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they weren’t at all newsworthy. They were simply an older couple living in a very nice home set far back off the road in a sheltered cove of Lopez Island.
    But over the next decade, their relationship took an ominously violent turn.

Three
    Financially, the Neslunds had done extremely well as they approached their twentieth wedding anniversary. Rolf had his salary, and Ruth’s dabblings in real estate were paying off. She acquired two lots in Port Townsend, and two more in Anacortes, the first city on the mainland where ferries from the islands docked. The Anacortes lots had come about in trade for a high-powered boat engine Rolf owned.
    “Rolf did it,” she said, proudly. “Sight unseen by both parties.”
    The early building lots Ruth bought cost no more than $800 originally, and she didn’t make a huge profit on them. But by the late seventies, she was much more savvy. On one day in May, she bought two lots for a total of $18,000 and turned them around in two months, selling them for a $4,400 profit. She bought another in Bellingham for $3,000, knowing she could sell it the next day for more than double that. She usually had her buyers lined up before she purchased the properties; she didn’t even have to use her own money in the purchases: That came out of her profit.
    While she was paying off the mortgage on the Alec Bay house, Ruth began collecting cars and other valuables: a motor home, a Dodge van, a classic 1966 Mustang, a LincolnContinental, an Oldsmobile convertible, farm trailers and boat trailers, a twenty-eight-foot cabin cruiser, Duncan Phyfe tables and other antiques, a coin collection, silver flatware. She registered the cars illegally in Louisiana, “because it was cheaper there,” and used an ambiguous “R. Neslund” as the name of the registered owner, which could have been either Ruth or Rolf.
    Ruth acquired horses, buggies, and more houses on Lopez Island itself, and sold them on contract with 12 percent interest coming to her. Without striving to remember, she could tally up every single asset she had, how much she owed, how much was owed her—at what interest— and she never had to glance at notes. She knew how much was in each of many bank accounts.
    When Rolf retired, he would receive a pension of $1,800 each month from the Puget Sound Pilots.
    They were doing very well indeed.
    But that was on the business side of their union.
    Over the years, Ruth and Rolf Neslund extended their evening cocktail hours further and further into the night. And when they drank, they fought. Their midmarriage arguments had long since exacerbated to ugly episodes. What had begun as grumbling and sniping at one another soon became angry words and insults. At a certain point, they began to actually exchange physical blows. They scratched, hit, bruised, and even bit one another.
    Once, Ruth claimed to San Juan County sheriff’s deputies Greg Doss and Joe Caputo, Rolf actually forced her head into the kitchen stove’s oven. What he intended to do next was a question. Turning on the gas wouldn’t work, and she was far too plump for him to push her all the wayin and roast her as the Wicked Witch threatened to do to Hansel and Gretel.
    Ruth told Caputo that she had been seeing to a roasting chicken in the oven when Rolf leaned on her shoulders and pushed her arms against the hot grill. She held her arms up quickly and showed him the “burn marks.” Caputo wasn’t sure if she was really burned, or if the oven racks were dirty, leaving grease marks on her lower arms.
    It was just drunken stuff, but disturbing nonetheless.
    Usually, the Neslunds had had so much to drink that they couldn’t even remember the details of their fights. They would waken in the morning and be shocked by their own reflections in the mirror. Ruth looked haggard, and Rolf often had dried blood on his face, deep scratches, black eyes and bruises, bite marks, bald spots where hair had been pulled out, and other wounds from their violent