Mortal Danger

he’d had a remarkably clear dream where he had experienced Sara Beth’s feelings as she was being killed. He had his dates wrong, and he was under the impression she had been shot. Tando sighed and put this “tip” into the “220 File.” (This is Seattle police language for mentally disturbed people; in the early 1900s, officers were paid a $2.20 bonus when they were dispatched to this kind of often dangerous call. In California, the code is “51/50” for someone mentally off balance.)
    A group of psychics offered to hold a séance and promised to get back to Tando with whatever “clues” they turned up. Evidently they didn’t find any because he never heard from them again.
    Because Sara Beth’s killer could be anyone , there was an invisible veil of panic in Ballard. Women of all ages who were approached by men they didn’t know expected the worst and called 911. Patrol units were kept busy. Most of the incidents turned out to be friendly, would-be pickups, but everyone was running scared.
    A receptionist at the Asian Services Center reported that she’d received a call from a youth who’d rambled on and finally confessed that he’d “killed a girl in Ballard.” But he had the details of Sara Beth’s case all wrong.
    Hers was the kind of murder case that pulled kooks out of the woodwork.
    Two patrol officers were in the area of the tire store afew nights after the murder. Shortly after 11:00 p.m., they watched a man loitering near the restroom. He was drunk and sobbing, and they were somewhat surprised when he asked them for a flashlight.
    “He told us he was Sara Beth’s neighbor, and he said he’d found her shoes.”
    The man was Sven Olsen—the thirty-five-year-old son of Lorraine Olsen, who had found Sara Beth’s purse and clogs! They wondered what he was looking for in the place where her body had lain.
    It was enough to make detectives look more closely at Olsen. He was showing excessive sorrow over her death. They learned that, twice, he had attempted to see her body at the mortuary. When they talked with him, Olsen agreed that it was he who had found Sara Beth’s shoes and purse and brought them into his house. He’d felt very guilty ever since, wondering if she died because of inaction on his part.
    “I thought I should call someone, but I didn’t know who. I went to bed instead,” he said, wiping away a tear. “Maybe I could have saved her somehow.”
    Sven Olsen had known both of the Lundquist girls since the time he’d clerked in a 7-Eleven in the neighborhood.
    It was hours later—on Sunday afternoon—when he showed the clogs and purse to his mother, and she called Lynne Carlson.
    Sven Olsen’s coming home about the time Sara Beth was murdered and his overwhelming emotional reaction over the death of someone he didn’t know did make him a likely suspect for a while. Still, further investigation showed only that he was an unhappy man with a drinking problem, employed, somewhat ironically, as a bartender.
    Detective Mike Tando talked with patrons at the Blue Gill tavern where Olsen worked. Those who were there on Saturday night were positive that Sven had never left the tavern between the time he came on shift in the early evening of July 1 and 2:00 a.m., when it closed. Whoever had seized Sara Beth had to have attacked her within five or ten minutes of when she got off the bus at twenty minutes after midnight.
    Tando was hitting all the catch-22’s that go along with murders with no obvious suspects. Anything was possible, and it was always a question of how far he should go on which tips. In retrospect, what is essential to solving a murder seems obvious. From the other end, it isn’t that easy.
    A photographer who worked at I. Faces called in. “I take slides of the dancers, and then we project them on a giant screen at the disco,” he said. “I’m sure that Sara Beth and Minda were at I. Faces both Friday and Saturday nights. I have pictures of Sara to prove it.”
    But he didn’t. Mike Tando looked carefully at all the slides in question and failed to find any photos of Sara Beth, although he saw a few that resembled her.
    “We weren’t there,” Minda insisted when Tando asked her about the previous weekend. “We went out for a Coke on Friday night at a restaurant in the north end, and then we talked to some boys we knew in a park. And on Saturday night, we went to the movie, but you already know that.”
    Another promising lead ending nowhere.
    It