“You worked the case with me, Sal,” Kerney said. “He was an upper-middle-class kid who went out drinking and hoping to get laid with two of his college buddies. They picked up a woman, fed her some crap about taking her to a party, drove her out to the boonies and gang-banged her. The fun times went a little too far when they wound up strangling her and burying the body.”
“I don’t mean the case,” Molina said, realizing that Kerney was tired and not tracking very well. “What do you remember about Olsen as a person?”
“He was an only child and a spoiled pretty boy,” Kerney said, “who played the lady’s-man role. The murder probably never would have happened if Olsen hadn’t tried to sodomize the woman. According to his buddies, that’s what caused her to fight back. She bit and scratched him and he slapped her around. The other two kids joined in to beat and strangle her.”
“Did he strike you as cold-blooded?”
“Not really. He started out acting the tough guy during interrogation, but broke down real fast, which is why he got to plead to lesser charges. I thought he was just as guilty as his cohorts, and so did Jack Potter, who cut him a deal in order to get murder-one indictments on his chums. To me, Olsen’s machismo act was a cover for his unresolved homosexuality. Dora Manning didn’t see it that way; she found him to be narcissistic with sociopathic tendencies.”
“Well, Manning may have missed the boat,” Molina said, as he pointed to the files on Kerney’s desk. “According to the prison records, a con made Olsen his bitch less than a month after he entered the general population at Los Lunas.”
“You got a name?”
“Yep, Kerry LaPointe, out of Curry County. He’s back in the slammer doing a hard twenty at Santa Fe Max for armed robbery, possession of meth, and assault with intent to kill a police officer. He’s an Aryan brother. Matt Chacon is on his way to interview him now.”
“Let’s locate Olsen’s parents and talk to them,” Kerney said, “and have Detective Pino do the same with his coworkers and friends in Socorro.”
Molina nodded. “Did Olsen ever threaten to get even with you?”
“No. In fact, he apologized to the victim’s family at the sentencing hearing.”
“Do you think he’s our guy?” Sal asked.
“Although the evidence is compelling, I have trouble understanding his motive,” Kerney said. “Potter cut him a really sweet deal compared to his two pals. What about that list of possible suspects I gave you?”
“We’ve tracked all of them down except two,” Molina replied, “and those we’ve talked to have tight alibis. We’re still looking for the others.”
“Okay, Olsen looks promising,” Kerney said, “but I want all the pieces to fit together, Sal. Olsen’s college pals should still be doing time for felony murder and aggravated rape. Have Chacon talk to them while he’s at the prison. Have him find out if prison made Olsen vengeful.”
Molina pushed his chair back from the table. “If it did, he’s waited a hell of a long time to act on it.”
Samuel Green had trained himself to sleep an hour or two at a time and wake up refreshed. He dressed in his jogging outfit, drove to the church at the lower end of Upper Canyon Road, parked, and took off at a fast pace up the street where Kerney lived, past the expensive adobe houses and estates that overlooked the dry Santa Fe River.
Aside from the workout it provided, running cleared Samuel Green’s mind. He liked the random thoughts he had when he ran, the ideas that came to him, the things and people he saw. Except for a wave from one pedestrian walking a dog, and a car that slowed as it passed him by, nobody paid any attention to him as he pounded out an eight-minute mile along the fairly steep grade of Upper Canyon Road. He was just another anonymous jogger getting some exercise.
Yesterday, he’d run past a female state police officer stationed in front of Kerney’s house. Today, the cop was gone. He stopped in front of the driveway, put his hands on his knees as if he was catching his breath, and glanced at the guest house. The new vehicle Kerney’s wife had bought was parked next to the pickup truck, but the unmarked police car Kerney drove was gone.
He stretched his right leg and rubbed his calf so that anyone who might be watching would think he had a cramp. All the curtains at the front of the house were drawn, but that didn’t mean anything. It was the cop’s absence that told him Kerney had moved his wife.
