Danny’s drywall hammer slap-slap-slapping on fresh wallboard jolted Arn awake. He rubbed the sleepers out of his eyes, just as he’d done a thousand times as a boy in this same room over the carriage garage. He stared at the ceiling, remembering cowboy posters he’d collected and hung there: Gene Autry and John Wayne and Roy Rogers, heroes all to a young boy who just wanted to be like them. And wanted to be like his grandfather and great-grandfather who’d settled here when Cheyenne was a whistle stop for the Union Pacific.
But the dark side of those men had frightened Arn growing up as well. His great-grandfather had been arrested and narrowly escaped a hangman’s noose for rustling cattle west of town. His grandfather had shot and killed a man on the steps of this very house when the man demanded money from a poker game. Which his grandfather had cheated in.
And his own dad. His father had so wanted to carry on the family tradition of lawlessness, but somehow fell into a position as a policeman for the city. The brutality he could never exert over the people he arrested spilled into his home life. And onto his only son, who’d found solace in this room from a father who beat him for small infractions of the household rules.
As miserable as those days had been, Arn never had to contend with Danny’s hammering at six in the morning. He sat up on the edge of the cot and looked out into the hallway. When he’d jumped on Danny last night about hanging a door, the old man had stood with his hands on his hips. “What you want me to do? Just tell me. Lay floor tile or pull wires or texture drywall, ’cause I only got so many hours in a day.” It was great to be home again.
Arn grabbed his jeans from a nail sticking out of the wall and slowly, painfully, put one leg in at a time. Between working on the house and fighting with the man in the park, he felt every muscle like he was back competing on the rodeo circuit. Danny had found him a foam camping pad—the pad fairy, he claimed—which helped Arn’s aches some. Still, resisting a midlife crisis didn’t extend to sleeping on cots. His next check from the television station, he told himself, would go to buy a bed. Make that three beds: for him, for Danny, and for Ana Maria.
Arn unplugged his cell from the wall and called the hospital, but there was no change in Johnny’s condition. “Who shot you, old friend,” Arn said aloud as he used the chair to help stand. His leg still throbbed from the beating in the park. He’d iced it to ease the swelling after he’d gotten back from the ER the other night. Still, it took him a moment to catch his breath before reaching under the cot for his slippers.
“Shouldn’t you at least zip up before you parade around in morning wood?” Ana Maria walked by his door, toothbrush in her smiling mouth, exaggerating a once-over of Arn’s open trousers. He turned his back to the hallway and zipped up. He looked a final time for his slippers under the cot before tiptoeing around drywall dust that seemed to float on the floor.
He tested the bare steps for exposed nails as he picked his way downstairs. A board creaked under his weight loud enough he thought it would give way, and he moved to the side to cling to the rickety railing for support.
In the living room downstairs, Danny squatted over a box of drywall nails. His arm was poised to swing his hammer again when he saw Arn, and he put it in the nail bucket. “Ana Maria and I have been starving to death waiting for you to wake up.”
“Sorry,” Arn said, crow-stepping over drywall dust. “I guess I was more beat than I thought.”
“If you hadn’t been sleepwalking, you might have woke up a little refreshed.”
“I don’t sleepwalk.”
“Hell you don’t,” Danny said. “I heard you upstairs when I was sleeping.”
“I sleepwalked once.” Arn drew in a deep breath. “But it wasn’t last night. What smells so good?”
“Flapjacks. They’ve been warming in the oven for an hour.”
“Toaster oven?”
“No, a regular oven.”
“Don’t tell me: the stove fairy?”
“You’re catching on.” Danny smiled. “It was delivered early this morning.”
Arn followed him into the kitchen. Ana Maria poured coffee and dished flapjacks on their plates.
“You see my slippers?” he asked Danny.
“They’re a little big for me,” the old man replied. “Besides, they’re a little threadbare.”
“Well, someone took them,” Arn said.
Danny grabbed the butter and syrup and sat across the card table from Arn. “No, it means you’re getting forgetful like the rest of us.”
