Everyone Dies

by Michael McGarrity

  “What did Olsen have to say about the offer?”

  “He didn’t like it. Said he was gonna turn them down, which I think would be plain stupid, because if the feds want your land, they’ll find a way to get it. Just ask some of the old-timers who got booted off the north end of the missile range back in the fifties.”

  “Did he say why he didn’t like the offer?” Thorpe asked.

  “Said he liked his privacy,” Lyons said with a laugh. “Well, he’s sure got that. About the only thing worth a plug nickel in these hills is the view across the river to the mountains.”

  “Have you ever visited Olsen?”

  Lyons shook his head. “He put a gate across his access road soon after he moved in. I took that to mean he wasn’t interested in having unexpected company come calling.”

  “Are there any other neighbors?” Thorpe asked.

  “Not nearby and living on the land,” Lyons replied. “Jett Kirby owns a couple of sections, so do Cisco Tripp and Roman Mendez. But, like me, they live in town.”

  “Thanks for your time,” Thorpe said.

  “Has Olsen got trouble?” Lyons asked.

  “He’s gone missing.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Lyons said. “Good luck finding him.”

  Thorpe drove away in full agreement with Lyons’s take on the land. It was parched, rocky, and desolate, chalk-colored and brown, and only cactus and scrub brush seemed to thrive on it. But when he topped out of the small valley the view was stupendous. Below was the fertile green expanse of the Rio Grande River valley, and beyond that were the mountain crests west of Socorro, blue-black against a bright afternoon sky.

  Russell wasn’t sure he’d learned anything worthwhile doing his one-man canvass. But he’d run it by Clayton Istee and Ramona Pino anyway.

  Clayton and Thorpe arrived at Olsen’s house within minutes of each other, and Ramona convened a conference at the front of Clayton’s unit. Inside the house, techs were vacuuming floors, looking for latent prints, and gathering hair and fiber samples.

  “What have we got?” Ramona asked as she leaned against the hood of the Lincoln County 4×4 patrol vehicle.

  “Where do you want to start?” Clayton asked.

  “Let’s stay in sequence,” Ramona said. “The interviews first.”

  Thorpe nodded. “I didn’t learn much on my end, except that Olsen doesn’t like gays, doesn’t have a girlfriend, keeps his personal life private, and plays well with others on the volleyball team.”

  “Roger that,” Ramona said. “I heard the same thing.”

  Clayton nodded. “Apparently, he hasn’t had an intimate relationship with a woman since he moved to Socorro. At least not one that anyone knows about.”

  “Maybe he’s asexual,” Ramona said.

  “That would be quite a behavior change for a convicted rapist,” Clayton said.

  “No one I talked to said anything about him being gay, bisexual, or asexual,” Russell said, “and they all seemed like straight people to me.”

  “You can’t always tell by appearances,” Ramona said.

  “Maybe he’s just a gay-basher,” Thorpe said as he hunkered down in front of the 4×4.

  “What did you learn at the bank?” Ramona asked Clayton.

  Clayton looked vexed. “It’s another one of those anomalies. I reviewed the surveillance tapes. Olsen drove the van to a drive-up window to cash his check, and he had somebody with him when he did it.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Thorpe said.

  Clayton explained about the bank statement and the two-thousand-dollar withdrawal.

  “So maybe he does have an accomplice,” Ramona said. “Did you get a picture of the passenger?”

  Clayton shook his head. “There wasn’t one to get. Whoever was with him was in the back of the van, out of sight. But Olsen talked to that person twice, speaking over his shoulder.”

  Clayton looked at the house. “Maybe it was the person Olsen had chained up in the utility room, if the techs haven’t blown away that little theory of mine.”

  “The techs say the small stains on the water heater platform are blood,” Ramona said, “and the dried fluid on the utility room floor is probably urine. They also found multiple prints on the platform and identified five different sets of latents in the bedroom.”

  “That’s interesting,” Thorpe said, as he stood up. “The guy doesn’t date women, hates queers, but he’s had five different people in his bedroom.”

