21

“DEANGELO SENT ME ALONG,” ANA Maria said, “only because there might be something newsworthy at the end of your rainbow of suspicions.”

“Just keep an open mind.” Arn slowed to allow a small herd of whitetail deer to cross the road.

Agent Kane of the South Dakota DCI had called last night. “You need to get up here,” he said. “We have an odd death that you might be interested in.” Arn hung up the phone and began laying out his clothes to wear for his trip to Hot Springs so Ana Maria could approve. Something about she didn’t trust his combining stripes with checks. Arn figured it must be a woman thing. He’d do his job even if he looked like he just fell off a clown car. “You’re welcome to come see for yourself,” Kane told him over the phone, “but this old feller died as peaceable and natural as you please.”

They drove past the Mammoth Site, cars in the parking lot of the archeological dig showed no shortage of people wanting to uncover the bones of the animals, and crossed a bridge over a slow running creek, until the Hot Springs VA Center loomed off to their left. Once called Battle Mountain Sanitarium, it had been the first short-term medical facility for war veterans in the country. Last year the Veterans Administration had threatened to close the facility, but public outcry kept it open.

Arn recalled one weekend in the summer of his youth when he and his father—in a rare moment of actually being a parent—made the drive to Hot Springs. They soaked in the healing waters of the mineral springs, though it did nothing to heal his father’s battle with the bottle, and he had reverted to being the mean drunk as soon as the weekend ended.

Arn parked his car in front of the enormous sandstone structure and led Ana Maria inside. The receptionist directed them to the campus police, and they walked a short hallway to where a man older than Danny sat under the “Police” sign.” With his hat tilted over his eyes, and his head bouncing now and again on his chest, Arn suspected he was still alive. They stopped in front of the VA policeman and coughed. When Arn got no response, he coughed louder. The man’s elbow fell away from the arm of the chair, jolting him rudely awake, and he rubbed the sleepers out of his eyes as he focused on Arn. “Don’t look at me like that.” the old man said. “I’m just catching a few ZZs is all. Not like anything ever happens here to need the police.”

“Except that patient who died here yesterday?”

“Oh, that.” He stood and stretched his back while he fished a pack of cigarettes from his uniform pocket. He put one in his mouth but didn’t light it as he stood under the no smoking sign. “Down the hall and to your left. Those DCI agents took over for us, and they’re interviewing folks,” he guffawed. “As if we couldn’t do the job ourselves.”

“Indeed,” Ana Maria said.

The old policeman didn’t wait for Arn and Ana Maria to leave to resume his duties. He sat back in his chair, pulled his hat down low, and started sawing logs, while his unlit cigarette still dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Ana Maria glanced back at the old man as they walked towards where the interviews were being conducted. “Good thing something bad doesn’t happen in here.”

“Like someone dying alone in the restroom,” Arn answered and stopped outside a room with a do not disturb—police interview in progress sign duct taped to the door. Chairs had been placed along the wall outside the room, but no one occupied any. “Must be something more than just some old veteran keeling over,” Ana Maria said and sat in a chair. “What did Agent Kane tell you exactly?”

“Just what I said—that there had been a death, unattended, like the others I was looking into. Asked if I wanted a firsthand look at the scene.”

“Appears we’ll know the skinny soon enough,” Ana Maria said as the door opened and a woman wearing dirt-scuffed pants and the top of a janitor left the room. A stocky man—squat was Arn’s first impression—followed her out of the room. “You must be Arn Anderson?” he said as the janitor disappeared down the hallway. “Please come in.”

When Ana Maria stood to follow, Kane stopped her.

“She’s with me,” Arn said, leaving out the fact that she was reporter. “She’s my secretary.”

Ana Maria’s face flushed and Arn smiled. “She does all the transcribing. Pencil sharpening. Small stuff around my office.”

Kane hesitated for a moment before motioning her to follow. He pointed to chairs lined up at a long table, notes strewn across the tabletop, manila folders marked and waiting for reports to be stuffed inside. A laptop stood open beside the folders. Kane tapped keys and turned the computer so Arn could see it. “Scroll through the photos and tell me what you see.”

With Ana Maria looking over his shoulder, Arn began scrolling through pictures of a man lying face down on the floor, his head partially inside a urinal. “This guy looks a lot younger than the others,” Ana Maria said.

“Looks a lot like Steve Urchek and Frank Mosby’s crime scenes to me,” Arn added.

“Funny you use that term,” Kane said, “because I think it is a crime scene.”

“So you think my theory holds water—that there have been deaths at the VA facilities made to look natural.”

Kane popped the top on a can of Red Bull and took a long pull. “The VA Police call us or the local law on every unattended death—more out of curiosity than policy. As many old vets die in these centers—just worn out or from complications of their service—we usually waiver the call. Tell the locals and the VA Police to handle it. After all, there hasn’t been a suspicious death here since it opened in 1907. But,” he took a longer drink of the Red Bull this time and tossed the empty can into a recycling bin by the table, “I remembered your… theory. I told them not to contaminate the scene until I got here, and to lock the facility down. No one in or out.”

