From the green, saltwater retreat of Bainbridge Island, the road runs 850 miles across I-90, then south on Wyoming 310 to the dusty, shadowy town of Lovell.
Jack Olsen knows the way. He knows it by heart. He made 10 trips from the south end of Bainbridge Island to Lovell -- the droopy, demoralized Mormon enclave known as The Rose City of Wyoming.
Because of Olsen's snoopy skills, all the world knows Lovell for more than roses. Olsen's book Doc hovers atop the paperback best-seller lists, celebrating Lovell as the town raped by its own doctor.
Doc is the startling story of Lovell's last two doctors. The town doesn't dote on doctors much anymore. Dr. William Watts Horsley planted rose bushes all over Lovell in the 1940s, '50s and '60s before he died in 1971. But Horsley's real legacy to Lovell was having sex with boys and men in his office.
Introducing Lovell to the reader through the dying old rose bushes lovingly bequeathed by Horsley, Olsen tells the story of Lovell's most celebrated doctor, John Huntington Story, who left a bruised legacy. He raped from 45 to 100 of his women patients.
Called a sawed-off Cary Grant by Olsen, called a trustworthy doctor by some Lovellites, and a dirty pervert by other townspeople, Story, 63, is doing 15 years in Wyoming State Prison at Rawlins.
Olsen, 64, works on his crisply written crime books while harbored on the south end of Bainbridge Island.
Long a newspaper reporter and magazine correspondent, and the former fishing editor of Sports Illustrated, Olsen's vivid writing has made him ace of the true crime writers. He works in a cramped room between the garage and back yard where his wife, Su Peterson, who was cover girl for Sports Illustrated's first swimsuit issue in 1965, grows rhododendrons, tomatoes, nasturtiums and herbs.
The work room has a computer, stacks of unopened mail, a sign reading "WELCOME HOME DAD" from Olsen's 9-year-old son, Harper, who is known as Harper The Barbarian, and a Shostakovich tape roiling almost constantly. Olsen considers himself the foremost expert on south Bainbridge of Dmitri Shostakovich, the Russian composer.
"I am a spasm writer," Olsen said. "I might not write for two weeks."
Olsen's biggest distractions are telephone interviewers bursting to discuss his latest book -- "I do phoners by the millions," he said -- and salmon.
"I don't get writer's block," Olsen said. "It just means I'd rather be fishing. So I go fishing and call it writer's block."
When this affliction strikes deep, Olsen can be found in a 17-foot open boat just off LaPush.
The telephone also brings ideas for books. Just as Olsen completed Cold Kill, a book about Texas murderer David West, he got a call from a Sacramento psychologist and criminal justice consultant named Tom Hill. He told Olsen, "My cousin is getting railroaded in Lowell, Wyo., by a bunch of Mormon women."
They claimed that Story, the trusted family practitioner, had been raping them for years, disguising the act as a pelvic examination. It did seem strange that women suffering from infected ear lobes and sore feet were regularly subjected to long, painful pelvic exams by Story.
"I drove down to Lovell, sat eight of these women in a living room and listened to their stories," Olsen said. "I figured either these women were the eight greatest actresses in history, or Story raped them."
A jury agreed with the women. After Story was convicted and sentenced in 1985, Olsen made 10 pilgrimages to Lovell. He read books on Mormonism. He read gynecology textbooks. He and a pocket-sized Panasonic tape recorder listened to hundreds of people in the town of 2,447.
"I embrace technology," Olsen said. He remembers lugging a 35-pound Revere tape recorder about Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 when he covered the integration of Central High School for Time magazine.
"Both sides in Lovell were eager to present their sides of the story," Olsen said. "The case against Dr. Story was voluminous. At least 45 women came forward to admit that be diddled around with them."
"Many of the women were quite intelligent," Olsen said, "but they were products of Lovell. They were strict Mormons in a small Mormon town, taught by their pastors and parents to look up to males. And they were taught never ever to discuss sex, no matter how extreme."
Olsen interviewed Story's victims for six months, intentionally avoiding the doctor.
"I wanted him to hear a lot about me, what I was doing," Olsen said.
Story's curiosity landed Olsen a seven-hour interview at Rawlins State Prison.
"He displayed all the symptoms of a psychopath," Olsen said. "He attacked everyone else. He admitted nothing. He had a narcisstic view of himself."
Olsen continues exploring dangerous geeks. A book takes Olsen 18 months: one year of research, six months of writing and fishing.
He is now working on "The Man on the Bike."
"It's about a guy in Rochester, N.Y., named Arthur Shawcross," Olsen said. "He killed two children, spent 15 years in the joint, got out and killed 11 prostitutes.
"The title comes from Shawcross's bicycling. He rode around Rochester on this old piece of crap bike."
Someone who submerges himself in such a creepy netherworld of rapists and murderers might be expected to live in a seedy Chicago rooming house, with the El trains rattling past, smoking Camels and drinking rye.
Olsen once was immersed in city slime. A native of Philadelphia, he lived in New York, Washington and Chicago before finding better places. He was a deputy sheriff in Gilpin County, Colo., 9,200 feet up on the Continental Divide before heeding the call of saltwater and moving to Sequim 19 years ago. A resident of Bainbridge Island for 14 years, Olsen takes his family to Seattle Mariners games, listens to Shostakovich and dreams of salmon.
"The real world is a long ways from here," he said. "Out here is a fairyland, a fantasy that lets me wash off all the grime."
Jack Olson's 5 favorite places In Washington
- Skunk Buoy 2 miles off LaPush: "Absolute heaven."
- Oysterville: "The whole Long Beach Peninsula is fantastic."
- Spokane: "I've got weird tastes."
- Dungeness Spit: "I used to be able to fish for days and not see another boat. Now, it's wall-to-wall boats."
- Commencement Bay: "Tacoma is a real working place. No prima donna stuff like Seattle."