It was too dark for a full-scale search, but the Green River Task Force was there the next day shortly after sunrise. They met at seven thirty and discussed their plan. The killer they had followed for so long had chosen such an optimum site that they were sure this must be yet another of his victims.

But who was it? It could be the last earthly remains of more than a dozen young women. KIRO-TV was already there, and the other channels were arriving, their reporters with mikes in hand, shivering against the trucks with transmittal satellites. The detectives tried not to notice them; as always, they were an intrusive presence in the disconsolate ambience of another body retrieval.

Water from springtime rains trickled steadily down the hill and added to the mire at the bottom of the ravine. The conditions were perfect for skunk cabbage, a native flower with huge, creamy yellow blooms and large leaves. Beautiful from a distance, it emitted a rank, sickly sweet odor when it was picked by unwary hikers, an odor that clung to them for days.

Dave Reichert and Mike Hatch searched for another way into the swamp while other detectives looked at the skull that wasn’t very far from where Sand-e Gabbert and a dog’s skeleton had been buried nose-to-nose. The bones had been scattered by animals and they found rib bones—twenty-three in all—an arm bone, a femur (thigh bone), and two clavicles. They put their hands into animal dens and found little bones there. The skull had six teeth missing from the upper jaw, and eight from the lower mandible. And then they located scattered teeth.

Randy Mullinax helped Bill Haglund package the remains. Eight hours after they began their search in the bog near Star Lake, Haglund announced that he had a positive I.D. At three twenty-two PM, they knew that fifteen-year-old Carrie Rois was at the Star Lake site, her body trapped in the muddy creek at the bottom of the ravine. “Silver Champagne,” who had, indeed, looked so much like Brooke Shields, had been dead for a very long time.

But the media, eager to learn whom they had found, would have to wait. Randy Mullinax and Mike Hatch notified victims’ advocate Linda Barker and arranged to meet her. Together, they would go to the U.P.S. offices where Judy DeLeone was at work. She mustn’t hear the news on the radio or see it on television. She had waited almost two years, hoping that Carrie was safe someplace and would be coming home.

But, at some point, Judy had to know. When she looked up and saw the two detectives and Linda Barker walk into her office, her face paled. She knew without their saying a word.

Mullinax made sure that Steve Rois, Carrie’s father, was notified as quickly as possible, too. For this victim at least, they could be sure that neither of her parents heard about it on the news. They tried valiantly to do it for all the parents, but sometimes zealous reporters got there first.

When Mullinax called Mertie Winston to tell her that Carrie had been found, she was near collapse, too. She and Judy DeLeone had succeeded in convincing themselves that their girls were together and were being treated the same by fate. When Mertie heard that Carrie had been found dead, it was the same as being told it was Tracy. She knew in her heart that Tracy was also gone. She just didn’t know where Tracy’s killer had hidden her.

35

HEwould have some dramatic lifestyle changes in 1985, and that may have made a difference in the scope of his activities on the Pac HiWay and Aurora Avenue North. His solo travels would be curtailed certainly. His son, Chad, was getting older and more aware of what went on around him, and the man with so many secrets had become increasingly social. He felt at ease because he had bested them all for such a long time. He began to feel invincible.

Since he’d discovered Parents Without Partners, he had never lacked for feminine companionship; there were group activities in West Seattle and the south end every night of the week, as well as on the weekend. He dated a dozen or more of the women he met there. He met women at work, too, but they weren’t as responsive to him. One woman recalled that he overstepped personal space boundaries.

“I’d just started working there—sometime in the mideighties—and he came up behind me and started massaging my shoulders,” she said. “I wasn’t at all comfortable with that. I tried not to be alone with him. It was just a gut feeling, but it was real.

“We worked in the rework area together. He talked about gardening, swap meets, garage sales. He would tell me about his marriages briefly, [saying] he was on his third. He was always touching the women at work and once he was reprimanded for sexual harassment. He was upset, asking me, ‘Can you believe this?’ ”

She could indeed, but she didn’t tell him that.

He always spoke to women who lived in his neighborhood and he seemed friendly. Most of them were married, though, and knew him only as a neighbor. One woman, Nancy, who lived a block away, worked at the VIP Tavern on the highway. He didn’t drink much, usually a Budweiser or whatever was on draft in taverns, but he often stopped in at the Midway or the VIP taverns. “He was always fairly quiet, but also pleasant,” Nancy recalled, “and a few times he gave me a lift home. Since he never drank much, I felt safe getting a lift home from him…until one night.”

Instead of driving her straight home, he asked if she would mind stopping by his house for a few minutes. She saw no harm in that and vividly recalled sitting on his couch, drinking a beer. They were just having general conversation, and then he changed the subject to the Green River Killer.

“At the time, it was a popular subject,” she remembered. “He became very serious, to the point of being physically tense. He asked me what I thought about the killer and what he was doing. I told him that if I were a prostitute, I’d find a different way to make money. He asked what I thought about prostitutes. ‘Don’t you think we’re better off without them?’

“At that point, red flags went up left and right. I felt it was in my best interest to say: ‘Yup. We sure are. At least the streets are getting cleaned up.’ ”

He seemed very intense as he explained that the police hadn’t been doing their jobs, and she heard odd stress in his voice, a thrum beneath his regular voice: “We’re much better off without them [the prostitutes] littering the streets.”

Nancy was alert now; he had changed so much and fairly vibrated with tension. “He also knew that I knew quite a few psychics. He asked me if any of the psychics knew who the Green River Killer was. I told him that a lot of psychics had thoughts about it, but no one was talking.”

“Why?” he persisted.

She told him that, “for one thing, the police wouldn’t believe them. For another, they don’t want to die.”

He asked her what she meant.

Nancy studied him, choosing her words carefully. “The psychics are afraid that if they tell anyone who the Green River Killer is, they’ll be killed before the police would take any action, so they’re not saying anything—and they never will.”

Nancy kept her voice soft as she casually told him that she was tired and really needed to go home. Would he mind? “He seemed to relax a little bit and said we could go any time. I told him I needed to go right away. I stood up to leave, but he stayed seated.”

“Would you ever be a prostitute?” he asked her, his eyes boring into hers.

“No way!”

“That’s good,” he said, finally smiling and seeming to unwind a little. “I didn’t think you would. Have you ever?”

“Of course not,” she countered. “Have you?”