An hour later, they had compelling evidence that tied Olsen to the explosion in Mescalero and the murders of Victoria Drake and Dora Manning.
By phone, she reported to Lieutenant Molina. “We’ve got a pair of Olsen’s boots that match the shoe prints Deputy Istee found on the trail behind his house, Dora Manning’s cell phone, receipts for the parts Olsen bought to make the triggering and detonation devices, all the raw materials used to make the plastique, the formula for the bomb he left on his computer, two dead Kangaroo Rats we found in a toolshed, plus a partially used container of over-the-counter poison bait.”
“Excellent,” Molina said. “Have you found anything that might tell us where Olsen is?”
“We’re about to start looking,” Ramona said. “What I’ve given you so far is just from a preliminary once-over. But I can give you information on Olsen’s vehicle.”
“Read it off.”
Ramona fed Molina the data. “Looks like our boy isn’t as smart as he thinks he is,” she added. “How did we miss him during our initial records search?”
“He had a clean record in the slammer and as a parolee. He was a model prisoner, made no threats against Kerney or the victims, didn’t violate his parole conditions, and supposedly rehabilitated himself. Besides that, at the time we weren’t looking for a perp who knew how to blow people up. I’ll get an advisory out for Olsen and his car. Keep me informed.”
Ramona disconnected and turned to Thorpe and the two investigators. “Okay,” she said, “let’s tear this place apart.”
“What do you remember about this guy?” Molina asked Kerney, as he put a thick packet containing Noel Olsen’s case file, court trial documents, prison records, and parole officer reports on the chief’s desk and settled into a chair.
“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.
“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 breakin 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.