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?
He wondered if he’d discovered another anomaly. The thought made him think about Clayton Istee. He liked the man and the way he processed information, paid attention to the details, and asked smart questions. Even Ramona Pino, who was no rookie, had seemed impressed with Istee.
Russell decided to follow Clayton’s example. Along the road to Olsen’s house he’d seen Bureau of Land Management signs posted on fences. He reached under the front seat for a binder that contained reference materials and pulled out a map from a plastic sleeve that showed all the public land holdings in the state. Except for several small private inholdings, the hills east of Socorro where Olsen lived were owned by the state and federal agencies.
Why had Olsen picked such a remote place to live? Did he simply want privacy while he plotted and carried out the murders? If Clayton was right about someone being kept prisoner in the utility room, that made sense. But what if he was wrong?
Russell’s first assignment as a rookie had been at the Las Vegas District, which covered a lot of big empty territory. He knew by experience that country people were usually very observant.
Maybe one of them had seen the blue van, or knew something interesting about Olsen. Thorpe figured it might be worthwhile to talk to the neighbors.
Noel Olsen did his banking at a state-chartered institution situated on the main drag close to the old plaza. A block away down a side street was one of the best western-wear stores in the state. Locally owned, it catered to real ranchers and cowboys, which meant that Clayton could always find jeans that fit, hats and boots that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and reasonably priced western-style shirts that weren’t ridiculously gaudy. There were equally good deals on clothes for Grace and the kids.
Many of the store’s customers were Navajos from the remote Alamo Band Reservation in the northwest corner of the county, and the place had a homey feel to it, with polite, friendly clerks who made shopping there enjoyable.
On family trips to Albuquerque, they’d often stop to do a little shopping at the store and have lunch at the restaurant in the old hotel a few steps away.
Inside the bank, Clayton met with a vice president, showed her the canceled check, explained the nature of his inquiry, and asked if he could view the video surveillance tapes for the day in question.
The woman, a round-faced Anglo with an easy smile, took Clayton to a back room, found the tapes, and sat with him while he watched the monitor, using the remote to fast-forward through the frames of customers at the teller stations inside the bank. Olsen wasn’t on the tape.
“What, exactly, are you looking for?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Clayton replied. “Can I view the tape from the drive-up window camera?”
The woman got up and replaced the tape. Clayton pressed the fast-forward button, and froze it when a van came into view. He did a slow-motion picture search, watching Olsen lower the van window and reach for the transaction tube. He stopped the tape. The passenger seat was empty.
Clayton advanced the tape frame by frame and watched Olsen conduct his transaction. He didn’t look very happy, and twice he turned his head and said something over his right shoulder. A curtain on the side window blocked the view into the rear of the van. But it didn’t matter. Clayton was certain another person was in the vehicle with Olsen. He ran through the frames again just to be sure.
“I may need a copy of this,” he told the woman.
“You saw something?”
“Yeah,” Clayton said, thinking that he might have been wrong about Olsen working solo. “But don’t ask me what it means.”
Two of the private parcels were tracts of vacant land, and a third looked to be an abandoned mining claim. Thorpe took the turn-off from the county road and traveled over rock-strewn ruts deep into the hills to a small ranch house situated in a shallow finger of a valley.
It wasn’t much of a place to look at. The front porch of the weather-beaten house was filled with wooden crates, barrels, and piles of rusted junk. To one side stood an empty corral made out of slat boards, a windmill that fed water to a stock tank, and a broken loading chute. Except for an old pickup truck with current license plate tags parked on the side of the house, the place seemed unoccupied.
The sound of Thorpe’s cruiser brought a man out of the house. He stood with his hands in his pockets and watched as Russell approached.
“Don’t get many visitors out here,” the man said. Tall and deeply tanned, the man’s face showed years of wear and a day’s growth of white whiskers. “Especially law officers.”
“I expect not,” Russell replied, extending his hand. “I’m Officer Thorpe.”