“Let me know when you find them,” Arn said. “They’re like old friends to me.”
“I would, “Danny said, “but I’m taking a break.”
Arn looked approvingly around the kitchen. “You’ve done a lot this week.”
“Question,” Ana Maria said as she dribbled syrup on pancakes. “If you can do all this, how come you’re not out making serious bucks?”
“Like work a steady job? With a contractor?” Danny held up his hands like he was giving up. “I’m better than any contractor.”
“Then start your own handyman business,” Ana Maria said.
“I got no time for that,” Danny said. “I’m too busy right here. Besides, we’re not prying, remember? And since this is a Saturday, I’d like to watch football.”
“Then do it.”
“I can’t,” Danny said between bites of pancake. “Those tightwads two houses down don’t even subscribe to ESPN.”
“The one you’re stealing service from,” Arn reminded him.
“I prefer to think that we’re just using service that they pay the cable company for anyway. Besides, I’m taking a breather and helping you with those cases you got tacked up on the wall.”
“I told you to stay out of there.” Arn had ordered Danny to stay out of the sewing room, where he had written on the fresh drywall with a Sharpie, perfect for organizing his thoughts.
“I needed my toolbox I left in there,” Danny explained. “Excuse the hell out of me if I glanced at your precious wall while I was there.”
“I got nothing else to do this morning either,” Ana Maria said.
“What, did I adopt you two?” Arn tossed his paper plate in the trash and grabbed his coffee cup. “Let’s go.”
He led them down the hallway to the sewing room. “The Situation Room,” as Danny had started calling it. Arn pulled aside the sheet hung across the doorway and led them in. Even though he had already seen the pictures—seen them and had nightmares about them—the photos cried out in all their gruesomeness, some black and white, others in murderous color.
Ana Maria stopped at the doorway. She swayed and caught herself on the door jamb. “You don’t have to come in here, you know,” Arn said.
She steadied herself before overturning a plastic milk crate. She took in deep breaths and sat in front of the wall. “If I’m going to help solve this, I need to man up.”
Arn gestured to a new door waiting to be hung that Danny had propped against one wall. “Grab some saw horses we can lay this door on.”
Arn waited until Danny left the room before sitting beside Ana Maria. “I never heard you come in last night. I told you to wake me up.”
“You were sleeping as soundly as that policeman assigned to watch me.”
“The officer was sleeping?” Arn fumbled to open his cell phone. “That’s bullshit. Oblanski’s going to have to replace—”
Ana Maria rested her hand on his arm. “It’s all right. Don’t you remember what it was like to be a young officer? Full of piss and vinegar and wanting to be in on all the action you heard come across the radio? Not parked in a television station lot waiting to follow some reporter home, only to sit for hours watching a dark house. If it happens again, then you can report the guy.”
Arn hesitated a moment before closing his phone. “If it happens again—”
“You’ll be the first I tell.”
Danny returned with folding sawhorses and helped Arn place the door across the sawhorses as a makeshift table. He ran his hand over the surface. “I’m a reluctant participant in messing up this nice door.”
“If I do,” Arn said, “I’ll buy another.”
He handed Ana Maria the manila folders. “You up to this? First look-see of crime scene photos can be nasty if you’re not used to it.”
Ana Maria nodded. “Just let’s take a look.”
Arn spread the Five Point case files across the door. His eyes darted from Joey Bent’s file to the photos on the wall.
Danny leaned over Arn’s shoulder. “Joey and this Delbert Urban were sure cut to pieces. The papers didn’t do them justice back then.”
Both victims had their throats slit. Joey sat slumped in his chair wearing no pants. Blood had dripped down onto his bare legs, and his ear-to-ear slice seemed to smile at the camera as he still clutched a bottle of lotion.
“Remember I mentioned I got into a bar fight along with Frank?” Danny said. “He cut hell out of two cowboys before the bartender waylaid him with a tire billy.”
“You saying he might have done this?” Ana Maria asked.
