No Regrets

logs, noting the time each one entered and left, and every scintilla of possible evidence that they had bagged and marked. As the detectives and criminalists moved through the house, it was silent except for their own breathing and subdued voices. Was Rolf Neslund’s ghost here? If something awful had happened in these rooms, any overt residue of violence had clearly been hidden—wiped up, cleaned up, covered over. To the casual eye, Ruth’s house was now in immaculate condition, spick and span enough to attract guests to a bed-and-breakfast.
    The searchers had to keep reminding themselves to look beyond the obvious, to stare at the slightest stain on a wall, or a baseboard, or even on the ceiling. Did any furniture or wall or floor covering look newer than the rest of the house, new enough to have been purchased since August 1980?
    Ruth Neslund apparently kept all manner of receipts, records, and contracts. Now, despite her indignation, those fell within the scope of the search warrant. Her life and her habits and interests were all there. Few people were as meticulous as she was.
    Ray Clever filled numerous notebooks in his remarkably small, careful printing, listing what he had found, and made out receipts that would be given to Ruth Neslund to indicate possible evidence the deputies had removed. (In the end, there would be more than seven hundred items!)
    Ruth Neslund’s banking and tax records were precise and organized. She had apparently saved every receipt, letter, card, and bill she ever received. The couple held mortgage contracts on a number of properties. Clever saw eight full-size, four-drawer filing cabinets in her office area, and every drawer was full to bursting.
    “As it happened,” Clever says, “I had taken a speed-reading course. It’s both a blessing and a curse. If I’m reading a really good book, I’m sorry that I read at the rate of twelve hundred words a minute. But during that search warrant, it was a blessing. I read through everything Ruth Neslund had filed, and I took all documents that seemed to be relevant into evidence.”
    Tediously, Ray Clever jotted down a long list of documents. They might prove to be totally useless in the probe, or there could be information in the stacks of files and notebooks that could either link Ruth to Rolf’s sudden vanishing or clear her of any culpability or motivation.
    It was likely Rolf never sat on the couch that was currently in the living room; her records indicated that Ruth had purchased a new couch just two weeks after she said Rolf left her. Earlier photos of the Neslunds’ living room showed the old couch, and bills from Hanson’s furniture in Mt. Vernon, a town just east of the Anacortes ferry landing, were for the present couch and matching love seat, purchased on August 23, 1980.
    Clever and Joe Caputo agreed that portions of the living room carpet looked newer than the rest of it, although the pattern was exactly the same. Ruth had gone to Willett’s Carpet in Anacortes on August 16, 1980, and bought eight square yards of carpeting and seam tape. That was only eight days after her husband disappeared. And then on March 23, 1981, after Clever and Greg Doss first questioned her in late February, Ruth had gone back to the same store to purchase still more new carpeting and tape. This carpeting, which Ray Clever saw in Willett’s style book, matched the present rug in the master bedroom.
    It wasn’t as if she had completely redecorated her home. Instead, certain sections had been patched or replacedso that the rooms would look to the casual observer exactly as they were when Rolf was there. Ruth had often said in a sentimental tone that she “wanted to keep our home just the way it was, so he will see that when he comes back to me...”
    The two investigators cut only that carpet that seemed to be recently installed.
    Beneath the new carpet, the padding was stained deep, dark red.

Eleven
    “Ruth’s bedroom was a small armory,” Joe Caputo said. “Loaded handguns and rifles up against the walls, under the beds, in closets, or in the drawers.”
    The search warrant listed any weapons Ruth might possess. According to those who knew Ruth, she was quite familiar with guns. They had seen her take a bead on a deer from her front door, and she also shot at cats to scare them away from quail on her property. She could shoot rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Indeed, a search of the Neslunds’ master bedroom netted a Smith & Wesson