No Regrets

Harborview, less than a mile away.
    She had no purse, no identifying papers. Nothing. They didn’t know who she was, and she couldn’t tell them; she might never be able to tell them. For the moment, she was a “Jane Doe,” admitted into the ER in extremely critical condition.
    Seattle Police Patrol Officers H. J. Burke and R. S. Zuray had arrived at the Melrose apartment building within moments of the paramedics, and Burke had ridden along in the ambulance to the hospital with the victim to write down anything she said. It would be Res Gestae (spontaneous utterances), a virtual deathbed statement that would be admissible in court if she didn’t make it. Burke also photographed her in the emergency room, feeling privately that they were already working on a homicide case, even though the victim was still, technically, alive.
    Zuray, along with Officer Dave Malland, remained at the scene, trying to locate just where the attack might have taken place, while their sergeant, Beryl Thompson, radioed in that detectives were needed at the 1520 Melrose address. Before her transfer to Patrol as a sergeant, Thompson worked as a sexual assault detective for years, and she was particularly adept at preserving evidence of rape.
    Detective Sergeant Don Cameron and Detectives Duane Homan, Gary Fowler, and Ted Fonis responded at once from the Homicide Unit on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building. They sprinted to their cars and headed up the hill to the scene. Ironically, the victim had been found less than a mile from the Seattle Police Department’s main precinct. By the time they arrived, the street in front of The Melrose was jammed with official vehicles.
    The Melrose was a well-maintained relic of an earlier day, having long since ceased to be the fashionable address it once was when Seattle’s high-society members hosted parties there, dancing the Charleston and drinking bootleg liquor. Their sprawling apartments had been sectioned off into smaller units for those who lived in genteel poverty, mostly elderly people living alone. They cookedon hot plates and watched a changing world through rain-spattered windows with faded curtains. Some of the occupants were younger, working for minimum wage, or getting money wherever they could. When they were drunk or drugged, or involved in “domestics”—fights between husbands, wives, and live-in partners—cops arrived, banging on doors. Every car in the Central District knew The Melrose well. There was no longer anything grand or upscale about the old apartment house.
    Next door to The Melrose, overgrown rhododendrons, camellias, lilacs, and laurel hedges were slowly being choked out by ubiquitous Himalayan Blackberry brambles. The thick growth almost obliterated a walkway leading to a deserted old mansion whose windows were boarded over. Just beyond that, there was a car rental agency. The area afforded tenants an easy walk to the downtown district to the west, or, going south, to the hospitals located on Seattle’s “Pill Hill.” It was the kind of neighborhood where residents try not to get involved in their neighbors’ affairs, where fights and screams in the night often go unheeded because people are reluctant to face reprisal for calling the cops.
    Zuray and Malland had looked around the area before the homicide men arrived and felt that the actual crime scene was probably at the abandoned house at 1516 Mel-rose. They pointed out what they had found to the homicide crew.
    Jagged shrubbery was broken down along the walk leading back twenty-five paces from the street. Worn marble steps led down into the basement of the house. Nearby, a pair of tan knee-length nylons lay twisted on the walk. There were scuff marks on the sidewalk three feet from those steps as if a mighty struggle had taken place there.
    The basement door appeared to have been forced open, and women’s clothing had been thrown into the stairwell leading to the cellar.
    “We found the coat over here,” Malland said, pointing to a white leather coat with a fake-fur collar. “And blue slacks with blood on them. There’s a bottle of Tylenol pills, too. None of it looks like it’s been here long.”
    Two rusty nails that extended from the basement window casing had strands of long chestnut brown hair caught on them. It appeared that the victim had been dragged forcibly to the cellar entry, her clothing ripped off as she went.
    The detectives moved into the concrete room at the bottom of the