“All I’m saying is, Frank loved his blade,” Danny answered.
Arn shuffled through the file until he came upon Butch’s field notes. He’d written the word “helpless” across the top. “Butch figured Joey died with no struggle,” Arn said as he thumbed through the incident report. “I’ve investigated deaths where victims got their throats slit. They thrash around like … well, a chicken with its head cut off.”
“I’m no trained investigator,” Danny said, “but except that he’s damn near decapitated, it looks like Joey died a pretty easy death. Not like someone killed him in cold blood. More like cool blood—like the killer eased Joey into his death.”
“You’re sharp.” Arn walked to the photos. “See that beer can just sitting on the side of the coffee table? If Joey had struggled with his attacker, it would have been spilled. And the coffee table would probably have been overturned.”
“The killer must have sneaked up behind him?” Ana Maria asked. “No other way to kill him without a struggle.”
Arn put his glasses on and held Butch’s hen scratching to the light. “Butch underlined ‘acquaintance’ and ‘date,’” Arn said, tapping the lotion in the picture. “He must have thought the killer wanted to give Joey a happy ending.”
“Kind of sexist,” Ana Maria said. “Who says the killer was a guy?”
Arn jotted that in big letters across the top of the wall. “Good point. No reason he wasn’t killed by a woman.”
“I don’t know about you,” Danny said, “but looking at these pictures makes me feel a little queasy. I’m going to make some coffee.”
He left, and Ana Maria scooted closer. She flipped through the second folder and laid out Butch’s field notes on Delbert Urban. “‘Same as Joey Bent,’ Butch wrote. ‘But different.’ What do you suppose he meant by that?”
Delbert had been killed on the couch in his office at the Hobby Shop, his crimson Speedo pulled down the crack of his butt and failing to camouflage more blood than Arn had seen at a crime scene. The soaked couch cushions lay scattered across the floor, and the end table was smashed.
“Rules out someone sneaking up when he was passed out. Delbert must have put up some fight. Looks like two cats that got into a fight in the back yard, crap scattered all over the room.” Ana Maria ran her finger over Butch’s notes. “The ‘same’ must mean that both men were killed when someone slit their throat.”
“Or this.” Arn pointed out that the crime scene had been staged: the bodies moved so the first thing anyone saw inside the door was a gaping hole under their chins. “The killer staged it this way to shock anyone seeing it.”
“Why?” Danny asked, munching on a cookie. He’d walked back into the room with a plate of sugar cookies and a carafe of coffee. “Just ’cause he’s a sicko.” He bowed to Ana Maria. “Or she’s a sicko.”
“The killer had no history with his victims,” Arn explained. “If he had, he would have covered them after he killed them. Protect their dignity.”
“Or it could be they were the same because of this.” Ana Maria pointed to the small five-point star badge pinned to Delbert’s bare chest, matching the one on the floor in the background of Joey’s house. “But what was different?”
“Besides that bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label on the floor?” Danny dunked his cookie into his coffee cup. “Winston Churchill’s drink of choice.”
Arn and Ana Maria looked sideways at him. “How you know that?” Arn asked.
“Maybe in another life I got an education. Point is, besides drinking like old Winston, Delbert was as big as Winston was, by the looks of him.”
Arn flipped through the papers until he found Delbert’s toxicology report. “Delbert tipped the truck scales at 262. And he had a blood alcohol of only .04—two drinks for someone as big as he was. Rules out a scenario that Delbert was killed after he passed out.”
Arn scanned both victims’ particulars: Joey lived alone in a modest part of town, while Delbert had an upper scale place on Cheyenne’s north side. “So that’s why Delbert entertained at his shop: to keep it from his wife. You wouldn’t want your wife finding out.”
“I’m not married,” Danny answered.
“Were once?’ Ana Maria asked.
“I was,” Danny said, “but we’re not prying.” He held Delbert’s file to the light. “What’s NAMBLA?”