“Doesn’t explain why you think this death is anything more than natural,” Arn said.

Kane eyed another Red Bull but didn’t assault it. Yet. “After I called you, I got to thinking maybe this veteran didn’t die peaceable like I told you. So me and another agent searched the restroom where the victim was found. Nothing odd. Until we expanded the search to include adjacent rooms.” He reached over and turned the laptop so he could read it before turning it back to Arn and Ana Maria. “That’s when we found that stuffed inside a trash receptacle by the entrance to the center.”

Arn donned his reading glasses, and stifled a smirk when Ana Maria had to do put on her own Walmart readers. A bent hypodermic needle stuck out of a plastic syringe partially covered with a crumpled Burger King bag. “Xylazine.” He took off is glasses and examined the drug name pasted on the side of the syringe. “Not sure what that is. Did you look it up in a PDR?”

Kane turned the laptop around again. “Wouldn’t be in any PDR. Xylazine is a horse tranquilizer. The syringe in on the way to the lab now, though I’m certain we won’t find DNA or prints on the tube.”

“What is horse tranquilizer doing in a medical facility?” Ana Maria asked.

Kane looked at her with an odd expression, and Ana Marisa quickly wrote in a long, reporter’s notebook. As if she were taking notes for her boss—Arn. “That’s the question we need answered. It might have absolutely no connection to the man’s death. But— .”

“I bet you don’t believe in coincidences,” Arn said.

“I do not,” Kane answered. “The closeness of this trash receptacle to the restroom—not thirty feet away—is just too handy. But we’ll see what the lab comes up with.”

“Did you find an injection site?” Arn asked, knowing that—if the victim was killed by horse tranquilizer—it could have been administered IM through the clothing. In the muscle.

“We found no injection site, though it means little at this point. If there is one, we’ll find it at autopsy.”

Arn turned the laptop again but could not see the victim’s neck clearly. “Did he have bruising on his neck like the other victims I faxed you a couple days ago?”

“No,” Kane said. “But the coroner said there might not be since the man was about thirty years younger than all the others you showed me. Skin too pliable. Resilient, she said. Not so prone to bruising.”

“So, the victim’s an Iraq War vet, maybe from the Syrian conflict if I figure his age right.”

Kane gathered his notes and stuffed them into a briefcase. “You’re not looking at any veteran. Our victim—Charles Boding—wasn’t a vet at all. He was merely here giving his father a ride to Hot Springs for his annual checkup.”

“But the hat,” Ana Maria said. “The photo shows Boding wearing a Vietnam hat with gold embroidery of some kind on the bill.”

Scrambled eggs,” Arn said. “They call them scrambled eggs. Officers wear them.”

Kent unplugged his laptop and slid it into a pocket in his briefcase. “Boding’s father was wearing an identical hat when he visited his primary care doctor right before his death. Must have given his son a cap like his with Vietnam pasted across the front and those gaudy scrambled eggs on the bill.”

“Then the victim could have been killed because he was mistaken for a Vietnam vet?” Arn asked.

“Very well could have.” Kane snapped the clasp on his briefcase. “Still, at this point I have no proof that this was a homicide. We’ll have to wait for the lab results and the autopsy.” He snapped his fingers. “If you’re staying in the Hills for the night you could come up and catch the autopsy in Rapid City,” he winked at Ana Maria. “It’d be cheap entertainment for you and sweet cheeks there,” he told Arn. “I’ll bet secretaries don’t get a chance to leave the office very often. I’ll buy popcorn.”

“We’ll pass,” Arn said. “We’re staying over here in Hot Springs for the night to catch the hot springs in the morning. It’s just late enough I hate to drive back at night with all the deer on the road. Besides, I wanted to visit with Ethan Ames if he happens to be here. Wanted to get his insight into the killer with this fresh victim.”

Kane slung his briefcase over his shoulder “I wanted to talk with him myself, but he left for Cheyenne earlier. I’ll catch up with him day after tomorrow as his secretary says he’s in Rapid that day.” He started for the door and called over his shoulder, “I’ll let you know what we find in the autopsy and the lab results when we get them.”

“What about the surveillance cameras?” Ana Maria called after Kane just before he left the room.

“What about them?” he asked without turning around.

“Did you look at them?”

Kane turned slowly. “Even us rubes get our jobs right now and then.” He laid his briefcase on the table and talked slowly. “There was no one—except veterans and employees—roaming the halls.”

“There must have been someone besides them. Someone wanting to kill Boding.”

“Anderson, I’m still struggling with your notion that all those deaths are connected. And until I took a closer look at Boding, there just is nothing to prove homicide.”

Arn nodded to Ana Maria. “She had a good point—did you see anything unusual at all on the cameras?”

“We talked before about those RSL fools,” Kane said. “Two of them came into the facility and tried recruiting but they were tossed out on their keisters before they got a chance to spread their hatred.”

“And they couldn’t have slipped back in and killed Boding?”

“You mean sneaking by Earl?”

“That old man guarding the front door?” Arn said. “You could drive a dump truck past him and he wouldn’t wake up.”