by Blake Banner
“Fair enough. I’ll see to it.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up. Dehan kept talking.
“So she’s looking for a friend. Isaac…” She blew out through her teeth and shook her head. “Isaac is the husband of the woman who is sleeping with her husband. It’s like an unspoken rule. If she seeks consolation with him, she has to sleep with him. She doesn’t want that. So she ends up connecting with Greg. They talk several times, probably on Facebook, and she tells him what’s happened. He tells her to come out and stay with him for a few days. She agrees…”
The hamburgers arrived. Peaches and Cream’s cheeks were still prettily pink. She told us to enjoy and hurried away.
Dehan sank back in her chair. I said, “OK, that all sounds very plausible, but we have two problems here. One, why would she tell Mo she was going to see his parents? It would take one conversation between him and them to reveal she had not arranged to go and to see them. Two, what is Greg’s motive for killing her?”
She bit into her burger and shook her head. She chewed and swallowed while I bit.
“No problem. One, her plan is to go and see them. She will stay the night with Greg and then come and see them the next morning. Two, Greg thinks she has come to have an affair with him, but she is a sweet kid who is still in love with Mo. Either she regrets it and backs out, or never expected to have sex in the first place. She’s naïve. She thinks they are just friends. He gets mad and rapes her.”
We sat chewing and staring at each other. I swallowed.
“So, while we wait for the captain to arrange the records, we need to talk to the Olveras. Then we go and see Greg.”
She nodded slowly. “He’s the guy, Stone.”
EIGHT
Alfredo and Ingrid Olvera had a severely humorless house on the outskirts of the town. It was a white clapboard affair with a gable roof and a small front garden given over to the cultivation of beans and peas. A simple, stone path led through the center of the garden to a plain front door. You could imagine, as you approached that door, that the words ‘simple’ and ‘plain’ figured large in the Olveras’ lexicon.
It was Ingrid who opened the door to us. She was probably in her early sixties, but looked older. Her skin looked desiccated and leathery. Hair that had been blonde was now turning to gray, and blue eyes that must once have laughed now judged the world and found it wanting. She didn’t say anything, so I spoke.
“Mrs. Olvera?”
She nodded once. “You must be the detectives from New York.”
“This is Detective Dehan. I am Detective Stone. May we talk to you for a moment? We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Make it quick. I ain’t got long.”
She led us through a dead hall to a soulless living room where a round table stood in the center of the floor with four hard chairs about it. Two very basic captain’s chairs stood in front of an open fire, which at the moment lay unlit. The room was cold. There was a simple dresser, a writing desk, and a credenza, little else. There were no photographs, no pictures of any sort, and no ornaments. The mats on the floor were basic rush. She gestured us to the table and we sat.
Dehan looked around the room. “Is your husband home, Mrs. Olvera?”
“He’s tending to the animals.”
“We’re going to need to talk to him, too.”
She didn’t react, just sat looking at Dehan with eyes that had grown obstinate through years of denying herself joy. I said, “Would you go and get him, please, Mrs. Olvera?”
She didn’t argue. She rose and left the room. Dehan shook her head. “Kathleen wasn’t coming here.”
“I agree.”
“Who would?”
“The penitent?”
We heard the measured tread of shoes on bare boards and Ingrid returned accompanied by a small, gnarled man with gray hair and a large, unkempt beard and mustache. We rose to greet him and he shook our hands, searching our faces with his pale eyes.
“Ingrid, tea. We have guests.” He sat and she withdrew to the kitchen. “Our home is simple, plain, but we can offer hospitality.” There was a trace of an accent, but only a trace. “What is a Christian who does not offer hospitality?”
“Mr. Olvera, we don’t want to take up your time. We just have a couple of questions for you and your wife. We are collaborating with the county sheriff’s department in the investigation into Kathleen Olvera’s murder.”
He nodded once. “I know.”
“There are a couple of things we are not clear about. Were you aware that Kathleen intended to come and visit you?”
He shook his head. “No. We had no contact with Kathleen, or her sister or her mother for that matter. They were papists. We did not approve of our boys consorting with them, but there was precious little we could do to prevent it.”
“And look where it has led them…” Ingrid stood in the doorway, watching us with a face like curdled milk. “One of them a drug addict, the other murdered after fornication, and our boys consorting with God knows what whores in Babylon…”
“Go back to the kitchen and get the tea, woman.” She withdrew. He continued. “Kathleen Vuolo is an Irish Catholic, who was married to an Italian Catholic. He was an infantile man, always playing like a child, consumed with idle curiosity about cowboys and the wild west. Stupid man. And his wife…” He curled his lip. “Not a good woman. A painted harlot.”
Dehan’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? What makes you say that?”
He fixed her with hard, unforgiving eyes. “After her husband died, he was barely in the ground, she was in the bars, drinking alcohol, mixing with the men. Her children in the hotel, alone, and her out in the bars, with men.”
Ingrid came back in with a tray. On it there was a plain, undecorated pot and four plain mugs. She set it down on the table and poured. She didn’t ask if we wanted milk or sugar. Instead she said, “We told Moses and Isaac not to mix with those girls, for the Lord was surely going to punish them. And he surely has.”
