As a young kid, Cruz had spent many summer weekends with Uncle Benny, now long retired, who’d lived in a cottage at the stables. Together, they rode horseback over the thousands of yet untouched acres that gave spectacular views of three mountain ranges in the distance, or drove into the back-country hills over rough roads on land slated to remain as open space.
Cruz knew that the subdivision had grown into a bedroom community of several thousand homes. But without a reason to visit over the years, he hadn’t given it much thought. Seeing it up close after so long made his jaw drop. All traces of the vast stretches of pinonstudded ranchland were gone. The main trunk roads had been paved, and houses on acre or more lots were scattered in every direction.
A shopping mall, a branch bank, and a professional office building stood within shouting distance of the highway. Further down the road, past a number of Santa Fe-style, faux-adobe houses, an elementary school and a fire station stood on pastureland where antelope had once grazed.
Cruz pulled to a stop in front of the community library near the school, consulted his map, and then drove on to the west end of the subdivision, where a string of houses bordered an old post-and-barbed-wire fence. Beyond the fence, open land stretched for several miles, ending at the state highway that cut in front of the Cerrillos Hills and ran past the state prison.
Tafoya knew the day was coming when pricier houses on five-, ten-, and twenty-acre tracts that were way beyond the means of most native Santa Feans would fill up the land.
The Olsens’ house was on a side road situated at the back of a lot accessed by a long, weed-infested driveway. Cruz entered the gate to a walled courtyard, walked up a flagstone path past barren flower beds, and rang the doorbell.
From the outside, the place looked neglected. The exterior plaster was badly cracked and the portal above his head showed water damage from a roof leak. A bird had built a nest on the outside light fixture next to the front door and there was a mound of dried droppings on the flagstone at his feet.
He rang the bell again and listened. From inside he could hear the sound of a blaring television. After waiting a few more seconds, he pounded on the door. An older woman with tousled gray hair opened up.
“Please go away,” the woman said. Wrinkles around her mouth gave her a sad, dissatisfied look.
“Meredith Olsen?” Cruz asked, displaying his shield.
“Yes. Why are you here? We don’t bother anybody.” Her breath smelled of booze.
“I need to ask you some questions about your son.”
“Noel? I can’t talk to you about him.” Mrs. Olsen’s expression turned cagey. “Did Stanley send you here to trick me?”
“I’ve never met your husband,” Cruz replied.
Mrs. Olsen raised her hand as if to stop him. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I have no reason to lie,” Cruz said.
Slowly, she lowered her hand and pulled her robe tightly around her thick waist. “We don’t talk about Noel,” she replied in a toneless recitation. “It’s not allowed. That’s all I have to say.”
Cruz looked past Olsen into the darkened front room. He could hear the television broadcasting what sounded like big band dance music from an old movie. The weak flickering of the screen spilled out from an adjacent room.
Mrs. Olsen hadn’t moved. He glanced back at her face and decided to try a ploy. “Noel is missing and I was hoping you could help me find him.”
“Missing?” Mrs. Olsen’s eyes blinked rapidly. “How can he be missing?”
“He’s not at home and hasn’t been at work for some time,” Tafoya answered. “Can we talk inside?”
“Are you sure you haven’t talked to Stanley?” she asked suspiciously.
“Never. Can we talk? I’m sure you want us to find your son.”
Meredith Olsen nodded timidly and led the way into a family room. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were dancing on the large-screen TV. Bookcases along one wall were filled with hundreds, perhaps a thousand, movie video cassettes. A fifth of scotch and a glass sat on a side table next to a reclining chair that faced the tube.
She picked up the remote control and pressed the mute button. “I knew something was wrong with Noel,” she said.
“Why do you say that?” Tafoya asked.
“Every month, when Stanley goes out of town, I have lunch with him. We always meet in Albuquerque on a Saturday. He didn’t come last week.”
“Did you try to call him?”
Mrs. Olsen nodded. “From a pay phone. He didn’t answer. He’s always kept his word to see me since he got out of prison, whenever we could do it so Stanley wouldn’t know.”
On the television, Astaire and Rogers spun across the ballroom floor and swirled off camera. The scene shifted to a closeup of an unhappy looking bandleader. “Does he come to Santa Fe to see you?” Cruz asked.
“Never. He hasn’t been in Santa Fe since the day he went away.”
“He hasn’t visited here recently, in the last week or so?”
Mrs. Olsen shook her head. “Why is Noel missing? Has he done something bad?”
“No, nothing like that,” Tafoya said. “His employer reported that he hasn’t been at work for the last two weeks. How do you stay in touch with him?”
“By letter. I can’t call him from home. Stanley would know about it when he paid the phone bill.”
“Does Noel call you?”
“Only very rarely when he has to cancel our lunches because of work.”
“And he didn’t call to cancel last Saturday?” Cruz asked.
“No.” She touched a finger to her lips. “Now I’m worried.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Tafoya said. “Do you have Noel’s letters?”
Meredith Olsen stiffened. “You have to understand that Stanley has no son, and I’m not supposed to either.”
Tafoya smiled sympathetically. “Your husband doesn’t have to know about my visit.”
“Promise?”
“Yes. Did Noel ever talk to you about getting even with the people who sent him to prison?”
Mrs. Olsen shook her head vigorously. “He made a terrible mistake and he knows it. He’s tried hard to put that behind him and become a good person. It does happen, you know. People can change for the better.”
“Would you get Noel’s letters?” Cruz asked gently. “They could help us locate him.”
“I don’t see how,” Mrs. Olsen said.
“The more we know about him, the more likely we are to find him.”
She left and returned with a shoe box filled with letters. She gave Cruz the box reluctantly, as though turning over a priceless treasure.
He promised to return the letters at a time when Dr. Olsen wasn’t home, said good-bye, and walked to his unit, thinking how the ripple effect of murder always seemed to destroy so many lives beyond that of the victim.
Tafoya called dispatch as he rolled out of the driveway, and gave an ETA to headquarters. He was eager to read what Noel Olsen had written to his mother.
The last room to be tossed again was the kitchen. In a coffee can at the back of the top shelf of a pantry, Ramona found Olsen’s passport and six hundred dollars in unused traveler’s checks.
“Seems you were right,” she said as she showed the items to Clayton.
“That’s our second interesting anomaly,” Clayton said with an approving nod of his head. He opened the door to what he thought would be the back porch and found that it had been sealed off and turned into a utility room that contained a fifty-gallon propane water heater plus a washer and dryer.
Clayton stepped inside and closed the door. There were a number of what appeared to be scuff marks made by rubber soles on the door and the bottom horizontal plate showed a fresh crack. He knelt down for a closer look. Someone had kicked the door repeatedly, and not with the tip of a shoe. There were full footwear impressions on the painted wood.
He gauged the length of the room. It was just long enough for a man to lie prone. He swung around and examined the water heater that sat on a raised plywood platform. It was a fairly new fifty-gallon tank painted a light gray. At the base of the unit was a series of scratch marks that had exposed bare metal. He ran a forefinger along the scratches and looked at the light coating of paint dust and metal particles on his fingertip. From the feel of it, the scratches ran completely around the tank.