Mortal Danger

lone clerk on duty, robbers find them vulnerable and easy targets.
    The corporation that owns the 7-Eleven where Julie Costello worked has taken steps to avert attacks on their clerks. I don’t want to lay out a blueprint of security systems for those plotting to steal from all-night markets. I will say only that those steps have proved very effective.
    Julie took the bus to work from her apartment on Capitol Hill, and it was full dark at 11:00 p.m. when she began her shift. During the winter months, the sun didn’t rise until hours after she headed for home. She wasn’t afraid. She was, at heart, an adventuress, and she had been in any number of situations more perilous than traveling across the city in the hours of darkness or working alone all night when most people were asleep. She knew a lot of her customers, and the police patrolmen working Beacon Hill during Third Watch often stopped in for coffee.
    But on Monday morning, September 25, 1978, none of the security measures helped Julie. When the store manager, Rita Longaard,* arrived to relieve her shortly after 6:00 a.m., she was startled to find the front door locked, the lights out, and no one on the premises. The store was supposed to be open, and Julie should have been on duty.
    Because the store was never empty, the changing of the guard didn’t necessitate having a key. Rita Longaard hadn’t brought one with her, so she went first to the home of her assistant manager to see if she knew anything about what was going on. She didn’t.
    The two women drove to Julie’s home on Capitol Hill. Maybe she’d gotten sick during the night and just locked up and gone home. That wasn’t like her; she was very dependable and would have called one of them, but they avoided talking about what might have happened.
    Rita had been puzzled at first, and then a little angry with Julie, but now she was alarmed. There was no answer to their knocks on her apartment door.
    There was nothing left to do but go back to the store and call a locksmith to open the front door. When they gained entrance, the women switched on the lights and carefully walked up and down the aisles. They were all empty. The only sound was the buzzing of the neon lights. At the checkout counter, they found that the cash register’s drawers were open—and empty.
    Yet when they walked toward the back of the store, they found an envelope stuffed with cash on a counter. That was where it was usually left while clerks worked the combination on the lock of the floor safe, preparing to deposit theirshift’s receipts into it. Why hadn’t Julie finished hiding the money in the safe?
    The safe hadn’t been tampered with. As the two women moved nervously into the back storeroom, they saw Julie’s purse in the spot where she always left it during work hours. Everything was basically normal.
    Except that Julie was missing.
    Rita Longaard checked the hidden surveillance camera. If clerks were concerned, they could trigger it surreptitiously. In the event of a robbery, the thieves’ photos would show up on the film. Rita wasn’t positive, but she thought the camera had been activated.
    She called 911.
    Detective J. D. “Jimmy” Nicholson arrived first. Nicholson’s special area of expertise was security cameras. They had proved invaluable to police in store and bank robberies. He verified that the camera had indeed been set off, and he retrieved the film and marked it carefully for evidence. If something had gone wrong during the night, the investigators might just be fortunate enough to find it recorded on film.
    Lieutenant Robert Holter, commander of the Robbery Unit, and his detectives—Sergeant Joe Sanford, Larry Stewart, and Jerry Trettevik—arrived shortly after Nicholson. It appeared that they were dealing with a possible robbery-kidnapping. The investigators glanced around the store. Nothing was out of place or knocked over. There were no signs of a fight, no blood spots anywhere. Either Julie Costello was somehow involved in the theft from the cash register, or she’d been frightened enough that an intruder hadn’t had to subdue her to get her out of the store.
    Two bags of salted sunflower seeds were lying on the counter. They were wrapped in cellophane, and that was a good surface for fingerprints. The detectives also took Julie Costello’s brown leather purse.
    Larry Stewart rushed the film from the camera to the photo lab for immediate processing.
    Bob Holter and Jimmy Nicholson drove