Empty Promises

and walked about twenty-five feet up the path, squinting through the murky light. Suddenly they stopped as they saw a motionless figure lying several feet off the path. It was half hidden in some brush and looked like a store mannequin. Moving closer, they could see that it was a partially clad young woman. She appeared to be either dead or unconscious. The fishermen ran to their car, drove to a nearby service station, and telephoned the police.
    Renton Patrol Officer Dave Smith responded to the call. He touched his fingertips to the fallen girl’s neck and felt no reassuring pulse in her carotid artery. Her skin was as cold as the ground beneath her. She was dead, and probably had been for several hours. Smith called the detective division of the Renton Police Department and reached Detective Don Dashnea, who had just reported for duty. Dashnea hurried to the death scene, which was only a few blocks from police headquarters. By 7:30 A.M. a complete crew of Renton detectives had joined him.
    The dead girl lay on her back, her legs spread-eagled, her arms thrown above her head. Fresh scuff marks in the dirt formed a trail between the path and her body, suggesting that she had been dragged to where she lay. She wore only a long-sleeved yellow sweater, a bra, and white socks. A single scarlet stain was visible on her white bra and in a startlingly macabre touch, leather shoelaces were wound tightly around her neck.
    While waiting for King County deputy medical examiners to arrive, the officers searched the immediate area meticulously. Detective Arnold Huebner found a school notebook. Inside it, someone had written directions for the preparation of an international dinner. There was also a letter, written in the same neat hand, which was dated only the night before and signed “Carole.” It was addressed to another woman, who said she was “in the library doing homework.”
    The Renton detectives located a pair of rain-soaked women’s jeans and some panties in the brush near the body, along with a pair of women’s shoes. The shoes had no laces.
    It wasn’t long before they found a wallet, as sodden with rain as the clothing was. It contained pictures and a driver’s license for Carole Adele Erickson. The picture on the license resembled the face of the dead girl, but it was difficult to be positive.
    The officers thought they knew who she was; they had no idea how she had come to be abandoned on the riverbank.
    Don Dashnea and E. A. McKenney drove to the address listed on the license but found no one at home. Another officer said he knew the Erickson family—the man who lived there was probably at his job as a custodian in a nearby factory. There was a teenage girl in the family. They found the father at work and told him they needed someone to identify the body of a young female. The anguished man accompanied the detectives to the King County morgue. There he nodded silently as he looked at the body of the victim. It was, indeed, his nineteen-year-old daughter, Carole Adele.
    He gave the detectives a studio portrait of his daughter. Seeing a clear image of Carole, several detectives were startled to realize that they recognized her; she had often served them at lunches hosted by the foods preparation department at the vocational school. Because the students were graded on how well they cooked and on their presentations, the lunches were popular with the police department—great food for a reasonable price.
    One of the detectives recalled Carole: “She was very vivacious, always friendly, with a smile for everyone.”
    Neither her father nor her roommate could imagine any reason why someone would want to kill Carole. Her roommate knew that Carole routinely used the riverside path to reach their cottage from the library because it was an easy shortcut.
    Don Dashnea read again the last letter Carole had written and looked up to say, “She wasn’t afraid of anything; she had no idea in the world what lay outside. This was a letter to a close friend. If she was worried or afraid about anything, surely she would have mentioned it. Instead, all we’ve got here is a rough timetable of the last few minutes of her life. She finished this letter and then she took the shortcut home.”
    Arnold Huebner walked the path between the library and Carole’s cottage and checked his watch. At a reasonable pace, the walk took seven minutes. Although many people used the shortcut, several nearby residents said they considered