On the last night Curt saw Gail, things were normal—for them. They had stayed in the New West for a few days, but their rent was up and they were both broke. On the night of April 22, they were in the VIP Tavern a few blocks north of their motel. They shared a couple of beers while Curt played Pac Man. Gail watched him, not talking to anyone else in the tavern.

Finally, Curt decided to head to the Midway Tavern, which was across the Kent–Des Moines Road from the Texaco station and the Blockhouse Restaurant. He hoped they had a poker game going there, and he’d have a lucky night.

Gail told him she would try to find a way to keep their motel room for another night or two. He walked away from the VIP Tavern, leaving her there alone; she knew the woman bartender. It was more than a mile to the Midway, so Curt decided to catch a bus. He waited at the familiar intersection at 216th and the Pac HiWay. Idly, he watched traffic and noted a blue or possibly green Ford pickup passing. It wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination, but it was noticeable because it had so many sanded “circular” marks on it, as if it was primed for a paint job.

Curt was startled to see Gail sitting in the passenger seat beside a man with light hair who appeared to be in his early thirties. He was wearing a plaid shirt that made him look like an “outdoorsman.”

Curt’s arm was half lifted to wave at Gail when he was surprised by the way she looked. “She seemed dazed,” he would tell F.B.I. agent “Duke” Dietrich later. “She was staring straight ahead. It was bizarre. She was looking right at me, but it was as if she didn’t see me. I’m sure she could see me—it wasn’t dark out yet.”

He waved harder, but Gail didn’t respond. If she was trying to signal him that she was in some kind of trouble, he couldn’t decipher it. She was sitting far away from the driver, right next to the passenger door. He watched as the truck turned left and disappeared. “I don’t know how to explain it,” Curt said, “but I felt fear—fear for her because I sensed she was in danger. I ran across the road toward the truck and tried to catch up with it, but the driver made a left turn and sped up.”

Curt had watched helplessly as the truck disappeared. The bus came by and he got on, telling himself that he was overreacting. He spent an hour at the Midway Tavern, but nobody wanted to play poker, so he trudged back to their motel room. He watched the highway for a long time, waiting for car lights to turn into the motel or the sound of Gail’s footsteps scrunching the gravel. There were a few cars, but Gail didn’t come back that night.

Curt called 911 to report her missing. He said later that he was told that he couldn’t make an official missing person’s report because he was not related to her.

Curt waited for Gail to come back or leave a message for him at the motel office, but there was nothing. He stopped at all the places along the highway where they’d gone together. No one remembered seeing Gail recently. He couldn’t help it; his mind turned to thoughts about the Green River Killer. Both he and Gail were aware of the missing and murdered girls, but she had never been afraid. He’d warned her about hitchhiking, too, but she told him not to worry about that—she could take care of herself.

He wondered now why Gail had looked so strangely at him—or, rather, through him—when he waved at her. Somehow, the man behind the wheel must have been controlling her. Maybe he was holding a knife against her body so she didn’t dare cry out. Maybe a gun. Why else would she have not even waved or smiled at him?

They’d been together for almost a year, and they’d become close. Curt didn’t buy the idea that Gail would simply leave him with no explanation. It was true they hadn’t had much money, and life was tough for them, but they had always believed that if they pulled together, they could get out of the hole they were in and build a better life. But drugs were important to Curt, too, and eventually he moved on, unsure of what had happened to Gail.

By the time an investigator knew what had become of Gail and tracked Curt down, he was an inmate in a Texas prison. When he was returned to Seattle to be interviewed by Dr. John Berberich, the Seattle Police Department’s psychologist, Curt agreed readily to be hypnotized. Maybe there was something hidden in his subconscious that would help catch her killer. A license number or a more complete description of the truck and driver.

Despite their best efforts, Curt could recall nothing beyond the odd, frozen look on Gail’s face the last time he saw her.

EIGHT DAYS after Curt saw Gail Mathews in a stranger’s truck, that same intersection was the scene of an apparent abduction. Marie Malvar was eighteen, a beautiful Filipina, the cherished daughter of a large family. They didn’t know she was out there on the highway at S. 216th, near the Three Bears Motel, trusting that she was safe because her boyfriend, Richie,* was with her to note which cars she got into and to make sure she came back safely in a reasonable time.

The young couple watched as a dark truck approached the intersection from the south. As it pulled over, they could see a spot on the passenger door that glowed lighter than the rest of the truck, a coat of primer paint. Marie spoke to the driver, nodded, and then got in and the stranger’s vehicle pulled onto the highway again.

As he usually did, Richie followed, keeping pace, and then pulling alongside. From her gestures, it appeared to him that Marie was upset. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it looked as though she wanted to get out of the truck. The driver slowed down, but only to turn around in a motel parking lot and then accelerated as he headed south. Richie did the same, but he didn’t make the light at S. 216th. It turned red and he had to stop. He watched as the pickup truck turned left and headed east—in the direction of the Green River. As soon as the light changed, Richie turned left, too.

Because he was less than a minute behind the pickup, Richie thought it was strange when he saw no taillights ahead, neither going down the Earthworks hill on 216th, nor headed north or south on Military Road, which ran parallel to the highway. Tossing a coin in his head, he drove south on Military, but there were no vehicles at all between the intersection and the Kent–Des Moines Road a few miles south. There didn’t seem to be anyplace the truck could have turned off, because Military and the I-5 Freeway were so close together and there were no on-ramps along that section.

Richie didn’t see the almost invisible street sign that led to a narrow cul-de-sac on the right side of Military Road. It was easy to miss, especially in the dark. Bewildered, he drove back to the parking lot to wait for the guy in the truck to bring Marie back.

But he never did.

Because he and Marie had been engaged in prostitution, Richie was hesitant to go to the police. He was just as nervous about telling her father, Jose, because he feared his wrath when he learned that Richie had let Marie take such chances. Still, when four days went by with no word from her, Richie went to the Des Moines Police Department. There, he talked to Detective Sergeant Bob Fox. Richie reported Marie as missing, but he didn’t tell the whole truth about what he and Marie had been doing out on the highway. If he had, Fox, who had investigated many homicides in the city of Des Moines, and who was well aware of the Green River cases, would have reacted differently. Instead, Richie’s evasiveness made Fox wonder if he hadn’t harmed his girlfriend himself, or, more likely, Marie Malvar and Richie might have had a fight and she’d left him on her own.

Jose Malvar was very concerned. Marie wasn’t a girl who stayed away from home for long, and she called frequently. Now there was only silence. Jose picked up Richie and said they were going to find her, demanding to know just where she and Richie had been when she disappeared.