Don’t Look Behind You

heroin had. When Tom found out, he was very concerned and they argued. She had gone through hell getting straight, and he couldn’t bear to see her slip.
    Their disagreements were strong enough that she told Tom she was going back to Washington for a while to visit her brother. She wasn’t leaving Tom; she just needed time to think and get her head together.
    She called Ty and arranged for him to pick her up at Sea-Tac Airport on April 2.
    As far as Ty could see, his older sister was clean and healthy when she returned to Des Moines. They stopped to eat dinner at a small, popular restaurant on Old Highway 99, and they had a good time talking and catching up. Ty hoped that Kandy intended to go back to Tom andweave together the tears in their relationship, but he didn’t preach. He listened.
    “We made plans to get together the next day,” Ty recalls. “And I dropped her off at the Three Bears Motel on the highway at S. 216th Street.”
    The Three Bears was a familiar stopover near Des Moines for decades, but by 1986 it—along with several other moderately priced motels on the highway—attracted young prostitutes and their pimps.
    And the Green River Killer was active along Old 99 then, too. His targets were teenage girls, many of them who stayed at the string of motels from S. 142nd to S. 240th Street. Ty wasn’t really concerned; Kandy was in her hometown, she was twenty-seven, and she was quietly self-confident. Nevertheless, he updated her about the serial killer who roamed anonymously up and down the highway and reminded her to check the peephole in her door before she let anyone in.
    When Kandy didn’t call Ty by noon the next day, he was a little worried. He’d expected that his sister would sleep late; she’d been tired after her flight from Utah, but now it was afternoon.
    Wondering if she might have turned her phone’s ringer off, Ty drove the short distance to the Three Bears Motel. He saw a few police units outside, but didn’t think much about it; they could be meeting for coffee. He began to feel a cold chill only when the front desk attendant at the motel gave him a peculiar look. He answered Ty’s question about which room Kandy was in and pointed down the walkway.
    Ty walked faster down the corridor. As he approached Kandy’s room, he saw several police officers standing in the doorway and in the hall. He identified himself as he maneuvered into a position where he could peer into the room.
    And he saw the sister he loved, the sister for whom he’d held out so much hope, lying perfectly still on the bed.
    The police officers and paramedics shook their heads when Ty urged them to save her. It was far too late.
    Kandy Kay Hansen had been clean and straight, and yet samples of body fluids taken at her autopsy for testing indicated that she had died of an overdose of black tar heroin. It had been administered subcutaneously. It wasn’t hard to find along the Sea-Tac Strip, and being back in that milieu may have tempted Kandy. After years free of heroin, she had succumbed to a fatal temptation.
    In the end, it didn’t seem to matter how Kandy had gotten the heroin. She was dead and nothing would bring her back. Kandy was hours beyond saving when a maid had discovered her body.
    Ty Hansen cannot even remember what he did when he was in that first numb grip of shock. He thinks he notified Tom Yarbrough, or, at least, had someone else let him know that Kandy was gone. (He did call Tom, who sent a mass of flowers and a note of everlasting love for Kandy Kay to her funeral services.)
    Ty wasn’t sure what to do next. He managed to contact his brother Nick who was on board the U.S.S.
Enterprise
as part of his navy tour. The
Enterprise
was halfway around the world, and even though the navy was willingto fly Nick back to Washington State, it would take several days.
    Their father was in Costa Rica, as he often was.
    “He didn’t come back for weeks,” Ty remembers. “We had Kandy’s services in Kent.”
    The brothers had different recollections of the event, not surprisingly, as both were in shock.
    Actually, Nick Hansen says he made Kandy’s funeral arrangements. And their father
did
get back to Washington State in time to attend her services, although Nick said Bob already had reservations for that day and made no special effort to rush home.
    Neither of his sons recalls Bob showing a great deal of grief during her funeral. Nick, however, went with his father shortly after Kandy’s