Dehan gave her a look that was admirable for its restraint. “With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t think it was God that raped, strangled, and beheaded Kathleen Olvera. I think it was a man. And I don’t know if God’s Law says that her rape and murder was acceptable because her mother drank and used make up, but the law of the United States says it’s a heinous crime. And I have to say, I tend to agree. Now can we clarify, please? Are you saying that Kathleen did not contact you to say she was coming to visit?”
Their faces had gone like stone. He answered.
“She did not. And if she had, we would have told her she was not welcome.”
“Because she had stolen your sons from you.”
She spoke through pinched lips. “They were young and innocent. Those girls seduced them. They led them away from the path of righteousness.”
I said, “And all you wanted to do was lead them back.”
“We only try to do God’s work. We are simple, plain folk.”
“What does God’s work include, Mr. Olvera?”
“Whatever God commands.”
“And how do you know what God commands?”
He was watching me carefully because he knew where we were going. “It is all written in the Good Book, Detective, and the Sixth Commandment states very clearly, thou shalt not kill.”
Dehan pressed him, “Even if it is the will of God?”
“If it were the will of God, He would find His own means, and maybe that is what He did. We are humble servants of God, but we follow His will as laid down in the holy scriptures. We do not make it up according to our convenience. We leave that to the Catholics and the Jews.”
I sighed. “Do you know Greg Carson?”
He nodded. “He was a friend of our sons. His father was a good man.”
“Do you have much contact with him?”
“No, Detective. We don’t have much contact with anyone. We work, we tend our simple plot of land and we serve God in whatever ways we can
each day, and give thanks for his mercy. We don’t socialize, we see few people from one month to the next.”
I’d heard everything I needed to hear, and about as much as I was willing to. I looked across the table at Dehan. She gave her head a shake and I stood.
“We won’t take up any more of your time.” They didn’t get up with us but stayed sitting at the table as we made our way to the door. I opened it for Dehan and then turned back to look at them, both staring down at the simple, plain table top their God had blessed them with.
“Do you know your Bible, Mr. Olvera? How about you, Mrs. Olvera? You know your Bible?”
He answered for them both. “We are rigorous in our Bible study, Detective.”
“You familiar with Matthew?” They both looked away. I insisted, “Matthew 7:1, Judge not, that ye be not judged. Matthew 7:2, For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Matthew 7:3, And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” I gave my head a little sideways twist. “You sure you don’t ‘make it up according to your own convenience’? A good day to you both.”
We left them in their simple, plain house, probably judging us and sentencing us to eternal damnation, and strolled through the broad, empty streets of Seven Hills back toward the Wagon Wheel. After a bit, Dehan said, “You memorized the Bible?”
“No, I just happened to Google that quote the other day, for something unrelated.” I shrugged. “Synchronicity.”
She said absently, “A Jungian concept.” I raised an eyebrow at her. She looked defiant. “What? I Google too.” She looked away and stuck her hands in her pockets. “So maybe they are religious fanatics. Maybe they hate the Vuolo girls for taking their sons away. Maybe she called…”
“They have no phone.”
“OK, so maybe she wrote them and they said, ‘Yeah, come up, we’ll talk about it.’ Papa Freak met her at the station, drove her up to Lefthand Canyon, badabim badabam, end of story.” She curled her lip and shook her head. “But I don’t think so. I can’t tell you why, I just don’t get that vibe from them.”
“Vibe… Cosmic vibrations aside, I can’t see Kathleen ever wanting to go and visit them. Especially if she was depressed. It’s extremely improbable. And if there ever was any correspondence between them, it’s going to be damned hard to prove, because there will be no electronic record of it.”
She nodded. “I agree. Greg is our guy.” I smiled. She eyed me. “What?”
“Go back to the kitchen and make the tea, woman.”
“Can you believe that? What keeps a woman with a guy like that?”
We walked in silence and I studied the cold, empty blue sky above us. “I think some people stick together just because they’re terrified of some day dying alone.” I frowned at her. She was watching me with an odd, quizzical expression. I said, “Dying alone is a pretty scary thought.”
She made a kind of ‘pfff’ sound and looked away. “Crazy, isn’t it? People will live all their lives alone, even when they are close to somebody. I mean, they won’t commit—take that step and commit. But what scares them is dying alone. You know? I don’t mind spending my whole, goddamn life alone, as long as I don’t die alone!”
We walked in silence to the car and got in.
NINE
We followed the same route we’d followed that morning, winding between the steep, densely forested slopes, till eventually we came to Gold Hill. Gold Hill has four streets: Main Street, Gold Run Street, Suicide Hill Street, and the fourth street has no name. These are intersected by Prospect Street and a couple of others which also have no names. None of these streets is tarmacadamed and there are no traffic lights or stop signs. And all the houses have plenty of space between them, so they can stretch and expand with gardens, orchards and vegetable patches. As we rolled slowly through the town along Main Street, it made me smile. I thought it would be a good place to be a kid in. I imagined how it must have seemed to the young Kathleen and Pat, accustomed to the crowds and restrictions of the Bronx, to experience this wild freedom. What it must have been like when they first came to visit Greg at the ranch.
