Everyone Dies (27 page)

“More like a student of criminal behavior,” Green said as he followed along.

“Graduate school?” the kid asked, eyeing Green as he crammed his laundry into a backpack.

“Doing some research,” Green replied elliptically with a nod.

“Well, with all the murders in town lately, you must be staying pretty busy,” the kid said as he zipped the backpack closed.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Green replied with a toothy grin.

The kid strapped on the backpack, said goodbye, and walked across the street toward the college. Green sat on one of the dryers and looked around. Except for new machines and a fresh paint job, not much had changed since the night he’d killed that old lady.

Because it predated his transformation to Samuel Green, the murder didn’t count in the usual sense. None of the early ones did. They all belonged to someone who’d not yet learned to be thoughtful, studious, and deliberate about murder.

Still, it had been a turning point in his life. Because no one had believed that his parents abused him-they were, after all, respected, upstanding citizens-he’d spent seven more years in hell at home, only to be followed by incarceration at the Boys’ School in Springer, where he’d surely been reformed.

He hadn’t meant to kill the old lady, but she’d resisted, and he needed that money to run away. So he hit her with the hammer, and it felt so good he did it again and again until her head was a bloody mess and she was lying on the floor.

The washing machine slowed to a stop. He transferred the clothes to a dryer and started thinking about a way to find out where Kerney and his wife where staying. It could be anywhere: a hotel, a friend’s house, one of those short-term vacation rentals, or even a bed-and-breakfast. Wherever they were, Green was pretty sure Kerney had arranged for 24/7 police protection to keep his wife safe.

Earlier in the day, he’d spent a couple of wasted hours listening to police radio traffic on his scanner, hoping he could locate them that way. When that didn’t work, he thought about following cops around town to see if one would lead him to them, but abandoned the idea as impractical. He needed to do something that would draw Kerney and the wife out into the open.

What would get them scrambling? He ran down a list of possible events in his mind and stopped when he got to the house that Kerney was building. From what he’d seen at the construction site, a lot of money was being poured into it. Although the horse barn was metal and the house was being made with adobe, there was enough wood lying around to start a really nice range fire, which would probably bring Kerney and his wife running.

The idea of arson appealed to Samuel Green. All he needed to do was to find another way in to avoid being spotted by anybody on the main ranch road. That shouldn’t be too hard. On the east boundary of Kerney’s land a railroad spur and a maintenance road ran from the Lamy junction to Santa Fe. In the evening, he would check it out to see how close he could get by car.

Even if he had to hoof it a bit, the site was remote enough to give him time to get away before the fire trucks arrived. Then he’d find a place near the highway to wait for Kerney to appear. After that, he’d just follow him back to town.

It should work. But if it didn’t, there was still the fire to look forward to. He could picture flames raging in a night sky, turning the grassland charcoal black, burning up all the construction material lying around, maybe even getting hot enough to buckle the steel horse barn and kill all the big pinon trees.

It was too bad that the explosion and fire in Mescalero had been kept from spreading, too bad that he’d been forced to leave in a hurry and miss the enjoyment of it all.

Green took a deep breath to calm down and think straight. Before he got too excited about the plan, he needed to make a trial run to see if it was feasible. He’d do that tonight.

The dryer buzzer pulled his thoughts away from the scheme. He folded his clothes neatly, placed them inside the pillowcase, and took one last look around the Laundromat. It had been a real kick to visit the scene of his first crime and tell the college kid about it.

Bone-tired from a lack of sleep, Kerney sat at his desk and tried to stay focused as Sal Molina and Cruz Tafoya gave him an update. Clayton Istee was in Socorro with Ramona Pino and Russell Thorpe. Although there strictly to observe, Clayton was helping out with the canvass of Olsen’s friends and acquaintances to gain information about his recent behavior and state of mind.

“That’s fine with me,” Kerney said, brushing aside the unasked question about Clayton’s role in the investigation.

