38

ARN WANTED TO GET OUT of the house before the walls closed in on him. Or before Danny’s constant pounding with his dry wall hammer threatened to crush Arn’s already-throbbing head. He started for his car when he thought it better to check if Sam was in Cheyenne today. He so wanted her not to be involved, but there were as many factors pointing to her as the killer as there was Jonah and Winger.

Sam’s secretary ran offices for two other traveling VA people, and she told Arn that Sam took a personal day off. “She stormed in here this morning, and I thought she was going to kick somebody’s butt. ‘If that little bastard who interrogated me last night were right here—right in front of me—I’d put a boot in his rectum. Accusing me of attacking Arn Anderson. I’m going home.’ And that’s just what she did.”

“To Rapid City.”

“Uh, huh,” the secretary answered. “Sam has a little bit of a temper, if you haven’t noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“And when she blows her top, the only thing that calms her is to saddle her mare and take a ride through the hills.”

That was all right with Arn. Though he had growing feelings for Sam, he also knew those feelings could cloud his judgement. Something he didn’t need right now. His head was clouded enough already, and not just from the pain.

He pulled into the Cheyenne VA lot and stepped around a legless Vietnam veteran being pushed in a wheelchair by a woman the vet’s age. Thanks for all you’ve sacrificed Arn thought as he passed the wounded man before he stopped. How many times had Arn secretly expressed his gratitude for veteran’s sacrifices as if ashamed to say it aloud to the very men and women who gave so much so that Arn could walk here free?

He waited until the man’s wheelchair came abreast of him before thrusting out his hand. “I want to thank you so much for all you’ve done for our country.”

The man looked up at Arn through one good eye, the other camouflaged by a milky white and he took Arn’s hand. Even wounded, the veteran displayed a vice-like grip as his calloused hand held Arn’s for a long moment. “Wasn’t always gratitude for us boys returning from ’Nam,” he said. “Mostly, people spit on us. Mostly piss-ant little school kids who’d gotten a college deferment because their daddies had enough money to keep them in school.” A tear ran down his one good eye and he chin-pointed to the woman pushing his wheelchair. “Like I told Emily, now and again someone thanks me. Now and again someone is genuine in their gratitude.” A smile crept across his face and he snapped a three-fingered salute. All he could do with his blown-up hand. “Thanks, pard’ner.”

Arn stepped aside, humbled by the old man’s graciousness. How many more veterans were treated the exact same way as he described, with such abject disrespect, no one could know. But what Arn did know is that—if he dug deeper and found the VA Slayer—no one else need die.

He found Sgt. Wagner tapping keys as he squinted at his computer screen. “I’m getting goofy looking at all these records, but I finally got all them sent to me.” He stood and grabbed file folders and tucked them under his arm. “Let’s take a walk to the courtyard… there are no ears there.”

They stepped outside just as a Korean War Marine made his way on a wobbly walker to the door and disappeared. “Tell me you’ve found something.”

Wagner lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings upward. “Here’s what I found—Winger got an article 15 twice for fighting, and he had nasty words with his CO, so you know he’s got a hard-on for officers. Jonah we already knew about because he earned himself an undesirable discharge, compliments of his Executive Officer. Seth seems to have had a chip on his shoulder ever since joining the Army, but then there’s a lot of Special Forces guys like Rangers have a chips on their shoulder. It what sets them apart and makes them such gnarly soldiers.” He leaned closer. “Even women started joining Special Ops some years ago.”

“And Sam? Was she ever written up?”

Wagner looked around, making sure no one else had slipped into the courtyard and turned to his file labeled Samantha Holder. “Except for getting in bar fights and receiving verbal reprimands, Samantha didn’t seem to have a problem with officers. Except,” Wagner turned to the back page, “she had to testify on the court martial of her CO. The major was charged with an article 134 in Iraq.”

“English,” Arn said. “Speak-a-English.”

Wagner tapped the paper. “Samantha was called to testify against her Commanding Officer she had been dating while stationed in Kuwait. The military frowns on fraternization. An officer just can’t have relations with enlisted personnel.”

“I wouldn’t think her commander getting prosecuted for it would cause her to hate officers.”

“It might if the officer was seeing two other women,” he closed the file, “at the same time. A woman scorned, and all that. At least that’s how my third wife put it when she tossed my clothes out into the yard one night when I came home… late.”

Arn stood from the picnic table and stretched the kinks out of his legs. “Essentially, we have all four of them potentially hating officers for various reasons enough to want to carry a grudge.”

“But did that hatred escalate into homicide?” Wagner asked. “That’s what I’d be asking.”

“It could,” Arn said. “I guess I need to talk with Ethan Ames again. Besides giving me some muted profile of our killer, Ethan knows more than he told me. He knows the killer, I’d bet.”

A woman testing out a new prostatic leg stumbled into the courtyard while a boy—perhaps her son—remained close to her in case she fell. They sat at a table at the other end of the courtyard and paid Wagner and Arn no mind. “Did you find out if all four of them served together?”

Wagner lit another cigarette from the one burned down between his fingers and snubbed the butt out in the grass. “Winger and Samantha and Seth Barnes all have some things in common from their military careers. Two—Seth and Sam—were both in Iraq at the same time—Sam in the motor pool, Seth in the Rangers before he rotated back to the states. They sent him to Ft. Sill and was there when Winger was stationed there after his tour was completed in theater.”

“Did you find that any knew each other before coming to this part of the country?”

Wagner shook his head. “They could have, there just was nothing to prove they ever did. Except Samantha and Jonah having served together, but we knew that.

“On a positive note, I learned that Frank Mosby had a rare allergy to cocaine. He underwent a nasal reconstruction down in the Denver VA fifteen years ago and was given cocaine for pain during the procedure.”

“They use cocaine in the hospital?”

Wagner flipped through his notes. “Apparently. There is one company manufacturing pharmaceutical grade cocaine for medical purposes, but it is highly regulated by the DEA.”

“But a doctor could have access to it?”

“A medical doctor. Anyway, seems like your friend went into cardiac arrest when he was given medical grade coke.”

“So he wasn’t a user,” Arn said. “Helen will be glad to hear that, though she already knew it.” Arn popped a piece of gun and moved upwind from Wagner’s smoke, wondering how the ME could have missed something as obvious as Steve’s allergy when it appeared as if he OD’d. “How about the other victims?”

Wagner shrugged. “Nothing to connect any of them except they were all officers. None served with each other in Vietnam, and none had the same jobs. They were as strangers to one another as ever can be.”

He stood and closed his files. “So you see, all the work it took to get their files was a waste of time.”

“I don’t see it that way,” Arn said. “You came up with a lot of excellent information.”