A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

reached Harborview to find Brad in a deep coma. He asked where Brad had been hurt and was given the address of the Take 5. As far as he knew, Brad had never patronized the restaurant; he certainly had never mentioned it.
    When Dalton Bass asked the detectives where Brad’s truck was, they said they hadn’t known he even had one. Everyone had assumed he was on foot the night he was stabbed. Dalton drove to the Take 5 and looked for his brother’s prized truck. He found it quickly; it was still parked a few paces away from the restaurant.
    Dalton knew that Brad seldom carried a wallet, but he thought that he would have had his payroll money with him. Searching the truck, he found approximately $280 hidden in the tape deck.
    Dalton called their father, who flew immediately to Seattle. The elder Bass found his son comatose, kept alive only by life support machines. The tracings of the EEG were almost flat, indicating that his brain was barely active. He was told that Brad had almost no chance to survive, and that, if he did, he would live in a state of vegetation. If there was to be any turning point, it would surely come within the next few days.
    Brad Bass had chosen to will his kidneys and eyes after death so that they might save another’s life and sight. He was only twenty-three; he could not have known how soon his legacy would be used. On Friday, February 20, one week after he was stabbed, Bass’s brain waves were completely flat. His father asked physicians to remove him from the respirator that made it look as if his chest rose and fell through some conscious effort on his part. It was an agonizing decision for any parent. If Brad could breathe on his own, even if he never regained consciousness, his father would have taken care of him forever. But it was a travesty of life to keep the bloated body of a once vital young man alive by mechanical means.
    The breathing machine was turned off. Sometimes miracles happen and clinically dead patients
do
breathe on their own. Brad Bass did not. For two and a half minutes, the doctors, nurses, and his father hoped for some sign of life, but there was none. At that point, with the physicians’ support, Brad Bass’s father decided to fulfill Brad’s wish to donate his kidneys and eyes to someone else.
    The life support systems were reconnected, but this time it was only to keep these vital organs alive until donors could be prepared for surgery.
    On Saturday, February 21, Brad Bass’s kidneys were removed. Two people would live because of him, but Brad himself was pronounced dead at 2 P.M. Dr. Donald Nakonechny, Deputy King County Medical Examiner, began the postmortem almost at once. To Nakonechny, there was no question that Brad’s brain was “grossly dead,” and had been for some time. It had softened and swollen as the brain will after death, until it extruded through skull openings and the spinal cord. His cause of death was listed as “anoxic encephalopathy—softening of the brain due to lack of oxygen, secondary to piercing of the right auricular appendage.”

    Now it was up to Seattle Homicide detectives to bring in a killer. Most of the information they were receiving had filtered down from the street people through the beat cops. Detective Benny DePalmo got a tip from one of the street officers that the “woman” with the knife was Jacqueline Emerson. DePalmo ran the name through Seattle Police records and found that there was a
Jonathan
“Jackie” Lewis Emerson, twenty-four, whose occupation was listed as a female impersonator. But there was no current address for Emerson, who had a rather lengthy rap sheet for various charges, many of them soliciting for prostitution.
    But Emerson was only one of the names rumored to be the person who’d stabbed Brad Bass. Vice Detectives Bill Karban and John Boren had heard other rumors. One was that the night bartender of a well-known gay restaurant and lounge had been in the crowd around Bass. The bartender had named another transvestite hooker.
    Primary responsibility for finding Brad Bass’s killer was assigned to Detectives Ted Fonis and Dick Sanford. They began a tour of several gay gathering places, carrying a laydown montage of suspects’ mugs. Jonathan Emerson was number four. Many of those they questioned seemed to recognize Emerson but they were evasive and wouldn’t admit knowing him. If they did recognize him, they said they had no idea where he was at present.
    The detectives went to the