  “It’s more than interesting, especially if the prints in the utility room are from a possible unknown victim,” Clayton said.

  “I agree,” Ramona said. “I asked the people I talked to if they hung out, partied, or had dinner with Olsen at his house. None of them had ever been here.”

  “I heard the same thing,” Clayton said.

  “Ditto that,” Thorpe said. “I also talked to a neighbor, about the only one Olsen has, who hasn’t set foot on the place since Olsen moved in. He said the BLM wants to buy all the inholdings and turn these hills into a wildlife sanctuary. Olsen told him he wasn’t going to sell.”

  “With all the evidence we found, that’s not surprising,” Ramona said.

  Clayton glanced to his left and right, looking for fences. He spotted one a good distance off on a rise. “I wonder how much land Olsen owns.”

  “From what I could tell, looking at my map, I’d guess no more than eighty acres,” Russell replied. “It shows as a rectangle that runs straight back from the road.”

  “You can hide a hell of a lot of stuff on eighty acres,” Clayton said. “Maybe we should take a look.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt,” Ramona said.

  Sal Molina and Cruz Tafoya met the agents who’d brought the evidence up from Socorro at state police headquarters. Because Sal didn’t want any screw-ups in the chain of custody, he’d decided to receive the seized items on the spot and immediately submit all of it to the state police lab for analysis.

  With the three agents helping, they got the paperwork done and the evidence into the lab in less than an hour.

  Henry Guillen, a senior tech who specialized in hair and fiber analysis, stopped Molina as he carried the last box into the lab.

  “Come see me before you leave,” Guillen said.

  Sal nodded, dropped off the box, and waited for the receiving tech to inventory the contents and sign the chain of custody receipt. He grabbed Tafoya, who was on his way out, and asked him to have the fingerprint tech take a fast look at the cell phone and the scrapbook. Then he went looking for Henry Guillen, who was peering into a microscope, scratching the back of his neck with one hand and adjusting the lens with the other.

  “Did you get the official word that the vic in the van died from rat poison?” Guillen asked without looking up.

  “I did,” Molina said.

  “What an ugly way to die,” Guillen said, glancing away from the microscope. “All those convulsions and muscle spasms. No wonder she flipped her wig.”

  “What are you talking about, Henry?”

  Guillen tapped the microscope and stepped away from the table. “These hairs and fibers were found in the van. Take a look.”

  Molina looked into the eyepiece and saw what appeared to be several blond strands of hair. “They look the same to me.”

  “It’s really a combination of human hair and modacrylic fiber of exactly the same length,” Guillen said. “Modacrylic is a long-chain polymer used in clothing, bedding, paint, carpets, curtains, upholstery—all kinds of stuff. The only producers are in Japan. These strands came from a wig.”

  “How can you tell?” Molina asked as he raised up from the eyepiece.

  “The combination of hair and fiber, plus the ends are curled, which means they were doubled over and machine sewn into the wig cap.”

  “Can you identify the manufacturer?”

  Guillen laughed. “Sure, give me a round-trip plane ticket, a hefty expense account, and a year in Asia, and I’ll get back to you.”


  “Why Asia?” Molina asked.

  “Because that’s where most of the cheap wigs and hairpieces are made.”

  “Victoria Drake was a brunette,” Molina said, “with a full head of hair.”

  “Well, somebody who was in the van wore a blond wig,” Guillen said. “Maybe your suspect or some other victim.”

  “I’ll check it out,” Molina said, as he patted Henry on the back.

  He went down the corridor to the fingerprint section, where Cruz Tafoya was watching the tech at work. “Anything?” he asked.

  “The cell phone has Olsen’s prints on it,” Tafoya said. “He’s checking a page in the scrapbook now.”

  The tech had carefully peeled off one of the newspaper articles taped to a page and was scanning both documents with a laser light. He turned them over and repeated the process.

  “No prints here,” the tech said, “and none on the inside or outside of the binder. But I’ve got a lot left to examine.”