Green smiled, straightened up, and ran on. He liked the fact that Kerney was no dummy. It made things all the more interesting.
Detective Matt Chacon stopped at the guard station at the state pen a few miles outside Santa Fe on Highway 14 and waited while the correctional officer cleared him to enter.
After an infamous riot in 1980 that had resulted in the death of several guards and the murder of some thirty inmates, most of whom were found in bits and pieces spread throughout the facility, the state had embarked on a massive new prison construction program. High-tech penitentiaries were built around the state, including the super max for men here at Santa Fe. The old facility had been closed but left standing, and was now rented out to Hollywood film companies shooting on location. A short distance down the road were the Correction Department training academy for guards and the central administration offices. Across the highway stood the county detention center and a brand-new county public safety building that housed the sheriff’s department, the county fire chief’s office, and the regional emergency communication center.
The guard finally waved him through. Inside the prison he was handed a phone message from Molina asking him to also interview Charles Stewart and Archie Schroder, Olsen’s partners in crime. It took twenty minutes for his first subject, Kerry LaPointe, to be brought to the interview room.
No more than five-six, LaPointe had light-brown hair, an acne-scarred face, a pumped-up frame, and an Aryan Brotherhood swastika and Nazi SS lightning bolt tattooed on his forearm.
Chacon asked him about Olsen.
“He was a pussy,” LaPointe said with a smug smile. “I made him my bitch as soon as he hit the general population at Lunas. Wish I had him here with me now. Why are you looking for him?”
“Multiple murder counts,” Chacon replied.
LaPointe laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“He did it once before,” Chacon said.
“Yeah, but he’s no stone-cold killer,” LaPointe replied. “Icing that slut with Stewart and Schroder was just a gang-bang that went bad. He tried to put on a hard-case act when he came out of reception and classification, but nobody bought it.”
“Did he ever talk about a payback? Going after the people who put him in the slam?”
LaPointe shook his head. “He whined a lot about how his life was ruined, that’s about it. Like I said, he was a pussy. Hell, I even branded him.”
“Branded him?”
LaPointe stroked the soft spot between his thumb and forefinger. “AB right here for the Brotherhood, so everybody knew who he belonged to. Didn’t want no niggers or spics thinking he was fair game.”
“Did he ever talk to you about getting even with anybody?” Chacon asked.
“All he rapped about was getting out and proving to everybody how wrong they were about him, like he was going to show the world how fucking brilliant he was.”
After a few more questions that got him nowhere, Chacon moved on to Stewart and Schroder. In individual interviews, both men talked about how the woman had agreed to take on all three of them, Schroder from behind, Stewart getting a blow job while Olsen played with her nipples and waited his turn. How when Olsen had tried to butt-fuck her, she’d spit Stewart’s cum in his face. How Olsen had threatened to get a safety flare from his car, stick it up her ass and light it if she didn’t cooperate. How the slut had tried to run away, which started the beating that led to her death.
Stewart swore Olsen incited the beating, got off on it. Schroder confirmed Stewart’s statement, said Olsen had a real mean streak. Both thought he could kill again.
&
nbsp; “So what if he turned queer?” Schroder said. “I don’t think that changed his personality. He didn’t give a shit about anyone except himself. He’d be all charming on the surface and would get real cold if things didn’t go his way. He liked to get even with people who fucked with him, find sneaky ways to do paybacks.”
Stewart said that nothing was ever Olsen’s fault, that he expected special treatment, and that he liked to talk about how smart he was and how dumb other people were, especially women.
Chacon asked if they thought Olsen had the capacity to organize and carry out revenge killings.
“Why not?” Stewart had said. “I’m sitting here locked up because he played the cops and the DA for chumps.”
“Oh yeah,” Schroder said. “He was a natural born actor, and I’ve got to give it to him, he was one smart motherfucker.”
