He turned to the washer and dryer. The unbalanced dryer wobbled badly when he jiggled it, and there was a dent on the side about six inches above the floor. He opened the dryer door and caught the strong odor of mildew. An unused fabric softener sheet sat on top of wadded-up clothes. The dryer hadn’t been used in some time.
Clayton checked the washing machine, found it empty and dry, and went back to the water heater. There were a few brown spots on the side of the platform and a yellowish stain on the middle of the linoleum floor.
He went into the kitchen where Thorpe and Pino were looking behind the refrigerator and under the sink. “Let’s get some techs out here,” he said.
“What have you got?” Thorpe asked.
“It could be a crime scene,” Clayton replied. “I think somebody was kept prisoner in the utility closet.”
“Another victim?” Pino asked as she flipped open her cell phone and made the call.
“Yeah, maybe,” Clayton said. “But who?”
“A third anomaly,” Russell Thorpe said as he peeked into the utility closet and saw nothing that pointed to a person being kept captive. He decided not to question Sergeant Istee about it. “What next?” he asked.
Ramona held up the address book she’d found in a drawer next to the wall phone by the refrigerator. “First, I need to bring my lieutenant up to speed.” She spoke to Thorpe, deliberately excluding Clayton. “Then, let’s start calling people. If Olsen really is our perp, somebody he knows should be able to tell us something of value.”
“I’ll work part of the list,” Clayton said.
“That’s not the role of an observer,” Ramona replied.
“Do you really want to waste time arguing with me about it?” Clayton asked.
Ramona paused and thought about it. Technically, she could order Istee to back off, but she didn’t want to do it. He was sharp, experienced, and had been more than helpful. “Okay,” she said, “you’re in.”
Samuel Green parked in front of the Laundromat on St. Michael’s Drive, grabbed the pillow case filled with his dirty clothes, and walked inside. The place was empty except for a long-haired college kid who was sitting at a table next to the wall dispenser that changed bills into quarters for the machines.
Green dumped his pillowcase on top of a dryer, which made the kid glance up from his book. Green smiled and the kid nodded in reply and went back to scribbling notes on a yellow pad.
He stuffed his laundry into a machine, poured in some detergent, and walked to the change machine. The kid slid his chair out of the way so Green could get by.
“How you doing?” Green asked, as he inserted the bill into the machine and waited for the quarters to drop down into the slot.
“Good,” the kid replied.
“Studying?” Green asked as he fished the coins out. The kid couldn’t be more than twenty.
“Yeah, summer school. I’m taking a required history course.”
“I like history,” Green said as he started up the washing machine. “You can learn about a lot of interesting people.”
The kid made a face. “Not me.”
“Why not?” Green asked as he sat at the table.
The kid closed his book. “It’s just a survey course of names, dates, and events that you’ve got to memorize, and the instructor is real lame.”
“That’s too bad, because history can be real educational,” Green said. “Like this place, for example. It’s got some history.”
The kid laughed. “What kind of history does a Laundromat have?”
“There was a murder here a long time ago,” Green replied. “An old lady was beaten to death with a hammer.”
“You’re kidding. Right here?”
“That’s right. She owned the place and came in one night to fill up the soap dispensers and collect the money from the machines. She got robbed and killed.”
“No shit? Did they catch who did it?”
Green nodded. “Yeah, a fourteen-year-old. They say he hit her ten times with the hammer. Burst her head open like a melon. There was blood all over the place.”
“Gross,” the kid said. “Did he get sent away for life?”
“You can’t do that to a fourteen-year-old,” Green replied. “In this state, young kids can’t get sent to prison. They get adjudicated and sent to reform schools. Except now they don’t call them that anymore. But they’re still under lock and key.”
“What happened to him?”
“They had to release him when he was twenty-one. Then he just disappeared.”
“Maybe he learned his lesson.”
Green nodded. “Yeah, he got reformed, I bet. I guess there’s hope for all of us.”
“That sounds sarcastic,” the kid said. “Are you a cop?”
Green laughed. “No, but I guess you could call me a criminologist.”
The dryer buzzer sounded. The kid gathered up his stuff and went to get his clothes. “So, you’re a teacher.”
“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 good-bye, 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.