A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

hospitals where victims were being treated. They would begin with interviews with those passengers who were able to talk: Jeremy Hauglee, Lacy Olsen, and P. K. Koo all gave O’Leary halting versions of the nightmare they had survived only hours before.
    At 7:30 that first night, ID Tech Joyce Monroe entered Whiskey Doe’s thumbprints into the AFIS computers. It wasn’t long before an answer came back: the man was identified as Steven Gary Coole, but, oddly, several birthdates came back: 5/14/57, 5/14/59, 5/15/57 and 5/15/59. Steven Coole had been arrested for shoplifting at the Green Lake Albertson’s Grocery store. Along with that, he had been charged with public park code violations, false reporting, and “obstructing.” He had been in jail in July 1994 for those offenses. There was another shoplifting arrest listed in 1991. There was no information on
what
he had been accused of shoplifting, and there were no current warrants out for Coole.
    It was a start. They had gone from being completely in the dark about Coole’s identity to the knowledge that he was probably from the Green Lake–North End area, and that he’d been arrested for some minor crimes. They still didn’t know if Coole was a victim or a shooter. Most of the witnesses had recalled hearing
two
spates of shots. Either the shooter had shot
both
McLaughlin and the man known as Steve Coole, or Coole himself had been the shooter. If the latter was true, he might have been fatally injured as McLaughlin fought with him over control of the bus.
    Efforts would be made now to contact all Seattle hospitals to see if there was a medical history on file anywhere for a Steven Coole, and that could lead to information on his next of kin. In the meantime, Coole wasn’t the only passenger whose name would be run through the computers for prior criminal history. But nothing much beyond traffic tickets and some minor drug violations popped up. Somebody on that bus had carried a dark secret inside his head, and the three investigators still had no idea who it was.
    Steve O’Leary headed out to talk with more of the injured at one hospital, while John Nordlund went to see others on the list. It was not an easy job. Many of the passengers spoke no English, a few were developmentally disabled, one or two had been drinking just before they got on the bus, and all were in shock and in pain; very few were in a state to provide clear and coherent statements.
    At the very least, the two detectives figured they could eliminate possible suspects as they questioned one after another of the people who had been on the bus. They weren’t naive enough after years in Homicide to believe they could spot a killer just by talking to him, but they relied on a certain sixth sense, too.
    AFIS was demonstrating once again what a remarkable investigative tool it was. Before the whorls, loops and ridges of fingerprints could be matched by a computer, using fingerprints as a means of identifying someone was catch as catch can. The FBI kept single prints on record
only
for the most wanted criminals in America, and all ten prints were necessary to identify an
ordinary
criminal. But the AFIS system has virtually changed the forensic identification world. One lone fingerprint can elicit remarkable information. Now, an investigator for the Medical Examiner’s office called Steve O’Leary at 9:30 that first night to say that AFIS had spit out another hit on the prints taken from the unknown man with the bullet hole in his head. But the new information only made the case more bizarre.
    On November 16, less than two weeks earlier, a King County ID officer had run prints of a John Doe for the Lynnwood Police Department. “They came back to a Steve Gary Coole.”
    O’Leary was elated, but not for long. Lynnwood police had arrested Steve Coole, but they didn’t really know who he was. He was only a most peculiar man who had been hanging around a local park. On November 9, 1998, at about 1:30 in the afternoon, a father had been waiting for his nine-year-old daughter to take a shower after a swim in the pool at the Recreation Pavilion in Montlake Terrace, Washington. Because it was a public facility, he stood guard outside the curtain where she showered. He was glad he had when he was startled to see a tall man walk up and boldly peer over his shoulder into the shower stall.
    “Back off,” the father had said forcefully. “My daughter’s taking a shower in there.”
    The man, who was