In the prison parking lot, Chacon sat in his unit and played back the taped sessions a bit at a time as he wrote up his field interview reports. He finished and put the clipboard aside. So which Olsen was real? Was he the psychopathic genius who could outsmart everybody or a weak sister, a sadistic braggart, or a fairy to an Aryan brother?
Matt cranked the engine and left the prison grounds thinking maybe Olsen could easily be all of the above.
The search warrant had been written broadly enough to allow for the seizure of Olsen’s personal, medical, and financial documents; his computer; any and all items used in bomb-making; articles of apparel and footwear; any and all poisons, weapons, or tools used as weapons; samples of material from blankets, linens, textiles, carpets, and rugs; any stolen property of the victims; and any personal hygiene products, hairbrushes, combs, or toothbrushes that could yield forensic or DNA evidence.
While Ramona and her team hadn’t gotten lucky and found a handgun, there were a number of knives that could have possibly been used to slash Dora Manning’s throat. Moreover, in Olsen’s office they’d discovered a scrapbook in the black vinyl binder that contained newspaper clippings about Jack Potter and Chief Kerney going back a number of years, and an arts calender notice in the Taos paper announcing Manning’s upcoming one-woman show.
That got them looking for the paintings that had been stolen during the break-in at the Taos gallery. Thorpe found them wadded up and stuffed into a fifty-five-gallon drum in the toolshed.
Ramona left Thorpe and the two investigators in charge of inventorying and boxing up the evidence for transport to Santa Fe, and drove to New Mexico Tech. Next up were interviews with Olsen’s coworkers and supervisor, which Ramona hoped would yield some information about where Olsen was spending his alleged vacation.
Buffered by pleasant, tree-lined residential streets, the college was a short drive from the main drag. The school grounds were even more delightful to the eye. A lush golf course, set in stark contrast to the brown foothills of the Socorro Mountains, separated two campuses. The main campus consisted of a blend of modern and territorial buildings surrounded by wide lawns fronting a curved main roadway. The west campus was less charming and more industrial in appearance, with blocky warehouses, storage facilities, a surplus property yard, and a number of research buildings, which included the headquarters of the testing center where Olsen was employed.
Ramona met with Morris Day, Olsen’s supervisor, who offered her a coffee in a mug bearing the logo of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco amp; Firearms.
“You do training work with law enforcement agencies,” Ramona said. “One of my coworkers took your course on terrorist bomb threats.”
Day, a thirty-something man with curly light-brown hair cut short and a protruding chin below a slightly turned-up nose, nodded. “It’s one of the most popular courses we offer to government entities. We have students from federal agencies, friendly foreign governments, and many state and local police and fire departments who come here to learn antiterrorism and counterterrorism measures pertaining to the use and identification of explosive and incendiary devices.”
“Sounds interesting,” Ramona said. “I’d like to take it.”
“I’ll give you an application packet before you leave,” Day replied.
“That would be great,” Ramona said. “Tell me about Noel Olsen. Did you know he was a convicted felon when you hired him?”
“Of course,” Day replied. “Even though he’s not working in a classified or a security-sensitive job, we did a very thorough background check before we took him on. He came highly recommended by his professors at State and his parole officer. Is he in trouble?”
“I just need to talk to him.”
“My secretary told the other officer who called that he’s on vacation,” Day said as he toyed with his coffee mug. “He asked for leave rather unexpectedly, but it came at a time when we could spare him.”
“Did he say what he planned to do on his vacation?”
“Noel likes to travel, especially to Europe. He said he had a last-minute offer from a friend to go on a hiking tour in Scotland that was too good to pass up.”
“Did he mention the friend’s name?” Ramona asked.
“No.”
“Did he request his leave in person?”
“No, he called me at home on a Friday night about two weeks ago and asked for fifteen workdays off.”
Ramona found that interesting. Why would Olsen, who had planned his crimes so carefully, wait until the last minute to arrange to go on holiday? It didn’t make sense. “Had he ever done that before?” she asked.