We followed the sheriff’s directions and soon came out the other side of town. The road forked and there was a rough sign that told us this was Pine Ranch. We turned in and followed the drive to a large, two story, log-built house with a raised porch. I pulled up there, climbed out and leaned on the roof of the car, looking at the land around. There was a lot of it, and I could see cattle, llamas, and lots of wood. Whatever Greg was, he wasn’t poor.
The door opened as Dehan got out and a man stepped onto the porch. He looked lean and tough. He was tall, about thirty-two, good-looking and dressed in boots and a cowboy hat. He looked the part. He eyed us both without warmth and said, “Help you?”
“Are you Greg Carson?”
“Who’s asking?”
“This is Detective Dehan and I am Detective Stone. We are collaborating with the Lee County Sheriff’s Department…”
“You here about Kathleen?”
“Yes.”
“You can put your badge away. I don’t need to see it. Tom Watson said you’d be coming. There ain’t a lot I can tell you.” He came down the steps. “What do you want to know?”
Dehan said, “Did she tell you she was coming to Seven Hills?”
“Nope.”
“She wasn’t in touch with you in the weeks before her death?”
“Nope.”
I smiled and came around the car to stand in front of him. “Mr. Carson, I should tell you that we have requested Kathleen’s phone records, emails and social media records for June and July of that year. If you were in touch with her, we will see the correspondence.”
He gave me a long, level, hard look. “I just got through telling you we didn’t have any contact. Do I have to repeat it?”
“When was the last time you did have contact with her?”
He took a deep breath and looked out at the horizon. “Must have been, 2010, 2009? There abouts. After her an’ Mo got hitched I didn’t really see much of them.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow. “Why was that?”
He shrugged and grinned. “I guess I always liked Kath myself. After her pa died, that little weasel Mo was in there like greased lightning. They used to come up regular in the summer, and each summer I hoped maybe she’d’ve got over him. But she didn’t. She still liked him. After a couple of years, I just gave up.” He gave her a humorless once-over and added, “I don’t like wasting time.”
I asked, “Were you aware that she and Mo were having difficulties in their marriage?”
“How would I know that?”
“Can you answer the question, please, Mr. Carson?”
“Nope.” He let the ambiguity of his answer stand.
“Did you know she was coming to visit?”
“I already told you I didn’t.”
I nodded. “Here’s my problem, Mrs. Carson. We know for a fact that Kathleen left New York and came to Seven Hills. We know for a fact that she was coming here to see somebody. We are almost certain that that somebody picked her up from the train station in Boulder…”
He shook his head. “No, they didn’t.”
“They didn’t? How do you know that?”
“The train don’t go to Boulder. You want to come to Boulder from New York by train, you’re gonna get the train to Denver, and then a bus from Denver to Downtown Boulder Station, on 14th Street.”
There was amusement in his face. I let him finish and smiled. “Thank you. So we know almost for a certainty that somebody picked her up from Downtown Boulder Bus Station. And that was probably the last person to see her alive. Now, there are only three people that she would have told that she was coming. Her in-laws, and you. And we know it wasn’t her in-laws.”
He looked down at the ground and nodded a few times. Finally he said, “You’re right.”<
br />
“You did pick her up from the bus station?”
“Nope. You’re right that you got a problem.”
Dehan sighed. “Can you think of anybody else that she might have been in touch with, that she might have been coming to see?”
He took off his hat and scratched his head with the same hand. He seemed to think about it. “Pat was a bit wild. She made friends with the off-grid crowd. Some of them farm cannabis and hang out with Hell’s Angels. They meet at the Shack.”
“The Shack?”
“It’s a bar down on Lefthand Canyon, ’bout three or four mile east of here, before the bend. They have themselves some pretty wild parties down there. I won’t say I never been. I went once or twice with Pat. But that ain’t my scene.”
I scratched my head in an unconscious echo of his own gesture. “So would Kathleen have had friends in that crowd?”
“I can’t see it m’self, but I don’t know. And to be honest, you’re wasting my time. I got work to do and I told you everything I know.”
I nodded. “I understand. Thanks for talking to us, Mr. Carson.” I moved toward the car, then stopped and turned back. “You didn’t like Kathleen, did you?”
He lifted his chin and gave me a hard stare. “I didn’t say that. I told you I was sweet on her at one time.”
“You didn’t say it, but you didn’t have to. It’s clear you don’t give a damn that she’s dead. The five of you used to hang out when you were kids and in your teens, you say you were sweet on her, but now she’s been murdered, and you can’t spare ten lousy minutes to help the cops find her killer? You had a grudge.” I shook my head. “You had some reason for turning hostile against a girl everybody else describes as an angel. What happened, Greg?” He didn’t answer. I pointed at him. “You’re still my man for picking her up at the station.” I smiled. “Have a good day, and thanks for your valuable time. You’ve been helpful.”
We climbed back in the car and slammed the doors. Dehan muttered, “Prick,” and I fired up the engine. I saw him in the rear-view mirror, watching us as we pulled out of the ranch.