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.But unfortunately, the Green River killer wasn’t going to let us catch up in this way.He had continued to murder women, and bodies were out there, waiting to be discovered.Every time this happened, investigations into suspects and our searches for the missing had to be delayed while the new site was analyzed and searched and the body was recovered.Between Valentine’s Day 1984 and April 20, fewer than ten weeks, eleven new bodies would be recovered by our team.Two were found near exit 38 of Interstate 90, the east-west superhighway that starts in Seattle and ends in Boston.Both were skeletons, and it would take time to confirm their identities—one was Lisa Yates, nineteen, and the other was Delise Plager, age twenty-two.Both fit the victim profile.Their location, far from the Green River, made it clear that the killer was making a greater effort to hide his crimes.Unfortunately, the same blessings of nature and geography that make the region a wonderful place to live also made it an ideal place to get rid of murder victims.If you’ve ever flown into Sea-Tac, you know what I mean.Within fifteen miles of downtown, development gives way to vast stretches of wilderness bisected by two-lane highways and logging roads.From an airplane you can see how easy it would be to hide something as small as a woman’s body.In March, the remains of four more bodies turned up.Three were near the airport; the fourth was found near a logging road a good thirty miles from The Strip in an area near Enumclaw.It was Debbie Abernathy, who was reported missing back in September.A few months before the body was found, a man changing a tire found her driver’s license on the side of Route 18.We had publicized the fact that a lot of women were missing, and this man had the presence of mind to call about his discovery.I met him at the scene and organized a search.We eventually found a birth certificate for Abernathy’s son.Obviously this stuff had been thrown out the window of a passing vehicle.It was potentially a big break because the killer had had these materials in his possession.But when we checked them for fingerprints, none were found.We didn’t have time to dwell on our disappointment, because within a few days, we made a number of discoveries well south of the airport district, along Star Lake Road.On that day, a man looking for mushrooms in the woods found a human skull.We didn’t get the report until the sun had set, so a patrol deputy guarded the site overnight.But by 8:00 a.m.on April 1, we had dozens of people assembled to start a search.The area was overgrown and littered with fallen trees.Waist-high plants disguised dips in the terrain, making it hard to keep our footing.To make matters worse, it had rained overnight, and the dense shade meant that everything would stay wet and slippery all day.A skeleton that apparently belonged to the skull was found in short order.Then we came upon a second set of bones, and then a third.All were located within sight of a little gravel turnout, a spot where someone would have been able to park a car or truck and have a pretty good view of the roadway to see if anyone approached from either direction.Obviously the killer had scouted the spot and found it so safe, and convenient, that he used it again and again.Sad experience had made us pretty good at recovering remains.We marked grids around the bodies and systematically searched the ground.Much of the brush was hacked away, but not before each leaf was inspected for fibers and other trace evidence.In the areas adjacent to the bodies, we were even more meticulous, sifting through all the natural debris and collecting every bone and fragment of bone.We made an odd discovery near the third body, which lay beside a fallen tree.Once leaves and sticks and twigs were moved away, we were startled to find a second skeleton.But this wasn’t a person; rather, it was a fairly large dog, which had been placed head to head with the human remains.At this site we got a little help, and education, from a professional tracker supplied by the U.S.Border Patrol.At first it was hard to accept that this man, Joel Hardin, could see things that we were missing.But I became a believer when he managed to spot footprints that everyone else had passed over.He studied them carefully and came up with the following information:• The regrowth of various plants crushed by footsteps suggested the prints were made about a year ago.• Sure footsteps indicated the man came in daylight and knew the terrain.• The size ten or eleven prints were made by the type of walking shoe worn by people who work on their feet.• The man appeared to walk in a purposeful, unhurried way.These observations weren’t going to send us running to the killer’s door.But they could be added to the pile of clues and contribute to our overall sense of who we were chasing.He was comfortable in the woods and very careful about his activities.Since he was depositing bodies in daylight, it was obvious that the killer was willing to hold on to his victims—dead or alive we didn’t know—for some period of time after he met them on the street.This boldness made me think he was going to keep right on killing.Two more bodies were found later in April.One was discovered by a Weyerhaeuser Company cedar scout, who was working just off a logging road near I-90 when he stumbled upon a human bone.I went searching in the area with Bill Haglund of the medical examiner’s office.After spending hours in the woods of the adjoining area, I noticed a shaft of light coming through the trees.The bright warmth of this light drew me out of the shadows and into a quiet glade.But where the sunbeam reached the ground, it fell not on ferns or flowers but on a bleached-out human skull, complete with teeth and jawbone, that had been perched on a stump.No matter how many bodies and skeletons you see, the sight of a perfect human skull, with its empty eye sockets and lifeless smile, is always frightening and stomach-turning.In other cases where heads were separated from bodies, we might have assumed that a wild animal had been at work.Here, I knew a depraved human being was responsible and that he was playing with us.The skull on the stump was a message.It said, “I know you’re here, but I’m one step ahead of you, and I always will be.”An odd thing happened the next day, while we were conducting a broader search.Barbara Kubic-Patten, self-named psychic and confidante of Melvyn Foster, arrived with her two kids.This in itself was not unusual.Barbara had continued to inject herself into the case, even though we were no longer focused so intently on Melvyn.On this day, we chased her away.She drove a couple of miles down the road, pulled over, and walked into the woods [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]