“Ask for an unscheduled vacation? No.”
Ramona asked about Olsen’s personality and learned he was well-liked, a hard worker, and had recently been upgraded to senior technician at the explosives mixing facility on the school’s testing grounds. He had no close friends at work, but always showed up for office parties and picnics, and played on the center’s coed volleyball team.
After she finished questioning Day, he drove her out to the facility where she spoke to Olsen’s coworkers, who confirmed that Olsen was a good guy who kept his head into work and his personal life to himself, which meant absolutely nothing. There were any number of sex offenders and murderers who masqueraded as ordinary people until something set them off.
Back at the center, Ramona thanked Day for his time and left, still nagged by the thought of Olsen’s abrupt request for a vacation. Perhaps Olsen had timed his leave to overlap with the arrival of Kerney’s wife, and since he didn’t have an exact date had to play it by ear.
But how did he know, even in a general way, when Sara Brannon would be coming to Santa Fe to have her baby?
In the kitchen, Samuel Green heated up some canned soup, poured it into a bowl, and carried it to his bedroom. He sat on the bed facing the small color television and watched the local noontime news out of Albuquerque. An anchor woman with big hair and bright-red lips smiled into the camera as she read the Teleprompter headline about the protest outside the Santa Fe Police Department.
Green turned down the volume when the picture switched to the intro of Kerney’s statement to the press. The camera panned over the crowd, and Green saw himself standing in the front row next to an old fag holding a JUSTICE FOR ALL sign. He looked good on camera, better then he’d expected.
He hit the mute button on the remote, and thought about how Kerney had to die. He’d done everything possible to make Kerney believe his next victim would be his pregnant wife. But that was not to be the case. In fact, until she delivered, Sara Brannon was in no danger at all.
Above all else, Green wanted Kerney to watch his wife and newborn child die before he killed him.
Chapter 11
T hrough a stream of fax messages and phone calls, the Santa Fe PD had kept Sheriff Paul Hewitt advised of the progress of the investigation. As soon as he got the word that a credible suspect had been identified in Socorro, Hewitt called Clayton Istee, who was with his family at his in-laws’ house. He gave Istee the skinny on the ID of Victoria Drake, her tie-in to Noel Olsen, and the search under way at Olsen’s house.
“They’ve found evidence that connects Olsen to the bombing and all but one of the homicides,” Hewitt added.
“I’m going up there,” Clayton said.
“Stay with your family, Sergeant,” Hewitt said. “They need you.”
“My family’s fine,” Clayton replied. “Grace and the kids are taken care of and well-protected.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I’m not going to sit here and do nothing,” Clayton said heatedly. “One way or the other, I want in on the investigation.”
Hewitt knew arguing wouldn’t change Clayton’s mind and ordering him not to go would be pointless. “Okay, I’m placing you on training leave for the rest of the week. You’re to observe methods and procedures used by the Santa Fe PD major felony unit. Observe is the key word. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
“Thank you,” Clayton said.
“Don’t overstep your bounds, Sergeant,” Hewitt said. “It could cost us both, big time.”
“Who’s the contact in Socorro?” Clayton asked.
“Detective Pino.”
“Ten-four,” Clayton said.
He made the drive to Socorro running a silent code three all the way, trying not to think too much about Grace and the children. Wendell, usually so talkative, had fallen silent. Hannah refused to leave her mother’s side and didn’t understand why she couldn’t go home. Grace vacillated between black despair and frantic bursts of energy, one minute refusing to look at anybody, the next minute whirling through her parents’ living room straightening up the numerous toys that relatives had brought over for the children, especially the Lincoln Log set Wendell kept building into houses and then destroying.
He felt guilty for leaving Grace to do all the phone calling to the bank, the mortgage company, government agencies, and the insurance agent to get their claims started and replace all the important documents that had been destroyed. But in his current state of mind he would have been useless at doing any of it himself.
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