Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

“Maybe he learned his lesson.”

Green nodded. “Yeah, he got reformed, I bet. I guess there’s hope for all of us.”

“That sounds sarcastic,” the kid said. “Are you a cop?”

Green laughed. “No, but I guess you could call me a criminologist.”

The dryer buzzer sounded. The kid gathered up his stuff and went to get his clothes. “So, you’re a teacher.”

“More like a student of criminal behavior,” Green said as he followed along.

“Graduate school?” the kid asked, eyeing Green as he crammed his laundry into a backpack.

“Doing some research,” Green replied elliptically with a nod.

“Well, with all the murders in town lately, you must be staying pretty busy,” the kid said as he zipped the backpack closed.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Green replied with a toothy grin.

The kid strapped on the backpack, said good-bye, and walked across the street toward the college. Green sat on one of the dryers and looked around. Except for new machines and a fresh paint job, not much had changed since the night he’d killed that old lady.

Because it predated his transformation to Samuel Green, the murder didn’t count in the usual sense. None of the early ones did. They all belonged to someone who’d not yet learned to be thoughtful, studious, and deliberate about murder.

Still, it had been a turning point in his life. Because no one had believed that his parents abused him-they were, after all, respected, upstanding citizens-he’d spent seven more years in hell at home, only to be followed by incarceration at the Boys’ School in Springer, where he’d surely been reformed.

He hadn’t meant to kill the old lady, but she’d resisted, and he needed that money to run away. So he hit her with the hammer, and it felt so good he did it again and again until her head was a bloody mess and she was lying on the floor.

The washing machine slowed to a stop. He transferred the clothes to a dryer and started thinking about a way to find out where Kerney and his wife where staying. It could be anywhere: a hotel, a friend’s house, one of those short-term vacation rentals, or even a bed-and-breakfast. Wherever they were, Green was pretty sure Kerney had arranged for 24/7 police protection to keep his wife safe.

Earlier in the day, he’d spent a couple of wasted hours listening to police radio traffic on his scanner, hoping he could locate them that way. When that didn’t work, he thought about following cops around town to see if one would lead him to them, but abandoned the idea as impractical. He needed to do something that would draw Kerney and the wife out into the open.

What would get them scrambling? He ran down a list of possible events in his mind and stopped when he got to the house that Kerney was building. From what he’d seen at the construction site, a lot of money was being poured into it. Although the horse barn was metal and the house was being made with adobe, there was enough wood lying around to start a really nice range fire, which would probably bring Kerney and his wife running.

The idea of arson appealed to Samuel Green. All he needed to do was to find another way in to avoid being spotted by anybody on the main ranch road. That shouldn’t be too hard. On the east boundary of Kerney’s land a railroad spur and a maintenance road ran from the Lamy junction to Santa Fe. In the evening, he would check it out to see how close he could get by car.

Even if he had to hoof it a bit, the site was remote enough to give him time to get away before the fire trucks arrived. Then he’d find a place near the highway to wait for Kerney to appear. After that, he’d just follow him back to town.

It should work. But if it didn’t, there was still the fire to look forward to. He could picture flames raging in a night sky, turning the grassland charcoal black, burning up all the construction material lying around, maybe even getting hot enough to buckle the steel horse barn and kill all the big pinon trees.

It was too bad that the explosion and fire in Mescalero had been kept from spreading, too bad that he’d been forced to leave in a hurry and miss the enjoyment of it all.

Green took a deep breath to calm down and think straight. Before he got too excited about the plan, he needed to make a trial run to see if it was feasible. He’d do that tonight.

The dryer buzzer pulled his thoughts away from the scheme. He folded his clothes neatly, placed them inside the pillowcase, and took one last look around the Laundromat. It had been a real kick to visit the scene of his first crime and tell the college kid about it.

Bone-tired from a lack of sleep, Kerney sat at his desk and tried to stay focused as Sal Molina and Cruz Tafoya gave him an update. Clayton Istee was in Socorro with Ramona Pino and Russell Thorpe. Although there strictly to observe, Clayton was helping out with the canvass of Olsen’s friends and acquaintances to gain information about his recent behavior and state of mind.

“That’s fine with me,” Kerney said, brushing aside the unasked question about Clayton’s role in the investigation.

“So far, they’ve got nothing,” Tafoya said, “except for the fact that nobody’s seen Olsen for the past two weeks. He didn’t have many friends, and those who have been interviewed reported he seemed okay. No aberrant behavior, no verbal preoccupation about his criminal past, and no talk about a last-minute vacation to Scotland.”

“That fits with what Olsen’s supervisor and coworkers told Detective Pino,” Molina added.

“Also, the letters Olsen sent to his mother over the years contained no hint that he was plotting revenge or planning to go on a murder spree,” Tafoya said.

“I doubt he’d admit that to his mother,” Kerney said. “What about Chacon’s interviews at the penitentiary?”

“It was a mixed bag,” Molina replied. “The two other perps in the rape-murder case thought Olsen was more than capable of killing again. Of course, they laid the whole thing at Olsen’s feet. The Aryan brother who turned Olsen into his bitch doesn’t buy it. He pretty much said Olsen was a poser and a whiner while he was in the slam.”

Kerney looked at Tafoya. “Do you think Olsen’s mother held back information about his whereabouts?”

“No, I think she was genuinely upset that he’s missing.”

“So, except for Charles Stewart and Archie Schroder, who probably have their own agendas, nobody else sees Olsen as a stone-cold killer,” Kerney said.

“That’s affirmative,” Molina said, “and according to Probation and Parole, Olsen was the star of Victoria Drake’s caseload, a model parolee who went on to get a full pardon and his voting rights restored.”

Kerney picked up the list of seized evidence Ramona Pino had faxed to Molina and waved it at him. “How do we explain all the goodies that were found at Olsen’s house? Or the fact that we have a police artist sketch that looks a hell of a lot like Olsen, and that’s based on information from reliable, local witnesses?”

“Who encountered him near one of the crime scenes,” Tafoya noted.

Molina shrugged. “It gets even more confusing. Sergeant Istee found tire tracks from the blue van at Olsen’s house, so we know for certain the vehicle was there. He also found evidence that someone may have been kept prisoner in a utility room inside the house, and two footprints that match those found on your property but don’t square up with Olsen’s shoe size. The crime scene techs are on it.”

Kerney rubbed his hand over his chin. “Anything else?”

“Olsen left his passport and six hundred dollars in traveler’s checks behind,” Molina said. “They were hidden in a coffee can in the kitchen pantry. Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning to go back there? And if he was planning to return, why would he leave so much physical evidence that connected him to the murders lying around for us to find?”