Kubik-Patten was particularly interested in solving Opal’s murder, feeling that she had a psychic connection to Opal. She was a frequent visitor at the Mills home, and conferred often with Robert Mills. Garrett Mills remembered her visits.

“She used to tape Melvyn, trying to trap him into saying something that would incriminate him. Then she would bring the tapes over and play them for my father. There were some awful things on those tapes, and I sometimes think that she forgot that she was playing them for a victim’s father. Finally, my father got mad at her and threw her out.”

Kubik-Patten told detectives she had learned that Opal had spent a few nights at the Economy Inn on S. 192nd and 28th Avenue South, a motel within walking distance of Angle Lake Park, where Opal had placed her last phone call—a collect call—to her mother on August 12.

When they followed up on that, the investigators found that Opal had never been registered there, although Cynthia “Cookie” Hinds had. Probably Opal had stayed overnight with her on occasion.

Like Melvyn Foster, Kubik-Patten appeared to crave attention, and she had an uncanny sense of when reporters might be visiting a site. Whenever something brought the media to the Green River’s banks, she was always there—watching and searching—and she was not averse to approaching and interrupting their coverage.

How Foster and Kubik-Patten met is a mystery, but they soon joined forces, making a curious couple who were rendezvousing not for romance but to discuss how they could solve the Green River murders.

Kubik-Patten became familiar to the media and thrived on that. One day in the fall of 1982, at the request of a writer-editor from a national magazine, I was at the Green River shoreline near where Wendy Coffield’s body had been discovered. Barbara Kubik-Patten appeared as if she had levitated from the thick reeds along the bank. She told the writer about her astounding knowledge that came from another level of consciousness, and was disappointed when he didn’t ask her to pose for the photographer who accompanied us.

Some time later, Barbara phoned and invited me to join her and Foster at the Ebb Tide for cocktail hour, curiously assuring me, “Melvyn won’t hurt you as long as I’m there.” I demurred.

Whether Foster was pumping Kubik-Patten for information, or she felt she was interrogating him while they sipped cocktails, they were a constant couple in the smoky lounge near the first body sites.

But by late fall 1982, Foster had had enough police attention. He announced that he no longer wanted to be involved in the Green River cases. He called reporters to issue more statements.

“I feel like I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide because I haven’t done anything,” he said angrily. “I think they are reacting to some substantial pressure on the cost of [my] surveillance. There have been no murders connected with the Green River mess in the last two and a half months, so why do they want to pull a second search of my house, outbuildings, and property? It’s beyond me.”

After their surveillance teams reported that Melvyn Foster was spending a great deal of time near the Green River, detectives had decided to undertake a more widespread search of his father’s house and property. With a search warrant, they removed several more items, including letters from Foster’s former wife and his new girlfriend in West Virginia, along with some nude photographs of two young Seattle women, neither of whom matched known Green River victims.

“Some guy who drives a hack mailed those to me last week,” Foster complained. “He was trying to frame me.”

The calendar on Melvyn Foster’s living room wall noted dates in July when he’d taken his car in for repairs, and detectives took that, too, along with some hair samples. Explorer Search and Rescue scouts and dogs searched the Fosters’ house and property in a wide range around it. They didn’t find anything that seemed to have evidentiary value, and they certainly didn’t turn up any bodies.

Still, Foster seemed hesitant to give up his status as a suspect, and the cachet that went with it, as he told reporters he had no knowledge of the slayings or the killer. “I would like to get my hands on the man who did [it],” he added, vehemently.

He hinted that he was thinking about hiring a lawyer because his civil rights had been violated by being watched constantly. He told reporters that he had prepared a six-page protest that he was sending to the F.B.I.

As Thanksgiving approached, with their two top suspects fading on them, there were only two detectives assigned to work full time on the Foster aspect of the Green River case. Six uniformed officers worked in teams around the clock, keeping track of Melvyn Foster’s comings and goings. But Dick Kraske admitted, “We can’t watch him for the rest of his life.”

Officially, Melvyn Foster’s visibility in the Green River investigation diminished until he was yesterday’s news, but Barbara Kubik-Patten was still convinced that she had the power to find the Green River Killer.

Dave Reichert, however, couldn’t let go of Foster as a suspect—too many things matched. He spent his own off-duty time checking on what Foster was up to, and often took the long drive to Olympia, which enraged the now-out-of-work cabdriver. Foster singled Reichert out as the detective he hated the most.

9

MELVYN FOSTER was right in focusing on Dave Reichert as an enemy. Although he had been in the Major Crimes Unit for less than two years in 1982, the young detective was relentless in his determination to catch the Green River Killer. Reichert tracked Foster, often taking time away from his wife and three small children to do so. In 1982, they were all under ten, and family meant a lot to Reichert.

Dave Reichert was the oldest of seven brothers. He was born in Minnesota, although his devoutly religious parents moved to Renton, Washington, a year later. His maternal grandfather was a Lutheran minister, and his father’s dad was a town marshal. Two of his brothers would grow up to be state troopers. The young detective attended Concordia Lutheran College in Portland, Oregon, on a small football scholarship. He met his wife, Julie, there and they eventually had three children: Angela, Tabitha, and Daniel. Reichert coached a grade school football team even before he and Julie had children. He and his family were familiar faces in their church.

Reichert had come close to losing his own life while on duty. Answering a call about a man holed up in a house, he had underestimated his dangerousness. The suspect sliced Reichert’s throat with a razor-sharp knife, barely missing the carotid artery on one side. If he had cut just a little deeper, Reichert could have bled to death.

Dave Reichert loved his job and he was full of energy at thirty-one. He believed devoutly that one day he would catch the Green River Killer. So did many other detectives and officers in the King County Sheriff’s Office.

It didn’t seem possible that one man, or even two men working together, could kill a half-dozen women and get away with it for long. Surely mistakes and missteps would be made, and they would have him.

AS THE CHANCE of connecting Melvyn Foster absolutely to the victims grew dimmer, any number of suspects bubbled to the surface of the investigators’ awareness that fall of 1982.

Kent had a disturbing case that began on October 5, a disappearance that had both similarities to and differences from the Green River victims. Geri Slough, twenty, left her Kent apartment early that morning to go to a job interview. Along with fifty other women, she had answered an ad that appeared in several south-end papers seeking a receptionist for a company called Comp Tec. Geri had circled the ad that listed a phone number and an address.