13

ARN DID HIS HUNTER’S BEST to sneak past Gorilla Legs, but the woman had some kind of superhuman hearing. Or animalistic hearing. “Where the hell you going, Anderson?” She asked from behind her desk.

“Where’s the chief’s secretary?”

“Out to lunch. You got the assistant. Now what—.”

“I need to talk with Chief Oblanski.”

“Got an appointment?”

“I do not. But I figured he’d see me if I just dropped in, since we’re pards and all.”

Gorilla Legs stood from her desk and walked towards the counter. Arn’s gaze froze, and the secretary followed Arn’s eyes. “It’s casual day, and I chose to wear shorts.”

Arn held his tongue. The woman never shaved as long as he had known her, with hair escaping under her blouses from hairy armpits, and the hint of a mustache most men would be proud of. “It’s healthier to go au naturelle,” she told Arn last summer. But he had never seen her legs… in such a state of hair growth, and she looked like she was wearing a pair of woolly chaps over those powerful legs. “This is a government agency,” she said, “not an old-boy’s club where you can just drop in and shoot the shit. Now beat it—the chief’s got a lot of work to do before budget time.”

“That’s all right,” Oblanski called, presumably from his office. “I phoned Anderson. We need to talk about something.”

She glared at Arn so long he thought she’d next throw a punch over the counter when she hit a button on her desk and buzzed him through the door. “Next time, lover boy.”

“Loverboy?” Oblanski said when Arn had walked down the hall and into the chief’s office. “You and her aren’t doing the wild thing by any chance?”

“Hardly,” Arn answered and took his hat off. “Just an old… handle, but not sure how she found out about it.” He ran his fingers through his wispy blond hair and set his hat on the chair beside him. He’d talk to Ana Maria later about letting his secret dating handle slip. “I don’t recall you phoning me for a meeting.”

“I didn’t.” Oblanski propped his foot up on an open desk drawer. “Just couldn’t have stood by while that… creature chewed you up and spit you out.”

“Then thanks for saving me.”

Oblanski chuckled and slapped a pile of papers. “I saved myself from doing this budget stuff the longer you’re in here, so it was selfish.” He picked up a pencil and began chewing the eraser end. “These No. 2 pencils have been number two for as long as I can recall.”

“Your point?”

“If they’re that popular, why aren’t they number one by now?”

“That and Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance and we’ll have all the mysteries solved,” Arn said. “Except the mystery of why eight men died at VA centers under suspicious circumstances.”

Oblanski put his foot onto the floor and rested his elbows on his desk. “What suspicious deaths?”

Arn handed Oblanski a spreadsheet Ana Maria had made covering the eight deaths. Arn explained that Ana Maria had uncovered six more veterans that had died under similar circumstances as did Steve Urchek and Frank Mosby.

“So you’re saying that the six vets besides Frank and Steve died of an apparent heart condition is somehow odd?”

“I am.”

“Do you not think it natural that older men would have heart problems leading to their deaths?”

“All died unattended, with no witnesses.”

“That certainly doesn’t ring any alarm bells for me,” He snapped his fingers. “There was something that came through the mail a couple years ago. A flyer telling about a veteran’s murder…” Oblanski opened each drawer in succession and rummaged through it.

“I bet if you asked her real sweet-like Gorilla Legs would help you find it.”

“Bite your tongue,” Oblanski said a moment before he came away with a crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded a pair of glasses and scanned the flyer.

“Since when did you start wearing readers?”

“Since my eyes got too damned old. Now you want me to read this for you, ‘cause I know your eyes are bad.”

“Read away,” Arn said as he dug his notebook out of his back pocket.

“A Vietnam Army Captain was murdered at the Sheridan VA—.”

“It says specifically ‘murdered’ and not just unattended?”

“Murdered,” Oblanski said. “Strangled. Petrie in the eyes and a crushed windpipe point to murder. Must have been a hell of a fight as the flyer says the restroom was busted up.”

“Can I see that?”

Oblanski handed Arn the flyer and he dug his own reading glasses from his pocket. He scooted closer to the window where the light shone into the office. The flyer—sent by the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office and the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation three years ago—asked agencies if they had similar deaths as Captain Sims’.

“Could you make a call to Sheridan and see what else they have.”

“That,” Oblanski said as he pointed to the flyer, “is nothing like the other deaths you described. Besides,” he tapped Ana Maria’s spreadsheet, “there was a full year between this murder and the unattended ones.”

Arn thought better with coffee and he said to Oblanski, “I’ll take that cup of coffee now.”

“I didn’t offer one.”

“I could stick my head out the door and yell at Gorilla Legs to fetch us a cup— .”

“I’ll make it,” Oblanski said and walked to his coffee maker. “Why are you so sure this one and the others are connected?” he asked over his back.

“What do serial killers all have in common?”

Oblanski laughed. “That easy—they kill.”

“Besides that, what happens the longer they kill?”

Oblanski turned and handed Arn a steaming cup. The Chief sat behind his desk and put his cup onto a leather coaster, tenting his fingers as he thought. “They get better. They learn. They improve their chosen killing technique.”

Arn nodded. “And some even become so proficient they are never caught. Can you say Zodiac Killer?”

