I-5 KILLER by Ann Rule

Author:Ann Rule [Rule, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-29T21:52:08+00:00

13

In Beaverton, Oregon, Captain Dave Bishop and Detective Neal Loper were as stymied with the progress of their murder case as Dave Kominek and Monty Holloway were with the stalemate In tracking the I-5 Killer. While both departments were peripherally aware of the other’s investigations, all the detectives were working around the clock on their own cases. Anyone who has not been caught in the vortex of an intensive murder probe can never really understand what is involved. Detectives’ lives are literally put on hold while they work day and night in a boiler-room situation where nothing else matters. They eat, sleep, and breathe the details of the homicides and their minds are a jumble of possibilities—most of which are reviewed, analyzed, and then discarded. If they make a mistake, even one, there is the dread possibility that someone else is going to die, and it will be their fault—or they will believe it is their fault.

Bishop’s ulcer flared up, and he gulped antacids and ignored it. Both he and Loper saw their homes infrequently, and then only to catch a few hours of sleep. The memory of Julie Reitz’s body on the stairway of her own home haunted them. The thought that someone had held a .38 to the back of her head was ugly. The pretty, slender girl could not have been much of a threat; she had clearly been shot either because someone hated her so much that he wanted to destroy her or, more chilling because he wanted to silence her.

They kept coming back to the concept that Julie’s killer had to have been someone she knew. They were sure they had already cleared the most likely suspects. That meant that it must have been a man who moved just outside the edges of her usual life, someone from her past that most of her friends had forgotten about—or even someone she had recently met.

Neal Loper questioned one of Julie’s close friends again.

“Think. Could there be any man Julie knew so slightly that you may have forgotten him? Someone who didn’t seem important?”

“No…Wait! There was a guy…Randy. He was a lot older than Julie.”

“Tell me about him,” Loper urged.

“He worked at the Faucet Tavern. His name was Randy Woodfield. That was last summer. Julie went out with him maybe once or twice. He came on too strong, and she told me she didn’t want to date him again—but then she said they were going to be friends.”

“She hadn’t mentioned him lately?”

The girl shook her head.

“What kind of car did he drive?”

“Let me think. Yeah…yeah, it was a Volkswagen Bug, I think. Kind of a gold color.”

The information went up on the charts in Bishop’s office:

“Woodfield, Randy. 25-27? Faucet Tavern bartender. Volkswagen?”

And then the name came up again. One of Julie’s girlfriends recalled that Randy Woodfield had asked to sleep over in Julie’s town house. She explained that he’d taken Julie out and gotten her a little intoxicated.

“He crawled in bed with us and fooled around with Julie—but nothing really happened.

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