Arn tossed the small plastic five-point star badge on Johnny’s desk. “That look familiar?”
Johnny picked it up and turned it over in his hand. “So it’s a plastic badge. Our DARE officers used to give some like those out to little kids. What’s your point?”
“You failed to mention yesterday that all three dead officers had worked on two cases where the killer left those at the scene. Why did you keep that from me?”
“It’s not material. It was just coincidental. We checked that angle at the time, ad nauseam.” He handed the badge back to Arn. “It looks about like any other badge our community service officers give out at schools.”
“But not exactly the same kind?”
Johnny shrugged. “What’s your point, besides being a pain in my rectum?”
“You still got the crime scene photos of the Five Point Killings?”
Johnny absently grabbed a pencil from his desktop and began to nibble on the eraser. “I can’t show them to you.”
“I’m not asking. Just pull up the photos of the badges left at those two crime scenes and compare them with this one.”
“They’re not the same. I don’t know how you got this notion in that thick head of yours, but the Five Point Killer is long gone from these parts.”
“Humor me.”
Johnny pushed his chair back and it rolled into the wall. “I got better things to do than prove your bullshit ideas wrong.” He tossed the pencil in his desk drawer. “But I will.”
He slammed the door leaving his office, and Arn could hear him asking Gorilla Legs for the Five Point Killer case files. Their voices muted, then, as they moved down the hallway. In minutes, Johnny returned. His lip quivered and his voice wavered. “So, it is the same kind of badge—”
“When did the department stop giving them out?”
Johnny walked to the window and looked out. “Ten years ago,” he said over his shoulder. “About the time Butch Spangler was murdered.” He faced Arn. “Where did you get it?”
Arn explained that he’d driven to the Archer Fairgrounds after Ana Maria got the call from the man who claimed to know who killed Butch. “The guy must have worked his way around and set it on my car seat.”
“Toying with you,” Johnny said. “That’s all. Somebody having some fun.”
“It was a warning.”
“If it was,” Johnny said, “why didn’t Ana Maria share information with us about a potential witness?” He sat at his desk and looked around for that pencil to nibble on.
“It’s in your drawer.”
“What?”
“Your pencil,” Arn said.
“Piss on the pencil! I got half a notion to arrest her for withholding information.”
“What are you afraid of?” Arn asked.
Johnny looked away. “Nothing.”
“Now it’s my turn to call bullshit. You’re afraid I’ll see something in those reports that links the Five Point Killer to Butch and the other two detectives.”
“Drop it.” Johnny nibbled on his upper lip and his foot tapped the floor.
“Tell me, what are you afraid of?”
“The damned Five Point Killer!” Johnny threw his pencil stub against the wall. “You happy now?” He turned his back on Arn. His hands trembled as he got up to straighten a picture hanging on the wall. “At the time of the murders, the killer scared the hell out of most of us with any common sense.” He turned back around, and his eyes locked on Arn’s. “The son-of-a-bitch was a ghost. We never picked up even one tiny piece of physical evidence. Except those silly badges.”
“After last night, there’s all the more reason for me to look at those cases.”
“Someone was just screwing with you last night. Either way, I’m still deferring to Ned Oblanski. If he wants to give you those case files, he can. And”—Johnny leaned closer—“if he feels like I do about your reporter friend, he just might arrest her.”
“If you think she’s withholding information, you must think she needs protection.”
“Protection from some guy who might have information?”
“If I hadn’t interrupted him, he might have got to her.”
“So you say.”
“He had a knife—”
“What kind of knife?” Johnny asked. “And what did he look like?”
Arn dropped his eyes and somehow found that same piece of lint still on the carpet. “It was too dark. I never got close enough to see. He made it out of the barn before I got a good look. But I swear he had a knife—”
“I recall you were always quite the tracker. Like a lot of cowboys. Did some elk hunting. Deer and mountain lion, as I recall.”
“And your point?”
“My point”—Johnny dropped into his chair—“is that there should be tracks enough for an experienced hunter like you to see something.”
“The tracks were indistinct. Like they were … brushed away. Or something.”
“Because there was no one there.”
“That badge—”
“Proves nothing,” Johnny argued. “Anyone could have put it there on your seat anytime. It just took a while to work its way into your imagination. And your butt.”