  “Let’s us know what you find,” Molina said.

  Outside, there was a steady whine of traffic along Cerrillos Road. Molina watched it for a moment before turning to Tafoya. “Henry Guillen says somebody in the van wore a blond wig. Olsen has long blond hair, or at least he did. Call his mother and ask her if he’s balding and wears a wig to hide it.”

  Tafoya checked his pocket notebook for a number and dialed his cell phone. It ran a long time before Meredith Olsen picked up and answered in a blurred voice. Cruz asked the question.

  “Oh, no,” Meredith Olsen replied. “He has shiny, long, baby-fine hair. I used to curl it for him when he was a little boy. He looked so beautiful.”

  Cruz thanked Meredith Olsen and clipped the cell phone to his belt. “No wig,” he said.

  “It could be that Clayton Istee’s theory about another victim is on target,” Molina said.

  “You’d think Olsen’s prints would be all over that scrapbook he put together on Chief Kerney,” Tafoya said.

  “I know it,” Molina said.

  Cruz Tafoya shook his head. “Things aren’t jibing.”

  “I know,” Molina said.

  The men separated and walked to their units. As Molina pulled out of the parking lot, he considered the inconsistencies in the case, tried to reconcile them, and came up short. There were still too many unanswered questions that cast doubt in his mind.

  The large guest room at Andy and Gloria’s house had a separate entrance off the rear patio, a private bath, and two comfortable easy chairs positioned in front of a window that provided a view of the backyard. An antique pine chest under the window was filled with toys used to entertain visiting grandchildren, and a large walk-in closet contained two folding beds and all the necessary linens to accommodate four guests.

  Kerney’s attempt to brief Sara on the case had suffered from a stream of constant interruptions as phone calls came in from various personnel. It seemed that everybody in the department felt a need to keep Kerney fully informed about each and every new development, no matter how small.

  Sara sat in a chair watching Kerney talk to Sal Molina on his cell phone. From what she’d overheard, it was clear the investigation was far from being wrapped up. The evidence seized in Socorro had raised troubling questions, as had the interviews conducted with Olsen’s friends and acquaintances. The possibility that Olsen had an accomplice was still up for grabs, as was the theory that there might or might not be another victim.

  Sara had tried to keep a sunny disposition and hold back on expressing the feeling of imprisonment that continued to annoy her. Although the two state police agents remained discreetly in the background, their presence was a constant reminder that she was under guard. And Gloria Baca’s gracious attempts to put her at ease during the course of the day hadn’t diminished her growing sense of uselessness. It wasn’t a feeling Sara liked.

  Half-listening as Kerney talked to Sal Molina, she told herself the situation was, after all, dangerous. When that didn’t work, she told herself that Kerney’s effort to keep her out of harm’s way was instinctual and protective. She found no comfort in either thought.

  Since the day Sara had entered West Point, she’d functioned in a male-dominated world, never once thinking that she couldn’t be a man’s equal. The bureaucratic barriers didn’t faze her, nor did the chauvinistic attitudes of some of her superiors and colleagues. Eventually, the glass ceiling would be shattered and no rank or duty assignment, including combat arms, would be closed to women.

  She knew Kerney wasn’t a chauvinist, or simply pretending not to be, as many men did. His endearing ability to accept her as an equal without the need to dominate or control had drawn her to him in the first place.

  When Kerney disconnected, Sara decided to approach him head-on with the fact she could no longer tolerate the situation. She held up a hand to keep him from talking.

  “We have to reclaim our lives, Kerney,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if a bomb goes off in five minutes, hours, or days and blows us both to kingdom come, I can’t stand being held hostage any longer. I want to go back to our own place, visit the new house, and do some shopping for the baby.”

  Kerney put the cell phone down, rubbed the palms of his hands over his eyes, and let out a deep breath. “That’s not such a good idea right now,” he said as he raised his head to look at her.

  “Maybe not,” Sara said, “but we’ve come through tough times before and survived them. We can do it again.”

  “Under completely different circumstances,” he said.