“So far, they’ve got nothing,” Tafoya said, “except for the fact that nobody’s seen Olsen for the past two weeks. He didn’t have many friends, and those who have been interviewed reported he seemed okay. No aberrant behavior, no verbal preoccupation about his criminal past, and no talk about a last-minute vacation to Scotland.”

“That fits with what Olsen’s supervisor and coworkers told Detective Pino,” Molina added.

“Also, the letters Olsen sent to his mother over the years contained no hint that he was plotting revenge or planning to go on a murder spree,” Tafoya said.

“I doubt he’d admit that to his mother,” Kerney said. “What about Chacon’s interviews at the penitentiary?”

“It was a mixed bag,” Molina replied. “The two other perps in the rape-murder case thought Olsen was more than capable of killing again. Of course, they laid the whole thing at Olsen’s feet. The Aryan brother who turned Olsen into his bitch doesn’t buy it. He pretty much said Olsen was a poser and a whiner while he was in the slam.”

Kerney looked at Tafoya. “Do you think Olsen’s mother held back information about his whereabouts?”

“No, I think she was genuinely upset that he’s missing.”

“So, except for Charles Stewart and Archie Schroder, who probably have their own agendas, nobody else sees Olsen as a stone-cold killer,” Kerney said.

“That’s affirmative,” Molina said, “and according to Probation and Parole, Olsen was the star of Victoria Drake’s caseload, a model parolee who went on to get a full pardon and his voting rights restored.”

Kerney picked up the list of seized evidence Ramona Pino had faxed to Molina and waved it at him. “How do we explain all the goodies that were found at Olsen’s house? Or the fact that we have a police artist sketch that looks a hell of a lot like Olsen, and that’s based on information from reliable, local witnesses?”

“Who encountered him near one of the crime scenes,” Tafoya noted.

Molina shrugged. “It gets even more confusing. Sergeant Istee found tire tracks from the blue van at Olsen’s house, so we know for certain the vehicle was there. He also found evidence that someone may have been kept prisoner in a utility room inside the house, and two footprints that match those found on your property but don’t square up with Olsen’s shoe size. The crime scene techs are on it.”

Kerney rubbed his hand over his chin. “Anything else?”

“Olsen left his passport and six hundred dollars in traveler’s checks behind,” Molina said. “They were hidden in a coffee can in the kitchen pantry. Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning to go back there? And if he was planning to return, why would he leave so much physical evidence that connected him to the murders lying around for us to find?”

Kerney held up two fingers. “Add to that these two questions: Who, if anyone, was held captive, and why did Olsen kill Victoria Drake? Olsen had to know it would lead us right to him.”

“He made a mistake,” Tafoya replied.

“That’s what I was hoping for last night,” Kerney said. “But I’m not so sure this is it.”

“He wants us to know who he is,” Molina said.

“Maybe, but let’s dig a little deeper.”

“We have one new possible lead,” Molina said, pulling a piece of paper out of his case file. “The techs found fingerprints in the engine compartment of the van that belong to an ex-con in Tucson. The guy’s an auto mechanic who did a dime for armed robbery. I’ve got the Tucson PD tracking him down.”

“Good,” Kerney said as he pushed his chair back and stood. “Get Pino started on looking into Olsen’s finances. If Sergeant Istee is willing to continue to help out, all the better.” He picked up his file folder. “Is this everything?”

“Right up to the minute,” Molina said, “except for the photographs we took of the protestors outside the building. Olsen wasn’t with them. Do you want me to get you copies?”

“Not now,” Kerney said as he walked to the door. “I’ll be at Andy Baca’s house if you need me.”

Kerney left headquarters and drove to Andy’s house with an eye glued to the rearview mirror looking for a tail. There was none. He waved to the patrol officer parked at the curb and walked to the front door, wondering if he had anything positive about the investigation to tell Sara. It sure didn’t seem so.

T he three agents left for Santa Fe with the evidence just as the crime scene unit arrived. While techs examined the utility room, Clayton, Thorpe, and Pino went looking for the people in Olsen’s address book that they hadn’t been able to contact by telephone. All were local and relatively easy to track down at work.

