Last Dance, Last Chance

though. I just took it for a joyride. I know that was wrong. I’m sorry.”
    Seth left his partner talking with Jack Gasser and went back inside the family home. Isabel Gasser was close to tears and her husband was apoplectic when he told them that they would be taking Jack downtown to police headquarters.
    “This could ruin us socially,” Isabel said faintly. “Just when his father was going to get such a big honor tonight.”
    “Well, I’m sorry,” Seth said, a little puzzled by her priorities, “but we’re going to have to talk to him some more. You can come down later, if you like.”
    As Seth pulled away from the curb, Don Sprinkle asked Gasser what he had been wearing the night before.
    “Just slacks and a shirt,” he answered.
    “Where are those clothes now?”
    “At the cleaners—the one right up in the next block.”
    Seth’s eyes met Sprinkle’s in the rearview mirror, and they both looked instinctively at their watches. It was almost 7 P.M. , time for the cleaners to close. Seth hit the accelerator and wrenched the wheel, pulling to a skidding stop in front of the cleaners.
    “I left Gasser sitting with Don and raced in to get those clothes before they were dry-cleaned. If any of Donna Woodcock’s blood was on them, we’d lose that evidence if they were cleaned. We made it just in time. All there was was a pair of slacks, but you could see they were heavily stained with dried blood. Later, Max was able to type it and match it to Donna Woodcock’s blood type.”
    Austin Seth recalls, “At first, Gasser seemed relieved that we were only taking him to the station because of a car theft. He told us he’d been in the Navy, and he got a dishonorable discharge for punching out an officer. He was going to college and was in his sophomore year at Seattle University. But he didn’t want to talk any more about the car or anything else we might have in mind.”
    It was hard for them to look at this kid with the clear eyes and realize that he was probably the monster who had mutilated the body of his victim after he raped and strangled her. He was polite and soft-spoken.
    At headquarters, Sprinkle and Seth escorted Jack Gasser to an interview room. Seth began rolling a tape from a recorder, a machine considerably larger than today’s tiny tape recorders. The big spools revolved slowly, committing their conversation to posterity.
    “Since you’ve admitted that you stole the car, you might as well tell us why you killed Donna Woodcock.”
    “I didn’t kill anyone,” Jack Gasser said, his voice suddenly apprehensive.
    “Her blood is all over that car you just told us you stole. We already have a witness who saw Donna get into your car Friday night.”
    “Somebody’s wrong,” Gasser muttered, refusing to meet their eyes.
    “And then,”Austin Seth said, “it was like he couldn’t hold it in. Within five minutes, he began to confess to killing her.”
    Jack Gasser said he had had a couple of beers, and then he’d driven to the Triple XXX Barrel drive-in. He insisted he’d never seen Donna Woodcock before the moment she walked up to his car to take his order. He had kidded around with her.
    “I offered to give her a ride home at closing time,” he said, “and she accepted.”
    Gasser told a story that warred with the facts. He said he’d driven Donna home, and she’d gone inside and fed some scraps from the drive-in to her dog. “She came back to the car, and we went and parked in the field and drank a couple of beers apiece.”
    Seth and Sprinkle knew that Donna Woodcock’s blood alcohol level was zero. She hadn’t drunk any beer—and if she had gone into her house, her mother and sister, who always checked to be sure she was home safe, would have heard her.
    Gasser said he was kidding Donna. “I was just sitting there,” he said, surprise in his voice. “I hadn’t laid a hand on her.”
    But he admitted he’d been teasing her, claiming that all carhops were floozies and easy, saying that he had no respect for them. And then she flared up at him, very angry. “I evidently said something she didn’t like at all. She slapped me,” he said.
    “I grabbed her and started to choke her and everything seemed to go black.”
    Austin Seth had heard the words, “Everything went black” too many times. He pressed Gasser to give them a few more details. Gasser admitted that he remembered having Donna down on the seat on her back, and that he’d punched her in the nose and in the