Mortal Danger

bus back to Ballard.
    Depending on how many stops it made, they would be in their home neighborhood around a quarter after midnight.
    The Seattle Transit bus got to Sara’s stop at 24th NW at 12:20, and she hopped down the steps, waving to her friend. Sometimes they called each other after they got home, but if not, they would be on the phone together the next day—as they always were.
    Reassured by Sara Beth’s call saying she would be onthe midnight bus, her mother had drifted off to sleep. She was very tired and thought she would hear Sara Beth come in; her daughter was always good about curfews and getting home when she said she would. And she had only to walk through a family neighborhood to get to her house.
    On Sunday morning, the phone rang and Lynne Carlson went to Sara Beth’s room to tell her she had a call. She was surprised to see that she wasn’t there. At first, she wondered why Sara Beth would have gotten up so early and had already made her bed.
    Then it dawned on her: Sara Beth hadn’t come home the night before….
    She immediately checked with Minda to see if Sara Beth had stayed overnight at her house, but Minda told her that Sara Beth had gotten off the bus alone at her regular stop and started walking in the direction of her home.
    The next call Lynne Carlson made was to the Seattle Police to report her daughter missing. On that Sunday morning, there was still a possibility that Sara Beth had changed her mind and stayed overnight with another girlfriend. Patrol officer LaVerne Husby, who came to take Lynne’s report, asked about the possibility that Sara Beth had run away, but she was adamant that Sara Beth would never do that.
    More frightening was a scenario where Sara Beth had been hit by a car, fallen, or been involved in some other kind of accident and was in the hospital. But a check with Seattle hospitals indicated there were no young “Jane Does” who had come in during the night.
    A half hour passed, but it seemed like a day, and Lynne Carlson felt cold fear with every passing moment. Eachtime the phone rang shrilly, she prayed it would be Sara Beth with an explanation about where she was.
     
    On Leary Avenue Northwest, three miles from where Sara Beth lived, a crew of family members were spending the holiday weekend helping Bill of Bill’s Tire Exchange finish transforming a deserted gas station into his new business. The weather had held the day before when they painted the exterior of the station, but now rain had started to fall. They were preparing to finish the paint job on the interior.
    It was shortly after noon when Bill’s teenage nephew opened the men’s room door to get some tools they had stored there. Or rather, he tried to open the door. Something was blocking it from inside. Puzzled, he looked down and saw a small hand with perfectly polished nails. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck, and he backed away and called his uncle.
    Bill knelt to examine the hand. It felt cold and stiff to his touch. As he told detectives later, “There was just no life in it at all. I knew—I’ve seen bodies before—and the way that hand lay, I knew someone was dead in there.”
    He called 911, and Officers Warren Lisenby and LaVerne Husby, and Patrol Sergeant G. S. Perkins responded to the stark report of “a body in a service station.”
    They had no idea who it might be, although they were inclined to think it was probably a homeless person who’d found a place to get out of the rain. From the description of the body’s hand, it was probably a female, maybe a “baglady” who lived outdoors because she had no money for a room or an apartment.
    Still, this area wasn’t a neighborhood where many street people hung out.
    The three officers peered through the crack in the door. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, they could make out the figure of a young woman. She lay on her back in the six-by-eight room.
    The officers immediately put in a call to the Homicide Unit.
    All unattended/suspicious deaths are considered homicides first, suicides second, and accidental last. If this young woman had perished through homicidal violence, the patrol officers didn’t want to risk losing any physical evidence.
    Detective Sergeant Don Cameron’s team was working the weekend shift, and he and Detective Mike Tando responded with the homicide van.
    “All we know now is that she wasn’t here when the painting crew left last night about eight thirty,” Sergeant