I had also driven along Frager Road on the Green River’s western bank in almost total darkness any number of nights, coming home from dinner with friends or from shopping at the Southcenter Mall. The lights of the huge mall faded within minutes as the road became indistinguishable from the river.

North of the Meeker Street Bridge, Frager Road and the rushing river frightened me a little at night because there were hardly any houses nearby, and winter rains made the Green River run so deep that it nudged the shoulders of the road. Drivers under the influence or inexperienced or reckless often missed turns on the narrow road and sailed into the river. Few of them survived. Sometimes they floated in the depths for a long time, because nobody was aware that their cars and bodies waited there beneath the surface.

In the moonless dark, the lonely road along the river seemed somehow sinister, although I could never come up with a good reason why I felt that way. It was just a river in the daytime, running past fields, tumbling-down farmhouses, and one tiny park that had two rickety picnic tables. There were usually a few dozen fishermen huddled in little lean-tos made of scrap wood, angling for steelheads along the river.

Despite my foreboding, I often took Frager Road home after midnight because it was a shortcut to my house on S. 244th Street. When I came to S. 212th, I drove away from the river, turning right and then left up a hill, past the “Earth Works Park,” which was not really a park at all but a huge pile of dirt that had been bulldozed into oblique ascending levels and then thinly planted with grass. The City of Kent had commissioned it as an art project. It wasn’t pretty, it didn’t seem like art and it, too, was faintly threatening as it loomed beside the secluded road that wound up a hill that became steeper and steeper.

I was always relieved when I reached the top and crossed Military Road onto S. 216th. Highway 99—the SeaTac HiWay—where the lights were bright again, was only two blocks ahead and I was almost home.

I rarely had occasion to drive on Frager Road between S. 212th and Meeker Streets, and Wendy’s body had drifted south of where I always turned off. In the summer months when she was found, the water wasn’t deep beneath the Meeker Street Bridge. She would have been in plain sight of anyone who drove across it into Kent. Kent was a small town twenty-two years ago, without the block after block of condos and apartment houses it has now. The place in the river where Wendy’s body floated didn’t abut a golf course or a joggers’ trail two decades ago because they hadn’t been built yet. Kent’s city council hadn’t voted in 1982 to make the city’s entrance picturesque.

Kent was mostly a blue-collar town and Seattle comedians were quick to make jokes about it. Bellevue and Mercer and Bainbridge Islands were the white-collar bastions, but Kent, Auburn, and Tukwila were fair game. Almost Live, the most popular local comedy show, even coined a euphemism for sexual intercourse, calling it “Going to Tukwila” after a local couple claimed the championship for “making love the most times in one year.”

Close to where Wendy’s body was left, there was a restaurant called The Ebb Tide that had moderately good food and served generous drinks in its smoke-filled lounge. A block or so east of that was a topless dancing spot, a two-story motel, and a handful of fast-food franchises.

The Green River was running low in July 1982, and much of the rocky shore with its reedy grasses was exposed. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a man—or men—to carry Wendy from a vehicle down to the river, but it would have had to be done in the hours of darkness. Someone pushing a bike or walking across the bridge, or anyone driving along Frager Road, could have seen what was happening. No one had. At least no one came forward to report any sightings.

The chances were good that the person—or persons—who had murdered Wendy Lee Coffield would never be found. She had quite probably met a deadly stranger who had no ties that might link the two of them with physical or circumstantial evidence. Stranger-to-stranger homicides are traditionally the most difficult to solve.

Even so, I saved the small pile of newspaper articles about Wendy. I drove to the Green River and stood at the spot where she had been found, wondering how she had come to get in a car with the worst person possible. Had it been someone she knew and trusted not to hurt her? Homicide detectives always look first at a victim’s friends, co-workers, and family. If Wendy Coffield had known her killer, the Kent police had a reasonable chance of finding him. If she had encountered a stranger with violence in mind, her case might very well end up in the unsolved files.

ALONG WITH THE NEWSPAPER clippings I saved, I began to receive letters from women with terrifying memories to share.

I don’t remember what month it was, or even what season. I do remember that it was in 1982 or 1983. I was nineteen, maybe even twenty at the time. It’s hard for me now to be sure because it’s been a really long time ago. I was “working,” because I didn’t have much choice—I had a big hassle with my mother and I didn’t have a place to live or a way to eat except to be on the streets. In those days, I pretty much worked in downtown Seattle and my street name was “Kim Carnes”—I got that from the song about “Betty [sic] Davis Eyes”—because, you know, none of us liked to use our real names. We knew we’d be out of “the life” pretty soon and we didn’t want any connection to…you know…

This particular john picked me up at the Greyhound bus depot on Eighth and Stewart. He was driving kind of a clunker of a car. I’m pretty good on details ’cause it was safer I figured to pay attention. It was a light blue Ford sedan with four doors, and it had vinyl seats. He told me that he was taking me to a party, and I believed him and said that was okay, but I knew that it was a “date” for money.

He got on the I-5 Freeway right there close to the Greyhound station and headed south, but it seemed like we were going a long, long way. I mean, I knew the south end of the county pretty good because I’d had this job where I delivered parts to Boeing at the plant out in the Kent Valley. I was starting to get a little bit suspicious. I kept asking him where we were going, and he seemed like he was getting nervous. He just said we’d be there “Soon—soon.”

I was trying to make conversation, but he was getting really antsy. One time he pointed kind of over toward the east and he told me that he worked over there “across the river.” That would have been the Green River and I thought he meant he worked in Kent.

I kept asking him how far the party was and he started to get angry and he was rude to me. But then he turned off on the Orilla Road South exit that’s just past Angle Lake and it goes down to the county dump there, and on down the hill into the valley. I thought that was where we were going, but then he made a turn and we were going up a hill, and through some streets where there were a lot of houses. I figured that’s where the party was supposed to be, but he didn’t stop—not until we came to this field or maybe it was just a big vacant lot. It was really lonesome out there with trees all around it. You couldn’t see any lights, only the moon.

I was really scared by this time because we were so far from the freeway and we weren’t near any houses, either. On the way out, I’d been memorizing everything I could about his car and I’d noticed that the glove box didn’t have a lock on it—only a button. He reached over me and popped it open and I saw that there was a stack of Polaroid pictures in there. He made me look at them. The first one was of a woman with red lingerie wrapped all around her neck and her face seemed kind of swollen. She looked scared. The thing I remember about all the pictures was that the girls in them had the same look in their eyes, like they were trapped. I didn’t ask him who they were because I was too afraid.