Mortal Danger

plethora of tips coming in, patrolmen and Crimes Specific officers fanned out more widely in the neighborhood where Sara Beth lived and near the remodeled gas station where she was found. They would eventually talk to almost three hundred households—and still glean pitifully little that might help find her murderer.
    One man near the alley where her clogs and purse were found recalled hearing a “shout” after midnight and a car revving up its motor and driving away immediately after.
    A woman a few blocks from there discovered that some old mattresses in her garage had been uncovered and disarranged. But they had no blood stains on them.
    Several homeowners said their dogs had barked frantically at something in the middle of the night. But anyone who owns a dog knows they bark at myriad things—from other dogs to raccoons, to the wind, to actual intruders. The list is endless.
    One young woman told a patrolman that she had been out with her boyfriend on the night Sara Beth was killed. “We ran out of gas at Eighty-fifth and Twentieth. I waitedalone in my boyfriend’s car for him come back with the gas, and this weirdo came out of the dark and tried to get in.”
    The man, who appeared to be in his twenties, had approached the car and tested all the locked doors. Then he proceeded to masturbate at the window next to her, while she cowered inside. After he ejaculated on the window, he disappeared. This had happened at about ten minutes to one.
    Another bus driver—on the alternative Ballard run—said he’d passed by a huge beer party going on near 85th and 15th. It had lasted for most of the night, with scores of young people in all stages of sobriety wandering around. “My last run through was about twelve thirty p.m. and they were still out there then.”
    On July 4, a resident living at 86th and 22nd NW reported that he’d found a large knife caught in the tall laurel hedge that bordered his yard. The knife had dried dark stains on the blade and handle. Mike Tando picked up the knife, only to find that laboratory analysis showed that the stains were food and animal blood. It had been washed, so the possibility that it had once had human blood on it wasn’t ruled out. The criminalists were doing further tests.
    Sara Beth’s funeral was on July 6. Mike Tando and other detectives mingled unobtrusively among the mourners, watching for someone who looked out of place or whose emotions seemed inappropriate. But there was no one there who raised their antennas.
    A few days later, Tando talked at length with Lynne Carlson in an effort to find something, anything, that mightpoint to her daughter’s killer. But he learned nothing that could help the investigation.
    Sara Beth and her mother had had a warm relationship. She had never run away or balked at her family’s house rules. She was happy. She would never, ever have gotten in a car, or gone with someone she didn’t know. Her mother confirmed Minda’s opinion that Sara Beth was frightened of alleys after dark. She wouldn’t have taken a shortcut home after midnight, but she would have fought hard for her life if someone grabbed her and dragged her into an alley.
    Sara Beth had planned a trip on Sunday, July 2, with the Aldalotti family, and their sons Benny and Frankie, the two brothers she dated casually. Frankie had come by to pick her up on Sunday morning. Told that Sara Beth was missing, he had decided to go on ahead to his parents’ lodge on the Olympic Peninsula. The Aldalottis had called later that day to see if Sara Beth had returned safely. Her mother told them that she was dead. They were stunned and saddened.
    Mike Tando was a little put off that Frankie Aldalotti hadn’t initially been very worried when he heard Sara Beth was missing. Perhaps some of the young men Sara Beth considered to be platonic friends didn’t see it that way. Jealousy has always been a motive for murder.
    Still, Sara Beth’s mother and sister confirmed that her current romantic interest was Nouri Habid, the Iranian student who was currently visiting in his native country. And she hadn’t dated Ricco Sanchez for a month or more.
    Sara loved to go dancing at I. Faces, but she usually went there with her girlfriends.
    Mike Tando answered tips and offers of help that continued to pour in. As time passed, however, they grew stranger. As it happens with most high-profile murder cases, real and self-styled psychics offered to help with the case.
    One man insisted that