Mortal Danger

about where we stood. Maybe she felt like she’d be cheating on Nouri. I know Sara Beth hadn’t dated Ricco Sanchez for almost two months.”
    Frankie Aldalotti had to be interviewed by phone; he’d already flown back home.
    Detectives wondered about the location of Sara’s Beth’s rich boyfriend from Iran. Had he really left America? They checked with customs in both countries and verified thathe had, indeed, left the country on June 28, arrived in Iran, and hadn’t yet returned to the United States.
    The only other boyfriend that Sara had seen regularly in the months prior to her death was Ricco Sanchez. Mike Tando found that Sanchez worked at a Black Angus restaurant when he was dating Sara Beth. He didn’t own a car, so he had picked her up in a taxi for their dates. A check at the Black Angus revealed that Sanchez had quit his job. His last day was either the Wednesday or Thursday after the July Fourth weekend.
    Detectives Duane Homan and Paul Eblin went to Sanchez’s address and talked with his mother. She promised she would have him contact detectives as soon as possible.
    On July 20, Ricco Sanchez appeared at headquarters, ready to talk with homicide detectives. Ricco, sixteen, said he was eager to help in the investigation of Sara Beth’s death.
    “I only knew her for about a month. We went out a couple of times—to the movies and the drive-in. I met her at I. Faces. I used to call her a lot—just to talk.”
    “Where were you on the Saturday night Sara was killed?” Mike Tando asked abruptly.
    “A friend and I went camping in the Cascade foothills on June 29—Thursday—and we didn’t come back until Sunday when we were rained out,” Ricco said. “I didn’t know about what happened to Sara until that night when my friend called and told me to look in the paper. I was shocked. I still am,” he finished, bowing his head.
    “Did you kill Sara?” Tando asked.
    “No, sir. I didn’t.”
    “Why would someone kill Sara Beth?” Paul Eblin asked.
    “The only reason I can think why anyone would kill her would be over jealousy. If somebody who wanted to go out with her—only she wouldn’t—is all I can think of.”
    Asking a suspect for his opinion on how to solve a crime is an old and effective technique; actual murderers tend to enjoy the cat-and-mouse game that puts them in the role of experts on the subject. As they pontificate on what detectives should look for, they often reveal more about themselves than they mean to.
    Was Sanchez telling them that he had been jealous when Sara Beth stopped dating him? They didn’t think so, and he knew that they would check on his camping story. He impressed the detectives as sincere. He seemed to be playing it straight with them.
    And, of course, they checked his alibi about the camping trip and found it to be true.
    In most homicide cases, there aren’t enough suspects. In the case of Sara Beth Lundquist, there were too many. Old boyfriends, new boyfriends, peculiar neighborhood characters, strangers who might have been attracted to the exquisite teenager, and possibly sexual predators who chanced upon her when she was all alone.
    Detective Pat Lamphere of the Sex Crimes Unit talked with Mike Tando about one of her cases. A seventeen-year-old girl had been abducted at knifepoint and raped by a man who drove a van. The victim was walking home after dark on a street not too far away from where Sara Beth was last seen alive.
    “The interesting thing is,” Lamphere said, “our victimgoes to I. Faces to dance all the time. Look at her picture; she’s almost a twin of Sara Lundquist.”
    The rapist Pat Lamphere sought had gotten away clean because his victim was too upset to think about checking the license plate as he sped off.
     
    July 1978 was coming to an end, and the case file on Sara Beth Lundquist was now as thick as an encyclopedia. Mike Tando started another file. Practically everyone who had ever known Sara Beth had been interviewed, as well as occupants of homes for many blocks around the alley where she was thought to have been attacked. Her girlfriends were frightened, too, and reported every call they received from boys or men they didn’t know.
    On July 28, Nouri Habid called from Iran and talked to Lynne Carlson. He was worried because Sara Beth hadn’t written to him as she’d promised. Lynne had to tell him that Sara Beth had been dead since two days after he’d left. Brokenhearted, Nouri said he would fly at once to the