No Regrets

not run away because of any guilty knowledge about Teresa’s death; they had left on a whim. However, they were able to corroborate much of the information about Teresa’s perambulations during her last summer. Tami verified that Teresa and Jeff had dated quite steadily all summer. “They were together all the time for about two weeks in August, and then I didn’t see either one of them anymore,” Tami said.
    “Do you know where Teresa met Jeff?” Gary Trent asked.
    “We were walking over by Crossroads and Jeff and some guy went riding past on motorcycles, but then they stopped—and started talking to us.”
    “Do you know where Jeff went after you stopped seeing Teresa?”
    “All I know is she kept saying they were going to California together. That’s what I thought they’d done,” Tami said. She had considered Teresa her very good friend, and wondered about her. “She used to call me at least once a day, and I was really surprised when she suddenly stopped calling me. She didn’t even say good-bye.”
    Another seventeen-year-old girl volunteered an opinion. Jill Reid* told Gleason that she had known Teresa and Jeff Bigelow, although she hadn’t been a close friend of either. “When we heard that Teresa had been killed, a bunch of us started talking. We kept asking each other, ‘Could Jeff Bigelow have done it?’”
    “Why would you feel that way?” Gleason probed.
    “Well, they were together and people saw them all over, and then three months ago, they both just disappeared. Suddenly, we heard that Jeff had gone into the army, and nobody had seen Teresa at all.”
    No matter which angle the Bellevue detectives studied, the most rational approach kept bringing them back to eighteen-year-old Jeff Bigelow—Teresa Sterling’s last boyfriend.
    One of the most dissonant factors jarring the detectives was that everyone but Jeff Bigelow had called them to offer help or to ask questions. If he had been so close to Teresa, surely he would have heard by now that her body had been found. Surely he would have come forward tohelp in the investigation. Unless he had something to hide.
    Gleason contacted military authorities and learned that Jeff Bigelow had enlisted in the army during the last few days of August, and been sent to Fort Lewis, Washington, the sprawling army base forty-five miles away. It had not been an impromptu enlistment, however; Bigelow had signed up earlier in the summer.
    On December 14, Gleason and Gary Trent went to CID offices at Fort Lewis—only to learn that Bigelow had taken a four-day pass and would not be back until Tuesday, December 18. Two days later, however, Bigelow called the Bellevue Police Department. When he was told that the detectives who were looking for him were not on duty, he left his name and hung up.
    On December 18, Gleason and Trent went back to Fort Lewis and met with Jeff Bigelow in the CID offices. The interview began on a casual note. He was told that they were merely seeking more information about Teresa Sterling, and Bigelow was perfectly agreeable to having the interview recorded.
    Even at this point, the young soldier was not a prime suspect, but he was the one man who had evolved as being the closest to the dead girl. Trent asked him to describe their meeting, their relationship, and how often he had seen her.
    The detectives were surprised by his next words. He seemed to be holding back. He was very calm as he said he had known Teresa only casually—he guessed that he might have dated her once or twice. “The last time I saw her was some time in the middle of August. It was in downtown Bellevue. I said ‘Hi’ and told her I was going in the army.”
    Trent stopped the tape. He said they knew that Bigelow’s story was full of discrepancies, and that, at this point, he would be advised of his rights under Miranda. “We think you’re the guy who was with Teresa at the beauty shop on August 24. All your friends have told us over and over you and Teresa went to a lot of parties together.”
    Bigelow turned ashen and sagged a little in his chair. And he then admitted that he
was
the man with the motorcycle helmet who had been with Teresa that afternoon. “I guess I thought that was sometime earlier in August.”
    “We don’t believe that you were only casual acquaintances,” Trent said quietly. “We think you two had hooked up last summer.”
    “I didn’t consider her my girlfriend,” Bigelow argued. “I guess we did go out together,