“Ah,” Oblanski said, lightly sipping his coffee. “I see your point. You’re thinking one man has perfected his killing so well he flies under our radar?”

“I lost a goodly amount of sleep thinking about this,” Arn said. “After that first murder in Sheridan—where it was a homicide to everyone looking at it—the killer learned from that. I had a case once in Denver years ago where a man stabbed his victims to death. There was a lot of blood at his crime scenes, and his victims didn’t die easily or quickly. One clawed the hell out of him before she succumbed to her wounds. His MO suddenly went cold, even though we had several more bodies piling up. Victims killed instantly when a blade was shoved into the base of their skulls. When I finally caught the man three murders later, he admitted he needed to be more… discrete. So, he jumped on the internet and found the quickest method to kill a human with a blade, ergo the wounds to the back of the necks. Don Vito Corleone would have been proud of him.”

“You’re saying these veterans who you think were murdered were the product of a killer who perfected his technique—after Sheridan?”

“Perfected and studied and researched until he found the most proficient way to kill and make it look natural.”

Oblanski looked around for another victim-pencil. He found one at the bottom of his stack of papers and began chewing the end. “And just how did he evolve, because the others weren’t strangled.”

“But the ones we looked at—Steve and Frank—had bruising no one can explain. I think the killer incapacitated them with a brachial stun—.”

“Nonsense,” Oblanski said. “We teach that to our officers, and no one’s been incapacitated. Not even any injuries. The technique wouldn’t kill anyone.” He tossed the stub of a pencil in the round file beside his desk. “Drawing your suspicions out, it would have to be someone familiar with the VA system, meaning a vet.”

“Or an employee.”

Oblanski nodded. “Sure. It could be. That would give the killer opportunity for certain. But how do you square that victims were killed in multiple VA centers?”

“A traveling employee,” Arn said. “Here look.” He turned Ana Maria’s spreadsheet so Oblanski and he could both look at it. “I thought at first it was someone on the move—perhaps they lived in the northern Black Hills and—when they moved to the Cheyenne area—started killing again. But these dates are random. They show someone who moves between facilities, and there is no pattern.”

“Back to the manner of their deaths… though I can’t speak for those deaths we didn’t investigate; the ME has already ruled Frank Mosby’s was natural.”

Arn waved the air, frustrated that he couldn’t quite get his point across to the police chief. “I read the death certificate—mechanism of death was a cardiac arrhythmia.” Arn leaned across the desk. “But that was before the tox report came in.”

“Arn,” Oblanski said, “you know how backed up the crime lab is. When a person dies of natural causes, they don’t order a toxicology screen.”

“But they have to for unattended deaths.”

“They do, but if it’s a natural death, the samples the ME submits take a back burner to obvious cases of foul play.” Oblanski finished his coffee and pushed the cup aside. “What are you getting at exactly?”

Arn smoothed what wispy blond hair he had left and put his hat on. “I think these men were all killed with some… substance. Maybe something the lab doesn’t test for.”

“For that, we would have to ask the lab to test for some specific substance.”

“You would.”

“All right,” Oblanski said. “What substance?”

“I don’t know,” Arn said. “But I’m working on it. In the meantime, could you put a rush on Frank’s tox report?”

Oblanski drooped his head. “You are one pain the rear end, but I’ll do it, just ’cause you spared me an hour of looking at budget crap.”

Arn started for the door when he stopped and turned back.

“Now what?” Oblanski asked.

“Doc Henry.”

“That murderer who abducted Ana Maria in Denver? What’s he to you now with him being somebody’s girlfriend in prison?”

“He’s living and working here in Cheyenne.”

“What! I thought you said he’d been paroled to Colorado?”

“He was,” Arn explained, “though I couldn’t believe it, either, that they allowed him to move to the same community where his last victim lives.

“But how—.”

“You know the drill. Shit head gets a sentence reduction because he’s a model prisoner, then another and before long he’s out. To reoffend again.”

“We haven’t had any dealings with him.”

Arn knew that law enforcement was reactive—if a crime occurred, the police responded. Oblanski and his department could do nothing until Doc made a move against Ana Maria. But—by then—it might be too late. “Could you fill your officers in about Doc Henry?”

“You know I will.”

“And have a patrol cruise by the house and the television station now and again?”

Oblanski nodded.

“Thanks.”

Arn turned to leave once again when Oblanski stopped him. “I have a small favor to ask you now.”

“Oh?” Arn said, detecting something in Oblanski’s voice that told Arn no good would come out of his mouth.

“Yes… Gorilla Legs lost her apartment when the owner sold the building. She has to be out of there by the first of the month.”

“I hate to ask—what’s that got to do with me?”

“I noticed you are still remodeling your mother’s old house… and even with Ana Maria and that old Indian staying with you I’m betting you have an extra room—.”

“Not on your life—.”

“It would only be temporary,” Oblanski argued, “until she could find another crib. Doc Henry wouldn’t dare cross your threshold with Gorilla Legs there.”

“Ned,” Arn said as slowly and sternly as he could, “I would rather French-kiss a rattlesnake than have Gorilla legs living under my roof.”