  “I’m not asking for your permission,” Sara said. “I want you to call Larry Otero and tell him we’re not to be bothered for the next twenty-four hours. Then turn off that damn cell phone and we’ll go back to our place and try to organize one day of normal living with no agents hovering around and no interruptions before the baby comes.”

  Still thinking of all the reasons it was a bad idea, Kerney studied the determined look on Sara’s face. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

  “It’s time to stop hiding and go home.”

  “Will you accept having an officer stationed outside?” Kerney asked.

  Sara nodded. “That’s agreeable.”

  “Okay. So what do you want to do first?”

  “I’d like to take an evening drive in my new car to see how our house is coming along.”

  Kerney smiled and flipped open his cell phone. “Give me a couple of hours in the rack, and it’s a date. Why don’t you tell Gloria about our change in plans, and I’ll let Andy and Larry Otero know.”

  Sara got out of her chair, kissed him, and went to speak to Gloria. Patrick Brannon gave a wiggle and something told Sara the twenty-four hours she’d demanded might not be as normal as she hoped.

  Doing a comprehensive field search of eighty acres was no small task. Using the boundary fences as a guide, the three officers spread out and walked the perimeter of the property before separating at the back fence to sweep down the hill toward the house.

  Shrub vegetation, mostly creosote, sage, and broom snakeweed, dominated several rocky terrace slopes, and there were clusters of hedgehog, prickly pear, and barrel cactus growing in pockets of coarse sand. Limestone, sandstone, and shale lined shallow runoff gullies, and gusts of wind raised dust swirls that dulled the pale-green, drought-stricken bunchgrass.

  Halfway down the slope, Russell Thorpe spotted a series of five rock cairns arranged in a neat line on a sandy fold in the hillside. He walked to them, wondering what they signified, and noticed that one looked fairly recent. Each cairn was round and no more than three feet high.

  He stepped back, knelt down, and pawed at the sand until he hit rock about a foot down. Fifty feet away from the cairns was a small quarry cut into the hillside. There he found a rock pile that matched the stones on the mounds. A wheelbarrow turned upside down leaned against the pile.

  As he retraced his footsteps, marking each one with a stone, Thorpe called out for Clayton and Ramona. They converged on him
from the north and south.

  “The one on the south side looks to be the most recent,” he said as Clayton made a wide loop around the cairns and Ramona took photographs. “The sand gives way to rock about a foot down.”

  “I make each one to be about ten feet in diameter,” Clayton said as he eyed the cairns, “and whatever is under them has drawn coyotes. There’s old scat everywhere.”

  Ramona lowered the camera. “Let’s rope off this area and get the techs up here.” She slipped on plastic gloves, walked to the newest cairn, and began carefully removing rocks.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for them?” Thorpe asked before he keyed his handheld.

  “There’s enough work here for everybody,” Clayton said as he joined Ramona at the mound.

  Within two hours, three bodies had been partially exhumed.

  Two hours of sleep left Kerney feeling better. He came out of the bedroom determined to put the investigation aside and enjoy the evening with Sara, although he did plan to remain cautious and armed. He clipped the holstered .45 to his belt.

  The bulge of the .38 in the purse on the kitchen table told him Sara was of a like mind.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked as he entered the living room.

  Sara nodded, eased herself off the couch, and held out the car keys.

  “Don’t you want to drive your new car?” Kerney asked.

  “I do, but I’m afraid Patrick Brannon will be a distraction. He’s getting restless and acting up.”

  “Maybe we should just stay here.”

  Sara shook her head as she put the keys in his hand. “Not a chance. I need to see a beautiful New Mexico sunset on our land, and talk you into letting me add the pergola on the front patio of the house.”

  “I’m having second thoughts about the swimming pool,” Kerney said.

  “Because of the water we’d use?” Sara asked.

  Since he was warned not to run on the leg, the pool was to be the alternative way to keep his new knee operating at peak efficiency. But he’d been raised on a desert ranch where water was precious, which made the whole idea of a swimming pool uncomfortable.