“North American Man/Boy Love Association,” Ana Maria said. “Bunch of sick bastards that like young boys. Pedophiles. I did a special on them some years ago in Denver. The local chapter president came on sweeter than honey until I told him I was with the news. Then he clammed up so tight you couldn’t drive a stickpin up his keister with a jackhammer. Needless to say, I didn’t shake his hand.” She finished her fourth cookie, and Arn marveled that she still maintained her figure even though she ate like a horse. “Looks like ol’ Delbert liked little boys.”
Arn leaned back in the folding chair. He straightened his leg out and rubbed it, grateful it wasn’t broken. Then again, he thought, the guy with the tire billy could have broken it if he’d wished to. “Maybe that’s how the killer got close, by posing as a boy?” Arn looked at Danny. “What do you weigh, 110? 115?”
Danny hitched up his jeans, which had slid down what passed as his hips. “This morning, 117. And I know what you’re saying. Someone my size could have passed as a boy.”
“Or a woman could, as Ana Maria pointed out.”
Danny walked to the wall. “That’s odd.”
“What’s odd?”
“That.” Danny traced a faint footprint left in blood on Delbert’s nude back. Arn put his glasses back on and bent to the photo. He’d seen that same footprint in the last couple days. Somewhere. Or maybe because a hundred people in Cheyenne might wear that same tread pattern.
He shut his eyes, imagining how the scene looked during the crime, something he’d often done when he was investigating the very worst of human nature. He envisioned Delbert and his killer drinking. Perhaps Delbert had impressed the other with his expensive taste in whisky. They may have agreed to have sex: Delbert was partially nude, and a condom lay on the floor beside the couch in anticipation. Perhaps Delbert drank a little too much—the killer slipped behind him. But when he started the death slice, Delbert came alive. They fought. The killer wrestled him to the floor, stepping on his back. Just like Butch had speculated.
Arn tilted the lamp to the photos and squinted through his reading glasses. “There!” He pointed to a tiled spot outside Joey’s front door. “There’s that same shoe print. I think.” He motioned to Ana Maria. “You don’t need glasses like us old farts. Come see if those tread patterns are close?”
Ana Maria stood next to Arn and leaned close to the photos. “They’re the same. Not conclusive enough for court, but they’re the same pattern.”
“But we already know the same person killed them both,” Danny said. “He left his calling card: that five-point star badge.”
“Then where’s the other shoe prints?”
“What prints?” Danny asked.
Ana Maria’s head swiveled between photos. “You’re right. There are no other prints.”
“That’s just my point.” Arn grabbed a cookie and dunked it into his coffee. A chunk broke off and bobbed like a miniature life preserver. “As much blood as there is at both crime scenes, there should have been a trail of bloody shoe prints all the way out the door. But there’s only that single print in each photo.”
“I don’t get it.” Ana Maria grabbed the initial reports from both murders and scanned them. “Butch mentioned it was the same tread pattern. So?”
“Whoever killed these victims put the print there on purpose,” Arn said. “He wanted a single shoe print to be found. There’s no other explanation for the killer not to have left a bloody trail.”
“So what did he do?” Danny asked. “Get beamed out of there? Climb the walls like a fly so he wouldn’t touch the floor? He had to have laid down more tracks.”
“I don’t know,” Arn said. “I’m going to have to study on that.”
“What’s bugged me as I was studying the old newspaper clippings,” Ana Maria said, tapping the photos with her pen, “is why were there only two Five Point victims?”
“That’s easy.” Danny beamed. “Delbert frightened him.”
“How you come to that conclusion?” Arn asked.
Danny nodded to the photo with a piece of cookie. “It looks to me like the killer had it easy with Joey Bent. But when he went to kill Delbert, he was too big for his attacker to handle, and it was Katy bar the door. A real knock-down-drag-out fight.” Danny punched the air. He feinted a jab and nearly fell down before Arn caught him. “I think Delbert scarred him so badly he called it quits. Or moved out of the area.”
Arn clamped a hand on Danny’s stooping shoulders. “You would have made a good detective if you weren’t a wanted man.”