Mortal Danger

ringer for him. He moved into that house early this year with his wife or his girlfriend.”
    Before Stewart could question her further, she hung up.
    Stewart and Jerry Trettevik checked Seattle City Light records for the block and found that one billing in the area was to a Clarence E. Williams, who was employed at Todd’s Shipyard. They ran Williams’s name through police computers and got a hit. Clarence Williams was described as a black male, thirty-three, five foot eleven, weighing 215 pounds.
    He had been on parole after serving prison time for convictions on burglaries, carrying a concealed weapon, and narcotics charges. But he hadn’t been supervised directly by a parole officer for two years. That would mean he’d kept out of trouble during his active parole and didn’t have to report to anyone currently.
    Obtaining Williams’s mug shot, the two detectives met with Lieutenant Holter, and they all agreed that he was a close look-alike to the man they sought. He did not wear glasses, however, and his driver’s license didn’t stipulate corrective lenses.
    But anyone can put on a pair of glasses with clear glass lenses.
    They checked with Todd’s Shipyard and learned that Clarence Williams was employed there as a sandblaster, working the night shift beginning at 4:00 p.m. Ordinarily, he would finish work about 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.
    Stewart and Trettevik drove to Williams’s residence. There was no response to their knocks, except for a snarling Doberman pinscher who lunged at the window with teeth bared. They looked up and down the street and failed to see any cars parked nearby that matched Williams’s known vehicles.
    When the Second Watch detective crew arrived for work at 3:45 that afternoon, they went to Todd’s Shipyard and showed the photo taken by the hidden camera to employees in the personnel office. They all agreed that it closely resembled Clarence Williams.
    But when they were asked if he was working at the moment, the personnel clerk checked and said that Williams hadn’t appeared for his shift.
    It was October 18 when robbery Detective Jerry Trettevik and homicide Detective Hank Gruber met with Clarence Williams face-to-face at the shipyard. When he walked into the personnel office, they were both struck by his startling resemblance to the pictures they had memorized. Williams even wore an olive green fatigue jacket, its collar rolled just like the jacket collar in the security photos.
    At the moment, Williams wore an orange hard hat and carried clear safety glasses. The glasses were not at all similar to those in the photo, however. Clarence Williams’sfacial hair was almost identical to that of the man they sought.
    Williams seemed nervous, but he readily answered the detectives’ questions. He said he lived alone, as he’d separated from his wife on September 1. “I gave her my car and I catch a ride every day with a friend—Mercina Adderly.*”
    “You ever been in that house where they found Laura Baylis’s body?” Gruber asked Williams.
    “Never. I saw those pictures in the papers and I knew right away that I look like him,” Clarence said anxiously. “I’ve been in trouble in my life, I’ll admit, but never for nothing violent.”
    Williams said that his own wife had called him after seeing the picture in the paper and asked him flat out if he’d killed the girl.
    “I had a hard time convincing her that it wasn’t me.”
    Williams wasn’t enthusiastic about taking a lie detector test, because he didn’t trust them. But he finally agreed to face a polygraph.
    The whole interview was unsettling. Stewart and Gruber were staring at a man who looked exactly like the man in the photographs, who even wore a jacket identical to that man’s—and yet he continued to insist that he knew nothing at all about Laura Baylis.
    Was it possible that he wasn’t lying? Clarence Williams was soft-spoken and polite and said he had no idea why he looked so much like the suspect they sought. He was as puzzled as everyone else.
    A number of tipsters wanted to get information to the investigators, but they were either frightened or didn’twant to get involved. Homicide Detective Wayne Dorman received the next anonymous phone call.
    “I been seeing that picture on the TV and in the papers,” a voice that could be either male or female said. “I know it’s Clarence Williams, and I know for a fact he’s been in that house where they found that girl. He ripped that house off three