Mortal Danger

either. She had bent over backwards to keep a peaceful relationship with her next-door neighbors. And the forgers had no idea yet that they were about to be arrested.
    No. Abducting the pretty divorcée made no sense at all. Surely, even as attractive as Traia was, she was much too old to tantalize teenage boys—and much too circumspect even to consider doing so.
    Five days passed, and there were no calls or letters from Traia. Her relatives and her lover were desperate for news of her as the hottest weather of the year burned grass brown, and Traia’s trees dropped pears, peaches, and early apples on the ground, where they rotted. Ordinarily, she would have been canning and freezing the produce for the winter ahead.
    The Marysville and Snohomish County detectives were convinced now that they were probably working on a murder case. They had eliminated almost everyone in Traia’s world as suspects. Tom Scott had a solid alibi for the vital time period when his sweetheart vanished, and he was doing everything he could to help them.
    He had loved Traia—that was clear—and he was deeply saddened as day after day passed and there was no word from her or about her.
    The amorous suitor who made unwanted sexual advances to Traia when he was drunk had been far away from Marysville on July 4. The detectives verified that.
    If Traia had received obscene phone calls, she hadn’t mentioned it to her friends or to Tom Scott. She had been afraid at night—but of whom?
    They had worked their way through Traia’s world. Except for someone unknown who had frightened her, there was no one else who would conceivably have wanted to hurt her.
    If a stranger had come to her door, she would never have let him in.
    “Traia’s feisty,” one of her relatives told the investigative team. “She could handle troublemakers in the tavern; she’d eighty-six them if they didn’t shape up. But she valued her life, and she wouldn’t have taken any chances with it. Once she saw a stranger in the peephole of her door, she wouldn’t let him in. I know that.”
     
    At 4:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday, July 12, Traia Carr had been missing for a full week. A logger was finishing work for the day off an isolated dirt road on the Tulalip Indian Reservation, which is very close to Marysville. Working alone, he was cutting and yarding—pulling fallen fir trees out of the woods.
    He’d been in the area for a few days, and he’d caught occasional whiffs of a nauseating odor. He recognized it as decaying flesh. That wasn’t unusual in the deep woods, and he figured some animal had died close by and was decomposing rapidly.
    He hooked a turn (two logs together) and dragged them down along the road. Glancing back, the logger caught a glimpse of “something light.” He hopped off his rig and walked back to see what it was.
    Traia Carr had been found.
    Bruce Whitman and Dick Taylor processed the body site. Without the logger choosing just this area to work in, the missing woman might never have been discovered. The undergrowth was as thick as if they were in a jungle.
    The female body before them was completely nude and lying facedown. Despite the decomposition caused by a week’s intense heat, and the fact that the huge fir trees had actually passed over her body—crushing it—the detectives could still see many puncture wounds in her back. And, when they gently turned her over, more knife woundsmarred her breasts. Someone had stabbed her again and again in an almost classic example of a rage killing.
    Traia’s purple robe and slippers were gone, although tracking dogs would later turn up a torn piece of purple cloth in the brush not far away.
     
    Dr. E. Bitar, a forensic pathologist, performed the postmortem exam on Traia Carr. The knife thrusts had entered her heart and lungs, causing several fatal wounds. Some were shallow, but the deepest wounds measured five inches. She had been stabbed at least fourteen times—five in her back and nine in her upper front torso.
    “See this bruising impression here,” Dr. Bitar pointed out to the detectives. “The weapon used had a guard at the end of the handle. The guard made the bruises. The murder weapon was a knife with a wide curving blade, tapered at the point.”
    Because Traia was nude when her body was found, her robe ripped to pieces, Jarl Gunderson, Bruce Whitman, and Dick Taylor agreed that the motive behind her murder could very well be sexual. And Dr. Bitar confirmed that theory.