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.
Chapter 12
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.