sense would overcome him, and he would be left with explaining to Helen her women’s intuition was no more reliable than Arn’s gut instinct. Until he compared more closely both crime scenes and determined that he and Helen were right. “Frank and Steve were both combat vets— .”

“You know that were,” Helen said. She took a neckerchief from around her hat and dabbed the sweat from her forehead.

“And they were officers.”

Helen set her hat down and looked at Arn. “Are you trying to tell me there was a connection?”

Arn nodded. “I’m thinking there must be something in their war service that is common to them.”

“But both served in Vietnam, though at different times and different places.” She held up her hand. “I know you’re thinking there may be some connection such as a run-in with another soldier who’s decided to take revenge after all these years. But Frank was an Army Captain. Military intelligence stationed in Saigon, and Steve was a Marine Lieutenant in charge of an artillery battery at Con Thien. A thousand kilometers apart.”

When Arn said nothing, she leaned closer and asked, “you have learned something that shows their deaths are connected?”

“I’m just not sure,” Arn said. “After looked at photographs of both death scenes, I saw some… commonalities between the two.”

“Such as?”

“Both Frank and Steve died in VA restrooms. Both appeared natural, but both had some discoloration on the sides of their necks that no one can explain. I’ll know more when I talk to the ME here tomorrow.” He refilled their glasses and put the cold, damp goblet against his temple to stem a rising headache as he tried wrapping his brain around what he’d seen in the photos.

About what he didn’t see that had caused him to lose sleep last night. “How about when they returned from Vietnam—did they have any run-ins with anyone you can recall? Anybody here in Cheyenne?”

Helen stood and walked to a sunflower at the edge of the tree shade and plucked a weed. “Frank worked as an oil field representative after the war. Never had a lick of trouble with anyone.”

“And Steve?”

She twirled the weed in her hand for a moment before dropping it into an apron pocket. “When Steve rotated back to the states, he went to the University of Wyoming under the GI Bill. He mentioned a time or two that he got into some heated arguments with the quarterback of the football team—Steve was an offensive end for UW. He said the man—Julie Lang—was arrogant and a bully, but he never mentioned running into the man after graduation.” She chuckled. “As big as Steve was, I doubt most men could take him on.” She brushed away a pine needle stuck to the side of her glass. “There just was nothing in our family history I could think of to connect them.” She brought the glass to her lips when she set it onto the table, her hands shaking, ice clinking in the tumbler. “I hear something in your voice that tells me you found something odd when you went to Ft. Meade.”

“It’s just a small thing. Nothing, I’m sure. I’m certain if I picked up on it the medical examiner did as well— .”

“What did you find, Arnold?”

Like Arn’s mother, Helen always called him by his Christian name when she was losing her patience. “Both Steve and Frank had slight—almost imperceptible—bruising on the sides of their necks,” he said, indicating the area between the neck and the trapezius muscle.

Helen let out a long sign and slumped back in her chair. “I didn’t see Steve’s photos, but the police investigator showed me Frank’s pictures when I asked to see them…” She looked away for a moment. When she turned back, her eyes were as wet as the side of Arn’s lemonade glass and she brushed her hand across her cheek. “Frank had a little bruise on his neck where he had hit the sink when he collapsed. I thought it likely that he would sustain such a bruise.”

“But Steve didn’t fall anywhere,” Arn said. “He simply died… sitting on the commode. And he had a bruise identical to the one on Frank’s neck.”

“What could have possibly made it then,” Helen said, “if not from someone else?”

“I don’t know,” Arn said, but he did know. Or at least, he suspected. The bruises were consistent with those made from a brachial stun, a blow police were just beginning to be taught as Arn was retiring from law enforcement. The thought of a lawman who would kill both men repulsed and frightened him. Whoever made the bruise had to know that it would not kill either man, especially someone as big as Steve. They had to have been killed another way. But how?