A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

spend the weekend with them. And, every Wednesday evening, she called them. She didn’t chafe at the responsibility to her parents; she loved them and was happy to be with them.
    During the week, Sharon lived near Olympia in a very nice ten-unit apartment building that was adjacent to an evergreen forest. Her balcony looked out on tall fir trees and the woods were full of bird songs. It wasn’t nearly as isolated as it seemed, however, and it was only a short distance to the I-5 freeway. It was also close to the capital building so several state legislators lived in her apartment building. She really didn’t know any of her neighbors well, no more than to politely nod if she met them in the parking lot.
    Sharon’s apartment was rather expensive for a school teacher, but she spent little money on anything outside her home. She didn’t need fancy clothes to teach first grade, her car was paid for, and her home was her hobby, her avocation, her pride and joy.
    She chose her furniture with care and good taste, and she coaxed house plants into luxuriant growth. Sharon’s only pets were goldfish. After a hectic day with six-year-olds, her apartment was a peaceful haven.
    The only jarring note in Sharon Mason’s life was that she was afraid to be alone at night. Maybe it was because her parents had warned her too much about the dangers of life; they doted so on their only child. Perhaps she was just naturally timid. She hated the dark. She always kept her drapes drawn at night, her door locked, and a reassuring night light on in the hallway.
    Occasionally, when the winter winds raged, there were massive power outages in the Olympia area, and Sharon was quite frightened. Then, the lowering trees seemed to close in around her apartment’s balcony and she felt cut off from the world. She would either phone her mother to say she was driving the sixty miles to Aberdeen to spend the night, or she would grab the overnight bag that she kept packed, and drive to a motel. On nights like these, her locked doors, the proximity of her neighbors, or the light of candles couldn’t comfort her. In the Northwest, winter days are short and the night falls before five P.M. , making the darkness more pervasive.

    On Friday, February 20, 1976, Sharon drove to Aberdeen as usual. It was a special weekend because her parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary. They all had a good time with friends. On Sunday afternoon, Sharon’s dad polished her gold Oldsmobile for her and filled the gas tank. He always did that, a gesture to thank her for making the long drive down each weekend. Sharon headed home in mid-afternoon so that she could be in her apartment before dark.
    On Monday morning, February 23, Sharon was in her classroom early, as she always was. But she was frightened. She told fellow teachers that someone had prowled the parking lot of her apartment house during the night. “My car was broken into,” she related softly.
    “What did you lose?” someone asked.
    “Nothing,” she said. “Well, nothing—except for the extra apartment key that I kept in my glove box. I told the manager about it right away, and he promised to have the maintenance man change the locks on my doors this afternoon.”
    None of the other cars in the lot had been touched. Only Sharon’s. It made her more nervous when she remembered that her missing key had the number of her apartment on it, a clear “9” etched in the metal. And if he—she was sure, somehow, that it was a
he
who had rifled through her car—if he had wanted to know her name, all he would have had to do was check her name on her car registration on the steering column of the Oldsmobile.
    It gave her a creepy feeling to think that some stranger had been sitting in her car, pawing through her things in the glove compartment and had taken her key. When she couldn’t get a hold of the apartment manager to confirm that her locks had been changed, she made up her mind not to sleep in her apartment that night; she would go home only to get her overnight bag and then check into the motel where she sometimes stayed.
    After classes, Sharon stayed for a brief after-school party. She stopped at an Albertson’s supermarket to pick up a few items, and then cashed a check for $75 at her bank.
    If she had thought to put an overnight bag in her car that morning, she probably wouldn’t have even gone to her apartment. But she did, parking the Oldsmobile in the front paved part of the