Clayton finished his in-person interviews first and drove back to Olsen’s house. Everyone he’d talked to was unaware that Olsen was supposedly on vacation in Scotland, but they all simply shrugged it off as Noel’s quirky ways. According to the informants, Olsen had a habit of dropping out of the social scene for long periods of time, only to eventually resurface at his favorite watering hole, some community event, or a party. Apparently, the two most consistent things Olsen did was work hard at his job and play on a coed volleyball team during the fall league season.

Several people noted that Olsen had a strong bias against gay men and, to their knowledge, never dated any women, at least none that they knew of. When they encountered Olsen in town after one of his frequent unsocial spells, he’d be polite and joke about having been in one of his solitary moods. No one found him or thought him any stranger than the other techies or eggheads who worked at the college.

Inside Olsen’s house, the crime scene techs had expanded their search to the bedroom. Clayton went into the home office and paged through the folders he’d emptied out of a file cabinet and dumped on the floor earlier in the day. One of the folders contained bank statements, the most recent a month old. It showed a combined checking and savings account balance of just over five thousand dollars. No checks in large amounts had cleared.

He scanned more files and found an annual pension fund statement which hadn’t been touched, an up-to-date home mortgage payment book, and credit card statements with low balances.

Clayton searched unsuccessfully for Olsen’s checkbook and then went back to the bank statement. According to the closing date, Olsen should have received a new statement. Clayton didn’t remember seeing any unopened mail in the house.

He checked to make sure the mail hadn’t been overlooked, and then walked to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway. It was stuffed full, mostly with junk flyers, a few credit card solicitations, an appointment reminder from a dentist, the latest issue of an engineering society magazine and the bank statement.

He opened the envelope. Olsen had written a two-thousand-dollar check made out to cash.

Clayton dialed Pino’s cell-phone number. “This is Sergeant Istee,” he said when she answered. “Are you free to talk?”

“Yeah,” Ramona said, “I just finished my last interview. Are you done?”

“Yes. When, exactly, did Olsen ask his boss for vacation time?”

“Just a minute,” Ramona said. “Here it is. On the twelfth of this month.”

“He cashed a check for two thousand dollars the day before,” Clayton said.

“So he did take quite a bit of money with him.”

“Yeah, but not all of it. He left over three thousand in the bank,” Clayton replied.

“Which brings us back to the question of why he left his passport and traveler’s checks behind,” Ramona said.

“It was the largest withdrawal he’d made in the last eight months. I’m going to the bank now.”

“You’ll need a court order to get the records.”

“I’m not interested in the paper trail,” Clayton said. “I want to see the video surveillance tapes.”

“Ten-four,” Ramona said. “I’ll meet you back at Olsen’s.”

“The techs are still working the scene.”

“Have they got anything?”

“I haven’t asked.”

“I’ll see you there,” Ramona said.

Russell Thorpe sat in his unit outside what once was Walter Holbrook’s house and wrote up his last field interview note, which didn’t take long to finish. Holbrook had quit his job at the college some time back, divorced his wife, and moved to California. The ex-wife, who ran a private counseling practice out of the house, hadn’t heard from him in months. She remembered seeing Noel Olsen at Holbrook’s volleyball games and talking to him casually once or twice. She gave Russell a phone number where the ex could be reached.

Russell had hoped to score some important new information about Olsen. Instead, all he got were comments that the guy didn’t like queers, didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t talk about his personal life, but played a solid game of volleyball.

He put his clipboard away, closed the driver’s-side window, and turned up the air conditioner a notch. State police cruisers were painted white over black, and heated up quickly in the New Mexico sun. On day shifts in the summer, they turned into blast furnaces the minute the air conditioning was cut off.

Russell thought about the blue van. The whole deal with the vehicle bothered him. Assuming Olsen was the perp, why had he used it to go back and forth to Santa Fe? Why did he go to the trouble to buy the junker, get it fixed up, and steal plates for it? Was it part of a plan to keep Chief Kerney from zeroing in on him? If so, why deliberately blow the scheme by killing Victoria Drake?