No Regrets

found that no one had seen Rolf for months. Gunnar was worried enough to call the sheriff’s office. He had also notified Rolf’s relatives in Norway. He made sure the Puget Sound pilots all knew that Rolf seemed to be missing.
    Ray Clever, of course, had never heard of the allegedly missing man, but then he didn’t know anyone on Lopez. This call sounded routine, a familiar task for any police officer anywhere. Adults usually disappeared for their own reasons and most of them came home within a week...or eventually.
    “Our first dispatch, my first call ever on the San Juan Sheriff’s Department,” Ray Clever remembers, “was to the Rolf and Ruth Neslund residence on Alec Bay Road.”
    As they headed toward the Neslunds’, Doss gave Clever some background on the couple. They had become very familiar to local deputies. “We’ve been called out there on a lot of domestic disturbances,” Doss said. “It’s probably something like that again.”
    Doss told his new partner that he’d been on a call to the Neslunds on June 15, seven months earlier. At that time, he’d seen obvious signs of a physical fight. “Their placewas a mess,” he recalled. “There were dishes and the tablecloth on the floor. Rolf had fresh scratches along the side of his face from his ear to his chin.”
    Ruth, he said, had been hiding in the bedroom, her clothing and hair a mess, her face puffy. She told Doss she was safe there, but if Rolf came in, she was going to shoot him.
    In July, Ruth called the sheriff again, complaining that Rolf had “decked” her. She pointed to a rifle and said that he would never do it again.
    It had seemed an idle threat at the time.
    Ray Clever wondered how a couple whom Doss described as sixty and eighty years old could do much real damage to each other. He fully expected his first assignment as a San Juan County deputy to be quite ordinary. “Domestics” were the most dangerous calls for law enforcement officers, but the Neslunds sounded pretty long in the tooth to be a danger.
    He had no idea how wrong he was. Nor did anyone else.

Five
    It was midafternoon on that blustery February day, but Ray Clever noted the magnificent view as they approached the Neslund home, passing the McKay Harbor Inn, where off-islanders were glad to pay the upscale prices for gourmet meals, and then turning down the lane to the sprawling red house set close to the water. Ruth Neslund welcomed the deputies and invited them in. She was a matronly looking woman with short, dyed hair set in a tightly curled permanent, her eyes magnified behind her glasses. She had carefully applied bright red lipstick. She didn’t appear nervous and she was pleasant enough. Her home was warm, clean, and decorated comfortably.
    The two deputies explained why they had come—just to check on how her husband was doing. Ruth assured them that Rolf certainly wasn’t missing. “He’s gone,” she said cryptically, “but he’s not missing.”
    She told them calmly that she knew perfectly well where her husband was, and there was no reason for anyone to be concerned.
    Sighing, she spoke to the deputies in a confidential tone. She admitted that her marriage was going through a rough patch. By mutual agreement, she and Rolf were technically separated—but only while they worked things out. Clever studied her face as she talked. She anticipatedtheir questions, quickly filling any silences that might be awkward with what seemed to him far too many words. She was quite animated, but something rankled them. Her explanations about her husband’s whereabouts were much too detailed. Clever thought that Ruth Neslund was telling them far more than she needed to, as if she was trying too hard to be convincing. He wondered if she might even have planned what she was going to say if anyone asked.
    Clever had a lawman’s “hinky” feeling about the situation, wondering if it was possible that his very first call on his new job might not involve far more than a marital spat. To be on the safe side, Doss and Clever agreed that Ruth Neslund should be advised of her rights under the Miranda Law.
    Clever read each clause, and she shook her head willingly, almost impatiently. She knew she didn’t have to talk with them, that she could have an attorney present if she wanted, and if she couldn’t afford one, the county would pay to have one appointed.
    “Are you willing to talk with us?” Clever asked.
    “Of course,” she said.
    Ruth explained that