No Regrets

family pictures, showing Ruth and Rolf together at different stages in their marriage, or with other family members.
    It looked as though Ruth might have been feeling sentimental about her marriage because there was a projector set up with a screen in the living room. Several slides of happier days lay near the projector.
    She picked out two pictures of Rolf and handed them to Ray Clever. “This looks like him now,” she said.
    Ruth began another long and rambling monologue on her suspicions of where he might be. It was difficult to break into her opinions, but Clever interrupted her. “Can you give me any information about your husband that would help us identify him—even if he should not be alive now?”
    She stared at him, as if it had never occurred to her that Rolf might be dead. “Well, he has some tattoos—old tattoos,” she said. “On his right forearm, he has a heart with an arrow through it—and it says ‘Muriel’ above it. That was some girlfriend he had a long time ago. She’s dead now.
    “And on his left forearm, he’s got something that looks like a Coast Guard insignia, or maybe it’s an American flag. And on the middle finger of his right hand, there’s an arrow tattooed around that finger.”
    Ruth remembered myriad details about her missing husband. When Clever asked her if there were dental X-rays available for Rolf, she shook her head. “His teeth arefalse—both uppers and lowers. Dr. Sam Anderson made them. His office is on Northwest Eighty-fifth in Seattle. And he had prescription glasses from Dr. Heffernan at the PayLess Drugstore at Thirty-fifth and Aurora.”
    According to Ruth, it was also quite possible that Rolf had once had two broken fingers. “I think Elinor broke them once in her lawyer’s office in Canada. He never got them treated, as far as I know.”
    Now Ruth began to talk about Elinor again, going into detail about all the legal problems she had endured because of Elinor and her attorneys. Whether she was questioned about her alleged love rival or not, Ruth was determined to bring Elinor into the conversation.
    “Have you had any letters or calls from Elinor or her attorneys recently?” Ray Clever asked her.
    “No,” she said firmly. “Of course not. That’s ridiculous, because I have nothing to do with her.” Ruth re-emphasized her lack of communication with Rolf’s one-time fiancée.
    “Anything else about Rolf that makes him stand out?” Clever asked.
    Ruth half-smiled as she told Clever that Rolf was bow-legged. “Too many years of riding decks on the ocean.” He also had a split diaphragm, an injury that he sustained when he was a young man and lifted a heavy log.
    Ruth Neslund was clearly a woman with a keen memory, and a talent for minutiae. Whatever their differences, she had known her husband well.
    She listed his clothing sizes: “Jacket, 41 chest; shirt, 15½ neck, 33 sleeve; pants, 35 waist, 29 inseam. He wore size 9½ shoe, and a 6⅞ hat.”
    She suggested that the investigators check Elinor Ekenes’s house to see if Rolf had his clothes stored there. She recalled that Rolf had a particular set of cuff links thathe always wore with his French cuff shirts. “They were Viking ships. He had other cuff links, too, but I never saw him without the Viking ship ones.”
    Clever asked if they might look at Rolf’s jewelry box— still at the Neslunds’ home—to see if he had left anything behind. But Ruth kept talking as if she hadn’t heard him. After he’d asked her several more times, she finally agreed to lead the deputies to the box. When Clever glanced in, he saw at once that the Viking ship cuff links that she had just described were among her husband’s left-behind jewelry. There was also a very expensive man’s watch with a broken metal wristband.
    When Doss and Clever found the cuff links that she’d insisted Rolf was never without, Ruth became very nervous. Her voice quavered and her hands shook as she tried to backpedal on her own remarks. She began to talk again about the histories of the cuff links and the watch. She clearly wanted to show that she and Rolf had been very close and that she had been a huge part of his life, at least until their recent arguments.
    “Could you tell us a little more about the day that your husband left?” Clever asked her. “What did he say?”
    “Well, he said, ‘I’m not coming back.’ Or he might have said ‘I’ll be back after the first of the year—if ever!’”
    The more