Ralf McAllister, who had died of a sudden heart attack—and whose wife, Nancy, took his place on the task force—had always been one of those who felt Ridgway was probably the Green River Killer. Frank Atchley was one of the few who shared this conviction. But it was Matt Haney, who had been absolutely convinced that Ridgway was guilty and tracked him doggedly in 1986 and 1987, who was the most disappointed when interest in the truck painter faded.

“Everything fit, when Randy and I went to Las Vegas and, as a last resort, agreed to have Paige Miley hypnotized to see what she could remember about the man who asked her about ‘Star’ [Kim Nelson/aka Tina Tomson],” Haney recalled. “And her directions to the police artist gave us a drawing that looked just like Ridgway. Randy and I had been assigned to track down the owner of the burgundy red pickup with the white canopy, and we found that Ridgway had a truck like that. That was the one that Marie Malvar’s family found in his driveway.”

Paige Miley insisted that she had memorized the license number of the red pickup truck, jotted it down on a scrap of paper, and called it in to the first Green River Task Force. Unfortunately, the detective whose name she gave did not recall whether he had followed up the lead, and three years later, even with hypnosis, Paige couldn’t remember it. She believed it began with a K and had a 1, followed by four or five numbers. It wasn’t enough information to trace. In the first two years, there was such an avalanche of tips coming in that no one could be blamed for inadvertent mishaps that, in retrospect, became important.

Back then, Tom Jensen, keeper of the computer, was one of the detectives who dismissed Ridgway with a shrug. He was adamant that Gary Ridgway’s two clean polygraph tests proved that he could not be the Green River Killer, saying that any continued belief that he was the one was only smoke and mirrors.

Haney knew Randy Mullinax was sick of hearing Ridgway’s name. “Randy and I were, and are, great friends and he’s a good detective, but he didn’t think Ridgway was the killer and he couldn’t bring himself to investigate him any longer. He left the task force in 1986 or ’87.”

When Haney lost Mullinax as a partner that year, he got a new one. “Sue Peters transferred in and became my partner,” Haney, now the chief of police of Bainbridge Island, Washington, remembered being enthusiastic about that. “Sue’s the best homicide detective in the King County Sheriff’s Office,” he said, “the best interviewer.”

Haney had left the King County force after the task force was dissolved and was recruited by two Alaskan police departments, first King Salmon on Bristol Bay and later Homer. Aleut natives were not fond of police officers, but Haney was welcomed. They thought he was an “Outside Native,” while in truth he is half-Korean. “I’m a war baby,” he said with a smile, “adopted in 1956.”

Haney loved Alaska, but after six years he deferred to his family’s desire for less snow and more daylight in the winter, and came back to Washington State. He was quickly hired as a lieutenant by Chief Bill Cooper of the Bainbridge Island Police Department. He had only worked for his new department for two weeks when, in mid-October 2001, he got an on-duty phone call from Sue Peters.

“I have to talk to you,” she said.

“Good,” Haney said. “We’ll have lunch soon.”

“No, Randy and I have to talk to you tonight.”

It was nine o’clock, but whatever was on Peters’s mind was urgent. Haney agreed to take the ferry to the mainland and meet Peters and Mullinax near midnight at the latter’s house in South King County. If Haney had been the type to gloat and say “I told you so,” this would have been the time to do it.

“When I got there, Sue and Randy were sitting by the fireplace,” Haney recalled, “and Sue said, ‘Matt, you were right all along. We’re focusing on Gary.’ Mullinax nodded. ‘It’s Ridgway. We have DNA.’ ”

“It was great just being able to tell him,” Peters said later, “because that was someone he ‘worked’ for a while. Our team would be coming back together, but we didn’t have a minute to let it sink in.”

Haney recalled a meeting Dave Reichert had called six months earlier for all former task force members to discuss the possibility that an advanced DNA test might work on body fluids and hairs found with Opal Mills and Carol Christensen’s bodies. Matt Haney and Jim Doyon had taken Gary Ridgway to the Kent Police Department fourteen years earlier as multiple search warrants, under Haney’s direction, were served on the extended Ridgway family properties. Although a superior court judge had felt at the time that it would be too invasive to demand a blood sample from Gary Ridgway, he had permitted the part of the search warrant that sought hairs from his head and pubic area, and added, “Saliva samples will be allowed.”

Fortunately, reporters hadn’t thought to stake out the police facilities in Kent, and that was where WSP criminalist George Johnston had handed Ridgway the small square of gauze and asked him to chew on it. Haney and Doyon oversaw the pulling and plucking of hair samples, and all this possible physical evidence had remained pristinely preserved in a freezer.

But Haney had heard nothing more after that. Now he learned that in March 2001, Tom Jensen had submitted biological samples from six victims to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in the hope that criminalists would find semen and be able to isolate DNA. Forensic scientist Beverly Himick compared the vaginal swabs from Marcia Chapman to Gary Ridgway’s known DNA and got a positive match. Pubic hair combings from Opal Mills also carried his DNA.

At the WSP lab, criminalist Jean Johnston had also accomplished a positive match. She reported that a tiny bit of sperm on a vaginal swab from Carol Christensen’s body was so consistent with Ridgway’s DNA that only one person in the entire world, save an identical twin, would have this DNA profile.

Sue Peters explained to Haney that Dave Reichert was about to start up a secret task force to surveil and hopefully arrest Gary Ridgway. And Haney was the detective who knew Ridgway the best, the one who had always been convinced that he was the Green River Killer.

“We need you back with us,” Peters said. “But you can’t tell anyone—not even your new chief. He has to loan you to us blind. No questions answered.”

Chief Bill Cooper wasn’t thrilled about letting Haney go back to King County without a good reason, but Haney just shook his head and said he couldn’t tell him why. Cooper finally asked, “Does this have something to do with your past?”

“Yes,” Haney said.

“Okay. You can go. Tell me about it later.”

IN November 2001 the reborn task force emerged. Haney, Peters, and Mullinax would be as close to the heart of the Green River probe as any investigator ever was—too close, perhaps, for them to ever completely stop thinking about it. It would play like a subliminal song in their brains twenty-four hours a day for month upon month.

There were also a number of detectives on the reactivated investigation who had been teenagers when the seemingly endless stream of murders began. The Green River Task Force became charged with energy again, albeit so quietly that the public didn’t realize its vitality, and in mid-November, the probe began to hum. Ironically, the man who was now dead center in their sights obviously believed he was home free. Gary Leon Ridgway, the truck painter, had long since returned to his old haunts and sexual obsessions.

THE PAC HIWAY WAS a far less friendly environment for prostitutes than it had been twenty years earlier. The cheap motels were either cheaper or gone completely, and there were many more upscale hotels constructed close to the airport. Casey Treat, a minister made popular by his television appearances, presided over a huge church complex he had built at the south end of the onetime Strip, and most of the legitimate businesses and stores had expanded.