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 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.