“You forget, I interviewed people all my life. And just now—when you came back from comparing that badge with the old crime scene photos—you knew they were the same. So let’s cut the crap, and maybe we can find out who the Five Point Killer is. And find out who killed Butch in the process.”
“There’s no connection.” Johnny nibbled through another eraser. “Can’t you get that through your head?”
“Then why this?” Arn picked up the plastic badge and held it for a moment before he tossed it back onto Johnny’s desk. “I was hired to find out who killed Butch. If this wasn’t a warning to back off, why risk putting the badge on my car seat?”
Johnny grabbed his mug and walked to the coffee cart. Stalling. He sniffed the day-old coffee and dribbled some into his cup before turning back. “Butch and Gaylord worked the Five Point Killings. I worked patrol when those murders happened, so I wasn’t privy to a lot. All I remember is Butch coming into shift briefing and asking us to shake down our snitches. See if anything dropped out. ‘I’m so close to finding this son-of-a-bitch,’ he kept telling us, ‘I can smell him.’ Apparently he was. The killer found him first.”
“So you do think those killings and Butch’s murder are connected?” Arn asked.
Johnny looked away, and Arn had his answer. “Have you talked with Oblanski?” Johnny said.
“He wouldn’t tell me anything about the Five Point cases,” Arn replied. “But I know Gaylord died an autoerotic death. And Steve died in a house fire.”
“How did you find that out?”
Arn didn’t answer as he ran his fingers through his hair. “Awfully coincidental, those two dying just as the Five Point cases were close to being solved. And not a month before Butch’s murder.”
“If you talked with Oblanski, then you know he still thinks Frank Dull Knife would be good for Butch’s homicide. Not some killer passing through here with a pocketful of toy badges.”
“Either way, Ana Maria’s television special just might bring some witnesses forward.”
“After all these years?” Johnny shrugged. “I doubt it.”
“Well, it got someone spooked enough to send me a little warning last night to back off.” Arn stood and walked to the coffee pot. The same donuts were on the cart that were there yesterday, as stale as the coffee, and he passed on both. “If Gaylord Fournier died by an autoerotic death, maybe his death wasn’t an accident. Maybe he was murdered for what he knew about the Five Point cases. Same as Butch.”
“So how do you connect Steve DeBoer? He didn’t work those cases.”
“He was their supervisor,” Arn explained. “They had to report to him about their progress. He knew what they knew. “
“Enough!” Johnny swiveled in his chair to toss the rest of his coffee into the trash can. “Gaylord’s and Steve’s deaths were accidental. Live with it.”
“Then let me see the reports. Maybe there’s something there—”
“We missed?” Johnny said. “We didn’t. You’ll have to do your mercenary gig without those files.”
Arn leaned forward. “I was loathe to mention it before, but you’re in the running for the permanent police chief job.”
“That’s no secret.”
“And it might make you look … inept … if an outsider waltzed in here and solved a crime that your agency’s worked on and off for ten years.”
Johnny stood. Though thirty pounds lighter than Arn, he was several inches taller, intimidating in his glare as he came around the desk. He stood close enough that Arn smelled his coffee breath and stale cigarette smoke reeking from his blue blazer. “What’s your point?”
“I’m not here to make you look bad, Johnny. But … ” Arn shouldered his briefcase. “The mayor insists your department cooperate.”
Johnny looked down at Arn, inches away. His jaw clenched; his fist balled and slapped his leg. “It’s been years since anyone’s threatened me without getting an ass beating. Only reason I don’t now is because we worked together once. And we were friends. Once. Now get out of my office. Mercenary bastard.”
Arn hesitated just long enough to let Johnny know he wasn’t intimidated before he started for the door. Then he stopped and without looking back said, “If you won’t order your lieutenant to give me their files, the least you can do is point me to someone who may know something.”
“No one in this department’s going to help—”
“Anyone?”
“Georgia Spangler,” Johnny blurted out.
“Butch’s sister?”
“Ah, that’s right,” Johnny prodded. “You two had a thing in high school.”
“Until I quit the team to go work cows and she dumped me. I didn’t know she still lived here.”
“She’s a chef at Poor Richard’s. You know she was the first one to call Butch’s murder into dispatch.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
Johnny smiled. “You would if you actually took the time to read the police reports.”