Mortal Danger

to Julie’s apartment, but they didn’t find anyone home either. A neighbor told them that Julie’s live-in boyfriend, Jack Atkins,* worked at a restaurant nearby. “It’s right across from Group Health Hospital,” the woman said. “The one that serves foreign food—and [has] a really good bakery. The docs from Group Health eat there often.”
    The two detectives found Atkins at work. He seemed as mystified as everyone else that Julie was missing. He was also very worried.
    “I walked her to the bus stop last night about ten—I always do—and saw her off to work. I haven’t heard from her since, but then I haven’t expected to. Sometimes, we’re like ships passing in the night. I usually leave for my job before she gets home from the store in the morning.”
    “Was Julie afraid of anyone?” Holter asked. “Had she said anything to you about trouble at work?”
    “Yeah,” Jack Atkins said, after thinking about it. “There’s some teenager who’s been pestering her. He’s a big kid, she said, and he’s been coming into the store. I think he has a crush on her, because he keeps slipping her notes. I’ve got one of them here.”
    Holter and Nicholson took the note, carefully preserving it for fingerprint testing. It appeared to be a simple, badly spelled love note. It was signed “Bubba.”
    The investigators asked Rita Longaard if she knew of a teenager named Bubba who had been bothering Julie.
    “Oh, Bubba,” Rita said, rolling her eyes. “Yes. I’ve had to kick him out of the store for bothering clerks. He’s only sixteen, and his name is Bubba Baker.* He has the biggest crush on Julie.”
    Rita described Bubba as over six feet tall and weighing about 250. He was a light-skinned black teenager who was really more of a lovesick nuisance than anyone they’d been afraid of.
    A check of juvenile records showed that a Bradford “Bubba” Baker lived about five blocks from the 7-Eleven. He had a short juvenile rap sheet for minor offenses but nothing violent. At this point in the probe, he seemed the most likely suspect in Julie’s disappearance. But that was because he was the only suspect.
    Patrol officers from the Georgetown Precinct were sent out to canvass the neighborhood surrounding the store in the hope that they might turn up witnesses to any unusual events during the night of September 24–25.
    They didn’t find anyone who had heard screams, shouts, or cars gunning their motors. Nothing. Whatever had happened had been silent and swift.
    Julie was still missing the next afternoon when Jack Atkins came to headquarters to give a complete statement to the detectives.
    Jack had some startling admissions of his own. Detective Maury Erickson was astounded when Atkins told him that he’d lied about being twenty-one.
    “I’m really only fifteen,” he admitted.
    That was hard to believe, but Erickson waited for Jack to say more.
    Jack Atkins said he was a native of Philadelphia, and he’d been raised there. “But I’ve been ‘on the road’ for more than a year now.”
    Jack was short and wiry, and he might possibly have been any age between fifteen and twenty-two, but when the detectives stared at him more closely, and looked at his true ID, they realized he probably was only fifteen. Still, he had an adult, responsible mien about him. At the moment, he was very concerned about his missing girlfriend.
    “I have thought and thought about it,” he said, “and I’ve decided that I have to tell you the complete truth about Julie.”
    Was he about to confess? It sounded like it, but they couldn’t read the emotion on his face. He had tears in his eyes. They didn’t know if these were guilty tears or worried tears.
    They waited.
    “I met Julie at the Carpinteria State Beach in California—it’s between Ventura and Santa Barbara.”
    “When did you hook up with her?” Erickson asked.
    “It was on July 28, 1977, more than a year ago,” Jack said. “And her name isn’t really Julie Costello; it’s Laura Baylis.”
    The robbery detectives realized that this case was getting more and more complicated.
    “Laura’s from England,” Jack continued, “and there was something about her passport or her visa running out, so she had to get some different ID so the authorities wouldn’t send her back. And so she took the Julie name.”
    As unlikely a liaison as it might seem, Laura and Jack had found that they shared a love for travel, and they soon shared a love for each